The Long Dark by B.J. Farmer (important books to read .TXT) 📗

look for another vehicle to get around town. I would go and help, and then I would wash my hands of the whole damn thing. “Look, Aadesh, I’ll help you get the Snow Trac… but then you’re on your own. It’s stupid to leave here.”

Looking down at the table, he nodded.

***

The directions Tish gave us sent us to a part of Barrow I’d never been. As much snow as there was on the road and the fact that it hadn’t seemed to be plowed even before things went dark, meant the way was treacherous and slow going. The desolate landscape was not good for my mood, either. The further we drove down that isolated stretch of snow-covered road, the more my mood sank. The Oxycontin I had taken was doing little to improve that.

Just up ahead lay a single small house, literally out in the middle of nowhere.  Beside the house sat an orange tracked vehicle. It looked straight out of the sixties, which it probably was.

We got out of the van, leaving our weapons inside. In those days, we hadn’t yet learned the importance of always having a gun or knife nearby.

I peeked inside the truck, hoping the keys were in it. They weren’t, of course. I didn’t really want to explore the house, but Tish didn’t tell us where the keys were. Aadesh’s worried look told me he felt the same. There was just something about that house that spooked the hell out of me. Darkness enveloped it from every direction. Without the lights from the van, there would’ve been no light to speak of. I couldn’t imagine living there, especially in the winter months. I don’t even remember seeing a security pole outside.

Broken appliances littered the front porch, making the front door inaccessible. We cautiously walked around to the rear of the house, where we found the door busted open. The first thing that came to mind was someone must’ve looted the house. But then after spending just a couple seconds inspecting the door, it seemed that someone had broken out of the house. Not in.

I wanted to turn tail and leave. Get the hell as far away from that place as possible, or at least back to the warm confines of Miley’s office. There was no damn reason to leave, but I knew Aadesh had it in his mind that he was going, and I knew him well enough to know that when he made his mind up, he did something. He had already taken several steps into the house. I cursed him before following him in.

His headlamp focused on a small picture on the living room wall. It looked to be of a young Tish, flanked on both sides by a white man and woman. Other than the one small picture, there didn’t seem to be any decorations of any sort anywhere. Austere as fuck, I thought, as I scanned my surroundings.

“I’m pretty sure they aren’t her biological parents,” I said, thinking aloud more than conversing with Aadesh.

“How are you knowing dad dose people are her parends.”

“I figure if you’re only going to have one picture in your house, it’d be a family photo.” I lingered for a moment longer on the picture before changing the subject. “Let’s just find the damn key and get out of here.”

“I agree.”

In one of the bedrooms, there were some men’s and women’s clothing. Specifically, there were three sets of men’s work clothes; the guy apparently worked at the North Slope Borough, and oddly enough, the name on the work shirt was Eddie. That wasn’t a name you might envision someone having who detested everything about America, but I guess neither was Tish. The woman of the house had maybe three outfits that were very plain and very similar in appearance.

There were two other rooms connected by via the hallway. One of them was empty. When I say empty, I mean completely empty, even devoid of dust. I wondered if it used to be Tish’s room. I didn’t linger on the thought too long or on any section of the house. I really wanted to just get the fuck out of there.

We had one more room in the hallway, a tiny bathroom, and the kitchen left to check for the key. I assumed it wasn’t in the bathroom, so we moved on to the last room beside the kitchen. I began to jiggle the door handle. It was locked. I motioned for Aadesh to stand back, and I kicked the hell out of the door. The only thing that wasn’t shoddy about the entire house was the damn lock. I had to kick the door at least five times to get it to open. It made a hell of a crashing noise when I finally busted the door off its hinges.

“Jesus, dis is wery much like liddle Korea.”

“Little North Korea,” I corrected, taking in what he was seeing.

I’m not sure if it was the drugs or just the ridiculousness of the room or both, but I couldn’t help on at least a couple occasions laughing out loud as I looked over the various Korean iconographies.  Wow, I thought.

“Id is a propaganda room, man,” Aadesh said, walking around the room looking at different things.

On three of the walls, they were covered from floor to ceiling with all things Korean. One of the walls, though, was completely bare other than a large tapestry that took up much of the wall. On it was the image of three chubby men prominently in the center of the wall hanging. One of them I recognized as the current douche-nozzle leader of North Korea. The glorious leaders were flanked on all sides with happy children, proud soldiers waving the flag and touting their AK 47s, and my personal favorite was a worker with a shit-eating grin handing a bundle of wheat to happy parents. What a bunch of bullshit, I thought. The food got shared alright: shared right down the oversized gullet of dear leader.

My