The Long Dark by B.J. Farmer (reading women .TXT) 📕

from the A.C. Store in Barrow. Oranges, bananas, and trail mix for breakfast. It was a hell of a lot better than the stale MREs we had been eating. Speaking of eating, the girl said she still wasn’t hungry or thirsty. When I asked her how long it had been since she’d eaten, she said she didn’t remember.

Needing a few moments of privacy, Sam and I leaned against the hallway wall just outside the room. Before I had a chance to say anything, Sam said, “‘At ain’t Tish in ‘ere.”

“Yeah --”

“Listen ta me for a minute. I get it. ‘Ey some bad shit goin on. But killin a kid ‘cause you scared?”

“I’m not afraid of her,” I emphasized the word her. “I’m afraid I’ll lose you and Avery.”

Sam sucked air in between his teeth. “Could you kill ‘er? I mean, could you, really?”

“To save you and Avery? Yes.”

His eyes got wide, and he shook his head as he said, “’En what?”

“We live.”

“You even alive if you dead inside?”

“I don’t know, Sam, but you ain’t alive if you’re dead, either.”

Chapter 5

After the run-in with the people in the trucks and the Sniffers, I lost the ice road. Afraid to stop the loader and get my head straight, I guessed on a direction, and with a lot of hesitation, drove towards it. After what had to be close to an hour and not seeing any signs of Barrow, I began doubting my decision. So, I changed direction for the second time. Twenty or so minutes later, I was about to change the course once again when Aadesh started frantically waving his arms and pointing.

I opened the cab door and called out to him, “What?”

“Barrow is dad way!” he yelled, pointing back in the direction to our right.

Still not seeing what he was seeing, I asked, “How the hell do you know that?”

He furiously pointed in the opposite direction and yelling, “Dad way!”

“I don’t fucking see any… thing,” I said, before finally seeing what he was talking about. He began to calm down as I turned in the direction of the faint, hazy glow back to our right.

Within twenty more minutes, I saw evidence of the sea wall. The euphoria of having found it washed over me, but it was short-lived.

We ditched the loader and made our way towards the sea wall, the jagged shards of ice stabbed at our legs as we stumbled our way over the treacherous sea ice. The lone beacon lay somewhere off to our right.

No streetlights. No people about. Nothing but darkness lay before us. “Fuck,” I uttered as we shambled over the last, especially rough section of ice before reaching the sea wall.

“Jesus,” Aadesh said.

“Yeah.”

“Whad is wery much happening? Dis is crazy shid.”

“Same as the Patch looks like.”

“So, we have been addacked?” Aadesh asked as he stepped in place and rubbed the backs of his legs.

I assumed he was asking a rhetorical question. I focused on the fact that he had to be nearly frozen. “You going to be alright?”

“I am a liddle cold, bud I will most cerdainly be okay.”

“I think you’re a little more than cold, bro.”

“I am freezing, bud I’m drying do remain posidive.”

“We’d still be out there on the ice if it weren’t for you.”

Aadesh shuttered. “We god lucky. I could nod see shid oud dere.”

I laughed. “Well, you saw what mattered most.”

“Dad is drue, I am supposing.”

“What now?” I asked, clueless about what came next.

Aadesh shook his head. “Nod in my job descripdion.”

“Yeah, well, I ain’t nobody who should be telling anybody else what to do.”

Aadesh blew into his gloved hands and continued walking in place but didn’t speak.

A low rumbling sound came from somewhere to our left. “Get down,” I said, as headlights bathed the area in front of us with light. Two large trucks screamed unsafely past. Aadesh was about to speak when I shushed him. I patted him on the shoulder, cupped my ear, and pointed the opposite way the trucks had come. With the overcast sky and lack of a moon, it was impossible to see what I knew I heard.

First, it came in the form of pounding footfalls. Then one Sniffer, ten, and finally who knew how many. Some of them were running, but many more shambling their way past. A churning, grunting gaggle of bodies ambled by in a procession that lasted at least ten minutes. I lay, and I’m sure Aadesh shared the sentiment, there thinking any second would be my last; that they would be alerted to our smell, and, well, things would end badly. There was no place to hide and no place to run. We might’ve been able to make our way back to the loader, but the ice was rough going. I wouldn’t have bet very much on our chances, especially given Aadesh’s already frozen legs.

Frozen and demoralized, we waited them out. Once they were gone, we continued lying there, not saying a word until maybe a half-hour had passed. “Fuck this shit,” I whispered to myself as much to Aadesh.

Aadesh had had enough of being tough. “I am freezing.”

“I know. I know. So am I.”

The sound of shots in the distance rang out. “It keeps getting worse, doesn’t it.”

“Aboud as bad as my feed are killing me. I am dinking I will be having the frosdbide.”

I sighed. “Miley’s is three or four miles from here. You think you can make that?”

Aadesh thought about it for a moment. “I will wery much dry do do dad. I dink my legs will be feeling bedder if I were do move dem.”

I took a shot at a joke, but I didn’t feel it at all. “Get your running boots on, then.”

He looked down at his feet.

“Dude, it’s a joke. You know, haha?”

“I was playing pard in your joke. I know how dey work.”

I laughed. He smiled real big. “We’ll see if we’re still joking when we get to Miley’s.”

“I am dinking if.”

No smiles.

***

I had been in Barrow on several occasions. Usually,