The Will To Live✔️

Chapter 21: The Comms Tower

There was nothing in the cabin but a few cans of beans, which Greg took and added to their supply in the back of the Snow Hog. Despite how useful it would have been, he was extremely grateful that the vehicle came with a cargo hold instead of a chaingun. Finding the beans made him aware of how hungry he was. How long had it been since he'd last eaten? Not that long, surely. But he frowned as he hopped up into the driver's seat and began going over a timeline. How long had it been? He was still thinking about that when Izzy climbed in beside him.

"You okay? What's up?" she asked.

"I'm just realizing how much shit we've done today," he replied. "Since we woke up."

"It hasn't been that much. When we woke up we searched for the stuff to repair the radio, and then we went to the mining complex and fought the Flood, and then..." she hesitated.

"Yeah. Right after we got up, we took a drive out to the comms tower, and then we searched the base over for supplies, and that ate up like four hours. Then we went to the mining complex, and back up to the tower again, and back to base, another hour. Then we took like two, two and half hours to get ready after we contacted Becker. Then we spent a good two hours at least down in that damned tunnel, maybe even pushing three hours. I'd say, altogether, since we've woken up today, we've been going almost nonstop for going on ten, maybe eleven hours..." He glanced up at the sky. It was noticeably darker than when he'd first received the distress call from Larsen.

"I am starving, and dead on my feet," Izzy muttered reluctantly.

Greg considered it further. "We need to bunk down for the night," he muttered. "Larsen, do you know of any other structures around besides this one and the comms tower?"

"Nothing closer," he replied.

Greg sighed. "Well, those two are our literal choices. Unless we want to drive back to the tunnel and maybe sleep in some of the cars there, or try to lay some bedding down in that generator room. This cabin could work, but it would suck, and the weather station is completely gone. So...yeah," he glanced at the sky again, "we shouldn't keep going for much longer. Because I'm starting to reach my limit, and because doing this during the day is dangerous enough. So, those are our literal choices. Tunnel, this cabin, or the comms tower."

"Well, the comms tower is our best bet. But even if it's trashed, it isn't that far away. We can drive back here if we really have to," Izzy said.

"Yeah, makes sense. All right," he started up the Warthog, "let's do this."

Greg began driving. He tried to get in touch with Becker as he headed back to the main road, then started moving along it again, keeping an eye out for the comms relay. But it was no good. There was nothing but static on the airwaves, and he was forced to give up after several minutes as he spied the next road that led off to the right, past the forest of dead trees. A sign gave a stern warning about military property, which was very comforting to Greg as he temporarily abandoned his effort to reach Becker and drove on.

Up ahead, he could see the dark bulk of the comms array, which was a huge satellite dish mounted on a three-story tower, nestled in a field of ice in between two forests of skeletal trees. It was surrounded by a fence that had been ripped open or collapsed in several places, and he saw several lumbering shapes moving about.

"All right, Larsen, show me that hand/eye coordination!" Greg called as he rolled to a stop about ten meters shy of the parking lot beyond the razorwire fence. He counted over a dozen Combat Forms and they were all starting to take notice of them. Greg wanted to bring the hostiles towards them, and it looked like that was going to be the easy part. Killing them quickly enough might be the harder part, because when they started moving, they really started moving.