I ease the tip of my knife through the top of the chest, piercing. Then I bring the blade in tiny jerks toward myself, cutting through the skin from beneath like popping stitches. This time, I don’t fuck up. The underside opens and I dig my fingers in. I grab the esophagus and lungs and everything else I can curl my fingers around, and I pull. The innards come out together, a cohesive system I toss to the ground. The squirrel’s nubby spine winks up at me from inside the cavity.
I walk over to the brook and scrub the squirrel blood off my hands and wrists, digging into the dirt at the bottom for abrasion. Afterward I chop up the squirrel and set it to boil in my cup. I wish I had some salt and pepper, some carrots and onion. If I felt stronger, I’d forage for some Queen Anne’s lace, but I haven’t noticed any and I don’t trust myself to identify plants right now, especially not one with poisonous look-alikes.
While the squirrel stews, I gather its inedible parts and take them away from my camp. Not far, maybe fifty feet. I should bury them, but I don’t. I’m tired and they’re such a small amount, I leave them in a pile, then wash my hands again. I let the squirrel boil until the meat pulls away from the bone when prodded, then pull the cup from the fire and fish out a piece. It’s too hot and I hold it between my teeth until I can chew without blistering my tongue. The meat has little taste that I can discern, but it’s not peanut butter. There is, I don’t know, half a pound of meat, probably less. I suck down every thread and when the liquid is cool enough, I drink that too. By the time it’s dark, all that’s left of the squirrel is a pile of skinny bones, which I toss into the woods.
Full, I could sleep for a month. But first I stretch my arms and legs, stand straight and tip side to side, fulfilling my pledge. I pour water over my fire, crawl into my shelter, and hang my glasses on the top loop of my backpack. I drift toward unconsciousness, content.
I awake to a snuffling sound. For a drowsy moment I think it’s my husband’s breath. I move to nudge him, and something pricks my hand. I jolt to full awareness, remember where I am, see the twig that scratched me.
Something is moving outside the shelter. I focus on the sounds: a powerful, rooting huff, crunching steps. I should have buried the squirrel offal. A black bear found it and now it wants my peanut butter too. The animal sounds too big to be anything other than a bear. It noses the side of the debris hut; leaves rattle, and a skinny ray of moonlight peeps through near the entrance. I hate peanut butter more than ever.
But I’m not scared, not really. As soon as I make it clear that I’m not prey, the bear will retreat. I won’t have a problem unless it’s habituated to people, and even then it’ll most likely back off once I make myself big, holler a bit. Wild animals don’t like a ruckus.
I reach for my pack, slowly, quietly, creeping my fingers toward my glasses as my shoulder muscles pinch and ache, resisting.
A rumbling growl; hot, wet breath. A blurred gray-brown muzzle dripping thick white foam three feet from my face. I feel my next heartbeat like a hammer’s blow. Even in the dark, even without my glasses, the aggression and frothed saliva of disease are unmistakable. Perched at the only exit from my shelter is not a bear but a rabid wolf.
The only rabid animals I’ve ever seen before were raccoons and a few emaciated bats, and those in cages—or dead, awaiting necropsy. No danger, not really, not like this: a wolf the size of a bear, the size of a house. A dire wolf brought back from extinction for the sole purpose of ripping out my throat.
I feel terror like a hardening of my veins as the beast growls and ducks its huge head. A glob of slime drops from bared teeth and lands on my backpack.
I grab the pack as the wolf lunges toward me. I’m not a screamer. Roller coasters, haunted houses, a RAV4 running a red light coming straight at me—none of this has ever made me scream, but I scream now. My scream strains my throat and the pressure of the wolf against my pack strains the rest of me. I hear snapping jaws, feel wetness—my sweat, its saliva, not-blood-please-not-blood—and I see the black of my pack, flashes of fur and teeth. I’m compressed behind the pack, tucked into the end of the shelter, shoulders pressing against the roof.
The wolf retreats, only a step or two, and sways side to side, stumbles a step. It growls again.
And though I can hardly breathe, a thought pierces me: There is no way I can fight off a rabid wolf confined like this. There’s no way I can fight off a rabid wolf at all, but especially not like this. But I have to; I have to get home. I heave my pack at the wolf and shove myself against the wall of my shelter. With a yell, I push through. The garbage-bag liner resists, then gives, scattering leaves and twigs. As my shoulders break through, the debris hut begins to crumble around me—and I feel a tug, a violent pull on my leg.
The wolf has my foot. I feel the pressure of its bite through my boot, pinching. Like bait on a line, I’m being jolted down, down, down.
All I can see is the back of my tears. Starlight glints in the liquid, a magnification not of detail but of the ethereal splendor of a world I’m not ready to leave.
I kick. I kick and scream and claw at the earth. I fight through the rubble everywhere. My unhindered foot connects against skull; I feel the impact through the heel of my boot like striking concrete, and my other foot is suddenly free too. I scramble toward the expanse of predawn light, the patchy grass and gurgling brook. Behind me, the wolf thrashes as the debris hut collapses atop it.
I clamber to my feet and grab a thick branch, and as the wolf’s sharp muzzle appears from the leaves I bash at the emerging form. I feel the thunk of impact, hear the cracking of bone or wood, and I keep swinging. Over and over I swing, until I’ve lost my breath, until the leaves are dark and heavy. I swing for as long as adrenaline allows, an endless instant, and then my strength abandons me. I stumble backward, my club hanging between my knees. The remains of my shelter are fuzzy stillness and liquid glimmer.
I hurt, everywhere. Not soreness, real pain. Pain like death.
My foot.
I collapse to the ground in my haste to check myself for injury.
My every nerve is screaming so loudly I cannot sense particulars, cannot separate fear from physical wound. Pawing at my leg, I feel prickling growth but don’t find any breaks in the skin. The hem of my left pant leg is tattered and wet, but not bloodied, I don’t think.
My boot has been torn from my foot. I run my hands over the wool sock that remains. Twigs and leaves poke my fingers. No holes.
I’m okay.
If I were still in the habit of taking off my boots to sleep—no, don’t think about it.
I raise my hands to wipe at my eyes, and see that my fingers and palms are thickly wet with the wolf’s saliva, like a mucous membrane.
I launch myself toward the brook.
So many scrapes, so many tiny cuts through which the rabies virus could enter. I rub my hands frantically in the water.
And then I freeze.
Will rubbing my hands push the virus into a cut? Is that possible?
I don’t know the answer. I should know the answer; I work with animals, and this is the kind of thing I know. Except that I don’t.
I sit in the water, shaking. Sopping wet from the waist down, and cold, I’m not myself. I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what to do, what to think. All I know is where I am: alone, sitting in a brook.
In time I realize I do know one other thing: Wolves don’t live around here. The closest wild wolf would have to be in Canada, or maybe North Carolina. The probability of the animal that attacked me being a wolf is infinitesimal.
Whatever it was, I killed it. Not to eat, not cleanly with a trap. Animal-loving me, who has spent her professional life working with children to inspire in them a respect for—a love of—nature. Not for the kids’ sakes. That’s what everyone gets wrong. It’s not the teaching that I like. I think of Eddie the red-tailed hawk, Penny the fox. I’m not supposed to name the ones slated for release, but I do. I always do.