The Cold

by Rich Hawkins

  “We’ll find him,” said Mack. “He couldn’t have gone far.”

  Neal was already following his son’s tracks. The other men pulled up their hoods and moved after him.

  *

  They stayed close together, keeping watch with weapons ready. The snow was coming down harder than it had done when they’d left the barn. Sweeping winds ghosted over them.

  Mack and Neal walked either side of Grant’s tracks. Seth held his axe with both hands, and he looked out for the lost boy. He winced at the cold working its way into his aching bones. His teeth chattered. He glanced back to see Darren hunching over and wiping at his face. Callum had his shotgun raised and ready for anything that came out of the white fog and falling snow.

  Neal began calling out for his son with his hands cupped to his mouth. His voice was hoarse and panicked.

  Through several fields they kept following the tracks, scared and hyper-alert. They’d lost sight of the barn in the distance behind them, and Seth worried that if their tracks were swept away by the wind or buried in the falling snow, they wouldn’t be able to find their way back. There were many different deaths waiting for them in the cold wastelands.

  A few minutes later, they found a small woollen hat discarded on a patch of bloodstained snow. The blood was half-frozen. Recent. The tracks stopped at the hat.

  The group halted. Each man stared down at the hat and the spread of wet red upon and around it.

  Neal seemed to become breathless, clutching his chest with one hand. He dropped his knife and collapsed to his knees on the snow, then let out a braying sob that descended into shuddering breaths of grief and pain.

  The other men regarded each other, their faces pale and forlorn. Darren stared at the blood. Callum shook his head, his eyes downcast in the frail light.

  Neal picked up his son’s hat in both hands and held it close to his face. With futile hope he looked about for any other sign of Grant, but the boy was gone. Completely gone. He slumped, sobbing with his head bowed and the sodden, bloodied hat at his face muffling his cries.

  “Christ,” Mack muttered, looking away.

  Darren doubled over to dry-heave, and then fell into a coughing fit until Callum slapped him on the back. He straightened, wiping his watery eyes.

  “What do you think did it?” Seth asked, and immediately regretted the question.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Mack said quietly.

  “The boy’s gone,” said Callum, as a gurgling roar drifted out of the distance. “We should go back. There’s nothing out here for us.”

  Mack glanced at Neal, still crying on his knees and oblivious to them all. He stepped over and placed his hand on his shoulder, but Neal shrugged him off and stood, then turned to face the rest of the group with tears down his face.

  “We failed him. My boy. My wonderful boy. Such a wonderful boy.” Neal looked down at the hat in his hands, gripping it between his fingers, the last remnant of his son.

  “We need to go back, Neal,” said Mack. “I’m so sorry. But he’s gone, and we have to get back to the barn. It’s not safe to be out here.”

  “You’re not sorry,” Neal said, meeting the eyes of each man standing before him. “None of you are.” His shoulders shook with anger and grief, the rest of his body tensing and clenched as if he were suppressing a scream.

  “You have my deepest sympathies,” Mack said to him. “But we can’t stay out here.”

  Neal’s voice was barely heard. “All those years for nothing. The years we lived, meaningless. All for a lonely death in the cold.”

  Mack took another step towards him. “Let’s get you back to the barn, my friend.”

  Neal seemed to contemplate Mack’s words, blinking away tears and flecks of snow. Then he nodded and started to move towards Mack.

  The next few moments happened very fast, and there was nothing to be done.

  A giant shape, with spiked wings spread wide, coalesced within the low clouds above them and started down towards the men in a swift swoop. It was some kind of albino bat, approximately eight feet tall, with a wingspan of approximately twice that, and red eyes set within a sunken, squat face of pale fur and pinkish skin, topped by pointed ears upon its head. Its abdomen was covered in sore tumours and cysts amidst the wispy white hair, which was matted in places with dried blood. A nightmare vision with broad wings threaded with scarlet veins and capillaries. Its mouth was wet and awful, and full of killing teeth as it shrieked and fell upon Neal, grabbing him by his shoulders and plucking him from the ground. His cries of agony rose into a shrill wailing as the bat struggled to lift him higher into the sky. Its claws tightened upon him. He dropped Grant’s hat.

  Mack and Callum raised their weapons. Seth grabbed Darren and pulled him back.

  Neal was still screaming when the giant bat swung its head forward and bit down upon the top of his skull. Its mouth gnashed and ripped until his struggles stopped and most of his face was gone. Neal’s arms twitched. Blood fountained from the debris of his head and fell upon the snow. His left eye was gone, somewhere in the bat’s mouth or already in its stomach, and the remaining one had turned upwards in its wrecked socket. His exposed brain glistened, half-shredded within the cradle of his skull.

  The bat raised its gore-streaked face and shrieked at the other men. Its long pink tongue unravelled and emerged, writhing and flicking, dripping saliva.

  Callum stepped forward and emptied both barrels of his shotgun at the creature. Mack fired his rifle, worked the bolt, and fired again.

  The bat screamed and roared in the brief hail of buckshot and bullets. It dropped Neal’s body and flapped its wings, lifting away into the white fog and low clouds. Mack fired again before the creature disappeared, and he kept his rifle aimed upwards, ready for it to descend again.

  Seth stared at Neal’s body; the man had died while grieving for his son. His last moments must have been torture before the bat’s horrid mouth had finished him.

  Seth thought of his own father and suppressed a sob. Darren vomited nearby. Callum reloaded his shotgun without once taking his gaze from the sky.

  Mack only looked once at Neal before turning away and facing the others. “Back to the barn, before that fucking thing returns.”

  “What about Neal?” Darren said, wiping his mouth and breathing hard.

  “We leave him,” Mack replied. “His troubles are over.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  The men struggled through the snow, and were less than two hundred metres from the barn when another monster emerged, drawn by the gunfire and raised voices. It came from their right side, loping on several dozen insectile legs, all double-jointed and sharp-tipped. A bloated thing of pallid flesh – as big as an elephant – with four long, crooked arms that ended in snapping crab claws.

  Its face was all teeth within a red mouth.

  The men tried to outrun the creature. Callum emptied his shotgun at it, with little effect. Mack fired his rifle.

  Darren was running beside Seth, and then he was gone, snatched up by one of the creature’s claws. He screamed only once, before the creature snipped him in half at the waist and then stuffed the upper part of him into its mouth. Seth glanced back to see it all, panic and fear leaving him witless, everything chaotic around him. Callum fired his shotgun again. More shots from Mack’s rifle.

  The bloated creature screeched.

  Seth was only fifty metres from the barn, when something barrelled into him from his left side and flattened him. He lay sprawling on his back, the air knocked out his lungs, hurting from the collision and breathing hard through gritted teeth. He patted himself down to make sure nothing was broken.

  A low hiss from behind caused him to tilt his head back to see what new horror awaited him.

  From his upside down view, he saw something like a flayed bull standing several strides away from him. It was about the size of a tiger or lion, its skinless form twitching, chattering through the sharp teeth in its mouth. Black claws scraped at the sn
ow. It snorted, its jaundice-hued eyes set upon Seth, sizing him up for another attack.

  He scrambled to his feet, standing with his legs slightly bent and his hands held out. The axe was on the ground about two metres to his left, but he didn’t dare move to retrieve it.

  Seth froze as the thing snarled and broke into a charge. Fear paralysed him. He didn’t even scream.

  Glass shattered upon the creature, and flames erupted upon its left side. It roared, stumbling and blinded. Seth dove out of its way, the flames licking at his back. The creature collapsed, thrashing in the snow, making a horrid choking sound as it was burned to ruin. It only stilled when Quinn stepped over and shot it in the skull with his pistol.

  “Thank you,” said Seth, his breath stuttering out of him.

  Quinn nodded.

  It had all happened in less than a minute.

  Seth climbed to his feet, brushing snow from his coat. Mack and Callum stood next to him. They looked worn out and half-mad. Seth glanced around for the other beast, but there was no sign of it.

  “It’s gone,” Mack said to him, reloading his rifle. “Must have had its fill with Darren.”

  Seth put his hands to his face. “Darren. Oh God.”

  “No time to fuck around,” said Mack. “He’s gone. Neal and his son are gone. We have to get back on the road.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  The survivors headed north, and some said prayers for the dead. Quinn had refuelled the tractor before they left the barn. They were down to their last can of diesel, but the brothers said it should be enough to reach the army base. If they were lying, they hid it well.

  The snow fell for another hour then stopped, and it was a welcome respite for the people in the trailer, even with the dubious shelter of the tarpaulin sheets. But soon it began to fall again.

  The snowplough made a path and nudged aside the occasional car wreck blocking the way. A plume of grey smoke rose from the tractor’s chimney exhaust. The plough and the tractor’s wheel’s kicked up snow in a grainy spray that added to the drifting downpour.

  Seth sat with his knees drawn to his chest, his arms around them, and he rocked and shook with the motion of the trailer. He thought about all the deaths he’d seen. He thought about his parents and their final resting place. He thought the world was without hope.

  Farther on, Ruby and Andy brought to his attention the corpses at the roadsides. All twisted and frozen in their death throes. Entire families lost to the cold.

  “Refugees,” said Ruby.

  “Just like us,” Andy muttered. “Poor bastards.”

  Seth said nothing and turned away.

  *

  The tractor trundled past a farmhouse whose roof had collapsed to leave the four walls barely standing. Outhouses and barns gutted and smashed. Broken structures and toppled bricks. And from within the ruins rose a behemoth of fleshy-pink tentacles, with an undulating central mass of pulsating flesh and gaping maws that reached fifty metres into the air.

  Mack aimed his rifle, but he did not fire. Someone muttered a prayer. The people in the trailer stared at the massive beast as it released a haunting, whale-like cry into the sky. But it did not move from its nest amidst the ruins, and soon the tractor left it behind.

  *

  They were trying to find a route onto the M5 motorway when they were stopped by an accidental blockade of abandoned vehicles and fallen trees across the road. There was no way through, so they doubled back and found another way onto the motorway, but they’d lost a good hour in the process.

  “We just have to follow this road all the way to Staffordshire,” said Delia, cuddling Jack as he burped out the gas from his last feed. She sat across from Seth and Andy. “Sounds simple, doesn’t it?”

  “I wish it was,” Andy said.

  Ruby sat beside him and nodded. Then she looked at Seth. “You all right?”

  Seth nodded once, wincing at deep pains in his leg muscles. His toes were numb. He breathed into his cupped hands then took them from his mouth. “I’ll manage. I just keep thinking about what else could be out there.”

  “The monsters?” Delia said. Jack had fallen asleep.

  “I dread to think what’s waiting for us to find. The things I’ve seen…”

  Delia held Jack tighter to her chest, and she looked at the trailer floor. “The things we’ve all seen. Terrible things.”

  “How many people have been eaten?” Seth asked. “This is insanity. I keep thinking that I should wake up, so everything can return to normal.” He nodded towards Jack’s sleeping form. “What kind of world will he grow up in? A world filled with monsters? Is that the future that waits for all the children?”

  “This might be over soon,” Delia said. “The snow might go away. It might thaw.” Her eyes were watery. She didn’t look convinced.

  Seth recalled the image of the giant albino bat that had eaten Neal’s head. “I don’t know.” He could feel Andy and Delia watching him, but he avoided their gazes and just looked at his knees. His bruises smarted, tender and soft, dark as ink on the skin under his clothes. His ribs ached from the collision with the flayed canine-thing Quinn had saved him from. He was constantly worried about frostbite, and the thought of his fingers and toes blackening made him feel nauseated and sullen with despair.

  “People have died to save us,” said Seth, shaking his head. “I haven’t done anything special to survive so far; all I’ve done is run and hide while better people have given their lives.”

  “If that’s the case,” Ruby said, “then we need to stay alive to make their sacrifice worth it.”

  Andy nodded. “Miles. Weir. All the people who died on the train. All of the dead. We owe it to them.”

  *

  They’d been on the motorway for two miles when Seth saw the silhouettes of human figures watching from within the white fog in an adjacent field. He’d only raised his head over the side of the trailer to vomit pale grease and bile. And his breath caught in his throat at the sight of the tall, thin forms, five of them in total, standing close together with their long arms at their sides. They were indistinct, ethereal, like grey shadows. Then they faded into the fog and were gone.

  No one else had seen them, so he kept the sighting to himself.

  *

  Later, when the snow fell heavy and fast, Quinn was forced to stop the tractor as a colossal spider crab with immense, jointed limbs crossed the motorway in the middle distance. Its exoskeleton was gnarled, ragged, and blood-red. The ground trembled as the pointed tips of the monster’s spindly legs thudded upon the earth. It was as tall as a skyscraper, roaming the land for morsels. Unnervingly gangly. Something that denied all natural law. Something to end the Age of Man. Its hooting cry, and the clacking of its pincers must have carried for miles.

  As the refugees watched, it passed out of sight, moving east into the veil of falling snow, and they hoped to never see it again.

  *

  An elderly woman died later that day. Her weak heart had failed. She’d gone peacefully, without anyone noticing at first. She was left at the roadside under a hasty covering of snow Quinn and Mack shovelled over her.

  No one knew her name.

  *

  The land was being lost to the snow. A few people suffered with rasping coughs and dripping noses. They were all worn out and stressed. A man complained incessantly about his sore throat until someone found him a packet of soothing lozenges from the supply stock.

  The children played simple games to entertain themselves. An old woman muttered the words of a hymn. Callum sharpened his survival knife, staring at his busy hands the entire time, a faraway look in his eyes.

  The light began to fade. Darkness was near.

  *

  Dusk was falling by the time Quinn found an exit from the motorway, and when they arrived at the nearest village it was nearly full dark. The village was snowbound, and the houses showed no sign of habitation. Empty places. Abandoned.

  “The snow took the people,�
� one woman whispered.

  The other refugees kept an expectant silence.

  The tractor’s headlights pierced the dense veil of falling snow in the darkness, revealing sagging cars reduced to blunt shapes on either side of the street. Seth and Andy stood in the trailer, holding onto the side, looking out from beneath the shelter of the tarpaulin. Seth shivered at the thought of dead people in lightless rooms.

  Callum stood next to Seth, squinting and frowning. He chewed on a sweet that made his breath smell of strawberry. Other people murmured inside the trailer as torches were switched on.

  “The place looks intact,” Callum said. “No monsters.” He cleared his throat. “No giant ones, anyway.” Then he moved away, stepping between the people staring out at the street.

  No one was home.

  *

  Quinn halted the tractor out the front of the community hall, but he kept the engine running while Mack and two other men went to search the building, weapons and torches in hand.

  Five minutes later they emerged and gave the all clear. Quinn guided the tractor around the side of the building, beneath the shelter of a large tree, and switched off the engine. Silence all around, in the houses and streets. The slow falling of the snow in this bleak place. A haunted place.

  The people disembarked from the trailer to take refuge for the night.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  They secured the community hall as best they could and stationed guards at the front and back doors, while Mack kept a solitary watch from the roof with his rifle. The curtains were drawn to hide the glow of lanterns and candles.

  The children were settled in the back corner of the main room, while the adults picked their own spaces on the floor. Seth went through the cupboards in the small kitchen just off the main room and found a jar of coffee and one of hot chocolate. He added the items to the group’s supplies.