Page 58 of The Woodcarver's Model
“But what if we get stuck? Look!” he said, holding his cell phone up to Frank’s face. “No bars!”
“Give me that,” he said, snatching the phone from his hands. “Watch where you’re going,” he yelled as Ricky almost missed a sharp hairpin curve in the road.
“S-sorry. I’m just not good with being out here.”
“Pull over.”
“No, I’ll be all right.”
“Pull the truck over! That curve’s not on the map.”
Ricky pulled over to what might be called the shoulder. The men got out and Frank laid out the topographic map of the island on the hood of the truck. They huddled around as he traced the route from the ferry landing. Ricky stood by nervously keeping his eyes open for danger. A turkey vulture circled above.
“What’s that?” he said.
“Just a vulture. Probably scoutin’ out dead things t’ eat,” offered Marco, the team’s driller.
“What do they eat?” Ricky asked nervously.
“Carrion.” Seeing the blank look in Ricky’s eyes, Marco explained, “Dead things…like scraps left over from a wolf kill.”
“Wolf?” Ricky was terrified by even the thought of wolves, having been brought up on a diet of fairy tales and horror films. In his mind the wolf was the pinnacle of evil—the cruellest, most conniving creature that nature had ever concocted.
“This road’s not even on the map,” Frank said. “They probably built it after a washout. We’ll have to re-map the whole thing from the base up.”
The talk of unmapped roads, vultures and wolves…all in an area with no cell service—no way to call for help—had Ricky tense. What if something bad happened?
Ricky sidled up to Philippe.
“So, are there really things like wolves on the islands?”
Philippe was never fast with a response. “Well…I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“But are there? Here…on the island?”
With a slight smile on his face, Philippe said, “Well…it’s this way. There are a lot of animals that can do you harm. The worst of them, they aren’t the big ones like the bear and the lion, not that we have lions here, of course. The ones you’ve gotta watch out for are the little buggers. Do you know what animal poses the greatest risk to mankind? Guess.”
Ricky thought for a moment. “Is it a wolf?”
“No, it’s not the wolf.”
“But a wolf could take a guy down, couldn’t it?”
Philippe stared intently at Ricky. “Well…I suppose…but a wolf wouldn’t rate nearly as dangerous as the tiny mosquito. Did you know that mosquito-borne illness takes almost a million lives every—”
“But say there was a wolf on the island,” Ricky interrupted. “What kind would it be?”
“Well…I’d say it’d have to be the Grey Coastal. Yuh. There was one shot just the other year down on Vancouver Island. Now, speaking of which, it could be a Vancouver Island Wolf which is a subspecies of the Grey Coastal. I suppose one could have made it over to Marsh.”
“So there could be two kinds of wolves around us right now?” Ricky said in a voice one step above a quivery whisper.
“You might be right. Better be glad you’re not a lame deer or they could drop you in a second.”
Just then there was a rustling in the bushes, and out leapt a large wolf. Or at least what Ricky imagined was what a wolf looked like. Without thinking, he pulled out a handgun, and fired off a half-dozen shots in the general direction of the wolf.
It was hard to say where the loudest noise came from—the gun, the men’s yelling or Ricky’s screaming, but the yelp of an injured animal rose above the rest. It quickly retreated into the brush.
“What the fuck?” Frank yelled as he grabbed the gun away from Ricky.
