LASKIN KILLED HIS ENGINE AND TOOK A QUICK LOOK over his shoulder, wondering where the fucking trucks were then realizing he didn’t really give a shit. From the top of the hill he looked back down what at used to be the main, cross-country highway, a deep four-laned chute that had been blasted out of the rockface lining either side. Laskin figured it had probably been a couple of years since any machine beside a snowmobile had tried to get up what the locals had called Thibeault Hill back in the day.
He’d told Talos that bringing along the trucks was a bad move, that nothing was left of the highway to even plough. But Police Services demanded the ‘safe removal of non-criminal civilians’ so Talos had agreed on paper to having the trucks written into the action plan. But Scott had been pretty clear that this wasn’t a rescue mission and to not worry too much about what Police Services wanted anyway. Now staring up at the sheen on the hill, he guessed it didn’t matter, those trucks weren’t going anywhere, not with that ice.
Below he could hear the revving of the trucks as they tried to find some traction. One of the snowploughs had already slid sideways down the hill and was face first in a high snow bank.
Christ Almighty.
He headed back down the hill.
A truck was sending the snow spitting outwards under its big tires, digging in deep before the back tires even reached the icy surface. Laskin barked at the driver to shut the fucking truck off.
Laskin grabbed his flashlight and shot the beam up the hill. The thing glistened like a goddam skating rink.
“Wow,” Miller said, “I didn’t know it had gotten that warm. Look at it. It’ll be near impossible to get those big ploughs up there.”
Laskin turned to him in irritation. He saw Turner and Miller watching him.
“I don’t need a fucking weather report.”
Miller asked, “Any other way of getting those ploughs up there?”
“No, there’s no other way up the hill or you wouldn’t be standing here with your thumb up your ass would you?”
One of the drivers approached them, shouted over the din, “Want me to contact Muspar? I could head over to the outpost.”
“I don’t think that would be too fucking helpful right now,” Laskin snapped, thinking of Muspar lying there in his own cooled blood, his body probably now thick and waxy, then saying, “You guys take one of the trucks that can still move over to the sand silos there,” pointing. “See ’em, down the highway there on the right? Start working on the hill and see if you can get anywhere.”
Then the drivers were complaining, one of them saying, “Well, how long do we have to sit out here? We aren’t exactly able to check into a motel or anything you know. It’s damn cold.”
Laskin told them to shut the fuck up while he figured it out. He wasn’t a goddam babysitter, and now with Mitch fucking off on him, he wasn’t in the mood for anything but getting Slaught into a body bag. Just as well the trucks were stuck; he hadn’t really planned on bringing them along anyway. Best to keep them busy down here, giving him a chance to get up to that shithole and take care of unfinished business. Now with Muspar out of the way, Laskin wasn’t feeling too committed to honouring the terms of that agreement. He figured Talos wasn’t either.
“You sit here until we get back. How hard is that to understand?”
“You mean we’re going on?” asked Miller.
“That’s right, Miller. Now let’s move out. I want this done. These bozos can catch up once they get moving.”
“But what if they don’t get moving. How are we going to get everyone out of there?” Miller asked. “We can’t bring them out on our snowmachines, and there weren’t that many sleds up there by my count, only a dozen or so. And there’s kids too, Mr. Laskin. I don’t see how it’s feasible.”
“Think Talos ever thought it was feasible? They know there’s no road up here. So open your fucking eyes, okay?”
Laskin just walked off, barking at them to get a move on, they were heading out. Miller caught up to him. “So, sir, really, what is the plan?”
“Are you completely fucked up, Miller?”
“No sir, I don’t believe so.”
Laskin was shaking his head. “We don’t bring them out. Problem solved.”
Miller was just staring at him now so Laskin said, “They want to stay so fucking bad, fine, there’s enough assholes in the City already.”
“There’re probably enough machines to get some of the women and children out sir.”
“Don’t give me that women and children shit, Miller. There aren’t enough sleds, end of story. You don’t have the stomach for it? Go help those sorry bastards back there sand the highway. Maybe one day you’ll get your trucks up there for your big rescue.”
“Have you briefed the team on this?”
Laskin looked at Miller’s face. These cops were something else. All yes sir, no sir, except when it counted. He’d be so fucking glad to be done with these jerkoffs and back on his own. From now on man, that was the way it would be, go it alone or don’t bother. “Yes, I briefed Talos. That good enough for you and your mother?”
Miller hesitated, then asked, “Do we have clearance for changing the operation from Police Services, sir?”
Laskin had already been walking away but he came back fast at Miller, grabbing him by his parka. “You question my command again and I’ll leave you behind too, understand? Now do your job before I write you up, you fucking wuss.”
“Well, can you see anything?”
Chumboy and Larose were hunkered down in a rock cut half way down Thibeault Hill. From where they crouched off to the side, they had a view of the lower part of the hill as well as the scatterings of buildings along the other side of what used to be the main highway.
“Looking at them right now,” Chumboy said. He had the night vision goggles they’d taken from Laskin’s team.
“No way.”
“Yes sir, just the way Ricky said. You just don’t want to believe it.”
“How many?”
“Again, the Rickyman was right on the money, seven sleds, four trucks.”
Larose took the night-vision goggles from Chumboy and asked, “This going to work?” and then said, “Hey, these are cool.”
“Nice toy, eh?”
Larose said that Chumboy sure liked that gadget shit.
“What if I do? Anishinaabe brothers are allowed a little high tech you know.”
“Yeah, well, what does your low tech knowledge tell you about that red streak spreading across the sky there?” Larose asked.
Chumboy figuring he was talking mostly for the sake of talking. Larose pointed to the horizon, “See, look at that, it’s going to be a red sky in the morning, man. That’s not good, right?”
Across the sky, thick charcoal clouds were emerging from the night, sliced by a single thin streak of dark red. Chumboy told Larose it looked liked the scar that ran across his mother’s belly. She’d given birth to him by c-section, had said otherwise it would have been like trying to drive a Ford pick-up through a doghouse.
“That doesn’t tell me much about the red sky, Chum.”
“You a sailor?”
“What?”
“It goes, red sky in morning, sailors take warning. Are you a sailor?”
“No Chumboy, I’m not a sailor,” Larose sounding testy, sitting back on his haunches.
“Then you got nothing to worry about, okay?”
They fell into silence, listening to the creaking of the trees, the birches slapping their tips together, cackling up high. Chumboy heard the engines revving up again and took a deep breath before he turned around to look down the hill, said, “Lock and load buddy,” as if they were in some sort of movie.
Larose said, “Ever think about that day at the warehouse, that guy shooting that kid in the back and how we all just stood there, almost knowing it was coming, or that something bad was coming, and saying things like, oh come on, give the kid the gloves. I can still see the kid turning, smiling, as if he was thinking that things like that didn’t happen in real life.”
“Well buddy, we aren’t standing around tonight now are we?”
“We could die here Chum, I mean it. I was just a parts guy. What the fuck do I know about any of this guerilla shit?”
“Look Larose, that day at the warehouse, we all made a choice. If we’d made another choice, some of us might already be dead, some of us might be in jail, and the rest of us would be trawling dumpsters for wasted Taco Bell shit and thinking Lysol was a fine merlot. We’d just be shit on the streets of the City.”
Larose thought about it for a few seconds, said, “Yeah, fuck, I don’t know.”
“Look, its like that Dillon dude said in Alien 3, when it was coming down to the wire, and they were deciding if they should go after the alien beast, and he says, ‘You’re all going to die. The only question is how you check out. Do you want it on your feet or on your fucking knees, begging?’ Essentially, Larose, that is the choice facing us.”
“Wasn’t it Ripley who said that?”
“No, it was Dillon.”
“Sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure, but you’re missing the point here.”
“No, I got the point, I’m not a fucking moron, I just think you’re wrong about who said it.”
“Larose, that is ridiculous, I’ve seen that movie at least twenty times.”
“You kidding me?”
“No, I’m not kidding.”
“Oh, shit, where are the sleds? I can’t see them anymore. I can’t see Laskin anywhere. Shit, shit, shit!” Larose was scrambling now, getting into position.
“Them trucks have been raising a ruckus, can’t hear shit over them. There’s a chance they could have slipped by us. Or they could be down behind the trucks, hard to say.”
“Fuck. What now?”
“Well Harv, not much we can do about it.”
“But Johnny is counting on it taking at least a day for them to get up, between the ploughing and the speed of the trucks. But with the sleds? Shit, they could get there in a couple of hours.”
“Well then, we better get our job done and get back up there fast as we can, eh?”
“Maybe we should just go back. What about Jordan? He can’t handle any of that shit on his own—Christ almighty, we should have left Shaun back there too. I think we should head back.”
“No, we’ve come this far, I say we finish it right. Jordan can get a hold of Johnny if he needs to. And this might be our only chance. Anyway, I think things are gonna be okay.”
“What the fuck could lead you to that conclusion, Chum?”
“My Auntie said we needed a miracle.”
“No kidding, that’s exactly what’s fucked up about all of this, Chum.”
“You know, that’s your problem Larose. You only have one way of thinking about things.”
“Yeah, see if the answer lies in a miracle, well, you don’t get a miracle when things are going okay. You get a miracle when you’re desperate. So now we qualify.”
“That’s some messed up thinking, Chum.”
“Well me, I figure we kick start this chain of events and see what happens. We can sort out our theological differences later.”
Chumboy swung back around and up, peering over the bank with the binoculars. “This makes me think of another line from the movie.”
“What’s that?”
“I say we grease this rat-fuck son of a bitch right now.”
Larose took a deep breath. “Let’s go then.”
He grabbed the beacon and flashed it twice, and from down below, over by the wreck of the strip mall, two lights flicked back at them.
They watched as Jeff hauled the string of crap out across the road with his snowmachine. They’d counted on Laskin’s guys still running their trucks and not being able to hear much of anything over the big engines, and it was likely they couldn’t see past the glare of the floodlights. Still, there was a lot of gambling going on with this one, especially now since they weren’t sure exactly where Laskin and his crew were.
Jeff, Shaun and Ricky had spent the last couple of hours pulling together a shitload of old butane and propane tanks and empty gas cans, tying them into a thick length of rope and jimmy-rigging in a bunch of sticks of crap dynamite and flares. After securing the rope to the back of the snowmachine, Jeff hauled it across the bottom of the road in the dark. He then left the snowmachine and ran back all hunched over, just like he was in the movies. Larose waited, counting softly in the dark, imagining the three of them scrambling up through the snow trail along the edge of the cliffs until they were far enough away. Then two flashes of the light. Good to go.
“You’re up,” said Larose. Chumboy swung his rifle across his back and said “Keep an eye on me. If you don’t, my Auntie will kill you.”
“Yeah,” said Larose, “she mentioned that.”
Ricky crouched down beside Jeff and Shaun, breathing hard after scrambling up the embankment deep with snow. After listening to the guys arguing about what would work and what wouldn’t, and soaking the rope with everything from kerosene to Tiny’s homemade hooch, Shaun said he was sure it would burn like a bastard. Jeff has also set a couple of plastic jugs full of fuel on the snowmachine for good measure. Ricky wasn’t sure what to expect. Would it start slow or blow up? They were catching their breath, Ricky listening in the dark, wondering if he’d be able to hear the shot from Chumboy over the roar of the trucks and clanging of metal below.
Shaun said he thought he’d heard it, and they waited as a few seconds dragged by. Then things sort of happened fast after that.
The idea had been to drag the junk across the road, hitching enough potential explosive trash to it that it would blast a deep gouge into the snow to stop the trucks getting up the hill. Then all they needed was the magic of Chumboy’s remote flare gun. Chumboy told them he used them back in the day when working summers fighting forest fires, using them to start control fires to slow things down. Said if he could get within a couple hundred feet he could hit the plastic milk jugs, figured it might just do the trick, starting some flames going that could then spread along the rope. With the rope burning down through the snow, all the debris and crap along it would sink down too, creating a big fucking melted mess that would stop anyone going up that road for a least another twenty-four hours or so. They’d also thought it might pack quite the psychological punch, making Laskin’s team re-group, thinking that there might be some more guerilla action along the trail. Johnny said if they could just create enough of a delay to allow for the public airing of their propaganda masterpiece, it might just to the trick.
Watching from his position up the hill, Ricky saw the fire eating its way along the rope and then following it back towards the abandoned convenience store that sat at the end of the strip mall. The fire was grabbing everything in its path as it tore along towards where the rope ran out just past the stack of empty propane tanks sitting in front of the store. He’d glanced over his shoulder and could see the fire licking up around the racks of old propane tanks.
He was still thinking it was a bit of a letdown when the rack blew, a hard, violent cracking sound sending the tanks skidding up and outwards over the snow, causing Ricky to slip, turning too fast, leaving him sitting on his ass watching the red and orange dancing around the blue flames. Scrambling up in the dark, he was glad Jeff has insisted they get up the hill right away, Ricky thinking at the time he’d like to stay down and watch it go up.
Jeff said, “Holy shit, did you see that?”
Shaun whistled, said, “Went up like a fuck-ing a-tomic bomb.”
Ricky scrambled up and just kept moving.