The wolf toy is the only thing I want from the store. And a canoe, because a canoe will get us home faster. She chooses a Kevlar canoe.
Our cart is full to the brim before we get to the tents. She’ll come to see that we need only the den, or maybe the cave if we want a fire. But the wolves are better for warming cold fingers and toes than any fire. Still, we pick one up.
She’ll be frightened at first, but the wolves will remember me, and if I carry her to them, they’ll accept her as mine.
Eventually she’ll feel happy there the way I did.
“We’ll go there in a canoe, drop all this stuff at your home for you, and you’ll canoe me back to the car,” she says.
I understand from the way she says this that she’s imagining our trip will take a day, maybe two. She has no sense of the vastness of this wilderness. She has no sense we’ll be travelling for many days.
I touch the hem of her shirt, thinking about the way she tasted. I smile.
She enjoys when I smile. People have always wanted me to smile, told me to smile. I never would. But Ann is different. I want to smile around Ann.
We unwrap the things we’ve purchased, which are in maddening plastic containers, and load them into the backpacks right there in the store. We sling them on and carry the canoe over our heads. We’re only a few steps out the door before I stop.
They’re here.
“What?”
“Back in the store.Now.” I turn us, canoe and all, back into the store, as though we forgot something. We put the canoe down.
“What?” she asks.
“They’re here,” I say.
She widens her eyes. “Who?”
“The ones who attacked the Fancher Institute.”
“The canoe was over your head…how did you see them?”
“I didn’t see them, I smelled their chemical scent. They’re out there waiting for us near our car.”
“The rental car? How could they have found us?”
Ann cares about details. I don’t. “You wait here while I kill them—”
“No.” She puts a hand on my arm. “They’re waiting for us at our rental car. Let’s let them wait.”
“Go on foot?”
She looks around. “We’ll borrow a car.”
“Borrow?”
“We’ll go out the back and find something…to steal-slash-borrow,” she says.
“You need keys.”
“I don’t,” she says. “We just have to be fast. I’ll get one started while you get the canoe fastened to the top with the bungees. Will you be able to tell if anybody is back there?”
“Of course.” I leave her and go to the back door. I take a whiff and return to her. “They’re not out back. Only in the front.”
She smiles as though I’ve performed a trick. Collecting facts for her article. I pick up the canoe and carry it myself this time. It’s what I wanted to do before, but Ann insisted on helping. I allowed it because it seemed important to her, but now the men who attacked us are here.
She leads me to a blue truck parked at the far end of the lot, hidden behind a larger truck. She breaks the window and an alarm sounds out, piercing my ears. Quickly she slips in and gets to work, doing something next to the wheel—pulling, prying. The alarm stops.