The Will To Live✔️

Chapter 19: Weather Station Z/41

"After all the bullshit we went through on Polaris, I was pretty sure that I'd more than had my fill of being outdoors in the snow, and yet..." Izzy muttered as they drove slowly back out into the gray sunlight.

"Here we are," Greg replied, and knew exactly how she felt.

He drove the Hog forward until they were up the incline leading from the tunnel and back on level ground, where the road smoothed out, and they were given a tremendous view of the area. The road continued for dozens and dozens of miles, eventually curving to the right, disappearing behind a massive stand of trees. Off to the left was a mountain range. To the left and the right were massive ice fields and small copses of snow-capped trees and the occasional frozen lake.

Greg took several deep breaths and tried to calm down as he brought the Warthog to a full stop and put it in park. That tunnel had been...a bit much. And had definitely taken longer than he'd initially thought, and hoped, it would. According to the chronometer in his helmet, which appeared to be working decently well, they had been at it for two and a half hours down in that miserable, wretched place. There had been long stretches of nothingness, just the empty tunnel, starkly lit by the generator that Izzy had repaired, which were glorious reprieves from fighting the damned Flood. He'd seen some bad combat before, but...

Fighting literal rotting zombie monsters in a giant, underground, freezing tunnel ranked pretty high up there as far as terrible encounters went.

It might actually hit number one.

"We should, uh, we should report in, let Becker know we did it," Izzy said after several minutes.

Greg nodded and activated his radio. "Yeah," he muttered as he dialed in. He had to admit, he kind of just wanted to hear the guy's response, because the Sergeant had almost sent them on a suicide mission, and they'd come out the other side intact.

After a moment, he actually had it working. The weather seemed pretty clear now, although now that he was actually paying attention to it, he thought that he did see an odd, very light green sheen to the sky, but it might be his imagination.

"I'm sorry, who is this? Over."

Greg sighed. "Corporal Greg Walker. I'm looking for Sergeant Becker, immediately. It's urgent. Over."

"I, um...okay, one moment. Sorry." A pause. Then a belated, "Um, over."

"What was that about?" Izzy muttered, listening in with her own radio.

"No idea, but it's annoying," he replied quietly.

After several minutes, a familiar voice came onto the line. "This you, Walker? Serrano? You actually made it through that tunnel? Over."

"Yes, this is Walker and Serrano. We made it. It wasn't easy. There were dozens of the damned things down there, but we successfully restored power, cleared the worst of the wrecks out of the way, and cleaned the place out in terms of Flood, at least as far as we could manage. We probably killed fifty or sixty of the things. Over," Greg replied.

"That's unbelievable! But great! You did great! Are you okay? Over."

"We're fine. Tired, but fine. We found some more ammo. What's with the guy who answered the radio? Over."

"Oh, him? He's a civvie. We've got not the best situation here right now, and I don't have enough personnel to cover radio duty, so we allocated some of the jobs to the civilians. That's how desperate we are right now. Where are you right now? Over."

"Just outside of the tunnel on the opposite side, the mainland side. Over."

"Uh. Okay..." A pause. "Hold on. Over." Greg waited, glancing at Izzy. She returned his look of uneasy reluctance. Something about the way his tone had shifted indicated he didn't have good news for them. The radio buzzed and hummed as they waited for Becker to come back. Finally, after what felt like too long, he did. "Okay, I'm back. Sorry. Things are a real mess over here, don't know if I've mentioned that yet. In case you didn't notice, the sky is kind of green. That's a residual charge leftover in the upper ionosphere, we think, from the solar flare from the local star. We think. Point is, we don't have enough data to really figure it out, and all we really do know is that it's screwing with radar, scanners, some radios, and our ability to fly, which is making this whole situation a hell of a lot more complicated than it needs to be.