The North (#wattys2016)

Chapter 21

I escorted Dawn-Marie over to my carrier. She was as good as her word and didn’t try anything stupid, but I didn’t entirely trust her. Not because I thought that she might be loyal to the Eden tribe - her story about being kept in an open prison under the watchful eye of Sunray’s people made perfect sense. She just wasn’t one of us. She hadn’t fought for her life alongside my team for the past six months. She was an outsider, and nobody trusts an outsider that easily.

I spotted Sid walking back from an area of dead wood a few meters behind our carrier. In one hand was a shovel and in the other was a roll of toilet paper. I was just about to rag on him for taking a dump without someone providing cover when he flashed an angry look my way.

“She’s riding with us, huh?” he said it more as a statement than a question. Dawn-Marie climbed into the carrier and the armored door closed with a dull thunk.

“She’s got information on what we’re up against here, Sid. That .50 Cal back in Dinsmore? There’s a military unit running Eden. The commander uses the term Sunray.”

I briefed Sid on everything there was to know about Sunray and how Eden had come to be, but from the look on his face I could tell he was quite prepared to drop Dawn-Marie off in the first creep-infested community we could find.

He slipped the shovel underneath a tie-down on the side of the carrier and then lit a cigarette, cupping the burning end with his hands as he took a deep haul.

“I voted for you to lead this thing, Dave. But I’m not backing you on that chick. She needs to go … at first light. When we pull out of here, just drop her off on the side of the road. We can’t trust her, man. She’s not one of us.”

The last thing I needed was to get into an argument with Sid Toomey. While I sympathized with Dawn-Marie’s story of being trapped in Eden, we needed her about as much as she needed us and what we needed more than anything was information. Dawn-Marie could give us an edge.

“Look … Sid, it’s complicated but the reasons for keeping her with us are tactically sound at this point. I need you to back me up on this, okay?”

He took another haul on his cigarette and said, “I don’t like it. You sure you’re not slipping because you sure as fuck screwed up getting us swarmed by the creeps back in Airdrie. I didn’t say anything about it then.”

I clenched my fists tightly and stuffed them in the pockets of my combat jacket.

“Yeah, Sid … I made a mistake,” I whispered but you could hear the anger in my voice. “It won’t happen again.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Bringing along that chick is a mistake from where I’m standing and want to know something?”

“What?”
He stubbed his cigarette on the hull of the carrier and said, “If I feel that way, there will be others who feel the same.”

I sighed heavily as I tapped the rear door with the butt of my carbine. Dawson opened it up and I climbed inside with Sid in tow.

Sid might have been right about Dawn-Marie and I scanned the faces of my team to gauge their reaction to her presence in the carrier. Everyone carried a blank expression and had I been playing poker with them, I would have been in a world of hurt.

I briefed Dawson and Doug Manybears in the crew commander’s hatch so that we were out of earshot from Dawn-Marie. Doug was practical - he recognized Dawn-Marie’s strategic value. She was a farm girl, while the rest of us were city-dwellers. Sure, we each possessed some field craft abilities, but none of us knew the first thing about where to scrounge for supplies on a farm, and, as he pointed out, we didn’t even know what kinds of farm equipment operated on diesel versus gasoline. Dawn-Marie could show us what to look for, she was familiar with the area and, the most important factor was that she had knowledge of Sunray’s assets. She knew what we were up against.