by R. A. Hakok
www.rahakok.com
Copyright © 2016 R.A. Hakok
All rights reserved.
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living, dead or furied, is purely coincidental.
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
If it’s been a while since you read Among Wolves you can click for a recap, or scroll to the end.
LIGHTNING SPLITS THE DARKNESS, and for a second I can see.
I grab the last piece of twisted rebar and haul myself over the edge. Beneath me the river has already disappeared; there’s just a black chasm into which the snow twists and tumbles. Ahead the storm drives the drifts in long, shifting ridges that snake across the road, clearing everything in their path. I tell myself that’s a good thing; soon my tracks will be covered too. But the truth is this is bad, far worse than I had counted on.
I’d like to rest after the climb but there’s no time for that now. I untie the snowshoes from my pack and step into them. It hurts as I ratchet the straps tight. I can no longer tell if it’s from the cold or the bindings.
I should never have let them take my boots.
I look down. The plastic I’ve used to wrap my feet still seems to be holding, but I can see the duct tape starting to fray where the straps have worked against it. That’s not good, but there’s not much I can do about it now. I lift my head and set off into blackness.
The wind blows hard, making me fight it for every step. My hood’s zipped all the way up but still it finds its way in, squeezing tears from my eyes that freeze on my cheeks, biting at the exposed skin there. I curse it for a bitch but it pays me no mind. It just snatches the breath from my lungs and gusts even harder.
I hug the parka tighter around me. The cold is raw now, relentless. Normally pounding the snow would keep it at bay but somewhere down on the river it’s managed to slip inside; I can already feel the icy chill from my sweat-soaked thermals seeping into my core. My teeth are chattering and I don’t seem to be able to stop them. I try to focus on the sound of my breathing behind the thin cotton mask, anything to shut it out. But I can’t. The cold is everywhere, and it’s overpowering. Marv used to say it was a vicious bitch, that it could mess with your thinking. I need to remember that. I don’t reckon it’ll be hard. Because the cold is an onslaught. It refuses to be ignored. It becomes all I can think about.
Bitch. Bitch. Bitch.
Bitch.
I lift a snowshoe up and place it down again. One foot in front of the other; if I just keep doing that I can make it. But the drifts are getting deeper. The crash barriers I was following earlier have already disappeared; all I have left are the mile markers. I use the flashes to search for them, but they’re getting harder to find. I need to hurry, before they get covered too. I can’t afford to get lost out here.
I pick up the pace. The snow senses it; it swirls around me, faster now, all I can see in the flashlight’s faltering beam. I wind the stubby plastic handle anyway, until it seems like somehow that’s what’s working my legs and if I keep turning it they’ll keep rising and falling, like it’s the key stuck in the back of some clever clockwork toy. I keep that up for what seems like a long time but might be less. Then I catch an edge in a deeper drift and drop the flashlight.
Bitch.
I lay there for a while, getting my breath back. At last I push myself up and kneel in the snow. I’m trembling quite badly now, long shuddering spasms that run up and down my spine and rattle my teeth together. I don’t think I was down for that long but when I set off again my legs no longer do my bidding. The muscles there seem to have stiffened; they don’t contract easily, and once I get them to work they spasm and won't relax, no matter how much I twist the handle. I give up on the flashlight and jam my hands up into my armpits. Maybe it’ll warm them a little. But it doesn’t seem to make any difference. Inside my mittens my fingers have tightened into claws.
The sky flares again, followed by a deafening crash as the heavens are rent asunder. The storm’s on me, the gap between lightning and thunder no more than a heartbeat now. In the instant before darkness returns a gap appears in the blizzard, revealing a small hut set back from the road among a stand of bare and blackened trees. I stare at it for a long moment. The shelter it offers is a gift and Marv would curse me for not taking it, but I can’t. I have to get back. Mags can't be another night in there. An image returns, the only one I can now summon, one I would burn from my eyes if I could. Forced onto her toes, her feet scrabbling for purchase on the smooth tiles as the noose tightens around her neck. The muscles along Truck’s arms bunching as he hoists her up. I hear him grunt with the effort of it but he holds her there and I would kill him if I could but there’s nothing I can do to stop it. I turn my head from the shack and face back to the road. The wind howls and the gray curtain closes around me again and it is gone.
How could I have been so stupid? I had been sure that the world that waited for us outside was empty; that once we escaped all we would need to concern ourselves with was staying out of Kane’s way. It hadn’t occurred to me that there might be others out here. Others worse than he was.
I try and put the thought from my mind. It won’t help me now, and I have other things to concern myself with. I don’t even know where they’re keeping her; I’ll need to figure that out once I get inside. First I have to find the blast door. I try and work out where it might be from what I know of the hallways and corridors above, anything to take my mind off the bone-piercing cold. It should be easy enough, but after a few minutes I give up and return to the simpler business of placing one foot in front of the other. Anything more complicated seems beyond me right now.
I trudge on, stumbling through the deepening drifts like some lock-limbed Frankenstein’s monster, searching the darkness ahead for the next sign. I think it’s been a while since I found one, although when I try and remember I’m not entirely sure. I’m beginning to worry I’ve strayed from the road but then the sky strobes again revealing a tractor-trailer that’s jack-knifed, its cargo strewn across both lanes. Did I pass it on the way out? I think so, but I can’t be sure. I stagger up to it, feeling for its outline so I can make my way around.
I leave the truck behind. I’m moving much more slowly now. My limbs feel like they’re seizing. Lifting each snowshoe has become a gargantuan task, requiring all my powers of concentration. At least my feet no longer hurt. Actually I can’t feel them at all. I realize I’ve stopped shivering. I wonder how long ago that was, but I can’t remember. I don't know if it’s a good or a bad thing.
Bitch?
Lightning strikes again, somewhere nearby, followed immediately by a crack of thunder. For a second the world around me is bathed in stark white light and in that instant I see something ahead, a small corner of metal almost buried under the snow. I stare at it absently. I know what it is, but right now it won’t come to me.
A mile marker.
That’s it.
The markers are important, I know that. I’m just not sure why. Maybe if I make my way over towards it it’ll come to me. My frozen fingers reach for the flashlight’s handle, getting ready to wind me forward, but there’s nothing there. That thought is troubling but eventually I let it be and focus on lifting one foot, setting it down again. One foot in front of the other; that’s the trick. But the sign seems to be further away than I first thought. I’m beginning to wonder if I’ve missed it when the front of my snowshoe catches something hard just under the surface. I trip and fall into a thick quilt of gray snow. I lay there for an unknowable amount o
f time, just listening to the pounding of my heart as it slows. My blood feels like it’s thickening in my veins, like when you tap the sump of an engine for oil to mix with gas for the fire.
Fire.
A fire would be nice.
For a while that thought occupies me but there’s another that hovers annoyingly at the edge of my consciousness, refusing to let me be. I can’t stay here. There’s something I have to do. Something important. I try to push myself up but my mittens just sink into the powder and it seems like far too much of an effort to extract them. I let my head fall forward again. The snow crunches softly against the hood of my parka and I lay still. Whatever I was worrying about recedes, washed away by a wave of cold exhaustion. If I can just rest here for a little while everything will be okay. The wind howls, pushing the swirling snow over me, slowly covering me up. I feel the last of my body’s heat leaching out into the thick, enveloping flakes.
It occurs to me that maybe I should be scared now. But fear is a concept that floats somewhere just beyond my reach, just like the numb hands that lie buried beneath me in the snow. Somebody I once knew called Martin (Marlin? Marvin) once told me something important. He said I had to mind the cold because it was vicious.
But Marvin was wrong.
The cold’s not really anything at all. It’s an emptiness; an absence of things. An absence of heat, of warmth.
An absence of caring.
Bitch.
Ten days earlier
*
DAWN’S LITTLE MORE than a faint gray smear on the horizon as I step out of the tunnel. I look through the bars of the half-raised guillotine gate, my eyes searching for the tattered, faded windsock that hangs beside the control tower. It was gusting yesterday but the wind’s eased overnight and now it shifts only occasionally. Heavy thunderheads sit low along the spiny mountain ridge, but at least they’re moving away from us, carrying what I hope will be the last of the big winter storms east. I know what Marv would say; it’d be safer to hold off another week. But I figure anything we get this late in the season should blow itself out in a day or two, and we’ve already waited long enough.
I look back over my shoulder. The Juvies have gathered to see us off, but I can tell they’re already anxious to get back inside. They wait inside the shadow of the tunnel, reluctant to step into the grainy pre-dawn light. Most of them haven’t been outside since we got here.
I’ve tried to warn them. We’re not safe here. As soon as the weather clears Kane will send Peck for us. They used to listen; when we first arrived it was all any of us could think about. But back then the memories of our escape were still fresh. As the days slipped into weeks and those became months things began to change. Nobody wants to talk about Kane now. I’ve heard more than one of them say that maybe Peck won’t even come.
I should have seen it. Outside the storms might have raged but inside the mountain our new life was good. The morning buzzer no longer jarred us from sleep, no curfew forced us back to a narrow cot or a cramped cell at night. Jake had the farms up and running within weeks of our arrival but the truth is there was no need. Anything we might have wanted was right there in the stores for the taking. All I can offer them is Marv’s map; an uncertain destination and until we find it, the promise of cold and hunger.
So I figure if I’m to have any chance of convincing them to move first I’ll need to find somewhere for us to go. I’ve already made the hike out to Culpeper, the nearest facility in the Federal Relocation Arc, a network of underground shelters stretching all the way through Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and down into the Carolinas. It was less than sixty miles so I was there and back inside a week, even allowing for a day holed up against the storms on the way out.
The bunker was just where the map said it would be, carved right into the side of the mountain, its squat bulk waiting patiently for me behind a rusting razor wire fence. Silent guard towers watched down as I cut a hole in the chain-link and pushed my way through. Lead-lined shutters covered the narrow, recessed windows, sealing them tight, but Benjamin’s code worked just fine on the blast door, just like it had at Mount Weather.
Culpeper was no use to us however; I don’t think it had even been designed for people. The ground floor housed nothing but banks of long-dead servers, here and there the occasional computer terminal, all covered in a thick layer of dust. A wide metal ramp led down to a huge subterranean vault. Row after row of pallets, each stacked four or five deep, stretched all the way into the darkness at the back.
I dug out my flashlight and cranked the stubby plastic handle as I made my way between them. Each was packed with shrink-wrapped bales. The blade on the leatherman sliced through the plastic easily, releasing a pristine wedge of green bills, bound tight and stamped with a seal that said Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. I wandered the aisles, freeing a bundle from each of the bales until I had a collection of presidents and founding fathers from Washington to Franklin that put me in mind of Miss Kimble’s civics and government class all those years ago. I took one of each to show Mags and piled the rest in the middle of the floor. I figured they might do for kindling but it turns out money doesn’t burn so well after all. I left early the following morning, the best part of a week gone and nothing for my efforts but a first grade show and tell.
Most of the Juvies had already been against leaving Mount Weather, but even those that might still have been worried enough about Kane to consider it lost their enthusiasm when they heard what I’d found at Culpeper. Jake asked me what I thought Marv would do and I had to admit I didn’t think he’d have led us out without a destination either, so that settled it. Mags and I will head south for Sulfur Springs, the location of The Greenbrier, the next facility on the map. It’s all the way down in West Virginia, I reckon a seven-day hike each way, but if it checks out we’ll be that much further from Kane, so maybe it’s for the best. It means we’ll be gone at least a couple of weeks though; more than enough time for Peck to get here from Eden if Kane has a mind to send him early.
I’ve told them they need to start posting sentries. I wanted them on the Blue Ridge Mountain Road, out where Marv’s buried. That’s the way we took from Eden, and it’s the route I reckon Peck will choose too, when he comes. It’s a good spot; from up there you can see for miles along the highway in each direction. But no one wanted to hike out that far so we finally settled on two-hour shifts in the control tower on top of the ridge. They’ll have next to no warning when he shows, but I guess it’s better than nothing. Jake’s worked out a roster. He says he’ll make sure it gets done.
I’ve already applied UV block back in the apartment so I pull my hood up and slide a pair of ski goggles down over my eyes. As soon as Mags has said the last of her goodbyes we snap on our snowshoes and turn and walk out underneath the guillotine gate. Marv’s gun weighs down the parka’s deep side pocket. It’s spent the winter hidden behind one of the ceiling tiles in our bedroom. I almost wasn’t going to bring it. It’s heavy and besides, the magazine’s empty. Mount Weather has an armory just like Eden’s but the door’s locked and the only code Marv gave me was for the blast door. I considered heading back up to Fort Narrows to look for some more bullets; I reckon that’s where he’d been getting the stuff he’d been stashing under the floorboards in the farmhouse. But it’s the best part of a two-day hike each way, and right now I figure that’s time better spent looking for somewhere to move us. Besides, I can’t see how I’ll need it. Mount Weather and Culpeper were both abandoned, and in all the years I was scavenging I never saw so much as a single print in the snow to suggest there’s anyone else waiting for us out there.
I look back over my shoulder one last time but most of the Juvies are already heading back into the tunnel. Soon only Jake remains, just standing there in the shadow of the portal, watching as we leave. I raise my hand but it takes him a moment to wave back, like it wasn’t my departure he’d come to see.
We make our way out of the compound between dark, empty buildings, their ro
ofs bristling with frozen antennas or the stacked gray boxes of long-dead microwave relays. Dotted here and there around the perimeter are the concrete cowls of the airshaft vents that lead deep into the mountain. Mags has figured out how to seal those from the inside so at least when Peck comes he won’t be getting in that way. I can’t see why he’d go to that trouble though; Kane will give him the same code for the blast door that Marv gave me.
The first of the morning light’s finally seeping into the sky, like water into an old rag, as we trudge up to the entrance. The gate towers over us; a gust of wind rattles a faded steel sign against the bars as we approach. On either side a high chain-link fence stretches off into the distance, its rusting diamonds topped by a half-dozen strands of razor wire hung outwards on elbowed concrete pylons. It all looks formidable but I know it won’t hold them long. I find the section I opened with bolt cutters the day I first arrived and pull the wire back for Mags to step through.
*
FOR THE FIRST SIX MILES we follow the road south along the ridge. There hasn’t been a fresh fall in a few days and the snow’s settled. Good tracking skiff, Marv would have called it. Our path descends gently then flattens, snaking along the spine of the mountain range. Limbless, lifeless trees poke through the gray shroud, stretching away down the slopes on either side. At some point we traverse the ridge and drop down onto the western rim of the valley. There’s little to tell where the road is now and I’m navigating based on the gaps between the withered trunks. But I’ve hiked this way several times over the winter and I have to stop only occasionally to dig out a mile marker to make sure we’re still on the right path.
I break trail and Mags follows in my footsteps, our breath rolling from us in short frosted puffs. She seems excited; she kept asking me whether I thought we’d have time to go looking for books. She’s read everything we have in Mount Weather and the few trips I’ve made out over the winter have yielded little new, just a single weary copy of A Prayer For Owen Meany I lucked into on the way back from Culpeper. She finished it the same day I returned. I told her to keep her pack light but I’m pretty sure it’s found its way in there.
