Alone in the Wild (Rockton #5)(2)

Storm and I head out to gather kindling. Soon, though, I realize that new-fallen snow is going to complicate the task. Even if I unearth sticks, they won’t be dry. That’s fine—the best source of winter kindling is dead trees. I’m maybe a few hundred feet from the camp when I find a brown-needled pine that’s been crowded out by sturdier siblings.

I start breaking off twigs. Storm dances about, her second wind gale-force strong. When I throw a stick, she chases it, only to notice I’m still snapping off branches. She shoots me a sullen scowl.

“I’m not Eric,” I say. “I play fetch properly.”

More scowling. Then she flings herself to the ground with a flounce and a sigh.

“Fine,” I say with a laugh. “Once and only once.”

I take another branch and hold it over my head. She stays where she is, watching me, refusing to fall for this again. I throw it, and she doesn’t move until I take off after the branch. Then she bolts up and runs for it.

I’m one pace ahead, Storm right on my heels. She veers to pass me, and I throw myself down in a home-plate slide. I grab the stick, flip onto my back, and fist-pump it in the air … giving me two seconds of victory before I have a Newfoundland on my face for the second time this morning.

Sputtering and laughing, I shove her off. Then, punctuating my own noise, I hear something that makes me go still. Storm lumbers off with the stick as I rise slowly, listening.

It wasn’t what it sounded like. Couldn’t be.

The noise comes again, a plaintive wail, like a baby’s cry.

Storm catches it. She stops and pivots, ears perking. She glances at me as if to say, What is that?

“I don’t know,” I answer, as much for myself.

The morning has gone quiet again, and I’m straining to listen and figure out what it really was. I mentally run through my list of “animals that aren’t hibernating right now.” I’ve heard a similar sound from a bear cub, but it’s the wrong season for that. We have cougars—a female who wandered north of their usual territory and now has grown cubs. The cry didn’t sound right for a big cat. Not a wolf or a feral dog, either.

Bird? That seems most likely, and I’ve decided that must have been what it was when the noise comes again, and it is not like a bird at all.

A fox? They make some truly bloodcurdling sounds. There’s a vixen who lives near our house in Rockton, and I’ve heard her scream and bolted upright, certain someone was being murdered horribly right outside our window.

I’m still standing there pondering when I catch a glimpse of running black fur and realize it’s my dog.

“Storm!” I shout as I bolt after her.

She stops, and I exhale in relief. This spring, I had to shoot a young cougar she chased. Thus ensued six months of special training to be sure no wild animal would ever lead her off again.

I jog to catch up.

“We’ll go check it out,” I say, and she may not understand the words, but I only need to take a step toward the sound for her to bark with joy.

I motion for her to heel, and she does. Dalton and I have spent countless hours training her, and it’s paid off. She’s not only blossoming into a first-rate tracker, but she’s more obedient than I’d dared hope. That’s a necessity when your dog is bigger than you.

Storm stays at my side. When a tree prevents that, she falls behind me, as she’s been taught.

The wail comes again. It’s weak enough that if the forest weren’t winter-quiet, I’d miss it. It sounds so much like a baby that I have to pause and ask myself “Why couldn’t it be?”

There are people living out here besides us. Rockton has been around since the fifties, and over the years, residents have relocated into the wilderness for various reasons. Their term ran out in Rockton, and they didn’t want to go home. Or they disagreed with the politics—as the town became less an asylum for the innocent and more a pay-to-play escape for the desperate—but they still needed the refuge of the forest. Most of these are what we call settlers. True pioneers of the north, some in communities and some living independently, as Dalton’s parents did. Then there are the hostiles, and that is … a complicated subject that becomes more complicated the longer I’m here and the deeper I dig.

When I arrived, I was told that hostiles were residents who’d left and reverted to something primitive and dangerous. I’m no longer convinced that all of them chose that reversion. But that’s a topic for another time. What matters now is that people do live out here, so I might very well be hearing a human infant.

I slow to a walk, straining for the sounds of others. If I hear any, I will retreat posthaste. Even settlers can be aggressive if we wander into their campsites.

Yet I hear only the occasional cry of what, increasingly, I can’t imagine as anything except a baby. Then Storm whines. I glance down at her, and she stops. Parks her butt in the snow and gives me a look that asks if we must continue. She follows it with a glance over her shoulder, in the direction of our camp, in case I don’t understand what she wants.

She senses danger ahead. No, I suppose that’s melodramatic. To be precise, she smells strangers, and she has learned, unfortunately, that not all strangers are kind. Something in the scent of whatever lies ahead worries her.

I motion for her to sit and stay, and she glowers at me. With a grunt, she lifts and then lowers her hindquarters. I’m as trained in Storm’s language as she is in mine, and this odd movement tells me that she will sit and stay, but she’d rather come with me.