Free Tundra by Tim Stevens

further back, but it too appeared to be following normally.
    The second sign of something wrong was the spark and flash behind Purkiss and to his left.
    He jerked his head round, saw the flame licking blue-and-orange from beneath the chassis, and reacted by instinct, the answer to the sum fuel plus flame driving his reflexes so that he punched the release on the safety belt and leaped to the right and up and out even without slowing the vehicle.
    The churning white ground rushed towards Purkiss and he braced himself, tucking his head in and raising his arms to cushion the impact of landing. An instant before the snow exploded in his face he felt the blast of light and heat at his back. He landed hard, plunging into the coating of snow so deeply that the bedrock beneath slammed his shoulder, but he welcomed it, clinging to it and flattening himself as far as possible because the sound hit him then, the thump-roar of the snowmobile’s engine going up, and he kept his head down because there’d be shrapnel, black ragged chunks of metal speeding at him with lethal force. He felt something whine over his head and bit the numbing frost smothering his face, sucking life and sustenance from it as if it would protect him from a shard of hot steel embedded in his back.
    For two seconds, three, five, Purkiss held his breath, the dissolving snow filling his mouth and disappearing into warm fluid, and suddenly it felt as though he should lie here forever, safe in the tundra’s embrace, the earth shielding him against the madness of the human race that stalked about on its surface.
    The realisations struck him like a pair of tightly-spaced gunshots.
    He was in danger of frostbite.
    More imminently, he was in danger of drowning.
    Purkiss rolled, keeping his head against the ground because he didn’t know what was happening behind him, and looked back. Over the curve of the snow surface he saw a messy ribbon of black smoke spilling towards the sky, many yards away.
    Purkiss sat up, the sudden movement making him feel groggy. To the left, Montrose’s snowmobile had pulled up. To the right, further away, Wyatt’s had veered in an arc and was heading back towards him.
    His own vehicle had ploughed into a bank fifty yards away and was unrecognisable, a smashed and charred pile of flickering metal. Behind it, the ground was furrowed by scorched tracks.
    Purkiss rose to his feet, the world tilting for a moment. His hearing was muffled, a high mosquito buzz in both ears. His shoulder ached, but that was good. The ability to feel was good.
    The cold drove its blade deep into his viscera.
    Wyatt’s Arctic Cat eased to a halt a few yards away. The man was off the vehicle and running. For an instant, Purkiss readied himself, searching the approaching silhouette for the glint of a weapon of some kind.
    ‘Farmer. Are you all right?’ Wyatt’s voice was a shout against the wind.
    Purkiss reeled, the reality of the situation catching up with him; because he wasn’t all right, not in the slightest.
    ‘Fine.’ He grasped Wyatt’s extended arm, steadied himself, staring at the twisted wreckage of the snowmobile.
    Montrose came loping over, Clement stumbling a few paces behind him.
    ‘What the hell?’ Montrose hung back, as if Purkiss was likely to detonate the way the vehicle had.
    Purkiss arched his back, flexed his limbs. ‘Fuel leak,’ he said. The white noise in his ears made him uncertain whether or not he was speaking loudly enough to be heard.
    ‘How’s that again?’ Montrose leaned in.
    Purkiss stared at him, at the man’s half-obscured face beneath its layers of wrapping. He looked at Clement, beyond. Then at Wyatt.
    ‘The fuel tank leaked,’ he said. ‘It sparked, and caught fire.’
    As one, the others gazed at the hissing pyre in the near distance. Purkiss studied them in turn. Montrose. Clement.
    Wyatt.
    The silence bore down heavily, nullifying everything but the crackle of the rising smoke and the thin howl of the