by Jack Dey
Juanita buckled her toddler into his capsule on the back seat and then climbed awkwardly into the driver seat of the family car, cranked it into life and with a final wave, drove away. Cutter waved after her and then searched around for something to wipe his hands on before mounting the Fat Boy again, but finding nothing, he wiped them on his faded denims instead.
*~*~*~*
Slinger was just closing the meeting when Cutter’s motorcycle stole the airwaves from the executive boardroom and made Slinger yell to be heard. Cutter gave his signature three quick revs before shutting down his engine and then strolled into the church office.
Mrs Jessop watched Cutter enter and knew that he was walking into Slinger’s ire. She eyed him carefully and noticed the greasy handprints wiped on his denims.
“What was it this time? A pensioner’s washing machine... no, no, it’s Wednesday; it must have been the garbage truck broken down and you stopped to help,” Mrs Jessop chided him sarcastically.
Cutter’s smile stretched across his face. “Nup, you’re way out. Juanita’s engine overheated on interstate 6 and...”
“You stopped to help her out! Cutter, today is the planning meeting for the next twelve months and Mr Slinger is breathing fire. You missed it!”
“Couldn’t be helped. I can’t imagine Jesus bypassing a lamb in need just to turn up to a board meeting.”
Mrs Jessop huffed and pointed him towards the washroom. “At least wash your hands before approaching Mr Slinger’s wrath.”
Moments later, Cutter appeared again from his task of washing the grease off his hands and with a gesture of arms up, showed Mrs Jessop his clean hands. She tilted her head on its side in unbelief at Cutter’s casual attitude and pointed down the passage towards the emptying boardroom.
“Good luck!”
Cutter recognised several of the associate pastors exiting the meeting room and stood aside, allowing them to make their way down the hall and amble past him. Most of the men didn’t even make eye contact with him but the few that did had a smirking attitude and their haughty eyes left him in no doubt his apparent candidacy for Mr Personality wasn’t going to succeed without their vote.
As Cutter finally entered the boardroom, Slinger was on his way out.
“Nice of you to finally turn up, Cutter. I gather you have a reason for your… tardiness... on second thoughts, I don’t want to know. Here is your portfolio for the next twelve months.”
Slinger handed him a manila folder with a single sheet contained within and a list of his activities scribbled across it. “Just so you understand, you have been given the activities that no one else wanted; they are self-explanatory. Maybe next meeting you will turn up on time and now, if you will excuse me, I have work to attend to.”
Cutter removed the list from the manila folder and scanned the activities. He had been scheduled to preach on every public holiday Sunday, and every weekend that a major outside event had been rostered, leaving him preaching to an empty church. Along with that, he was scheduled to visit Mrs Parks every Wednesday; the prison every Friday; and Bairnsworth Psychiatric Hospital every Tuesday. Cutter couldn’t understand. The way Slinger was talking, it seemed as if he was ticked off and Cutter was being punished by being given the dregs of the activities, but apart from the preaching schedule, he would have volunteered for the ones he had been given anyway.
As he made his way out of the boardroom, he stopped in the doorway of Slinger’s office and excitedly proclaimed, “Thanks, boss. I’m really pleased with your choice.”
Slinger sat openmouthed at Cutter’s confession and watched him disappear from his doorway and then Cutter’s head reappeared, making Slinger jump.
“Oh... I forgot to tell you; Juanita and Javier will be coming to hear me preach this Sunday.”
Slinger waved his hand above his head in annoyance and then through his window, watched Cutter walk out to his bike and then disappear in blur of motorcycle noise, rattling his office windows as he left.
Slinger huffed. Either Cutter was playing with his head or he really didn’t mind doing the things others wouldn’t.
*~*~*~*
Deputy Jackson had been run off his feet all morning, attending to his normal workload and Bayer’s as well. Now the sheriff wanted him to drop everything and report on a blood stain covering the running track and take a sample for forensics to examine. He was feeling rather antagonised towards Bayer, until the sheriff explained Bayer was missing and the blood stain may have something to do with her disappearance.
Jackson parked his police vehicle at the start to the running track and locked the doors, then quickly settled into a brisk walk, striding out the five kilometre journey to the old mill.
By the time Jackson could hear the screeching of the old waterwheel, his brow was covered in sweat. He slowed his pace and began to search around the scene, looking for any ominous signs of trouble, then with his head bent down, he studied the uneven surface of the track while a puddle of slippery red fluid caught his attention. He dropped to his haunches above the stain and dipped his fingers into it and came up with the slick, sticky red fluid staining his fingers… blood.
Carefully he slipped his clean hand into his pocket and drew out a sealed swab, dipped it into the fluid and then sealed it into a sterile tube. Searching around, there weren’t any signs of a struggle or disturbed bushes and it was time to report back, delivering the sample to forensics. If this is Bayer’s blood, the crime scene people will be crawling all over the area shortly, he thought.
*~*~*~*
“What was that description of the running track offender?!” the sheriff bellowed out of his office, expecting the dispatcher to comprehend his command from two rooms away.
Cleaver’s head peered around the sheriff’s door. “Come again, boss?”
“The running track offender’s description,“ the sheriff repeated, a little annoyed.
Cleaver disappeared from the doorway and soon he was back with a piece of paper containing the description. “Arr... male; big arms; jacket with the sleeves removed and wielding a knife,” Cleaver read from the page.
“Is that it?!” the sheriff barked.
Cleaver nodded. “Afraid so, boss.”
*~*~*~*
Chapter 39
Every time a blast of super chilled Arctic wind rocked the walls of the extreme-cold-weather-survival tent, a new bout of uncertainty swayed her resolve. Normally, difficult situations didn’t faze her, but that wasn’t at minus fifty degrees Celsius, alone out in the middle of nowhere and in the face of Jack Frost riding a continuous round of hurricane force hammer blows.
The last time she was able to check her navigation by the stars was two days ago, just before the cloud obliterated her view and locked her into a deep freeze. She fiddled with the compass she’d brought with her but every direction she pointed it, pointed west. Being so close to the pole meant it was useless and if she wasn’t aware of its deception, it could force her into extremely dangerous territory. With a disgusted pitch, she threw the device at the back of the tent and steadied herself as another gust tore at the thin aluminium skin of her shelter, threatening to tear it open and expose her to a very quick, freezing death. She studied the flapping material of the refuge’s roof, painfully aware there was only a micro-millimetre sheath between her and the frozen elements.
As the tent interior began to grow darker, she figured what remained of the Arctic sun was about to retire for the night, and the outside temperature would drop even further. Making a mental calculation according to the guarantee attached to the manufacturer’s tag–as long as the wind chill didn’t increase any further and the tent fabric wasn’t breached–at minus sixty degrees Celsius outside, the tent interior would remain a toasty minus five degrees. It is vital that the human body’s core temperature remains at a constant thirty-seven degrees Celsius, while any fluctuations of more than two degrees could prove fatal. To survive in her current situation, the difference between her core temperature and the out
side temperature was ninety-seven degrees Celsius. Although the tent accounted for fifty-five degrees of that, her protective clothing had to maintain a further forty-two degrees to ensure her continued existence.
She was fundamentally aware that when the body senses a loss of core temperature, violent shivering is activated and body warmth is switched off from non-vital organs such as skin, feet, legs, arms and face, ensuring the vital organs were protected by funnelling that reserved warmth for the heart, brain and kidneys to use. Once core temperature drops further, shivering stops and the effects of hypothermia confuses the mind and as with any trauma to the brain, it wants to sleep and that can signify a fatal shutdown, eventually resulting in death.
Another flapping gust tore into the side of the tent and shocked her from her musings, making her tense instinctively and wondering whether this would be her last moments alive. It didn’t matter which way she looked at her situation: it was desperate. Whether she died out in the waste lands of Liverpool Land searching for a legend man or at the hands of her own people, it made no difference. To her it was a lose-lose situation and if she didn’t come up with the results they wanted, she may as well die out here.
*~*~*~*
Galina Babkin awoke with a start and gazed, disorientated, around the inside of her survival tent. She had fallen asleep at the height of the storm, something she had been trying desperately to avoid, the very something in these desperate circumstances that could cost her life.
She listened for the threat of turmoil advancing on her situation but the furious winds had abated, leaving nothing but earsplitting silence occasionally interrupted by her whimpering dog team, of which she had abandoned to their fate in the face of the fierce storm. The huskies were a tough breed and if anything could survive the rigors of the stormy tundra, they could. Snow drifts had forced the tent sides to bend dangerously inwards, restricting her movement within her cocoon, but with a few accentuated movements she managed to dislodge enough of the constricting mass to access the outside air.
Surveying the bitter landscape and staring back at her tent, it soon became apparent how she had survived the overnight freeze. The snow packed around her shelter had insulated her against the bitter wind while the temperature inside had stabilised. Gazing around, the Arctic sun seemed to be frozen in the cloudless, pastel blue sky. Freezing mist danced around the tundra floor, trying to trap and blanket the feeble sun’s rays from warming the glaring, flat and lifeless tundra landscape. Galina surveyed her surroundings from horizon to horizon, squinting against the bright glare of the polar plain as each cold ray of sunlight bounced and intensified off a million icy surfaces and hurt her eyes, but she knew she had to keep moving.
Accurate navigation was essential. If she inadvertently wandered off the frozen land and ventured onto the forming sea ice, she could break through the thin, frozen barrier and drown in the freezing waters in seconds.
Her mind drifted back a few short days to the tiny settlement of Ittoqqortoormiit and the mixed reception she had received from the locals when she’d started asking questions about Bjarni Kleist and Dan Gurst. She suspected most people had little stomach for Bjarni Kleist; it seemed that Dan Gurst was an unknown, or at least, that’s the way they were leading her to believe. One man in particular seemed to have more to say than all the rest about Bjarni Kleist and judging by his weird getup, he was some kind of tribal religious figure. He had warned her about the legend man and how he seemed to have some kind of animal cunning and instinct that allowed him to appear and disappear and survive in places others couldn’t.
The talk had only heightened Galina’s interest and piqued her resolve to capture this strange apparition and tap into his knowledge concerning the mysterious, powerful source.
After a supposed sighting by an elder out hunting in Liverpool Land, the villagers seemed to think he had relocated and now she had an impossible job to find him. The isolated bays and fjords of the coastal regions were an ideal hiding place for outlaws, and this would be the subject of her search.
Driven on by sheer determination, Galina dug out her buried sled and tethered her dog team, then dismantled her shelter and packed her equipment onto the cargo well. Rifling through her survival supplies, she hungrily devoured a chemical meal and then mushed the tired and hungry huskies onto another day of bone jarring, overland travel.
*~*~*~*
On the edge of the blinding glare and downwind of her, another set of eyes watched her movements from afar. The lumbering giant stood up from his haunches and tasted the wind, his snout twitching with the smell of food. He hadn’t eaten for several days and his belly was complaining bitterly. Two staring black pupils followed the movement, tracing his prey with measured accuracy and as soon as her back turned to him, he dropped to all fours again and swiftly closed in on her.
*~*~*~*
The dogs barked and strained while Galina dipped and jarred, standing on the rear of the sled. In the extreme cold, icicles began to form on her eyelashes and an eyelid had frozen closed, causing her severe pain. She pulled the dogs to a standstill and removed a hand from her glove, placing it over her frozen lid, then slowly the eyelid thawed and it blinked stiffly. Not wanting a repeat, she wrapped her face completely in a thick fur scarf, using small holes for observing her surrounds and then replaced her freezing hand back into the warm glove again.
Hours seemed to pass and the dogs began to slow; they too were tired. She decided to give them a break before searching the flat landscape for a suitable overnight campsite, but in the meantime, she reached into a bag and removed a satellite phone. Galina hadn’t reported in for nearly three days and her boss wouldn’t be happy. She shrugged as if he was standing nearby–extenuating circumstances beyond her control. She grasped the device with her gloved hands and tried to punch in his number, taking several attempts before she bit at the finger of the glove with her teeth and removed it in frustration and punched the keys with a cold, bare hand.
The phone clicked, followed by a frustrated sigh, but no connection was made. Then with quickly stiffening fingers, she punched the keys and typed a quick message, ending with an antagonised stab at the send button. If she left the phone on for a while, a passing satellite would eventually pick up her message and deliver it to the intended recipient.
*~*~*~*
Downwind of his prey and a short distance away, a 700 kilogram frame lifted onto his back legs and balanced perfectly; he had been stealthily tracking his quarry four hours now. Hidden flawlessly by impeccable camouflage and with black eyes searching, the three metre tall carnivore sensed the wind and tasted her scent. He was getting hungrier, but he wasn’t going to give away the element of surprise and lose his meal in a foolish charge. He had to remain downwind of his victim and move around as the wind direction changed, with every step carefully measured and every move carefully weighed, picking precisely the right time to strike and cutting off any chance of escape.
Long powerful arms culminating in ten razor-sharp claws made him an unstoppable force once the hunt began in earnest, easily overpowering his prey. The persistent hunger would drive him relentlessly until his passion had been quenched. With great reserves of patience and discipline, the experienced hunter could wait all night for the right moment if he had to, ensuring he always ended the satisfied victor.
*~*~*~*
Galina decided to camp where she was. The dogs had found the remains of a long dead and frozen fox and no amount of coaxing would convince them to leave their meal.
Once in the warmth of her shelter, night was descending and after a meal of rations, she slipped into her sleeping bag. In a moment of wonder, she grabbed for the satellite phone, but it had shut itself down to conserve the battery. She pushed the enter button again and the phone blinked back to life, but the message send icon was still flashing. She sighed and pushed the send button again.
This time the icon changed to message sent.
*~*~*~*
Parlo strolled down t
he long corridor from Annette Dysart’s apartment carrying a U.S. Army folder. As he glanced down at the document, a treacherous smile stretched across his face, but it was suddenly interrupted by a beep from his jacket pocket, disrupting the thoughts of an easy conquest. He retrieved his phone and read the message and then with an unamused frown, he placed the device back in his pocket.
Even this news didn’t matter. Now that he had the file, he could relax. Surely his superiors would restore him to his former glory now.
*~*~*~*
Chapter 40
Bjarni carefully surveyed the scene, peering outside through the hazy hut window. The Sund had all but frozen over, allowing a considerable shortcut to his usual hunting grounds but he was all too aware of the treachery of seeming solid sea ice. The weather was still clear, but now with extra mouths to feed he had to make good use of the limited sunshine before the winter night set in and food gathering would become almost impossible. Hungry nanuq would be on the prowl too, adding another dangerous dimension to his plans. If he had the privilege of another few weeks he could wait out the initial migration period, and pass the time until the stealthy hunters filled their stomachs on fat muskox left alone on the mountain slopes to graze the summer months, unperturbed by hungry bears.
He watched the first rays of dawn peek over the mountains surrounding the fjord and decided Anunya had slept long enough. They had to pack the sled and ready the dogs and her hands were needed too. Bjarni reached down to the sleeping form and shook her, while Shtiya yawned with a wide open mouth and a slapping tongue.
“Anunya...! Get up, girl!” Bjarni tried again.
Anunya jolted upright, eyes still full of sleep and staring, but ready to bolt from danger.
“Steady on, it is only me. We have to get prepared while the weather holds.”
