GOD, DEREK WAS sick of the fucking woods.
Growing up in the urban concretion of Scarborough, with its stunted trees and exhaust-tainted air, Derek had often dreamed of going to summer camps—something for which his tightwad parents would have never dreamed of shelling out money. He pictured the scene in pastel hues of hypothetical nostalgia: paddling canoes along pristine rivers; ranging through acres of old-growth forest, a canopy of leaves overhead; eating sausages musky with campfire smoke; sleeping beneath a canvas tent, chirruping crickets the bucolic surrogate of rattling subways and idling cars. He longed to slice through the GTA’s fog of glass and steel and concrete, to heave in lungfuls of unblemished air, to live off scavenged berries and hunted deer. To purge himself of the trappings of urban decadence. To rough it.
He was roughing it now, all right. Mosquitos breakfasted on his face and supped on his back, charting constellations in his scabbed and swollen flesh. Northern winds dive-bombed every clearing, raking icy claws against exposed skin. The trees blocked the worst of it if you ventured deep enough into them, but they held between their gnarled trunks a heavy, stifling dimness, where shadows thick as soggy cotton filled your lungs and settled over your face like a caul. Ridges of bedrock broke through the brittle alkali soil, snagging ankles and cracking shins and making flat stretches large enough to sleep on comfortably all but non-existent.
The urge to bail on the whole scene grew stronger with each passing hour, though making it back to civilization would be no easy feat. Miles of forest and marshland stood between him and the nearest town, and orienteering was about as far from Derek’s strong suit as you could get. Stealing a car was likewise not an option. Shortly after they’d left the last town behind, Luka drove his convoy through logging paths and over rock-studded fields until he found a cliff overlooking a deep and frigid lake. Sunlight bounced off its surface like spilled gems, beneath which fathoms yawned down to a bluish darkness.
“All right, boys,” he called. “Unload anything you wanna keep. If you can’t carry it, leave it be.”
Derek popped the trunk. He held a tire iron in one hand in case the “luggage” made a break for it. He needn’t have worried. The professor and the Asian kid mewled and squirmed at the sudden brightness, faces buried in the cruxes of their elbows. He dragged them out and tossed them onto the grass, wondering with abstract curiosity whether one of them would try to run. Neither did.
Once the cars were empty, Luka and half a dozen of his bigger pack members drove them to the precipice, punched out the windows, and shoved them over the edge. One by one, they fell in stunned silence for two hundred feet before slamming into the lake. White fists of foamy water jabbed upward with each impact before dissolving into mist and foam. Derek watched the cars sink into the blue-black abyss, the pit of his stomach sinking right along with them. There went their only safe ticket out of the wilderness, plunging axel-deep into mud and silt beneath two hundred-plus feet of frigid northern lake water. And yet Derek seemed to be the only one at all worried—save for the professor and the kid, of course, but they didn’t count.
They went the rest of the way on foot, Luka leading and the others gaggling behind, alone or in chatty clusters. They lugged supplies in plastic bags or Value Village backpacks or simply loose and by the armful. Derek wadded up a few blankets in a canvas grocery bag and aped hauling something heavy. He kept his jacket unfastened and the Governor within reach, its final two chambers still pregnant with their silver payload. The professor and the kid stayed near the front of the pack, hands bound behind their backs with lengths of nylon rope.
The walk took most of the day, culminating on a barren limestone outcrop overlooking a foam-flecked river. Derek helped gather firewood and watched as a heavyset man with a serpent’s head tattooed on his neck touched his Zippo to the kindling, unlocking wisps of smoke that coughed into a dull but serviceable flame. They stacked punctured cans of chili and beans in maple syrup around the fire and ate when the contents started to bubble, digging with pocket knives or sticks or their fingers. Derek fished out a can and ate alone beneath the shadow of a pine tree. Shed needles formed a spongy cushion atop the rocky soil.
The air grew frigid away from the fire, but Derek preferred the company of the cold to that of his packmates. The former could still kill him if he wasn’t careful, but at least it wouldn’t take any pleasure in doing so.
A voice in his head urged him to leave, just figure out which way was south and beat feet. Fuck the pack, fuck the cars, fuck Luka and his cabal of junkies and prison-cot padding. Yet something held him in place. Curiosity was too flippant a word. Call it fascination. Luka exerted a tangible pull on his followers, a microgravity snagging each misfit chunk of human detritus in his orbit. Derek saw it clearly in their obsequious bending to his commands. They were less a street gang than a cult, and Luka their messiah. It was nauseating to observe, but was he entirely immune? Had Luka bound him the same way he’d bound the others, slipped the collar of his charisma over Derek’s willing neck?
No way. You see through his bullshit. You call him out when he does something dumb.
He repeated those sentiments to himself, rosaries of self-praise that soothed his battered spirit. He was up here in the woods to lay low, far from the dragnet doubtlessly trawling the whole Golden Horseshoe from Toronto to Niagara in search of Motes—not to mention Ballaro’s merry little search party. And, perhaps, to take a little of what Luka was offering. If it was even true.
The radar scanner in Derek’s head issued a feeble blip, a note of caution little stronger than background static. Branches rustled behind them, stirred no doubt by the wind or some passing animal. He shifted the cut of his jacket, allowing for an easier draw, and waited. The sound came again, louder this time. It circled the clearing, a low susurrus of pine needles crunching underfoot. The others didn’t seem to notice—no surprise there. He skimmed possible causes, assessing each for probability and preferred response. Mounties tipped off to their location? Triggermen on Ballaro’s payroll, aiming to engage in the mother of all “hunting accidents”? A set-up by Luka? His tongue circled his lips, leaving them no less parched.
They emerged from the woods as one. Derek counted a dozen before losing track. Men and women, they bore a common build and similar features, a leitmotif of kinship in the slant of their eyes and the slope of their noses, underscored by their common dress: pelts and hides from a dozen breeds of northern mammal, sewn together with rugged sinew stitches. Flint knives and tomahawks and tanned bladders full of water hung from their belts. Some held pikes or axes; others bore bows over their shoulders, crisscrossing quivers stuffed with hand-fletched arrows. Russet hair ran wild on their heads and faces, a colour Derek noticed was similar to Luka’s.
Luka’s packmates regarded the new arrivals warily. A few reached for weapons—mostly improvised cudgels or the knives they’d been using to eat—while the others looked to Luka for prompting. Luka stood, tossed an empty can into the fire, and extended his arms in a mimed embrace.
“I’m back, brothers and sisters! Where’s Mother?”
The newcomers shifted, speaking to one another in a guttural tongue. Sighing, Luka found the professor and dragged him to his feet. Motes’ legs were bound along with his arms, forcing him to follow Luka in a series of demeaning hops.
“Tell them to go get Majka,” Luka said.
Motes spoke in the same language as the forest people, his voice pinched with discomfort. A burly man answered, fingers twining through his grey-streaked beard. By his demeanor and that of the others, Derek pinned him as the head honcho, excluding “Majka.” His reply was terse and even-toned, but the message it conveyed was clearly not a great one. Motes bit his cheek and hunched his shoulders before relaying it to Luka.
“He says she’s gone into the wilds.”
Luka pursed his lips. “For how long?”
Motes asked. “He says it’s not for him to dictate Majka’s whereabouts.”
“Will she be back before the full moon, at least?”
“I suspect so.”
Luka planted a foot on Motes’ tailbone and shoved him forward. “I’m asking him, not you.”
Motes spat out a mouthful of dirt and pine needles. He posed the question with head bowed, absorbed the reply, and answered in a voice of hollow tin: “Yes.”
Satisfied, Luka stepped over Motes, hand extended. The forest man regarded it without expression. His eyes locked with Luka’s. A smile parted the underbrush of his brambled beard. He pulled Luka in by the wrist and wrapped him in a muscular embrace—Derek heard the wind escape Luka’s lungs in a huff.
Reluctantly, Derek slid his hand away from the Governor. He picked up his can and resumed eating. Weird or not, the forest people were clearly on Luka’s side.
Derek wasn’t sure whether to feel worried or relieved.