Global Warming Fun 4: They Taste Like Chicken by Gary J. Davies
Chapter 11: Okwaho
Walking Stone wearing his parka easily carried Ann in his arms and her camping gear and Mark's on his back. Fortunately the wolf den was less than half a mile away and the Stone-Coat had been there before the previous summer. He had memorized each footstep and now repeated them accurately with little need for correction using his infrared eyesight. It was another dark moonless night, and so that Mark and Ann could dimly see their surroundings his head and feet slightly glowed.
Mark followed closely behind them, focused on his telepathic search for nocturnal animals. He located owls and encouraged their efforts to attack and kill the dormant flies that rested on the rocky outcroppings of the Mountain that still retained heat from the daytime sun.
He remained deeply puzzled and concerned about his inability to contact the wolf-pack. The wolves should have heard the frequent telepathic calls he made to them since his arrival on Green Mountain. Even neglecting telepathy, the arrival of Ann, Mark, and Walking Stone in their hunting territory should have been sensed and acknowledged by them. The jants would only say that for the last few days they detected unusual patterns of distressed thought from most animals of the region, similar to what occurred when a storm or a forest fire threatened the forest. This was due to the fly invasion; it had to be. Had the flies attacked the wolves?
As they made their way towards the den Mark spoke about the wolves to Ann. "They aren't dogs," he noted. "They're smart, fiercely independent and proud, and behave as a coordinated unit. Humans in general are a competitive enemy that they normally avoid. These particular wolves didn't stay on the Reservation when the others moved south because they are fond of the Tribe that still lives here, they did so because they stubbornly refused to be forced away from their territory."
"Hmmm," mused Ann. "A fiercely independent, proud, stubborn coordinated unit that refused to move south. That sounds like your Tribe but in canine form."
"I guess it does!" Mark admitted. Minutes later he was relieved when he finally sensed the distant thoughts of several wolves, but upset when he immediately felt their extreme pain, fear, anger and weariness. Most were in their den and sleeping, or trying to sleep, at a time when they often hunted in the forest.
"OKWAHO, OKWAHO," Mark pathed the Mohawk name for 'wolf' over and over.
"OWL CUB!" he finally sensed as a joyful answering thought, but it was accompanied by a mournful chorus of cave-muted, anguished wolf howls that erupted from somewhere deeper in the rocks not far ahead. With his flashlight in hand, Mark rushed past Walking Stone and Ann just as a big dark shape shot out from the darkness of the rocks and leapt upon him, knocking him down hard onto his back.
It was a huge gray wolf easily as big as Mark, Ann realized, as Walking Stone increased his glow-light. She would have been scared to death if it wasn't for the fact that Mark was laughing and hugging the creature with both arms as it licked his face liberally.
"Off, Runner!" Mark finally said, as he pushed himself up from under the affectionate creature. "Wow you've grown big! You put on thirty pounds since fall, I bet! Ann, this is Runner, a sixteen-month old pup of pack leaders Long Fang and Gray Shadow. He and I became good friends last year. Runner, this is Ann. ANN!"
The wolf raised his forefeet up to rest them on the arm of Walking Stone and peer into the face of Ann and smell her arm. He also seemed to take stock of the cast on her leg. "HURT?" he asked.
"BROKEN LEG," Mark replied.
"He's fantastic!" said Ann, "but look! He's injured!"
Using his flashlight for extra light, Mark closely examined his wolf friend and was disturbed to find numerous bite marks all over his body. Most were in the form of swollen bruises under thick ruffled grayish fur, but a few were ugly bloody areas of torn skin where patches of fur had been gouged off. Bleeding had coagulated to a stop but no scabs were yet formed: the wounds were obviously only hours old.
"Flies!" Mark exclaimed. "These must be fly bites! Lots of them! Some got past the protective fur and broke the skin."
"RUNNER HURT," the wolf confirmed. "TSIKS," he said the Mohawk word for fly. His thoughts were filled with anger and pain. "PACK HURT," he added. "PACK DEATH!"
"There are more wolf injuries and even deaths," Mark told his companions.
"How bad is it?" Ann asked.
"I don't know yet," Mark said. "Wolves don't understand numbers well enough to quantify how bad things are, but this is very bad. Let's get to the den and assess the situation."
"There were only a dozen wolves remaining in this pack," Mark explained, as Runner led them towards the den. "Most wolves moved south with most of our Tribe."
"I remember reading about the Tribe moving when I was a kid," said Ann. "At first it was thought that the whole Mohawk Tribe had moved away, but then it was discovered that some of the Tribe stayed to guard their sacred Giants' Rest Mountain."
"That's us, the stubborn remnant. My Dad says that after his Uncle White Cloud led most of our Tribe and clan animals south, there was a rush of intruding white men that had to be repelled. The ice sheets were forming then. Those were very tough times for the Tribe."
"Yet then somehow in the middle of all that your people managed to build huge greenhouses. How did the Tribe manage to do that?" Ann asked.
"Greenhouses?"
"Until the flies trashed it I had a little UAV with a camera that got some damn good pictures of them. Did the US Government build them for you?"
"No way!" Mark objected. "The US Government abandoned all Native Americans more than two decades ago as a cost-saving measure. There was no more Bureau of Indian Affairs to help with anything such as greenhouses."
"So you admit there are greenhouses?"
"Sure. Clever of you to get me to admit that, but you'll see them when I take you to Giants' Rest anyway, I suppose," Mark reasoned.
"But aren't they supposed to be a big Tribe secret? How can you take a reporter to see your Tribe's secret greenhouses?"
"Good question, but save it for later," said Mark. "We might not live that long anyway, and we near the okwaho den."
"Oh my God!" Ann exclaimed, when she realized what she was seeing in the light that Walking Stone and Mark's flashlight illuminated. The path they had been following ended at a deep cleft in the mountainside. Before it on the rocky ground the remains of hundreds of giant flies were scattered, wings and tough carapace parts that were inedible.
"The flies themselves ate all the flesh of their dead," said Mark. "But there was a great battle here."
"Is that a dead wolf?" Ann asked.
To one side of the path partly hidden by fly parts was a skeleton stripped free of all flesh, surrounded by torn furry strips of wolf-hide. Runner paused beside it and lifted his head to let out a mournful howl. The howl was answered by whimpers within the den, and by the howls of several wolves much further away somewhere higher on the Mountain.
"It was a wolf," said Mark. He fought down tears. "I can't even tell which one. Some of the pack hunts higher on the Mountain not very far from here. Much of what remains of the pack is in the den."
Beside him Runner looked up for a moment at his human friend, and then led the visitors into the den. The cleft in the rock was a cave opening just large enough to admit Walking Stone, but he had to put down Ann first and give her the crutches that had been strapped to his back. Mark entered first behind Runner, shining both his large flashlight and his little penlight, followed by Ann with her flashlight and crutches, followed by the increasingly brightly glowing Walking Stone.
The nauseating stench is what first struck the humans. A wolf den should normally smell a bit nasty to a human but this one was pungently putrid, an assault that nearly caused Mark and Ann to puke and run away. The air was chilly inside the cave also; in the mid-fifties at most, Ann judged. It was almost like being inside a refrigerator full of rancid food.
The sight was nearly as bad as the smell. A few feet in from the entrance the cave widened out to roughly the size and shape of a twenty-foot
long hallway. At the feet of the three visitors lay more dead flies: several dozens of them, with wings and legs and torn oozing body parts that stunk of death. Mark had smelled this odor when he butchered they fly they ate earlier, he realized, but here in the confines of the cave and numerous fly bodies the odor was a thousand times stronger. There was a weaker smell of wolf urine and poop also. The wolves had befouled their own den in a futile attempt to overpower the smell of the dead flies.
Worst of all the entire mess was in motion. Some of the fly bodies twitched as if still alive, and hundreds of light colored objects the size and shape of half a human finger slowly crawled on the cave floor in every direction. "Magots!" Ann exclaimed. Hundreds poured out of the bodies of several of the dead flies after consuming their own dead parents, searching for more to eat.
Against the far wall of the cave four wolves lay huddled panting and shivering around a fifth prone wolf. The four lifted their heads and whimpered to acknowledge the return of Runner, and looked up at their visitors with wide eyes that stood out in the dim light. Runner lay down in front of them to establish a protective position, though not before crushing with a big paw several maggots that were crawling towards the wolves.
Thinking calming thoughts of reassurance and muttering words of greeting, Mark slowly and cautiously approached the prone wolves and crawled around to assess each one of them with his small penlight and soft touches of his hands. Ann feared that in their pain and fear they would attack the boy or at least nip off his probing fingers, but they all lay still. Each licked his hand and appeared to greatly appreciate his attentions; especially when he scratched them behind their ears. The big gray wolf in the middle never moved at all, and Ann had to wonder if it was alive at all.
At last Mark returned to where Ann and Walking Stone stood watching. Ann could see that the distressed young Mohawk was fighting back tears. "Runner is in the best shape of any of them by far; the others are weak from hunger, thirst, and especially loss of blood. Their thoughts are confused and not that easy to piece together even at the best of times, but for most of the day they were here fighting off the flies, attack after attack of them. They also keep repeating three names; those must be the names of their fallen pack members. The big wolf in the middle they huddle around to keep warm and protect is Gray Shadow herself, the female pack leader. She lives, but only barely. I couldn't raise a conscious thought from her. The three strongest remaining pack members are out hunting flies, as far as I can tell. That's probably a good thing; Long Fang the leader can be a bit difficult at times. Humans, even Tribe humans, aren't his favorite creatures. That's one of the reasons that this pack stayed here when the others went south."
"Now you tell me! But what can we do for them anyway?" Ann asked.
"They need medical help, protection, food, and water," said Mark. "I have to do whatever I can for them. The quest just got ten times harder again."
"So you're determined to help them then?" Ann had to ask.
"I have to try," said Mark. "As important as our quest is, keeping the wolves alive, like keeping you alive, is far more important. These wolves are essentially part of the Tribe, at least as far as the Tribe Wolf Clan is concerned. But even if they weren't, I'd have to try to help them no matter what."
"Can medical ticks help them?" Ann asked. "I've heard of the ticks helping other animals aside from humans."
"I don't know," Mark admitted. "I'll talk with the jants." He returned to sit near Runner while he mentally conversed with the jants.
"Well while you do that telepathy stuff I'm going to start to clean this place up," Ann announced. "Good God it stinks in here! And I won't rest until every damn maggot and wolf turd is gone." She got a plastic garbage bag from her backpack and a trekking pole from Mark's pack. She had only two extra-strong garbage bags. Using the pole and one of her crutches she was able to push fly parts and other nasty stuff into the bag one yucky thing at a time. Walking Stone joined her, knocking nasty things into the bag expertly with his big diamond-tipped toes at several times the rate of Ann's slow efforts. Quickly they settled into a routine where Ann focused on holding the bag open while Walking Stone pushed refuge into it. After they cleared one side of the room near the entrance, Ann helped the Stone-Coat take off the two camping backpacks and lay them in the cleared area.
The first trash bag was full. It would have to be emptied so that it could be used again. Ann helped Walking Stone remove his parka at his request and the Stone-Coat carried the bag away to empty it, leaving Ann to work on her own using only a flashlight for light. She found that if she lay down she could use one of her hands to more quickly fill the second bag. She used a small empty plastic bag as a glove so that she didn't have to directly touch anything nasty but it was still a disgusting job. The down side of her approach was that her face came within feet or even inches of disgusting fly parts, maggots, and wolf excrement that she scooped into the bag.
"Where did Walking Stone go?" Mark asked, when he finally joined her.
"To cool himself in a snowbank somewhere and empty a full trash bag," said Ann. "I envy him; he is out there in the warm fresh night air, while we're stuck here in this stinking refrigerator. God, I wish I had packed about a hundred pounds of fresh smelling baking soda!"
"He simply walked off by himself without me?" Mark asked, amazed.
"He's a big boy that can take care of himself," said Ann. "What's the big deal?"
"He can't hear or see me; that's the big deal!" Mark insisted.
"And why is that such a big deal?"
"This breaks the Treaty between humans and Stone-Coats!" Mark told her. "I should have gone with him!"
"You've been busy with the wolves," Ann noted. "Walking Stone knows that. What more have you learned?"
"The jants can help the wolves but they need more ticks," said Mark. "I've sent an owl to Giants' Rest to try to get more. We should get them in a couple of hours, if the Tribe decides to supply them."
"Why wouldn't they?" Ann asked. "Don't they have them?"
"Probably, but the Tribe is prohibited from helping my quest."
"But the wolves are the ones that need the help," Ann noted. "And you said that's more important than your quest."
"Maybe the Tribe will see it that way, maybe not."
"Well, in the meantime we already have one tick that can be used," said Ann.
"What are you talking about?" Mark asked.
"That big ugly bug on my back. Take it off me and put it on the wolf."
"But it's still helping to heal you and deaden your pain!" Mark explained.
"I'll get by but Momma Wolf won't. Get that tick off me and on to her A-S-A-P."
"The jants say it can be done but it will be a big strain on the tick," said Mark. "It's all geared up to support your chemistry now and it will be switching to support a significantly different species. The last common ancestor that humans and wolves share lived eighty-five million years ago. Since then evolution changed us both. That's a hundred-seventy million years of accumulated evolutionary divergence in body chemistry to deal with, even though our tribe and pack behavior has converged enough for us to get along together."
"Take the tick." said Ann. She turned her back to him and pushed up her sweatshirt and tee-shirt, exposing her bare back. Centered where most humans couldn't see or reach it was the big tick, gorged to twice its original size with her blood.
"OK, hold that pose for a minute and I'll get the jants to release the tick. It wouldn't do for me to break off its head inside your back."
"Hell no, it wouldn't!" agreed Ann. She tried to relax but couldn't. She abruptly felt a stinging pain centered on her back when the tick severed its neural link with her, but that was nothing compared with the sudden throbbing pain in her upper leg.
Moments later Mark lifted the tick off of her and dabbed away the resulting gush of blood that dribbled down her back with a paper towel. "Crap! That's going to bleed a bit," he said. From his first-aid kit he found his b
iggest bandage and put over the hole in her back, then helped her sit down on the cave floor. "Sit still until Walking Stone returns and we'll cauterize that if you're still bleeding," he told her.
"Never mind me; work on the wolves," Ann insisted, pulling down her shirt. She watched the tick that had been attached to her spit out several tablespoons of her blood onto the cave floor before Mark again picked it up.
To her surprise Mark put the tick on Runner at the base of his neck, instead of on Gray Shadow. "It has to calibrate itself to a healthy wolf first," Mark explained, "and Runner is the healthiest wolf that we have and the offspring of Gray Shadow."
Mark spoke calmly and pet Runner for fifteen long minutes while the tick sampled the young wolf's body chemistry. Then he moved the tick to Gray Shadow, who remained unconscious. For the next fifteen minutes the humans anxiously waited for first word from the jants on the older wolf's health. Far more exhaustively and quickly than would have been humanly possible, the tick/jant medical team examined the she-wolf.
"She is near death," Mark finally announced. "They recommend a second tick for her, if she lives long enough. This first tick might be able to keep her alive for an hour or two, but maybe not."
"When will the owl get back here with the additional ticks?" Ann asked.
"In an hour or so, if she is successful in getting any," said Mark. "And there is more nasty news: the flies have injected their larva into her. Maybe into some of the others too; we don't know yet."
"Maggots! Oh my God!" Ann exclaimed.
"They'll be eaten alive, but with more ticks we can handle that problem too," said Mark. "And how are you doing?"
"My leg hurts like hell," Ann admitted, "but I'll live."
Waking Stone returned and provided a warm glowing light.
"You left me and broke the Treaty," Mark told Walking Stone.
"You broke it first," noted Walking Stone. "Put my parka on me, please, and I will resume the cleanup effort."
"Cut off from the Mountain Stone-Coat enclave you are becoming quite the rebel, aren't you?" Mark remarked. "Well then, go ahead and resume your cleanup."
"We will do it together," said Ann.
"But your leg!" said Mark.
"It's going to hurt like hell anyway even if I just lay here," she noted, "so I might as well get some work done."
"Your logic is sound," remarked Walking Stone.
Mark offered the wolves water but most of them refused to drink any, even though he sensed that they were all thirsty. They were all in an anxious angry mourning tizzy, on top of individual weakness and pain, because of the death of three pack members and the pending death of Gray Shadow. There was really nothing else he could do for them directly now, he realized, so he also joined in the clean-up effort, though he continued to monitor Gray Shadow telepathically through the jants. With three of them working, cleanup progress was rapid, and the inside of the cave was soon finished, including the removal of every disgusting maggot they could find.
"It even smells a lot better," said Ann, "unless I'm just getting used to the stink."
"Airborne hydrocarbons are only twenty-three percent of what they were when we started," stated Walking Stone.
"Let's cleanup outside the cave too while we're at it," said Ann. "Plenty of nasty stinking airborne hydrocarbons out there."
There were even more fly parts outside than there were inside, but most had at least been mostly eaten clean by the hungry flies and weren't as messy. Waking Stone and Mark took turns carrying the full bags of fly remains down the path they had used to reach the den and returning with the emptied bags.
"Where are you guys emptying those bags?" Ann asked.
"At the closest Stone-Coat implant site," said Mark. "There are a couple of dozen of them on this mountain."
"Implant point? What's that?"
"It is a place where Stone-Coats have started to grow into the rock of Green Mountain," explained Walking Stone. "In only a hundred thousand years this mountain will host thousands of mature Stone-Coat units."
"I can't wait to see that," said Ann.
"That's very rapid development for Stone-Coats," said Mark. "Meanwhile they absorb waste and refuge dumped onto them. The potty spot near your earlier camp site was a Stone-Coat implant point."
"They eat poop?" Ann asked.
"They eat everything!" said Mark. "That's super useful for the Tribe!"
"And for Stone-Coats," said Walking Stone. "We make use of most elements, particularly carbon. Human waste is rich in many useful substances."
Ann again added to the growing set of knowledge that she would have to report on.
They buried the wolf remains not far from the den. When they finished there was a sound of howling wolves from higher on the Mountain. The howling was getting noticeably closer.
"Long Fang will return sometime later tonight," said Mark. "I wonder what he will think of all of this." Contacting the jants he checked on Gray Shadow's status again for probably the hundredth time since applying the tick. Again there was no appreciable change. The tick was administering helpful aid but the wolf was tiring. At some point soon the aid of one greatly over-taxed tick would not be enough to sustain her life.
"And I wonder about your owl friend and the additional ticks," said Ann.
****
Walking Stone wearing his parka easily carried Ann in his arms and her camping gear and Mark's on his back. Fortunately the wolf den was less than half a mile away and the Stone-Coat had been there before the previous summer. He had memorized each footstep and now repeated them accurately with little need for correction using his infrared eyesight. It was another dark moonless night, and so that Mark and Ann could dimly see their surroundings his head and feet slightly glowed.
Mark followed closely behind them, focused on his telepathic search for nocturnal animals. He located owls and encouraged their efforts to attack and kill the dormant flies that rested on the rocky outcroppings of the Mountain that still retained heat from the daytime sun.
He remained deeply puzzled and concerned about his inability to contact the wolf-pack. The wolves should have heard the frequent telepathic calls he made to them since his arrival on Green Mountain. Even neglecting telepathy, the arrival of Ann, Mark, and Walking Stone in their hunting territory should have been sensed and acknowledged by them. The jants would only say that for the last few days they detected unusual patterns of distressed thought from most animals of the region, similar to what occurred when a storm or a forest fire threatened the forest. This was due to the fly invasion; it had to be. Had the flies attacked the wolves?
As they made their way towards the den Mark spoke about the wolves to Ann. "They aren't dogs," he noted. "They're smart, fiercely independent and proud, and behave as a coordinated unit. Humans in general are a competitive enemy that they normally avoid. These particular wolves didn't stay on the Reservation when the others moved south because they are fond of the Tribe that still lives here, they did so because they stubbornly refused to be forced away from their territory."
"Hmmm," mused Ann. "A fiercely independent, proud, stubborn coordinated unit that refused to move south. That sounds like your Tribe but in canine form."
"I guess it does!" Mark admitted. Minutes later he was relieved when he finally sensed the distant thoughts of several wolves, but upset when he immediately felt their extreme pain, fear, anger and weariness. Most were in their den and sleeping, or trying to sleep, at a time when they often hunted in the forest.
"OKWAHO, OKWAHO," Mark pathed the Mohawk name for 'wolf' over and over.
"OWL CUB!" he finally sensed as a joyful answering thought, but it was accompanied by a mournful chorus of cave-muted, anguished wolf howls that erupted from somewhere deeper in the rocks not far ahead. With his flashlight in hand, Mark rushed past Walking Stone and Ann just as a big dark shape shot out from the darkness of the rocks and leapt upon him, knocking him down hard onto his back.
It was a huge gray wolf easily as big as Mark, Ann realized, as Walking Stone increased his glow-light. She would have been scared to death if it wasn't for the fact that Mark was laughing and hugging the creature with both arms as it licked his face liberally.
"Off, Runner!" Mark finally said, as he pushed himself up from under the affectionate creature. "Wow you've grown big! You put on thirty pounds since fall, I bet! Ann, this is Runner, a sixteen-month old pup of pack leaders Long Fang and Gray Shadow. He and I became good friends last year. Runner, this is Ann. ANN!"
The wolf raised his forefeet up to rest them on the arm of Walking Stone and peer into the face of Ann and smell her arm. He also seemed to take stock of the cast on her leg. "HURT?" he asked.
"BROKEN LEG," Mark replied.
"He's fantastic!" said Ann, "but look! He's injured!"
Using his flashlight for extra light, Mark closely examined his wolf friend and was disturbed to find numerous bite marks all over his body. Most were in the form of swollen bruises under thick ruffled grayish fur, but a few were ugly bloody areas of torn skin where patches of fur had been gouged off. Bleeding had coagulated to a stop but no scabs were yet formed: the wounds were obviously only hours old.
"Flies!" Mark exclaimed. "These must be fly bites! Lots of them! Some got past the protective fur and broke the skin."
"RUNNER HURT," the wolf confirmed. "TSIKS," he said the Mohawk word for fly. His thoughts were filled with anger and pain. "PACK HURT," he added. "PACK DEATH!"
"There are more wolf injuries and even deaths," Mark told his companions.
"How bad is it?" Ann asked.
"I don't know yet," Mark said. "Wolves don't understand numbers well enough to quantify how bad things are, but this is very bad. Let's get to the den and assess the situation."
"There were only a dozen wolves remaining in this pack," Mark explained, as Runner led them towards the den. "Most wolves moved south with most of our Tribe."
"I remember reading about the Tribe moving when I was a kid," said Ann. "At first it was thought that the whole Mohawk Tribe had moved away, but then it was discovered that some of the Tribe stayed to guard their sacred Giants' Rest Mountain."
"That's us, the stubborn remnant. My Dad says that after his Uncle White Cloud led most of our Tribe and clan animals south, there was a rush of intruding white men that had to be repelled. The ice sheets were forming then. Those were very tough times for the Tribe."
"Yet then somehow in the middle of all that your people managed to build huge greenhouses. How did the Tribe manage to do that?" Ann asked.
"Greenhouses?"
"Until the flies trashed it I had a little UAV with a camera that got some damn good pictures of them. Did the US Government build them for you?"
"No way!" Mark objected. "The US Government abandoned all Native Americans more than two decades ago as a cost-saving measure. There was no more Bureau of Indian Affairs to help with anything such as greenhouses."
"So you admit there are greenhouses?"
"Sure. Clever of you to get me to admit that, but you'll see them when I take you to Giants' Rest anyway, I suppose," Mark reasoned.
"But aren't they supposed to be a big Tribe secret? How can you take a reporter to see your Tribe's secret greenhouses?"
"Good question, but save it for later," said Mark. "We might not live that long anyway, and we near the okwaho den."
"Oh my God!" Ann exclaimed, when she realized what she was seeing in the light that Walking Stone and Mark's flashlight illuminated. The path they had been following ended at a deep cleft in the mountainside. Before it on the rocky ground the remains of hundreds of giant flies were scattered, wings and tough carapace parts that were inedible.
"The flies themselves ate all the flesh of their dead," said Mark. "But there was a great battle here."
"Is that a dead wolf?" Ann asked.
To one side of the path partly hidden by fly parts was a skeleton stripped free of all flesh, surrounded by torn furry strips of wolf-hide. Runner paused beside it and lifted his head to let out a mournful howl. The howl was answered by whimpers within the den, and by the howls of several wolves much further away somewhere higher on the Mountain.
"It was a wolf," said Mark. He fought down tears. "I can't even tell which one. Some of the pack hunts higher on the Mountain not very far from here. Much of what remains of the pack is in the den."
Beside him Runner looked up for a moment at his human friend, and then led the visitors into the den. The cleft in the rock was a cave opening just large enough to admit Walking Stone, but he had to put down Ann first and give her the crutches that had been strapped to his back. Mark entered first behind Runner, shining both his large flashlight and his little penlight, followed by Ann with her flashlight and crutches, followed by the increasingly brightly glowing Walking Stone.
The nauseating stench is what first struck the humans. A wolf den should normally smell a bit nasty to a human but this one was pungently putrid, an assault that nearly caused Mark and Ann to puke and run away. The air was chilly inside the cave also; in the mid-fifties at most, Ann judged. It was almost like being inside a refrigerator full of rancid food.
The sight was nearly as bad as the smell. A few feet in from the entrance the cave widened out to roughly the size and shape of a twenty-foot
Worst of all the entire mess was in motion. Some of the fly bodies twitched as if still alive, and hundreds of light colored objects the size and shape of half a human finger slowly crawled on the cave floor in every direction. "Magots!" Ann exclaimed. Hundreds poured out of the bodies of several of the dead flies after consuming their own dead parents, searching for more to eat.
Against the far wall of the cave four wolves lay huddled panting and shivering around a fifth prone wolf. The four lifted their heads and whimpered to acknowledge the return of Runner, and looked up at their visitors with wide eyes that stood out in the dim light. Runner lay down in front of them to establish a protective position, though not before crushing with a big paw several maggots that were crawling towards the wolves.
Thinking calming thoughts of reassurance and muttering words of greeting, Mark slowly and cautiously approached the prone wolves and crawled around to assess each one of them with his small penlight and soft touches of his hands. Ann feared that in their pain and fear they would attack the boy or at least nip off his probing fingers, but they all lay still. Each licked his hand and appeared to greatly appreciate his attentions; especially when he scratched them behind their ears. The big gray wolf in the middle never moved at all, and Ann had to wonder if it was alive at all.
At last Mark returned to where Ann and Walking Stone stood watching. Ann could see that the distressed young Mohawk was fighting back tears. "Runner is in the best shape of any of them by far; the others are weak from hunger, thirst, and especially loss of blood. Their thoughts are confused and not that easy to piece together even at the best of times, but for most of the day they were here fighting off the flies, attack after attack of them. They also keep repeating three names; those must be the names of their fallen pack members. The big wolf in the middle they huddle around to keep warm and protect is Gray Shadow herself, the female pack leader. She lives, but only barely. I couldn't raise a conscious thought from her. The three strongest remaining pack members are out hunting flies, as far as I can tell. That's probably a good thing; Long Fang the leader can be a bit difficult at times. Humans, even Tribe humans, aren't his favorite creatures. That's one of the reasons that this pack stayed here when the others went south."
"Now you tell me! But what can we do for them anyway?" Ann asked.
"They need medical help, protection, food, and water," said Mark. "I have to do whatever I can for them. The quest just got ten times harder again."
"So you're determined to help them then?" Ann had to ask.
"I have to try," said Mark. "As important as our quest is, keeping the wolves alive, like keeping you alive, is far more important. These wolves are essentially part of the Tribe, at least as far as the Tribe Wolf Clan is concerned. But even if they weren't, I'd have to try to help them no matter what."
"Can medical ticks help them?" Ann asked. "I've heard of the ticks helping other animals aside from humans."
"I don't know," Mark admitted. "I'll talk with the jants." He returned to sit near Runner while he mentally conversed with the jants.
"Well while you do that telepathy stuff I'm going to start to clean this place up," Ann announced. "Good God it stinks in here! And I won't rest until every damn maggot and wolf turd is gone." She got a plastic garbage bag from her backpack and a trekking pole from Mark's pack. She had only two extra-strong garbage bags. Using the pole and one of her crutches she was able to push fly parts and other nasty stuff into the bag one yucky thing at a time. Walking Stone joined her, knocking nasty things into the bag expertly with his big diamond-tipped toes at several times the rate of Ann's slow efforts. Quickly they settled into a routine where Ann focused on holding the bag open while Walking Stone pushed refuge into it. After they cleared one side of the room near the entrance, Ann helped the Stone-Coat take off the two camping backpacks and lay them in the cleared area.
The first trash bag was full. It would have to be emptied so that it could be used again. Ann helped Walking Stone remove his parka at his request and the Stone-Coat carried the bag away to empty it, leaving Ann to work on her own using only a flashlight for light. She found that if she lay down she could use one of her hands to more quickly fill the second bag. She used a small empty plastic bag as a glove so that she didn't have to directly touch anything nasty but it was still a disgusting job. The down side of her approach was that her face came within feet or even inches of disgusting fly parts, maggots, and wolf excrement that she scooped into the bag.
"Where did Walking Stone go?" Mark asked, when he finally joined her.
"To cool himself in a snowbank somewhere and empty a full trash bag," said Ann. "I envy him; he is out there in the warm fresh night air, while we're stuck here in this stinking refrigerator. God, I wish I had packed about a hundred pounds of fresh smelling baking soda!"
"He simply walked off by himself without me?" Mark asked, amazed.
"He's a big boy that can take care of himself," said Ann. "What's the big deal?"
"He can't hear or see me; that's the big deal!" Mark insisted.
"And why is that such a big deal?"
"This breaks the Treaty between humans and Stone-Coats!" Mark told her. "I should have gone with him!"
"You've been busy with the wolves," Ann noted. "Walking Stone knows that. What more have you learned?"
"The jants can help the wolves but they need more ticks," said Mark. "I've sent an owl to Giants' Rest to try to get more. We should get them in a couple of hours, if the Tribe decides to supply them."
"Why wouldn't they?" Ann asked. "Don't they have them?"
"Probably, but the Tribe is prohibited from helping my quest."
"But the wolves are the ones that need the help," Ann noted. "And you said that's more important than your quest."
"Maybe the Tribe will see it that way, maybe not."
"Well, in the meantime we already have one tick that can be used," said Ann.
"What are you talking about?" Mark asked.
"That big ugly bug on my back. Take it off me and put it on the wolf."
"But it's still helping to heal you and deaden your pain!" Mark explained.
"I'll get by but Momma Wolf won't. Get that tick off me and on to her A-S-A-P."
"The jants say it can be done but it will be a big strain on the tick," said Mark. "It's all geared up to support your chemistry now and it will be switching to support a significantly different species. The last common ancestor that humans and wolves share lived eighty-five million years ago. Since then evolution changed us both. That's a hundred-seventy million years of accumulated evolutionary divergence in body chemistry to deal with, even though our tribe and pack behavior has converged enough for us to get along together."
"Take the tick." said Ann. She turned her back to him and pushed up her sweatshirt and tee-shirt, exposing her bare back. Centered where most humans couldn't see or reach it was the big tick, gorged to twice its original size with her blood.
"OK, hold that pose for a minute and I'll get the jants to release the tick. It wouldn't do for me to break off its head inside your back."
"Hell no, it wouldn't!" agreed Ann. She tried to relax but couldn't. She abruptly felt a stinging pain centered on her back when the tick severed its neural link with her, but that was nothing compared with the sudden throbbing pain in her upper leg.
Moments later Mark lifted the tick off of her and dabbed away the resulting gush of blood that dribbled down her back with a paper towel. "Crap! That's going to bleed a bit," he said. From his first-aid kit he found his b
"Never mind me; work on the wolves," Ann insisted, pulling down her shirt. She watched the tick that had been attached to her spit out several tablespoons of her blood onto the cave floor before Mark again picked it up.
To her surprise Mark put the tick on Runner at the base of his neck, instead of on Gray Shadow. "It has to calibrate itself to a healthy wolf first," Mark explained, "and Runner is the healthiest wolf that we have and the offspring of Gray Shadow."
Mark spoke calmly and pet Runner for fifteen long minutes while the tick sampled the young wolf's body chemistry. Then he moved the tick to Gray Shadow, who remained unconscious. For the next fifteen minutes the humans anxiously waited for first word from the jants on the older wolf's health. Far more exhaustively and quickly than would have been humanly possible, the tick/jant medical team examined the she-wolf.
"She is near death," Mark finally announced. "They recommend a second tick for her, if she lives long enough. This first tick might be able to keep her alive for an hour or two, but maybe not."
"When will the owl get back here with the additional ticks?" Ann asked.
"In an hour or so, if she is successful in getting any," said Mark. "And there is more nasty news: the flies have injected their larva into her. Maybe into some of the others too; we don't know yet."
"Maggots! Oh my God!" Ann exclaimed.
"They'll be eaten alive, but with more ticks we can handle that problem too," said Mark. "And how are you doing?"
"My leg hurts like hell," Ann admitted, "but I'll live."
Waking Stone returned and provided a warm glowing light.
"You left me and broke the Treaty," Mark told Walking Stone.
"You broke it first," noted Walking Stone. "Put my parka on me, please, and I will resume the cleanup effort."
"Cut off from the Mountain Stone-Coat enclave you are becoming quite the rebel, aren't you?" Mark remarked. "Well then, go ahead and resume your cleanup."
"We will do it together," said Ann.
"But your leg!" said Mark.
"It's going to hurt like hell anyway even if I just lay here," she noted, "so I might as well get some work done."
"Your logic is sound," remarked Walking Stone.
Mark offered the wolves water but most of them refused to drink any, even though he sensed that they were all thirsty. They were all in an anxious angry mourning tizzy, on top of individual weakness and pain, because of the death of three pack members and the pending death of Gray Shadow. There was really nothing else he could do for them directly now, he realized, so he also joined in the clean-up effort, though he continued to monitor Gray Shadow telepathically through the jants. With three of them working, cleanup progress was rapid, and the inside of the cave was soon finished, including the removal of every disgusting maggot they could find.
"It even smells a lot better," said Ann, "unless I'm just getting used to the stink."
"Airborne hydrocarbons are only twenty-three percent of what they were when we started," stated Walking Stone.
"Let's cleanup outside the cave too while we're at it," said Ann. "Plenty of nasty stinking airborne hydrocarbons out there."
There were even more fly parts outside than there were inside, but most had at least been mostly eaten clean by the hungry flies and weren't as messy. Waking Stone and Mark took turns carrying the full bags of fly remains down the path they had used to reach the den and returning with the emptied bags.
"Where are you guys emptying those bags?" Ann asked.
"At the closest Stone-Coat implant site," said Mark. "There are a couple of dozen of them on this mountain."
"Implant point? What's that?"
"It is a place where Stone-Coats have started to grow into the rock of Green Mountain," explained Walking Stone. "In only a hundred thousand years this mountain will host thousands of mature Stone-Coat units."
"I can't wait to see that," said Ann.
"That's very rapid development for Stone-Coats," said Mark. "Meanwhile they absorb waste and refuge dumped onto them. The potty spot near your earlier camp site was a Stone-Coat implant point."
"They eat poop?" Ann asked.
"They eat everything!" said Mark. "That's super useful for the Tribe!"
"And for Stone-Coats," said Walking Stone. "We make use of most elements, particularly carbon. Human waste is rich in many useful substances."
Ann again added to the growing set of knowledge that she would have to report on.
They buried the wolf remains not far from the den. When they finished there was a sound of howling wolves from higher on the Mountain. The howling was getting noticeably closer.
"Long Fang will return sometime later tonight," said Mark. "I wonder what he will think of all of this." Contacting the jants he checked on Gray Shadow's status again for probably the hundredth time since applying the tick. Again there was no appreciable change. The tick was administering helpful aid but the wolf was tiring. At some point soon the aid of one greatly over-taxed tick would not be enough to sustain her life.
"And I wonder about your owl friend and the additional ticks," said Ann.
****