It was another two days before we made it to Williston Lake, which was the largest of the chain of lakes I had been walking us down. The only problem was the size of the thing. I don’t know exactly how the lake came to be, although on the map I saw a dam, so I guess it’s not entirely natural, but Williston Lake is huge, at least a hundred and fifty miles long. My map didn’t have any sort of details as to what was around the lake, but I knew we had to reach some sort of civilization by the end of it, if anything at the dam itself.

“Just a bit further,” I said, trying to put a brave spin on things. The pure math was, we could walk another five days just on the lake itself before reaching the dam if we had really bad luck. We had only two ration envelopes left, and the snake meat gave out the day before. I was starting to feel the effects of slow starvation and Robin looked even worse. Her body was nowhere near as prepared for this as I was, and her normally lean, sexy figure was becoming a bit gaunt. Her cheekbones, which I had always thought lent her a bit of an air of aristocracy with their high, rounded curves, now stood out even more and had taken on a sharpish angle.

It was all the exercise, I knew. Back in the plane, I had lied to Robin when I said that we could get by on only one ration pack each with supplementation from foraging. That would have been true if we had been able to follow our first plan, where I had us staying by a lake shore and just relaxing, going on five or six mile nature walks and a lot of lounging around. Instead, we were hiking twenty to thirty miles a day, wearing packs, and sleeping out of doors constantly. Our bodies were going through calories at a very high rate, plain and simple. We should have been eating two, maybe even three rations a day, and even with supplementation we weren’t eating half of that.

I had tried my best to keep Robin as strong as possible. I don’t know if she noticed, but when it came time to divvy out the rations, I made sure she got the tastier ones, and a lion’s share of the foraged food. Also, whenever I set aside parts of my ration for the next day’s breakfast, I made sure she ate at least half of my share as well as all of what she had set aside. I had a bit more experience with the conditions we found ourselves in and could keep going longer. Still, both of us were starting to show the signs of our slow starvation, and I wanted to get attention as quickly as possible.

“All right, let’s take a break,” I said, looking around. I wanted to see the lay of the land, and see if there were any potential sites of civilization closer than just hoping and staying on the same side of the lake we started on. Also, I wanted to find some food. “Ten minutes?”

Robin nodded and slung her bag off, much lighter than it had been when we left the plane a week earlier. She plopped down on the ground, her head nodding between her knees, and I watched her for a minute, concerned that it was time to take a day off to go hunting and trapping. I didn’t want to make Robin eat grubs and bugs, but if we had to, I’d do it. Hell, I have done it. After a moment, though, she looked up at me, and her eyes were clear, if tired. “Ten minute break, then we keep going,” she said, her voice determined. “But you so owe me a weekend in a five-star hotel after this.”

“Deal,” I said encouragingly. “Nothing but spa treatments, pampering, and room service.” At the mention of room service, my stomach grumbled, loud enough for both of us to hear. Robin giggled and patted her own stomach. “I think we might take the next hour to scout out some foraging as well,” I said. “There’s gotta be some sort of nut trees around here.”

Walking away, I kept my eyes open, looking for any signs of man or food. The lake was like milky glass, a shiny, slate gray that did not lift the spirits at all. I kept scanning and hoped for the best. Robin needed it.

---

While Wes was down by the lake, trying to see something that could help us, I let my body relax but kept my senses open. The incident with the snake had taught me a very important lesson, and I kept my walking stick near me, my ears open, and my eyes unfocused, trying to detect any movement I could.

I heard a sound off to the left, turning my head on a swivel. The wolf was big, a male who had obviously been outcast from his pack, at least from the scars on his side. He moved in, and in an instant I was rolling to my right, my stick in my hand.

I had been pretty good with the staff during my days in martial arts, although I’d never had to use anything I had learned outside of the classes. Wes was out of sight, maybe a hundred yards away through the trees, and I focused on the wolf instead of calling for him. There was no way he could get to me in time, and I knew I couldn’t waste any of my focus on anything but the wolf.

The staff, so similar but still so different from what I had used in martial arts, had become an extension of my arm over the past few days. Thicker near the top and tapering toward the end, I brought it up in my hands in about a one-third, two-thirds split, giving me reach but still balancing the weight. I didn’t have time for any other adjustments as the wolf charged, a growling cry tearing from its throat. My eyes felt almost supernaturally focused, and an intense sense of calm that I had only barely felt the wisps of before dropped over me. When the wolf’s rear legs tensed for the final leap, I started my thrust, jabbing the tapered bottom of my walking stick where I somehow knew the wolf was going to be.

Days of usage and dragging over the forest terrain had turned the tip into a rounded point, maybe not spear sharp, but good enough to do the job. It caught the wolf square in the throat, slipping just below his bottom jaw to scrape along the fur before landing solidly in the larynx, catching and twisting the wolf to the ground. I was still knocked back, the wolf’s sixty-five pounds of flying body mass driving the staff out of my hands and driving me to a knee, even though it never touched me. Recovering quickly, I sprung toward the wounded wolf, driving the sharp splinters into the wolf’s lungs. It coughed in agony, unable to stand or even howl with a crushed windpipe.

The whole fight lasted four seconds at most. I could see Wes running toward me out of the corner of my eye as I calmly retrieved my stick, which I could see was cracked in half, the narrow end hanging on by a thin strip of twisted pine wood that I yanked off. I was left with about a two-foot-long stake of wood with a murderously sharp end, which I looked at before I looked at the wolf. I could see the agony in the dark brown eyes, and I knew what I had to do. Before it could suffer any longer, I drove the sharp end of the stick into the wolf’s side, piercing through the lungs and I had hoped the heart or something that would kill it quickly. I must have hit something, because there was a short gush of blood which coated my hands, and the wolf sagged to the forest floor, dead.

Wes came rushing next to me as I knelt next to the dead wolf, stroking its majestic head. I had never killed an animal before, aside from the occasional bug, and never one so beautiful. I didn’t feel any sense of triumph over what I had just done, I just felt a weird mix of joy and sadness. I was happy to still be alive and uninjured, but on the other hand, I was sad to have taken the wolf’s life. “I’m okay,” I said to him preemptively as I stroked the wolf’s fur. “It never touched me.”

Wes knelt down next to me, and I could see his hands trembling when he reached for my hand. I held his hands and we embraced next to the wolf’s body, just holding each other in order to remember we were alive. Breaking the hug, I looked from the wolf to Wes, my adrenalin starting to wane, and the shakes began. I realized then just how close to death I had been, and I shuddered, my stomach clenching dangerously for a moment before relaxing. Wes watched me for a moment before standing me up and looking me over. He took my hands in his, looking over my gloves and jacket for any cuts or scratches before looking over my legs. “Strip,” he ordered, taking off my gloves. “A wolf, even a hungry one, doesn’t normally attack humans. So you either just killed a wolf that was driven by hunger and became familiar with humans, or a rabid one.”

The black fear that washed over me as I stripped was sickening. The plane crash had been chaotic, frantic, and the fear then was the same. This time, the fear was cold, creeping, and unceasing. While I stripped, Wes grabbed the wolf’s carcass by the hind leg and pulled it away toward the lake shore, where there was better light. Once I was down to my underclothes, he came back and looked me over critically, looking for any scratches or scrapes. I couldn’t see any, especially on my hands and arms, but Wes was thorough, checking me for long minutes until the cold and my fear left me shivering.

When he was finished, he looked at me and smiled softly. “You don’t have any cuts, and it looks like the wolf’s blood never even touched your skin,” he said, taking my field jacket and gloves and picking them up with the remaining section of my stick. “I’ll go wash these, but the gloves are toast. You’re going to have to wear mine for the rest of the trip.”

“And what about you?” I demanded, pulling my pants up and buckling my belt. “You’re no help if you lose a finger or two to frostbite.”

“I won’t,” he said, pulling his glove off. “I have a spare set of glove liners in my bag, and I can keep my hands in my pockets when I need to. Besides, I have an idea that might just save us a few more days of walking.”

“What?” I said, pulling my top on. Without my field jacket I was already chilly, but it wasn’t too bad. We were in the middle of the afternoon, and the daytime heat was still mostly apparent. I was still a little on edge from the encounter with the wolf, too, so the cool air hadn’t quite hit me yet. Still, I knew as the night approached that I was going to be very, very cold.

“We need to wash this blood off your jacket, and I’d prefer to dispose of the wolf’s body if we can, to prevent any other animals from getting rabies if it is infected,” Wes answered. “For both of those things, we need a fire. Well, today, we’re going to make not just a normal fire, but something big, something that can be seen if anyone is out there who can see us.”

“You’re going to burn down the forest!” I replied, hurrying to catch up. “I thought we kept our fires small for that exact reason.”

“There’s a beach, maybe a quarter mile down the shore,” Wes said, pointing. He went over to his dropped bag and took out our supply of five fifty cord, looping it around the wolf’s rear legs before standing up and putting his pack back on. “Get your bag and follow me, then we get to start the fun part. I’ll wash your jacket, if you want to get the fire started. Just build it like a normal campfire, and we can go from there.”

It was silly and childish, but I felt proud to be given the great responsibility of building the fire. I guess I just wanted to feel useful. We found the beach easily enough, a good twenty yards deep and fifty wide of pebbly sand, which had some driftwood already heaped up on it. Even more encouraging to me, though, was the fact that for the first time in a week, I saw crumpled up beer cans and tangled fishing line, clear evidence that the lake was at least used by someone recently. “La Blatt’s,” I noted, kicking the can. “If it wasn’t a sign of other people, I think I’d be offended. All my Canadian friends insist on Molson’s if they’re going to drink Canadian beer.”

Wes laughed and knelt by the water, using the lake and handfuls of sand to scrub at my field jacket. The water turned a muddy, reddish hue while he worked, and I turned, pulling our bags over to the tree line before going to gather wood. As I gathered, I pondered why I wasn’t more scared or upset about what had happened. I mean, I had just killed something, and almost had my life taken for the third time in a week. Maybe that was it, I considered as I got my first armload of wood and carried it back to the beach. Was I starting to get used to this?

Wes had finished his washing by then, and had laid the now sopping wet jacket on a rock to start to dry in the weak, late fall sun. “Let’s get about another two or three armloads each,” he said. “I’ll start while you get the kindling prepped and going.”

Starting the fire was actually remarkably easy. Some of the driftwood we found on the beach had been there for a very long time, and once I started breaking it up with a rock, it lit easily. By the time Wes came back with the first of his wood, the fire was already about the size of what we would make at night for warmth, and I turned the whole thing over to him to tend while I went out into the woods for my first load of wood. It didn’t take me long, but by the time I got back, the flames were already about as high as my waist and growing.

It took us a total of nine trips to get enough wood for the fire to reach what Wes wanted. In the end, we had a proper bonfire, with flames easily reaching twenty or even thirty feet into the air. The waves of heat rippled against my skin even from a good twenty feet away, and the entire beach was lit up in waves of red and orange. It was the warmest I had felt in a week, and I eventually had to strip off my outer layer on top, leaving me in just a t-shirt and my pants.

Wes grabbed the wolf carcass and tossed it on the fire, making sure to stay far away after the fur started to roast. I caught the odor for a moment, then hightailed it over to Wes’s side, where the air was a lot cleaner.

Wes dashed across the beach to our bags, rooting around inside to pull out one of our last rations.

Breaking out the ration pack, we shared out the food. “This is our third today,” I said, keeping track in my head. “By my math, we only have one left.”

“You’re right,” he said, munching on a cracker. “But you’re losing weight too fast, Robin. Even if it takes us another ten days to reach the other end of the lake because we’re foraging and fishing and stuff, I’d rather do that than have you drop from starvation and exhaustion. But if this fire works, it doesn’t really matter anyway.”

The night darkened, and we watched the fire dance. Every once in a while, Wes or I would toss in a new chunk of wood, but our supply was starting to dwindle. We were just thinking of breaking out the poncho for the lean-to when the sound came to our ears, so faint we couldn’t hear it at first. “What is that?”

Wes looked around, but in the darkness of the night we couldn’t see anything. Still, the humming sound increased, and after a moment I realized what it was. “That’s an engine!”