He peered out the two sets of double doors, to the mostly empty parking lot beyond, and lingered on whatever he was pretending to look at.
“What are you doing? Do you see something?”
“No,” he said. “I am drying do dink up a way in which you will nod be judging my characder.”
“Well, hurry.”
“When I was in Universidy here in the sdades, I god sick of asking my parends for money. Dey wanded a general accounding for every cend of my expendidures.”
“Okay,” I said, not forgetting the dangers our surroundings presented, but still having to know the ending to this story.
He started and then stopped. “Come on, dude,” I said.
“I used do film women widoud deir acknowledgemend. I did dad wid a special lens dad allowed me do see dere pandies drough deir apparel. I den sold de images and wideo do pornographic websides.”
“Holy shit, dude. You’re a fucking creeper.”
“We all have our wices.”
He managed to work in a good jab there. I guess his vice was no worse than mine. I liked drugs, and he, well, was a peeper who wanted to film women without them knowing it. And look, if you ever saw Aadesh, the last thing you would say was he was a perv. He wore these expensive glasses and dressed impeccably well. His parents were wealthier than mine. He seriously looked like a GQ model. A GQ model who liked to smoke weed and wack-off to voyeur shit.
“Yeah, now let’s get the hell out of here.”
He sheepishly nodded.
We were near the truck when I noticed, to our right, near the edge of the parking lot, what I first thought were three figures. That was until I noticed a crouched fourth figure hanging back several feet from the others. My first thought was that these were the people I had seen earlier, which was probably right, but I wasn’t sure they were what I initially expected or at least hoped for.
“Whad are you doing?”
I had stopped. “You see what I see?”
He stopped as well, not bothering to reply. Just looking.
One of the figures seemed fidgety like she was on a good batch of meth. I didn’t see any odd characteristics with the other three, other than them sharing the same curiosity with us as us with them. Their eyes seemed to bore holes into us. I imagined if they had the same ability for critical analysis, they’d say we were doing the same.
After maybe a minute into the stare-down, the figure in the back motioned to one of the others. Sniffers didn’t do that, I thought. Watching her move towards the crouched figure who had beckoned her, though, made my tensions skyrocket. They did, however, walk like that.
“I… think we should be getting out of here,” I said, beginning to walk faster towards the truck, but not breaking the sight-line with the figures.
Aadesh was way ahead of me, literally. He was in the driver’s seat and ready, already having stowed his loot as I haphazardly threw the supplies into the back. A loud screeching wail erupted just as I was closing my door. I mean, this thing reared her head back and belted the loudest, most terrible thing I had ever heard up until that point. She then ran off in a direction to the east of us. The crouched figure then motioned to the two remaining men. They took off in a sprint towards us.
“Go, goddamn it.”
The thing we had come to know about the Snow Trac, was, if you got on the gas too hard, it sputtered. Sometimes it would die, but many times it would rattle its way from the grips of death and motor through it. Not this fucking time.
Aadesh looked at me with wide eyes before saying, “Fucking hell.”
“Fucking re-start it dude.”
“I am wery much drying to fucking re-sdard de bidch.”
The truck tried to start but sputtered out. They were thirty yards and closing. I had my rifle in hand and was ready to step on the tracks for a shot when the damn thing fired to life with a plume of smoke and a backfire.
“GO!”
The men got close enough that I could see the pained expressions on their gray faces but no further. As fast as they were, the truck was just a little bit faster. Even after we had passed several other stores and covered a lot of ground, they were still running behind us at what seemed like full speed.
“Whad do we do now?” Aadesh asked.
“Get as far as we can away from these two first.”
“De damn ding is being pegged.”
“Well, keep it pegged. They can’t run at full speed forever.”
By the time we reached Illinois Street, we had covered a lot of ground, but somehow one of the Sniffers had managed to stay close enough that we could still see the tiny figure off in the distance, yet far enough we wouldn’t have to worry about him.
“Dose Sniffers were nod of dey variedy we were seeing in Barrow,” Aadesh said nervously.
“No… No, they sure as hell weren’t.”
We had driven with no destination in mind for several minutes before something occurred to me. Actually, a few things occurred to me. “How close do you need to be to Fort Wainwright to fly the drone?”
“I will be honest. I am nod knowing for sure. Id as been a long dime since I have flown one of dem. I god de besd one dey had, dough. So, I would say widhin dwo kilomeders.”
“Yeah, I don’t how many miles two kilometers is, dude.”
“Of course you do nod.”
“Yeah, so.”
“Id is roughly a mile and a half, Jack.”
“Okay, why didn’t you just say that to begin with?”
Changing the subject, he said, “Are you having a plan?”
I left him hanging for a few moments, while I began to take in our surroundings. I’m not sure it was the first moment that things really hit home just how terrible things were, but it was another milestone along the way, especially given how fucked I was most of the time. And the fact was, I was probably more sober at that moment than I had been since I was at the Patch, days earlier. I was dealing with the brunt of reality.
Aadesh spoke, but I put my hand up to let him know I was thinking. He sighed but gave me my moment.
We passed by businesses and houses, most with their lights still on. There wasn’t, as far as I could see, anyway, a solitary person in or around either of those things. Aside from the damn Sniffers, and with any luck, a well-staffed garrison at Fort Wainwright still in the fight, we seemed to be very, very alone.
We passed by a very nice house. It was well maintained. There were no bomb craters or pockmarks. Hell, there wasn’t a single thing out of place that would lead anyone, if anyone was there beside us, to believe something catastrophic had happened. We had been attacked, and I dare say beaten without a solitary shot fired.
As always, I had the pill bottle in my hand. I began to take the lid off but stopped. I don’t know why, really. There was no moment of come to Jesus, as I proved shortly after. But I think I wanted to feel just a little longer what Aadesh was feeling. I didn’t want to lose complete sight of what my good friend was feeling. I then unscrewed the cap and popped several pills.
“Up ahead, there will be a highway. Turn left there,” I said.
“Aboud dime you speak.”
“Sorry.”
No reply.
We followed a street whose name I didn’t remember. I’m not sure that I ever knew its name. I had only been to Fairbanks a few times. I usually went with Tom when he had one of his routine checkups because of his heart condition. With him being a veteran, he always went to Basset Army Community Hospital, near Fort Wainwright. I figured that would be as good of a place as any to take up residence. We just had to find it. I knew the street we were on or was pretty sure, because it ran south, that it should terminate close to the highway. “There should be a highway that runs east and west up ahead.”