Free EDEN by Dean Crawford Page B

responsibility,’ Bradley snapped, his head down as he rummaged through the rest of the boxes. ‘We’ll stash these out back somewhere.’
    A long silence as Sauri digested what he had heard. ‘We are here to protect Jake and his team.’
    ‘We were,’ Bradley corrected him as he hefted a stack of tins across the building toward a distant rack. ‘That was before everything went to hell.’
    ‘It is our duty.’
    ‘It’s our damned duty to get home,’ Bradley shot back as he slid the tins out of sight behind boxes of Arctic clothing. ‘Where are you from, Sauri?’
    ‘Inuvik.’
    ‘Great. I’m from Yellowknife. You think that Jake and his little crew will want to head our way if we get out of here? You heard them.’
    ‘They need us. We have the weapons.’
    ‘We’ll give them a rifle and wish them the best of luck,’ Bradley retorted.
    ‘If there’s no power, everybody in Yellowknife will have left or died,’ Sauri pointed out. ‘Too cold without power.’
    ‘That’s up to us to find out, right?’ Bradley challenged. ‘You’re either with me or you’re with them. Decide.’
    Sauri looked at Bradley for a long time, and then shouldered his rifle and began carrying the tins across the building.
    *
    It took several hours to shuttle their belongings across the rutted and rolling ice valleys of the plain, the headlights of the snowmobiles flickering in the eternal night like lonely stars wandering an empty universe.
    Cody drove back and forth between the two camps, one eye always cast toward the faintly glowing horizon as he worked, unable to break his thoughts away from his wife and daughter. They could see that same glow, brighter where they were. The pain of separation was a dull ache that infected his chest, throbbing with each beat of his heart as though he were already bleeding out.
    The base at Alert was shrouded in darkness but for a pair of lights that illuminated the accommodation block on the south west corner. Cody guided his snowmobile through the snow blustering across the beams of his headlights and turned in alongside the main block.
    Bethany and Charlotte appeared at the door to the block and began hefting boxes and crates from the sledge behind him as Cody watched Jake’s heavily laden snowmobile follow him in. Jake killed the engine on his snowmobile and joined Cody as they walked up into the block.
    ‘You guys done yet?’ Jake demanded as he yanked his hood back.
    Charlotte hauled the block door shut as Bethany joined them and dumped a crate on top of a pile near the window.
    ‘We’ll get this lot logged,’ Bethany said, ‘but it’s not looking good.’
    ‘What isn’t?’ Cody asked.
    Charlotte jabbed a thumb out toward the main buildings. ‘Brad’s just gone through the stores and there’s no food. Looks like the soldiers took everything with them.’
    Cody felt a new fear twist his stomach as he realised the depth of their situation.
    ‘They cleared out everything?’ Jake uttered in disbelief.
    ‘The whole damned lot,’ Bobby Leary confirmed. ‘All we’ve got is supplies for maybe a month at most.’
    ‘That’s all?’ Cody asked. ‘There’s no way we can stretch that out until the spring.’
    Jake dragged his hand down across his beard. ‘Jesus Christ, did they want us all to die out here?’
    Reece Cain walked into the block from the rest room and gave a bleak laugh.
    ‘May as well have done,’ he muttered. ‘Ration packs, water bottles, sterilisation packs — you name it, it’s gone.’
    Cody’s mind raced as he tried to hold back thoughts of his daughter and think for a moment.
    ‘Survival,’ he said. ‘They were thinking about their own survival.’
    Jake nodded as he sank back against a tower of boxes. ‘They knew what was coming. Maybe their listening devices picked up the coming storm?’
    ‘But then who sent the airplanes?’ Bethany asked.
    ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Jake said. ‘They cut us loose and now we’re on our own. We either