Exodus ep-2

by Paul Antony Jones

  The door creaked open, and Emily pushed it open farther with the barrel of the Mossberg. She stepped inside and scanned the interior with the flashlight while Thor ran around checking every nook and cranny. There were no windows in the building, so the interior was lit only by the meager light that made it through the panes of the glass double doors.

  Thor trotted back to her side after a minute, giving no indication they were anything but alone in the store. Emily leaned around the door and beckoned to Rhiannon to join her.

  “Bring your flashlight,” she yelled to the girl as she exited the SUV.

  Inside the store, row upon row of shelves were stacked with heavy-duty boots, camping equipment, dry goods, and fishing gear. Clothing racks held cold-weather jackets and trousers, thick wool sweaters, even thicker scarves, gloves, and balaclavas. Everything the modern outdoorsman would ever need to survive in this unforgiving climate and more.

  Emily couldn’t see any carts, so, after a quick look around, she found a large gray plastic storage container. She discarded the lid and carried the container over to the racks of clothes.

  Rhiannon had already found a parka with a fur-lined hood that she had zipped up so far her face was completely hidden.

  “A big improvement,” said Emily, smiling.

  They worked their way down each aisle, pulling what they needed from the racks, filling the plastic container to almost overflowing.

  Near the camping equipment, Emily found a selection of heavy-duty sleeping bags. The tags attached to them said they were good down to minus thirty degrees. She added two of them to the container, the electric-pink one for Rhiannon.

  Emily double-checked their loot one last time, running over the mental list she had made, making sure they had forgotten nothing.

  Sure they had liberated everything on the list, Emily and Rhiannon each took one end of the box and readied themselves to carry it out to the idling SUV.

  As they navigated carefully between the racks, Emily’s flashlight glinted off a glass display case that took up most of the right wall of the store.

  “Hold on a second,” she said, lowering her end of the box to the ground. She walked over to the display case and played the light over the contents of the case, then along the back wall behind it.

  “Excellent,” she called back to Rhiannon. “Guns. Lots of guns.”

  * * *

  The gun cases were all locked. Emily solved that particular problem with the butt of the Mossberg.

  “Here, hold this,” she said as she handed Rhiannon her flashlight, the sound of the shattered glass still reverberating in their ears. “Keep it angled like this and be careful of the glass.” She used the butt of the shotgun to clear away the remaining broken shards of glass that still jutted from the surround of the case.

  There was a selection of about twenty handguns to choose from. Each one had a small plaque beneath it that displayed the make and model. When Nathan had taught Emily how to shoot, she had used several handguns, but her favorite had been the Glock 19. It was light enough for her to handle easily and held fifteen rounds of nine-millimeter ammunition.

  She searched the glass-strewn case until she spotted the model she was looking for. Emily carefully picked up the pistol, shook off a couple of pieces of broken glass, and gave it a quick once-over. The magazine was missing, but she’d probably find that in the plastic case that came with the weapon.

  She was about to start looking for the Glock’s case when another pistol caught her eye. She picked up the little revolver and placed it next to the Glock on the counter behind the gun case.

  She found both pistols’ protective cases in a drawer beneath the gun display. She added gun oil and a couple of cleaning kits and a shoulder rig for the Glock along with a leather belt holster for the little revolver. Adjacent to the display case were shelves of ammunition. She pulled several boxes of ammo for each of the guns and added them to the clothing and pistols, then went back and grabbed four boxes of shells for the shotgun.

  It took two trips to carry their new “purchases” to the waiting vehicle. They hefted the overflowing container up into the cargo space of the Durango, sliding it in between the remainder of their food and Emily’s bike.

  “Brrrrrrr!” Both girls were shivering as they climbed back into their seats, glad to be out of the biting cold. Emily cranked the heater back up.

  In the thirty minutes or so their shopping trip had taken to complete, a layer of white fluffy snow had covered almost everything, completely transforming the image of the town from empty frontier to classic Christmas card. Emily was surprised at how comforting it was. With the layer of white covering everything, it was easy to think of each of these businesses and homes as containing families huddled around the fire, talking and laughing, safe and warm.

  Emily glanced at the digital clock on the dashboard; it read 3:18. Still a couple of hours of light left but with the snow reducing visibility, it was probably better if they tried to find the university as quickly as possible.

  Jacob had told Emily that it would be a mistake to try to make the final leg of the trip in the Durango. “It just won’t be capable of making it,” he had explained. “The engine isn’t designed to take the kind of gasoline you’ll need, and if it gets cold enough, it’ll freeze in the lines and you along with it.”

  He had told her she needed to find his department at the university. “Look for the Geophysical Institute building. We have a couple of Sno-Cats that will be better suited to the terrain.”

  When she had expressed her concern about how she was supposed to drive this new vehicle, Jacob had told her not to worry. “If you figured out how to drive the Durango, you shouldn’t have a problem.”

  Emily wasn’t sure she agreed with him, but he had been right about most things so far.

  “Okay, young lady, buckle up,” she said and carefully edged the SUV out onto the snow-covered road.

  * * *

  They spent the night on the second floor of the Geophysical Institute building, serenaded by a storm that, come morning, had added a fresh layer of snow several inches deep, completely covering the SUV they had left parked on the narrow road outside the building.

  Jacob had told Emily that she would find the Sno-Cat in a storage facility on the north side of the Geo-Phys building, so, after breakfast—soup they found in the second-floor lounge—they threw on their cold-weather gear and headed out, descending down to ground level. Rhiannon found a fire escape that led them out to the rear of the building, but when Emily pushed down on the bar to open it, the door would not budge. She tried again, this time leaning her shoulder into it, and she felt the door give a little, then a little more as she bumped her shoulder hard against it.

  Sunlight streamed in through the gap along with a large clump of snow that fell with a splat onto the floor.

  Well, that explained the problem with opening the door. A drift of snow, at least four feet high, had piled against the outer door. She thumped the flat of her arm against the door, each time she hit it, the door budged a little bit more until there was just enough room for them to kick the snow away and squeeze through.

  The early morning sun bounced painfully off the top layer of snow, blinding them both momentarily as they stepped from the darkness of the corridor into the open daylight.

  Thor was off in a heartbeat, leaping like a fox through the snow that came up to his belly.

  Emily, her hand pressed against her forehead to shade her eyes, scanned the field of white for any indication of the building that Jacob had talked about.

  At the top of an embankment about three hundred feet or so away, past several mounds of snow that were probably buried cars, Emily saw a large building, its roof heavy with snow and its white sides blending almost seamlessly into the surrounding scenery.

  Parked outside the entrance were several large dump trucks.

  “I think that’s where we need to go,” she said to Rhiannon. The girl looked like an Eskimo bundled up in her the
rmal trousers and parka, her warm breath condensing in the frigid air like smoke from a baby dragon.

  “’Kay.” Another puff of white filled the air.

  The pair, flanked by Thor, trudged their way toward the building, the fresh powder crackling and crunching beneath their boots.

  By the time they crested the embankment leading up to the building, Emily knew this had to be the right place. It was about the size of an aircraft hangar. They stood in front of two huge fold-back doors, both of which were closed and locked tight. A door on the left of the building opened when she twisted the knob, and they stepped into a small office area with a back wall made entirely of shatterproof glass that looked out into the darkness of the hangar’s interior space.

  A set of filing cabinets and a small desk with a computer occupied most of the room. Fixed to the wall next to a second door leading out into the hangar was a corkboard with paper fliers and notices pinned to it. Beneath the corkboard was a metal frame from which hung several sets of keys.

  There didn’t appear to be any windows in the main part of the building, and with the main doors closed, the interior beyond the office was dark as night. Emily hadn’t thought to bring the flashlight and didn’t much care to trudge all the way back through the snow to fetch it. If she had to, she would, but she decided to see if she could figure out a way to open the doors and let some light into the building first. Much like she had with the garage door back at the Jeffersons’ house, she surmised there had to be a way to manually open them.

  She opened the second door leading into the main hangar and asked Rhiannon to stand in the doorway and keep it ajar for her. A thin pathway of light filtered out from the office. It wasn’t much, but it was at least enough for her to be able to make out the shape of the two main outer doors. Stepping into the larger space, she edged over to the double doors, pausing a minute as her eyes adjusted to the darkness.

  Through the gloom Emily spotted a large metal handle protruding from a gray oblong box that came up to her waistline. It was secured to the floor by four bolts. A pulley system ran from the box and disappeared into the darkness high above her.

  She took the handle firmly in both hands and rotated it once. The mechanism inside the box made a clacking sound as Emily turned the handle farther and the doors rattled like they’d been buffeted by a gust of wind. Two more turns of the handle and a laser-thin beam of light appeared at the center of the doors running from floor to ceiling. With each turn of the handle, the beam widened and grew, flooding the interior of the building with the sharp white light of the winter wonderland beyond its walls.

  A few minutes later and both doors were fully opened. Emily dropped the hood on her parka, putting up with the sudden chill as the sweat on her forehead began to freeze.

  “You all right?” asked Rhiannon.

  “Fine,” Emily replied as she drew in deep icy breaths that stung her nose and throat. She beckoned the girl over to her side.

  “Let’s find this thing and get out of here.”

  Two rows of vehicles lined the interior of the storage building. A snowplow and a couple of trucks adapted to spread salt over icy roads waited off to her right. On the left was a second snowplow and, just beyond that, she saw a large bright-orange tracked vehicle that looked like it was designed for a science-fiction movie…or to traverse the snowy wastelands of this world, she thought. That could only be the Cat.

  She walked over to the nearest side of the vehicle. It had four powerful-looking triangular tracks instead of wheels. Each was attached to a flat chassis on top of which sat a glass-encased four-door cab that contained two rows of seats. It looked like whoever had designed this machine had taken the cab from an eighteen-wheeler and dropped it onto a tank. In front of the cab was the squared-off engine compartment, and to the rear of the cab was a large silver tank that she assumed contained the fuel. Seven large windows in the cabin gave whoever was driving this thing a 360-degree field of vision.

  An emblem etched on the engine compartment read TUCKER SNO-CAT.

  “Wow,” said Rhiannon. “Are we going to be riding in that?”

  It really was more like a tank than the SUV, Emily thought as she slowly circled the vehicle.

  “Ohhh-kay!” she said aloud as she stood next to the giant machine. “How the hell am I supposed to drive this?”

  * * *

  First things first: she needed to find the keys.

  While Rhiannon waited with Thor next to the Sno-Cat, Emily walked back to the office and the sets of keys she had seen dangling from beneath the corkboard. Each pair of keys was attached to a plastic tag indicating which vehicle it belonged with, and Emily quickly located one that had “Sno-Cat 1644” written across it in thick red marker.

  Keys in hand, she headed back into the hangar.

  The Cat’s triangular tracks were almost three feet at their highest vertices. To get into the vehicle’s cab, Emily needed to use them as a ladder to climb up to a flat aluminum access gantry running the length of the vehicle. Much like the Durango, the cab of the Sno-Cat had two sets of doors, the first accessed the front section, where the driver’s area and a single passenger seat were located. The second was for the passenger section of the cab. The cabin doors were locked, but the keys she had found slipped easily into the lock. She pulled the door open.

  Inside the cab Emily was happily surprised at how similar the interior layout was to the Dodge. There was a regular steering wheel with a gearshift stick on one side of the column and one to control lights on the other. The dash had a similar cluster of indicators and dials she had become accustomed to driving the SUV. Even the seats looked comfortable and familiar. She’d been expecting something far more complicated, but the only unfamiliar thing she noticed was a bank of switches on the right side of the console. A quick inspection of these showed her they were most likely heating and exterior lighting controls. There was even a CD player, for crying out loud.

  In the time it had taken to drive the Dodge Durango from Stuyvesant to Fairbanks, Emily had become quietly confident in her newfound skills as a driver, but she found herself feeling nervous as she settled her butt into the Cat’s driver’s seat. This thing was a hell of a lot bigger than the SUV, and like the tank it reminded Emily of, it looked more than capable of causing major damage to anything it hit…or ran over.

  “Better if you stand out of the way,” she called down to Rhiannon. “And keep a tight hold of Thor.”

  Rhiannon slipped her gloved fingers beneath the dog’s collar and guided him into the space between the snowplow and sander on the opposite side of the building.

  “Hurry up,” she yelled back. “It’s freezing out here.”

  Emily pulled the cabin door closed and looked over the controls. “Nothing to it,” she whispered as she slipped the keys into the ignition and turned them. The engine turned over once…twice…then caught, and the cabin filled with a deep rumbling as the engine sprang to life. A large puff of exhaust fumes coughed from the engine exhaust and a barely audible thrum vibrated through the cabin as the engine settled into its natural cadence. She checked the fuel gauge. It indicated the tank was almost full.

  Slipping the gear stick into drive, she slowly pressed down on the accelerator. The engine revved, but the tracks of the Cat did not move an inch. What the? Glancing over at the console of lights and indicators, she saw a large button glowing red. Etched above it were the words PARKING BRAKE. She pressed it once, and the light went out.

  She eased her foot back onto the accelerator. The Sno-Cat gave a slight shudder, and then it was moving, inching forward as its tracks rumbled across the concrete floor.

  Emily whooped with joy as she guided the Cat toward the exit. She beckoned to Rhiannon to meet her outside the doors.

  When she was clear of the hangar doors, Emily brought the Cat to a halt and pushed the gear stick back into the park position. With the engine still running, she climbed from the driver’s seat into the passenger seat. Opening the passenger door,
she beckoned for Rhiannon to come around to her side of the vehicle as she stepped out onto the access gantry.

  “You’re going to have to climb up the tracks. It’s easy. Don’t be afraid,” she said, yelling to be heard over the rumble of the engine.

  The girl hesitated for a moment, then used the deep ridges of the track’s tread as finger- and toeholds and pulled herself up until Emily could reach down and take her hand. She pulled her the rest of the way. “Inside,” she yelled, pointing toward the passenger seat. Closing the door, Emily moved to the rear door and pulled it open. The door’s hinges were positioned so the door could be laid flush against the cab and not block the gantry access to the back part of the cabin.

  Thor waited patiently at the foot of the Cat, his tail sweeping the dusty concrete floor. Kneeling down, at the far end of the gantry where he could see her, Emily called the dog to her.

  He didn’t hesitate, leaping onto the rubber tracks and using his powerful hind legs to launch himself over the metal lip and onto the gantry next to Emily.

  “Good boy,” she cooed and ushered the dog into the back compartment of the Cat. He climbed inside and sat facing the front windshield, panting quietly.

  Emily climbed down the tracks and walked around to the driver’s side, then climbed back up again and retook her place in the driver’s seat, closing the door behind her.

  “Wagons roll,” she called out as she slipped the Cat into gear and pulled out of the storage facility and onto the snow.

  * * *

  The Cat was incredibly easy to maneuver, nimbly moving over the snowy surface with no loss of grip; the four huge caterpillar tracks provided a surprising amount of stability and traction. It was a little bumpy in the cabin, but that was something they could put up with. The important thing was that they now had a vehicle that could travel safely over the roads and snowfields that Jacob had warned her were to come.