Biscuits peered through weathered binoculars off toward the northern horizon, an endless low-grey sky above. It was snowing heavily. His right eyebrow flickered. With quiet aplomb he handed the binoculars to Admiral HmmGov.
‘You see it? It’s coming for us. We can tame it. Use it. Channel our will through it. Kill them all with it’.
Admiral HmmGov winced through the hallucinatory snowfall‘s haze.
He hadn’t signed up for navigating the sea of stupidity that had been his lot in life, ever since he first tasted raw steak at cub camp and the other cubs vomited. Now there was this Biscuits fellow. A contractor of unknown provenance as a guide in the frozen north, a place where stupidity was found out quickly evidenced by the occasional frozen rib-cage of savaged carrion and a remorseless, salt-pierced wind.
He agreed with his colleague’s instincts initially, but something now seemed severely off with the man. They were still a solid 18-day hike across sheet ice to the nearest supply station, at best, with 6 days left on quarter-rations. As the pearly, dying sun bounced down the ridgeway marking dusk, he pondered if he was ever going to see home again. It had all seemed so straightforward a few months ago. Start a new nation, bootstrap Wim Hof living, away from that sullen isle of rain and piss-soaked streets, the pre-diabetic fools with their masks and chips. The question then became where. Somewhere their gumption and balls would be embraced - the entire Arctic - pioneers of a noble, long-term goal. Leave the scum to their deep fried pizzas and diazepam.
Funding had come by divorces and equity release, a highly tense drug deal in Halifax that snowballed into a grotesque incident neither of them had spoken about since. A quest in the blood, bonded by blood, raiding gangs headed into the great unknown fully prepared, unlike those poofs at cubs. They’d show everyone how it was done. Except......their gear and insignia designs seemed like bantz originally. Now they disturbed him - ‘Digestives’ - rich in fat and sugar, known enemies of testosterone. Why had Biscuits lied?
The addiction revealed itself after he’d misplaced a hunting knife and found a stash of Digestives in a sack. Suspicious, he checked all the food sleds and every single one was packed with Jammy Dodgers, Twixes and Mint Clubs. Pushing the eyepiece to his sunken, malnourished socket, in his mind’s eye a flash of crumbs, overfamiliar talks about Covid equations during meals and the referencing of a certain Lord Tea in his companion’s sleep broke through momentarily. Ignore. Concentrate and commit. The designated viewpoint still seemed unclear in the driving elements.
Biscuits shouted hoarsely at HmmGov, his voice lost partially in the gyre. ‘Can you see it? The legends all confirm it. We can talk with it, mediate terms. They’ll never know what hit them’.
’Hit what, Biscui......?’, the admiral paused mid-word. Around 800 yards away, an unknowable shape bounded over crevasses the width of city streets and icy crags.
’Yessss’, hissed Biscuits, fondling a strange amulet, ‘there it is. We can enchant it with Kenny Ken. Hell hath no fury like a guinea pig bugler scorned’.
