Battle Scars

Chapter 48: Just in Time

Chapter forty eight: Just In Time
"Abby you're hurt!" said Preston. I gave him the 'duh' face.
"You just noticed?" I chuckled.
"Is it your arm AND your stomach?" He exclaimed. "Oh gosh Mitch is gonna KILL me!"
"Well he better not, because it clearly wasn't you who shot me."
"Where are we going now?" Asked Vikk.
"To the base in Canada," said Preston. "We're meeting the others there. Vikk you should definitely sleep most of the way there. Are you sure you're ok?"
"I'll be fine," said Vikk quietly. "But sleep does sound great at the moment." He gave us a slight smile. Preston showed him a room in the hovercraft where he could sleep, and pretty soon he was dead to the world. Preston returned to the room I was in. We looked at each other, not really knowing what to think about the situation.
"Well, we did it, I guess," he said quietly. I knew he was upset about Lionel, but I didn't want to bring it up because I knew he would cry. Instead, I pulled him in for a hug, which was the best way to let him know I cared. Although he might pretend he was over the loss, I knew he wouldn't be for a long time. To come so far, and come so close to escaping, only to have your hopes shot to pieces would be devastating.
"Thanks Ab," he sighed, pulling away to look at me. He gave me a small smile, which I returned. "I think I need some time to think."
"Hope you feel better soon," I said quietly. He nodded, and disappeared into the control room of the hovercraft. I sat for a while at the back of the hovercraft, watching through the vast panes of class as the land below us rushed by. I don't know how long I sat for, but at one point, I noticed another object coming towards us. It wasn't moving much faster than we were, but it was gaining ground. I wondered what it was, and as it drew closer, I realised it was another hovercraft. And suddenly, I knew what it was doing there. I jumped up, and ran to the control room.
"Preston!" I exclaimed. "They're on our tail!" He stared at me for a few seconds, then pulled up some information on one of the radars in the room.
"It's unclassified," he murmured. "That's why it didn't register on the radar, and alert me. Lucky you were in the rear room Ab, or we wouldn't have known!"
"So what do we do?" I asked.
"We've only got a short while to go," he said thoughtfully. "But we can't just go straight to the base, because as far as we know, the base is undetected by The Soviet."
"Let's bail into the water just outside Canada," I suggested.
"This is Canada we're talking about," he prompted. "Not Arabia or Australia. There's no such thing as warm ocean water here."
"But we don't have another option, do we," I said. "Better to be freezing than dead, right?"
"Of course," he nodded. He looked at the radar again. "Give it ten minutes," he said. "Should we wake Vikk?"
"Yeah, we should," I nodded. "I'll go do it." I left Preston to the controls, and went to find Vikk. He was sleeping peacefully, perhaps for the first time in a long time, so I felt bad waking him. But it had to be done. I shook him gently.
"Vikk, wake up." He rolled over, and looked up at me.
"What's going on?" He asked, sleepily.
"Long story short, we're abandoning ship." He frowned.
"Do I want to know?"
"Probably not," I smiled ruefully. "But get up, we've got ten minutes."

"We've got two options," said Preston to Vikk and I. The three of us were perched on the edge of the hole underneath our hovercraft. "We can wait a few moments and jump closer to our destination, or jump now which will mean they won't notice us leaving the craft, since they're still too far away."
"Go in the middle," I said.
"So about one minute?" Said Preston. I nodded. "Ok." We waited a little longer, and watched the hovercraft behind us get closer and closer. If our hovercraft wasn't so large and slow we might have escaped them, and avoided abandoning it. But we didn't have a choice.
"You guys ready?" Preston asked after a few more seconds. We nodded.
"Jump on three?" Asked Vikk.
"One," said Preston.
"Two," said Vikk. I breathed in deeply.
"Three." And then we were falling towards the freezing water. The second we hit the surface, I was enveloped in what felt like a blanket of ice cold needles pricking my skin. I blinked my eyes open, and through the blurry vision of the water, I could see light above my head. I kicked up towards it, and gasped for air once my head broke the surface. Above us, the two hovercrafts shot away, and a few seconds later, ours exploded in a cloud of smoke and flames. I looked to where Preston and Vikk had also surfaced, and sighed. Just in time.