Zoo(32)

Kiril's face is cauliflowered and enflamed with rosacea. His eyes are like raisins.

Prokopovich pauses for a moment, frowning. It is not Sasha, who still plays hockey, or his cousin Jirg, the weight lifter, whom he is worried about; it is the largest of the men, his best friend, Kiril, who causes him concern. The big, boisterous fool is squatting against the trunk of a tree, wheezing like a concertina from the exertion of the morning's uphill march. Kiril is fat as a swine and smokes like a broken truck, and is as slow-moving as sap in January.

Dead weight, Prokopovich thinks grimly, looking at his friend.

"Blya! We run, you drunken pig. We run for our lives!"

The wolves are a swarm of gray dots down in the distant valley, slaloming between trees up the mountain. They make no noise. No barking, no howling. Only silent running.

"Hurry! Run, if you want to live!"

The men have one last chance. There is another bridge over the ravine, a little less than a kilometer farther north. It is in even worse shape than the first one, a mere skeleton of a bridge, with no ties at all. They will have to scale the outside of its rusted latticework frame. An almost suicidal enterprise, especially for poor fat Kiril. But there is no other choice. At least there is no way the four-footed wolves will be able to cross that. The problem is getting there in time.

They are within sight of the bridge when Kiril drops. He looks terrible. He huffs at the air like a fish out of water, hacks into a fist. His face is swollen, the color of borscht.

"Bol'she-nyet!" he says between gasps. "No. More. Can't. Not … one … more … step."

"Damn you!" Prokopovich gives him a savage kick. For all the good it does, he may as well have kicked a tire. "Mudak! Get up, you son of a whore."</ol>
 
 

 

"Blya, blya," Jirg adds. "My wife isn't going to be a widow because you're a fat fuck."

"Pojdite! Go! Both of you!" Prokopovich says as his knees crunch in the pine needles beside Kiril. "Kiril just needs to catch his breath. We will catch up with you at the bridge."

Sasha and Jirg do not need to be told twice. In a breath, they are gone.

Prokopovich holds Kiril's heaving shoulder and gazes forlornly through the trees at the distant Ural Mountains, looming to the east.

"Go, Cheslav," Kiril pants. "Don't do this." His beady eyes look defeated and miserable. "Jirg is right. I am fat and useless. I am too weak. Always have been."

Kiril is a clumsy, bumbling fool, laughed at by one and all. What redeems him, what has always made him Cheslav's best friend, is that Kiril himself is always the one who laughs the hardest.

Prokopovich checks the ammo in his rifle as he sees the wolves beginning to race through the trees.

"I'm sorry," Kiril says as the panting of the wolves becomes audible now. Kiril is weeping. His voice is cracked and whimpery. "I always loved these hunts. You are my great friend, Cheslav. I never became a millionaire, but I am rich to have had you for a friend."

"Zatk'nis!" Prokopovich hocks a dismissive dollop of spit in the pine needles. "Shut up, you poof, and take up your gun. We are going to live."

As the wolves approach, Prokopovich looks down the valley. It is crisply sunny at this elevation, but the plain beyond the bridge, where the village is located, is overcast, bathed in a dark purple-red glow, as if lit by a black light.

So this is where I die, Prokopovich thinks.

Then the first wolf, a male with eyes as yellow as the moon, steps into the clearing.

It is a monster of a thing, fifty kilos at least. When he was a child on a hunt with his father, Cheslav saw a wolf smaller than the one now before him take down a bull elk.

Too bad I am not a bull elk, Cheslav thinks.

"Stand up, you fool," he says to Kiril.

Kiril heaves himself to his feet.

Together, they stand back-to-back, with their guns facing out.

Prokopovich knows what to do with wolves. Stand your ground. You stay put, they respect you, you live. You run, you die.

The wolves begin to gather around them. More and more come. The groups of wolves begin to mingle, merge, intermesh. Snarling, growling, teeth snapping, staccato bursts of threat-barks. The wolves form a circle around them. They advance, they retreat. The air is filled with a cacophony of barking.

Prokopovich can feel Kiril quaking against his back.

"Stand still, mudak," he grumbles at Kiril, behind him. "We stand our ground, we live. We run, we die. They smell your fear."

"Eto piz'dets, eto piz'dets," Kiril is half whining, half mumbling. "This is so fucked up, this is so fucked up."

Kiril squeezes the trigger of his gun and a shot goes off, from the hip, aimed almost at random into the crowd of wolves. Cheslav feels the gun crack against his elbow. A jet of blood leaps into the air, like a squirt of bright dark berry juice, and there's a whimpering howl.

"Kiril!" Prokopovich shouts. "No!"

He hears Kiril pull the trigger again. Another howl and a spurt of blood.

A wave of fresh agitation moves throughout the circle, a swell of freshly crazed barking.

Whatever, Cheslav thinks. Fuck it. And he, too, fires a shot into the crowd.

They kill about seven of them. More keep coming.

Then Kiril decides to run. He leaves their post in the middle of the circle and tries to bolt. A moment after he does-just a fraction of a moment later, a sliver of time so thin an eye blink does not describe it-the circle of wolves rushes in to close. Their bodies become a whirlpool of fur, roaring throats, thrashing legs, ripping jaws, all piling on top of each other. Prokopovich squeezes another fistful of bullets into the horde, but it is useless. The wolves swarm over the two men until they disappear beneath them.

It goes on for several minutes before the clamor dies down. The pack loosens and the wolves separate, rove the field, sniff the ground, begin to tumble and growl, not in earnest violence but in play.

Cheslav and Kiril are gone. There are no bodies left to speak of. There is blood smeared across the floor of grass and pine needles. Many of the wolves have bloody snouts and mouths, and some of them lick blood from their damp, matted fur. Some of them squabble here and there over bones. But the men themselves have disappeared.





Chapter 66



I'M SURE I looked like a zombie who had freshly clawed his way out of the crypt when I flung open the door of our apartment. I heard the clink and scuttle of Chloe putting away groceries in the kitchen. I left the keys in the lock and sprinted down the front hallway.</ol>
 
 

 

As I stood in the kitchen doorway, Chloe looked at me as though I had gone completely crazy. I looked it: I was slathered with black filth and breathing hard after running back from Bryant Park.

But I wasn't crazy.

For the first time in years, I knew I was right.

"Hi," I said.

"So," she said. "How was the meeting with the mayor?"

Her voice was sarcastic.

"Incredibly productive."

Chloe stood up from where she knelt beside the open refrigerator, closed it.

"The mayor's office just called. What the hell happened to you?"

I took the jar of salsa she was absentmindedly holding and set it firmly on the counter. I held her by the shoulders as I struggled to catch my breath.

"I've figured it out!" My voice was choked with excitement. I tried to calm it. "The reason for the attacks … it's not a virus … it's pheromones."

Chloe looked at me askance.

"You're not making sense, Oz."

I started to collapse onto a chair next to the kitchen table.

"Don't touch the furniture!" said Chloe.

I remained standing.

"On my way to the meeting, I saw a stray dog," I said. "I followed it into a tunnel beneath Bryant Park. Inside were more dogs. Thousands of them."

Chloe nodded, mental gears turning.

"You saw another dog pack?" she said. "Like the one on the video?"

"Yeah," I said, nodding. I started to wipe sweat from my eyes with filthy fingers, thought better of it, got to work on blinking it out instead. "But here's the thing. They were all grouped together, rubbing against each other, behaving in a way I've never seen before. They were mating, regurgitating food. They had these chambers where females were giving birth."

"Disgusting," said Chloe.

Then she began backing away from me, her hands flying to her face.

"Mon Dieu! What is that smell?" she said, finally catching the full brunt of the dog sludge I'd crawled through.

"Exactly!"

I shimmied out of my shirt. My pants followed a moment later. I was leaving black streaks on the kitchen tiles. I rummaged through the kitchen drawers in my socks and underwear, found a plastic bag, and threw the clothes inside, tying it tightly.

"We need to test my clothes. It's their smell. I think the dogs are emitting it. But they almost weren't acting like dogs, Chloe. I know this sounds insane. They were acting like insects. Like ants or bees or something. It's not a virus, like rabies, that's making the animals go haywire. We need to test for some kind of new pheromone in the environment."

"That's crazy," Chloe said, still covering her face.

"Is it?" I said. "This whole thing has been staring us in the face from the beginning. How do animals communicate? Subconsciously, I mean. How do dogs, bears, hyenas recognize one another, their environment, their territory?"