Run (End Times Alaska Book 2)

by Craig Martelle

  “How many dogs have problems?” I asked.

  “Two or three is all. We may have to cut one loose from Becca’s team. He’s limping pretty badly. It’s hurting the rest of the dogs on the team. He’ll take down the whole team if we keep trying to run him.” Abigail was analytical when it came to the dogs. They had jobs to do, and she expected a certain level of performance. I think she also understood that when she said we’d have to cut one loose that meant we’d have to leave him behind to fend for himself. It was probably a death sentence.

  “What about the twins?” I asked, looking for something positive. I was already proud of them, but I wanted someone else to tell me that they were doing well.

  She laughed. She knew I was fishing for a compliment. “There is no way on this earth that there is anyone their age who is as good as they are.” She smiled. I didn’t expect the ultimate superlative, but it was very nice to hear.

  “Thank you. That means a lot to me.”

  Her smile faded. “What happened back there?”

  “Winnifred didn’t make it.” I got up and headed into the trees to find some more deadfall. I didn’t know when I would be willing to talk about it.

  My fear was that this would only be the first loss we suffered. We were far away from our goal, but we were so close, too. Across a big plain on the other side of these hills was Highway 5. Through another range and we would find the Yukon River, well inside of Canada.

  About two hundred miles to go. Only eight days if we covered twenty-five miles a day, but we were managing more than that. I wanted to be there now, but less than a week would work, especially if we didn’t lose anyone else.

  The rest of the Community made it to the campsite over the course of the next hour. The twins arrived after Abigail. They were tired and thirsty, but they made sure that their dogs were fed and watered first. I encouraged them to take a drink, which they did out of the dog bowls before putting them down for their teams. I pulled each of them aside for a big hug. They didn’t ask why. They probably knew. Only two horses were following them.

  The other three teams were bunched up and arrived at almost the same time. Becca had a gap on her team where she had already removed the injured dog. Once they arrived, the dog jumped out of the sled where he had gotten a ride. He couldn’t put any weight on one leg and hopped over to get to the water dish with the other dogs. Becca didn’t leave him behind. No one wanted to see anyone left behind.

  It took Colleen and Chris another two hours before they finally made it to our campsite. Colleen got off her horse very gingerly, even with Chris helping her. I faded into the trees. We could use some more wood.

  When I got back, I stayed as far away from Colleen and Chris as I could. But that didn’t help. Chris hunted me down.

  TOMORROW

  “What’s tomorrow bring?” Chris asked as he squatted next to me. I looked up at him, not understanding the question. “Today is over, my friend. It is as it had to be. Tomorrow, Colleen and I will ride in the sleds. We decided that the horses have a better chance to live if we let them go free. Our baby will have a better chance at life if we can get to a hospital. It wouldn’t be good if the baby was born out here.”

  “No. No it wouldn’t,” is all I managed to say. Chris slapped me on the shoulder as he stood up. I looked up. He held my eyes for a second and then walked away.

  Chris stood at the campfire and warmed his hands. Everyone else was sitting, still chewing their dried, half-frozen moose. Nutrition did not have to taste good or be easy to eat. Cans of baked beans had been dumped into a pot and were heating on the fire. These hit the spot, but there wasn’t enough to let everyone eat their fill.

  Chris stood up straight and called quietly for everyone’s attention. “Today was a tough day. We left a warm shelter to cross the unknown in the hope that something better waits for us across the border. We know that nothing good waits for us here. If we tried to stay, it would take us, one by one.” He shuffled his feet. He’d had a long time to think of this speech, but when he actually had to make it, the words weren’t coming easily.

  “Colleen and I are going to set our horses free. We’ve chosen our baby’s life over the lives of our horses. It has to be that way. We don’t want to see another put down. And we don’t want to hold up the rest of you. You deserve better. We’re sorry, and we want to make it right.” Everyone talked at once, protesting his apology. He didn’t know what else to say to them. The twins hugged each other and cried.

  I stood up. “We didn’t choose this!” I said, much more forcefully than I intended. Everyone stopped and looked at me. I stepped closer to the fire. “We didn’t choose any of this. We did the best we could with what we had.” I hesitated, the fight gone from my voice. “I’ve killed people. I’ve killed animals. I didn’t do any of it because I wanted to. I hated it, but it had to be done.

  “Survive. One word. One little word that drives everything we do. Whatever gives us the best chance to survive is what we’ll do. It’s what I’ll do. It’ll be easier once we’re there to lament the past. But until then, we can’t waste the energy. We need every bit we have to take the next step, and then the next, and the next. Until someone else provides us with shelter and food. Until there is a someone else, we have to do it ourselves, just like we’ve done since the war started. A war we didn’t know anything about, but were right in the middle of.

  “We had no choice. Just like now. No choice but to go on.” I let the silence continue until people started looking somewhere other than at me. Then I continued.

  “I’ve already scouted ahead, and the valley should make for a quick run. We can make good time. By the end of tomorrow, Highway 5 should be in sight. From right now, we may be less than three days away from the border. Since we are picking up the pace and should arrive sooner, what do you say the dogs get an extra ration of moose?”

  The twins were the first to cheer and immediately got up to take care of their teams. I went back into the shadows of the trees. My noble steed was already fueled and ready to go. I saw Madison comforting Colleen. They had sat together since Chris and Colleen had arrived. Chris disappeared, probably to take the reins and saddles off the horses, untying them for the last time.

  Madison stopped Lucas and talked to him briefly and then came to find me.

  “I’ll ride with you. Colleen will ride with Abigail. We’re shifting around a little. Chris, Lucas, and Darren will mush as they’re the best ones we have. It’s better if they can help push the sleds along. Jo and Emma, Becca and Bill, Amber and Diane will ride in the sleds.” She snuggled up next to me. “We’re all going to make it.”

  I looked at her. It was impossible not to smile. I had been given the greatest gift when she agreed to marry me. And then there were the twins. What more could anyone ask for?

  “McDonald’s.”

  “What?” she asked.

  “Dawson better have a damn McDonald’s.”

  “Yeah. I could go for that too....”

  HIDING IN THE OPEN

  As we left the hills behind, the open plain through which Highway 5 traveled was open. Really open.

  We made quick runs north and south of our trail, but there was nowhere to hide. In the summer, the brush probably would have helped, but in the winter, we were visible to anyone who looked.

  We’d arrived in the middle of the day. I didn’t want to find out if the Russian-U.S. Armistice Committee had checkpoints or personnel in this area. I figured that if we saw them, they would have already seen us. It was best to be completely unnoticed. Infrared to detect heat sources had much less range than the human eyeball.

  We couldn’t travel in the daylight, and we couldn’t use lights at night.

  We had to slow down.

  My stomach started churning. I felt like the whole world was watching me fail.

  We were close, so close to escaping from Alaska that I could taste Canada in the air. Hope gave me energy. Hope made Canada the best place in the world.


  And reality said that it was probably more snow and remote terrain that we’d have to slug through. What if Canada refused our entry? That was too much to contemplate.

  Madison knew what I was thinking. She watched my body language as I slumped over the handlebars of our snow machine.

  “It’ll be all right. We’re going to make it. We are so close now that we could sprint across the border if we had to.”

  I understood her words to mean that we put the twins on the snow machine with us and leave everyone else behind. I turned around with a scowl on my face.

  “What?” Madison asked, not understanding my expression.

  “We’d leave the others behind?” I asked incredulously.

  “What?” she asked a second time, before it dawned on her what I was thinking. “Of course not. We’d run, all of us, through the night, until the dogs were ready to drop. If you think I’m going to abandon our family or give up now, you don’t know me very well,” she shot back.

  I laughed softly. “You know I wouldn’t leave anyone behind. It bothers me that we had to leave the horses, both of them.” I looked for something positive to say. “You know what doesn’t bother me?” She shook her head. “That John crashed your sled.” I nodded for emphasis.

  A BLUR

  We stopped around midday and waited until the sun began to set. Then we made an all-out sprint to see how far we could go before it got too dark.

  We stopped around midnight.

  The teams were exhausted. My thighs hurt from the crouch I maintained to absorb unseen bumps. My back hurt from when I didn’t crouch and we jammed against something. The shocks on the snow machine weren’t in their prime. This was probably the last run for my stalwart iron dog.

  I remember that we were always tired. We were sleeping in three- to four-hour blocks before running again.

  The dogs kept up the pace and seemed happy to do it. We fed them well as we had almost double the provisions we needed. We were eating less, but we mattered less than the dogs. They would carry us across the finish line.

  We saw Highway 5 only when we physically crossed it. No vehicles had traveled it in so long that it blended into the landscape. The road signs were covered with snow. The only reason I saw one was when I almost ran into it. The highway was important as a waypoint on our journey. It was meaningless as a road. The enemy didn’t use it that way.

  They had helicopters and could find us from the air.

  We needed to get into the back country again. I wanted to conduct a reconnaissance using the snow machine, but if I were seen, they could backtrack my trail and find everyone else.

  The best course of action was to not be seen, so I decided that there’d be no reconnaissance north or south. We needed to head straight east. The Community needed to finish the run across to Canada.

  If anyone looked, they’d see one trail making a beeline for the border. Abigail followed the snow machine’s path, and everyone else followed her.

  The second day went by quickly as we realized we were close. We had covered more than two hundred miles since we left our home, two hundred and fifty if you include our wild ride from Chena Hot Springs. We weren’t Iditarod racers. We were just a bunch of people and their dogs on a journey to a better place.

  We hoped it was better anyway. We had no way of knowing for sure. Hope was what drove us forward.

  When we reached the last mountain range between Alaska and Canada, we stopped and spent the night. We all needed the rest. It was too late in our flight to make the mistakes that tired people make. We needed the daylight for us to continue safely. We were close now, and it would be reckless to get hurt.

  We camped among the trees on a hillside the day before we were to cross the border into Canada. We’d had good weather for the past few days, which necessitated us running much of the time in the dark, but it was getting overcast. We figured it would soon snow. What would Canada be without snow?

  Not Canada! We had a good laugh at our own joke. The Community was in good spirits. The snow would mask our final passage out of Alaska. I thought that we were supposed to feel relief, maybe even joy at our accomplishment.

  I was sad. Alaska was our home, but that was a different Alaska.

  We awoke as Phyllis growled and then started barking. Husky joined in, wagging her tail as if the pizza man had just arrived. I pulled my .45 out, having no idea what the commotion was about.

  A cow moose bolted through the middle of our camp, knocking over a dog sled, throwing its contents in a wide arc away from us as it disappeared into the dark. It was followed closely by a yearling moose that plowed through a pile of sleeping sled dogs. A second cow ran through the camp a moment later. We only saw flashes of brown and the whites of its eyes. The moose hadn’t expected to come across the Community, otherwise they would have avoided us altogether.

  We must have slept too close to willow trees.

  We rallied to recover what we could from the overturned sled and the sleigh it towed. The sled could be repaired but the sleigh was a complete loss. I surprisingly wasn’t worried about the sleigh. Our dogs and teams had already shown what they were capable of. We’d continue, and we’d be dragging one less item out of Alaska. We snuggled back into sleeping bags, blankets, and dogs.

  We woke to a heavy snowfall. A good six inches of snow was already on the ground, and the near white-out continued. The question was, did we push forward? With the lights of the snow machine, I could see a hundred yards. I didn’t want to lose anyone in a mad rush over a cliff, but I felt like I’d be able to keep us on a clear path. We debated, but everyone wanted to go. We were exposed to the weather, but they wanted to be done with the journey, have the hardship behind us.

  I couldn’t guarantee that when we crossed the border there wouldn’t be more hardship. Once we crossed, we still had a ways to go.

  So we pressed on. Madison sat with her back to me on the snow machine so she could watch Abigail. We stayed barely in front of her team, and that helped Madison keep an eye on Aeryn just beyond. She tapped me on my right leg to go faster, left leg to slow down. We continued this herky-jerky drive for quite some time before we came to a rather large river that was frozen over.

  I looked left and right. The snow was letting up, but we still couldn’t see very far. I was positive it was a river and not a glacier. We’d been descending for half the day. Then it dawned on me.

  We had reached the Yukon River.

  We stopped Abigail and asked her to wait. Madison turned around, and we drove up the river a little ways and then back down. It couldn’t be anything but the Yukon.

  That meant we were in Canada.

  DAWSON, YUKON TERRITORY

  We set up camp on the bank of the river although everyone was excited to go on. It was getting late. We thought it best if we arrived in the middle of the day. We would need help as we had almost no money. Colleen, Madison, and I had our passports, although mine was expired. Many had no identification at all. We didn’t have anything for the new babies: Diane, Bill, or Tony.

  We would find out tomorrow. We didn’t know what day of the week it was, but we needed to end our run. I hoped beyond hope that Dawson City had not been affected by the war, that we would find food and shelter there.

  And information.

  We camped for what we hoped was the last time. We stayed close to one another as the sky cleared for a beautiful sunset. Ravens flew by, letting us know that they’d seen us.

  Ravens were good luck in Alaska. We waved at them and thanked them for being there.

  We stayed wrapped up for a long time that night, but few slept well.

  Everyone got up before sunrise. We took our time packing and eating because we wanted to travel in the daylight. So close to the end of our journey, we didn’t want to take senseless risks.

  We lost two more dogs overnight – maybe the weather finally got them or they crawled away because of an injury, we’d never know. Becca’s (Darren’s) team was down two dogs, so I told them
to hook Husky up. She was a powerful dog, I thought. That made for quite the comedy. She’d ridden hundreds of miles on a dog sled, yet when she was hooked up, she seemed to have no idea what to do. She’d have to figure it out. We were going to run straight, so all we needed was her power.

  Everyone else was ready. I had to avoid the temptation to race ahead and see. I was impatient. Not knowing was difficult for me. Almost too difficult, but finally the time came for us to head up river.

  Madison hugged me tightly when we pulled out. I maintained a pace just ahead of the dog teams. It didn’t take long before we came across snow machine tracks. A great number of snow machine tracks. And dogsled trails, too.

  I sped up, and soon Abigail was far behind us. Madison started hitting me on the shoulder and pointing past my helmet.

  I saw them, too. Lights up ahead. Coming toward us.

  I turned around and raced to Abigail to let her know, and then I headed back up river. As the other snow machine approached, it slowed down. The driver was wearing a regular snowsuit, a big knit cap, and goggles. I breathed a sigh of relief that he did not look to be military. We waved him down.

  The moment of truth.

  “Can I help you?” he asked. Normal. Nothing unusual about meeting another snow machine traveling along the river.

  “I hope you can. There are a bunch of sled-dog teams behind me.” He stood up and craned his neck to see Abigail in the lead. “We finally made it out of Alaska. Is there someone in Dawson City we can talk to? Maybe get a place to stay, something to eat?”

  “Alaska! We haven’t seen any refugees for what, three years now? We used to have a refugee center, but that’s not open anymore. They came for a little while, but then nobody,” the man said as he rubbed his face in thought. His eyes smiled, and I felt the stress of the journey leave me.