“Zombies aren’t real right? lol,” he texted Jess. It made him feel somewhat better about his surroundings. A few minutes later she replied. “Maybe. But they’d leave you alone since you don’t have a brain <3.” He smiled and allowed the truck to creep onwards.
Tired of being alone with his increasingly anxious thoughts, he slowly turned on the emergency band radio. It sputtered and chattered numbers but they were nothing comprehensible to the Omega. He left it on and rolled the truck forward around a bend.
“What is going on…here?” Kyle spoke to himself as he glanced skyward. Even though it was a little before eleven in the morning, the sky was dim and angry. Ash and smoke had smeared a greasy haze across the sky. The veil it placed across the sun left it a perfect orange sphere.
He had to turn the wipers on when small white flakes of snow began to lightly dust the truck. When they smeared and didn’t act ‘right,’ he realized that a light coating of ash was gently falling from the sky. Looking out from the truck he saw that there were uneven patches of white dusting all across the brutal landscape. He gasped and immediately thought of the Upside Down from Stranger Things – it wasn’t a good thought for an anxious soul to have all by his lonesome.
Some ash, sodden by water, had congealed into shimmering patches of pale grey mud, while others rimed trees and branches like frost. Combined with the white, smoky fog that seemed to hang in the air, the dull, reddish-orange haze of the sky almost gave the impression that Kyle was driving through a twilight, winter scene.
Utterly mesmerized by what he saw, the Omega was snapped back to reality by an electric snarl from the emergency band radio. Flicking on Jake’s GPS, it booted up as he waited for the loading screen to clear. After a short while, it had updated his position, and he saw that he was perhaps seven or so minutes away from the MacKay Energy valley.
He heard what sounded like a helicopter thudding high overhead, its blades whipping the smoke-filled air. Bright orange and white, it had Fire & Rescue insignia upon its side. Kyle was uncertain if it saw him or not, but it passed over quickly twice more before disappearing. Even after it had left, he swore that he continued to hear its mechanical whirr echoing through the ashen woods. He frowned when he realized that the road was becoming darker. He paused to look, but couldn’t see anything above him. Smoke began to pour down the slight embankment that he’d pulled over upon. It filtered the sunlight in a weird way and cast the countryside in a gloomy brown haze.
Kyle turned off the truck to listen to the weird sound. Had the smoke damaged the engine? He gulped in fear, but was somewhat relieved to note that the noise persisted even once the vehicle fell silent. Whatever it was, the sound became louder and louder, almost like a rushing, crashing river. Kyle turned the keys in the ignition and the truck roared back to life. He was about to shift into drive when a bright orange light began to creep through the copse of ghostly trees to his right. And there, just at the top of the hill some two or three car lengths away from him, was a small burst of angry orange flame.
“Oh fuck fuck fuck fuck,” Kyle mouthed to himself as he pulled back onto the road and began to drive. Wide-eyed, his pulse raced and he felt his hands begin to tremble. Within seconds, a dull roar of orange fire burst through the tree line and began hungrily climbing pines and setting their needles alight. The crashing and burning intensified as plumes of brown, sap-scented smoke began to pour down the hill and spill across the road. Showers of bright sparks burst from the wood and sent pine cones hurtling and sizzling against the side of the truck.
Kyle’s blood ran cold as his fingers went numb. He focused intently upon the road and tried not to let the overwhelming fear send him into a panic. He could feel the powerful waves of heat beating against the side of the truck as it was peppered with ash, sparks, and smouldering wood. The entire right side of the windshield lit up like fireworks but he dare not look – he knew that seeing a wall of living flame threatening to come crashing down the embankment would likely cause him to veer off the road in blind fear.
He sped up but the fire matched him. Glowing embers bounced and scattered across the road like popcorn as the immolation voraciously crept along the pines and timbers. It was nearly noon, yet the sky was lit by a burnished haze and star-like flecks of ash amid the choking smoke. It was a hellish, alien landscape that he’d never associate with Shale River. Although the windshield was taking the brunt of the fire, he could feel the heat bearing down against the side of the car. It would’ve been unbearable had he been outside this close to the inferno.
Kyle tried his best to not think about what might happen if the tires burst due to the heat, and eased his foot down on the gas. The truck sped up just enough to pull ahead of the orange, fiery cloud that was starting to billow down the embankment. In less than a minute, several tall trees, decades old, had flashed up with yellow licks of flame. Freely as pollen, their needles began pouring from them as red-hot specks danced across the road.
“Shit shit shit,” Kyle bellowed, while he focused with laser-like intensity upon the road. The pickup swerved to avoid the bouncing sparks. A loud crashing and snapping noise drew his attention immediately ahead of the car. Pouring choking grey smoke, a few smouldering trunks slid down the rocky hill and scattered across the road ahead. Splinters of charred wood broke off, revealing dazzling orange underbellies that flared briefly in the wind.
The Omega audibly gasped and held his breath. Had he not been through some emergency road training of his own as an emergency responder, Kyle probably would’ve panicked, or sent the truck skidding off of the lonely road out to the valley. Considering how fast the fire was moving, and how few people even knew where he was, it would’ve certainly been the last mistake that he’d ever make.
Static from the emergency band radio began whining and whirring, giving an added amount of drama to the sharp turns that he found himself making.
“Oh fuck right off!” Kyle snarked at the radio. “Shut up, shut up your… shitty… face! It’s been too goddamned long of a day for this business right now. Nobody wants to hear it!”
As the truck wheeled past the burning timbers and pines, a fresh burst of wood and stone flung itself from the hill and bounced across the hood and windshield of the truck. Catching him unaware, he swerved to avoid the burning rubble that spilled across the road. The cab began bouncing as he realized that he was driving along the rocky, unpaved shoulder of the road. The tires had trouble gaining purchase on the poor soil, and sent the four wheels skidding and sliding in a frenzy. The truck bobbed and jerked suddenly, and it was only due to lightning reflexes and white knuckles that he was able to swerve back onto the road.
“Well now… I… JESUS, that was scary!” Kyle made weird faces and laughed nervously. He didn’t know whom exactly he was supposed to be speaking with, but even hearing his own voice comforted him somewhat. Glancing at the rear-view mirror, he noted the generous burst of an orange flow of rocks, logs, ash, and smoke slide down the hill, across the road and over the other side of the deep ravine. He felt his ass clench while his heart skipped a few beats – five seconds slower, and he would’ve had to turn back and abandon Jake. Ten seconds slower and he and the truck would have been pushed clear into the deepening ravine beside the road. He shuddered and tried to remain focused.
Visibility was worsening, and he found himself looking back and forth between the windshield and the GPS. He turned the wipers on to take care of some of the worst of the ash and fallout.
“MacKay Energy Facility… less than… two minutes,” an electronic voice explained to him phonetically. Kyle smiled like a madman as a bead of sweat began to trickle along his temple. He was here, he thought to himself, as a riot of other thoughts began to dance and play around his head. Luckily the road to the facility was lined with rocky grasslands dotted with tall trees and pines, which meant that they probably wouldn’t catch with the force of the woods that he’d just shot past.
Probably.
Pulling into the long conc
rete lot beside MacKay Energy was an eerie experience. Barring the distant roar of nearby flames or the far off whoop of a helicopter in the distance, the valley was deathly silent. All of the wildlife had long ago fled, and the workers and engineers probably evacuated that morning. A few shipping crates had been sandbagged in the middle of the parking lot, but beyond them, it was entirely empty. The security personnel had left with them too, apparently – the entrance gate to the facility was open. Kyle hadn’t really counted on that and breathed a sigh of relief that he wouldn’t have to figure out a way to somehow scale the barbed wire fence.
It was a little before noon yet the sky was a dark, angry orange as plumes of pine smoke and the scent of bubbling tar poured down the embankments to the valley. Whispering gently in the wind the pines and conifers hedged in the parking lot. They were dark and brooding, and made him feel uneasy. His eyes caught something that immediately steeled his courage and urged him forward. Just inside the main gate was a little red flag sticking out of the ground. A brilliant neon orange, painful to look at, it had the Firedog’s insignia emblazoned upon the side.
Jake had been here!
As he walked toward the facility’s front doors, he was all too aware of the creeping orange light that flickered menacingly through the smoky woods. He knew next to nothing about forest fires, but figured that he had maybe half an hour, tops, before the entire facility was surrounded by a blistering and uncontrolled inferno. Grabbing his pack, he knew that if he was going to find Jake he had to move quickly.
Twenty Nine
Arriving at the doors, Kyle’s heart sank. They appeared to be locked up tight and all of the lights were off. He scowled. He pressed his face against the glass and could see no movement inside. It was just a yawning black space that offered the dim outlines of what appeared to be either an office, or the grey insides of bank.
“Besides…he…Jake… might need to get lower down in the facility to get to some kinda shut-off value.” He spoke aloud mostly to keep his flagging morale up. Kyle recalled the few stories that his friends told of Tyler’s heroic sacrifice last summer, where he’d had to travel to one of the low-lying valleys to turn off a valve. He wasn’t clear on the specifics, but knew that MacKay Energy was built into the side of a similar valley. He surmised that perhaps they all had similar construction, and decided to follow a well-paved path that lead around the facility, then followed a small gravel road down a steep hill that wound alongside the building.
The valley was deep. Weathered away over hundreds of thousands of years, and sped along by dynamite prior to the construction of this facility, it plunged some two hundred feet downward. Dotted with scrub and a ramshackle collection of scraggly trees, the raw sides of the valley were in some places submerged beneath white plumes of smoke that snaked out from the main tree line. Glancing down, Kyle gasped as he realized that the base of the path sunk partially beneath white plumes of smoke. Flecks of ash and dust floated on the breeze like motes of dust and stuck to the tall, concrete walls beside him as he continued down, giving them a weathered look. A collection of small buildings huddled along the seam of the valley poked up above the smoke, as did a tall metallic structure that looked like a radio antenna. Massive cords and pipes slithered among the landscape before jutting at odd angles and burrowing into the earth below.
As an emergency responder, Kyle knew safety. He soaked a slender towel with some water from his canteen and tied it loosely around his mouth and nose. He then carefully pulled the swim-goggles over his head and aligned them to his eyes. It wasn’t as good as his normal vision, but he hoped that it would keep out the worst of the burning smoke. A few minutes further along the smoky path and Kyle caught his reflection in a muddy crater left by the recent storms. He looked like a pretty stupid ninja. With shaking hands he wet another towel for when he got to Jake and slung it over his shoulder. They’d both be stupid ninjas and be laughing about it on the ride home. Laughing and smiling. Kyle’s smile belied the fact that this was the scariest thing that he’d ever done in his entire life.
Kyle called out to Jake a few times but there was no reply – not that he was expecting one. He held back a cough as he descended into the smoke. He squinted as it piled up and swirled around him. Pausing to wipe powdery ash from his goggles, he realized that there were at least a dozen or more sheds, each the size of a large house. Most of them were unmarked, while the rest seemed to be numbered in a fairly arcane manner. At least two had large red signs, and bore names that almost seemed like the engineers responsible had dared one another to invent the most made-up words that they could imagine. Considering the numerous, prominently displayed hazmat warnings that flowed beneath the words Polydextran Sulphate Polyelectrolyte Complexes MEV001, he figured that Jake probably wasn’t in either of those two bunkers. That still left at least eleven, and those were the ones that he could see. Running out of breathable air and visibility, he retreated far enough back up the entry path that the worst of the smoke was a few metres away from him.
“Fuck, think Kyle, think…” He crouched and wracked his brain. Tensions were notably heightened when he realized that orange flecks were dancing along the edge of the valley above. Further smoke and ash poured down and painted the ground beneath him eerie white.
The fire had followed him and would be here soon.
Hell, he didn’t even know if Jake was here. Kyle cursed his luck. He had no idea how to use the radio transceiver in Jake’s truck. And since the Firedogs ran silent, he couldn’t call him… but that meant that he still had his phone on him! Kyle allowed himself a little whoop of joy as he began to knit a wild idea together. He knew that Jake had an Android phone, just like he did. And then he remembered how often he lost his phone around his place in Toronto and a big, silly smile crossed his face beneath the humid towel that he’d wrapped around his face.
“And that means, that we… can look… for him… somewhere…” Kyle spoke out loud to block out the fact that he was standing at the bottom of a choked, ashen valley perhaps minutes away from a forest fire tumbling down on top of him. His hands shook but he quickly turned on data and tried to sign into Jake’s Google profile.
“Password… password… password… what is Jake’s password….” He tried Jake’s mother’s maiden name, but after a few seconds little red letters blocked his passage onward. He didn’t want to get locked out. He typed in ‘Tyler’, as slowly and carefully as he could.
Success!
The loading page stalled and he refreshed as fast as he could hoping that the valley wouldn’t block his reception. A few seconds later he Googled “find my phone” and after around forty seconds it pulled up a Google Map of the MacKay Energy Facility. A helpful white circle flickered over one of the buildings on the far side of the valley.
“Thank you Google!” Kyle screamed to the sky as he raced over to the building.
It was washed with a deep smoke and made his breathing ragged even through his mask. The windowless door was imperceptibly ajar and he crept inside. He immediately heard the distant ring of Jake’s phone. He was in here! Kyle felt like he was walking into some kind of weird brewery, surrounded by fat tanks, spinning dials, and all manner of unusual tubes protruding from the walls. Glancing at the screen, he saw he was close, perhaps five or so metres from where Jake’s phone was.
“Jake! Jake are you in here?” he screamed with a ragged voice as he tried to walk closer to the ringtone. The smoke was terrible. The emergency lights unhelpfully bathed the bunker in shadows. He turned a corner and saw a large grey panel with seven or so large levers on it, similar to a massive fuse box. All had been moved toward a blinking amber light clearly labeled “Pump Shutdown.” He called out in shock, for, crumpled in the corner, was Jake.
His friend wasn’t moving. A small pack had fallen beside him – inside, his phone was blaring loud and clear. Kyle called to him as he rushed to his side. Tears welled in his eyes. Jake had a pulse, but it was weak. A few streaks of blood crested along his crown �
� he must’ve hit his head somehow after powering down the system. He had to get him out of here, and fast.
“Jake buddy, come on, get up! Get up, get up, get up!” Kyle poured some cool water from his canteen on the back of Jake’s head and smoothed it along his hair. He began carefully wrapping the damp towel around his head, more akin to a bandage than a ninja mask.
“…Kyle?” Jake sounded distant and confused.
“You’re concussed. I’m bandaging your head. Let’s try to stay awake. We’re going to be moving back to your truck, okay? Can you walk?” Kyle finished applying the wrapping and gave Jake a little water to drink. His heart was racing faster than it probably ever had before.
“Maybe…” He was barely responding. Kyle needed to keep him occupied.
“Okay good. It’s just going to be one foot in front of the other. We’re standing up on three, okay?” After slinging both packs over his shoulders, they rose as one, but Goddamn if he weren’t heavy. Even though he was toned and fit, the Omega strained under the Alpha’s bulk.
Kyle glanced back at the wall in fear. “Did you turn off… what you needed to here?”
“Yeah… she’s good…” Jake began coughing and nearly doubled the two of them over.
The Omega coughed as he laughed. “Fantastic. Okay, real simple now, one foot, two foot, okay? Easy as that, okay bud? Let’s go.” The pair exited the bunker and began slowly making their way to the ramp a few buildings over. The sky was an angry red, the high noon sun a menacing orange globe ahead of them. Dark tendrils of smoke crept down along the valley toward them.
Kyle blocked out his fears of the fire and smoke, of Jake, and of their unborn pups. He pushed all of it away and focused on their steps. “One, two; one two. Easy peasy, just follow me, Jake.” Jake seemed to be getting into the rhythm of things when they finally hit the ash-covered ramp and began their ascent out of the valley. A fresh, terrible roar let him know that the fire had reached the edge of the slope, but Kyle dared not look behind him.
His Prairie Omega Box Set Page 21