Part 2
"Sara, I've got a special job for you." Bruce stopped next to her desk. His smile told Sara, it wasn't something ordinary, no job she was supposed to do every day. It was early in the day, her shift had started half an hour ago.
"What's that?"
"A special delivery out to Evi."
"O-okay." She, out with the dogs? Alone? On a road that didn't exist? Going to a place she had never been before?
"Not on your own." He read her thoughts. "You need to know where to go. We do have GPS and everything but you're in an ice desert, not the best place to get lost. It's safer when you have somebody by your side who knows the way."
That sounded much better. Company for the first ride to Evi. All she knew about Evi's place was, it was somewhere north of their village, a three hours ride with the dog sled, not accessible with a car at the moment. It would take her all day to get there and back.
"Go and see Kevin, he prepared the sled and should be ready to leave any minute. Evi has some bags with soil for us, some blood from a polar bear that loses it's fur for no obvious reason and needs some help with repairing her scooter. You're good in fixing cars, lets see if you can be a mechanic for a scooter too."
"Okay." She got up. A day outside, her first day outside. Time to discover the area around. She hadn't really been around, only around the village, never further away than a mile.
Kevin was in the shed, putting some stuff on a big sled with twelve dogs in front. Next to that one was a smaller one with four.
"Good morning, how are you?" She greeted him.
"Very good. What about you? Excited?" He was in his early sixties, always remembered her of a grandfather. Not her grandfather, she never met him but she liked the idea, her grandfather had been like Kevin. She was sure, he spoiled his grandchildren when he saw them and told them exciting stories about his job, the animals and how it was to live in ice and snow.
"A little bit." She confessed.
"No reason to be. You take these four beauties, I take the dirty dozen. Are you dressed for a few hours out in the snow?"
"Yes." It took her ten minutes to walk to her work place every morning, ten minutes she dressed for like she spend the day outside; which she would do today. Of course it was quite an effort to put on all these clothes every time, when she didn't do it, usually she regretted it after a minute.
"All right then. The sled is packed, I've all the stuff for Evi, you have what we need."
Sara looked on a single backpack and a bag in her sled. They didn't need much. Seven hours, eight top and they were back. Not in time to make it back in daylight, they needed big torches for their return.
"Lets get ready to rumble." Kevin opened the door and ordered the dogs to pull the sled out. Excited like the knew it was time for a long trip, they made their way out, followed by Sara and her dogs. Time to set off into a new adventure, finally seeing what the place she lived in since three weeks, was really about.
Plus her first long distance trip with the sled. No roads, no even surface, full concentration all the time. She didn't want Kevin to turn because she fell on her head. After the last time she fell and Ryan carried her home, she had a headache for two days, got forced by her boss to see the doctor when she came in for work, who cleared her for light duty. No more stupid things like that.
Leaving the village behind they were on their way into the great wide tundra. All white. It was snowing, had snowed the whole night, Sara guessed they gained six inches of snow within the last twenty-four hours. How were they supposed to find their way back when it still snowed this afternoon? Even in daylight her eyes got to the GPS every minute to make sure she was on the right way, following Kevin and the big sled. The dogs seemed to be happy to be outside, without many instructions they ran like they knew their destiny. Probably they did. As far as Sara knew once a week somebody got out to see Evi, the dogs did this trip often enough to know where to go.
If she was supposed to go on this trip on her own any time soon? It was part of her job and there must be a reason why her boss sent her out with Kevin today. Maybe the next time she had to go to Evi alone. A thought of that scared her a bit when she thought about it. Would somebody find her here? It was like being under the car in the desert…only colder and with less chances to survive. She would never make it a couple of hours stuck under the sled here.
Pushing these thoughts and the memory of the night under the car away she concentrated on her way, tried to find remarkable things, help her remember where she was, where she came from and where to go to. All white. No trees, no special formed mountains, no stones or anything else. All she had was the GPS and when she lost it or broke it, she was caught in an endless white prison of ice and snow.
It took almost three hours before Sara saw something remarkable: smoke. Coming out of a hut. Half of the hut was buried under snow, only the last yard and the roof looked out of the snow. The dogs must have seen it too, it was like they ran faster now to get to their destination. Another hut appeared.
"Halt!" Kevin called out when they arrived at the two huts. They made it in slightly over three hours, having a little break in the middle of the trip. "Time for a break guys." He got off the sled and put the brakes in. "How do you feel, Sara?"
"Sore." Her back ached after all this time standing on the sled, getting shaken by the uneven surface.
"You'll get used to it. Come on, lets get inside and have a hot coffee."
"Hot coffee sounds like the best promise in the world." She followed Kevin to the bigger hut. He swiped a key card and the door opened. Sara found herself in a room with a few computer, screens that were connected to surveillance cameras and showed her the area around the huts and some other areas. Two screens showed her places at the sea. There was no activity on any screen, only the landscape.
In the corner was a coffee machine, Kevin stepped right to it and started it. "Are you hungry?"
"If it's hot I eat it. Whatever makes me feel warm again."
"How about some soup?"
Sara turned when she heard the voice of Evi. Wearing thermo pants and long sleeve, the short black hair of the woman matched her outfit. Dark eyes seemed to stay a second longer than they had to on Sara. "Hi, I'm Evi."
"Sara." Sara shook the offered hand.
"I've some soup on the oven, should be ready to eat in five minutes. Have a coffee first, then the soup and after that it's time to go back to work."
"At least you let us have some food first." Kevin joked. "Most times Evi hands us a coffee and forces us into doing the work first before we get anything to eat."
"Hey, you have the long way back home, not me. You want a meal first, some tea and biscuits after it, you have to get back in the middle of the night."
"We deserve half an hour for our personal refill before we feed the dogs and do some work. Sara is here for your scooter."
"You're a mechanic?" Evi's brown eyes studied Sara interested.
"No, not really. But I know a few things about cars, that's why Bruce sent me."
"Oh well, you can have a look at the scooter while Kev and me do the rest." Evi poured some coffee into three big mugs. "How is everybody?"
"Fine. Allen and Hugo flew to Vancouver yesterday, the bloody Canadians don't want to work with us. Some stupid politics reason."
"For politics reasons they usually stop worrying about the environment. What about the guys from Iceland?"
"They'll come in next week. We might send one to you to stay here, you'll be busy."
"No, thanks. I'm fine by myself."
"You won't when they start and the group from Norway comes in too."
"Both? Wow."
"Yes. We'll be very busy. Want me here with you?"
"Your wife will tell you otherwise when you come home and tell her, you want to stay here with me for a few days."
"She might be jealous…and then she'll laugh at me old fool. No, seriously Evi, I'm sure Bruce will send somebody over. These guys will make some work, will come over and take your attention away from what you're supposed to do."
"I'll cope. C'mon time for some soup, I made some nice English stew."
"I might pass on that when there's meat inside." Sara said.
"Plenty of meat. You don't meat at all or you also don't eat something that had been with meat in the same pot? Kev will be more than happy to eat your meat."
"The wife put me on a diet."
"She'll never know." Evi blinked at him. "And it's easy to pick out the meat."
"Okay." Sara knew sooner or later she had to make com-promises living in the nowhere. It wasn't like there were vegetarian restaurants around like in Vegas. And not a lot of fruits like in South America. She reckoned meat and fish were the first choices.