“That would be good. Can you shoot?”
“I learned. Out of necessity, I learned. I think I can shoot okay, but I like to be close. It helps to get a head shot. Makes the cleaning easier without losing any of the meat,” she said in a businesslike tone.
“I see. Welcome to the Community.” Ben breathed deeply of the smells of the fire and the roasting ptarmigan. “They remind me of the village where I grew up, without any of the big problems. No one drinks. Everyone works. Everyone has a purpose. I’m glad they invited Clarisse and me along. I hope that we can build on what we have, while keeping what we have, if you understand what I mean.”
“Sure, the friends who are family. It’s like us. A bunch of escapees who survived. And we took our children with us, even though none of us planned on motherhood. That happens under those conditions. I don’t think the Russians intended to stay as long as they did. I think they might have been trapped, just like we were. But there were more of them and they had the guns. Then we broke out and they didn’t have enough soldiers to search for us, so they gave up quickly.” She finished by taking a drink of water. She stared into the fire as it popped while Ben turned the spit.
“I’m glad you found us. I don’t know how much fight we had left. Things were pretty grim.”
“We won’t let anything happen to you. We’re one family now, one tribe as it may be. It’s us against nature, not each other now that our enemy is gone. Even if they come back, we’ll fight them. All of us will fight them together,” Ben said matter-of-factly as he declared the ptarmigan ready to eat. Maggie enjoyed it and rolled her sleeping bag out in the back of the trailer. Ben slept on the ground under the stars where he was most comfortable.
Until he was kicked by a moose that walked straight through their camp. Maggie woke with a start at Ben’s cry of pain. In the light of the false dawn she shot the big cow from a range of twenty feet. She didn’t even try to look through the scope. The moose jumped and ran five or ten steps before falling to the ground, unable to get back up. Maggie climbed out of her bag and put the animal out of its misery.
Ben was in a heap. She tried to wake him, but he was out cold, a nasty bump on the side of his head showing where he’d been kicked. She didn’t know what to do. She guessed that more blood to his brain would increase the swelling, so she rolled her sleeping bag to put under his shoulder and his sleeping bag to put under his head. His pulse seemed strong and he was breathing. She dribbled some water on his lips and tongue. She couldn’t think of anything else to do except make sure that the moose didn’t go to waste.
She started cleaning it as she checked on Ben every five seconds. After ten minutes, she’d barely made any progress and he was still unconscious. She started working, wanting to get the moose ready to go as soon as Ben woke up. She didn’t want to think about it if he didn’t wake up. With a burst of adrenaline, she worked through the moose, cleaning it and cutting the meat into smaller, manageable sizes. She bagged each chunk and threw them into the trailer one by one.
She took a break and drank sparingly of her water. They were running low already. They’d planned to refill at a stream, but hadn’t gotten to it yet. She checked on Ben as she had been doing, and his eyes were open, but unfocused.
“Ben! Ben! Can you hear me?” she cried. He leaned to the side and threw up, breathing heavily and holding his head as he tried to sit up. Maggie helped him.
“What happened,” he slurred.
“You got kicked by a moose,” she told him.
“Figures. We chase it for half a day when all we had to do was lie here and wait. Damn, my head hurts.” His speech was already improving, but he said that he couldn’t stand. She tried to help him, but he wasn’t moving.
“I guess we’re staying here for a while, and we need water,” Maggie said, suddenly feeling very tired.
“Go get some. There’s a stream down that way.” He pointed in a general direction. “Do I smell blood?”
“We got our moose and the trailer is full! Maybe seven hundred pounds of meat. We’re ready to go whenever you can manage.”
Ben shook his head slowly. “Give me my gun, and then unhook the trailer so you can get us some water. I think a moose steak cooked on an open fire will taste pretty good.” His head swam, but he was hungry. There was nothing left in his stomach, and the wave of nausea had passed.
With a full load in the trailer, Maggie was hard-pressed in unhooking it. She managed it, but knew that she wouldn’t be able to hook it back up without Ben’s help. There was nothing she could do until he felt better.
She drove in the direction Ben indicated, hoping the stream wasn’t too far. She wasn’t comfortable driving the quad in the rough terrain.
BECCA AND DARREN
Becca and Darren followed moose tracks through a small woods. When they were clear through the forest, they found a herd of caribou grazing in the valley beyond.
They mushed their dog teams in opposite directions, hoping to trap the caribou between them, setting up for a few good shots. Becca picked a spot and tied up her dog team. Darren rounded the opposite side and flushed the caribou, then stopped. He didn’t want them running past Becca at full speed.
She carried a 300 Winchester Magnum, just like he did. That eliminated mismatched ammunition. Although the round was a little bigger than what they needed for caribou, there was no excuse for not getting a kill.
Which is exactly what Becca got with her first shot. The second shot was at a running animal and she knocked it down, but didn’t kill it. The herd turned and ran away from her at an angle that would bring them closer to Darren. He set the brake and hopped off the wheeled cart that served as the summer dogsled.
He didn’t like to shoot while standing as he wasn’t steady in the offhand position, but the grasses were too high for him to kneel. He aimed his best and tried to put his reticle just in front of the shoulder. When the rifle bucked, he thought his aim was true. He misjudged how far he had to lead the caribou, but the end result was the same. The bullet went through just in front of the heart, but took out the lungs, and the animal quickly collapsed.
Becca jogged down the hill to dispatch the wounded caribou. She would have normally cut its throat to save ammunition, but it had horns and was thrashing its head about. She took the easy route to put it out of its misery. She looked across where Darren stood and thrust her rifle in the air. He did the same thing, then they each started the cleaning process. When he finished with his, he estimated he had a hundred and twenty-five pounds of meat. He loaded it into his sled and took the team to where Becca had already started on her second kill. They finished it together and headed further up the hill to find a nice place to spend the evening.
They hung the meat in a tree and took the dogs fifty yards away where they set up a camp with a single bed under the stars. They missed Bill but they appreciated the peace and quiet. They knew he would be well taken care of in their absence. They made love long into the night and fell asleep exhausted.
They awoke when the dogs started barking furiously. A mammoth grizzly bear was standing on his back feet and pawing at a bag of caribou. Darren pulled his rifle out and, while standing naked before God and the world, put a bullet through the bear’s head. He cycled the bolt to load another round, expecting to shoot again, but the bear was dead where it dropped. Next to him, Amber stood also without clothes, holding her rifle steady as she aimed.
He never took his eyes from the curves of her body as he carefully put his rifle down. She watched him with a smile as he reached for her. “Don’t make me shoot you,” she said slyly.
“I am the luckiest man on earth.”
“You keep saying things like that and you will be. Shouldn’t we clean that bear first?”
His answer was muffled as he buried his face into her neck and hair.
THE RESCUE PARTIES
Lucas started to get
in the truck with me, and that’s when the screaming started. Both Amber and Madison were coming unhinged and running toward us. I was ready to gun it, but Lucas caved and got out. He jumped in the quad with Chris, and Terri climbed in the passenger seat next to me. Then Madison chased her out and joined me instead, and Phyllis and Husky climbed over her and filled the remainder of the bench seat. She shut the door and we were ready to go.
With musical chairs concluded, we headed south, the direction the twins had gone. Chris went north after Ben, and Abigail and Phillip went east where we thought Darren and Becca might be. We simply went south on the highway, driving slower than I wanted, but we were looking for any signs that the dog sleds had gone from the road. It would have been much more obvious in the winter as the wheeled carts didn’t leave as clear a trail.
After a very long hour, we’d gone less than twenty miles, but that was all we needed. Our children and the two adults were standing at an intersection. They only had one sled, but they still had both dog teams. They cheered when they saw us. We stopped and Phyllis and Husky almost bowled Madison over as they raced from the truck to see all their buddies, the twins and the two teams.
There was a great deal of barking.
We hooked all the dogs together. Charles took the reins of the super team, twenty-four dogs, but it was a level straightaway. Aeryn insisted on riding along. That meant she wanted her turn mushing the big team. We loaded the others into the truck. I sat in the bed with the dogs and Madison drove as we followed the twins the rest of the way home.
Abigail and Phillip followed Becca and Darren’s dog team tracks unerringly. They trailed them as they entered the woods and continued to the valley on the other side. When they got there, they watched as the two dog teams struggled with immense loads on the carts and towed trailers.
“You’re a sight for sore eyes. We couldn’t leave it and we couldn’t move,” Darren said as they approached. Abigail looked wide-eyed at the mounds of meat filling the sleds and trailers.
“What did you get?” she asked, surprise on her face.
“Three caribou and one rather large grizzly bear,” Becca said with a smile.
“Shot him offhand, buck naked!” Darren blurted out, grinning, only to get punched by Becca.
Phillip chuckled while Abigail feigned shock.
The two groups spent the next hour rearranging the loads, splitting the weight as much as possible. With all four sleds loaded heavy, they rolled downhill, trying to keep their speed under control so they didn’t run over their own dogs.
Chris and Lucas followed Nordale to Chena Hot Springs Road to Steese and turned north when it met the Dalton Highway. They had extra gas as they didn’t know how far they needed to go. Ben had said something about one hundred miles. Chris was afraid they wouldn’t find where he’d turned off. Lucas planned to drive one hundred twenty-five miles up the road, then slowly backtrack. He didn’t expect to drive off the main road. Alaska was a big place. They didn’t need to be the next casualties.
Lucas was happy to get Chris talking about the engineers and the “incident” at Eielson as they’d taken to calling it. Chris was able to talk about it without breaking down. And Lucas wanted to know. He didn’t want an accident like that to happen to anyone else.
They drove farther than they thought Ben had gone, then returned south. They saw no sign of where Ben and Maggie had turned off. They took four hours driving back and forth between the eighty- to one-hundred-twenty-mile markers. Seeing nothing, they left for home, hoping that the hunters had gotten behind them and were already on their way.
When Chris and Lucas arrived late in the evening, everyone else was there, except for Ben and Maggie. Clarisse met them at the door. Lucas shook his head.
“We’ll go back out tomorrow,” Chris stated before hugging the older woman.
JUST A FLESH WOUND
After two full nights of rest, Ben felt immensely better. He could stand without the world spinning. Maggie was a wreck. Ben had both sleeping bags so he could sit upright. She also felt she had to stay awake all night to protect the moose meat. She catnapped and that wasn’t enough.
Ben watched her during one of the brief periods where she slept, not wanting to shake her awake with the rifle braced across her lap. He waited, feeling refreshed, smelling the cool air of the late summer. The fall weather was starting to settle in. He loved this time of year. It meant hunting and berry picking, followed by a feverish rush to put everything up before the snow fell.
He and Clarisse would then relax over the winter, reading and doing detail work with leather and wood. The hunting vest he wore was the one he’d made twenty years prior. He touched up the intricate designs on it each winter, adding a little something new to the worn panels of a never-ending story. The leather was supple, almost as soft as flannel.
Ben started the fire, hoping to make a cup of coffee, but Maggie had drank it all. He hoped she’d awaken soon so they could go home, back to the schoolhouse where they’d spend the winter. The moose in the trailer would go a long way toward filling the freezer. They’d get more when they needed it.
He felt guilty, but he couldn’t wait any more. He walked carefully toward Maggie and then grabbed the barrel of her rifle, shaking it gently.
She was startled awake and reflexively pulled the trigger. The shot rang in their ears as the round went somewhere toward the mountains.
“Easy!” Ben said loudly, without trying to yell. His head started hurting again.
“Sorry, sorry,” she mumbled, putting a hand to her head, then rubbing her eyes. “Ben, you’re standing up.”
“Not for too much longer. I think it’s time to go home, don’t you?”
Maggie stood and stuffed her rifle into the back of the quad. She kicked dirt over the small fire and took a drink of water. Together they hooked up the trailer, although it was rough on Ben. She climbed in the driver’s seat as Ben walked around to the other side. Once in, she spared no time driving back toward the Dalton Highway. She went as fast as she dared, but soon the drone of the quad’s motor made her eyelids droop.
Ben smacked her arm, and she woke up. He kept his eye on her but found it hard to keep himself awake as his headache returned. It felt like his head was twice its normal size.
They finally pulled over when she dropped off and started to veer off the road. They pulled over near a stream that ran alongside.
“Give me some privacy, please. I’m going to take a quick bath, wake myself up. I want to be back home as much as you. My little girl is waiting for me, and she’s probably worried sick.”
Ben nodded and walked downstream until he found a spot where the water pooled. He took off his clothes and eased himself in, the cold water shocking to his system. He didn’t stay long, but used a little sand along the shore to scrub himself clean. He found the berry bushes as he was climbing out. He was hungry for something besides moose, so he started picking and eating. And he kept picking and eating, savoring the season’s best blueberries until he heard Maggie shout his name.
“Here, I found blueberries!” he yelled as he kept eating.
“Ben!” came the cry from the road. At that point, he realized his clothes were still hanging on the bush, so he eased himself back into the water. He dressed while she retrieved the quad. They picked and ate more berries, then headed down the road greatly refreshed.
RUNNING FAST AND GETTING SOMEWHERE
Chris and I were ready to take another trip up the Dalton Highway to look for Ben and Maggie when we heard the quad approaching. We waited as it drove in, not too fast as it pulled a trailer filled with moose.
I held out my hands in the traditional “what the hell?” Ben put up his hands, while Maggie nodded and high-fived us as she walked toward the school.
“Would you believe that we hunted the moose just until it found us?” Ben smiled. “I got kicked in the head for ou
r troubles, but the moose got butchered and loaded into our trailer.” He looked tired. The knot on the side of his head was alarming in size. Chris took one of Ben’s arms to help him out of his quad, then escorted him inside to Colleen’s new clinic.
I drove the quad around back where we could get the meat to the kitchen for processing without dripping blood through the hallways. We were having a hard time keeping the hallways cleaned. Too many people running in and out leaving their shoes on. That was a good problem to have, since it seemed we were successful in heading off our food shortage.
August was a great time for berry picking in the interior of Alaska, but North Pole wasn’t the best area for it. We needed some elevation, so we fired up the convoy and loaded every single person, along with Phyllis and Husky, for a day trip of berry picking and anything else that might supplement our diet of moose, fish, and aged canned goods.
Terri thought there would be nothing better than a day of the whole Community picking berries. Children too young to walk were strapped to their parents while the toddlers ate more than they put in the buckets. People compared purple and red fingers as a sign of hard work. We filled a great number of buckets that day. We returned as a very sore bunch of people.
In the business world, companies would have paid a small fortune to conduct the team-building event we went through, but for us, it was our shared understanding that our very survival was at stake. Everyone carried their own weight and a little extra for the person beside them.
Some of the children fought. That was to be expected, but the conflicts were managed, and people grew closer.
Shane’s contributions were significant. Cullen’s death led to the young engineer’s awakening. His revelation was that he didn’t say anything when he should have. He beat himself up over that, but understood that to move forward all he had to do was speak up. He was still an introvert, but able to manage the social side of a life when too many people were in a confined space. He found plenty to do outside the school, but would still smile and talk with the others when he was indoors.
Return (End Times Alaska Book 3) Page 16