Page 6 of What Remains

“Ah.” Flowers held up a finger. “Excellent question, Grasshopper. What you’re looking at is wild licorice.”

“Where’s the water coming from?”

“Think about it a second. Just because the watersupplyto the villages got smashed, that doesn’t translate into no water at all. There’s a small spring there, a pool that stays filled most of the time. We figure the spring’s fed by the alternative track the water took after the aqueduct was destroyed.”

“So why didn’t people stay?”

“I don’t know, but I might leave if I’d been a target.”

“But if there’s plenty of water, are you saying they couldn’t rebuild or re-configure the aqueduct to bring the water to them?”

“Guess not. But their loss is our gain.” Squinting through the windscreen, Flowers grinned. “You want to see something interesting, I got a pair of binos in the glove box there. Grab ‘em and glass the base of the foothills.”

Popping the compartment, John rummaged through a couple MREs, a box of bullets, packets of chewing gum. Flowers’s binoculars had slid to the back and as he reached for them, he spotted a flash of orange plastic, which he fished out. “You carry a flare gun?”

“Sure. Never know when you need to signal someone. All the paratroopers carry ‘em. Radios get busted, you know, and sat phones…You ever see the movie they made of that book, the one about the guy whose team gets wiped out? Starred the guy with the hamburgers.”

Hamburgers?“You mean, Mark Wahlberg?Lone Survivor?”

“That’s it. Remember the scene where that guy trying to vector in the choppers has to get out in the open, so the phone connects? And then he gets shot? That’s what I mean. If he’d had a flare, he coulda just fired it off. Sometimes the best tech is the lowest.”

“You ever use this thing?”

“Naw, man, don’t you see, that’s why you pack it. It’s like an umbrella.”

“It never rains when you carry one.”

“And only rains when you don’t, that’s right. That flare gun is like an umbrella. I’ve never had to use it.” Flowers flashed a grin. “I re-load and switch out that cartridge every three years. Keep a couple spares. So far, though, knock on wood.”

“If you say so.” Slotting the flare gun back into the glove box, he pulled out Flowers’s binoculars. “Where should I look?”

“To the right. Glass those foothills over there, at the base where the shrubs and that spring are. You watch, you’ll see movement.”

Squinting through the binoculars, John spotted something long and brown loping along the near flank of a solitary crag. He adjusted the focus, and the figure of a wolf coalesced and sharpened. “Wow. I didn’t know they even had wolves here. How didyousee them? I can barely make them out.”

“I know where to look? They’re like clockwork. Plus, when they start moving, they stand out against the green. Same pack runs heads east toward the spring every morning. They’ll go back out to the west again at night.”

“There’s game?”

“Enough, I guess. Rodents, marmots, stuff like that.”

He watched as five more wolves emerged. The largest trotted up and nosed the lead as the remaining four rubbed and exchanged playful nips. “Looks like a family.”

“More than likely. Mom and Pop out with the kids for a little stroll. Everyone talks about the alpha male? That’s a buncha hooey. Most packs are held together by the dominantfemale.”

“They’re really quite beautiful.”

“ I know. What’s weird is how much people here hate them. Think they’re evil and unclean. Except, get this. Wolves are alsosupposed to be protectors. There’s this old myth. Might just be Iraqi, but what I heard is people believe that it’s good luck to have a wolf hanging out at your door. That way, come night, it can see the fingers of evil jinn coming up out of the ground from their version of hell.”

“That’s pretty wild.”

“Isn’t it? Anyway, that wolf will eat the jinn’s fingers and the family’s safe for one more night. And yet they treat wolves and dogs like they’re scum. That always burns me up. Like, who would kick a dog? Where my family’s from, dogs and wolves…they’re like a man’s brothers.”

“Where’s that?”

“Michigan. The Upper Peninsula. We lived on Superior. Couple kids in my class were Ojibwe.”

“Yeah?” His heart did a queer little flip, and he couldn’t help the alarm bell that suddenly clanged at the back of his brain. Michigan was next door to Wisconsin wherehehad been sent to start a new life as John Worthy. “Me, too,” he said. “Small world, man.”

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