Flight To Pandemonium

by Murray, Edward

  Old Man Lake, January 21st. Judy gently advised Mac that it would be ‘quite alright’ if he stood by in the lobby. Mac had never visited a delivery room in his life and was happy to join others in the lobby. Both of his first children had been born in a clinic where husbands were ordered ‘outside.’ Mac’s only understanding of human childbirth came from a flickering film in his high school health class. He knew he would be worse than useless in the infirmary.

  Surprised by their early morning activity, he watched Judy and Onita begin preparing for the day. Onita had attended home deliveries for close relatives. Judy instructed her exactly what to do in case of difficulty, and expressed confidence in her equanimity under any circumstances. By all signs, they expected a normal if perhaps lengthy delivery for Judy’s first labor.

  Mac had procrastinated recording recent events and thoughts in his journal. Now, he wrote to distract his anxiety while Judy was in labor. Mac was having difficulty recalling major action from the numbing fog of weeks of hard work. Life had been demanding during their first winter at Old Man Lake. Food still demanded daily attention.

  Short winter daylight was devoted to ice fishing. Fishing Old Man Lake was no longer worthwhile. Ahtna guided the Captain and Mac on overnight trips to Lake Louise and nearby Susitna Lake. Tony constructed a second hut and transported both huts to the distant lakes where screened from the wind the fishermen could camp directly on the ice and avoid the calamity onshore.

  The trout at both lakes were larger and more plentiful, but another species of fish proved even better. Burbot, which Ahtna called lota-lota, spawned in mid-winter under the ice in shallow water. Mac and the Captain took advantage by widening holes allowing them to spear the sluggish fish. At night, they left drift lines staked and baited with fish scraps and by morning nearly every line hooked a primordial looking Burbot. They saved all fish livers welcoming their rich vitamin nutrition. After each trip, Tony met them with the snowmobile, ready to carry home the bountiful catch.

  They skirted the death camps at Lake Louise by traveling across country through the narrow neck between the two lakes. Many floatplanes had descended on the lakes during the calamity. Some landed on Susitna Lake to avoid the chaos of Lake Louise and many were loaded with personal gear of fleeing refugees. While they found little food, the aircraft yielded blankets, camping gear, ammunition and fishing tackle to supply the huts. A few aircraft damaged during the winter storms still held fuel in their wing tanks. Wick lamps readily burned avgas so the anglers kept two lamps fired continuously in the huts to ward off the cold and warm perpetually wet hands. While the fishermen gathered a bountiful harvest, the little band consumed fish as fast as they were caught.

  By New Year’s Day, the band decided to severely ration their remaining staples which otherwise wouldn’t last through winter. Their diminishing larder also warranted another caribou hunting trip to Tolsona Lake.

  Ahtna, Mac and the miners packed the sled with food for a week. A wide sweep near their first hunting ground yielded neither the herd nor fresh tracks. They succeeded in taking only a young moose but were glad for the fresh meat while hunting. The four hunters needed to expand the sweep of their caribou hunt beyond Tolsona Creek. So they butchered a week’s supply and cached the remaining moose carcass under a tarp and heavy rocks covered with a snow to defeat the wolves, knowing however, it wouldn’t deter a grizzly.

  Ahtna explained that experienced wolves, alerted by a gunshot, traveled a great distance seeking a reward of offal, scraps, hides and any butchered morsel they might snatch. True to Ahtna’s warning, the wolves shadowed them for the remainder of the hunt. Four men hunting well apart could have covered far more country. But the pack so doggedly flanked them that the men separated abreast only far enough to remain within sight and hail of one another.

  Mac wasn’t convinced that the wolves sought only butchered kills. He worried they might be bold enough to turn the tables if the pack could creep close enough. The men were reluctant to expend precious ammunition attempting to frightening them. There were too many of them anyway. More than once, however, the men discovered that a skulking wolf, flanking ahead, had lain in wait for one of them. When that happened, they shot the wolf at once hoping to keep the pack wary and distant. But Mac feared that killing the skulker provided just another opportunistic meal for the pack, encouraging them to further stalk the hunters.

  At night, the pack roamed afield returning time and again testing the air… and, Mac feared, to take measure of their watchfulness. Keeping a campfire helped, but when the fire diminished to coals, the pack prowled closer.

  A lifelong suburbanite, Mac peered anxiously out of his sleeping bag, spooked by so many pairs of blinking luminous eyes. And after the fire died during dead of night, his imagination invented skulking hairy images. Wolves never appeared near Abel’s yurt with his people commonly about. Eerie howling disturbed his sleep. Then… nearly asleep, another wolf howled from the opposite side.

  Whenever Mac and his party gathered to mount a rise to glass their surroundings, all they saw were skulking wolves, never a caribou. Were the hunters more attractive to the wolves than caribou, Mac wondered? He never imagined living a Call of the Wild existence himself. Hearing the tale as a boy, the haunting winter scenes had been so far removed in time and place that the bedtime story hadn’t been so scary. Now, nearly a ‘hairy man’ himself, he and his companions melded within the world of the hunted. Here was primal existence before civilization.

  By week’s end, the team hadn’t found the herd, had consumed nearly all their food, and were already away from the lodge longer than promised.

  Back at the moose cache, the men were puzzled to find a large mound of fresh diggings adjacent to their rock cover. Ahtna shouted a warning just as a bloodied, snarling, ferocious looking wolverine charged them. While everyone stood startled, Ahtna shot the animal just in time.

  Uncovering the cache, they discovered the wolverine had tunneled among the rocks reaching the moose and entered the body cavity. He had eaten much of the animal from within and sprayed what remained. Tony summed up their frustrating trip… “Could ‘a spared with that thrill my whole life.”

  Once home, the hunters returned to living as civilized fishermen…

  Mac needed a break from writing. Avoiding the window into the infirmary which had been silent for hours, he went to the kitchen, found a simmering pot of tea, and returned to the now vacant lobby to resume his journal.

  Lengthening days prompted the band to find suitable ground for their vegetable garden. Five of them with Onita leading toured the perimeter of Old Man Lake and the ‘island’ projection on the far side. About four acres in size and connected to shore by a swampy neck, the low island was covered with a thin stand of black spruce surrounded by a thicket of shore willows. The neck would provide easy access to any beast fond of fresh veggies. When they gave up the idea, Tony called them to reconsider.

  “I think I can make this a real island with the cat,” he said.

  “A short stretch of open water wouldn’t help much,” replied Ahtna.

  “What if it was deeper and wider so any raider plunged in over its head?”

  “Wouldn’t likely stop moose, but maybe other browsers might pick something easier. We’re probably going to have to guard whatever we plant, but a wide stretch of open water would give us a better chance to see trouble coming.”

  That was the encouragement Tony needed to hear. He and Jack remained behind to plan their strategy. With the lake thickly encased in ice, Jack thought they had an opportunity that wouldn’t last beyond spring thaw. They planned to blade a deep furrow on the beach opposite the future island. A new shoreline would be mounded and banked to form an arching bay entirely replacing the isthmus.

  Once underway, Tony’s machine was perfectly suited for enlarging the dry snow covered shoreline, but would be useless once flooded by t
he lake in spring. The closer Tony moved to open water, the deeper the ice penetrated the ground, so he took advantage and followed the ice as far as he dared. Shore ice came up in thick fractured slabs. At the deepest end, the last slab released the deluge Tony hoped to avoid and he quickly evacuated the cat. Spring would reveal whether the moat was deep enough.

  But with the deluge replacing the frozen neck, Tony proudly invited the island team to see his shimmering conception. Ahtna hadn’t visualized the idea nor experienced Tony’s ability with the cat and pronounced the island far better than he expected. Ahtna doubted that moose would be….

  Mac’s heard the cries of an infant protesting its arrival into the world. The sound attracted others who gathered at the infirmary window in anticipation. Onita beckoned Mac and opened the door, beaming. “He’s a healthy boy, perfect in every way. Judy’s is doing fine.” She handed him the bundle and said, “Show him off near the fire, will you? We need to finish in here.”

  Mac sat in a deep chair holding the boy in his lap, unfolding the blanket. Everyone gathered around to have a peek. The infant had dark wavy hair, long eyelashes, and a bright tan face only slightly bruised by the experience. Judy had never described her Banff lover, but the infant’s physical appearance could have made the child his own. Privately, Mac had been unsure of his fatherly reaction, but now holding him close, his heart was warming to the little cherub. They had been blessed with the first child born since the calamity.

  57

  Beyond Purgatory, January 22nd. With the tent flap open, Ernie could hear the motorcycles. “Everyone wake up! Ladies! Just grab clothes and get dressed in the humvees. Guys! Meet me at the trucks!”

  Cindy dove back into her sleeping bag, pulling on her thick socks. She stuffed her clothes and boots in the bag and followed Piquk who was already fully dressed, infant in a sling. Puppy jumped to follow, but Ernie grabbed her collar. “Christie, please keep her muffled quiet as you can. She’ll give us away…and don’t start your engines!”

  A dusting of powder continued falling shrouded with fog. Ernie arrived to find the ladies safely inside their humvees and Puppy quiet.

  When Lazlo and Pug joined him, Ernie took command. “We don’t want to reveal ourselves until we’re sure they’re coming straight this way. I don’t want to be the first to shoot, since we don’t know how many there are or who they are. They might even just pass us by.”

  Pug objected. “Who else could possibly be out this time of the morning? I say we shoot soon as we see ‘em.”

  “And I say we don’t unless we have no choice. Without cover, this is a terrible place for a battle. Wait for me to shoot… and not a sound to give us away, either. I’ll get up on that fifty, but you guys get behind the humvees. And Lazlo… help cover me, will ya? Behind that gun, I won’t see a thing coming ‘cept what’s in front of my face. Let’s get ready! They’re getting close!”

  But they weren’t close. The rumble grew steadily louder as the sound reverberated off the bluffs behind them. They traveled slowly, rapping their engines, headlights ablaze, apparently picking their way along the inside curve across the river. Standing tall in the deuce, Ernie could see the glow of each headlight in the mist, but nothing of the riders or their motorcycles.

  Just when he thought they might be passing unaware, they halted and gathered, the combined glow of headlights still within Ernie’s sight. He listened to voices raised in an argument which he couldn’t understand over the idling ‘Harley’ engines. When several bikers swept their headlights over the ice, he feared they would be discovered.

  But they roared off upriver spaced far apart, searching again. Ernie waited and listened for any change in their direction. Once, he thought they might be returning, but then realized that a double-back in the winding river made it seem so. Presently the rumbling faded away.

  Ernie remained behind his gun until he was sure they were gone. As his rush of adrenalin subsided, the consequence of their passing struck him with renewed fright. The biker gang was now ahead of them, between them and their destination… a chilling thought.

  Lazlo, anxious over the silence, joined Ernie on the deuce. “Now what! They’ve passed us, so now if we continue, they could be lying in wait anywhere ahead. And they’ll hear us coming just as we heard them. These deuces are louder than the bikes. We’ve gotta think this through before we do something stupid.”

  “I was trying to muddle through all that when you climbed up here,” said Ernie. “Some things don’t make sense to me. When we flew over those brutes, they were grabbing food and guns from everywhere. Ours must be puny pickings by comparison… especially coming way out here. And Cindy thinks they’re lookin’ for more slaves. Maybe, but they haven’t seen any of us so far. For all they know we could be marines armed for a holy war who scorched camp as a warning… and they don’t know how many we are. So how do you put all that together, I ask?”

  “You’re not making much sense either. You’re trying to crack a bigger problem than it is,” replied Lazlo… “More likely they’re just drug addled bikers who don’t give a shit about anything and can’t think past their own dick, especially way out here!”

  “Maybe I am getting carried away, so let’s talk reality.”

  “That’s what we need most… Pug said he counted sixteen bikers and was certain of the number… sixteen drug addled crazies verses six pussy footers like us. How’s that reality grab ya?”

  Ernie replied, “I think we need a place to hide while we get our shit together… somewhere with better odds… and cover.”

  When he asked Piquk to suggest a place, she said she knew nothing of such things. Instead, she told them that there were separate leads in the river ahead and many places of refuge among them if that was what he sought. Ernie realized that they had no choice but to rely on Piquk’s judgment.

  Piquk chose an obscure lead on the opposite side of the river from the trail of motorcycle tracks. Ernie chose a spot for camp in the midst of an island where they could hide their vehicles among spruce trees, but have an unobstructed view of the river leads on either side. They decided to remain quietly hiding so long as snow continued. Their military vehicles made so much noise traveling that they would have far less warning should the motorcycles double back.

  Ernie was unsure of what to do next. They unpacked only MREs. After a brief meal, they gathered in the cold, wary of lighting a warming fire. Ernie confessed his doubt and requested suggestions.

  Christie proclaimed that she and Piquk were utterly unfamiliar with warfare or its tactics; they knew only of the medical consequences. She suggested that they remain hidden, allow time to pass for things to settle down, and not engage the bikers for any reason.

  Pug admitted that his earlier belligerent stance to shoot first had been unwise. The bikers were too numerous and scared hell out of him. He suggested they push on as fast as possible. Their goal and their salvation lay days away.

  Cindy replaced Pug with the most aggressive approach. “It won’t do any good running away. It’s time we take them on and kick ass, before it’s too late…and I’ll help do it. They’ll never give up looking for us.”

  Oh… the invulnerability of youth, thought Lazlo. His own thought was nearly the opposite. “I think we ought to find a way around them. Let’s look at that map with Piquk and see what can be done. So far, they don’t know where we are and that’s about our only advantage. Let’s depend on that.”

  Ernie had settled down. “Since I spent most of my military career trying to avoid trouble and get the job done, that appeals to me. And I’m alive to talk about it.”

  Lazlo said, “What appeals to me is the part about livin’ through it.”

  Ernie asked Piquk, “Is there some obscure stretch of the river where we might flank around ‘em and then quietly skedaddle?”

  Piquk looked puzzled and remained silent until
Christie provided a translation. They chatted until Christie replied, “She says that a stretch near Fort Yukon has many leads where other rivers and creeks all come together. It’s all very confusing unless you know where you’re going.”

  “Sounds like our kinda place to me,” said Ernie. “Avoid town and keep to the sticks.”

  “Yea, but Fort Yukon? Sounds like a place those bikers would avoid and favor the sticks like us,” said Lazlo.

  “Laz, it’s not a military fort anymore, it’s a Gwich’in village mostly.”

  “Well I gotta question,” said Pug. “These guys aren’t just sittin’ on their hands. We’re still on the same river together. What if we run into ‘em traveling round some curve? Then what?”

  “Then we kick butt!” shouted Cindy, “We can’t outrun motorcycles! We lose everything if we don’t fight back, especially me.”

  “But that’ll be the last resort,” said Ernie.

  “Way wrong! If we sneak by them tomorrow, they’ll catch up the next day… or the next! They’ve come this far, haven’t they? They won’t go back empty handed to face disgrace. Bikers? That’d be worse than death. They’ll find our tracks and chase us down...or die trying! This will end when they catch us.”

  Ernie was discouraged. Just as he sensed a common direction, so many of Cindy’s objections rang true that his plan evaporated. And what Cindy didn’t know… couldn’t know… was that’s how it worked for centuries in Afghanistan. The enemy always came back, no matter the beating they took. Allah always knew where to look.

  “Damn,” said Lazlo quietly. “She’s right. If those bikers stick around…”

  “And how will you know unless we go look?” interrupted Cindy. “If we lose Puppy, the next time they come for us at night, they’ll park the bikes and it’ll be sixteen against six right outside our tent. But the rest of you won’t even know. You’ll be dead.”