The Cold

by Rich Hawkins

  Far away, rumbles like detonations arose and faded away, but the grinding about them continued, and the walls shuddered. Hanso raised his rifle towards the ceiling when a small burst of grey dust billowed downwards, but no cracks yet appeared in the plaster. Seth held his breath for a drawn out moment, looking upwards.

  “Some kind of insect-thing attacked her,” Andy said. “I killed it.” His mouth stayed open, but he said nothing more. Tears pooled in his eyes. He looked to Delia. Her head dipped to her chest. She muttered something.

  Hanso knelt by the woman and peered into her eyes. They were dull and watery. Then he checked her wound, gingerly moving her hand to one side first. She barely resisted. He looked at Seth and Andy, shaking his head.

  “Please,” Delia whispered, struggling to find the strength to talk. “Look after Jack. Keep him safe. Take care of him.”

  Hanso placed his hand on her arm, a paltry gesture of comfort.

  She glanced at Hanso’s rifle, then at him. And Hanso nodded.

  “Okay,” he said, standing. “Okay.”

  Seth eyes widened. Ruby stood and went to Andy; he kissed her on the forehead. Everyone looked at the sergeant.

  “It’s probably best that you all go out in the corridor,” he murmured.

  They said goodbye to Delia. She kissed Jack’s forehead one last time, and gave him a smile. Then they went out to wait with the others. The door closed. No one spoke.

  Seconds later a single shot rang out, and that was that.

  CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT

  Hanso, Leeds and Seth led the way. Beckwith and Marwood walked at the back of the group, keeping the stragglers moving.

  They went on through the twisting maze of corridors, moving in silence.

  There were cracks in the walls, in the floors, in the ceilings. A terrible grinding within the ground, mixed with the wailing from the God of the Wastelands as it worked its sinuous way into the structure. Seth pictured the massive creature wrapping itself around the bunker, making a new nest, full of morsels inside for it to consume.

  Ruby was trying to calm Jack, who cried in her arms, squirming within his blanket. Andy walked with them. Seth looked over at him and nodded. Andy tried to smile, but his eyes flitted ahead and his mouth trembled.

  Distant sounds of scraping rose from behind them.

  Farther on, they found a man hanging from a rope on a ceiling light fixture. They stood there a moment, staring at him, none of them saying a word. What could be said?

  They walked on.

  Hanso brought the group to a stop later, when they came to a corridor carpeted with more than a dozen broken corpses. Large puncture wounds perforated their stomachs and chests. Strips of their clothes had been ripped away and scattered on the floor around them. Doctor Felton lay among the dead.

  Hanso pointed his rifle down the corridor and started forward grimly. “Come on. We’re not far from the exit.”

  The others followed, tenderly stepping between or around the corpses. No one spoke. Seth looked down at one of the bodies. It was a young woman, and he noticed that her stomach was trembling. He paused, horrified, and Andy and Ruby walked into the back of him.

  “What’s wrong?” Andy said.”

  Memories of the service station burned through him but Seth was paralysed. A small squeaking noise was all he could muster.

  Hanso looked back at them, frowning.

  Seth couldn’t look away from the woman’s stomach. It almost seemed like he was willing it to bulge upwards. And then it did, pulsing and tearing swiftly. Something slick, squirming and eel-like emerged from its chamber of flesh, snapping at the air with its sharp mouth. It was the size of a house cat, with pale yellow skin, white eyes, a narrow snout, and three stubby limbs on each side of its elongated body. A low hissing came from between its wicked jaws.

  Before anyone could react, the eel-thing leapt from the woman’s stomach and sprung towards a man standing beside Andy. The man went down screaming, collapsing to his knees as his hands pawed at the creature. Other people backed away from him, stumbling on the corpses, falling against the walls in an effort to get away. Screams rang out. Jack’s cries grew louder.

  Within seconds, several of the other corpses began to jerk and shudder, and their stomachs birthed similar monsters.

  The soldiers opened fire.

  Some of them were blown apart before they could escape their flesh-and-bone nests, but several were too quick and they fell upon the civilians. Chaos followed. Screams and cries. Flailing arms and elbows. Blood sprayed from faces and throats. Seth was pushed face first into the wall by people clamouring to escape. Something like a knee slammed into his lower back and the air was driven from his lungs. He fell to one knee. He turned to see one of the creatures perched upon the struggling form of a woman, who was barely keeping it at bay with her hands. Its mouth was biting at the air inches from her neck. She cried out as her eyes met Seth’s.

  He raised his pistol, heart stammering, hands shaking, and took aim at the creature.

  The loud report was brutal, but the bullet took the eel-thing in the abdomen and sent it flying against the opposite wall. It writhed and shrieked on the floor there, thin tail thrashing. Seth stumbled across the corridor and shot it again, in the face. His hands thrummed from the recoil.

  All around him, struggling bodies and shrieking monsters. Bullets pierced the air. Another of the creatures skittered towards him. He shot it four times and when all was done, he stood amid the carnage and looked around.

  Ruby was sitting on the floor, away from the bodies, holding tight to Jack, whose cries eventually softened to murmurs. Andy crouched beside them, his arms around Ruby’s shoulders. Hanso stood nearby, the barrel of his rifle smoking. Blood spattered his fatigues and thick coat.

  The air stank of burnt flesh and gunpowder. A faint taint of urine. The bunker shook in a series of hammering tremors.

  The eel-things he could see were dead, but Seth wasn’t sure they were all accounted for. Some of them could well have escaped. The group had lost ten people, including Private Marwood. Most of his face was gone, ripped away by savage teeth. Private Leeds crouched beside him and gently plucked the spare magazines from his webbing. Privates Beckwith and Bright looked down at Marwood, their shoulders slumping, faces slack with grief.

  “We have to keep going,” said Hanso.

  They all turned to him. There were some complaints from the civilians, but they knew he was right. The survivors had to go on.

  Then the lights went out.

  CHAPTER FORTY NINE

  The soldiers activated the torches on their rifles. The few civilians with torches did the same. The corridor was full of the sound of nervous breathing and barely restrained panic, blending with the click and scrape of rifles being reloaded.

  People were sobbing in the dark, cowering together or against the walls. They were shadows until the torchlight swept over them, revealing faces full of fear. Beckwith and Leeds began urging them, not unkindly, to get moving again, and they responded in numb reluctance, slowly gathering together again to face down the corridor.

  Dazed and vague, Seth looked at the pistol in his hand. He’d killed two of those creatures, but when he tried to remember it all, his mind came up blank. Something to do with trauma and the chemicals in his brain. He shook his head to help clear his thoughts. Ruby stood with Jack still in her arms, holding him tight with something akin to reverence. Like he was a little bundle of hope for all of them.

  “We’re not far from the exit point,” Hanso said to the survivors. “We just have to keep going.”

  No one protested. It was a silent understanding between them all.

  “Let’s go,” Beckwith said from the back. “Move your arses.”

  Seth picked up a dropped torch from the floor. He switched it on, the beam pointing at his blood-splattered boots.

  “Come on,” Private Bright told the civilians, his voice uneven and strained. “Do as the Sarge says.”

  As t
hey started down the corridor, a terrible grinding rose from behind them; it grew louder and mixed with the sounds of slick movement. They all looked anxiously back with their torches, peering at the point where the corridor curved into shadow. Someone whimpered. Someone else stifled a gassy, nervous burp.

  A cluster of black tentacles emerged from the darkness back there. The limbs of the God, as though the writhing appendages had detached from the shadows to hunt down their prey. They filled the corridor, swaying and thrashing. It was a ghastly, awe-inspiring sight.

  “Run!” Hanso said. “Fucking move!”

  The civilians ran while Beckwith and Leeds opened fire on the tendrils as they closed in. One of the tendrils snapped forward and wrapped around Leeds’ head, lifting him from his feet. He dropped his rifle and beat at the tendril over his face, his screams muffled, his legs kicking at the air.

  Beckwith backed away, still putting down fire, but powerless to help Leeds. Moments later Leeds stopped screaming as the tendril tightened around his head and popped his skull like an overripe fruit. Blood and brain matter splashed the ceiling and he was dragged away into the mass of tendrils.

  Beckwith fled, firing blindly over his shoulder, lost to panic and terror.

  Seth was swept along in the rush of bodies, jabbed and nudged by errant limbs. He kept the pistol clenched in his hand. He heard Beckwith’s rifle firing, and then fall silent. He didn’t look back.

  The trembling of the corridor grew until the group could barely stay on their feet. Thin cracks appeared in parts of the ceiling. The bunker was coming apart.

  Seth stumbled against a wall, grazing the back of one hand. He kept going, staggering blindly in the scrum of people. Screams filled his ears. Flailing arms and kicking legs.

  The floor split open with a deafening crack. Concrete dust and bullet-sized debris flew from the breach. Another cluster of tendrils rose swiftly like oversized worms, spilling out from the gaping rent.

  Seth was sent flying and landed on the floor next to the far wall. The air was knocked from him, and he struggled to breathe. Sharp pain filled his limbs. The pistol was gone from his hand.

  The people were easy prey for both packs of tendrils. They were snatched and impaled, torn apart, then dragged down the hole in the floor. Many were taken, including Private Bright, who was pulled shrieking into the darkness.

  A tendril slammed into the wall above Seth, and he scrambled away, straight into a dripping mound of spilled guts. He looked back as the tendril readjusted itself and arrowed towards him.

  Seth screamed.

  The tendril was less than three yards away when a hail of bullets shredded it, and it flopped uselessly to the floor. Ichor covered Seth, who gasped and held out his hands in some form of futile resistance. He let out a groan and wiped at his face. He was whimpering to himself as Beckwith pulled him away from the other tendrils.

  Lost in a traumatised fugue, Seth saw a tendril inflict a glancing swipe across Hanso’s stomach. The sergeant’s rifle ran empty. He screamed in agony, pulled out his pistol and unloaded it into the tendril until it retreated. Then he slumped against the wall, and was only saved from the other black appendages when some of the surviving civilians helped him along. There weren’t many left.

  When Seth saw Andy and Jack still amongst the living, such relief hit him that it almost burst his heart.

  Seth rose to his feet as Beckwith slapped in a fresh magazine and fired at the swarming tendrils that still pursued them. He reloaded his pistol, working as quickly as he could, and then fired several shots at them.

  Beckwith turned away from the writhing terrors and pulled Seth with him. “The exit is just down this corridor. It has steel doors. We can make it.” His voice was almost drowned out by the horrific thrashing and busy scraping of the tendrils.

  The survivors – the few of them that remained – ran for the steel door at the end of the corridor.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Beckwith was the last through the doorway as the tendrils grasped towards him. He slammed the door shut and tapped the combination on the keypad to lock it. Then he collapsed on the floor, breathing hard. Seth crouched next to him and put one hand on his shoulder.

  The tendrils scraped and scratched at the other side of the door.

  Seth stood and regarded the survivors around him. Torchlight stung his eyes. Terrified, pale faces wherever he looked. On the far side of the room, a metal ladder led upwards. Their escape route.

  “We’re all that’s left,” he said. Seventeen survivors.

  Hanso stood against the far wall, leaning into it with one hand over his stomach. He’d lost a lot of blood already and his skin was bone-white. With some effort, he managed to speak.

  “The door won’t hold for long. You have to go.”

  “You’re coming with us,” Seth said. “We’re not leaving you here.”

  A heavy weight slammed against the other side of the door.

  Hanso looked past Seth, towards Beckwith, who stood now, reloading his rifle. “You know what to do, Private.”

  Beckwith hesitated, a quiver in his lower lip. “Y-yes, Sarge. I know what to do.” He turned to the gathered civilians. “Let’s go, people. Time to get the fuck outta here.”

  Compliant and beyond terror and exhaustion, the civilians made little noise.

  Seth stared at Hanso, stepping towards him. “You don’t have to stay here. We can treat your wound.”

  Hanso gave a wry smile before his face creased into a wince. He shook his head weakly. “Doc’s gone. I won’t survive up top. Wouldn’t last five minutes. You know that.”

  Seth’s voice failed in his throat. He had no words. And, yes, he knew Hanso was right.

  The door shook again with another impact. More scraping as the tendrils tried to work their way inside the room.

  Hanso, with some effort, took two grenades from his belt. He spat. He held up the grenades. “I’ll give them a surprise. Don’t worry.”

  Another impact shuddered against the door. Distant sounds of devastation as the bunker began to fall apart. There was constant pounding on the door now, the tendrils impatient to be let in.

  Beckwith went to Hanso and they exchanged some brief words. Beckwith slapped Hanso’s shoulder. The understanding of soldiers.

  “Let’s go,” the private said, all business now, taking charge. He began to climb the ladder. The civilians followed, their panic barely restrained. Ruby put Jack inside a rucksack so just his head remained visible, and put the rucksack over Andy’s shoulders. Jack wasn’t happy about it, but he didn’t have any choice. Andy took him up the ladder.

  The door rattled, warping at the top where it had been hit. It would only hold for a minute or so.

  Seth was the last civilian.

  “Goodbye, Seth,” said Hanso. “Don’t let this all be in vain.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” Seth replied. His eyes held Hanso’s for a moment and understanding passed between them.

  “Good lad. Now, go.”

  “Goodbye, Sergeant.”

  *

  Seth climbed the ladder and emerged topside into the wailing wind and sweeping snow. He closed the latch behind him. The others were already heading towards the woods to the east.

  He turned and saw the towering silhouette of the God in the frozen fog. It was too preoccupied with the ruined bunker to notice the frail humans escaping under its nose. The writhing mountain did not see all. It was no god, just another fucking monster.

  He barely heard the detonation of Hanso’s grenades below as he turned away and fled for the barren woods.

  EPILOGUE

  The survivors hid in the woods with their bags and packs, huddled together for warmth. They waited, motionless like fawns, watching the God of the Wasteland consume the bunker and all within it. Most people were silent. Some muttered prayers.

  Ruby cradled and comforted Jack, while Andy stood with his arm around them. Seth looked at the three of them and couldn’t help but feel some faint ho
pe.

  There had to be hope.

  “We’ll head north,” Beckwith said. “I know of some military bases on the way. We’ve got enough supplies for a few days. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  Seth stepped away from the group. Tears thickened in his eyes as he looked at his companions, there at the end of the world. He spoke with a tone of resignation in his voice.

  “I’m staying here.”

  Andy turned towards Seth, a look of utter incomprehension on his face. “What are you talking about? We’re not leaving you here, mate.”

  “We’ve lost enough people,” said Ruby, holding Jack tightly. “You can’t do this.”

  “This will give everyone a chance to escape,” Seth replied. “Otherwise the God will just follow us. It would track us down and kill everyone.”

  Andy shook his head. “Please don’t do this. We need you.”

  Seth walked to Andy and put his hands on the man’s shoulders. Andy looked up at him, blinking away tears. “It has to be done. People have died to save my worthless life. It’s time to make their sacrifice mean something. Someone has to survive, Andy. Give Jack and the other children the chance to grow up and make a difference in the future; maybe fight back against the monsters. I’ve finally realised the reason I survived. I think it’s about sacrifice, the greater good. I think we all have to make that choice eventually. Don’t let it end here.”

  “Sacrifice,” Andy muttered.

  Seth nodded, offered a trembling smile.

  Andy hugged him. Ruby joined them.

  “You sure about this, Seth?” Beckwith asked.

  Seth nodded. “This is the best way.”

  *

  The group was little more than a small herd of prey animals, terrified of the beasts awaiting them. But they were alive, to go on and keep going, to watch and care for each other.

  Seth watched them vanish into the falling snow and fog.