Colder than Hell

by Anthony Neil Smith

  The man with the ax had sat alone at a window seat since before sunrise, when a woman dropped him off. He’d bought a prepaid cell phone and a bottle of cough syrup before limping into the café and taking a seat. Anna Lynn took his order—a double stack of pancakes and as much coffee as she could bring—and asked where he was headed. He didn’t look in too hot. Scratches all over his face and ears, a busted lip, battered nose, and a bruised, swollen cheek. She couldn’t be sure, but he might have been missing a tooth. He had pulled his cap down low and had the collar on his filthy jacket turned high. Both of his hands were bandaged, soaked through with blood.

  He smelled terrible.

  And yet there was still something about him that got to her. The poor guy’d had himself one shitter of a night, it seemed.

  He smiled. “Car crash. It was all I had. Now I just need a ride home.”

  “Where’s home?”

  “For the next little while, probably the Twin Cities. Again. I like it there.”

  Anna Lynn shook her head. “If you’re looking for a ride here, you’re probably in for a long wait. At least ’til late afternoon, since the same storm that got us is just now down thataway.”

  He sniffed. “It’s okay. I can pay for the coffee all day, if that’s—”

  She waved him off. “Might as well be free, how much we make of it. As long as you don’t cause any trouble with that ax of yours, stay as long as you like.”

  He nodded toward the ax. “Trust me, I just use it for work.”

  Anna Lynn smirked at him, raised an eyebrow, and asked him if he’d heard about the hospital explosion.

  “Sorry, no. That sounds terrible.”

  She left it alone, went over to the service window, and put in his order. There were only five other people there that time of day, and her shift ended in two more hours. She was dying to talk to somebody about this, but that guy, he wasn’t the guy. She wiped the counter and watched as he ripped the phone out of its cardboard and plastic container, then pulled a wet-looking business card from his pocket, cringing as if his whole body hurt to do so. He put the phone on top of the card, and then…sipped coffee and stared out the window.

  One shitter of a night indeed.

  Matt liked the old-lady waitress, so much like all those others he had met out on the road at greasy spoons and truck stops. On any other day he would have loved to have talked about the news, the weather, her grandkids. He might have even warned her to be careful of the fat dickhead telling the dirty jokes and playing the pinball machine, since he was as rotten as any of the doctors Matt had fought last night. But he would deal with that one later, once he got some strength back.

  She brought him his pancakes, then told him her shift was over. The fat guy? Believe it or not, it was her ex-son-in-law. Still “family,” so…

  Matt sighed and said, “You trust him?”

  A sad smile. “Let’s just say it takes a lot of energy to look the other way.”

  He excused himself from the table and walked gingerly over to the guy as he nearly tilted the machine and screamed “Mother-fucker!” after nearly every ding.

  Matt put his hand on the guy’s shoulder. Got himself an evil look, like that was just what Mr. Fat Festering Demon Shit-for-Brains wanted most to start his day—a good ol’ fashioned brawl.

  But Matt stared him in the eye, said, “I know what you want to do.”

  The asshole was about to toss back a Fuck you or Fuck you, pussy, or Who the fuck do you fucking fuck fuck think fuck you fucking piece of fuck, and so on, but he couldn’t break the staring contest. He was mesmerized. Sores on his chin, one of his ears, an entire eyeball, but he didn’t spit back.

  Matt brought his other hand out of his jacket pocket. His fingers were smeared red. Shakily, he lifted those fingers to the man’s face.

  “What the hell, is that blood? Get that away from me! Jesus, you’re a nut—”

  But he couldn’t keep going. Matt grabbed him by the throat with that red-smeared hand, his thumb resting on top of the chin sore.

  Then he gave the guy a little pat on the cheek, just enough to leave a handprint of blood. Before he stepped away, he could already see the sores retreating, covered over by waxy new skin. The guy went quiet, too. Stood there at the pinball machine not playing, not doing anything.

  Matt hobbled back to his table and the waitress, who stood there, pale, her lips parted but with nothing to say. “Okay, one more cup of coffee, and then I think you’re good to go.”

  He didn’t remember much about what happened after the second explosion. He’d awakened with someone compressing his chest. Then, “He’s alive, thank God, he’s alive.” Then, looking around, it was definitely a doctor saving his life, but not an evil one. He found Rhonda nearby, in shock but alive. Matt let out a deep breath and then sat up so he could cough a lung into his mouth.

  Firefighters were everywhere. He was in the parking lot, way at the back. Even that far away he could feel the heat from the fire. One of the firemen said he was still holding his ax when they found him. “An old one, like my grandpa used to have.”

  Exactly. And it always seemed to find its way back to him.

  After the crowd had subsided some as the firemen got to work and showed them all that the worst was over, Matt thought about approaching Rhonda, finding out all he could about what had happened to her and Jimmy at the rest area. How had they succumbed to the virus after fighting it off so well earlier? And also, could he ask her for more blood?

  Apparently, the explosion had knocked him down so hard that the plastic vials broke in two and caused the blood to soak into his jacket. So if he wanted a chance to take the fight to Mr. Dark, he would need to convince her that it was in her best interest… Well, it was, right? Who knew when this thing would bloom again?

  But after watching her for a good five minutes, considering what to say, he saw her finally reunited with her kids. Both of them were back to normal. She stood and pulled them both into a monster of a hug, crying. She didn’t want to let go. So Matt decided it was time to leave.

  He slipped away when no one was looking, went into the nearest bar, and found a lonely woman willing to give him a ride to the truck stop.

  Now, later in the morning, after the waitress had left with her formerly pus-dripping ex-son-in-law, he picked up the cell phone and called the number on the front of the P&K card. He hoped that Mr. Icarus would be in, but if not, he would gladly talk to someone in HR about a job. But he didn’t get that far. A robo-voice told him the number had been disconnected.

  He flipped the card to the back, the handwritten “trouble” number, and dialed that.

  Disconnected.

  He tried again, thought he might have gotten it wrong.

  This time it wasn’t even a “disconnected” voice. Just a low thrumming noise. No one even picked up.

  Matt closed his eyes.

  He called information and asked for Pavlov & Kirk’s number. It seemed to take longer than usual for the operator to come back and say, “I’m sorry, but that’s no longer in service.”

  “As of when?”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but I only know that it’s no longer in service.”

  Then she hung up. Not even a Can I help you with anything else? Nope. She hung up. And then, even though he was supposed to have at least five hundred minutes left on the phone, it went dead.

  Plus his coffee had gone cold.

  It was time to leave.

  Salvatore said that his company didn’t allow hitchhikers, of course. But then again, Salvatore would’ve never gotten this job if he hadn’t been picked up by so many truckers when he was new to the country, right? So he was more than happy for the company as they cruised down I-94 toward the Twin Cities, about a five-hour trip from Fargo in good weather. In this? Six or seven hours. They had to drive under the speed limit, and Matt could feel why, as the semi often seem to lose control just a little as it trundled along the interstate.

  At some point, he was prett
y sure it was when Salvatore was talking about how he had learned to invest his money via online brokerages—you know, “that one with the talking baby?”—Matt fell dead asleep.

  Salvatore punched Matt in the shoulder, causing his passenger to wake with a shout, ready to fight. But Salvatore was too busy staring out his window to notice.

  “Hey, man, you sure you want me to drop you here?”

  Matt leaned forward, looked around the driver. Across the street, exactly where the card had told him Pavlov & Kirk’s offices should be, there was nothing except the smoking fragments of what must have once been a building and a big hole in the ground.

  Just like the night before, there were lots of fire trucks. Lots of cops.

  And, well, this was a new twist—military vehicles. Jeeps, Humvees, cargo trucks. Lots of men in gas masks and fatigues, carrying M-16s, forming a wall of soldiers around the perimeter.

  “This is the place, right? This is the one you told me.”

  Matt scoped it out a little while longer, Salvatore now staring at him, fingers thumping the steering wheel impatiently.

  Holy shit.

  Someone had wiped the whole company off the face of the Earth.

  All Matt had now was his bloodstained jacket, a new name to chase down with this Icarus guy, and a wild-assed story he couldn’t prove.

  But the virus?

  Gone.

  All those crates, all the samples, all the evidence.

  Destroyed.

  Jesus, that fucking clown Mr. Dark had been a step ahead of Matt the whole time, except for that one glorious moment when he realized that the virus protected people from his touch. That look on his face, that was all Matt needed to keep pushing forward, even on days like this, when he was sick, wounded, and pretty sure he lost last night’s battle, no matter how many people he had saved.

  Even so, there was comfort in knowing that Mr. Dark himself could be stopped and that the answer might still be waiting to be found someday in the people who survived the freezing hell on the highway.

  Assuming Mr. Dark or his minions didn’t get them all first.

  Salvatore said, “Man? I’ve got to make this delivery. You getting out?”

  Matt sat back. “Sorry. Must’ve been given the wrong address. If it’s okay, let me hang out with you a little longer.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah.” He closed his eyes.

  “But where will you go now?”

  Matt yawned. “Surprise me.”

  Salvatore put the truck in gear, and they kept on rolling.