No one being happy made for a good compromise. Next time they’d be more amenable to finding a solution themselves instead of calling in outside help.
The Community was about enjoying the ideals of self-realization. We helped ourselves and each other, integrating as one, while still living apart, unlike the first two years after returning when we lived together in the old school. A group still lived there, mostly Russian, but they were always pleasant and welcoming. We stopped by every six months or so to verify head counts as they seemed to have a great number of kids. I would have worried about them, but the adults were overly industrious to provide for their families. Many women remained in the school during the day, handling day care and schooling while the rest of the Community worked to provide. They looked like we used to before expanding around the airport as we had originally intended.
When I reached the mini fish camp that Ben had set up, I watched the wheel spin slowly, tossing the occasional fish into the trap by the shore. I didn’t see Ben anywhere, but his chair on the bank looked inviting so I sat down and rested, taking a short break before riding the rest of the way to the community center.
“What brings you this way, my friend?” a gentle and elderly voice asked. Ben headed toward me, obviously coming from the outhouse. I laughed. “Too much coffee in the morning. We live decadent lives,” he explained.
“I just wanted to stop in and say hello. I also have an ulterior motive.” I hesitated, biting my lip because the thought of it made me angry. “Someone stole our airport truck and then used it to steal two full freezers and a pile of canned goods, along with a generator and a lot of gas to run it. We need to find that bastard and get our stuff back.”
Ben looked at me through narrowed eyes. A native Alaskan, he joined us to help us better understand the land that we were trying to become one with. He brought a calm that carried over to everyone he met. I hadn’t spent any time with him since Madison passed away. I probably should have, but there was no value in regretting the past. The day was now, and we had work to do.
“I’m going after them, Ben. We can’t have people stealing from us. It reminds me too much of a couple men whom I crossed paths with fourteen years ago. Not long after the fall, they tried to take everything I had away from me.” I didn’t explain further. No one besides Madison and the original Community knew that I killed those two men.
“We’ve all done things we’re not proud of, but we do what we have to,” Ben said knowingly. “Clarisse!” he yelled as he turned toward the small house that they called home. I stood my bike up and put my backpack on as Ben opened the small garage at the side of the house. He pulled a dusty tarp off an old quad, an all-terrain vehicle. He put the key in and said, “Watch this.”
It turned over right away and coughed to life. He gassed it and it revved in response. “Leave your bike here and climb in. Let’s go hunting, my friend.”
We hadn’t used quads for over four years because they died and we couldn’t get parts, then gasoline became scarce. “How do you still have this?”
“Saved for a rainy day,” was all Ben would commit to. I leaned the bike against Ben’s house as Clarisse came outside to give me a hug and a fresh-baked biscuit. I ate it like I hadn’t eaten in forever, so she brought me a second one. I was down to one hundred and sixty pounds. My kids said I looked sickly, but I hadn’t been hungry; for a whole year, I had not eaten well.
Clarisse spread some homemade jam on the second biscuit and, with my eyes closed, I savored its warm sweetness. When I opened my eyes, Ben and Clarisse were both smiling. She hurried inside one more time and returned shortly with a bagged lunch, enough for both of us. She threw some burnt crusts to Floyd. They disappeared into his gullet without so much as a single smacked lip.
After the three of us were settled, Ben took it easy, nursing the old girl onto the beaten road and toward the community center. Even driving slowly, it only took four minutes to get there. It would have taken me twenty on my bike and I would have had to catch my breath afterwards. I appreciated Ben’s thrift in keeping the machine alive for our self-declared emergency. We pulled in and Ben shut it down. I didn’t ask how he’d maintained it, but I expect he invested the time, taking it apart, keeping the gaskets oiled so they didn’t dry out, keeping the gas clean and fresh through filtering and use of a stabilizing agent. Or Ben had acquired some avgas. It didn’t matter because I could not have been more pleased.
“I think this confirms it, Ben,” I started as we walked inside. “We need to cut our ties with the States and go worldwide. We need to open up the road and rail to Valdez. And then we need Alaska to become a real nation, in and of itself. I’m tired of living in the stone ages. I like this, a quad to get around. This is a big country and it’s the twenty-first century! Why in the hell are we acting like refined cavemen? We start fixing this today!” I declared. Ben nodded noncommittally.
My speech rang hollow since there wasn’t anyone in the community center. I should have expected that no one would be there. Everyone had other work to do. We went to the small room with the big map on a cork board. How many colored push pins had been carefully placed? It was hard to tell, but there was a legend: Green pins for multiple families in a small area. Black pins for most everyone else, and then there were red pins for outliers where the surveyor guessed people lived. I saw small initials on the legend – AMN for Aeryn Mary Nagy. My daughter.
“I think we need to take Aeryn with us. She seems to know where all these people are,” I suggested. I pulled out my stalwart cell phone, which I kept charged and with me to play music. I’d loaded the new one up ten years ago when we were back in Pennsylvania. I turned it on often enough that I charged it about once a week, so the battery still worked and held a charge, for a little while anyway. The pictures of the map would come in handy as a reference. Technology – why would we leave it behind if we didn’t have to?
The more I thought about it the angrier I got. We did all the hard work while at the same time begging the United States government to take us back. And here we were, with limited power for a few buildings, while everyone else burned wood and sat in the dark, shepherding their stock of candles to help them make it through the winter.
We deserved to be treated better than that. We deserved better for ourselves. Ten years and this was where we were, more backward than when we started. The fury grabbed me, and I clenched my fists so hard my fingernails cut into my palms. My chest was tight, and I gasped for air. I had to close my eyes and force myself to relax. I felt a hand on my shoulder as Ben held me up.
“Your lips are blue,” he said matter-of-factly. “Probably not the best color. It’s good we have the quad, eh?”
It was hard not to chuckle at that. Yes, indeed, it was good to be riding in style.
It was an hour and a half before Aeryn arrived, which gave me time to rest and recover. She thought she was going to complete her circuit without anyone having seen or heard anything, but her last stop at a homestead along Ballaine Road, far to the northeast of the airport, shed light on the raiders. The couple that lived out there heard a vehicle drive by at about four in the morning. Once Aeryn heard that, she raced to the community center. There was no time to waste. The theft happened seven hours prior. They could have covered a great distance in that amount of time.
We had a broad area to search, but not as broad as it had been fifteen minutes prior. “Get in the back with Floyd,” I told her. She propped her bike against the wall and we were off.
BEGIN THE SEARCH
Aeryn wanted us to swing by and pick up Toby, but I didn’t know him and now wasn’t the time for me to bond with Aeryn’s boyfriend.
Or maybe it was. I asked Ben to stop, and I looked back at my daughter. She nodded, hopeful. “You make sure Floyd is comfortable back there,” I ordered as a way of compromise. Aeryn directed Ben past our home to the furrier’s shop where Toby was elbow deep in tallow
working a hide stretched on a frame outside the building.
“Grab your bag and get in!” Aeryn commanded. Toby disappeared inside. I could feel my heart beating faster in anticipation. In order to fend off the surprise, I simply asked. “What do you expect me to do with him?”
“Geez, Dad, I don’t know. Maybe you could get to know him?” She’d put it all on me. I could only look at that innocent face and shake my head. The blood pounded in my ears. Toby ran out carrying a back pack and a lunch bag.
“Rifle?” I asked. Aeryn hit me in the shoulder. “Get your rifle, Toby,” I asked more gently. He held up his hands, then gave me the thumbs up. I did not look at my daughter in the back seat. Toby returned, triumphantly holding a bow and arrows.
“God grant me patience,” I intoned, earning myself another punch in the back. He stopped and looked at the quad, where a massive half-wolf sat in one seat and Aeryn in the other. He had a compound bow, not large by any means, but the geometry of how to fit it in the quad with everything else failed him.
“Dad!” Aeryn barked at me. “Get out and help.”
Without much of a hesitation, I climbed out. Ben covered his face, laughing into a gloved hand. Aeryn jumped out and hugged her boyfriend, making a big show of it. My brain turned into mush, and I stood there, probably with a stupid look on my face, wondering why I was standing there.
“Dad?” Aeryn ventured. “Say hi to Toby.”
Freaking Toby, I thought. What is the guy, twenty? She’s only sixteen! I felt my hand forming a pincer that would fit nicely around his throat as he tried to smile at me. I didn’t want to get to know him. I wanted to beat him to a pulp.
“Forget him,” Aeryn finally interjected to break the stalemate as I glared at her boyfriend. “Let’s tie that on the outside here, then Floyd can sit in between us.” Floyd was at my side, indifferent to the tension. Toby reached into the bag he carried and pulled out a hefty chunk of jerky, probably moose, and handed it to Floyd. He ripped it from the young man’s hand and happily chewed, wagging his tail the entire time.
“Traitor,” I told him while scratching behind his ears. That earned me yet another glare. I decided to get back in the front seat. Ben’s eyes sparkled as he looked at me. “How did you handle it, Ben?”
“Listen,” he started in a low voice. “I know how your kids were raised. Trust them. They’ll be fine. Let them continue to grow and learn. Don’t chase them away over something like this. Support her, don’t make it hard. And you can always kill him later if he hurts your little girl,” Ben said with a smile to the shocked looks of the two in the back. Floyd unashamedly climbed on top of them both, trying to get his muzzle into Toby’s bag.
“Welcome aboard, Toby. You better pass that up here so you don’t have to fight Floyd the whole way,” I said casually over my shoulder as Ben fired up the quad and drove away. When I had the bag, I took out a piece of jerky and tried it. I approved. “Try this, Ben. It’s good!” I handed a big piece to Ben, who chewed it absently as he carefully drove the old road. I had a second piece before waving a small piece in front of Floyd. He’d turned and his head was on my shoulder, which meant his butt was in Toby’s face with his wagging tail slapping Toby’s head. I expect if Aeryn could have reached me, that would have earned me another punch.
Once Floyd laid down across the kids’ laps, I put my intelligence officer hat on and briefed everyone.
“Someone stole two freezers and a generator. For the meat to stay frozen, they’ll need to run the generator I think a minimum of one hour out of every three. We’re going to work our way along a broad front, dropping people off about a mile apart. We’ll sit and listen for maybe two and a half hours, then we’ll move to our next spot. The sound of the generator should carry. I love the silence of the new world. It used to be so noisy,” I said, thinking about the calm of nature.
“Where do we start?” Ben asked as he drove slowly north on University, carefully dodging obstacles lying in the road. It would turn into what used to be Farmer’s Loop and then Ballaine.
“How about where Ballaine meets Goldstream? With the hills behind, maybe we can drop people every couple miles, see if anyone is living in those homes on the hillside. Do we know of anyone up that way, Aeryn?” I asked.
“Nope. That couple on Ballaine is the farthest one out that we know of. It’s a long haul from the airport to their house if you’re walking. Maybe we should stay in pairs. What if these people are willing to fight for what they’ve taken?”
I didn’t want to think that way, but Aeryn was right. “I know you’re right. Aeryn, you’re with Ben, and Toby, you get the short straw.” I smiled evilly over my shoulder while taking another piece of jerky out of the bag and stuffing it in my mouth. My daughter was shaking her head.
Be careful what you ask for…I thought.
WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO?
Ben took a left when he hit Goldstream, but kept the rpms down to make less noise. When he stopped, Toby and I jumped out, taking our backpacks and weapons. Aeryn gave him a long kiss goodbye, just to get back at me for something I did wrong in a previous life. When it came my turn, I hugged her and whispered into her ear, “I’ll be nice. You take care of Ben and watch out. I expect these people are dangerous. If we find them, they probably won’t like it, and things could get dicey. I love you.” Her eyes teared and she nodded briskly. I took off my shoulder holster and handed it to her. It held my .45 and two extra magazines. She took it without hesitation and started adjusting the straps to fit her lean form.
Ben confirmed where he was going to stop and we told him we’d see him in three hours and if we moved, we’d leave a note in a mailbox. I pointed to one that was still intact and tested the flag. Ben nodded and drove off, leaving the three of us standing there.
When we could no longer hear the quad, I stood with my eyes closed and listened. “Toby,” I whispered. “I’m sure your ears are better than mine. Do you hear anything?” He didn’t answer, so I looked at him. He was standing still, eyes shut, mirroring my pose. As I thought about it, one of us needed to keep watch. Then again, Floyd had the best senses of us all. No one was going to sneak up on us.
Dammit! I left the jerky in the quad, I thought. That stuff was good!
I didn’t hear anything. He opened his eyes, then shook his head. “Let’s go to that rise up ahead. You take the far side and I’ll stay over here. Then we’ll settle in. For the record, I don’t hate you, but she is my little girl.” He didn’t know how to respond to that, so he remained quiet.
We walked almost a half mile up the road, before stopping.
“I want to marry her,” he blurted all of a sudden, face flushing instantly. I thought my head was going to explode. I started clenching my hands anew.
“She asked me to get to know you. Is this why? Have you two talked about this?” I asked in a hurry, resisting the temptation to grab the young man and shake him.
“Kind of. I can’t stop thinking about her. All I want is to be with her. What do I have to do?” he asked sincerely. His eyes told me everything I needed to know.
I put a gentle hand on his shoulder. As I opened my mouth to speak, I heard a generator fire up, not far. “Get down!” I cautioned, dragging Toby off the road and into the heavy brush of the ditch. We dropped our packs. “Floyd! Get in here!” The half-wolf happily joined us, sniffing my fingers on the stock of my rifle since they still smelled like jerky. His big tongue whipped out before I could move, dousing my hand in slobber.
“Stop!” I growled at him. His ears flattened and his tail drooped. I hugged him and he was instantly happy once again. Toby stretched upward to look past the road. “What do you think?” I asked.
“It sounds like they are up one of these driveways that head into the trees and up the hill,” Toby whispered. My eyes followed where he pointed. Driveways were clear leaving the roadway, but disappeared quickly into the brush and
trees. The foliage in August was still heavy and hid much. I had no idea if the roads wound their way up the hill or went straight. I couldn’t judge the distance to the generator, but trusted Toby’s ears more than my own.
“Wait here. I’m going to look around. We just want our stuff back. If they make a break for it, stop them, because we need to talk with them. I want to make sure they don’t visit us again. Be ready,” I warned him as I crawled out of the ditch and jogged slowly across the road, stopping on the other side to catch my breath. Floyd knew something was up and ran at my side, watching up the hill. He smelled something out of place.
“Good boy,” I whispered, then said more firmly, “heel.” He took his place at my side as I walked from driveway to driveway, looking for a sign of recent use. The tire tracks on the third one I checked showed where the truck had passed. I pointed to it and then pointed up the hill. Toby nodded. I stalked into the woods, staying away from the roadway, keeping trees between me and the sound of the generator. I started breathing faster with the increase in anxiety. It had been a long time since I last made war, although I’d gone hunting with Charles not more than a few weeks prior. It’s just like hunting, just like hunting, I chanted within my mind.
The undergrowth cushioned my steps. The leaves wouldn’t fall for another couple weeks, making it easy to move quietly. As soon as we could see the house and parking area, we stopped. Floyd sat on command and waited, although his hackles were up. I wondered if they had a dog.
Fury (End Times Alaska Book 4) Page 5