The North (#wattys2016)

Chapter 17

Everyone recognized that the risks of veering north into the vicinity of Red Deer outweighed the risk of running into whoever the hell had murdered those two people. Sid was spoiling for a fight. Maybe that was his own ingrained sense of justice, or it might have been the fact that he was getting restless, sitting in a turret with twin machine guns and nobody to shoot at.

We fuelled up both carriers with the remaining diesel and cut through the wire on both sides of the highway. All hands were hatches up and keeping a watchful eye for signs of life as the carriers bounced across empty farmland. The drizzle had ended, but the temperature was dropping and I could see my breath every time I exhaled. It was probably going to snow; not an uncommon occurrence in November when you live on the Canadian prairie.

I slipped off my combat jacket and pulled a sweater over my head. I really hoped it wouldn’t snow. Whoever these Eden survivalists might be, they could easily follow our tracks and come up on us from behind. Then again, there’s only so much stealth you can use when you’re bombing up the back forty in an armored personnel carrier. The constant rumble from our engines could be heard from miles away, so I decided that whoever was out there, they had to know we were coming.

They just didn’t know what was coming.

It’s one thing to whack a pair of survivors who might have made the tragic mistake of trespassing on your land claim. It’s another thing entirely when the trespassers are carrying automatic weapons, mortars, high explosive charges and light anti-tank weapons on board. From a purely tactical perspective, the Eden tribe would be out-gunned. Save for an RCMP station, the closest establishment carrying a stockpile of conventional military armaments was in Camp Wainwright, a good six hundred kilometers to the north-east.

Surely their land claim didn’t stretch that far.        I popped back up in the hatch and glanced at my watch. It was just past four in the afternoon and we’d been driving for more than an hour since we crossed highway two. The first place we came to where people might once have lived wasn’t even a village. On the map it was called Neapolis, but it was nothing more than a few barns, a tourist information shack and a couple of rundown bungalows. We skirted along the sides of grid road 3-12 so we wouldn’t kick up any gravel dust that could be seen for miles by anyone in a sentry post. It was the best I could come up with in the way of stealth. I glanced down at my map. Dinsmore wasn’t more than a few kilometers to the east, so I hailed Ark Two on the radio.

“We’ve still got a ways to go before we hit Dinsmore. Bring your carrier up alongside mine.”

“On it,” Cruze replied, as we edged up to an enormous red barn.

“We’ll stop here, Doug,” I said through the intercom.  Our carrier came to a gentle stop. Within seconds, Ark Two had pulled up beside us and I looked around for any signs of life.

The radio hissed. “One road into town and one road out,” said Cruze. “If they’ve got it blocked off we could be in trouble.”

“Agreed. Get on my tail once I cross onto the main drag. We’ll creep forward until we see anything that might offer some decent scrounging.”

“Well, there’s a barn, Dave,” she replied. “Maybe there’s some stuff inside?”

“Maybe. Give us some cover while we go inside and investigate. How’s Jo doing?”

Cruze answered in a haze of static. “Jo’s good. She’s having a big nap in the back. Mel’s doing her level best to let her sleep.”

“Cool … let her sleep some more.” I answered back.

I hit the intercom. “Listen up! Cruze is going to provide cover for us. Dawson, toss down a couple of Jerry cans and Sid, grab the siphoning tube from the tool kit. Grab your personal weapons and we’ll check out that barn.”