“What in the hell is going on around here…” I stated out loud as I glanced from the broken mirror fragments on the floor to the mirror on the wall where they had come from.
I started examining the area and soon after found more blood—it led out of the bathroom and into the outside hall over to one of the windows that overlooked the northeastern rampart, as I examined the window I discovered that it had been forced open from the outside and that more blood was outside on the floor leading away and my heart sank; it was now clear to me that someone had stealthily broken in and possibly abducted Chelsea during the small hours of the morning just before daylight. I quickly summoned the others of my group together in the first floor meeting hall and told them what I had found, Josiah and a few of the others with him offered to pull the security footage from the cameras on the third floor and soon after I watched the footage; it didn’t take long before a lanky figure slunk its way through the same window I had examined and waited in the shadows until I seen Chelsea enter the bathroom on the footage. The figure then crept into the bathroom and moments later appeared again dragging her out of the bathroom and over to the window where they proceeded to dump her body out onto the ramparts before slipping out themselves; my blood boiled with rage as I watched the footage and it became clear as rain to me of what I was going to have to do, one of the women I had come to love deeply had been abducted and taken from our fortress to God knew where and I was going to track them and hopefully get her back alive.
“I’m heading out into the forest—I will find them and they will regret not only breaking into our home here, but they will also regret taking Chelsea.” I stated with a dark look as I turned and headed back out where the others including my other women were waiting.
“What did you find out, baby?” Jennifer asked with concern in her tone.
“We had an intruder early this morning and they abducted Chelsea taking her off somewhere—I’m going out after them and I’ll find her…I want you all to stay here and keep the door to our room locked; don’t go outside during the night hours and if you see anyone that’s not suppose to be here, shoot them.” I instructed as they all gathered around me with worried looks.
“Someone’s got to go with you—you can’t go out there by yourself with all of those dead-heads and other mutations running ape shit everywhere.” Ivy protested.
“Face it, babe—we’re not staying here alone, we’re going with you and we’re going to help you bring her back.” Chloe stated folding her arms across her chest.
I knew that there would be no dissuading them from doing just that, so I agreed and then turned to Noah and Christina and the rest of my family and close friends stood close.
“Keep this place safe and keep an eye out for trouble—we can’t afford to have anyone else taken by whoever the hell that was.” I stated with a dark look.
“You can count on us—we’ll keep this place locked up tight until you bring Chelsea back, we’ll post more patrols if that’s what it takes.” Noah answered patting me on the shoulder.
“Someone wants what we have here—them taking your girlfriend just proves it…I’m not sure why they took only her, but get her back and show those assholes who they’re not to mess with.” Richard stated firmly.
“Could have been marauders…makes me think back to when April was alive and she told us about the things that she had been through when they captured her…” Sheila stated with a troubled look.
“If they’ve laid a single finger on her in any way, I will kill every single last one of them and I will kill them slow and painfully.” I answered with clenched teeth.
“You guys can use the boat that’s docked in the sublevels on the north side of this fortress—it’ll be the most direct way of getting to the northern shores of the lake.” Josiah stated directing my attention to a nearby map and layout of our fortress.
“Right…it’ll take us a bit to prepare…” I answered and I turned and led my women back up to our room on the third floor.
We grabbed our bags gathering food provisions, ammo, knives and side arms as well as melee weapons in case we needed them—we then grabbed the heavy winter coats that we had recently claimed and put them on over our bodies; I grabbed a gas mask that I had picked up awhile before as well as a pair of goggles and a length of thick rope—which I slung over my shoulder before I grabbed my sword and its scabbard doing the same. I helped my women do the same and we pulled our hoods over our heads and checked the ammo in our weapons before leaving our room behind—I attached my gas mask to the side of my coat and pushed my googles up as I led my women back down to the first floor.
“You’re in charge, Noah—keep everyone safe until we return.” I called waving to Noah and the rest of our group.
We proceeded down to the sublevels using the map that Josiah had given us and we came to the docking area only to find that there wasn’t anything there—no boat, nothing; I turned and led the way back up to the courtyard where we met back up with everyone and they seemed confused as to what we were still doing there.
“There is no boat down there—nothing…I have the feeling that whoever the fucker was who broke in and abducted Chelsea also stole the boat that was suppose to have been there…” I stated with anger in my tone.
“Damn it…” Josiah answered kicking at the dirt of the courtyard.
“We’ll just have to use the marauder…have the damages been repaired?” I asked turning to Billy and Kayla, who stood nearby.
“Yeah—got your vehicle repaired a week ago, I kind of figured that something would happen sooner or later to where it would be needed again.” Billy answered tossing me the keys.
“Be safe, dad.” Mace called and she and Remy as well as Ember and my other kids gathered before us.
“We’ll be back—I promise.” I answered as I turned and headed for where our marauder had been parked.
I attached one of the trailers that held around eight fuel drums full of diesel fuel to the back of our marauder and we all got inside of it and I started the engine, the trailer had been modified to where it had armored plating and a canvas cover to protect the cargo from weather and whatever else might pose a threat. We waited until Marco and Regan got the main gates opened and then I left through them heading along the bridge toward the southern shore—this way was going to take longer, but I had a suspicion that once we got to the northern shores of Great Bear Lake that we’d find something; we would find a clue as to where the asshole that took Chelsea went and then we’d follow that clue, sooner or later they would regret ever crossing us. Once we got to the southern shore of Great Bear Lake, I turned left and headed north along the eastern bank—according to the map we were getting close to Port Radium and I planned on stopping there just to see if there were any clues there to be found; it took about an hour to make it to the small settlement of Port Radium. The place was just as dead as the rest of the places we had passed through and there didn’t even seem to be any dead-heads or other mutations around—the buildings were in poor shape and the snow was piled up really deep in some places, I parked our marauder getting out pulling my gas mask over my face as well as my hood and goggles and my women followed with their weapons ready; the first building we came to was what looked like it had been some kind of geological office as there were scattered equipment all around the front of the room we checked that looked like it had been used to measure seismic activity. Several skeletons were more than half-buried by snow in the far corner of the room from where the roof and ceiling had buckled, after spending several minutes to search the building thoroughly, we found nothing—I led the way back out into the empty streets of the settlement checking each place we came to but there wasn’t any sign of anyone at all being there recently.
“This place is a dead end—let’s continue on north toward the northern shoreline and see if we can’t find something…” I stated turning to my women as they gathered
around me.
They nodded and we returned to our vehicle and I continued driving into the wilderness taking us deeper and deeper into the unknown wastes—after another solid day of traversing through deep snow drifts and iced over bogs and low area, we arrived on the northern shoreline of Great Bear Lake; after several long minutes of scouring the shoreline, I found the missing boat that had been at our fortress. I glanced across the span of the lake and I could see the distant outline of our fortress and I hoped silently that everything was okay as I turned back to the boat noticing that there were traces of now frozen blood here and there on the inside of the boat and I knew that we were on the trail of whoever had taken Chelsea.
“Looks like the trail leads north—how much further north it goes is anyone’s guess…we’re pretty close to the Nunavut border.” Jennifer stated glancing over the map that we had been using.
“By these tracks, it looks like they had some kind of large truck waiting here—possibly a military supply truck…it doesn’t seem like they’re trying to hide their tracks either.” Ivy stated as she knelt down and examined the tracks that were still fairly visible despite the fresh snow that had been falling.
“Fucking marauders…there really isn’t anyone else it could be…why they abducted Chelsea though is what I can’t figure out.” I stated with a dark look.
“I hate to say it, but this shit sounds just like what April told us like I mentioned earlier—they kidnapped her and spent months—hell, probably years raping her…their methods for taking Chelsea are probably similar…” Sheila stated placing her hand on my arm.
“I’ll kill every single one of them if they’re doing that to her…I should have been there to protect her…” I answered looking away as my fists clenched and trembled with the raw rage I was feeling.
“Baby, you can’t blame yourself for this—I mean, you can’t be expected to follow all of us into the bathroom every waking moment of every day…nobody knew that this was going to happen.” Chloe stated as she touched my face bringing me out of the thoughts I was having.
“I know…let’s just get after them and get her back—if she’s even still breathing…” I answered turning and heading back to our vehicle.
They followed and once we were ready, I started following the wide path that the truck had made and it led us north into the wilderness—by nightfall of that same day we had passed into Nunavut and the trail soon started going east and we soon crossed the Coppermine River; the river had been frozen solid and it looked like whoever had been driving the truck had passed over it without an issue.
“Is there anything at all in this direction—any settlements where they could have gone?” I asked turning to Jennifer who sat beside of me in the passenger seat.
“There are two settlements—one due east and the other one more southeast; the one that’s due east is called Bathurst Inlet and the other one that’s more southeast is called Lupin.” Jennifer answered after a few seconds of looking over the map.
“Guess we’ll just have to continue following their trail and see where it leads us…” I answered casually.
I was soon the only one still awake as the rest of my women were all sleeping around me—I was tired but I forced myself to stay awake knowing that every minute that we wasted was one that could mean life or death for Chelsea; by daybreak the trail that I had been following started to veer off to a southeastern direction and remembering what Jennifer had told me about the settlements in this direction, it started to seem more plausible that they had gone to Lupin.
“Where are we babe?” Shae asked as she leaned forward from her seat behind me and kissed the right side of my face.
“We’re headed toward Lupin—it’s the direction that these tracks are heading in.” I answered glancing at her in the rear-view mirror before my glance went to my other women briefly before going back to the terrain ahead of us.
We continued heading in the same direction until around dusk when I was forced to stop and use the fuel from one of the drums on the rear trailer to refuel our marauder—after the tank had been refilled, I started out again and we continued following the trail of the truck; luckily there hadn’t been anymore snowfall and the tracks were still visible enough to follow. After several more days of non-stop travel, we were getting close to the Burnside River—which flowed into Contwoyto Lake; Lupin was located on the southwestern edge of the lake and if that was where the people we were tracking had gone then we would have to leave our marauder somewhere hidden and go in on foot or risk being spotted before we had the chance to infiltrate their compound. Around 11:30 pm that night, the trail took a loop back west and only and hour or so later we were crossing the Burnside River once again—I was wondering silently to myself what the purpose of doing that had been, but I was sure that we would soon find out; it wasn’t long after that when a large structure started to come into view that looked a lot like some sort of mining structure, the buildings looked like they were painted mostly red with some partially white and lights could be seen here and there.
“That’s it—got to be…looks like they’re dug into that structure, whatever it is.” I stated as I shut our vehicles’ lights off and parked it in a low area that was out of sight from the structure.
“Doesn’t look like there is too much else around the area—it may have been solely a mining settlement…I have to give those assholes props, setting up in an old mining structure is a good idea.” Ivy stated as she took out her night vision binoculars and looked off in the direction of the structure.
“We’re going to have to be very careful—we want to get inside, but we want to do it without raising an alarm.” I stated as I took out a handful of suppressors that I had packed from our armory back home.
I attached one to the barrel of my assault rifle and handed the rest to my women who done the same and then we carefully left our vehicle behind heading through the sparse trees and underbrush that was all around the area—the cover of the darkness helped us get up close and we soon found that the parameter around the buildings was guarded by a tall chain-linked fence; knowing that we didn’t have time to circle around, I used the bolt cutters from my bag and cut our way through the fence until we were outside of one of the doors to the place. Jennifer quickly pointed her AK-74 to the south and fired a single shot that hit a marauder guard who was coming around the corner of the building—we quickly ran over to his body and checked it taking his weapons and ammunition as well as the bag that had been slung over his left shoulder before we turned and headed back over to the door; I used my combat knife to force it open and we were soon greeted by an intense heat as the machinery and smelters were all running. I ducked behind a large steel object as a group of marauders passed by and my women done the same—it looked like there were a good sized number of them here and there but it looked like they were pretty spread out, after the group had passed and gotten a good distance away from us with their backs still turned—I pointed my assault rifle at them as my women done the same and we all fired at the same time killing each one of them quickly; we then ran over and dragged their bodies back into the cover of the darkness and the obstruction that we had been using and we stripped the bodies of their weapons and gear.
“The coast is still clear—I can make out two guards on one of the upper levels…they’re holding automatic weapons, but it looks like at least one of them has a scoped rifle.” Chloe reported as she scanned the area in front of us through the scope of her Dragunov rifle.
“Take them out if you can—as soon as the coast is clear we’ll move to the next location.” I answered in a whisper.
She soon after fired, the first bullet tore through the marauder with the scoped rifle’s head and then she fired again killing the second guard before he could even raise his own weapon—moments later after scanning for movement and making sure that we were still in the clear, I led the way across the inside span of the structure and we mad
e it to a set of stairs that looked like they led up to rooms above; I noticed an open area that led to what looked like a garage and I glanced inside seeing a military transport truck sitting there and I knew that we were in the right place. I headed up the stairs and cautiously peeked around the corner noticing a door at the end of the hallway where two guards stood talking—it looked like they were still unaware that we were there; I motioned to Chloe and she quickly dashed across the hallway opposite from me and we both aimed our rifles at the guards taking them both out simultaneously.
“That door they were guarding must hold some significance—they wouldn’t have been posted there for nothing.” I whispered as I led the way down the hallway arriving at the bodies that were now forming puddles of blood on the floor.
My women clustered around me nervously watching both directions as I checked the doorknob—it was locked and I bent down near one of the bodies searching the pants pockets until I found a key; getting back up I proceeded to stick the key into the lock and after a few seconds it clicked and I opened the door rushing in. The room looked like a storage room that had been converted into a holding cell and my eyes immediately fell on Chelsea, who lay on a wooden pallet nearby—her body was covered with cuts and bruises and her clothing was torn; as my eyes studied her condition, my women called my attention to another figure that was bound and gagged on the other side of the room. I noticed that it was a middle-aged man with a balding head and a unkept beard—I went over to him and pulled the gag from his mouth leaving him bound; I wasn’t taking any chances as we didn’t know him after all.
[HGB] Humanity Gone Bad: The Dead Chronicles Page 92
