Zack Wolf was born and raised on 2nd Street North in Biwabik, Minnesota. He grew up exploring the surrounding woods and fishing the many lakes that dot the Iron Range. Embarrass Lake was his favorite. There he spent countless hours pulling in crappie, bluegill, largemouth bass, and his preferred eating fish, walleye. His grandparents had moved to the area from Wyoming to work in the local mines. His parents stayed, raising Zack and his older sister in the same hard, weathered place.
After graduating high school, Zack joined the Navy for reasons he still cannot fully explain. It did not take long for him to realize that life spent peeling potatoes aboard a ship was not for him. He entered BUD/S and passed. What followed was the most demanding training of his life. The details of his career beyond that point remain locked behind a Top Secret classified wall. What is known is that he served four tours in Afghanistan.
While serving as a SEAL, Zack went on leave. Through sheer happenstance, one of his teammates was from Karst Valley, a connection that led Zack to meet Emily. After a twelve year career in the Navy, Zack retired with honor. He and Emily settled fifty miles outside the Valley, where Zack took work as a construction foreman.
Their move placed them in a subdivision, quiet and unremarkable. Not long after settling in, a new neighbor arrived and moved into the empty house next door. As Zack remembers it, the man came over alone to borrow sugar from Emily. The encounter ended with mutual surprise when the supposedly single woman turned out to have a husband.
The two men became fast friends.
When Jimmy moved away, Zack withdrew into a quieter version of himself, avoiding public attention whenever possible. He preferred distance, routine, and the margins rather than the center of things. But as events around him began to slip out of alignment, Zack knew there was only one person he could trust to understand what was happening.
And only one person he could turn to.
Zack enjoying a walk in the park