by AR Shaw
Both men looked scared, thin to the point of starvation, and lost. Whatever they were about to say, Bishop knew the subject concerned their last hopes.
Austin tapped a lady passing by who had a young child at her side. “Miss, could you have the kitchen bring some coffee and breakfast for these two gentlemen?”
She stopped and smiled, and when she did, the child caught Bishop’s attention. The little boy…he was the one who’d been flung into the snow. He could tell by the blue eyes and the fact that half of his little forehead was black and blue from the encounter. Feeling a sort of relief, Bishop took a deep breath. He hadn’t been able to help wondering about the child.
Bishop returned his attention to the men in front of him, and the surprise on their faces for the simple fare Austin had offered concerned him.
“Austin,” Carl began. “I’ve made this trip two times before.” He swallowed hard. “My people in Rockford Bay…they’re literally starving to death.” He held his hands out wide. “We don’t have much to offer you, but we were hoping we could work something out.”
Resisting the questions coming to his mind, Bishop held back. He didn’t want to step into any position that could be handled by another. Austin, in his mind, was the rightful heir of the hotel and the town, and he would back him as long as he did things right.
“How many people do you have?”
Carl swallowed again. “We were at twelve hundred before the freeze; we’re now about eight hundred. We’ve had some fighting. We had to take down looters for killing others for their food.” He wiped his forehead. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Common people…killing one another for a sack of flour. It’s the worst of mankind out there.”
“We’ve seen it too. So eight hundred. I’ll tell you we’ve just gotten things under control here, barely. We have a food shortage here as well. We can’t spare much, but we’ll put together what we can.”
Bishop watched as Carl began to speak, but then the sheriff couldn’t contain himself and broke down in tears. His companion patted him on the back and said to them, “His wife died yesterday and his daughter is dying too. It’s been really hard.”
Austin nodded. “I understand,” he said and continued to talk while Carl got a hold of himself. “We’ve had tough times too. Roman basically sponsored town looting, killed many people. Most of the food was brought here to the hotel. Now we’re using our kitchens to feed everyone two meals a day. I wanted to give everything back to the people, but it was an impossible task, so I’ve appointed the staff to make daily meals instead. Those who have nothing to eat can come here. We even have horse-drawn sleds bringing them in from old bus stops.”
Carl laughed at the statement.
“We’re back in the pioneer days it seems, and we damn well better figure out how to live through this before it’s too late. How long is this Maunder Minimum supposed to last anyway?”
Bishop spoke up then, and they weren’t going to like his answer. “This can go on for ten or more years. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but…” He paused and shook his head. “We won’t survive here long term. We’re in an ice age.”
The two men looked at each other, not trusting or wanting to believe the words. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, all the food you can hunt beyond what we have in our possession will not be enough to survive here. We might as well be at the poles. We can fish the lake for what’s survived the sudden freeze there, and we can grow hydroponics in some of the buildings. We can also hunt the woods to oblivion and it will still not be enough to sustain us. We cannot live here for long; this is a temporary situation. We need to get our heads around that and soon, because we need to find a way to travel before it’s too late.”
BY THE TIME the men left, their snowmobiles were topped off with fuel and attached with trailers filled with food and medical supplies as well as radio units so that they could communicate better with their neighbors.
The people of Rockford Bay promised to share hunts when they were well enough to do so, and to attend meetings to make decisions on the inevitable evacuation Bishop alerted them to.
Again Bishop and Austin watched the men leave through the great windows, more slowly and more burdened by lifesaving supplies than Bishop thought was wise, but he wasn’t going to give Austin a hard time about it. Helping the people in Rockford Bay might pay off in future exchanges. At least he hoped so, because they were going to need it.
48
Maeve stood gazing out the frosty, sliding glass window, her arms wrapped tightly around herself. With the blue light cascading onto her, highlighting the red in her hair and the crimson shade of her lips, for the first time in a year, she found herself wanting a man’s touch other than her deceased husband’s. At first, she felt guilty for the urge, a betrayal of sorts to Roger’s memory, and shocked at the realization that perhaps she was no longer grieving her dead husband. The sweet memory of Bishop’s kiss kept flashing into her mind and began replacing the pain Roger’s death left in her heart.
This morning when he touched her hair, she couldn’t help but feel the anticipation of this quiet man kissing her again. Now she had hope, a hope for something she’d never allowed herself in the past. A hope that perhaps someday when he was ready, they might become a family.
If only life were normal. But then again, chaos was what brought them together. That, and a promise Bishop made with her husband. Somehow, she thought, Roger had made this possible. If he couldn’t be there to protect them, he put in place a man who could, one whom he trusted with his family. So in the end, it was with Roger’s blessing, that she let some of her guilt go and made room to live life with a possibility of love in the future, no matter the dire conditions of the world at hand.
SANCTUARY
1
Svalbard, Norway
2018
The hum of the private jet lulled Roman into a deep sleep. At some point the flight attendant laid a soft navy fleece blanket over him. He’d leaned back into the comfortable leather seat, while somewhere over the Atlantic, his long legs splayed out before him, crossed at the ankle. Not knowing the exact time didn’t matter. They were flying blind to the northern most real town before the North Pole in a January snowstorm. Roman hated the cold. He hated the painful numbing sensation brought to his hands when exposed for too long during the worst winter seasons of northern Idaho.
Once he finished with Geller, he intended to retire to some tropical nation near the equator. That was his plan anyway; in the meantime he was on another mysterious mission for his boss. He’d already made this trip once, and now he had returned for another load, though he didn’t see why they couldn’t just mail these damn totes through a courier. Geller insisted he make these trips in person. Said it was of the highest importance though it made little sense to Roman—silly even. Sometimes the old man’s interests were fairly odd. But he wasn’t one to judge as long as his paychecks kept coming in, as substantial as they were.
“We’re about to land,” the stewardess said as she nudged his shoulder. She was blond, slim, and too young for him, but that hadn’t stopped him the last time. As he remembered she liked spending time with him at the Svalbard Inn. Actually, she liked it a lot, as he recalled—or so she seemed the last time. There wasn’t much else to do in that dreary little town and even less now that the sun didn’t rise at all in January during the polar night. The last time he’d made the trip in May, during the midnight sun, which was quite the opposite, the sun never completely went away. It was a confusing and dreary place most of the time, but even Roman had to admit that when looking out at the landscape and feeling the thin air of this remote archipelago island in which the most formidable place men had carved out a sustainable life, he had to admire the strength of a man tenacious enough to thrive there—a hard life, nonetheless, but sustainable. There was beauty there in stark contrast of light and dark. It was like living on another planet at times, though he wouldn’t have the benefit of sightseeing much th
is time.
Jeannette pulled down the navy fleece blanket and reached down to each side of his hips. He let her hands roam over his sides as she hiked up the two metal ends of his seat belt and clicked the metal clasp in place, pulling the woven belt tight. Though he didn’t notice, his eyes lingered down the creamy crevice of her exposed cleavage until she lifted her eyes to his with a mischievous smirk upon her face.
His long tan fingers encircled one of her wrists as he pulled her hand to his chest.
“Nice…maybe we’ll play later?” he whispered, his voice husky.
“May…be…” She drew out the word and then disappeared somewhere down the aisle.
His eyes landed on the back of her tight skirt and calves, imagining his hands grasping her slim ankles…until she rounded the corner. Sighing, he diverted his attention out the window. A few lights sped by as the small jet lowered and touched down. Stretching his back, Roman took a deep breath. Back to work, he thought as he pulled on a puffy black parka, the hood lined with fur. He hated the coat, but it was the only thing that kept him halfway warm in the last town north of only two thousand or so of residents hiding from their lives, or so he thought that might be why they’d decided to reside there. Only those who had no life otherwise might live in such a place…those fighting demons within their souls or hiding from demons on the outside.
The next morning, Roman flipped on the nightstand light. He smiled when the pretty blonde pulled the covers over her head to shield the light.
“Already?”
“Yeah, it’s that time. Apparently that’s what my watch says, anyway.”
He showered and met his driver out front in the dark of the morning.
On their way to the destination, the Russian driver said, “You know, we had a polar-bear attack last night.”
Roman never liked making small talk. He didn’t think Russians were ever very adept at the art, either. “Doesn’t that kind of thing happen around here all the time? Isn’t that why you have to be armed by law here?”
“Da,” he said with a nod of his head.
“Well, why was this person attacked then?”
The driver became frustrated all of a sudden. He threw up his hand and said, “The bear was hungry!”
Roman didn’t understand. “Didn’t this person carry the required firearm?”
“Da, shot de bear four times. He kept coming to him.”
“Four times?”
“Da!”
Now he understood why the Russian was frustrated with him. Yes, the man was lawfully armed, and, yes, he was mauled to death by the polar bear after shooting the carnivore not once but four times. “The bear was hungry. I see…” Again, a formidable place to live and one he disliked visiting.
It was a nine-minute drive from Svalbard’s Inn to the Global Seed Vault. In fact, they’d passed the turnoff on their small, narrow drive from the airport last night, though it didn’t matter. The Seed Vault wasn’t manned twenty-four seven. He had no doubt there were cameras monitoring the place, but there wasn’t a staff who stayed all hours to babysit precious seeds. There was, however, staff there now, and they were expecting him.
As they pulled up, barely illuminated in the midmorning hours, the portal to the globe’s largest seed vault stuck out of the landscape like some coal-mining-shaft entrance. If it weren’t for the reflective artwork mounted on the top, one would expect coal stored in a place like this, not the precious seeds deposited there for safe keeping for countries and private companies around the world from any catastrophes that might otherwise wipe out that country’s natural habitat. The global storage facility was a way of ensuring the survival of a unique species, and it worked.
“Wait here,” Roman told the driver. With only one other vehicle parked nearby, with a few snowmobiles alongside, he didn’t expect there to be more than one or two people inside the underground building.
The driver opened his palms. “Where I go?”
Great. A sarcastic Russian driver with an attitude.
Roman smirked and shook his head as he got out of the warm vehicle. The snowy gravel parking lot crunched under his boots. He started to cross the little metal bridge to the front entrance when one of the doors opened up, and there stood a blond, middle-aged woman, who appeared to be more like a mother than a grandmother.
“Hello. Good to see you again, Mr. Roman.”
He towered over her by a foot at least. Her accent was a Norwegian lilt to near-perfect English. “I see you were expecting my arrival.”
She smiled at him. “It’s a small island. Word travels fast.” With a purposeful gander, her eyes stretched the length of him. “Dark, tall, and handsome…they were right.”
“Who’s they?” He smiled.
“No one comes to Svalbard without a prior introduction. By the time you leave, we’ll know even your blood type.” Waving to him to follow her down the hallway, she continued, “Of course, I knew you were coming. Your boss has kept me informed.”
They passed another set of white double doors and headed through a concrete tunnel leading on a downward slope into the earth. Growing colder with each step, he noticed there were ice formations alongside the walls and doors as if walking into a deep freezer. She smiled at him as he shivered and pulled his thermal coat closer to his body.
“Not much farther.”
They came to another room, where she headed to another set of doors with more frozen ice formations surrounding the doorframe. Opening the metal door, which creaked from the disturbance of the seal, she led him inside.
He’d been in this room once before with the same experience. He couldn’t help but feel claustrophobic in there.
“You know, we could easily mail these to you in America. We do this all the time. There’s no need to come here personally for these parcels.”
Oh, how he agreed. “That’s very kind of you to suggest. However, my employer prefers to safeguard this cargo personally.”
Giving him a knowing look, she led him inside to a set of shelves. Boxes of all sorts of materials—plastic, wood, cardboard, etc.—lined the black metal shelves. They had one thing in common, though: they were all exactly the same size. She led him down past a sign that read Canada, which held black plastic totes. Then right next to those were red wooden boxes in the same dimensions with a white sign allocating these to North Korea. Roman raised his eyebrow, thinking. Then his guide stopped. Next to the red boxes was a sign in black ink: Geller Enterprises.
Roman was even more intrigued, and his guide must have picked up on his curiosity.
With a wry smile, she said, “We have no wars below the permafrost, Mr. Roman.”
“I suppose not.”
She pulled out the totes labeled in his boss’s name. They were lightweight and easy to carry. Stacking two of them in his arms, she brought the other two herself.
The last time he’d made the pickup, he wasn’t invited to come into the stock room to retrieve them himself. Perhaps that was how the people of Svalbard were. Maybe the citizens were that distrustful; they needed to check him out first before they allowed him into the vault itself.
“Bjork is not feeling well today. He is usually the one to help with the deposits and withdrawals.”
“I see,” Roman said as they made the return trip, dashing his thoughts that maybe he’d been trusted by the citizens of Svalbard. When they entered the last room before the doorway, she had him sign several papers. The driver helped him put the totes into the van, and then they were off to the airport, just down the road not five minutes away. It was a long travel for what Roman felt little benefit. He wasn’t sure why he was made to come all the way from Idaho to this frozen island nearly within shouting range of the North Pole, but he did it at least once a year. He also did not understand where the totes were deposited from. He only made the withdrawals. Some things Geller kept to himself, but Roman really didn’t need to know, though at times he wondered about the man’s soul for whom he worked. If there were nefarious de
alings, he’d never know about them. Roman was committed to working for the man no matter the contents of his soul. Yes, he did wonder from time to time whether he worked for the devil himself or merely for a man for whom ethics were an elastic concept. He himself didn’t mind either way unless his dealings got him killed, which would matter, then. That would matter a lot.
2
An eerie, distant howl of a wolf was met by another, causing the moose to abandon the sparse stalks of grass poking through the mounds of packed snow and raise his muzzle. Despite having his ears on rotation for the danger, he never sensed the closer enemy.
The breath that Bishop held hung in the frozen morning air before him, ears ringing in the moment after the rifle shot, the jolt, and an instant aroma of gunpowder. Mark Bishop rose from his icy stoop and peered around the pine tree from which he’d hidden for the last hour and was finally able to wipe the crusty snot from his nose. The moose he’d shot cleanly through the heart had attempted to flee after realizing his peril too late, though Bishop took him with clean accuracy from only twenty yards away. It paid to be a patient man. He’d waited for nearly an hour in a cramped position upwind from where he’d tracked the animal the day before.
Wildlife had grown increasingly thinner in the recent weeks, since anyone with a gun and enough ammunition hunted the woods whenever they felt brave or hungry enough to deal with the subzero temperatures, even when the biting wind ate through their synthetic clothing. Bishop had long adopted one of Jax’s habits of wearing a deer fur over his coat. The addition of fur kept out the wind and moisture, while the under layers were nearly useless once wet. This dawned on him as an oxymoron, in a way. Man was supposed to be sophisticated, yet here he was…eagerly thrust into the dark ages, resorting to furs for warmth, because the latest fiber technology wasn’t worth a damn in this kind of cold even to keep a man warm and dry.