“Jack?”
I showed him my shaking hands. “It’s bad.”
Aadesh nodded. “Derrible.”
“One of the attackers was still alive.”
“Did you have to—?”
“No. I think they poisoned him. Apparently, he didn’t have the stomach for killing our people.”
“Too bad de others did.”
“We have to leave.”
“We do nod have a wehicle, Jack.”
I nodded. “The problem isn’t leaving. I have an idea for that. The problem is finding where we need to go.”
Aadesh walked over to one of the delivery bays and began to point. “We know in which direction Barrow lies. If we direct ourselves on the course in which I currently point, we will come upon Barrow or some close vicinity dereof.”
“Yeah, but how do we stay on the correct heading?”
“I don’t know ewerything. I know dat is,” again pointing with his index finger, “roughly da correct heading. Dat is all I know, okay.”
“We have no choice. After we warm up for a bit, we’ll go see if there’s any juice in the battery Avery used to fire up the heater. If there is, we’ll try to take the front-end loader.”
“Da one dat is used to clean the Patch of snow?”
“Yes.”
“I believe it only has seating for one, correct?”
“We’ll put you in the bucket.” He looked at me skeptically. “Do you know how to drive it?”
“No. But I’m not sure I want to ride in de bucket.”
“Well, there is always walking?”
“I’ll ride in de bucket.”
We went about the task of getting everything together we thought we needed, including the ten blankets Aadesh believed necessary for him to not freeze to death. Whatever, I thought. If that kept him from griping, and we could fit the other things in there, he could take whatever he thought he needed.
I had the battery in the loader and was ready to give it a try. The lights switched on. That was a good sign. I turned the key, and a plume of smoke came out of the stack as it came to life on the first try. “I’ll be damned,” I said out loud, “the damn thing runs!” Aadesh gave me the thumbs up, and he began to quickly load things into the bucket. I had the rifle and the bag I took from the man plus a few odds and ends in the cab with me. Everything else, including Aadesh’s rifle, was with him.
I oriented the bucket a few feet off the ground and in such a manner that he could lie down without worrying about rolling out. I did a quick check of my gear in the cab and was getting ready to put the front loader in gear when I saw someone moving towards the driver’s door. I was getting ready to let Aadesh know how stupid it was to get out of the bucket without letting me know when I noticed it wasn’t Aadesh.
Instead, it was the guy I found sick in the Commons, except he didn’t seem to be sick anymore… not exactly, anyway. His head moved in crazy directions as he came closer and closer to the cab. “Fuck this,” I said out loud while also closing the door. Without warning, the guy began trying to get to me in the cab. Luckily for me, he wasn’t coordinated enough to climb the three steps necessary to access the door, or smart enough to reach for the door handle that was easily within reach of his grasping hands. All he could manage to do was pound with his fists on the bottom of the door.
I switched the loader into gear and goosed the gas. We lurched forward. I saw Aadesh now standing up in the bucket and pointing ahead of us. His eyes were wide with fear. I pointed to the guy pounding on the cab door. He waved and pointed frantically ahead, ignoring the seemingly bigger problem I was dealing with. I put my hands in the air letting him know I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about. Then I saw exactly what he was talking about.
Through the powerful lights of the loader, I could see figures slowly emerging from the dark. First one and then two, three, and finally I lost count at ten. The leading edge of the group was almost on Aadesh, and he was making sure I knew how bad of a predicament he was in. He also made sure to let me know, because of his highly animated gestures, that he wanted to get the hell out of the bucket. I yelled for him to “Stay in the fucking bucket!” I then raised it up several feet in the air, out of their reach. His wide eyes relaxed, albeit only slightly.
I don’t know why, but I tried to reason with the dude pounding on the cab door. “Get the hell away,” I said, gesticulating that he should move away from the rear wheel that was coming very close to squishing him. His big, black eyes never broke their perpetual lock with mine and, undeterred, he continued pounding until he was simply not able to match the pace of the front loader. His gray face contorted as he fell away from view, and his body was a scant hindrance to the big wheels as he passed under.
I turned my attention to the other attackers, while also slowly increasing the speed of the loader. One of them was quick fodder for the front left wheel. Another spun in circles, confused about what he should be doing. Some of the others were simply too slow to react to the loader as we sped by. There were two of them, though, who managed to time things correctly and jump on both the right and left front fenders, in something that seemed way too coordinated for my liking.
The one on my left was especially adept. In a couple motions, he used one of the steps of the cab as a foot peg, leaping off it and landing squarely on the fender. The one on my right, although in a much less agile manner, grasped onto the fender and willed himself up.
I remember their gray faces vividly. There was evil intent in their eyes. While they didn’t exactly look inhuman, they looked just enough different that I wasn’t going to be too upset if they also found themselves under the big wheels of the loader, especially since the one on the left was now trying to climb the bucket arm up to where Aadesh was.
I pantomimed that he should use the gun he had to try to shoot the Sniffer nearest to him. He looked confused as hell. The idea of actually using the gun to shoot someone seemed to hit home hard. He fumbled with the rifle. The other Sniffer was stuck on the fender, not sure of what he should do next. We would concentrate on the other one first, assuming Aadesh didn’t shoot himself in the process.
With one hand on the control throttle, and the left side of my right foot pressing down on the seat so the safety switch wouldn’t cut the engine, I opened the cab door and yelled out to Aadesh. “Shoot him, dammit!”
The Sniffer looked at Aadesh, then back at me before settling on the closest target, Aadesh. He went back to trying to find a way to get him.
At least by that point Aadesh was holding the rifle in a firing position. The gray was close enough that he could just put the tip of the barrel on the Sniffer’s head and fire. He got part of that correct. He used the tip of the barrel to poke the Sniffer. Except that he couldn’t put enough force behind it to dislodge him from the arm.
“Shoot him!” I yelled.
Finally, a shot was fired, and the Sniffer fell to the ground. Aadesh had shot him in what looked like his neck. Wherever he hit him, he was now off the loader. Aadesh, looking very pale, ejected a vomitus spray, followed by a long string of words I wasn’t sure made any sense at all. I couldn’t make sense of them, anyway. Besides, I was still worried about the Sniffer who was somehow still managing to ride out the rough terrain on the fender.
I serpentined the loader, trying make him fall off, but he was holding on for dear life. With all my attention being paid to the hitchhikers, I hadn’t noticed the lights approaching quickly from behind us. Aadesh’s eyes got wide again. He saw the truck speeding to my left, going way faster than he should have been on the ice. The window was down and the man had a gun aimed in our direction.