Snowbound - Blake Crouch [51]
He heard the three black wolves coming from behind, turned and faced them.
As they stopped in their tracks, the lead wolf moved toward him again.
“I don’t have time for this stupid game,” he said.
He began following his footprints back up the hill, that white wolf backpedaling in the snow as Will moved toward him, its head low, muzzle pointed toward the ground, long tail flicking back and forth. Will could hear the others coming behind him.
He reached the top of the small hill, but instead of seeing the meadow and the tent as he’d expected, he saw only more forest, his footprints winding aimlessly through the trees.
I’ve come farther than I thought.
He turned slowly around so he could see the wolves, noticed for the first time that they wore collars. They were closer than before, all within fifteen feet, and the black wolf on his left had arched its back, its ears now erect, hackles raised, lips curled back. Will could see the long incisors.
And he felt pure old-fashioned terror—primitive fears, eons of old programming firing in the synapses. He lunged at them and waved his arms, but they backed only a few feet away, and the largest of the black wolves, a 150-pound male, didn’t move at all, just stared him down through focused yellow eyes. For the first time, Will noticed the pair of gray wolves lurking thirty feet behind the others.
Jesus. Six of them.
He jogged up through the trees.
It was snowing again, and he thought he heard thunder, but he wasn’t sure with his heart banging relentlessly in his chest.
The wolves loped along beside him as Will tried to retrace his own footprints, and something snapped near the back of his left leg, the click of teeth clamping shut.
He stopped, spun around, leveled the .45 between the big black wolf’s eyes, and fired.
The report filled the woods, and the wolves scattered.
The one he’d killed lay crumpled in the snow, a mound of black fur. “Go find an elk or something!” Will yelled.
He pushed on through the trees, now moving at a solid clip through the snow.
He kept expecting to emerge from the forest, and at last he did, but it wasn’t into the meadow they’d camped in.
He came out of the trees, and the ground sloped for two hundred yards down to the shore of a narrow lake whose water appeared black as blood. The inner lake. He looked to the near end, saw where a ribbon of water flowed out of it, knew that was the stream they’d followed earlier in the day, hoped it would guide him back to the meadow, to Devlin.
As he started for it, he heard something moving in the woods, and not creeping or sneaking, but the full-on noise of something, somethings, running toward him.
He ran for the end of the lake, glancing over his shoulder every few steps, trying to keep his footing in the snow. The third time he looked back, he saw five shadows break out of the trees, racing toward him in tight formation, kicking up powder clouds in their wake.
It was snowing hard again, and the moon disappeared, the world now gone cavern black. He could see nothing, but he heard them coming, and as he looked back, the sky flickered with lightning and he saw them—Oh God, so close—aimed the .45, firing at the lead wolf, the big white one with pink eyes. It was panting, its huge blue tongue swinging out of its mouth.
Lights-out. No way to know if I hit—
Something rammed him from behind, a wolf throwing the full weight of its muscled frame into his back.
Will went down, toppled over several times in the snow, jaws snapping all around him, as he smelled the sharp odor of their scent glands, then on his feet again, somehow untouched.
Lightning offered a fleeting glimpse of where he stood, forty feet from the lake’s edge, the mouth of the stream, and the wolves surrounding him, snarling, growling, the ones behind him lunging at the back of his legs.
Darkness again. He’d dropped the gun when he’d fallen up the slope, had nothing but his bare, freezing