Canadian Isles - Late Summer 2113
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Wintering
We had been staying at my sister's old summer place in the Canadian Isles for a few years, after the Archangels first appeared. Frank got separated from us for a long while when we were on our way here, but he made it back eventually. He deteriorated a bit after he got back; he's almost… hollow now. I don't know if he'll make it through our coming journey.
The isles were naturally desolate of Archangels from almost the very beginning. One had appeared there and quickly killed any fledglings around it, but it was capable of much more migration on its own than the rest of its kind seemed to be, and quickly departed the isles of its own accord. Personally I speculate it evolved from an old Armaros node. Now however, the armies of Cassael are finally encroaching, and if we stayed, it wouldn't be much longer before we would be assimilated.
The call to Winterbase had come a few years back at this point, but we were holding out hope for Frank, for the angel’s armies to thin out, for a miracle really. And we did get one, when Frank did come back, but then it took another year for him to get enough strength back for the journey, and in that time his mind and spirit seem to have withered. And by now almost everyone else who was left around here had already given up and made the journey themselves, so we'd be going it alone now.
Two weeks before Frank came back, there was a ferry. We could have hopped on a boat and been safely in the walls of Winterbase in three days time. Instead, we'll be trekking across land to the furthest northern landing we think we can manage to find a boat at, and chancing the north Agathan sea in a motorboat if we have to, avoiding angelic armies on three sides by little but prayer.
It is worth it. I have to tell myself that it is all worth it. For the kids to have an unbroken family, a safe home. As long as we make it through this together, it will all be worth it.
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"Alright folks, all aboard!" I called back into the house from the front step.
The car– my sister's old solar-roof-powered SUV– was all loaded with the provisions for our journey and the very few belongings we hoped to bring with us to Winterbase. Following my call the kids quickly emerged from the house and solemnly got into the car; Amy gave a fractionally-hearted smile as she passed to acknowledge my attempt to lighten the mood with the train call.
Frank was much slower to emerge, but when he did he smiled weakly.
"Once more unto the breach," he said as he left the house.
"Dear friends, once more," I replied, giving him a side-hug as he passed me.
I pulled the door shut and locked it, which would seem like unprecedented optimism if it weren't simply a force of habit. I hardly gave the house a final look before joining my family in the car. I used to be the wistful type– even when we were running from Gabriel I took a good couple of minutes to tearfully look at our home before we left. Things were too bleak for wistfulness anymore; humanity was cut to a fraction of a fraction and the Archangels truly rule the earth now.
I started the car and backed down the long driveway. Carter let out a soft sob, barely audible from the back of the car, and my heart ached a bit. I turned on the sound system, which was being fed twentieth and twenty-first century classics from an absolutely ancient device I found in the attic a few months back. As Olivia Newton-John's rendition of "Country Roads" started up, we hit the open road.
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After three days of driving, we reached the northern coast. As we were driving we occasionally switched off our music to listen to the AM radio for any signs of life, and last night we finally caught bits and pieces of an announcement about boat or ferry service to Isla Noctis. This morning as we were nearing a tiny coastal village, I switched the AM radio on again to try to catch the full message.
"...regular ferry service will continue until arch-….-mies are within dangerous range of viable landings…. Saltwharf Village ferry to Isla Noctis every two days. Regular ferry serv-... -til archangel arm-....-thin dang-...."
Still not a particularly clear broadcast but at least we could get the full gist this time. Just as I saw the same indicator, Carter announced from the back:
"Saltwharf Village?! We're there!"
There was a town welcome sign just ahead.
'Welcome to Saltwharf Village, the northernmost port in the Canadian Isles. Population X'
The population looked to have been in the hundreds when the sign was made, but the number was aggressively crossed out with dark red paint. As we drove into town, the place seemed desolate. It quickly became difficult to traverse the streets in the car as they were lined with abandoned vehicles from earlier migrants. As the ocean came into view, the streets became a parking lot, and we had to give up on the car at last.
"Alright, everybody out!" I called as I put the car into park in the middle of the road between a pickup that looked about a century old and a home-built dune buggy.
I went around to the back of the car and opened the lift gate. As each of the kids then Frank came to the trunk I tossed them their bags before loading up with my own. Duffle bag across a shoulder, positioned at my back, jam-packed oversized backpack above that, and a smaller backpack with my absolute essentials worn backwards on my chest. Once all four of us were similarly encumbered, we started walking to the sea. Once we got past the roads and the cars we could see the town's namesake wharf.
"No sign of a boat, or life…" Amy remarked aloud, sounding more than a little concerned.
"No need to worry yet, kid," Frank said, "there's probably one old guy maintaining the radio broadcast and nobody else left in town. The ferry probably brings its own landing crew."
I hope you're right, I thought to myself, then said aloud "your father's right. We just have to wait. Broadcast didn't give a time so we'll wait a full forty-eight hours if we have to before I'm gonna feel worried."
My kids, and even Frank, seemed reassured by my confidence, but it was admittedly a ruse. I had been worried this entire time. There was no benefit to miring myself in that worry though. We made our way over to the wharf, found a pair of benches, and sat ourselves down for a long wait.
Quickly bored by mutual anxious silence we started playing waiting games like I Spy, and I turned the tunes back on, plugging the music player into a portable speaker which I had deemed worthy of the precious cargo space on account of the morale boost. It had been mid-morning when we arrived, and just as dusk was falling –our meals finished and renewed worry following the food down our throats, beginning to settle in our stomachs– we heard the unmistakable horn of a large ship approaching.
Carter and Amy cheered aloud, and I saw hope in Frank's eyes for the first time since the night he arrived at my sister's. I was a little more hesitant to celebrate (probably irrational; what other ship would be coming here than the one we aimed to board?), but once the cruise ship, retrofitted with armor plating and anti-node devices, came into clear view and approached the wharf, I whooped loudly.
An Anti-Node Eventuality Taskforce operative hopped down from the boarding gate to help us clamber aboard, and as I got back to my feet and picked my bags back up I let out a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding. I felt a space open inside myself that had quietly closed itself off years ago– I was finally feeling real hope for the future. We might never leave Winterbase once we arrived, but we would be safe, for generations. That kind of security couldn't be found anywhere else in the world anymore.
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