Bitter Cold Apocalypse | Book 1 | Bitter Cold Apocalypse

by Connor, T. W.

  We all leaned to the right, and the sled started to slide closer and closer to the bank. Closer…and then too close.

  “Sit up!” I screamed.

  Behind me, the weight of the sled shifted and we were suddenly moving straight again, and not a moment too soon. We hit a spot where the mud reached further out into the river than anywhere else, and the sled went up the slight ramp and was airborne for a moment.

  I held my breath, terrified at the thought of coming down, and when we slammed back down into the ice I was already tensed and ready to jump ship, certain that the ice was going to shatter.

  But it didn’t. Instead, we shot through the turn and right toward the center of the river.

  “Lean right, hard!” I screamed.

  We all threw our weight to the right, the sled lifting up on the left side and carving over the ice in a sled’s version of going up on two wheels, as I watched the river ahead of us, holding my breath. We were going far too fast to stop now, and I wasn’t sure we were going to turn quickly enough. I wasn’t even sure we were going to keep going. The sled was rushing right toward the center point of the river, and I remembered Marlon’s words about the thickness of the ice out here, terrified. What if it was too thin to hold us? What if we went right through it and into the water—and then under the ice—and there was no one up there to save us? What if this was the way it all ended?

  Then the sled was turning away from the center, and moving back toward the shore, the parabola of our path pushing us closer and closer to the safety of the thicker ice. I watched our progress, measuring it for when we needed to stop turning, though, because it wasn’t going to do any of us any good if we overshot it and ended up in the forest on our side of the river.

  I waited until I thought that we were on safer footing—or icing—and then called for everyone to lean slightly left. I needed us to get the sled back to where it was running parallel to the shore, rather than straight toward it. The timing was perfect, and the change in weight distribution turned the sled slightly, pushing the nose so that it was traveling forward rather than toward the shore. Thirty seconds later and we were back in the prime position, about ten feet from the shore and shooting forward on the ice.

  At that point, I finally let out the breath I’d been holding and allowed my shoulders to relax. For the moment, at least, we’d achieved a sort of victory.

  “Marlon, how much further do we think we have to go before we hit Ellis Woods?” I asked. I wanted to hear that we were almost there. I wanted to hear that this wild ride was almost finished.

  I desperately wanted to hear that I was going to be able to deliver my wife to safety soon.

  “I’m guessing a mile more!” he called back. “If we’ve managed to lose Randall and his men, we should be in town before they can get to us again.”

  If. It was an awfully big question. But right now, for just a moment, I was willing to let myself believe that we might have done just that.

  24

  We maintained our forward momentum for the next half an hour, and though we heard occasional shots in the distance behind us, they never came close to us.

  The knowledge that Randall and his men were still back there chewed at me. I didn’t like the idea that we didn’t know where they were or what they were doing. And I really didn’t like the idea that they could show up again at virtually any moment. They shouldn’t have been able to catch up to us the way they did. Not when they were at least half a day behind us, and not when we’d done so much to put them off the trail. Yeah, we’d taken a couple hours off from traveling when Angie went into the water, because we’d had to get her warmed up.

  That shouldn’t have given them enough time to catch us. It shouldn’t have given them enough time to get settled in the trees and turn their guns on us.

  There was something there that wasn’t right. Something that was making my instincts scream. Unfortunately, my screaming instincts weren’t giving me anything definitive, and that was a problem. Something was wrong—but I couldn’t figure out what it was. Which was not only frustrating, but also frightening. I’d made a living off of letting my instincts rule me in Afghanistan, and they’d never led me wrong. They’d also never taken so freaking long to give me an answer.

  I was just starting to go through things in my head one more time when the tree line in front of us suddenly broke and I saw…buildings.

  Buildings that I recognized.

  “We’re here!” I screamed, too excited to keep my voice down or try to come up with anything more sophisticated. “Ellis Woods, dead ahead! We’ve got about five hundred more feet, folks, and we’re home.”

  I didn’t think I’d ever been so excited to see human civilization in my life. And that included the time I’d spent three full months in the desert of Afghanistan with only one other man for company.

  Behind me, Angie screeched in excitement, and I could hear Marlon chuckling to himself—no doubt as surprised as I was that we’d actually made it.

  “Right, we aim for the gentlest part of the shore we can find!” I shouted, my mind already running through the options here. I had legitimately never thought about how we were going to stop once we got to town—partially because there had been so many other things to worry about, and partially because I hadn’t been sure we were ever going to make it to town.

  Now I saw this as a desperately bad lack of planning.

  We were going fast enough that I didn’t think we could just put our feet down to slow the sled anymore. We would run the risk of doing serious damage to our feet, ankles, and knees doing that—and might actually flip the sled, in which case we’d be in danger of damaging a lot more than just our limbs. Literally the only way we could slow the sled was to get it up on the mud and ice of the shore, and hope the sled just slowed down, rather than flipping and sending us all flying into the air.

  Of course, first we were going to have to get to the other side of the river. Which meant we were going to have to once again cross over the center of the river—and the thin ice there. I was just going to grit my teeth and hope we were moving fast enough to skim over the top of the ice without causing too many problems.

  It didn’t seem like a lot to ask. We’d been tempting fate since we’d started this crazy ride. What was one more bout of temptation before we were through with it?

  “Right, we’re going to have to start leaning left!” I shouted. “We need to get to the other side of the river, and I’m thinking if we do it gradually enough, we’ll be able to run right up onto the bank on that side. With luck, we’ll end up right below our house, Angie!”

  “We’re crossing the river?” she asked instead of answering.

  “Do you see another way of getting to town?” I asked, only semi-rhetorically.

  If she saw another way of doing this, I was all ears. But I knew—as she did—that the bridge across the river was another mile down. And we’d been lucky up to this point in avoiding any further interaction with Randall and his boys. I didn’t want to push our luck any further than we had to. I also didn’t want to have to walk a mile through the snow to come back to the town we were about to pass, just so we could avoid crossing the river here.

  Sure, it was flimsy reasoning. But climbing into the sled and shooting down this ice funnel hadn’t exactly been solid.

  I just wanted to get home. I wanted out of the cold and out of these clothes I’d been wearing for too long. I wanted Angie in the hands of a doctor. I wanted to see Sarah and make sure she was safe. And I wanted to start talking to people who might have more information than I did about what was going on with this whole EMP thing—and the rest of the freaking world.

  And I wanted out of Randall’s territory. I wanted to stop worrying about when that group was going to pop up again and start shooting at us.

  “You’re right,” Marlon said, interrupting my thoughts. “We can’t afford to stay out in the open for any longer than we already have. I don’t know about you, but I don’t trust Ra
ndall and the others. There’s something wrong with them having caught up with us like that. Something I can’t quite put a finger on. I want to feel four walls around me again so I can figure it out.”

  “You and me, both,” I shouted back. “Let’s get this beast across the river and into the mudbank, so we can get to those four walls! Lean!”

  We all leaned to the left, and the sled’s nose edged further and further toward the middle of the river, our speed increasing again as we got away from the random reeds and bushes that had frozen into the river near the shore and got onto an area that was pure ice and nothing else.

  I looked down, and realized that the ice was actually changing color beneath us. Instead of the bright white, scattered with debris, that it had been on the shore, it was now…turning more and more blue.

  Getting more and more thin, I told myself, biting my lip. It wasn’t that the ice was changing color. It was that I was better able to see the water flowing underneath it.

  Oh God. Oh God, oh God, oh God, this was a bad idea. A really terribly horribly rotten idea. I shouldn’t be able to see the water so clearly under the ice. I shouldn’t even be thinking about the water under the ice. But suddenly I was, and my thoughts flew back to that earlier idea of us going right through the ice and into the water—and when we were so close, too. I could actually see our home now, the bright orange of the shutters screaming out from the white of the snow. I could see the town where I’d come to know the mayor and the chief of police and the owner of the grocery store. I could practically smell the scent of apple pies baking in the local coffee shop/bakery where we liked to get coffee on Sunday mornings.

  But it wouldn’t matter. If we went into the ice here, we’d die. We’d die with our town right there, almost close enough to touch. Even if someone saw us go into the water, there was no way they’d get to us in time to save us. Particularly if we got swept up by the current running under the ice.

  Below us, I heard a deafening splitting sound, followed by an echoing crack, and I knew the worst was about to happen.

  “John!” Angie said, her arms coming suddenly around my waist.

  I reached down with one arm and grasped her hand, squeezing it tightly. If we were going to go down, then I was going to spend my life saving her. There was no two ways about it. I’d throw her up onto the ice and use my last breath to make sure she made it to solid ground, and I would count it a win if she came out of it. I wouldn’t even think twice about it.

  But I didn’t hear any further cracks, and within seconds we were flying up onto the mud and debris of the shore in front of the town, the sled bouncing and jumping as it hit the flotsam and jetsam of the shore, throwing us to the right and left as we bounced along.

  “Hold the sides!” I screamed. “Hold it steady to keep it from tipping!”

  We might be on the mud now. That didn’t mean I wanted any of us to go flying out.

  The sled flew up onto the snow, then, where the nose stuck suddenly into a snowbank, and at that, we all did go flying out of our carriage, landing in a jumble on the snow a few feet further. I lay there for several moments, trying to figure out whether I was alive or dead—and which I would rather be. Then the aches and pains started coming through, as well as the fact that the side of my face that was on the snow was registering the pins and needles of impending frostbite, and I realized abruptly that I was alive.

  Alive and on the right side of the river. Laying right in front of our town—and protection.

  At that my brain started moving again, followed by my body, and I was on my feet within moments, my eyes scanning the ground around me for Angie and Marlon. They were both a bit further along, Angie sprawled out on the ground as if she’d done a belly flop, but laughing, and Marlon curled into a ball—which, I realized now, was exactly the right position to have taken when we were flying through the air.

  I rushed to Angie, relieved beyond words to see her alive, and took her into my arms, sobbing with the giddiness of sudden relief from all the tension we’d been feeling. I couldn’t believe we’d made it. Couldn’t believe we’d actually carried off that final run, across the center of the river and over the ominously cracking ice. I couldn’t believe Angie had actually been in that water, and we’d actually managed to get her back out again.

  I couldn’t believe we’d been attacked by a bear and survived.

  I looked up from Angie’s face, tears of relief in my eyes, and that was when I saw it.

  A small group of men across the river. And by small I meant small. There were only ten of them, if my counting was correct, and they looked as if they’d all lived incredibly rough lives. Outdoorsman’s lives—lives that had prepared them for living outside the boundaries of civilized society. They weren’t sensible preppers or survivalists. No, deep in my bones, I knew they were something else entirely…

  I narrowed my eyes at them, trying to figure out what they were doing. Where the hell had they come from? I didn’t have any doubt that they were with Randall—I could actually see him at one end of the line—but how had he managed to gather them in the time he had?

  What had he been doing, hiding them in the woods just in case they found someone to chase back toward Ellis Woods, where he evidently had old business to take care of?

  Regardless, the men all had guns, I could see that much. And they all had their faces covered by a various array of scarves, hoods, and even masks. They were…were they actually forming ranks? Yes, I realized. The ones in the front were getting down on their knees, the ones behind them standing directly over them.

  And they were all pointing their guns right at us.

  “Run!” I screamed.

  Marlon, Angie, and I jumped to our feet and sprinted for the building right in front of us, Marlon and I supporting Angie between us as we made for the narrow opening between two houses, our minds moving in sync as if we’d been working together for years.

  Behind us, I could hear a voice shouting out orders. A voice that I recognized. A voice that brought back the terror of a night spent in a cabin that wasn’t ours—with a man that I knew was going to try to kill me, come morning.

  Randall.

  He’d managed to catch us again. And this time, he’d brought a number of friends with him. I could only hope that their aim was as bad as whoever had been shooting at us on the river. They had to be at least five hundred feet behind us, given the width of the river, and we were moving targets. Not quickly moving targets, but moving targets nonetheless.

  If we could just hit that alley before they got settled, we’d be okay. I hoped. I prayed.

  Twenty feet, I thought.

  Behind us, more shouting. Randall giving orders.

  Ten feet.

  Five feet. But Angie was starting to flag. She was tired, cold, and wounded, and we’d long since gone through her reserves.

  And then we were shooting into the alleyway. I ducked down, scooped Angie up, and fled toward the street ahead of us, Marlon taking up position behind me as we sprinted for the safety of town.

  Behind us, I could hear the group letting off the first of their shots. But it was too late. We were already in the lee of the building.

  We shot out into the street, our breath ragged, and came to a staggering stop, each of us staring dazedly around, shocked at the sudden return to the normalcy that was town life.

  There weren’t many people on the street, and the ones that were there were obviously frightened. The EMP, I remembered. These were people who had seen their way of life suddenly disrupted, with no reason and perhaps very little explanation. They’d likely been cut off from civilization entirely—I didn’t think there had been enough time for the government or the military to send anyone to explain anything—and they probably didn’t know anything more about what had happened than we did.

  I turned slowly, my eyes roving over the town as I tried to fit it into this new version of the world. All the lights were out, of course, and there were no cars on the street. The three
signals I could see on this block were just dead. They weren’t even blinking to indicate that they were broken.

  The town had generators, I thought. Every town in this area did—just in case of electric failure. But they would only be in certain areas. The mayor would be, I thought, collecting everyone and funneling them to those areas. To keep them warm. To keep them safe.

  That was where we needed to go. We needed to figure out where all of the people were, and get there. That was where we’d find the mayor, the chief of police. That was where we’d find the doctor. And Sarah.

  Above anything else, that was where I’d be able to tell the people in charge that there was a group setting up outside of town, evidently hellbent on causing trouble for reasons I still didn’t understand—but definitely needed to figure out.

  Because we were too far out from any military bases to be expecting help already. And this town was too small for it to be of much importance to anyone else. We wouldn’t be the first place they would send their soldiers. Hell, we probably wouldn’t even be one hundredth. It could be weeks—maybe even months—before we heard from anyone, unless we went out in search of answers on our own.

  And that meant that for the time being, and when it came to defending ourselves against whatever ragtag group of outlaws Randall had managed to put together, we were well and truly on our own.

  “Let’s get to Town Hall,” I said roughly. “I expect that’s where they’re gathering people. That’s where the mayor had the biggest generator, and they’ll want to have everyone there where they can keep them warm.”

  “Lead the way,” Marlon answered quickly. “Because we’re going to need to do more than just find the people.” He gave me a long, intense stare. “We’re going to have to get them ready to defend the town against Randall and whoever else is out there.”

  I gave him a nod, understanding all of the things he wasn’t quite saying, and then swiveled on my heel and started running for the next block up. Town Hall was close to here, thank God. And I wanted to get there as quickly as possible.