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Abe struggled to keep up with Sano.
Ha! Come on, Stoic! Prove your mettle!
Umezawa, however, flagged quickly.
“Come on, Ume! That’s what you get for chowing down on Black Thunder after workouts!” Abe said, laughing.
“Shut up!” Umezawa gasped. “Wait up!”
Abe pushed himself and caught up to Sano. They all slowed their pace, if not for the sake of Umezawa, then at least for the collective realization, unspoken, that conservation of energy was utmost in their united quest for survival. After a half hour walk, which seemed to Abe an eternity, and at least a mile of hiking over slope and stone in a quickly fading twilight, they arrived at the kill site, where Blake was, hovering over a gigantic beast, surveying it, being overwhelmed by it.
“Wow!” exclaimed Umezawa. “Did you kill a woolly mammoth?” The others laughed. Umezawa dropped his eyes, saying, “Oh.”
“Were you serious?” Jason asked. “Umezawa!”
“I thought they found some in Siberia.”
“Thirty-thousand years old, preserved in arctic ice,” Jason said, shaking his head.
“Well, it is really big, you have to admit,” said Umezawa. “And it is dark.”
“Fair enough,” said Jason. “This is amazing.”
Blake said, exasperated, “Would you boys quit yapping and lend a hand? This mammoth ain’t gonna process itself!”
“What do we do?” Abe asked, reaching out a hand, tentatively, not sure he wanted to touch the mammoth. Oh dear God. Do not throw up. Ick. Ick, ick, ick. Do not throw up. Can’t we just somehow get the meat without having to cut into the poor beast? “Like, hold her leg?”
“Yeah,” Blake said, “hold her hind leg up and away from me. Jim, you sit on her other hind leg, and I’ll get after it.” Blake hesitated. “Sano, this is your kill. Do you want to make the first cut?”
“Yes,” Sano said without hesitation.
Now you absolutely cannot throw up.
Sano continued, “But I don’t know what I am doing.” She giggled prettily.
Abe saw her take the knife in her hand while Blake guided her. He had a headlamp, which was fighting darkness with a dim solar-charged LED light. “Right between her legs, I’m afraid,” Blake said. Sano plunged the knife into a soft section of hide right between the elk cow’s legs, spotlighted by the ghostly glow of Blake’s headlamp.
Abe’s stomach turned right over. No, don’t you dare. Do not, I repeat, do not throw up. His stomach continued to dance. He felt his salivary glands begin to pump. He spit.
“Good girl!” said Blake. “Just cut up and down in a straight line about a foot or so, but don’t cut through to the anus. We need to get to the meat. Abe, keep pushing.” Abe heard flesh and cartilage popping as Sano cut through sinew. A strange smell came wafting into his nostrils. Ordinarily, at such a stink he would have vomited immediately, but the redolence of wilderness within that smell was becoming familiar and comforting, and he settled down.
James Thurgerson suddenly turned his head and heaved. “Oh, God,” he said, spitting. “Oh, dear lord,” and he vomited again.
Blake looked over at James Thurgerson for a moment, then returned the light of the lamp to the task at hand. “You okay over there, Jim,” he stated, more than asked.
“Oh, that smell,” James Thurgerson said.
“You should put your hands in it,” Sano said, giggling again.
“Now turn the knife over,” said Blake, “so that the blade is facing toward you. Use your fingertip to cover the tip of the knife; we want to make a clean incision straight up to the sternum, so we do it from the inside to keep hair from getting all over the meat, and we cover the tip of the blade to keep it from slicing the inner organs.” Blake paused. “Jim, you wanna smell something horrible, just you wait if she nicks the stomach.”
“Oh, God!” James Thurgerson said, and he heaved again. “How much bear meat did I eat?”
Umezawa was standing still, quite still, staring at the proceedings. Abe saw the glitter of the headlamp in his eyes. When Sano slit open the belly skin, intestines began to shove out, reminiscent of Blake’s guts when he was slit open by the bear claw.
“That’s right, Sano,” said Blake. “Just pull gently. Going slow is going fast. The whole thing is going to try to fall out. You want to get your fingers in behind the viscera and pull it away from the spine.”
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It was Umezawa’s turn: he spit, leaned over, and threw the contents of his stomach onto the ground. Wordlessly he did his work while Jason laughed. Suddenly, the entire party ceased all movement, all laughter, all vomiting. Before them on the ground appeared an animal womb, and in that womb appeared a baby elk.
“Oh…” said Jason.
“Well,” said Blake, “I did not expect that, even though it was to be expected. Any female cervid in February is going to be carrying a fetus.”
“Aw…” said Sano. Her glee was gone.
“You saw the coyote chase off the one I was going to shoot,” said Blake to Sano. “We’re in the wild. We’re part of the wild, and we’re the most humane of the wild, what with a well-placed bullet.”
“We have to eat,” said Umezawa.
“We don’t eat the baby, do we?” asked Sano.
Blake hinted at a shrug. “It’s food, my friends. It won’t taste like much, but when we’re hungry, we’ll eat it, just as the wolf and coyote would.”
Abe saw Sano steel herself against the thought, and she returned to her work.
“Take care of the heart and the liver, too,” said Blake. “That stuff that looks like a net? Save that, especially. It’s fat. We want to preserve as much fat as we can, and let me tell you: that fat there is going to make some fantastic roasts. And, for the love of all that’s kind and tender, don’t pop any of the stomachs. That will be a smell the likes of which you will never forget.”
“Stomachs?” Umezawa asked.
“They’re ruminants, like cows,” said Blake.
“Huh.”
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Sano continued pulling and tugging. The sound of the viscera tearing loose from the body cavity was like a giant suction cup being pulled from a wet window. Blood covered Sano up to her shoulders, all of her torso, and her thighs.
“Yep, that’s the diaphragm. That separates the gut section from the heart and lungs. Keep it. Also, we might want to save the lungs. Oh, never mind. Look at them!” Blake smiled broadly. “What a great shot! You should have seen her! Ice cold. Brought the butt into a nice weld, up to her cheek, without me even telling her. Most people bring their face down to the butt, but she brought the butt up. Can you believe that, Jim?”
You naughty thing, Stoic. Purge that image from your mind. It will never happen, anyway. Why torment yourself?
Sano brought forth from within the recesses of the elk into the wilderness the lungs and heart. The arteries and veins had been cleanly cut by the knife, but the top of the heart showed a little mangling where the bullet crossed over it while it liquified both lungs.
“Lung shots are the best shots. Quicker death than a heart shot!”
“Really?” James Thurgerson said.
“I think so,” said Blake. “Anyway, it’s what I always go for.” Back to Sano he said, “Now reach up with one hand—you have to really commit, now: basically crawl up inside the poor beast and grab the trachea and pull. Then with your other hand, feel your way up there with the knife, and slice it right off. That will release the entirety of the guts, and they’ll just slide right out. Well, almost. Then we can work on the anus, and then the guts will be entirely free of the carcass.”
It happened as Blake instructed: Sano lay practically prone, reaching into the elk cow, keeping her head above blood, as it were, and with a quick motion, unseen within the neck of the animal, the guts slid out, connected now only at the rear of the animal.
Just to think, Stoic, we’re basically the same on the inside, all woven together to be eviscerated one day, either by medical students or worms.
“If you don’t want to do this next part, Sano,” Blake was saying, “I can do it for you.” But Sano was cleaning the knife on the ground, rearranging herself to carry out the last disgusting procedure for field-dressing a big game animal. “There’s nothing for it, then,” said Blake. “You have to pinch the colon so excreta is trapped going out, not coming in, which will, uh, flavor the meat unfavorably if it does. Then it’s all about reaming around the anus so you can pull it out.”
“Don’t you have to keep proof of sex on the carcass?” asked James Thurgerson. Blake scowled at him. James Thurgerson cowed in the LED light fixed upon his face. “Sorry, just trying to lighten the mood.”
“Silliness is not appropriate for the joy of the kill.”
“Ah.”
While Sano was sawing away with the knife, trying to free the anus from its canal, Blake continued to boast in her. “Ice in her veins, as I was saying. She peered down that scope like a real pro, asked where to place the bullet, and I told her. I said, ‘put it right behind the foreleg, just as she steps forward, and up a little, to account for drop,’ I said. We had no real wind, as far as I could figure, just as the equilibrium between night air and day air came to pass. And she was three hundred yards away from us, just across the little wash you crossed to get here. Sano pulls the trigger, just as smooth as butter, and she hollered—the cow did—and down she went. Kicked a little while, less than a minute, then expired. Lung shot, double lung shot. I’m so proud of you, Sano!”
“Why didn’t you do the shooting?” Jason asked.
“I told you: coyote chased mine away. Sano spotted this one. It was hers to shoot.”
“There!” said Sano, and she held up the colon and anus with a smile. Blake gave her a pat on the shoulder. Jason then leaned over and made it a crowd of vomit piles on the mountainside that evening.
“What is wrong with you people?” said Blake. “I have to admit I’m somewhat astonished at you. No stomach at all for the food you eat.”
Well, Stoic, you’ve done yourself proud. This should give you a leg up on the competition.
“Who eats elk?” Jason said, spitting, and returning to his turn to vomit, his torso lurching involuntarily in the crisp, clean, night air.
“It’s just a wild cow,” said Blake.
“Don’t they do cows in a factory?” asked Umezawa.
Blake grunted, then said, “You people…” By the oscillation of the LED light, they could see he was shaking his head. “Okay, now we quarter it up. I’ve thought about it the whole time Sano was at it: the hide will probably do us good, so we want to keep it in one piece for curing.”
Abe looked and saw steam rising from the carcass, illuminated now and again by Blake’s headlamp, then sparkling in starlight. Blake gave orders, and the party gripped the hide, pulling together carefully while Sano followed the place where flesh separated from hide with her hand and the tip of the knife. She gave her own orders to stop occasionally so that she could used the knife to help the process along. When they had the hide pulled halfway around the carcass, they paused.
“Yeah, let’s quarter this side now. Grab those hind legs again, and let’s get the leg quarters going,” Blake instructed.
With a few deft knife strokes, under the watchful eye of Blake, Sano separated hip from socket and shoulder from sinew. They piled the hind and fore quarters onto the hide, then Blake showed Sano how to take the strap off the spine. “There’s the good eating,” said Blake. “We may be refugees, but we’re kings and a queen for a while. Let’s make a trip back to the bower so we can get the butchering going there—I imagine Abe and Jim can do that, while the rest of us come back to—hey, where’s Lars, anyway?”
“Working on the antennas,” said Jason.
“He was just turning on the radio to test it when Sano came in,” said Umezawa. “And we, uh, all kinda sprinted out the door.”
“Well, that’s fine,” said Blake. “Probably good to have him setting up our ears. It cost him, you know.” He put an elk forequarter on Abe’s shoulder.
“This is nothing like I ever saw in all the seasons and OVAs of The Morose Alpaca,” Abe said, straining under the weight.
Jason hoisted a hindquarter onto his shoulders. “No, this is definitely Golden Kamuy territory, isn’t it?”
Umezawa picked up the tenderloin strap and started to sing the lyrics from the season one closing credits. “Someday we will find the truth! Kono kizu no kazu dake”
“I love that song,” said Jason.
When Umezawa got to the chorus section, Sano began to sing with him. Abe and Jason joined, filling the woods with the sounds of lusty victory of youth and humanity over the wild and over human evil.
“The hills are alive, Blake,” said James Thurgerson.
“With the sound of music,” Blake said. “Someday we will find the truth.” He shifted the elk fetus, adjusting it to fit over his shoulders.
“Someday,” said James Thurgerson. “At least I hope so. Conspiracies are strange things.”
“If more than one person knows a secret thing, it is no longer a secret thing,” said Blake. “They’re cute, aren’t they?”
“The kids?” James Thurgerson said. “Yeah, they’re just like kids, in a way. Catchy tune.”
Get a load of the old people talking.
“I’m glad they’re our kids,” said Blake. “I feel like they’re going to save all our asses. They’re dangerous, otherwise.”
“Ha!” said James Thurgerson. “So am I, but I’m the target.”
“The dingus,” said Blake, nearly laughing. “You’re the dingus.”
“I’m the dingus.”
Umezawa carried the song’s ending lyric alone: “Kibou wo terashidasu / Across the long and winding road.” Sano cheered for him.
The bower entryway opened to them. There, in the main living area, which was rather dark, hanging in thin air as if by magic, were the two antennas and Lars’s transceiver, still attached by the homemade coaxial cable to the j-pole. On the ground lay a pale and naked Lars, unconscious to the world, and covered with welts.
“Heal!” Abe shouted. “Ume, heal him!”
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