Chey smiled at the householder. “Hi. I’m Chey,” she said. “Cheyenne Clark. You must be Monty,” she went on, holding out her hand. He took it and shook it once, a ritual he barely had the grace to complete.

“And you must be Dzo’s latest find.” He looked her up and down and his eyes stopped on her hips. She wondered how long it had been since he’d last seen a woman. “My friends call me by my Christian name, Montgomery,” he told her, turning away, toward the house. He walked away from her as he spoke. Clearly she could follow if she wanted but he didn’t care one way or another. “I don’t know you. You can call me Mr. Powell. What’s taking you so long?” he said, finally turning to look at her again. On her bad ankle she couldn’t keep up with him.

He looked at her again and this time he noticed her blood-stained sock and her swollen leg. “Damnation,” he said, so softly she barely heard him. As softly as the noise the pine needles made when they hit the ground.

Without further words he hurried off around the side of the house. She heard Dzo’s laugh but it was cut off short. They started muttering back and forth but she couldn’t hear them properly. She was pretty sure what they were saying, so she limped to the front door of the house and stepped inside. She needed more information.

The little house comprised a single room and an attic, with a ladder leading up into the latter instead of stairs. It smelled of very old smoke and relatively new mildew. The sunlight coming in through the yellowed curtains gave the place a butterscotch color that was homey without being quaint. The furnishings inside, which were few in number, were mostly hewn out of raw wood. The seats of the chairs and the top of the table had been sanded down and finished but in other places old bark still decorated the legs of a stool or the underside of a shelf. There was no television set, no radio, no electricity. Well, where would it come from? There were no power plants this far north, nor any grid. It made her wonder where Dzo got fuel for his truck.

She searched the rest of the little house but turned up little of interest. Powell did all his cooking in his fireplace, it seemed, though there were few pots or pans in evidence. She climbed up the ladder and poked her head into the cramped second story. He slept on a mattress laid on the floorboards of the attic. The sheets were neatly tucked in underneath with hospital corners. A kerosene lantern stood near the pillow and was flanked by piles of books—old dog-eared paperbacks from decades past, everything from Zane Grey to spy thrillers to nurse stories. A neat stack of textbooks and technical manual lay near the foot of the bed, mostly science stuff. Chemistry, a Guide to Edible Plants, Elements of Surveying and Civil Engineering. None of the books was less than five years old. The newest item was a well-thumbed Old Farmer’s Almanac from 2001. At the far end of the attic she found a couple worn volumes of crossword puzzles. The puzzles had been completed in pencil then carefully erased—stringy black bits of used eraser fell from the pages as she turned them—and then filled in once more. At the back of the pile she found a Rubik’s cube that had been partially solved then abandoned, judging by the thick layer of dust on its uppermost face.

She climbed back down the ladder, having learned as much as she supposed she could, and poked around looking for food. The fried bark Dzo had given her was doing wonders for her appetite. As if it had forgotten all about the existence of food for ten days, and just now recalled it, her stomach growled and grumbled at her. She found little to satisfy her, however. Powell’s cupboards were bare other than a couple of dusty cans of corn and peas that she didn’t think would be good even if she found a way to open them. The faded labels spoke of another era.

His liquor cabinet promised a little something more. She saw some half-full bottles of Scotch and considered how much she’d love to just sit and have a drink—but then she heard the two men coming around the side of the house.

“You saw her ankle,” Powell said. “She got herself scratched. She’s in the club, or she will be very soon.”

Dzo shrugged. “Sure, that’s why I brought her here.”

“I imagine that made sense to you at the time,” Powell said. He stopped by one of the windows but he didn’t look in. “I can’t let her turn, though. She’ll hurt somebody. Maybe she’ll even spread this thing. I can’t let her do that, not now that we’re so close.” He hefted something in his hands. Something old and rusty, a wedge shape the same dull red-brown color as Dzo’s pickup. It had a handle most of a meter long. It was an axe, the kind you used to chop down trees.

“No way,” Dzo said, his furs shaking in negation. She couldn’t see his face behind his white mask.

“The moon’ll be up in a few minutes. If we take her head off right now I think it’ll still be alright.”

By the time he got to the door Chey was gone.