Exodus (26 page)

By the time they crested the embankment leading up to the building, Emily knew this had to be the right place. It was about the size of an aircraft hangar. They stood in front of two huge fold-back doors, both of which were closed and locked tight. A door on the left of the building opened when she twisted the knob, and they stepped into a small office area with a back wall made entirely of shatterproof glass that looked out into the darkness of the hangar’s interior space.

A set of filing cabinets and a small desk with a computer occupied most of the room. Fixed to the wall next to a second door leading out into the hangar was a corkboard with paper fliers and notices pinned to it. Beneath the corkboard was a metal frame from which hung several sets of keys.

There didn’t appear to be any windows in the main part of the building, and with the main doors closed, the interior beyond the office was dark as night. Emily hadn’t thought to bring the flashlight and didn’t much care to trudge all the way back through the snow to fetch it. If she had to, she would, but she decided to see if she could figure out a way to open the doors and let some light into the building first. Much like she had with the garage door back at the Jeffersons’ house, she surmised there had to be a way to manually open them.

She opened the second door leading into the main hangar and asked Rhiannon to stand in the doorway and keep it ajar for her. A thin pathway of light filtered out from the office. It wasn’t
much, but it was at least enough for her to be able to make out the shape of the two main outer doors. Stepping into the larger space, she edged over to the double doors, pausing a minute as her eyes adjusted to the darkness.

Through the gloom Emily spotted a large metal handle protruding from a gray oblong box that came up to her waistline. It was secured to the floor by four bolts. A pulley system ran from the box and disappeared into the darkness high above her.

She took the handle firmly in both hands and rotated it once. The mechanism inside the box made a clacking sound as Emily turned the handle farther and the doors rattled like they’d been buffeted by a gust of wind. Two more turns of the handle and a laser-thin beam of light appeared at the center of the doors running from floor to ceiling. With each turn of the handle, the beam widened and grew, flooding the interior of the building with the sharp white light of the winter wonderland beyond its walls.

A few minutes later and both doors were fully opened. Emily dropped the hood on her parka, putting up with the sudden chill as the sweat on her forehead began to freeze.

“You all right?” asked Rhiannon.

“Fine,” Emily replied as she drew in deep icy breaths that stung her nose and throat. She beckoned the girl over to her side.

“Let’s find this thing and get out of here.”

Two rows of vehicles lined the interior of the storage building. A snowplow and a couple of trucks adapted to spread salt over icy roads waited off to her right. On the left was a second snowplow and, just beyond that, she saw a large bright-orange tracked vehicle that looked like it was designed for a science-fiction movie…or to traverse the snowy wastelands of this world, she thought. That could only be the Cat.

She walked over to the nearest side of the vehicle. It had four powerful-looking triangular tracks instead of wheels. Each was attached to a flat chassis on top of which sat a glass-encased four-door cab that contained two rows of seats. It looked like whoever had designed this machine had taken the cab from an eighteen-wheeler and dropped it onto a tank. In front of the cab was the squared-off engine compartment, and to the rear of the cab was a large silver tank that she assumed contained the fuel. Seven large windows in the cabin gave whoever was driving this thing a 360-degree field of vision.

An emblem etched on the engine compartment read T
UCKER
SNO-CAT.

“Wow,” said Rhiannon. “Are we going to be riding in that?”

It really was more like a tank than the SUV, Emily thought as she slowly circled the vehicle.

“Ohhh-kay!” she said aloud as she stood next to the giant machine. “How the hell am I supposed to drive this?”

First things first: she needed to find the keys.

While Rhiannon waited with Thor next to the Sno-Cat, Emily walked back to the office and the sets of keys she had seen dangling from beneath the corkboard. Each pair of keys was attached to a plastic tag indicating which vehicle it belonged with, and Emily quickly located one that had “Sno-Cat 1644” written across it in thick red marker.

Keys in hand, she headed back into the hangar.

The Cat’s triangular tracks were almost three feet at their highest vertices. To get into the vehicle’s cab, Emily needed to use them as a ladder to climb up to a flat aluminum access gantry
running the length of the vehicle. Much like the Durango, the cab of the Sno-Cat had two sets of doors, the first accessed the front section, where the driver’s area and a single passenger seat were located. The second was for the passenger section of the cab. The cabin doors were locked, but the keys she had found slipped easily into the lock. She pulled the door open.

Inside the cab Emily was happily surprised at how similar the interior layout was to the Dodge. There was a regular steering wheel with a gearshift stick on one side of the column and one to control lights on the other. The dash had a similar cluster of indicators and dials she had become accustomed to driving the SUV. Even the seats looked comfortable and familiar. She’d been expecting something far more complicated, but the only unfamiliar thing she noticed was a bank of switches on the right side of the console. A quick inspection of these showed her they were most likely heating and exterior lighting controls. There was even a CD player, for crying out loud.

In the time it had taken to drive the Dodge Durango from Stuyvesant to Fairbanks, Emily had become quietly confident in her newfound skills as a driver, but she found herself feeling nervous as she settled her butt into the Cat’s driver’s seat. This thing was a hell of a lot bigger than the SUV, and like the tank it reminded Emily of, it looked more than capable of causing major damage to anything it hit…or ran over.

“Better if you stand out of the way,” she called down to Rhiannon. “And keep a tight hold of Thor.”

Rhiannon slipped her gloved fingers beneath the dog’s collar and guided him into the space between the snowplow and sander on the opposite side of the building.

“Hurry up,” she yelled back. “It’s freezing out here.”

Emily pulled the cabin door closed and looked over the controls. “Nothing to it,” she whispered as she slipped the keys into
the ignition and turned them. The engine turned over once…twice…then caught, and the cabin filled with a deep rumbling as the engine sprang to life. A large puff of exhaust fumes coughed from the engine exhaust and a barely audible thrum vibrated through the cabin as the engine settled into its natural cadence. She checked the fuel gauge. It indicated the tank was almost full.

Slipping the gear stick into drive, she slowly pressed down on the accelerator. The engine revved, but the tracks of the Cat did not move an inch. What the? Glancing over at the console of lights and indicators, she saw a large button glowing red. Etched above it were the words P
ARKING
B
RAKE
. She pressed it once, and the light went out.

She eased her foot back onto the accelerator. The Sno-Cat gave a slight shudder, and then it was moving, inching forward as its tracks rumbled across the concrete floor.

Emily whooped with joy as she guided the Cat toward the exit. She beckoned to Rhiannon to meet her outside the doors.

When she was clear of the hangar doors, Emily brought the Cat to a halt and pushed the gear stick back into the park position. With the engine still running, she climbed from the driver’s seat into the passenger seat. Opening the passenger door, she beckoned for Rhiannon to come around to her side of the vehicle as she stepped out onto the access gantry.

“You’re going to have to climb up the tracks. It’s easy. Don’t be afraid,” she said, yelling to be heard over the rumble of the engine.

The girl hesitated for a moment, then used the deep ridges of the track’s tread as finger- and toeholds and pulled herself up until Emily could reach down and take her hand. She pulled her the rest of the way. “Inside,” she yelled, pointing toward the passenger seat. Closing the door, Emily moved to the rear door and
pulled it open. The door’s hinges were positioned so the door could be laid flush against the cab and not block the gantry access to the back part of the cabin.

Thor waited patiently at the foot of the Cat, his tail sweeping the dusty concrete floor. Kneeling down, at the far end of the gantry where he could see her, Emily called the dog to her.

He didn’t hesitate, leaping onto the rubber tracks and using his powerful hind legs to launch himself over the metal lip and onto the gantry next to Emily.

“Good boy,” she cooed and ushered the dog into the back compartment of the Cat. He climbed inside and sat facing the front windshield, panting quietly.

Emily climbed down the tracks and walked around to the driver’s side, then climbed back up again and retook her place in the driver’s seat, closing the door behind her.

“Wagons roll,” she called out as she slipped the Cat into gear and pulled out of the storage facility and onto the snow.

The Cat was incredibly easy to maneuver, nimbly moving over the snowy surface with no loss of grip; the four huge caterpillar tracks provided a surprising amount of stability and traction. It was a little bumpy in the cabin, but that was something they could put up with. The important thing was that they now had a vehicle that could travel safely over the roads and snowfields that Jacob had warned her were to come.

Before they could head out, they would need to head back to the Geo-Phys building and pack their supplies from the previous night. Then they would have to transfer as much of the supplies they still had in the back of the Dodge over to the Cat. It was
going to be a tight squeeze in the backseat for Thor as there wasn’t a stowage compartment.

Rhiannon had slipped her parka’s hood from her head and sat with her arms braced against the console as she stared out the side window of the cab. She had seemed fascinated by the Sno-Cat’s tracks as they’d pulled the vehicle across the snow, leaving a trail of powder behind them like a jet’s vapor trail and a smile of joy on her face as the machine raced along the street.

Emily allowed her foot to become heavier against the gas pedal, pushing the Cat first up to twenty-five miles an hour, then, when she was confident of her ability to maintain control, up to thirty-five. Her nerves and the narrow streets of the campus quickly got the better of her, though, and she brought the machine back down to a more sensible twenty-ish as they cruised the street leading back to the Geo-Phys building. She spotted the snowy outline of the Dodge Durango halfway up the street and slid her new set of “wheels” to a stop alongside it.

Switching off the engine, Emily climbed out of the cab and leaped down onto the tracks, then the ground, closely followed by Rhia and Thor.

The Dodge was barely visible beneath the snowdrift that had all but covered it overnight. That was okay, though; they wouldn’t be needing it anymore.

“Race you upstairs,” Emily shouted. She was already running toward the door before her little companion could yell “Not fair” and chase after her to the accompaniment of Thor’s gleeful barks.