The Cold

by Rich Hawkins

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Andy wrapped his arms over his chest and shivered in the cold. “Maybe we should find somewhere to stay for the night, before anything else passes through here.”

  Seth bowed his head. “I don’t want to stay in the village.”

  “But we won’t survive in the dark out in the snow and fog,” replied Andy. “Please, Seth. We need to find shelter.”

  Ruby looked about the street, her teeth chattering. She rubbed her arms. “Andy’s right.”

  Seth’s mouth felt sore as he let out a prolonged breath. He made sure not to turn back to see the devastation of his house. So many memories back there. But memories wouldn’t do him any good. He raised his face to Andy.

  “All right. Lead the way.”

  *

  At the outskirts of the village they found an intact house not yet compromised by any kind of creature. It stood at the top of a gentle rise in the ground, with no tracks around it, near a grove of trees. The front door was unlocked, the insides neat and untouched by any violence or disorder.

  They didn’t bother to barricade the doors or block the windows. They were exhausted – and if some giant entity passed through it would smash the house to bits anyway. There was no protection.

  Everything seemed so paltry and forlorn.

  Seth just wanted to sleep. He felt hollowed out and useless, beyond help. All he could do was lie on the sofa and stare at the opposite wall. He didn’t care or even wonder about the people who once lived in the house. He ignored the photographs on the shelves. Trembling seized his arms and his hands. He couldn’t eat.

  Andy and Ruby sat within a nest of blankets on the thick carpet of the living room, sharing a packet of crisps that rustled in their shaking hands.

  The snow fell against the house.

  It was still daylight when they fell into a deep sleep of exhaustion.

  *

  No refuge in his dreams. No comfort in the faces of the dead people he once knew. Nothing but monsters and bloodthirsty gods.

  *

  In the morning, Seth woke cold, groggy and aching-limbed. Andy and Ruby were looking out of the living room window.

  “Someone’s out there,” Ruby said. “There are lights.”

  Seth sat up, rubbed his head. “Lights?”

  Andy glanced back at him. “Out past the snow, in the fog. Maybe a car or something.”

  With a tired grunt, Seth rose shakily from the sofa, keeping the blankets draped over his shoulders as he went to the window. He cleared his throat and sagged on his sore feet.

  He didn’t see the lights at first; his vision was still blurry from sleep and stinging with tiredness. But then twin beams of headlights appeared within the white fog and moved towards the house.

  They stumbled outside, into the driving snow. Seth’s eyes smarted from the cold air. The wind flailed at the survivors, tried to drive them back to the doorway, but they dug their feet in and struggled towards the headlights.

  “There it is,” Andy shouted. He flicked on his torch and pointed it towards the approaching lights, then he worked the switch to make the torch beam blink repeatedly as a makeshift signal. Seth waved his arms and called out, his voice rasping and dry. Ruby stood in silence, her hands at her face, wavering in the cold.

  The headlights neared, creeping closer and growing brighter, until the sound of a slow, rattling engine could be heard.

  Seth put his arms down. Andy grimaced into the wailing wind and stood closer to Ruby. The growling of the engine rose above the wind, and the shape of a large green tractor emerged upon the road, clearing a path for itself with a curved snowplough attached to its front. Its huge wheels were bulky and thickly-grooved, clotted with snow. A shadowed figure sat inside the cab.

  “Holy shit,” Andy said. There was awe in his voice.

  “We’ve been saved,” muttered Ruby. “Thank God.”

  The tractor was pulling a long, open-top trailer that bore a makeshift roof of tarpaulin sheets held up by thin lengths of wood and tent poles. Within the trailer, the huddled forms of over two dozen survivors looked up or turned their heads to stare at Seth, Ruby and Andy from beneath their swaddled blankets, coats and stained duvets. Children peered over the raised side of the trailer. Dirty, unwashed, desperate. Lost souls, all.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  They left the house behind, and Seth looked back at the vanishing shape of the village as the tractor moved along the road. He gave a silent goodbye to his parents.

  The three of them sat at the rear of the trailer, awkward in the presence of strangers. The trailer shuddered over the wide road, whose lines and angles were only hinted at beneath the snow. There was the smell of old sweat and neglect, mixed with the faint odour of animal dung. The tarpaulin canopy flapped above them. The wind pushed at the trailer, sweeping about in gusts that seemed to speak if Seth listened too intently.

  The trailer was crammed with people, scattered supplies of food, water, equipment and clothes, all vaguely chaotic in the huddling of survivors clad in winter clothes and woollen hats. Some of the people bore wounds and injuries. A few looked ill. Traumatised hearts and minds.

  Seth looked around, but the others avoided eye contact, except for a few children who watched him warily. He tried to smile at them, but couldn’t maintain the shape of his mouth. His expression became more of an aggrieved grimace. He noticed makeshift weapons clutched in hands or lying on the grimy floor of the trailer. There were hammers, an axe, assorted lengths of lead pipe, a crowbar, and a baseball bat. A man, wearing an oversized coat and a furred cap with ear flaps, sat on a plastic lawn chair, his back to everyone else as he looked out from the trailer, keeping watch. He cradled a double-barrelled shotgun across his chest. His darkly-stubbled face was flecked with snow, his eyes squinting, mouth tight with a scowl.

  In the tractor cab, Quinn hunched behind the steering wheel, keeping the tractor in the middle of the road. He was a middle-aged man in layers of winter clothing. Perched behind and to the side of him, his brother Mack held a bolt-action hunting rifle with a telescopic sight atop it. Mack kept glancing back at Seth, no expression on his haggard face. His eyes were the colour of dark soil.

  Seth looked away from him. He recalled the two men climbing down from the cab when the tractor arrived at the house. They had appraised Seth, Ruby and Andy, asking them questions in a vaguely threatening manner. They had let Seth keep the axe, but he’d been forced to hand over his pistol. Seth hadn’t protested, and was glad to be rid of the firearm. He didn’t trust himself with it, and the two men seemed competent with guns – they had that look about them. Proper countryside types, who lived close to the earth and cared little for the outside world of large towns and urban sprawls.

  Quinn had taken the pistol and pocketed it. Then the brothers invited them to join the others in the trailer. It hadn’t taken long for Seth, Ruby, and Andy to decide.

  And now they were on the road, heading north to an army base rumoured to be taking in survivors.

  Andy hunched over, smoking a cigarette. No one seemed to mind the smoke, especially Ruby, who sat especially close to him with her arm hooked around his.

  An old woman to Seth’s right sat against the side of the trailer, and she caught his eye with an anxious smile. A grey blanket draped over her shoulders. She was holding a sleeping baby, no more than six months old and swaddled in blankets.

  “I’m Delia,” she said. She looked to be in her sixties or seventies.

  Seth gave her his name. Andy and Ruby nodded at Delia.

  “Where are we heading exactly?” Seth asked the woman. “Quinn told us that we’re going to an army base up north. Where up north?”

  “Somewhere in Staffordshire,” Delia said, one hand brushing loose strands of greasy hair behind one ear. Her face told of the last few days of struggle. “We’ve been picking up survivors here and there. Quinn and Mack rescued me from Dorchester. They’re good men. They saved us all.”

  Delia noticed Seth g
lance at the baby.

  “He’s my grandson,” she said. “His name’s Jack. Such a lovely boy.” She kissed him on the forehead.

  “Where are his parents?” Seth immediately regretted asking the question, and even more so when he saw the glimmer of pain in Delia’s face.

  “They died in Dorchester. Killed by one of those godawful monsters. I managed to save Jack and get away. Now, I feel guilty.”

  “Because you couldn’t save his parents?”

  “My daughter and her husband. I couldn’t do anything. I feel like I let them die.”

  “You’re only human. At least Jack is safe. I’m sure they’d be grateful to you for that.”

  Delia gave a slight nod without much conviction.

  “I’m sorry,” Seth said. “I shouldn’t have asked.”

  “It’s fine. Gotta keep going for Jack.”

  “That’s admirable.”

  “I’m all he’s got left. He’s all I’ve got left. I’m not going to fail him.”

  No one spoke for a while. The snowfall dwindled to a stop, but the sky was darkening in slow degrees. Seth wondered if it would ever rain again.

  “Does anyone even know what caused all this?” Andy said. “Where do the monsters come from?”

  “I’ve heard stories,” Delia said. “Hearsay.”

  Andy extinguished his cigarette and threw it out of the trailer. “What kind of hearsay?”

  Delia sniffled, wiped her nose on the back of her hand. She pulled the swaddled blankets tighter around Jack’s sleeping form and looked at the two men. “I heard someone say that the monsters are from Hell – the manifestations of humanity’s sins. Sins made into flesh. Sounds bloody ridiculous, if you ask me.”

  Ruby frowned at Delia, and blinked.

  “You believe that?” asked Seth.

  “I don’t believe Hell is real,” she answered. “But I believe we’re in some version of it, for the foreseeable future. Apart from that, I have no idea.”

  Andy sighed and sat back. “My grandfather was very religious, and he always said that Hell was a place of deep cold, not fire and brimstone. I know it sounds crazy, but this feels like the Hell he talked about.”

  “Christ,” said Seth, wiping his mouth. He noticed Ruby turn away to hide her face.

  Delia gazed down at her grandson with a trembling smile. “Christ is gone, I think.”

  The baby boy slept, blissfully oblivious to the world that wanted to consume him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The tractor pushed through rising drifts upon the road, weaving between snow-clotted car wrecks and around pile-ups. Its tyres fought for purchase, occasionally slipping and skidding over the more treacherous parts. The sounds of its engine and stuttering exhaust echoed into the snow and white fog.

  Seth wondered how many bodies were lost beneath the snow. He and Andy peered over the side of the trailer at a single-engine aircraft that had crash-landed on the roadside. It was crumpled and broken within a grove of blackened trees. Human remains hung from the upper branches of a leafy birch. Limbs and viscera dangled like decorations.

  Food was shared amongst the survivors. Delia fed Jack from a bottle of Cow & Gate instant milk. Seth watched them, amazed that such a vulnerable thing was surviving the cataclysm. He thought about the sacrifices and hardships there would be just to keep that little life from being snuffed out by the cold. To protect that tiny spark in a world of darkness. He thought about the problems ahead. He thought about the survival of children.

  Someone told a joke.

  Later on, the tractor stopped and several of the people disembarked from the trailer, clutching handfuls of toilet paper, and warily moving into a dense thicket. Mack stood guard at the vehicle with his hunting rifle, while men and women with makeshift weapons watched the road and the surrounding area.

  Seth took two wads of tissue and went to shit behind a patch of overgrown nettles. As he relieved himself, he heard distant roaring to the east, and when he emerged from the trees the other refugees were staring up at the massive gliding silhouette of something that resembled a giant stingray.

  Ruby stood near him, her eyes wide. “It’s beautiful and terrible.”

  Before the flying thing vanished deeper into the low clouds, a squirming form was glimpsed struggling in its hanging claws. It looked a lot like a person.

  Ruby looked at Seth then turned away.

  They were all prey now. Animals to be hunted.

  *

  They travelled for the rest of the day, and when the light began to fade they took shelter for the night at an old barn, not far from the road. Seth had been one of the men and women who’d checked the building was safe before the rest of the group was allowed inside. His hands had been shaking around the axe haft the entire time. Then the supplies were brought in and placed in the middle of the floor. People made spaces for rest and sleeping around the edges and up in the hayloft. Coleman lanterns were lit and camping stoves fired up to cook a communal meal of baked beans and tinned sausages.

  The few children played simple games away from the adults

  Seth’s little group found some space near a rusting piece of farm machinery and sat on the hard-packed dirt floor waiting for the food to be ready. Delia sat nearby, cooing to Jack, who gurgled and whined. The barn smelled of mildew, old wood, and dust.

  The steaming food was dished out in paper bowls, with plastic forks and knives. Cheese crackers and chunks of chocolate were given to the younger ones as a treat. They ate in a loose gathering, mostly in silence. The walls creaked around them. The wind rose to a distressed wail, pushing at the old building as if to test its strength and fortitude. Quinn said that they might have to dig out the tractor and trailer in the morning, depending on how heavy the snow was overnight.

  When they had finished their meals, they gathered the bowls and cutlery in a pile and retired to their makeshift beds of blankets, sleeping bags and duvets. A red-haired woman with a long knife fixed to her belt read stories to the children.

  Andy was already snoring gently, at peace for a few precious hours. Ruby slept beside him. Delia sat nearby and rocked Jack to sleep, then returned him to his crib of blankets and lay down next to it. Her eyes flicked towards Seth, and he nodded at her. She returned the small gesture.

  He rubbed his eyes and yawned. He shivered, more from grief than cold. Exhaustion was a slow pulse within him. He thought of his parents and missed them terribly. Bad memories of his teenage years, when he hadn’t been a good son, made his face burn with shame and his heart crumple. He regretted every argument and angry word. He wished he could have made them proud of him.

  “Sorry,” he whispered, with tears in his eyes. No one heard him.

  Seth lay down, staring at the glowing Coleman lantern in the middle of the barn. He passed into a sleep filled with nightmares.

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  In the morning Seth woke to panicked voices and found that a boy had gone missing during the night. His father was on the verge of hysteria; two men were holding him back from going outside alone. He swore and spat, said he had to find his boy, and was only calmed by Quinn’s decision to send out a small group to search for his son.

  “I’ve already lost my wife,” he said. “I can’t lose Grant as well.”

  “Was he taken by something?” asked Mack.

  Quinn shook his head. “I found the door left open when I woke this morning, and his tracks in the snow leading away. There was no blood.”

  “We have to get out there and find him,” the father said. “We have to get out there now.”

  “Yes, we will,” said Quinn. “No one gets left behind.”

  “Let’s get it done,” said Mack. He would lead the group out into the snow. Seth volunteered so he’d have something to distract him from thoughts of his parents. The rest of the group was made up of the father – whose name was Neal – and two other men, Darren and Callum. Darren was a wiry man with reddened eyes. Callum was the man in the furry Russian hat
with ear flaps; he stared out from the doorway, gripping his shotgun, as the others got ready for the search.

  Seth took his axe. Mack readied his hunting rifle, while Neal and Darren each carried a knife.

  “Good luck,” Andy said to Seth.

  “Thanks,” Seth replied. His heart was clattering. Adrenaline drained his mouth of saliva and soured his throat. He shifted on his feet to disguise the shaking of his legs.

  Delia watched from nearby, rocking baby Jack in her arms. She looked pale and wan, older than she had appeared yesterday.

  “Come on, let’s go,” Neal said, panic and worry in his face. His eyes were watery and bloodshot. He took gulping breaths. “We can’t leave him out there.”

  Mack led the men outside. Seth and Neal walked either side of him, while Darren and Callum walked behind. The tractor and trailer were parked nearby and appeared untouched.

  The boy’s footprints trailed away from the barn and to the east. The men stood scanning their surroundings, grimacing in the falling snow. The wind howled high above them. Seth thought he heard the deep growling of thunder from far away, followed by distant crashes that could have been the impact of falling trees.

  Mack crouched beside the tracks, looked down at them. “They’re fresh. The boy hasn’t been gone long. There are no other tracks.” He looked up at Neal. “Do you have any idea why he’d leave?”

  Neal rubbed at his face. “I’m not sure. He never spoke a word yesterday. And sometimes he just…uh, loses track of what’s going on. He hasn’t been the same since his mother was killed.”

  “That’s not surprising, is it?” said Callum.

  Darren nodded, as if it was needed.

  “We have to hurry,” Neal said, his mouth trembling as he looked at Grant’s tracks going off into the white fog. “He needs our help. Oh God. My poor boy, out there all alone.”