The jets made one more pass, dropping one bomb each which leveled most of the remaining compound. We waited in the woods, huddled together for warmth. Not all of us had jackets on. I was proud that people remembered what I’d tried to teach after our first encounter with the military. Time was more critical than any one thing. Get out first, we’ll figure out the rest later.
We had put together a cache of goods at the yurt on the hill. The couples all ended up there for a night away on occasion, so it didn’t hurt having extra stuff that anyone could use.
Last time, the helicopters arrived about five hours after the jets. I didn’t know if the helicopters were coming or not, but didn’t feel like they would. If the helicopters were coming, they would have no need to level the compound. I figured that they simply wanted us to not exist. Maybe the negotiations for the territory had finally concluded. I could see our government caving, believing that no one was alive. It seemed that the Russians were trying to make our nonexistence a reality.
In any case, we couldn’t stay here. We made a stretcher out of two poles and two coats and carried Emma to the stables. Terrified horses had bolted, knocking the door down. They were still running mad in the pasture. Our two caribou were gone. I expected the fence was down somewhere.
Colleen took over with Emma, trying to calm her down. Jo was helping. There was no room for the rest of us. We went back to the compound. Chris continued to the kennels to check on Abigail.
There wasn’t much left. We found things we could use as rags, some frozen food that we could salvage. None of our canned goods survived. Canning was a misnomer as we used only glass jars. They couldn’t withstand the concussion from the bombs.
We had to decide on a course of action, just like last time. Stay or go?
WE CAN’T STAY
We lost one of our own in the bombing, a minor miracle and a tragedy at the same time. Felicia had been in the greenhouse. When we found her, there wasn’t much left. The greenhouse had provided no protection from the bomb blast.
We broke up into two groups. One was at the stable helping Colleen with Emma. The other was at the kennel where the building was still mostly intact. One side of the structure leaned, but had gone as far as we thought it would. A number of dogs had succumbed to falling debris. Abigail was in tears.
I looked to Chris. “What do you think, wild man?” He looked out over the kennel. Even now, he didn’t look rattled.
“Are they coming back?” Then he added, “What do we have left?” He had gone straight to the kennel, not looking closely at the destruction in the main compound.
“I don’t think they’ll be coming back. Why? No power. No food. No water. No shelter.” I was not trying to be dramatic, but it came across that way. He narrowed his eyes as he looked at me. “It’s all gone.”
Chris moved over to Abigail, who had survived it all without a scratch.
“Abigail,” he said softly, putting a hand on her shoulder to get her attention. She looked at him, trying to blink the tears away. “How many dog sleds can we run if we hook them all up?” We had all trained somewhat with dog mushing, but we had very few lead dogs.
“Let’s get the sleds out and start hooking up the dogs. I think it’s time to leave, and we have a long ways to go,” Chris said calmly, but with determination. The decision was made.
We all pitched in getting things ready. We were able to save a couple of the less injured dogs. The others had to be put down. I took care of that myself, remembering a long time before when I had put down a dog in a house not far from our own using the same pistol.
I had a good deal of ammunition left because I stored all of it in our long-dead Jeep at the side of the compound. The Jeep had come through the explosions with scratches and dents only. The buildings on the other hand succumbed instantly to the high explosives.
I had all of our traveling kit in the Jeep, a tent, sleeping bags, some bottled water, “shopping” tools, our little BioLite camp stove, and other such items. We had carried this kit for years, not ever needing it. We didn’t want to ever have to use it, but unfortunately, now it would get its chance to help save our lives. I pulled out the two duffels containing our gear and put them on the hood of the Jeep.
I turned back to look at the compound and watched the glow from our smoldering home for just a minute. There was nothing to do there. It was time to get to work to ensure our survival.
TODAY’S MY BIRTHDAY
Emma was in a great deal of pain. She wasn’t communicating, so all Colleen could do was make her press forward with the birth. She put a blanket down and tried to make Emma as comfortable as possible. The baby was coming, no matter what.
Jo held a flashlight, but she was shaking badly. Madison was doing all she could to try to calm Emma down. Colleen knew something was wrong when blood came out the birth canal. They needed the baby out now. Because of the light, she couldn’t see the top of the head. She felt Emma’s abdomen and it seemed like the baby was in the right position.
“Push!” she yelled. “Push!” The head started to appear and Colleen helped guide the baby out. The placenta had broken apart during the events of the day and that was the blood and gore that preceded the baby. Emma calmed immensely after the delivery of her little boy. He had a blend between her pale skin and Chris’ dark skin. He had a full head of curly black hair. Covered in afterbirth, he was a mess, but a beautiful mess that Jo and Emma were proud to call theirs.
Colleen was worn out. She was about eight months pregnant herself and this had been a trying day. She staggered away, bundled herself up, and fell asleep in the corner of the stable.
Little Tony was a trooper from the word go. It seemed that he had had plenty of the birthing business and fell fast to sleep after he was cleaned and fed. Emma fell asleep with him. Jo wasn’t much better off, but we needed her help. We needed to get ready to go.
MUSHING THE BACK COUNTRY
We were able to hook up five sleds, although Abigail wasn’t certain about their effectiveness. She had two strong teams. The twins each had their own six-dog teams pulling small sleds, Husky’s puppies being half of their teams. They were fun to watch, but this was going to be real. The worst that could happen was that we had to abandon their sleds and some of the dogs. No one wanted that, but we couldn’t stay. With the twins driving their own teams, we gave twelve more dogs a chance to live.
The third big team was mostly untrained, but without the extra sled, we couldn’t carry everyone and our supplies.
I would lead the way in my stalwart snow machine, the one that Sam had me tear apart over and over. I knew the machine, and I knew it would run. I filled the sleigh with five-gallon cans of gasoline. If we were able to stick with the shortest route, we only needed to cover a few hundred miles to reach Canada. The towns of Boundary, Forty Mile, or even Dawson awaited us.
We hoped.
Jo helped us gather what food items we could find. We did not have very much. We needed the stores at the yurt on the hill. I took the snow machine on a quick trip. I filled the sleigh with blankets, food, and drinks. It still wasn’t very much. We needed water. We had smoked moose at the kennel for the dogs. It would feed us, too, because it had to.
We needed to head east, northeast. If we hit the Yukon River, we could follow that into Canada. It would be longer that way, but manageable. I needed to be able to navigate the route, in the dark of winter. My stomach twisted into a knot.
I wasn’t confident that I could do it. I met with Darren and Becca. They had traveled into the hills around the Hot Springs on quite a few hunts. They weren’t familiar beyond about fifty miles, but that was much more than what I knew.
I changed places with Darren. He’d take the snow machine, and I’d ride with Madison in the number-three dog sled. We’d keep the twins by us. Abigail would drive the number-one team, carrying Emma, Jo, and the baby. They hooked up a sleigh, but didn’t put much in it. We didn’t have much. They used the blankets to pack under and over the riders
.
Becca would drive the number-two team with Chris, Colleen, little Diane, and baby Bill on board. She wouldn’t tow a sleigh behind her as she was already traveling with a full load.
The twins loaded their small sleds with food, water, Phyllis, and Husky. We had no other choice. We were fleeing for our lives. It wouldn’t be pretty, and it wouldn’t be fast.
But it needed to be fast. We couldn’t survive in the wilds of Alaska as we were. I didn’t know how many of us would survive the trip. We knew we couldn’t stay. We had two bad options to choose from. Or did we.
As we were doing our final checks and getting people settled, Darren, Abigail, and I came to Becca’s sled. “What if we go to our house back toward Fairbanks? Then we can take the southern route. It’s longer, but if we keep abreast of the roadway, we’ll be able to avoid the bigger mountains as well as find shelter. We might be more exposed, but if we try to go east through Alaskan wilderness for three hundred miles, I don’t think we’ll make it. We have a new baby and almost no supplies. Let’s go toward Fairbanks and set up to do this right. We aren’t ready for this, and I’m not ready to see anyone else die.” I hung my head as I finished my speech. I was exhausted, and we hadn’t taken the first step away from the resort.
“Thank you.” That’s all Chris said. I could see the relief on his face, on all their faces. I felt it energize me. I wanted to believe that the Community would be okay. This gave us a better chance. We were too close to plunging into the abyss. I was so afraid that I wasn’t even sure that I could mush the dogs away from the compound.
Note to self: If a decision is so bad that you are panicking, change the decision.
Colleen was especially relieved. Going through the back country, we knew we couldn’t take her horses. By taking the roads and staying out of the mountains, we gave her precious friends a chance at life. Colleen raced back to the stables and saddled up two of the three horses. They had calmed down over the past few hours and returned to the stable, only to find that they had to stay outside. Colleen rode her horse and Chris rode the other. This helped to reduce the weight on the sleds and gave us a fighting chance.
Darren and I switched places once again, Madison joined me on the snow machine. We turned our convoy around and headed down a real road with a destination less than a day away.
IT SEEMED SO CLOSE
Fifty miles is a ridiculously long mush for a five-year-old with a six-dog team. We stopped multiple times to let them rest. We even switched out, letting the twins ride while Chris and Jo took turns mushing the sleds. That was taxing as the humans had to half run to keep the sleds going. Colleen followed along with the other two horses in tow when Chris wasn’t riding. The riders shuffled around the sleds until I lost track. I told Darren to make sure we didn’t accidentally leave anyone behind.
About halfway there, only twenty-five miles in and twelve hours later, we daisy-chained the twins’ teams, leaving a ten-dog team to pull Chris (with Phyllis and Husky on board), while we threw the other small sled atop the sleigh behind my snow machine. I put both Charles and Aeryn in front of me as I drove the sled, while Madison moved to Becca’s sled to help with the babies. This made all the difference. It only took four more hours to cover the last twenty-five miles. When we were only a couple miles from the house, I raced ahead to get the wood burner fired up.
I even tried the generator, which came to life, albeit roughly after I thought my arm was going to fall off from pulling. The gasoline was starting to go bad, but it had a little juice left.
I shut off the pumps. The house had been frozen for too long. I didn’t want to risk a burst pipe, not because of damage to the house, but because we needed all the space we had so people could recover. It would be a tight squeeze, but it was a means to an end.
The twins had curled up and gone to sleep on the couch. They were still wearing all their gear, but it was cold in the house. I was tired, but they were exhausted. We would need to train with the dog teams a great deal in order to make the trip. We were going to run our own Iditarod, but without any support and with five small children, maybe even six.
I’d been awake for nearly thirty hours and, as the adrenaline wore off, I felt bone tired, but there was still too much to do to stop.
I plugged in our electric heaters in the various bedrooms. It would take the edge off so people could sleep. I opened up the garage so we had a place for some of the dogs, although it was still filled with wood and water tanks. They would be exhausted, too. There were enough trees around that we could tie off other dogs to those. It was cold, but not to the extreme. Or we could use the fenced yards in the neighborhood. That would probably be better. At this point, we needed every dog we had to give us the best chance. Those we weren’t able to hook up with teams had run with us. I hoped that many of them had made it all the way.
We needed a break.
At least we had some water here. We needed more bowls. I was tired and simply moving around was painful. Maybe we could sleep for a while first.
Our good people all mushed in together. First and foremost, all the babies needed to get inside where it was warm, get changed, and maybe even eat something. The mushers tied off their teams and brought out anything that would hold water. I used the hand pump to get water from our tank. Everyone got their buckets and bowls to their teams for a big drink. They passed out some smoked moose, now frozen solid, for the dogs to munch on before sleeping.
The humans were too tired to chew frozen meat. We squeezed into our house, and most people grabbed a spot on the floor to lay down. Madison and I took our own bed. The electric heater helped, but it was still cold. We slept in our clothes. I awoke when Bill let out one of his earthshaking cries. He calmed quickly when Emma gave him some now thawed smoked moose to gnaw on.
THE FIRST NEW DAY
I got up, but moved pretty slowly. I ached all over. I had no asthma medication left and was struggling to get a deep breath. There was no time for any of that. We had all of our canned supplies that we had left behind when we moved to the Community. The frozen goods had thawed and refrozen. They were no good.
I put a number of jars of green beans in the kitchen. It was now warm enough in the house that they would thaw. What we lacked in variety, we would make up for with quantity. There were leftover seasonings we could use on the beans. We could fry up some moose.
Then we could take stock of our situation. We were running for our lives, so we would make do with less. Just how much less was the question.
The twins slept like they were dead. So much so that I checked to make sure they were still breathing. I was proud of them. We had asked them to be adult too early in their young lives. And they gave us everything they had.
I went to our outhouse. It was cold. I had gotten spoiled with a heated suite and flush toilet. I wanted to be spoiled again. I was getting too old for this. But there was a world of pain and trial in front of us. If a better world was out there, we would have to earn the right to be in it. We would have to beat the odds one more time.
TRAINING
We spent the morning recovering, eating, drinking water, and resting. We were all thankful that we had not tried to head east yesterday, or was it the day before?
The sled dogs seemed like they were ready to go again, which was good since they had a great deal of work ahead of them.
In the afternoon, we hooked up the twins’ sleds and one other team. We had to practice. We also needed to scout our route south. Nordale Road, the route I had recommended to John years ago in order to bypass Fairbanks, was where we’d practice. We would take that to a point where we could see North Pole and then return home.
The twins didn’t want to do it. They were still tired from yesterday’s run. Abigail mushed our third dog team to provide some training for them, with Madison riding. The twins each took their own sled. Charles had Phyllis as a rider. Aeryn carried Husky. I watched my family mush away. Although I considered all the Community as my family, there was no subs
titute for flesh and blood. I felt helpless, but Madison was with them. She carried my .45. It would have to be good enough. I had the snow machine, and if they weren’t back in four hours, I would go find them. And I’d bring my 45-70 rifle.
The time went quickly as we worked through what we had. Colleen took Chris and the horses to her old house. She said that she might have some things that we could use. I think she wanted to let Chris into more of her old life. She was a far different person from the woman I’d found.
She stabled the horses and fired up her old wood burner. They would stay there to free up some room in our house. There was even some hay left for the horses. It might be bad as it was old, but it was all they had. They came back for dinner after preparing the old stable for the horses to bed down for the evening.
I was fixing what looked like our breakfast when I realized that four hours had come and gone. I asked Jo to take over as I couldn’t eat while they were still out there. I bundled up, put on my helmet, and fired up the snow machine. I took it slowly out of the neighborhood and opened it up a little when I turned onto Chena Hot Springs Road. I kept the speed down as I didn’t want to accidentally run into them. They had no lights. The headlights of the snow machine were all we had. I followed their tracks onto Nordale Road, but needed to go no farther. I could see them up ahead. The dogs were running well. The small teams and two sleds were side by side as they climbed the hill toward me. I turned the snow machine around so the lights weren’t shining in their faces.
The twins looked tired but confident when they came up to me. I waved them onward. Phyllis tried to jump out, but Charles got her to sit back down. Husky was off before Aeryn could say anything.
Run (End Times Alaska Book 2) Page 11