Chapter 2

As she bathed in the stream, Lupe standing guard, she imagined, she reflected on what was happening to her. It was a return to nature, to a savagery she had always felt in herself. But the extent of her adventure was astonishing, though as she lay in the cold water, she felt wonderful. Her body was refreshed, not feeling at all tired in spite of its being long after midnight. I'm getting nocturnal, she thought. She ran her fingers through her wet hair, pulling out tangles that had formed during her wild lovemaking. Moonlight glinted from the water's surface. She felt truly alive. To eat, to fuck. What more could anyone need.

"Let's go for a run, lover" she said to Lupe. She got out of the water and jogged to the path, then speeded up to see what he would do. He bounded ahead of her, then paused at a fork, hopping around. When he saw her slow down to a more sustainable speed he took a few steps back to her, then led her to the left. He's trying to lead me, she marveled. I wonder where.

They ran a new path, but one she had seen. It would be a five mile run, and that seemed just right to her stimulated body as the morphins began kicking in. He kept loping ahead, then stopping to wait for her, occasionally poking his nose at her cunt. When he did, she would stop and spread her legs, letting him stimulate her. The feelings he caused combined with her runner's high to create a fantastic euphoria. They ran on for an hour, and as she realized they were approaching her house, Lupe froze up ahead, his head low, staring into a thicket just ahead. "Oh my god, he wants to hunt" she whispered.

Stopping her jog, she stared into the darkness, breathing hard. There it was, a deer frozen by the smell of the wolf, hoping its stillness would save it. A thrill coursed through her. Lupe was staring intently at the animal. She slipped into the brush, circling around behind as quietly as she could, trying to keep her breathing quiet. She didn't think the deer had seen her, focused as it was on the wolf. She got within ten feet of it before it bolted away from her. It bounced as she chased it, heedless of scratches from the branches. Then it froze as it realized it was near the wolf, and she tackled its back legs, throwing it to the ground. A grey blur flashed through her vision, and the deer squealed as Lupe's fangs ripped the neck open.

She felt the deer urinating in its death throes, then a rattle from its lungs signaled a quick end. Her blood was boiling, the smells of her sweat, the deer's pee, and the blood gushing from its neck mixed with her euphoria. She scrambled to sink her head next to the wolf's, and drank of the blood with her lover. She felt the juices on her skin.

The wolf began to drag the prey up the mountain, following the path that led to the meadow. She started to follow him, but he growled menacingly at her. No humans will interfere with my pack's feeding, she guessed was the message. "Okay to fuck, but not to eat with, huh" she chuckled. Maybe he'll change after a while. Meantime, she smelled herself getting rank, and hurried back to the stream. She needed soap to clean herself properly. When she fell into bed, it was to a languid sense of satisfaction, and a thrilling, unfocused dream of tomorrow.

Gene Brooks was happy to be getting back to his wolves. It seemed to him that he had never been truly happy except in the vicarious participation in their lives that his first visit a year and a half ago had allowed. Life had twisted his mind brutally, and he was dimly aware that he was like a time bomb, just waiting to explode. The peace of the mountain, and the enjoyment of watching the two animals live their hard but simple lives was the most serene period he could remember. He had had to leave just after the cubs had been born, intending vaguely to try and find some way to improve their chances of surviving.

He had been dancing to other's tunes' all his life, and paying for their mistakes with suffering of his own. He had been orphaned at five, and moved from foster home to foster home, never feeling the affection he vaguely remembered from the shadowy figures of his parents. He had been told so many stories about them that he never knew what to believe. Years later, he had researched it enough to find out they had died from gunshot wounds. He was wild in his teenage years, starting with purse snatching, and ending with armed robbery of convenience stores. When the fuzz caught one of his friends, he enlisted in the army.

By that time he had acquired the handsome appearance that made girls easy lays. They never seemed to touch him deeply, as though he was afraid of affection. He was dimly aware that he might feel his mother had abandoned him, and used that psychobabble in the various interviews that had been necessary for him to get in Special Forces. They taught him all the killing arts, from hand to hand, to weapons. At first, he had thought it would make him a more successful criminal, but eventually he became fearful at the skills they had given him. His first real mission had been in Panama, overthrowing Noriega. They used fancy words like interdiction, but it amounted to brutal elimination of anything that got in the way of their orders. He saw women and children shot, and young teenagers killed who were fighting because it was the best job they could get. His reaction had been horror at the unfairness of the effect of it all.

Eventually, he had been sent to kill a guy they said was really evil. He watched for three days, as the general fighting ended. He was a sleazy druglord, fairly low on the totem pole. Gene watched him abuse women, sell dope to ten year olds, and when he finally caught him alone in the streets one night, he disobeyed his orders by slitting the man's throat shallowly, and letting him die very painfully. Gene watched him suffer for an hour. He got less pleasure from it than he expected.

They were starting to suspect his commitment after that, but sent him to a survival school, where he excelled. The battle with nature to survive was simple and necessary. It was not complicated. Even the long final week in a jungle in Mexico had been easy, and he was almost sorry to leave. Everyone else came out bitten and exhausted, but he was smiling, tanned, and well fed. He was the only one who had been able to eat insects.

They sent him to Vietnam with a platoon to search for POWs. He always suspected it was a set up to please parents, because they were ambushed the second day in. He escaped, and lived on the land for three months. He stayed in the high mountains, and it was surprisingly easy. He had considered just staying there forever, but eventually worked his way out. When he crossed the border to Cambodia, he had taken out an entire guard station, twelve young orientals. None was more than sixteen. He mustered out that fall.

By this time, he was reading voraciously, philosophy, history, but was limited in his math, so science was a problem. He took a night course, and ended up living with the pretty teacher. She pushed him all the way through calculus, and badgered him to take the college entrance exam. When he did amazingly well on it, he applied for a GI scholarship to the University of Arizona. The teacher was pissed off he was leaving LA, but he was tired of her anyway. Plus, he had cold cocked a guy who tried to mug him one night, and the old confusion between his anger and necessity had scared him.

He drifted to ecology because it seemed so right. Through all the conflicts with population growth, it was still noble to want to preserve the simple perfection of nature. He was amazed at how little even experienced teachers really knew about how survival of animals really worked at the individual level. Their theories were often silly, and he acquired a "Nature Boy" reputation. But the young coeds went gaga over him. He found himself more and more crude in his relationships, often abusing people when they had no clue about reality. Even as he caught himself doing it, the anger kept bubbling up.

He found a love of wolves on a field trip his junior year. They went to Yellowstone, and hiked up to watch the almost tame protected creatures. He identified with them in some strange way, but the range in the park was carefully controlled, and he sensed it was artificial. He got support from one professor for a field study of real animals in free range, and his background got him a five thousand dollar grant from a foundation. He spent the second half of that year in the mountains, reading everything he could, and watching the pair of greys.

The first night back at school, after the money ran out, he had been drinking in a bar, missing the mountain, and got in a fight with three football players who were pushing their weight around. They never landed a punch. One was lost to the team for the season, and he was thrown out of school, losing his scholarship. He finished the report on the greys, and his professor got him a job in a foundation devoted to endangered and near endangered species. He curbed his temper pretty well, and his report was published, with Gene as the co-author. It was good enough to get him another grant.

So here he was, making his second trip from his motorcycle to the camp he had selected with his gear. There was a house that had been unoccupied that looked used now, and he avoided it. The wolves' base was on the property that belonged to it, and he didn't need any interference. He camped well up the mountain, but within easy binocular sight of the meadow. He now had a telescope that could also take a video tape recorder. As he hiked, he looked forward to rejoining the lives of the animals.

Merry had picked up signs of a human two weeks after meeting Lupe. There were footprints on one of the most distant paths leading up. It was a big shoe, and she thought it must be a man. She had followed the trail until she saw the camp above the meadow, well off her property. "Shit". Now she had to be more careful, even though he seemed to be anxious to avoid contact. She was deeply disappointed with this interference with the idyllic life she was leading.