Cold Falling White

by G. S. Prendergast

  Logan and Michael aren’t very talkative, but Garvin lets them trail ahead, hanging back with me until there’s a good distance between us. It’s been a week since he got back from taking Dylan to the hospital and we’ve hardly spoken. I’m not sure if I’ve been avoiding him or he’s been avoiding me. But he seems to want to talk now.

  “How are you feeling, Xander?”

  “Fine. Okay.”

  “I can move you into a different cabin if you don’t want to be alone.”

  “No, it’s fine. How is Dylan doing?”

  “He’s getting better.” We walk on silently. The rhythm of our footsteps in the snow, the soft crunching, is hypnotic. I listen to it for a moment, thinking of following Nahx footprints and what happens when you catch up to them.

  “He’d be dead if it wasn’t for you,” Garvin says.

  The word “dead” hangs there, and for the life of me I can’t figure out what it even means. Does Garvin mean dead as in dead or dead as in darted? Because I’m almost sure those are two different things, but I don’t know how to broach that with him or anyone else.

  “Has anyone seen that Nahx again?” I ask.

  “We tracked it back up to Mugaha Creek but lost the trail. It was heading away from the enclave, though, to the east. We don’t think we’ll see it again.”

  “You’re not worried he’ll bring back a squadron?”

  Garvin shakes his head. “All we’ve seen on this side is lone pairs or singles for nearly a year. I think they accidentally got left behind when the Nahx activated the web. They remind me of those Japanese soldiers after World War Two. You know, the ones on the remote islands or whatever, who don’t know the war is over?”

  “The war isn’t over,” I say. Either Logan or Michael coughs.

  “Isn’t it?” Garvin says. “We surrendered.” He grins at me. I almost expect him to wink. I look up at the sound of more coughing. Logan is bent over, hacking. He spits a blob of phlegm into the trees.

  “Dude, that’s gross,” Michael says.

  “Where do you even get cigarettes now?” I ask as we catch up to them.

  “People send stuff to us,” Logan says. Unbelievably, he tugs his gloves off and lights another one. Apparently some people don’t care how they die. I’m reminded of Colin, back in the refugee camp, who has something eating away at his insides.

  “Why do people send you stuff?” I ask Garvin as we trudge on, letting Michael and Logan take rear guard.

  “Fans of our work,” Garvin says. “There are weekly deliveries—most weeks—down in Prince George. I have a guy down there who makes sure things marked for us get set aside. I guess people appreciate what we’re doing up here.”

  “Killing Nahx?” I’m trying to hide my incredulity, and probably failing.

  “Making videos of killing Nahx. You think Hollywood is still churning out blockbusters? Los Angeles has no power and no water. And anyway, who wants to watch fake fantasies when they can watch the real thing?”

  I guess I’m not very good at hiding anything anymore. Garvin puts his hand on my shoulder, which reminds me of the way August used to do that, the way all Nahx walk with their partners. But Garvin only squeezes for second, in a fatherly way, before letting go.

  “It’s a lot to take in, kid, I know.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “I can get word down to Vancouver, get something special for you in our next delivery.”

  “Like what?”

  “Girlie magazines?” Michael says behinds us.

  “Boy-ie magazines?” Logan adds. They dissolve into giggles.

  “Logan!” Garvin snaps, making them both shut their stupid mouths. “Take point. And put that cigarette out. Michael, you stay where you are and shut up.”

  They obey, chastened. Logan jogs up ahead of us while Michael lingers behind, muttering, until Garvin gives him a dirty look.

  Garvin talks to me in low tones. “Candy? There’s not much chocolate but there’s roaring trade in maple brittle and peanut fudge in Vancouver. Or liquor? I discourage drinking, for obvious reasons.” He flicks his head back and glares at Michael again. “But I can make an exception. We had a case of homemade wine sent up over the summer. Maybe we could get more.”

  “I don’t really like wine. I don’t need anything.” Though the candy sounds good, I don’t like the idea of being Garvin’s favorite son, for whatever reasons he has. It won’t last, for one thing. Stuff like that never does.

  “LOGAN!” Garvin suddenly bellows, making us skid to a stop. “You walked right past it.” He points to an unexceptional tree. Only when I step closer do I see three lines carved into it, as though it’s been marked by some kind of beast. Garvin makes a disdainful noise in Logan’s direction and barrels off the path into the trees.

  We emerge through the tree line about twenty minutes later, puffing with the effort of the uphill climb. The terrain is rocky, made treacherous by its coating of ice and snow, even in my sturdy new boots. I nearly wipe out three times before it occurs to me to follow in Garvin’s footprints. He knows the way, knows secure footholds where the rock is rough enough to provide adequate purchase. Turning back, I see that Logan and Michael aren’t struggling either. They’ve been this way before.

  We come around a bend, and the rocky surface changes to a landscape of brutal cracks and wide crevasses, as though some giant hammer has smashed the mountain from above. Ahead of me, Garvin deftly leaps over one crevasse, then another. On the third leap he drops out of sight.

  “Whoa. Garvin?”

  I jump the two crevasses, stopping short at the lip of the third. Garvin is about eight feet below, crouching in the deep snow.

  “Down you go,” Logan says, coming up behind me.

  I jump, poised to roll when I land if needed, but the snow is deep enough to cushion my fall. Logan and Michael jump down after me, their arrivals marked only by the soft whoomph they make when they land.

  The crevasse narrows as Garvin leads us along, and we have to duck to avoid rocky outcrops and overhangs. Soon we’re edging through a passage so narrow, Logan and Michael have to take off their packs and drag them along behind them. The crevasse is deeper by this point too, and the light of the gray day has diminished to a thin lightning-shaped strip above us. Finally even that disappears, and we creep through a low rocky tunnel before emerging into a large, light-filled basin, which is surrounded by high craggy walls. Beyond the walls, to the east, the filaments of the Nahx web glow across the cloud-heavy sky.

  Mobbs and another guy whose name I think is AJ look up from a small campfire as we approach. Behind them, about two hundred feet up a steep escarpment, is a radio transmission tower and a small shack. Both are equipped with solar panels. Garvin pulls a USB drive from his pocket and hands it to Michael, looking at his watch.

  “Upload it, test the transmitter. Wait for the break, then blast it.”

  “I know. I know,” Michael says. Logan follows him up the slope.

  “What’s the break?”

  Garvin leads me to the campfire, where we dump our packs as Mobbs and AJ gather theirs and wander wordlessly away toward the crevasse.

  “You got our broadcasts on the other side? And the emergency stuff? Only for about an hour a day, right? Around noon?”

  “Yeah.”

  “The Nahx use a jammer. A massive signal emitter that jams most wireless communication. No one knows how it works, but it seems to be connected to the web somehow.” He grins at me. “But something, or someone, uses a canceling frequency to break through the jammer signal. No one knows how that works either, but it gives us about thirty minutes to an hour, most days, to stream video.”

  “Do you get anything back? From the other side, I mean?”

  “Early on we did. But not recently. Everyone is dead.” He shoves another log into the fire before realizing what he’s said. “Sorry.” I can tell it costs him to say that, but that knowledge doesn’t really help.

  The fire blazes up, making it warm e
nough for me to take off my gloves. I hold my hands forward, letting the warmth sink into my fingers.

  “So, one of our guys was on the crew that found you, did you know that?” Garvin asks.

  “Found me? You mean back in May? Just after I crossed?”

  Garvin nods encouragingly. If this is what he wants to talk about, my rescue, he’ll be disappointed.

  “I don’t remember much of that,” I say. “I was delirious, they told me. Raving nonsense for three days.”

  “Was it nonsense?” Garvin asks intently. He lets a silence grow around us, one I’m sure he wants me to fill up. “I’m pretty curious about this base you were at. North of Jasper?”

  I shrug. Precisely what I told the people who found me is lost in the mists of my delirium. I know no one believed me about the base, though, not even military types. Apparently it was such a top-secret operation that hardly anyone knew it existed.

  “I can show you on a map. And if we could get through the web, we could go there and get those people out.” Get Topher out, I’m thinking, if he stuck around. Maybe he left the human race behind, like Raven did.

  “I don’t think anyone is thinking about getting through the web.”

  “Why not?”

  He shakes his head. “Things have changed on this side, after the surrender especially. The focus became… narrowed.”

  “On this side?” I don’t mean for it to come out so accusingly, but it does. “Was it that easy to just sell us out?”

  Garvin remains calm, rubbing his tattooed hands on the knees of his snow pants. “On survival.” His tone is patient now. “On rebuilding, and hanging on to what we had left. You know the Nahx took control of most of the hydropower stations, right? And several of the coal and nuclear stations too down in the States.”

  “So?”

  “So. Hardly any power. Rolling blackouts. Whole areas cut off. And communications are messed up because of the jammer. Not nearly enough food. Transport is fucked because there’s almost no fuel. You know that expression ‘bombed back to the Middle Ages’? That’s what happened to us.”

  “That’s not a very good excuse. I had eight friends with me when the Nahx attacked. Seven of them are dead.”

  “Everybody is singing the same song, kid. Dylan is not the first of us to get darted. The others are dead. I know well enough what it’s like to be in close company with Nahx,” Garvin says. “The buzzing way they breathe. The smell—like ashes or charcoal. The signs they use.”

  He studies me as I try not to react. I’d like to change the subject to just about anything. I can’t get August out of my head. Every time I hear a twig snap or a door click closed I think of the sparks he made by snapping his fingers, and the way he did it to set himself and those other Nahx on fire, to blow them all up.

  He did it to help me get away.

  Garvin watches me, as though he can see into my mind like I’m a zoetrope.

  “You’ve been in close company with a Nahx, haven’t you?”

  “It’s against the law, isn’t it?”

  “What is?” He knows what I’m talking about but wants me to spell it out.

  “What you do. Hunting and killing them. You’re supposed to ‘avoid and report.’ Aren’t you worried you’ll get arrested or something?”

  “No. I’m not. It doesn’t take much to buy off cops, and no one else cares. Not even the Nahx.” He clears his throat forcefully and leans forward again. “But helping the Nahx—people care about that. That will get you killed.”

  I focus on keeping my expression calm. I haven’t done anything wrong. Not really. At least nothing Garvin could ever find out.

  “I… I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “How did you get through the web, Xander?”

  I wipe my face and surreptitiously glance up toward the signal tower.

  “I went through a pipeline, like you said. It went right under the web. But the Nahx came after me and blew it up.”

  “Right. Just a bit south of here. Pretty far from Jasper. You walked halfway across the mountains by yourself?”

  “Yes.”

  Garvin leans forward and takes me by the knees, his chunky fingers digging in just enough that I can feel pressure on my bones. “Listen to me. You’re safe here. We don’t follow the law either way. Our goals are… different.”

  Despite my best efforts, I’ve started to shake. “Okay. But—”

  He holds a finger up, silencing me. “When James picked you up, you were raving about a Nahx. A single Nahx you traveled with. Who helped you. Is that true?”

  I take a breath. “Yes.”

  Garvin sighs with satisfaction. “You befriended it? Him? Her?”

  “Him.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Dead.” Supreme concentration is the only thing that keeps me from sobbing it out. August is dead. My last friend on earth, unless I can find Topher again one day. Everyone is dead.

  Garvin nods and loosens his grip on my knees, patting me almost sympathetically before leaning back.

  “All right, Xander. You don’t need to be worried. No one here is going to judge you for doing what was necessary to save your own skin.”

  I just nod. I’m not sure who was trying to save whom anymore.

  “I have one last question, and then I want you to meet someone.”

  I nod again. Maybe I’ll just stop speaking altogether.

  “This Nahx friend of yours, who helped you,” he says, fixing his eyes on mine. “Did you learn his sign language?”

  “Yes. Some of it.”

  This time his satisfaction is palpable. He practically fist pumps, leaping to his feet and beckoning me to follow him across the wide basin to the sheer wall of rock. We squeeze through another crevasse into a dim cave of rock and ice. Digging a lighter from his pocket, he bends to light a small kerosene lamp. It casts a yellow light over the rock and ice walls.

  “Sometimes she tries to jump out at you,” Garvin says, not taking his eyes off the shadowy edges where the cave ceiling curves down to crawling height.

  “Who?”

  There’s a low hiss, a rattle of heavy chain, and the scrape of metal on rock, and something moves in the dark. I step backward without thinking, but Garvin stops me.

  “She can’t hurt you. Not in her condition.”

  Garvin squats, lifting the lamp to shine into the low rift at the back of the cave. And there, kneeling in the dark, her arms pulled to either side by thick chains bolted into the stone, is a Nahx.

  Her head is hanging wearily, but even though I can’t see her eyes through her mask, I can tell she’s watching us as Garvin sets down the lamp and beckons me forward. As my eyes adjust to the light, I note with horror the pools of dark blood on the floor of the cave—one beneath her knees, and one beneath each of her forearms. I step closer, tugging my own flashlight from my pocket and clicking it on.

  “God…” I whisper it without thinking. I’ve seen enough of Garvin and his crew to know how I’m supposed to feel about this. Rationally thinking, maybe I could just ask to be taken back to Prince George and forget any of this ever happened. But irrational thinking is my specialty. And that tells me that I’m just as likely to get banished out into the snow if I make a scene.

  The cave smells, the characteristic smoky, chemical smell of the Nahx, but mixed with rot and death. As Garvin moves the lantern I can see the Nahx has heavy metal bolts piercing both wrists and one knee, shackling her in place, imprisoning her through her very flesh. Is she dying, this Nahx? Surely the wounds must be infected.

  “How long have you had it… her?” I ask, swallowing a sour taste in the back of my mouth.

  “Three weeks.”

  The Nahx’s head shoots up at this. She growls as I kneel next to Garvin, both of us still keeping our distance. The way she’s chained, it doesn’t look like she’d be able to lie down or sit, and she couldn’t stand because the cave ceiling is too low.

  “Have you fed her? Or given
her water?”

  “They don’t need to eat.”

  Three weeks. They’ve had her here for three weeks, chained up, unable to move, to sleep, sit, or stand, with no food or water. I can feel her eyes on me as I take it in, but after a few seconds, she lowers her head again as though she’s done with me.

  Garvin shimmies backward out of the cave, and I follow him.

  “What do you think?” he asks me as we straighten up.

  “Did you kill her partner?” I ask.

  “We thought we did. But when we went back for his body two days later, it was gone. I think it might have been the one that got Dylan.”

  “He’s looking for her?”

  Garvin shrugs pretty calmly for someone so in danger of being killed in his sleep. I think about the tracks we’ve left in the snow leading up here, tracks all the way back to the pulp mill.

  “Jesus, Garvin, he’ll destroy us if he finds her like this. You have no idea how loyal they are.”

  Garvin considers me with a thoughtful expression. “And you do? How close were you with the Nahx who crossed with you?”

  “He didn’t cross with me. He… accompanied me to the web. That’s it. I wasn’t trying to get him across to our side. He didn’t want to cross.”

  He looks like he doesn’t believe me, which just reinforces how tenuous my situation here is. And also how much Garvin must think he needs me. He wouldn’t bring someone he didn’t trust here without a good reason.

  “You want me to talk to her? Interrogate her?”

  “Among other things.”

  “What things?”

  Garvin’s face is permanently fixed in a not sure how much I should tell you expression. He’s been looking at me that way since the moment I clapped eyes on him back in Prince George, and it’s really starting to piss me off.

  “Look, Garvin, I can’t get on board with whatever it is that you want me to do if you don’t trust me. Where am I going to go?” I look around the snow and rocks for emphasis. “If you’re not sure about me, take me back to Prince George, and we can call it a day.”