The Cold

by Rich Hawkins

  He looked around, but there was no sign of the creatures, and the tractor and the refugees were nowhere to be seen. His relief at their escape was tempered by the realisation that he was completely vulnerable. Panic and fear worked inside his stomach. A sense of loneliness and desolation came to him, and all he wanted to do was lie down and go to sleep.

  The fire raged thirty yards behind him, flames reaching to the dark sky. Implosions and dull crackling from within. The street was aglow from the inferno and, from its light, shadows writhed against the outer walls of houses. He felt used up and utterly forlorn. His clothes were singed, as were his eyebrows. He pawed the snow over the tender skin of his face and into his mouth, and it tasted of nothingness.

  A sound behind him made him drop the snow from his hands. He wiped his mouth. He listened, not daring to move at first. Something there, that had been barely audible above the noise of the fire. He patted his pockets for anything to use as a weapon, but there was nothing, and he didn’t think he had the energy to make a run for it.

  He rose and turned around, ready to face his death.

  Mack stood before him, a machete in one hand and the whiskey bottle in the other. He was tattered and slumped but he seemed to have escaped without serious injury.

  Sudden relief flooded Seth. “I thought you were dead.”

  Mack snorted, shaking his head despairingly. “I certainly feel like it, lad.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

  They watched for monsters and retreated to a house down the street from the burning community hall. It was a pyre in the night. The front door of the house was unlocked and the interior was empty of bodies except for a dead hamster in its cage. It was beginning to smell, so Mack buried it in the snow outside.

  They sat next to each other on the sofa, wrapped in scavenged blankets. Mack drank whiskey and muttered to himself. They wouldn’t be able to put up much of a fight if the antlered creatures attacked again. The room was cold and dark.

  “Do you think the fire will spread?” Seth asked. He felt wretched and sick. His ears still throbbed from the gunfire.

  Mack swigged from his bottle and grimaced. “It always does.”

  Seth wasn’t sure what that meant, so he said nothing and closed his eyes.

  Neither of them slept that night.

  First light arrived in grey shades. They swapped their tattered coats for better ones from the house. Mack found two thick woollen hats, both seemingly brand new, and gave one to Seth, who packed some food, a bottle of water, a torch with spare batteries, blankets, and three road flares into a rucksack. Then Mack used a penknife to sharpen one end of a broom handle, whittling it down to a fine point. He figured it would do as a makeshift spear. He handed the improvised weapon to Seth, who smiled tightly.

  “Better than nothing,” Mack said.

  “What do you think happened to the people who lived here?” Seth asked, weighing the weapon in his hands doubtfully. “You think they fled?”

  “Maybe,” said Mack. “But would they have left this stuff here? Surely they would have taken it with them. It doesn’t matter.”

  Seth supposed it didn’t really.

  They left the house. The community hall was still burning, and the fire had spread to the adjacent buildings. Smoke streamed upwards in dark plumes. The air smelled of ash.

  No snow fell from the sky. Both men looked upwards, surprised.

  “Maybe the snow has stopped for good,” said Seth.

  Mack trudged onwards. “Or it could just be a lull in the storm.”

  Up the road, following the tracks from the tractor tyres, they stopped and stood over the charred corpse of an antlered creature. It was all twisted and broken in the snow. Bullet wounds in its torso.

  Mack spat on it, then turned and walked away. Seth followed, clutching his spear in one hand, the rucksack swinging over his shoulder.

  “Carry your rucksack properly,” said Mack, glancing back at Seth. “Hook it over both shoulders and behind you; carrying it by one strap will hurt your shoulder eventually.”

  Seth considered arguing the point, then nodded and did as he was told.

  They left the burning village behind.

  *

  They walked for over an hour, until eventually the tyre tracks led back to the motorway and then northwards. They walked for most of the day, Mack urging Seth on when he faltered.

  It was a relief to not encounter any monsters that day. And when Seth could go no farther, Mack finally relented. They settled down for the night in the back of a transit van at the roadside and took turns to check the snowfall, worried that the tractor’s tyre tracks would be covered while they rested.

  “How many died back at the community hall?” Seth asked. “How many got out alive?” He had tried counting in his head, but his thoughts were muddled. He sat across from Mack, both of them wrapped in blankets against the cold. His teeth ached and chattered.

  “I didn’t see much,” said Mack. His face looked wizened and sickly in the glow of the torchlight.

  “Callum died,” Seth said. “I saw it happen.”

  Mack looked at the machete in his hand, resting on his lap. “Did the children make it out? Did Delia and Jack escape?”

  “Delia and Jack escaped, but a lot of the children were taken. Quinn is still alive, I’m sure of it.”

  Mack nodded, gave a fragile smile. “Quinn’s a survivor. That’s why he’s in charge. He’ll get the rest of them to safety, eventually, I know he will.”

  “Is he much older than you?”

  “Only three years. Used to give me a lot of shit when we were children, but nothing too bad. Always looked after me at school. Even stopped our father from hitting me once during an argument. My father never tried again.”

  “What was the argument about?” Seth asked.

  “I forget now. Nothing important. But old Dad had a temper. He loved us, though. And he loved our mum.” Mack sighed. “That’s all gone, now. It’s weird looking back at the past, isn’t it? I can’t stop thinking about the old Clint Eastwood films we used to watch on Sunday afternoons.”

  Seth sipped some water. “I try not to do it any more. It just makes things worse.”

  “I’m sorry about your parents.”

  “It’s done now. Like you said, it’s all gone.”

  Mack rested the back of his head against the side of the van. Neither of them spoke for a while. The wind made low sounds as it swept across the snow-covered motorway.

  “I think this is it,” Mack said, finally. “Properly it.” He scratched at his face. There was a faraway look in his eyes.

  “What do you mean?” said Seth.

  “The end of it all.” said Mack. “If we survive, as a species, the ones left alive are going to be in for a terrible time.”

  “Even worse than now?”

  “We’re the bottom of the food chain, lad. We’re food for the beasts. And if the snow has covered the entire planet, it’ll be impossible to grow crops or farm livestock. Think about it: Permafrost. An Ice Age. No food except what we can forage from tins and cans. Or hunt. Then there’s the problem of finding suitable shelter from the snow and the cold. And, of course, there are the monsters.” He sighed, shaking his head slowly as he wiped dirt from his blade.

  Seth looked at him, but didn’t know what to say.

  Mack laid the machete on the floor of the van. “We’ve just got to keep trying. That’s all we can do.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

  The night passed without incident and it didn’t snow in the hours before the grey dawn. When they climbed out of the van, the sky was nothing but a ceiling of white cloud stretching away in every direction. The cold fog had closed in during the night and reduced visibility down to less than twenty yards.

  Seth and Mack stood beside the van. There was only silence beyond them. No tracks in the snow, except for the tractor’s and their own boot prints. There’d been no visitors in the night.

  “Ready to go?” Mack asked.


  Seth took a swig from the water bottle. “Yeah.”

  “How you feeling this morning?”

  “Like shit,” Seth replied. And he did. It wasn’t an exaggeration. Every part of him ached, and his chest was tight. His legs were fighting off cramps and little pains jabbed at his shins. His joints felt stiff and brittle.

  “Gotta keep going,” said Mack.

  “I know. I know.”

  They kept following the tractor’s trail, walking for over two hours before they took a rest and shared a granola bar.

  A mile later, they halted when a flock of oversized black moths took to the air from the snow drifts they’d been perched upon. There were half a dozen of them, each measuring a good six feet from the tips of their antennae to the end of their thoraxes. Their wings were coloured with skeins of vivid red.

  Mack raised his machete, but Seth placed his hand on the man’s arm and shook his head.

  “Wait,” Seth said. “They’re not a threat.”

  “How do you know?”

  They stood there and watched the black moths flutter their wings and swoop through the air above, diving in and out of the white fog like silent wraiths. The only sound Seth could hear was his own heartbeat. He had thought all grace and beauty gone from the world since the snow fell, but now he was transfixed, utterly beholden to the dance of the black moths in the air.

  The men were so mesmerised by the moths’ display, they didn’t notice the giant haggard shape of the vulture-thing until it snatched a moth into its curved claws. The rest of the flock scattered, and Seth and Mack reeled away, stumbling back as it took its prey to ground. It issued a wheezing shriek from its blackened beak. It was yellow-eyed and featherless, save for a few downy scraps. Its wings were papery and thin, spanning more than twenty feet combined. A nightmare vision, pale and shabby.

  Seth and Mack hid behind an overturned car and peered out at the thing as it began ripping at the moth’s thorax with its busy beak. The moth twitched occasionally, but it had been dead by the time it hit the ground. Its black blood stained the snow.

  Within minutes the vulture-thing had dismantled and devoured the moth until all that remained were shredded wings. Then it lifted up from the ground and vanished into the sky with a gurgling cry.

  “Christ,” said Mack, slumping in the snow. He was shaking his head, gripping the machete with both hands.

  Seth looked around for any sign of the flock, but it was gone, fled to some sort of safety.

  *

  Half a mile later they found the wrecked remains of the tractor and trailer lying across the road.

  The snow was stained red.

  CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

  “Oh fuck,” said Seth, blinking flakes of snow from his eyes.

  The tractor was disconnected from the trailer, both lying on their sides and skewed across the northward side of the motorway. There were splatters and pools of frozen blood around the wrecks. Severed body parts and wet-red bones. Smashed supplies and broken boxes of food had been scattered across the road.

  Seth and Mack stood crestfallen and shivering. All over the crash site were muddled prints from footwear mixed with smears and smudges. And there were larger tracks, from some kind of creature; something large and heavy, judging by the spaces between the deep indentations of clawed footprints in the snow. Something no smaller than a bull elephant, that moved on four legs. It could have been any kind of nightmare thing.

  Seth looked at Mack, who was staring at the tractor cab; the windscreen was mostly gone. Snow was already beginning to shroud the wreckage.

  “It happened hours ago,” said Mack.

  “What do you think did it?” Seth asked.

  Mack shrugged, his face terribly pale, and he began searching the crash site. Seth helped him.

  “Do you recognise any of the remains?” said Seth. He felt sick just from asking the question. If he found baby Jack’s cold corpse amongst the wreckage, it would be too much for him. He was already close to tears, and it felt as if any hope that remained had seeped away to be replaced by a creeping dread that filled his stomach. He remembered the train crash and the bodies of the passengers in the snow.

  The world was full of death.

  “There’s not much to recognise,” said Mack. And he was right; a few arms, a leg, some tangled entrails and anonymous lumps of flesh.

  There was no sign of Quinn, Delia, Andy, Ruby or baby Jack.

  The snow fell in the dreadful silence. The white fog moved in. The end of the world had arrived with the cold.

  *

  Dusk closed in with faint shrieks from across the land. Echoing cries of terrible creatures and monstrosities.

  Seth and Mack huddled beneath the overhanging trailer through the night hours, taking turns to sleep and keeping watch in the darkness.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  “What do we do now?” Seth asked. It was morning. The snow seemed like drifts of ash in the grey dawn light.

  “Keep heading north,” Mack told him, checking the compass he’d pulled from his pocket. “It’s all we can do.”

  “Do you think any of them got away?”

  “I don’t know. I hope so.” Mack’s throat worked as he stared at the machete in his hand.

  Seth looked to the ground. A fresh snowfall had covered any tracks they might follow. He slumped, buried his hands in his coat pockets, and tried to suppress the cold futility that curdled his stomach and made his legs heavy. He felt exhausted and he couldn’t stop shuddering in his clothes. Parts of him were numb. He envisaged his toes blackening, flesh sloughing away to reveal bone. The cold was claiming him one piece at a time. When he considered the distance ahead and the monsters waiting for them, it was all he could not to collapse in the snow and sob like a child.

  “Let’s go,” Mack said.

  They moved on.

  *

  An hour later they sighted a service station area beyond the side of the motorway, and followed the slip road towards it, hoping to find survivors from their group. The building would be adequate shelter for anyone who’d escaped the crash site.

  Both sides of the access road to the service station were lined with conifers; the trees were burdened with heavy snow upon their branches, wilting under the strain. The road led Seth and Mack to a car park, beyond which stood the service station itself, which was basically a mall-type building, with several different shops, fast food outlets, and facilities inside. Seth had been here before, a few years ago, when he and his parents had driven up north for a holiday in the Lake District.

  Mack started across the broad expanse of snowed-under tarmac. Seth followed. They passed abandoned cars and lumpen shapes under the snow that might have been corpses.

  They arrived at the short flight of stone steps leading to the front entrance. Mack halted, Seth beside him. Beyond the glass doors was impenetrable darkness.

  Seth took out his torch. He wiped snow from his face and winced inside his hood. “Do you really think anyone’s in there?”

  Mack sniffed, glanced around, before looking at the entrance. His jaw tensed. “Let’s find out.”

  *

  They went inside and stood beside each other in the vestibule, a row of standing ATMs to one side of them. Seth’s torchlight swept the way ahead.

  “I don’t think anyone’s here,” said Seth, keeping his voice low. He ground his teeth.

  “We’ll just have a look around,” Mack replied.

  “Fair enough.”

  They entered the main area – a wide walkway lined by shops, coffee houses and various fast food outlets. All of them were dark and silent. Deserted. Seth directed the torch towards the open seating area of a Burger King, moving the light over abandoned meals on tables and toppled chairs. His stomach crumpled at the sight of decaying food. A few jackets and coats were left hanging over the backs of some of the chairs.

  “Stop,” said Mack.

  Seth did so, but frowned at Mack. “What?”

  “We�
�re not alone.” Mack pointed at one shopfront to their right. Seth shone the torchlight through the plate glass and into the shadows. His heart stuttered as he saw the slumped figures inside several shops on both sides of the walkway; one was sitting with its head bowed at a table near the back of a Starbuck’s, far enough from the torchlight to be ambiguous – as were the others. They could have been mannequins but for their twitching movements as they turned away from the searching torchlight. Most were hunched over, stooped and solemn, like old shades of consumers who’d passed through on their way to distant destinations.

  “You see ‘em?” said Mack.

  Seth was about to step towards the nearest shopfront, but then thought better of it. He squinted, wiped his mouth. “Yeah, I see.”

  “I don’t like the look of them.”

  “What if they’re people from Quinn’s group?” Seth almost asked if Quinn was among them, until he noticed the apprehension on Mack’s pallid face.

  Mack stared into the shadows. His mouth opened, quivered a little. His voice was the meekest Seth had heard it since they’d met. “I don’t think so, lad. I don’t think so.”

  They walked on.

  Directly ahead of them, the torchlight found the motionless figure of a woman standing in their way. They stopped ten yards from her. Mack swore under his breath. The torchlight threw the woman’s spindly shadow upon the floor, revealing her twisted and misshapen body. Lumpen shapes bulged beneath her hooded coat, and her face was pinkish, shining with something like sweat. Her eyes were stretched wide and reddened with burst capillaries. She muttered through a crumpled mouth. She held a small pickaxe in the hand that wasn’t swollen purple and fit to burst with infection. Seth only realised the bulging of her stomach when it juddered violently, as if manipulated from within.