Rogers reached the road the next morning beneath the rippling banner of a brilliant sunrise, streamers of orange and fiery red splitting the sky above him. He sat down on the berm alongside the road and stared up at it, drinking from his canteen as he did so.
The sunrises and sunsets here were much brighter than what he remembered. Much more vivid and intense.
It was colder, but still nothing compared to the chill of waking up in the bomber. Rogers moved alongside the road without complaint, staying within the tree-line. There was no sign of traffic. No trucks. Faint tire tracks marked the snow, but they were old. Nothing had moved this way in a long time.
He checked his map again. Made sure he was still moving south. Saw that the road intersected with what appeared to be a fuel depot in another fifteen kilometers.
Was that even a fuel depot? He couldn't tell…nothing manmade was labeled on the map, just the Comrade Ogilvy Range and a few forests, which had numbers tacked onto them.
Rogers wondered who Comrade Ogilvy was as he walked. A compatriot of Big Brother? A war hero? Both? Whoever he was, he had to be pretty important to have claimed an entire range of peaks in his name.
"Once Oceania falls," he said aloud, listening to his voice dampen and disappear within the confines of the snow laden trees, "I'm going to put the name of that range back."
Once Oceania fell…
Jeez. Maybe he could think about putting the top of the bomb blasted mountain back too.
Toppling a totalitarian regime was a big task. He knew this from experience. It wasn't anything to be talked about idly.
Taking down the Third Reich had been a process of years…and it had still been incomplete when he had slammed down into a stretch of Quebecois wilderness and been lost for forty years.
And that had been when he had had the might of the Allied powers alongside him. The U.S., Britain, the Soviet Union…all of that against the legions of fascism.
This time around it was different. So far it was just him against the world. He had no armies to assist him, no scientists, no arsenal of democracy.
Even his own arsenal was still stamped with the emblem of totalitarianism.
A now familiar thwack of rotors broke him from his thoughts. Rogers crouched instinctively down, suddenly aware of his lack of camouflage. A red, white and blue super-suit didn't exactly blend in with snow and trees. Still, he was hidden in shadow…perhaps that would be enough.
But the helicopter passing overhead didn't seem to be searching, it was moving too fast for that. The roar of engines heightened, reached a momentary peak, then were receding. Rogers waited until they faded entirely away, then stood back up, feeling trepidation.
So the Oceanians were beginning to look for their lost helicopter.
Rogers had an uneasy feeling that the next aircraft he heard would be moving a lot more deliberately. Like a hunting dog rather than a greyhound.
He checked over his rifle again. Made sure that it was in working order.
It really was quite similar to the experimental automatic light machine guns that the Nazis had started using towards the end of the war. Lighter though. More finely made. Seemed to fire a larger caliber round as well, not a 30-06 like the Garand used, but almost that size.
Rogers wanted to sit down and take some time to test fire it, but was too concerned about the nearness of the fuel depot(?) to dare. Gunshots carried a long way, and if there were Oceanians hanging around then they'd definitely come by to see what was going on.
So instead he tramped determinedly onwards through the snow.
It took him another two hours to come to a point where the road widened and reached a fork with another path. This path was more heavily traveled, the tracks crossing it looked fresh. Rogers spent some time watching it, examining the map as he did so, trying to deduce where it went, but he simply wasn't familiar enough with Canadian geography to hazard more than a vague guess. East, he decided at last, that fork in the road went east.
In the end he scrambled quickly across it and made a long loop around to a gentle hill that overlooked the fuel depot(?). There he took out his binoculars and looked down at the miserable little outpost below.
Two sets of fuel pumps, one marked red, the other yellow. Next to them a Quonset hut, marked with the ubiquitous crimson V of English Socialism. How a V of all things could come to represent something like that was beyond Rogers. Still…there were probably more than a few confounded Hindus wondering the same thing about the swastika.
No movement, but Rogers could see footprints in the snow. Fresh.
Out beyond the Quonset hut was a decently sized square of flattened snow. Clearly a makeshift landing pad for helicopters.
Rogers searched his pockets for a pencil, found a nub of one, and labeled the installation on his map as a fuel depot. So he had been right…this was where the Oceanians gassed up before delving into the wilderness.
Strangely enough, he couldn't see any vehicles. Unless they were parked on the other side of the Quonset hut.
Over the next half hour Rogers stalked his way around the fuel depot, examining it from every angle. During that time the installation remained dead and empty, completely devoid of life. Either its garrison was holed up inside playing cards or praising Big Brother…or they didn't exist.
Rogers would have preferred the second option, but knew better than to straight up accept it. He'd need to check. Carefully.
During his reconnaissance he'd noted a snowmobile parked alongside the far end of the Quonset hut. That seemed to be the only vehicle in the entire installation.
It was also his ticket out of the wilderness. He could cover considerably more ground on a snowmobile than he could on foot.
Slowly, he began to move down the side of the hill.
There was a simple barbed wire fence separating him from the fuel depot, but it was shoddily made. Rogers forced his shield through two strands, forcing them far apart, then ducked through.
And with that he was in.
He'd seen better security at small town dime-stores.
Rifle in one hand, shield in the other, he moved stealthily towards the Quonset hut, taking the occasional glance back towards the road. Still empty and bare but for the occasional whirl of wind driven snow.
And then he was there, pressed alongside the door of the Quonset hut. It looked flimsy, probably didn't even have a lock.
Rogers took a deep breath.
Slammed the door open with one shoulder and stepped quickly inside.
The inside of the Quonset hut was dimly lit by kerosene lanterns. Smelled very much like a barracks, which was to say…not good. Had a quartet of beds and a glowing wood fired stove.
To go with the beds were four very surprised Oceanians. One was holding a rifle, looked to be about to head outside. He was the only one wearing boots and a coat, the rest were more lightly dressed. One held a book, the other two were playing cards.
The man in the coat raised his rifle. Rogers was already moving, faster than the Oceanian could track. Slammed him hard with his shield, rifle went flying, the soldier traced a graceful arc, then impacted the stove with a bang and a great orange shower of sparks. The two men playing cards had risen, one groping for a pistol, the soldier with the book had dropped it, taking up a knife instead.
Rogers jabbed the knife man in the mouth with the barrel of his rifle, felt the impact jolt up his arm, heard the man's teeth shatter like sugar cubes. Pivoted into a kick that took the man with the pistol high in the chest. He hit the side of the Quonset hut hard enough to dent it. The hut rang like a gong.
And just like that the last soldier was cowering down, arms laced protectively over his face, shrieking for clemency in mercifully normal English.
"No, please don't hurt me!" He begged. Rogers let down his rifle just a little bit. Looked over the wreckage of the hut, the ruins of the garrison. The man with the coat was groaning, smoke issuing from an irregularly shaped burn mark on the back of his coat, his comrade with the broken teeth clutching his mouth, moaning pitiably through what was most definitely a shattered jaw. The man that Rogers had pitched into the wall? Unconscious.
"Where are the keys to the snowmobile?" Rogers asked, snatching up the soldiers' rifles one by one and tossing them through the open door of the hut. The cowering soldier made no move to stop him. Just pointed, hand shaking, to a line of rucksacks hanging from pegs on the wall.
"Get them for me. You try for a weapon I'll break your arms." Rogers made sure to snarl that last part. The Oceanian, already cowed, cringed away from his words. Got up and secured a pair of keys with shaking hands.
"Who are you?" The soldier asked as he gave the keys over.
Rogers hesitated, then decided that he might as well.
"Captain America."
The soldier stared, half horrified, half…awestruck. Like he was encountering a higher power.
Before he left the Quonset hut Rogers took a handful of clothing at random from one of the rucksacks, and a cheap steel cigarette lighter.
"Stay in the hut." He warned the Oceanian, then stepped outside, shutting the door behind him. He felt slightly jittery as he warmed up the snowmobile and got it running, excited even.
This was another blow struck in the name of freedom.
But not the last blow he'd land before he left this place…
Taking the clothes, Rogers cheerfully lit them ablaze and draped them over the fuel pumps before retreating a safe distance away. There, in the middle of the road, he took deliberate aim with his rifle. Directly at the center of the pump.
Squeezed the trigger.
For a moment there was nothing, then came a spurt of liquid flame, a bigger jet, a plume!
And…
BOOM!
The pumps went up, their eruption almost simultaneous, a flash of white flame so bright that Rogers had to duck away, so hot that his face would tingle and burn for hours afterward.
But all that while he couldn't stop grinning, even as he gunned it down the lonely wintery road south.
This had just begun.
