Dead Of Winter (The Rift Book II)

by Robert J. Duperre

  The expression on the face of the young Marine sprawled out beside him remained stoic. His right eye was pressed against the scope of his rifle. Corky opened his mouth again, but the kid raised a finger to his lips and stopped him mid-complaint.

  “Dougie, what is it?” Corky whispered.

  Doug sighed and gestured for his large compatriot to pick up his binoculars. He pointed towards the base of the hill on which they lay.

  Corky obliged. He peered through the binoculars’ twin lenses and fiddled with the focus. An image came clear. Below them were six individuals, slogging their way across the snow-covered valley. Two of them, one old man and one young, appeared to be normal, while the other four, whose disintegrating, rag-like clothing hung off their shoulders like molting skin, were most certainly not. They had distended jowls, slouching gaits, and automatic weapons clutched tight in their clawed hands.

  “Fuck,” moaned Corky. “Fleshies.”

  “Uh-huh,” replied Doug.

  “What’re we gonna do?”

  “Nothing.”

  Corky’s mouth plummeted. “What? Why the fuck not?”

  Doug pulled back from the eyepiece. His normally terse expression was replaced by an irritated frown. “That’s not what we’re here for,” he said.

  “That so, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, fuck me with a two-by-four.” Corky shoved his partner, which caused Doug to slide down the hill a couple of inches. “I thought we was supposed to be helping people.”

  The young marine rolled towards him and took a swing. With a feat of quickness that surprised even him, Corky jacked up his arm and caught the kid’s fist in his massive right hand. You might be in better shape than me, boy, he thought, but when push comes to shove, I’ll knock your puny ass into next fucking week.

  They remained locked in their horizontal tango for a few uncomfortable moments before Doug muttered, “Listen, we can’t compromise the safety of the group. We don’t know if there’s more of those things close by, now do we? Do you wanna put our friends in any more danger than we have to?”

  “No,” grumbled Corky.

  “Then can I have my hand back now?”

  Corky loosened his grip. Doug withdrew. He jiggled his fingers like a dead fish. The large redhead grunted, rose to his knees, and brought the binoculars back to his eyes. From the corner of his vision, he noticed Doug shake his head.

  The action below had evolved during their stalemate. The older of the two prisoners had fallen. His captors stood over him, their mouths opened wide, exposing rows of jagged teeth and flopping, serpentine tongues. The one in the lead lowered its rifle as if to fire, only to be stopped by its three brothers, who in turn dropped their weapons. Another grabbed the old man by his thinning hair and lifted him off the ground. The three who’d interrupted the leader threw their heads back as if laughing. The lone creature who didn’t seem to want to play their game snarled.

  The younger hostage rushed up from behind and tackled the objector. He took the beast to the ground, fists flying. The brave soul’s brown hair flailed about him like the tentacles of a sea anemone as he pummeled his subjugator’s misshapen face time and time again. Much to Corky’s chagrin, his efforts proved useless. He was outnumbered and under prepared. A monstrosity snatched him by the back of his shirt and tossed him to the side. The creature he’d assailed stood up and screeched at its compatriots. It lifted the barrel of its rifle in a swift, purposeful motion, and pulled the trigger.

  The discharge echoed through the valley. Corky covered one ear with his free hand and kept on watching. Down below, the brave young man’s face imploded. It became a hollow wreath of flesh and disintegrated bone. His body crumpled into a heap while his limbs quivered in their final death throes. The four tyrants passed a few interested glances between each other. A moment later they descended on the moldering corpse like a school of rabid piranha. Blood and streams of viscous danced in the air above them. Corky’s stomach cramped, much the way it used to after a night of drowning his sorrows in a sea of way too much tequila.

  He veered the binoculars to the side and saw the old man trying to scurry away on his hands and knees while his fellow prisoner’s body was devoured. Corky’s breathing picked up its pace. We can’t just let him die out there, he thought. Shit, man, that ain’t no way to go.

  He peered at Doug. The kid was still concentrating on the events in the valley, seemingly oblivious to him. Corky slowly rose to his feet. For a moment, the weight of his beer gut threatened to topple him over on the uneven footing. He steadied himself, picked up the binoculars again, and noticed that one of the busily feeding creatures had craned its head around. It spotted the fleeing old guy and seemed to giggle before turning back to its meal. Corky reached under his bundle of jackets and scarves and removed the gun tucked into his belt.

  “Fuck this,” he proclaimed, and took off down the hill.

  * * *

  Doug Lockenshaw closed his eyes. He didn’t want to see what came next. He’d watched scenes much like this one play themselves out way too many times over the last two months.

  He’d been stationed in Richmond, Virginia, when the first wave of murderous Wraiths (or fleshies, as Corky so affably dubbed them) descended upon the city. They spread like a plague, working from inside out, taking all by surprise. The people his comrades had been assigned to protect turned on them in a matter of seconds. The conflict was violent, bloody, and futile. At the end of a four-day siege in an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of the city, only Doug and three other soldiers from a platoon of eighty remained. Then came silence.

  A week later, when the ongoing quiet had reached the point where he and his fellow survivors began to take their relative safety for granted, another wave, smaller but deadlier and more focused, swooped down on them. Doug’s three companions lost their lives in the scuffle, torn apart by the homicidal horde of perverted humanity.

  Doug fled the scene and spent the next month on the run. Guilt and relief washed over him with equal aplomb. Around every darkened corner, in every hushed nook, the nightmares of past events and failures haunted him. He was alone and afraid. Snow fell and showed no sign of letting up, casting an icy serenity over all he saw. Nothing in his rugged Marine training had prepared him for this.

  While stalking through the northern Virginia wilderness two weeks prior to the scene that now unfolded in the valley below, he stumbled upon the diverse assembly of men that included Corky, his massive Nordic sidekick. They were as he, afraid and on the run, but they possessed a sense of community, of brotherhood, that seemed to ease his frazzled nerves. Despite the fact they were much older than he, they accepted him as one of their own. He found that being in the company of others was just what he needed to get by. Isolation had worn down on him like a thousand-pound weight.

  The last thing Doug wanted was to put his new friends’ lives in jeopardy. This was why he’d told Corky no when the behemoth wanted to intervene on behalf of the old man in the valley. He knew Corky didn’t like it – how many older men like being given orders by nineteen-year-olds? – but hoped he would understand. Their collective safety mattered above all else. They had to hold on to it as long as they could, because deep down he knew it all would be taken from him in a moment, just like it always had been.

  He shifted on his belly, opened his eyes, and peered again through the looking glass. The melee below him continued, but the feast was in the process of winding down. One of the creatures leaned back, exposing the picked-clean shoulder of what had been a living, breathing person only minutes before. Tendrils of flayed meat dangled below its chin. Doug stifled the urge to vomit.

  A flash of red appeared to his left. Doug shifted the barrel of his rifle in that direction and placed the source of this new blast of color in his crosshairs. What he saw was a crimson-haired giant, barreling down the slope on a pair of tree trunk legs with the speed of a Viking who wanted nothing more than to hit the brothel after a long day of pi
llaging. Doug jumped to his knees and glanced at the matted patch of white beside him, hoping this vision was nothing but an illusion, hoping Corky would still be lying there, as lewd and scruffy as ever. Of course he wasn’t.

  “Oh, shit.”

  * * *

  Corky ran as fast as he could. Gravity was his constant enemy, thrusting his upper body forward while his feet lagged behind. He pumped his legs like mad, trudging through knee-high piles of snow, trying to keep from tumbling head over foot. Somehow, he managed to stay upright.

  The ground leveled out and he pushed himself even harder. A peek to the right informed him the fleshies were still busy with their mid-day snack; to his left, the old man plugged away, on his hands and knees, hollowing out a trench in the frozen land.

  With Corky only five feet away from him, the old man spun around. He threw his hands up in front of his face and screamed. Corky stopped dead in his tracks. This time he did fall over. He careened into the snow like a leaping whale and whacked his head on something hard. A surprised breath squeezed from his lungs. The pistol flew from his hand.

  He rose up on all fours when the ringing in his cranium subsided. The old man was scurrying away again. He glanced in the opposite direction. The scream of the old timer, along with his clumsiness, must have alerted the fleshies. They all stood over the stripped-clean carcass and stared at him with their burning, yellow eyes. Corky slowly backed away.

  “C’mon, dude,” whispered Corky to the retreating detainee. Even moving at a crawl he gained on the old man. “I don’t wanna hurt you.” The elderly gentleman tried to scamper away even faster, but ended up spinning his wheels in sludge. Corky threw caution to the wind, leapt towards the old guy, and grabbed the back of his mangled shirt.

  “Just…get…over…here!” he screamed. “We don’t…have…time for this!”

  A crack split the air, followed by a whine that breezed past his ear. Corky let go of the old guy’s shirt and wheeled around. The bastards had raised their weapons. Smoke wafted from the barrel of the one in front.

  “Fucking fleshies,” he muttered. He dropped to his knees in a panic and plunged his hands into the shifting mush, trying in vain to find his gun. His tension reached levels he’d only dreamed of. He could actually feel the flesh on his neck turn bright pink. Once more he glanced up to find the four monsters even closer than before. They approached him with calm, measured steps.

  “Why don’t you just FUCK OFF!” he barked. Spittle erupted from his lips.

  A sequence of riotous pops cut off his anger. Corky ducked and threw his arms over his head. This is it, I’m a goner, he thought, but no bullets pierced him. He glimpsed up, wincing. One of his attackers had toppled over, clutching at its neck. Two others stumbled and almost lost their balance. They swiveled in the direction of the continuous pop-pop-pop. Their tongues whipped about like tails. Corky followed their gaze.

  He watched in amazement as Doug sprinted down the hill, high-stepping through the snow with grace he could only dream of. The rifle was locked into the kid’s shoulder and he squeezed off round after round in short bursts, pivoting the barrel of his weapon with sharp, concise motions. There was an expert’s ease in this, and Corky believed he hadn’t seen a more beautiful display of talent since he watched Perky Sunshine spin around the pole down at The Velvet Moon.

  Corky thrust his fist into the snow one last time. It struck paydirt. He wrapped his fingers around the butt of the revolver, jumped to his feet, aimed at the faltering creatures, and squeezed the trigger time and again until all six rounds emptied. He laughed hysterically the entire time. “You like that? How ‘bout that? HA! You lousy fucking UGLY FUCKS!”

  It was over in a matter of seconds. The four monstrosities lay in crumpled heaps. Steam rose from the holes in their carcasses. Corky laughed and looked at the old man, who was now scrunched up on his knees with his hands covering his ears.

  “Sorry ‘bout that, dude,” said Corky between giggles.

  “You’re an ass,” he heard Doug’s voice announce.

  The kid stood to his flank, rifle flung over his shoulder, arms crossing his chest, and lips creased tight as a virgin’s nethers. Corky, however, couldn’t stop laughing.

  “What?” he asked, lifting up his hands in his best who, me? expression.

  “You’re a moron,” replied Doug. The young Marine shook his head and stormed in the direction of the scattered bodies. Corky blew one last chortle through his nose and turned his attention back to the old man.

  “See, I told you, pops, there ain’t nothing to worry about.” He lifted the shaken man by his armpits until he sat, shoulders hunched, in the snow. He waved his palm in front of the old guy’s face. There was no response. “Hello, anybody home?” he asked. Still nothing; the eyes before him stared off into the distance. Then they closed.

  “Okay, you asked for it.”

  Corky lifted the old man with ease and threw him around his neck like an ox harness. A touch of concern reached him when he realized how light the guy was. He turned to Doug, who had by this point finished his inspection and glared in his direction with an expression that seemed much too intense for a boy his age.

  “Sorry, man,” said Corky sheepishly.

  “Whatever,” Doug replied. His voice shook with anger. “You’re gonna get us all killed, you know that? Shit!”

  Corky patted the old man on the behind. “I know,” he said, “but hey, I couldn’t let the geezer die.”

  “There could’ve been more of them!” screamed Doug.

  Corky flipped him the middle finger. “But there ain’t, is there? Look around you.” He spread his arms and spun around, Julie Andrews-style, with the old man still draped over him. “We’re the only ones here!” he hollered at his own echo. “HELLOOO!”

  “Asshole,” Doug mumbled.

  “You’ll get over it.”

  “I don’t feel like dying because of you.”

  “Me neither.”

  “So no more stupid risks, okay?”

  Corky grinned. His cheeks turned red. “Dougie-boy,” he said, “you got my word.”

  ii

  Horace Struder awoke when a stiff, cold wind brushed past his face. An omnipresent sense of warmth followed. Something sizzled. He opened his eyes. Everything was hazy, and in the distance he saw what appeared to be six huge snakes. They danced around a giant column of light. His heart skipped a beat.

  It took a long while for his vision to adjust. When it did, he realized the serpents were actually men. They sat in a circle; the glowing pillar between them was flame spewing from a fire pit. He tried to lift himself up on his elbow but was too weak. His head swiveled as he gave in to his frailty and allowed his eyes to scan the backdrop. All around him were jagged rock formations. Tufts of grass sprouted from cracks in the earth below. It looked like a cave.

  How did I get here? he wondered. The last he remembered, Clyde Cooper and himself had been ripped from their lean-to by a small platoon of Wraiths. They’d been on the run for five weeks at that point. They were starving. Their exhaustion made them sloppy. The enemy gained the advantage.

  His head began to throb while he tried to think of what happened next. He recalled being led into a vast white meadow with guns at his back. He remembered falling down. The screaming voice of Clyde, his only friend, came next. After that, however, his mind went blank.

  As Horace tried his best to piece together the particulars of his endeavor, one of the men who sat around the fire, a huge and familiar-looking sort with long hair and a beard colored bright red with a hint of gray, leaned back and glanced his way. A jovial smile plastered itself on the stranger’s face.

  “Hey, it’s the old dude,” the stranger said. “He’s up.”

  The man rose to his feet. Horace could hear his knees crack. He bent over and snatched a long, round object off the ground.

  The other five outsiders turned their attentions to him. Though his vision was still quite foggy, he could tell they were smiling.r />
  “What’s up, grampa?” the monstrous redhead asked. He stood hunched over, his head scraping the top of the cave. With a flick of the wrist he unscrewed the top of what Horace realized was a thermos and poured its contents into the cap. He offered it to him.

  “You been out forever, dude,” he said. “We was starting to worry about you.”

  Horace gathered enough strength to force his body into a sitting position. He nodded at the man and gripped the cup with both hands. Taking it to his lips, he was suddenly parched and drank too quickly. The liquid drained into his dry esophagus and caused his throat to spasm. Fluid ran down the wrong tube. He gagged. His lungs felt like they were on fire.

  The large man took the cup from his hand and assisted in leaning him forward. A gigantic hand slapped his back. “Whoa, slow down, dude,” he said. “You don’t wanna choke yourself.”

  Horace sat still for a moment and closed his eyes. After a few stifled gags, the feeling subsided. He swallowed gently. The relief he felt in this act, even with the knowledge of his cancer-ridden lungs, brought him a dreamlike sense of calm.

  “Thank you,” he managed to whisper.

  “No problemo, dude,” the redhead answered.

  With one more calming breath, Horace attempted to stand up. His knees buckled. The large man caught him around the waist and broke his fall. In a split second of humiliation, Horace turned his vision towards the others, expecting them to laugh at his ineptitude. They didn’t. Instead, the look on each of their faces extolled sympathy and relief.

  He turned to the redhead, who was still holding him, and gazed into the kindest pair of emerald-green eyes. “What’s your name?” asked Horace.

  “Charles Ludlow, my man,” he replied, “but my peeps call me Corky.”