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

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.”

After a minute or so, the street dead-ended. “Dere is no highway up ahead, as you say.”

“Drive over that fence. It’s on the other side.”

He gave me an odd look.

“We’re not going to get a ticket, Aadesh. Just do it.”

He muttered something unintelligible. I’m not sure the issue was going over the berm. The problem was what was I getting him into next, and why wasn’t I telling him.

There were legitimate reasons why I chose the location I had. I suppose at least one of the reasons should be obvious, but not all of them were self-serving. The hospital was multi-storied. It was in close vicinity to the base. Hopefully, far enough away to be safe, but close enough to see what the hell was going on. I was pretty sure there was an observatory on top you could access, which seemed to me to be a very safe place to launch a drone. Not to mention, I had been to the hospital.

***

Aadesh, as you might expect, wasn’t happy with the choice. When he saw where I was taking him, he cursed loudly and told me I was an idiot, then stopped in the middle of a subdivision. I then went about explaining to him my reasoning. That helped a little, but he was still unconvinced. I even made sure to point out the observatory at the top of the building, as we could see it from the subdivision, but all that did was make things worse.

“I can fly de fucker from nearly any locadion. I do nod need such an accommodadion. You are wery much making up excuses do ged more drugs.”

Then I told him we about the electronic doors leading to the ER. We could barricade all the other doors besides those, and we would be safe. No one could easily get in if we didn’t want them to. Plus, the spiraled staircase that accessed all the floors would make a perfect funnel point and Killzone if it came to it, and it would probably come to it. **This needs to be changed slightly… they are on the ground floor in the third book. Maybe have Jack talk about the stairs as a fallback and killzone. There were ladders off the building from the top…

“It’s perfect, dude. Or as perfect as anything can get.”

“Whadever, Jack. I am being fine wid id.”

“Are you?”

“Does id madder?”

“Yeah. I mean, why wouldn’t it?”

“I know whad you are wanding. Dad is all.”

“Yeah, okay… What do you want me to fucking say? I’m a drug addict?”

“I am nod needing dad confirmation.”

I probably screamed. “I AM!”

Aadesh pounded the steering wheel. “Den do you believe dis is de besd of ideas, given your issue?”

My eyes were growing heavy. “It isn’t just about that,” I pleaded.

We sat there for a long time before Aadesh slammed the shifter roughly into drive. We sputtered our way through the subdivision, crossed a highway, and was in the parking lot at the hospital within just a few minutes. Without saying a word, and taking the time, even though gunshots rang out much closer now, to make sure it was safe, Aadesh grabbed his gear, including the shopping bags from Walmart, and waited for me to get out of the truck.

“Afder you,” he said, smugly.

I sighed, grabbed my things, and headed into the hospital.

In many ways, the hospital resembled Walmart. There were signs of things having gone very badly: trails of blood smeared the floors throughout the three levels, but again, no bodies. It was clear that the Sniffers had been at both places, and they had gone on a rampage. The good news, if you could even call it that, was, the Sniffers seemed to have been mostly concentrated at the military base. So, if the fort hung on, I hoped we would stay reasonably safe at the hospital. Damn, we were close, though.

Just like I had hoped, we were able to lock the entrances into the surgery ward. It took us a little time, but we found the switches that operated the electronic doors. As soon as that was squared away, Aadesh began working on the drone. During that time, I did my usual thing and passed the time mostly fucked up. We had enough food from our trip to Walmart that we didn’t have to go on any supply runs. All considering, aside from the constant reminder, the near-endless gunfire