The North (#wattys2016)

Chapter 14

Sid gave me a running play-by-play of Ark Two’s actions. God love Melanie Dixon: she’d armed herself with a baseball bat and was clubbing to death every monster that dared attempt to claw its way up her hull. I made a mental note to worship the ground she walked on if we got through this intact because what she was doing took a huge amount of guts. What I was about to do, on the other hand, would require less in the way of guts and more in the way of dumb luck.

I’d hauled the 20 foot, rubber-coated slave cable out from underneath a floor panel, and cleaned the dirt out of each receptacle. Dawson helped me coil the 50lb monster onto my crew commander seat, and then I nervously gripped the hatch handle, waiting for word from Sid that it was clear to make my move. My throat was dry and my heart was hammering the inside of my chest like a battering ram. I checked the battery gauge on the wall panel. We had barely enough juice left for another radio signal, so I ordered that Sid assemble a mobile radio and hail Cruze’s APC.

“Vehicle radio is dead - I’ve got Cruze on the man-pack!” Sid shouted, in a voice that sounded like he’d just won the lottery.

“Thank fuck! Are there any creeps around our hull?”

“None that I can see,” he said.

I gripped the handle tighter. “Are you sure?”

“For fuck sake, Dave, I don’t know! It’s pitch black out there and I don’t have any infra-red, so my field of view is maybe a hundred feet or so.”

“Everyone listen up!” I bellowed. “I’ll go hatches up first. If the coast is clear, I’ll hammer on the hull of the carrier. Kate and Sid … get your asses topside and provide cover as soon as you hear me!”

“Don’t worry – we’ve got your back!” answered Dawson.

I took a deep breath and said a little prayer as I exhaled heavily and gave the hatch lever a sharp turn to the right. It opened with a loud screech, and I poked my head up to make sure everything was clear.

The first thing that hit me was the sharp stench of diesel in the air. I did a quick look to my left and right, pushed the hatch door wide open and lifted myself topside. In the distance I could make out Cruze’s panel markers, showing the rear of her carrier. She was climbing a sharp incline and there were dozens of creeps hot on her tail. I hammered on the hull with the heel of my boot and in seconds both Sid and Kate Dawson were standing in their respective hatches, carbines in hand.

“Cover me!” I shouted as I hauled up the slave cable. In the distance I could hear sounds of branches being snapped to pieces as Cruze’s carrier lured the monsters away from us.

I hauled the slave cable to the nose of the carrier, dropped down onto my belly and shone my flashlight on the side of the hull. The red beam offered little illumination, but I spotted the slave receptacle just above the front right tire. I reached down and wrapped my hand around the receptacle cover, giving it a sharp twist to unlock it.

I managed to get the cover free, pulled the male end of the slave cable over the receptacle and plugged it in. A bead of sweat rolled down the center of my back as I gulped another breath of air. We were ready for a boost. All we needed was for Cruze to make it back to our vehicle and it would be a simple job to plug them into the front of our carrier. Doug would get the juice to turn over our engine and we could get the hell away from Airdrie.

I was close to feeling we might actually make it out of our predicament when I caught a flash of movement coming from a copse of bushes no more than thirty feet away. The air filled with the sound of broken branches, and a surge of panic shot straight into my bowels. It was another group of creeps. I scrambled to my feet as I spotted the front panel markers on Cruze’s carrier, heading down the incline eight hundred meters away.