by Mike Kraus
Rachel looked down at her feet, considering what Marcus had said. “Do they really consider us that much of a threat, though? The survivors, I mean. Are a few people that they haven’t yet killed really enough of a threat to them that they’re willing to do something so extreme? It’ll work, don’t get me wrong, but the storms will have to be kept up for years… or longer, if they want to starve everyone out.”
“As smart as the AI is, it’s still somewhat limited by what it knows, Rachel.” David’s voice was distant as he considered the new possibility brought up by Marcus. “Obviously it does consider the remaining few people to be a large threat, otherwise it wouldn’t be sending bands of the creatures through cities with the express purpose of killing any survivors they find. Maintaining those creatures is a huge task in and of itself, but it clearly thinks that expending resources on that and the storms to keep us at bay is worthwhile.”
Marcus chuckled from the driver’s seat, a small laugh building into a roar as Rachel and David both looked at him quizzically. He grinned as he looked back at them, wiping a tear from the corner of one eye.
“Don’t you get it? The thing’s afraid! It’s so scared of a few little people running around that it’s going to destroy everything on the planet in order to get to us. It can’t do it directly still, so it’s throwing everything else it’s got against us, and not just us three, but any and all remaining survivors, too.
“I don’t know about you, but that kind of behavior just smells of pure, unadulterated fear. And fear like that can be exploited like nothing else on the earth.”
Somewhere in Canada
Samuel pulled himself out of his vehicle, gasping for breath as lances of pain shot through his back and exploded out through his chest and shoulders. The infection that was ravaging his body had gotten slowly but steadily worse, and nothing he tried had been able to change that fact. Every bump and vibration along the road had manifested in the form of intense pain, and driving had become a burden greater than he had ever thought he would have to bear.
Despite his physical condition, Samuel had no intention of giving up his chase. After passing over the Canadian border and finding the clear path of destruction taken by Leonard and Nancy’s armored vehicle, he wasted no time in getting back on the road to follow them. By his estimation, he was no more than a day—and perhaps as little as a half day—behind them.
Tugging at his shirt, Samuel gently pulled it off, reaching around to his back to touch the throbbing infections. What had started off as simple scratches had progressed into something far worse, and Samuel was at the end of his rope. After starting a small fire, he pulled out a long-bladed knife and wiped the edge of the blade on his shirt, removing any visible pieces of dirt and dust. After it appeared clean he plunged it into the flames, heating the steel for several minutes in an effort to sanitize the blade.
Gritting his teeth, Samuel held the knife upside down in his hand and maneuvered it around to his back. While he couldn’t see the lines of infection, they stood half an inch up from the surrounding flesh and were easily felt by hand. The heat of the knife made his hairs stand on end as he held it close to the top of one of the infections before quickly scraping it downward, breaking open the pus-filled skin and causing it to hiss violently upon the hot knife.
Try as he might, Samuel couldn’t help but let out a small scream as he continued the process on the next infected area, cutting open the wounds in an effort to remove the infection from his body. After each pass he wiped the residual flesh from the knife on his shirt and held the blade back in the fire for several seconds, hoping that he was doing enough to keep the freshly reopened wounds clean.
After each of the several infected areas had been scraped open, Samuel placed the knife to the side and opened a large plastic bottle filled with rubbing alcohol. Part of his homemade first aid kit, Samuel didn’t hesitate to hold the bottle behind his head and pour the contents of the bottle down along his back. As much as the initial step had hurt, feeling the burn of the alcohol in the wounds was a hundred times worse. His arms and hands shook and drops of alcohol flew around nearby as he struggled to keep most of the liquid from being wasted.
After he had finishing dousing his back in the alcohol, Samuel took a large roll of gauze from one of his bags and began to slowly wrap it around his chest and back, wincing each time the fabric touched the dampened wounds. The process felt agonizingly slow, but after several minutes he was finally finished. Samuel completed the bandaging with a piece of medical tape, holding the gauze firmly in place. It was wrapped tightly around his torso, but not so much that he couldn’t bend over or back, though such actions irritated his wounds and caused immense pain.
Between the wounds, the infection and the procedure he had just performed, Samuel’s body was ready to shut down. He felt exhausted, and knew that he needed sleep more than anything else, but he dutifully climbed back into his vehicle and donned two new shirts, one on top of the other to help absorb both the blood and alcohol that was coating his back.
There will be time enough to sleep once the chase is done.
Leonard McComb | Nancy Sims
1:08 PM, April 20, 2038
A break in the storms was rare, but Leonard and Nancy both kept their eyes on the sky for any signs of one. The first hint that a break was coming was when a piercing ray of sunlight broke through far to the west. Landing on a distant body of water, the ray was overwhelmingly bright in contrast to the dark clouds. When Leonard first saw the sunlight, he stood slack-jawed, in awe of the simple display. After a moment of contemplation he came to his senses and ran back into the hanger, shouting for Nancy.
“Get everything on board! Hurry!”
Nancy stood hastily and turned to look at Leonard. Confused and worried by his shouting at first, his grin made her relax as she realized that he must have spotted a break in the weather. Together they quickly loaded up the few supplies that were scattered on the ground around the APC and jumped in, fastening their harnesses with an urgency that they hadn’t felt in days. The opportunity to make their final push to Alaska during a lull in the fierce storms wasn’t something that either of them took lightly, and Leonard was eager to get them on the road.
As they drove out of the hanger and down the runway towards the nearest road, Leonard and Nancy kept their eyes on the surrounding city. The fast-approaching light painted the area in a completely new perspective, showing them just how small the city was in comparison to the adjacent wilderness. Driving down the main road, Leonard didn’t bother to slow down to check any of the nearby stores. He and Nancy had raided as many as they could when they’d first entered the town, and the back of the APC was stuffed full of the best gear they could find. Trying to find anything else paled in comparison to getting on the road.
Leonard gunned the engine to its limit as they reached the edge of the city. Except for an occasional vehicle, the road heading out to the northwest was relatively clear, although quite worn down. Instead of being a well-built highway, the two-lane road was narrow and treacherous, with rusted bridges extending over rivers both narrow and wide. The one nice thing that they could say about the road—and the area in general—was that it was insignificant enough that it had escaped the wrath of the nuclear bombs. Whitehorse, while being a moderately sized city for the area, had received no damage, and neither had any sections of roadway going in or out of the area.
The main danger from the road would come later, when the storms picked back up, as Nancy and Leonard knew they inevitably would. The fresh blanket of snow, while annoying, was easy to get through when the winds were calm and the sun was bright. Trying to fight their way down the highway in the middle of a blizzard in the dark, though, would be quite the challenge.
“Hey Leonard.” Nancy had a map of Alaska stretched out over her legs and she was studying it closely, tracing their planned route out with her finger. “Call me crazy, but I just had an idea.”
Leonard glanced over at her for only a secon
d, not wanting to take his eyes off of the road as they whipped along at over eighty miles an hour. “What’s up?”
“Well, if we’re planning to get in around Anchorage anyway, why don’t we just see if there are any boats there, and take one of those up to the strait? That’s got to be easier than trying to go cross-country in the Yukon with this thing, right?”
Leonard shook his head and sighed deeply as he silently berated himself for not thinking of Nancy’s idea himself. As rough as the Alaskan waters were sure to be, traveling by boat would, he agreed, be much easier than trying to make their way by land to the village near the Bering Strait.
“Damn Nancy, since when did you get so good at this?” Leonard smiled as he poked fun at Nancy. Though he had been initially frustrated that he had overlooked the obvious solution, the feeling was quickly replaced by happiness that Nancy had come up with an idea that would save them time and effort. Plus, he thought, if we’re looking for a submarine, we might as well be in the water from the get-go.
Rachel Walsh | Marcus Warden | David Landry
1:00 PM, April 20, 2038
Another sharp swerve brought Rachel back to the present. The revelation of their best possible theory about the origin of the storms had been replaying in her mind many times, though she was more worried now than she had been. After hours of Marcus wildly driving them south, the APC was nearly out of fuel, and she had a decision to make. Marcus’s erratic behavior was no doubt dangerous, but she was unsure how deeply the insanity ran. If he was simply tired of sitting still at the overpass, that would be one thing, and it wouldn’t be that big of a deal. If, on the other hand, Marcus had had some type of nervous break, then he was more of a threat to their mission than the AI, the creatures and the storm all put together.
Rachel and David had been unable to communicate during the rough ride, though they had cast more than a few worried glances at each other. Neither one of them was willing to jeopardize their safety by trying to take back control of the APC from Marcus. Fortunately, though, a shudder from the vehicle accompanied by a sudden cough indicated that they wouldn’t have to wait much longer for the fuel to run out.
As the APC gradually slowed to a halt, Marcus fought with the steering wheel and gas pedal, stomping on the latter and wrenching the former back and forth. He continued in this manner even after the APC lost all power and died, sitting half on the road and half off. Rachel looked back at David who was slowly moving to the back door of the APC, getting ready to get out and approach Marcus from the outside. Rachel nodded and looked at Marcus as she reached out to gently touch his arm.
“Marcus? We’re out of gas… we can’t go anywhere until we refuel.”
Rachel’s voice didn’t seem to have any effect on Marcus at first, until she repeated her statement. He looked over at her as he loosened his grip on the steering wheel, his shoulders slumping. Marcus took several quick, deep breaths before he opened his door. David stepped to the side, raising his hands defensively as Marcus walked past. Instead of attacking David or Rachel, though, Marcus simply walked to the back of the APC and crawled in to the bench seat where David had been previously. He put his head down and immediately fell asleep, leaving Rachel and David to stare at each other, completely confused by what had transpired.
“What the… did he just…” David pointed at Marcus in the back of the APC, struggling to form words to express the combination of bewilderment and frustration he felt.
Rachel shrugged, having left the front of the vehicle. She stood next to David and the two of them watched Marcus’s sleeping form for several minutes. Whistling for Sam to hop out of the APC, she looked at the highway they were on, searching for any diesel vehicles that they could siphon fuel from. A few hundred feet up the road, a pair of eighteen wheelers sat next to each other, offering the nearest source of fuel. Leaving Marcus safely inside the back of the APC, David, Rachel and Sam walked toward the trucks, checking in the windows of cars along the way to find a container that they could carry the fuel in.
Once they were out of earshot of the APC, David looked back at it and shook his head. “I don’t like this, Rachel. I think the poor guy’s losing it.”
Rachel cupped her hands around her eyes as she looked inside the back of a minivan. She grabbed the barrel of her pistol and swung the edge of the handgrip against the window, shattering the safety glass into small pieces. She retrieved a collection of water jugs from the back of the van, handing two of them to David and taking two herself. Squatting down on the ground, she emptied the water from the jugs as she watched the APC, considering what David had said.
“I hate to say it, but I think you’re right. I’m not sure what we can do about it, though. I mean, as reckless as it was, it did help us, in a way.”
David raised an eyebrow at Rachel as they both shook the last of the water from the jugs. “Oh, yes, running out of fuel in the middle of nowhere and then having to use containers contaminated with water and who knows what else to fill it back up is such a great help.”
Rachel looked around, struggling to see through the darkness of the storm overhead. “Speaking of which, any idea where we are?”
“Who knows.” David shrugged. “Somewhere south of Washington, but it was hard to keep track of where we were going when I was getting thrown around in the back. If I had to make a guess, I’d say somewhere in the northern part of Virginia.”
Rachel stood up and continued walking toward the eighteen-wheelers with David close behind. “We made good time, too.”
“Rachel! How can you be standing up for him? He could have gotten us killed with his insane driving, and who knows what’s out here with us!”
“I’m not on his side, I’m just trying to understand where he came from. This whole thing has been a complete nightmare. Now that I think about it, I’m surprised that we’re not all in the same boat as Marcus, going crazy from the stress.”
David sighed heavily as he unscrewed the cap from the eighteen-wheeler’s left fuel tank. A small drain plug on the bottom of the tank was removed next, letting a fast trickle of fuel escape into the water jugs. “We’ve still got a job to do, and until it’s done, we can’t let him jeopardize this.” David turned and took a step, moving closer to Rachel and lowering his voice.
“We’re so close to the end of this, Rachel. We’ve got to see it through even if it means that not all of us make it to the end.”
Somewhere in Canada
Reaching the edge of the storm clouds was a transformational experience for Samuel. As the darkness gave way to the waning light ahead, he felt his entire body glow with a warmth that he hadn’t felt for days. Energy flowed through his veins as his eyes widened, taking in every detail of the landscape that surrounded him.
A tall sign a few miles back had proclaimed, in the light of his vehicle’s headlamps, that the town of Whitehorse was dead ahead. Located near the lower section of the Yukon, Whitehorse was not a large city, but it was the last major city between British Columbia and Alaska, as well as the most likely location where Samuel’s prey would have stopped along their journey.
With the skies ahead clear and with no sign of any creatures nearby, Samuel kept on the main road heading into the city, driving slowly to look for signs of the APC. Heavy snow brought by the storms had covered the roads in layers of snow thick enough to wipe away any tire tracks, so Samuel was forced to search the city street by street, hoping to find evidence that Leonard and Nancy were nearby. After an hour of driving through the entire city, Samuel decided to check the airfield, though his hopes weren’t high for locating anything of interest.
In one of the hangers, though, his heart jumped as he saw the blackened remains of a fire that had been built near the rear wall of the inside of the structure. The fire did indicate to Samuel that Leonard and Nancy had been at Whitehorse, though where they had gone next was the more puzzling question. Samuel spent another half hour searching the area around the airport, but the snow cover made it impossible to pick up
any traces of Leonard and Nancy.
Somewhat dejected, Samuel started driving north again, moving to where the highway split, with one way going west and the other going north. As there was no way of telling where Nancy and Leonard had gone, Samuel was unsure of what to do except to seek guidance from above. After leaving the main portion of the city behind, Samuel began to pass by a smaller area to the north. As he looked over at the buildings to his right, he suddenly swerved off of the road, plowing through the snow and smashing through two sets of guardrails.
Unlike the paved airport in Whitehorse proper, the smaller cousin airport to the north of the city was just a dirt strip, though they looked identical under the snow. With no air traffic control tower or hangers, though, the smaller airfield was hardly distinguishable as one except for the object that Samuel had spotted from the highway.
In his younger years, one of Samuel’s many pursuits had been a two-month-long desire to obtain a private pilot’s license. This hobby ended when he was no longer able to financially support it, though the basic skills he’d learned had not disappeared with the years. The sight, then, of a small aircraft lashed to the ground with thick cables and straps made Samuel’s heart skip a beat and he chased after it, hoping that it would somehow still be functional enough to get him into the air. Tracking Leonard and Nancy by ground had grown too difficult to continue, but with a plane he would be able to not only track them but finally catch them as well.