Frost Moon

Frost Moon Part 7

Safe. Well, that would be if Eirin had remembered to turn off the booby traps. Bjørn stopped just outside the minefield and radioed her to make sure.

'Bjørn here, have you turned off the minefields?'

'Only one way to find out, honey,' a female voice replied.

'Yeah, fuck you too. Just make sure that you turn them back on immediately after we are through! I have a really bad feeling about this,' Bjørn mumbled.

Elisabeth cursed silently. Just her luck that the third brother already had some kind of girlfriend, and that she was around. Always more difficult to control two lovebirds if they were together. But what the heck, this was supposed to be her field of expertise. She just had to give it her best shot. Anyway, she was getting curious about these people. Folks that brought holy water on taxi missions, and lugged military sniper rifles around, weren't nobodies.

The massive vehicle roared up the hill and pulled to a halt in the yard between the picturesque timber cabins. They were almost buried in snow and looked like they came straight from a Christmas carol. A Christmas carol with machine gun nests – unmanned, Elisabeth noted – and barbed wire. The dark guest cabins were huddled in a semicircle in front of the brightly lit main building, and Elisabeth's attention was captured by the beautiful girl bathed in the light streaming from its open front door. With the light coming from behind her and her long red hair blowing freely in the strong wind, it almost looked like she had a halo. As Tor and Geir were cursing about soreness and stretching their legs, the girl motioned for them to hurry up wit hone arm, while the other was hidden behind the door she struggled to keep open in the storm. Probably with a weapon in it, Elisabeth thought.

'Hurry up! I don't want to let the cold in,' Eirin shouted and waved them in. When Elisabeth passed her, she gave the Goth princess a thorough, almost hostile look. Bjørn thought he could see sparks flying between the girls already. Catfight coming up! Eirin wasn't going to give up her position as "hottest babe around" voluntarily. And Elisabeth was a clear challenger for that title. Fair enough, maybe now his brothers would get off his back for flirting with the girls they had in. Normally there would be 25-30 people living here, mostly the boys and girls of the district receiving what passed for schooling these days. No more algebra or literary analysis; the curriculum was subjects like arctic survival and how to banish a demon. Most of the kids had gone home to their families to celebrate the winter solstice- or "Jul" as some old timers insisted on calling it – and only Eirin had stayed, on his personal request.

* * *

The three brothers –Tor, Geir and Bjørn – were the latest generation of the Myrvang family, the family that had been the soul of the community for as long as anyone could remember. There had always been a Myrvang as the local constable, the priest was always a Myrvang, and among the youth the same applied to the role as captain of the local soccer team. So when the world had gone to hell, it was only natural that the community turned to the Myrvangs for guidance. The only Myrvangs left back home at the time of the Troubles were Geir and old Ingjerd, the brothers' great-aunt, who lived in her own cabin far out in the forest. Tor had left home just before the beginning of the Troubles, to volunteer for the militias, and saw action in all the places they could see go to hell live on television. Bjørn, after his infamous proclamation about Myrvang – which also was the name of the village– being nothing but a speck of shit on the map, had left long before. As soon as he was old enough, he'd headed out to seek his fortune in Oslo. Of all the lessons he learned away from home, the most important one was discovering that the last place you want to be when civilization breaks down is trapped in a major city. Beaten and broken, both errant brothers had eventually returned to their ancestral community and the ski slopes above.