Part 3
The ten days before deployment felt like a slow suffocation. Denis spent hours hunched over his crackling shortwave radio and his unreliable cell phone, calling every hunter, logger, and town official he knew in Tymovskoye. He offered them money. He offered them his truck.
“I’m sorry, Denis,” a local mechanic told him over a static-filled line. “If it was a German Shepherd, sure. But you’re asking me to put a hundred-and-fifty-pound timber wolf in a yard where my kids play. It’s not a dog. I can’t do it.”
Denis knew they were right. Sever was perfectly behaved, but he was still a wild apex predator to anyone who didn’t understand him. The logic made sense, but it didn’t make the failure any easier to swallow.
As the departure date loomed, Sever grew increasingly restless. Wolves are creatures of absolute routine, and the shift in the cabin’s atmosphere was palpable to him. He shadowed Denis constantly, his ears swiveled back, his yellow eyes tracking the man’s every restless movement. When Denis finally dragged a canvas duffel bag out of the closet and began tossing clothes into it, Sever paced the floorboards, his claws clicking sharply against the wood. When Denis zipped the heavy bag shut and left it by the door, Sever sat beside it, pointed his muzzle at the ceiling, and let out a long, climbing howl that vibrated against the cabin’s windowpanes.
Denis had to turn away, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes, struggling to keep his breathing steady.
On the final morning, a heavy military transport truck ground its way up the dirt road, its diesel engine breaking the silence of the taiga. The driver stepped out, lit a cigarette, and leaned against the fender. He took one look at the massive gray wolf sitting by the gate and wisely decided to stay by the truck, giving them a moment.
Denis dropped to his knees in the dirt. He wrapped his arms around Sever’s thick neck, burying his face in the coarse fur.
“I’ll be back,” Denis said, his voice tightening in his throat. He gripped the fur firmly. “You stay here. You wait.”
Sever whined, pressing his heavy head against Denis’s chest and licking his jaw. It was a gesture of pure pack comfort, and the raw grief in the animal’s eyes made the military driver turn his head away, suddenly finding his boots very interesting.
Denis stood up, grabbed his duffel, and climbed into the cab. The truck slammed into gear and began to roll.
Denis watched the side mirror. Sever didn’t stay by the gate. As the vehicle accelerated, the wolf broke into a sprint, chasing the heavy tires, his muscular legs eating up the distance. He ran for nearly a mile, swallowing the choking diesel exhaust, desperately trying to keep up. But the truck gathered too much speed. Finally, his chest heaving, the wolf stopped in the middle of the rutted dirt road.
Through the swirling dust, Denis watched the lone gray silhouette shrink into the distance until the road curved and swallowed him entirely. He didn’t look back again.
For the first week after the deployment, the responsibility of the outpost fell to Semyon, an older game warden from the neighboring district. Semyon drove up every few days to check the property and leave food. What he found unsettled him.
The wolf had become a ghost. Sever paced the empty rooms, sniffing Denis’s abandoned boots, nudging the closet door where the ranger’s winter coats still hung. He refused the fresh meat Semyon left on the porch. He wouldn’t let the old man come near him. Most of the time, Sever simply lay on Denis’s unmade bed, staring blankly at the wall, letting out a low, vibrating whimper that sounded entirely too human.
Sitting at the kitchen table one afternoon, watching the untouched bowl of food on the floor, Semyon rubbed his tired eyes. He’s not going to make it, the old warden thought. He’s going to starve himself to death out of sheer grief.