Fury (End Times Alaska Book 4)

by Craig Martelle

  Abigail did the next best thing. She put out a call for all people to kill any fox they could find, whether trapped or shot, she didn’t care, but they couldn’t expose the dogs to the disease. Next thing we’d know, people would have it and then there’d be panic.

  We were too busy for people to panic.

  Charles seemed sullen, more so than usual. He spent little time in the house, finding any reason to be somewhere else. There was an inordinate amount of friction between him and his sister. I didn’t like it, but he wouldn’t talk about it. She was busy with the administration of the Community and he was busy hunting, putting stocks up for others to eat. I finally trapped him in the kitchen.

  It was time to get back to work. Clearly, my children needed me, just in different ways. Aeryn needed approval for what she did. Charles needed to get something off his chest.

  “How can you be so selfless and selfish at the same time?” I asked him. As usual, he was defensive. I expected no less from a sixteen-year-old.

  “What do you mean by that?” He tried to get past me, but I blocked his way and waited, committing to win the staredown. He caved first when he saw that I wasn’t going to give in.

  “I like hunting, Dad, and I’m good at it!” he declared.

  “You are, and I’m proud of that. Darren, Becca, and Ben have taught you well. Everyone who gets meat on their table should be thanking you, too. But I’m not talking about that. You’ve withdrawn. You spend too much time alone. I’ve spent too much time alone, and it’s not healthy. I see you doing the same thing, and we can’t have that. Your sister has been the bedrock of this family and now I need to step back into that role before I lose you both.” My voice caught. “I can’t have that.”

  Charles looked at me, wondering what he was supposed to answer. I hadn’t asked a question.

  “What’s between you and Aeryn?” I asked directly.

  “Toby,” he answered without hesitation. I nodded.

  The boyfriend. “It’s inevitable and it’s okay. Your sister is a beautiful woman, strong and outgoing. Of course the young men would come calling. What about you?” I asked, doing what I did best, avoid the stickiest of subjects.

  “They’re doing it, you know,” Charles blurted out. I nodded as my heart stopped. I hadn’t known. I’d been gone for too long. All my love for Madison, and it would make her angry that I hadn’t noticed.

  “I’ve been talking with her. Now what about you? There are some lovely ladies out there.” I nudged him while trying to smile. He turned away, trying to hide his smile.

  “Come on, Dad!” he laughed, but his smile told me that he had someone he thought fondly of. I didn’t want to press too hard.

  “What’s your plan for today?”

  “I saw some pretty big tracks crossing the road toward Nenana. I thought I’d head down that way and see what there is to see. I won’t bag anything. We need to let them do their thing, and then we’ll hunt again in October. And you?” Charles asked. I was glad that he noticed I was back in the game.

  “Sounds like a plan. Me? Well, I’m heading to the shop, see if there is anything I can do to help with the tractor repairs before Pavel rampages through the town. I also need to stop by the warehouse, make amends, and see if they’re on the right track.” I listed the things that I intended to accomplish that day.

  “I heard about that. Kasparoff is a dick. Serves him right,” Charles said as he packed some jerky for his trip. He carefully checked his bag to see if his survival gear was in good order. A space blanket, fire starter, skinning knife, snare, rope, wire rope saw, antibiotic ointment, and a bandage. He also carried his 45/70, a .45 pistol, and plenty of ammunition for both. “I think I’ll take the dogs. It’s been awhile since they had a good run.”

  “Plus, why would you want to pedal up those hills if you don’t have to?” I asked knowingly. Charles nodded. I slapped him on the shoulder and headed outside. I would ride my bike as everything I needed to do was in town. I added a trip to the river to see Ben and Clarisse. They were getting old, but still contributed. Plus, Clarisse probably had something freshly baked that needed to be eaten.

  I rode to the warehouse first, Floyd running along by my side. I wanted to put the business with Nikolai behind me. A couple people were in line and I excused myself as I stepped past them, holding my hands up to show that I wasn’t there for trade. The people nodded politely. The sound of laughter from inside threw me for a loop. Nikolai and Bill were laughing with the customer at the counter. Nik had a ridiculous cardboard box over his nose and two black eyes. Bill had his hand on Nik’s shoulder as if the two had been old friends forever. The humor stopped when they looked at me.

  “Can we help you?” Bill asked coldly.

  “Just stopping by to tell Nik that I’m sorry about yesterday and for you, I hope it didn’t take too long to clean up the mess I made trying to fill in.” Floyd barked and wagged his tail.

  “It is okay,” Nikolai said in his Russian accent. “Aeryn made sure I was okay. Colleen is master at her job. You as warehouseman? Not so much. We have work. It is good. You go now.”

  I didn’t leave until I had shaken both their hands and earned a smile. I don’t know how they resolved their differences, but suspected that Aeryn had had something to do with it. She’d left before me that morning and I suspected she was making the rounds right in front of me.

  Next stop, the machine shop. Floyd ran along happily as I biked quickly away from the warehouse and toward our mini-industrial sector. We were on a level stretch, not far from the airport in New Fairbanks, which had been the far west side of town. Everything east of us was leveled and we had no time or heavy machinery to waste on clearing out the old city, so we started fresh with the buildings that were intact and the fields that were already well-prepared. It had been easy to establish ourselves close to the river and then expand with all the new people. I thought we were topped out with what we could support. Without any transport, there wouldn’t be any new people, either.

  The machine shop wasn’t far from the processing facility. As I approached, Aeryn rode at breakneck speed toward me. She slid to a stop, which I didn’t like to see since tires would soon be in short supply. We needed our stuff to last as long as possible.

  “Someone broke in. You’re not going to like what you see,” she said between breaths.

  “I already don’t like it,” I replied as we raced the short distance to the sprawling structure which had numerous cables leading into it from the power generation facility nearby. My head was pounding when we arrived and the first thing I had to do was catch my breath.

  A door had been smashed in and two entire freezers were gone, the marks where someone had moved them outside clearly etched into the concrete floor. “Two whole freezers?” I asked, looking at the spots where the two large chest freezers had stood.

  “Not just that,” Chris said as he emerged from within. “Cases and cases of canned food are gone, too.” He shook his head. Canning jars were irreplaceable. We’d scavenged far and wide over the years so we’d built up a pretty good collection, but we had one thousand people in the Community and no new jars.

  “How could this happen? How could someone drive a truck right through town and no one sees them?” I asked, perplexed.

  “It’s the ghost in the darkness. We’d seen evidence of the ghost for the past nine months, but didn’t bother you with it, because it wasn’t anything like this. A little thing here or there went missing. But nothing like this. I figured it was the kids, but not anymore; this is an escalation. Charles is going to be mad. His bear was in that freezer.” Chris pointed to one of the empty spots.

  “The ghost. And he, she, or they have a truck. Wait a minute. You don’t think they took the airport truck and trailer, do you?”

  Chris shrugged. The only way to find out was take a trip to the airport. Aeryn nodded and ran out.

>   “Can we back fill what we lost?” I was sure we could restock the meat. Two moose would replace what we had, but the freezer space was limited. The walk-in freezer would have to be filled beyond capacity, until we had the hard freeze outside, then we could break things down into coolers for easier distribution. In the interim, it would be catch as catch can. The vegetables were the issue.

  “Maybe, but we need to get those tractors working.” Chris pulled a massive bone from behind his back and waved it at Floyd. The half-wolf was instantly Chris’s best friend until he got the bone, then he lumbered off to find a place to tear it up. Floyd’s jaws could snap just about anything. The wolf part of him dominated the Alaskan Husky half. Although he could run and he was leaner than a full-blooded wolf, he could chew through a hunk of iron if he wanted to. As a puppy, he was hell on the furniture, which was all replaced when he got done teething.

  Chris and I walked to the machine shop where sparks were flying beneath their workhorse tractor, a big John Deere which burned diesel that we were able to produce in limited quantities from biomass, the leftover food stuffs from the processing facility and anything else that would rot but hadn’t been composted.

  The mechanic slid out from underneath the tractor. Lucas’ grin was unmistakable as he wiped off a hand with a greasy rag. I took his hand as it was and pulled him in for a one-armed man hug. He knew what we were there for.

  “I think it’s ready. Let me top off some fluids and we’ll crank her up.” We stayed out of his way as he added what seemed like an infinite amount of transmission fluid and then maybe ten gallons of diesel. He turned it over and it belched black smoke. Floyd was the first one to bolt from the confines of the machine shop’s large bay. Chris and I followed closely behind.

  Lucas put it in gear and carefully backed it out. He parked the tractor outside and then leaned out the door, whooping and hollering. It was hard not to appreciate his attitude. Every victory, no matter how small, should be celebrated. I’d been preaching that for quite some time, and Lucas was a believer. We joined him in cheering.

  “You better get that to Pavel before he has a meltdown!” Chris yelled. They’d found that the most economical way to farm was to use a tractor to pull a variety of planting and harvesting equipment instead of having specialty, self-powered gear. They couldn’t stock the spare parts for that much different equipment.

  Lucas waved and drove slowly away, but changed gears once he was past us. The big John Deere rumbled happily as it headed down the road. Lucas reached an arm out the window and waved at Aeryn as she raced by on her fat-tire bike.

  She slid to a stop next to us. I shook my head as she shook hers. “It’s gone.”

  “They stole one of our last running trucks, a trailer, two freezers of meat, and how many cases of canned veggies?”

  Aeryn held up one finger to stop my recitation of our loss. “The small generator and ten cans of gas. Almost our complete backup stock. Sure, we have avgas, but that would burn up the generator. No, they hurt us pretty badly.”

  “We need to find these people and get our stuff back. I’d be mad if they only stole from me, but I’m furious that they took from all of us. We can’t have this. Now that the tractor is running, that frees some manpower. We’re going hunting. If they are running that generator anywhere within fifty miles of here, we’ll find it. What do you think, with those two big freezers they’ll have to run the generator one hour out of every two?” Chris asked.

  “I’m on it, if you’re okay with that,” I offered. He nodded.

  “It’s good to have you back, Chuck.”

  I slapped Chris on the shoulder, then turned to Aeryn. “Ride the perimeter of town. Find someone who heard the truck so we have an idea which direction they went. Then we’ll spread out from there. Any movement. We’re not looking for a ghost, but flesh and blood, someone who can drive a truck and needs to eat. And someone with no morals, no integrity. Meet me at the community center when you’re done.”

  Aeryn rode off again, pumping her legs hard to get up to speed. I watched her go, seeing in her much of her mother, while also seeing a great deal of me. The twins were committed to our success as much as I had been and was going to be again.

  “Chris?” I asked. He tipped his chin toward me, also watching my daughter riding into the distance. “Thank you for being there, my friend. Thank you for giving me space. Now, it’s time I got to work. If this bastard can be caught, it will be done. No one steals from us. No one,” I said through gritted teeth.

  I needed to go home and get my rifle, more ammunition, and my go bag. I was going hunting.

  A NEW DIRECTION

  Aeryn swept the perimeter of the town, from the far west, to the north and then east. Everyone wanted to know the story and she accommodated them, even though she was in a hurry. She begged each of them to be on the lookout for the stolen truck, the missing freezers. A few people hung their heads and lamented their misfortune, but she was having none of that.

  “We’re going to figure this out, and we’ll be fine!” she insisted. “You know the Community helps those who help themselves. The berries are good this year, so put up some extra.” She told everyone the same thing. Get back to work. If we curled up, the winter would take its toll, and everyone would suffer.

  Nothing we’d lost was irreplaceable. We had time to fill in the gaps if people got to work. One thousand pounds of meat was less than two moose, and it was still early in the season. We wanted people to have confidence in the Community, that we would protect each other, that we would all work for the greater good while improving our individual lives.

  There was so much that needed done. If only we’d cleared the road and the tracks, to make it easier for transport to continue from the port to New Fairbanks, if we only had something to trade.

  Gold. Minerals. Furs. Even fish we had in abundance, which reminded me, I needed to stop by and see old Ben. I’d get my rifle and then stop by his place on the way back to the community center where they’d held the meeting. All the paperwork for the Community was there, along with the most important thing that I needed – a map with push pins for every single person and family showing where they lived.

  I didn’t know the status of our application for statehood. We were already on the verge of being the next Puerto Rico, bankrupt with the U.S. only providing enough support to make us wholly dependent upon the big green machine, guaranteeing that there would be no prosperity except for those corporations sanctioned by the government.

  When I said it out loud to myself, it sounded horrible. It sounded like a disservice to the people who worked so hard to provide for their families, for their friends, and for the Community. I had submitted the paperwork before Madison’s death.

  I needed to talk with the Council. It was time to go in a different direction, one that best suited us. Why would we ask to be a part of a country that abandoned us, not once, but twice? No. It was time to go our own way, and I needed to inform the Council of the plan that had just popped into my head and make sure they approved.

  I rode home with Floyd running alongside. Our cabin was more than a simple cabin. It was a two-story building with a centrally located wood-burning stove that provided heat to the entire house. Although it was a big stove, Charles and Aeryn helped to make sure that we always had enough wood. Those kids were dynamos. They had to be because that’s the world in which they grew up.

  When we reached the house, I did a quick inventory check, always preferring twenty cord of wood to start the winter. We were close, but not quite there. We’d have to put up some more, maybe four days’ worth of cutting. Maybe less.

  Inside, I cleared my rifle, my trusty Marlin 45/70, made sure it was clean and lubricated, then reloaded it, taking two extra boxes of ammunition, another forty rounds. I looked through my backpack, verifying my go bag.

  A military entrenching tool (the e-tool also doubled as
an axe)

  Space blanket

  A skinning knife

  Coast Guard survival rations, ten years old, but the foil was still tight around the bar

  Weatherproof matches

  A water filter, iodine tablets, and a collapsible flask

  Rope and 550-cord

  A wire saw

  My Biolite stove which I cherished

  Instant coffee because even with the end of the world, coffee kept obstacles from being insurmountable

  First aid kit with a pressure bandage, sutures, ointments, and pills for various ailments. Just enough for me to patch myself up and get back to civilization.

  Warm gloves and a stocking cap

  One extra pair of underwear and wool socks – I learned that in the Marines. Dry socks could save your day.

  All of that was shoved into a dry-bag backpack. It wasn’t very heavy, but I always had to make sure the e-tool was wrapped in the blanket and clothes, otherwise it would have beat me senseless. I tied my rifle on the top of the backpack, then I put the pack on. Its straps rested below those of my shoulder holster so nothing was digging into my back. My kukri knife was at my belt, but it hit me on the leg as I peddled. I used a small piece of 550-cord to tie the sheath down. That made all the difference for bumping, but now it rubbed instead.

  I’d figure that out, maybe find a way to tie it on below my pistol.

  I rode slowly toward the river where Ben would be minding his fish wheel. Many people fished, but not at the commercial level that Ben did. He ran the wheel as a service to the whole Community, especially for those who had dogs. Everyone had at least eight dogs, enough to run a small team to travel back and forth in the winter. We held as many events as we could, to give the people a reason to leave their homes. It was easy to stay inside and hide for the entirety of a six-month-long winter, but that wasn’t healthy. Social interaction was encouraged, but we didn’t force anyone to do anything. We were still free people, together because of a shared ideal, shared sacrifice, not because our laws dictated compliance and subservience. We actually never passed any laws. We hadn’t needed to, although we had arbitrated some disputes, coming to resolutions that were satisfactory to both parties, which meant that both parties were equally unhappy.