How Are You, Wolf?

Getting the cargo into the truck was a lot easier than Leffer imagined, and he paid two of the guys extra to come with him and get the stuff into the office building. He wasn’t going to take it to the hotel.

Leffer figured the police station was on the other side of town. He spent two days, or was it three, it was hard to tell with the sun always out there somewhere, looking out the second floor window of the building. The cops didn’t really come around. He took another walk on the third day, or the fourth, and noticed the police station wasn’t even open all the time. 8 to 2, spring and summer hours.

The interior would be easy to penetrate. Leffer had gotten the snow mobile back from the police, and made a payment to Elvis, to cover things. He was satisfied.

There was no point in going under cover of night. It seemed like there were never any people around, and there was never darkness. It might be darker during the day.

It didn’t matter who saw him, the body armor would get around quickly. As it was, he disappeared quickly into the background speeding on his snowmobile. He didn’t pack much. He took only the shotgun around his shoulder and a remains retrieval unit he threw into the trunk of the snowmobile.

What he’d heard was that there were no trails in the interior. It was a constant refrain. But he found trails, frozen ones. It was so barren, Leffer couldn’t imagine how the last team had gotten lost. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine it in the darkness. Maybe the equipment malfunctioned, you could get disoriented.

The heat vision was a nifty feature of the armor’s helmet, and Leffer thought turning it on might help find any warm bodies out there. Instead he saw five wolf-like shapes in the distance. He slowed down to make the distance even longer. They were tracking something, but it wasn’t him.

He turned the heat vision off and lifted his visor. Leffer thought the helmet was stuffier than it should be to really work for extended use. He couldn’t see the wolves without it, but he thought he saw a floating dot peeking over the horizon. He was twenty kilometers into the interior, it was 5:41. Precision from his heads up display helped with the fog in his head. It wasn’t that far in. Wolves?

He put the visor back down and turned on the heat vision. Four wolf-like shapes. He was following a big frozen trail, surely it was what the last team followed, where Nanny would have gone.

He could hunt these wolves, sure. Leffer hit the throttle on the snowmobile to pick up speed. Backing off from wolves. It’s what we’re here for. He put the visor back down. Thirty kilometers, 5:67. He left the heat vision off, the colors disturbed him, but he still couldn’t see the wolves without it. He flicked it on, three wolf-like shapes, then two. He lifted the visor and tried to pick up speed again. He balanced the arrow-shooter attachment on the snowmobile handle. There’s so much space, he thought. Hunting would be better sport in an enclosed park. They could find a way to lure the wolves in. Pheremones, Leffer thought. Phoromones, pheromones? Pheromones.

The helmet even had eyes on the back its head, rear vision, but nobody used that, it was that counter-intuitive and disorienting. So Leffer got snuck up on from behind.

-How are you, wolf?, Leffer heard a voice behind him ask. At that moment he decided to use the rear vision for the first time, and it was that counter-intuitive and disorienting that he lunged forward and nearly fell off of his snowmobile before managing to readjust and turn toward his rear.

-Lost your pack?

He reached behind himself to feel for a pack, but remembered he hadn’t brought one.

Then Leffer looked over, and saw a giant wolf’s head, dangling, the sun behind it. He flicked on the heat vision, then the night vision. A man, wearing a wolf’s head. The vision was disorienting, so he lifted his visor again.

-Hey, he said. Nanny.

-The cookie company sent you! Finally.

-Where’s the team?

-Amarok, he muttered. The amarok got them, he said before starting to smile and shaking his head, but I got it.

-Eaten by wolves?

-Eaten by the big bad wolf.

-Where are the bodies?

-There’s a cave. I can show you.

In the distance, Leffer could see a dust storm in the distance. He’d seen them in the desert before, but never in the tundra, even though they were essentially the same ecosystem.

-What are you wearing?

-The big bad wolf.

Leffer looked closer. It did look real.

-It’s pretty big, Leffer said. Nanny didn’t respond. Amarok’s a legend.

-Anything’s a legend. I’m a legend now.

-Then why didn’t you go back to show the people? Where’s the rest of the big bad wolf? Use every part of the animal.

-Hey wolf, is that what you’re doing out here? Using every part of the human animal?

-Sure. And I need to find every part. Take me to my team. The bodies. And the settlement in a box.

-The settlement in a box is okay, Nanny said, shaking his head and beckoning for Leffer to follow as he turned around to readjust his electric skis. It’s all the way, he said, pointing not far off from where Leffer saw the wolf-like shapes, the heat signatures that maybe were wolves or something alive.

-The guys set it up good. I stayed with it, the team went back and forth. But the night vision only made them feel invincible.

-Does the big bad wolf come out at night?, Leffer asked in a tone that sounded more condescending that intended.

-What’s night, Nanny scoffed, pointing up at the sun edging the horizon. It wiggles in the sky, right? You never get used to it. No, the amarok can go in day or at night. This is where it lives, the deep interior.

Leffer put the visor down again. 60 kilometers, he didn’t even look at the time. It didn’t sound so deep. The interior went hundreds of kilometers. But it was getting warmer so it was getting closer to the coast. He took another look at the giant wolf’s head and skin Nanny was wearing.

-It’s very big. How many of them are there?

-In the interior? More than us, probably, Nanny offered solemnly. But you’ve got big guns, wolf, he added, patting Leffer’s armor.

-Yeah, don’t forget it.

-Hey, that’s why I like you.

-You disappeared after the team did. You didn’t bring the bodies back, you didn’t contact us. The police think you’re dead.

-That’s fine, they’re the only ones who care about me but they’ve got nothing for me but a cell.

-Sure.

-I don’t drink. I gamble.

They continued down the trail Nanny took them off on and found themselves heading right into the dust storm. Nanny pulled the wolf’s head over his face.

At some point Leffer flicked his heat vision back on. He couldn’t tell what direction they’d been going compared to the wolves. He only saw one shape in the distance now.

On the other side of the dust storm there was an embankment with a series of holes along the foundation, openings to caves that looked together like gums with their teeth missing. They couldn’t be that deep.

Nanny took them to one of the holes on the outer edge of the embankment.

-Here, he said solemnly, pointing to what Leffer could already see.

He was already pulling out the remains retrieval unit. The Body Remover, an early invention from the cookie company’s first logistics R&D department. They died in the cold of winter but the warm spring had started to thaw the bodies, and the local fauna were doing their work too. Even in these conditions, the Body Remover could vacuum seal the bodies in a tighter configuration for towing.

-You’ll come back into town with me, Leffer said to Nanny. Neither was sure if it was a question.

-The big bad wolf will follow me, Nanny said, to himself and to Leffer. It’s getting closer to town every summer.

-We can hunt them, Leffer offered. We can put up electric fences, hunt from land and from air. If the wolves are that big, he said, touching Nanny’s wolf head, people will pay a lot. They’ll pay a lot to kill anything.

Nanny looked at Leffer intently. The Body Remover had packed and stacked the bodies and Leffer was starting to hitch the bag to the back of the snowmobile. He kept looking at the wolf’s head on top of Nanny.

-Yeah, sure, Nanny said, just as the wolf made it into the cave.

[ The Greenland cycle continues in PROJEKT SIKU QULLUGIAQ: https://www.honeyfeed.fm/novels/28137 ]