One

  “Tomorrow.”

  “You’re bat-shit crazy, Zack.”

  Like I didn’t already know that.

  * * *

  He had the rest of the afternoon to kill. His apartment was above a sports bar—very convenient. But all at once Zack didn’t want to go there. It was the kind of place where men and a few women watched extreme sports; he might be recognized, especially with his bandaged hands. He pulled his cap low over his face, stuck his hands in his pockets, and found a bar so dark that entire stables of fighters could have gone unnoticed. He gulped two Scotches and then nursed a third, trying to not see Julian Browne choking on his own blood on level one of the First Ever Level Fighting Match.

  At six o’clock he started home on dark streets that had half their street lamps broken. It was cold; he turned up the collar of his jacket. Occasionally he passed little sidewalk altars, pictures painted or glued onto building walls of people who had been killed in gang-war violence, with clumps of dead flowers on the cracked cement beneath them.

  In an alley, three punks about eleven or twelve were throwing stones at a little dog.

  They had it backed up, cowering and whimpering, between two overflowing garbage cans. The stones were heavy; the bastards meant business. A gash had opened in the dog’s side.

  “Hey! Knock it off!”

  Their heads snapped around, peering through the darkness. When they saw it was only one man, their postures eased a little. When they saw his bandaged hands, Zack knew they were going to start something.

  “Yeah? Who says so? You, old man?”

  The leader. That he called Zack the same name that Zack called Jerry—that didn’t help. The boy’s lieutenant half-turned, making sure Zack was watching, and hurled another stone at the dog. It hit and the animal yelped.

  Zack rushed them. It was no contest, of course, not even when the head punk drew a knife. Zack knew what clumsy move each untrained kid was going to make, and he was fueled by a rage he didn’t even try to understand. At the same time, he didn’t want to really hurt them. So he pulled his punches, tripped but didn’t kick, only waved the knife when he’d captured it, which took about ten seconds. Another ten and they were all running away, one limping but nothing serious. Not crippling them had taken every inch of self-control Zack hadn’t even known he possessed.

  “Okay, mutt, scram. Go home.”

  The dog didn’t move. Maybe it was hurt too bad?

  But when Zack approached warily—he didn’t want to get bit, not even by a mutt this small—the dog got to its feet all right.

  “I said go home!”

  The dog lay down again, this time on its belly, and looked up at Zack.

  What the—he hadn’t been trying to dominate the animal. Actually, it didn’t look dominated. It looked adoring. The dog crept forward and licked his shoe.

  “Stop that. You know what shit can be on shoes?”

  The dog went on licking.

  Gingerly, Zack squatted beside the dog. It didn’t bite. How did you tell how bad a dog was hurt? He had no idea. Maybe he could take it to a shelter. Were there shelters for dogs? Would the shelter people think he had hurt it?

  “I gotta go,” he told the dog, and did. When he looked over his shoulder, it was following him. Under a street lamp that actually worked, he saw how thin and scruffy it looked, its fur coming out in patches. This wasn’t a dog with a home to go to.

  “Damn it to fucking hell,” Zack said to the dog. It wagged its tail.

  In his apartment, he washed the little dog’s wound and tied a thick bandage around its middle. The dog, a neutered male, let him. It seemed to be of no breed—not that Zack would know otherwise—and a middling sort of animal: middle-long fur, middle-brownish color, middle-thick tail. Zack gave it half a pizza and some water in the plastic tray from a frozen TV dinner. By the time he finished, Gail was at the door. She wasn’t carrying anything. She looked around the apartment and snorted.

  Zack said, “Where’s the camping stuff?”

  “You’ll get it in the morning. We’re not driving up until it’s light in the morning.”

  “‘We’? No way.”

  “Oh, yeah, and believe me, I don’t like it any better than you do. But you’re ignorant about camping and you’re not the deepest carrot in the garden anyway. I took tomorrow off. I’ll drive up with you, set up the tent, show you how to keep your food in a hang-bag, basic survival stuff, and leave. Wear warm clothing and bring a parka, hat, gloves, changes of wool socks, and boots, no matter how warm it seems in the city. We’ll need two cars.”

  “I don’t want you there.”

  “That makes two of us. But I’m doing it. Not for you—for Anne.”

  “Does she know about this?”

  “No. She’d have a cow. Hey, I didn’t know you have a dog!” Before Zack could say “I don’t,” Gail added, “What’s wrong with his side?”

  “He got into a fight.”

  “Males,” Gail said. “Is he going with us?”

  Zack looked at the dog. It gazed back at him with an adoration he never got, not from boxing fans, not from Anne or Jazzy, and certainly not from Gail. “Yeah. I guess he is.”

  “What’s his name?”

  From a deep place inside that Zack instantly hated but could not control, he said, “Browne. His name is Browne.”

  * * *

  They took both cars, the secondhand Ford Focus Zack had just bought and Gail’s four-wheel-drive Jeep. Their only conversation occurred in the street before they left the city. Gail said, “You’re really not going to do that maximum fighting crap anymore?”

  “Yeah. I’m done.”

  “Why?”

  “I just am.”

  She didn’t answer. Zack felt her curiosity: about his decision, about this trip, even about the dog, who had jumped happily onto the passenger seat of Zack’s Ford. Zack disliked Gail as much as ever, but he’d give her this: unlike Anne or Jazzy, she didn’t crowd him.

  Jazzy. The last time he’d gone up to the mountains, they’d done it. Her luscious body warm in the firelight … but it hadn’t been any good, not for him. He’d had to get way too far inside her skin. The price was too high. Still …

  He was astonished to realize that right now he didn’t want to fuck Jazzy as much as he wanted to talk to her. Well, that wasn’t happening. Another price too high.

  He followed Gail’s car. After a few hours of ascent, they reached a small parking lot. Below them spread hills of red and gold trees dotted with dark-green firs. Beyond that, the city lay hazy and unreal. A sign with an arrow said AMBER NATURE TRAIL, followed by a lot of small print that Zack didn’t read. Browne leapt happily from the car.

  Gail said, “This is as far as we can drive. Now we pack it in. Do you know where you want to camp?”

  Zack shook his head and Gail rolled her eyes, an action repeated when she saw the Safeway brown bag of groceries on the passenger seat. “You really thought you could just carry that stuff in?”

  “It’s food,” he said, lamely. He filled his pockets with two bananas and handfuls of dog kibble before she handed him things from the trunk to carry, including a big jug of water with straps that slung over his back. She put on a backpack that rose far above her head, and they set off along the trail.

  In half an hour he felt as if he’d just gone three bouts in the ring. Gail strode on, tireless. Zack said, “This spot looks good.”

  Gail snorted, led him off the trail, and kept hiking. It was even harder here, rougher ground and branches all over the place. Eventually she stopped in a clearing. “Okay, this has good drainage, a place for the hang-bag, wood for the fire. Now pay attention. There are bears around here, and you need to do this right.”

  Bears? That wasn’t the animal Zack was hoping for.

  Gail put up the tent. She showed him how to keep his food in a hang-bag when he wasn’t eating it and how to reconstitute and cook the dried stuff when he was. The hang-bag was suspended high aboveground from a lin
e stretching between two trees. She built him a fire and showed him how to start another one with the nanoSTRIKER, a device he hadn’t even known existed. She found wood and told him to keep the woodpile replenished during daylight. She gave him a GPS, a powerful flashlight, a hunting knife, a miniature first aid kit, and a sleeping bag “good to ten below zero, and it won’t get anywhere near that. I always bring a handgun up here but I can’t loan it to you—you’re not licensed to carry.”

  “I can take care of myself without a gun.”

  She snorted. “Does your phone work up here?”

  It didn’t. Gail looked around the camp she’d made, shrugged, and disappeared into the trees. “Thank you, Gail,” he called after her retreating form, but she didn’t look back.

  * * *

  He couldn’t sleep. He sat very late by the fire, feeding it from Gail’s woodpile. Browne lay beside him, and Julian Browne filled Zack’s thoughts. The non-voices whispered in his head. The forest made strange sounds. By firelight he read the only book he’d brought, a secondhand paperback titled Wolves and Their Ways.

  “Within the genus Canis, the gray wolf (Canis lupus) represents a more specialized and progressive form than either Canis latrans or Canis aureus, as can be seen from its morphological adaptations to hunting larger prey—” Christ! Why couldn’t they write in English?

  He did learn that wolves traveled in packs, were constantly in search of prey, were smart, and covered nine percent of their territory daily, about fifteen miles. So what were the odds of a pack, or even a single wolf, strolling into Zack’s camp? Also, wouldn’t they avoid the fire or maybe even a flashlight? But if he doused the fire and turned off the flashlight, he couldn’t see any wolves if they did come. And he’d be sitting alone in the dark, which was deeper here than he could have imagined. Bottom-of-a-cave dark, Devil’s-soul dark. There wasn’t even a moon.

  It did rise, eventually, a little after midnight, an almost-full globe that flooded the clearing with silver. But no wolves. The non-voices swirled and hummed in his head. Zack gave up and went to bed.

  The next day he was profoundly bored. What the hell was a person supposed to do up here? He emptied his pocket flask of Scotch, cooked his mushy meals, and rehung the food bag. He read as much of Wolves and Their Ways as he could stand. He threw a stick for Browne. The dog brought it back. Zack experimented, teaching the mutt to shake paws, to “stay” on command. It was easy; Zack knew everything Browne would do before he did it, just by watching the animal’s movements, and somehow Zack also knew what movements he himself should make to control the dog. When Zack said “No,” Browne obeyed instantly.

  Zack was still bored. This had been a stupid idea, in a life of stupid ideas. Give it one more night, then pack up Gail’s stuff and go home. The drinking water was almost gone, anyway.

  No wolf pack that night, either.

  Sometime after midnight, Browne barked sharply and Zack awoke. There was someone outside the tent.

  He picked up the hunting knife and turned on the flashlight, briefly regretting the lack of Gail’s gun. Fully dressed except for boots, he unzipped the tent and jumped out, to take the intruder by surprise. It was a bear, up one of the trees that anchored the line holding his hang-bag of food.

  “Holy shit,” Zack said. Browne, zipped inside the tent, barked hysterically.

  The bear is going to climb down the tree.

  It did, faster than Zack thought anything could move. At the bottom it stared at him. It’s uncertain … It’s going to take a step toward me …

  It did, and through his panic and fear, Gail’s advice rushed into his head: If you encounter a bear, make all the noise you can and wave your arms. It will probably go away, unless you’re between a she-bear and her cubs or you have the supreme bad luck to encounter a grizzly in a bad mood. Then you’re dead.

  Was this a grizzly? Zack didn’t know one bear from another. He shouted and waved his arms, and his shouts came out high-pitched and shrill. “Go away, leave me alone, I didn’t ask for this, shut the hell up!”

  Dimly, he wondered who he was screaming at.

  But the bear didn’t respond to him as Browne had, or the wolf last summer. It tried again to grab the hang-bag, failed, and eventually ambled off into the woods. Zack went back into his tent, knife still clutched so tight in his damaged fist that the blood had left his knuckles. Browne was still barking. Zack picked up the dog and held him tight. The bear didn’t return. Zack knew this because he stayed awake the rest of the night. In the morning he took down the tent, carrying it in his arms when he couldn’t figure how to fold it enough to fit into the backpack along with the sleeping bag and everything else. He left the hang-bag with its remaining food and the water jug with straps. He’d pay Gail for them.

  On the drive back to the city, Zack realized that he’d gotten what he’d come for, after all. Just not in the way he’d expected. But he had it. The information had been not in the woods, not in the bear, but in a stray, almost irrelevant sentence in the book about wolves.

  For the first time since he’d killed Julian Browne, Zack smiled.

  III.

  The MGM Grand Arena in Las Vegas was filled to capacity. From his dressing room Zack could hear the noise of sixteen thousand people. All waiting for him.

  “Ready?” Jerry said.

  “Ready.” For the hundredth time, Zack wondered why he kept Jerry on as his manager. There were better people to manage the new career Zack had pursued for over two years now. Much better people, more knowledgeable about the field and more used to the big time. But Zack owed Jerry, from back in the day. And he trusted Jerry, which was more than you could say for the usual eye-gouging Vegas promoter.

  Just as Zack was making sure his headdress didn’t wobble, Marissa pushed her way into the dressing room. Zack shot Jerry a glance that said: You’re supposed to keep her out before a fight. Zack didn’t need the Gift to read Jerry’s shrug: Didn’t want another scene. Browne, who loved everybody, barked happily and licked the silver-painted toes showcased by Marissa’s four-inch high heels.

  “I just thought I’d give you a big ol’ sloppy kiss for luck,” Marissa said. “Ugh, your breath reeks of liquor.”

  Marissa, unusual for a showgirl, didn’t drink. She ate only organic, carefully nourishing that spectacular body. She wasn’t that great of a dancer, but for her erotic act at After Hours Vegas, she didn’t have to be. Not with the way she looked.

  Jerry, radiating fearful worry, made a face at Zack. But if Zack didn’t drink, the non-voices got distracting. It was a fine line: enough Scotch to tamp them down but not so much he got muddled. The hell with Jerry.

  “Gotta go, honey.”

  “Break a leg!”

  He could never get her to stop the stupid show-business clichés.

  When Zack walked onto the runway, the crowd noise rose to a crescendo. Focus, focus. There was no room for distraction, or error. Not here.

  He focused. There was nothing but the cage door, not even Karoly as he unlocked it. Karoly and his brothers resented Zack tremendously. All three of them had spent their lives at this, raising and training and working with the animals, and then Zack waltzed into Las Vegas and did what none of them could do, for bigger audiences and a lot more money.

  Not exactly. Not Karoly, Anton, or Henryk Bajek—not even Jerry—knew anything of the year in Florida, before Zack had returned to Jerry’s stable. Zack had started with the rinky-dink, semi-illegal carnivals that spring up in the South like mushrooms after rain. Those were the only places that had what he looked for, and were willing to let him be killed facing it. The Bajek brothers knew nothing of Zack’s struggles to banish the fear that ruined his phrasing, to learn what phrasing even was, to achieve the right state of mind from which his Gift could do this. The first time Henryk had seen the scar down Zack’s left arm, without a thick covering of makeup, Henryk’s eyes had widened.

  “From an alligator,” Zack lied. He had never tried alligators, not since reading
that one sentence in the wolf book.

  “Of the Felidae, only lions exhibit, and to an astonishing degree considering the morphological and evolutionary differences, many of the same social needs and pack behaviors as Canis lupus.”

  He stepped into the cage and faced the big cats.

  Four lions: three females and a young male. They were a pack, the females all related to each other. Thin bars of unbreakable steel separated the audience from the cats, the lingering legacy of an onstage tiger mauling twenty years ago. Entirely different, as far as Zack was concerned. Roy Horn had not had Zack’s Gift. But the crowd remembered, and at least half of them hoped Zack wouldn’t emerge alive. Cell phones stood ready to record the gore. A robo-cam, somehow smuggled through Security, hovered overhead. The Arena’s drone captured it silently and flew off with it.

  Goldie, the young male lion, got to his feet. For a few weeks now, he’d been getting ready to challenge Zack. Probably the announcer was putting that into his excited spiel, along with the facts that the lions had been given no tranquilizers, Zack was unarmed, some ancient pharaoh had taken a lion into battle with him as a mascot. This last was the reason Zack was wearing an elaborately wrapped white loincloth, gladiator sandals, and a towering fake-gold headdress.

  He didn’t listen to the announcer’s garbage. He took a step toward Goldie.

  Goldie, Fluffy, Fuzzball, Lulu. The Bajek brothers hated the cutesy names Zack had given the lions and called them by more “dignified” names. But Zack had chosen these to minimize the beasts’ power in his own mind. It wasn’t like the lions responded to their names. They weren’t dogs.

  Fluffy, who’d given birth a few months ago and didn’t like having her cub left behind backstage, opened her cavernous mouth and roared.

  Zack held no chair, no clicking spoons, none of the other gizmos that lion tamers used to distract the animals and break up their concentration. Except that the MGM Grand insisted, Zack wouldn’t even have allowed Anton or Henryk to stand behind the barred shield, a cage within a cage, with canisters of CO2 to blast any lion that attacked. No lion was going to attack. Nor did Zack carry a whip. He carried himself.