Winter Castle

by Isla Jones

  Beside me, Castle pulled on a parka too, though his was a rusty green. He handed me a pair of leather gloves before tugging on his own.

  We got out of the car and ventured into the chill of the air. A frosty cloud came from my lips. I huddled my arms around myself and followed Castle as he walked down the dirt-road to the main one.

  It might have been day, but there wasn’t much light. The sun was hidden behind a thick layer of dark clouds, and the ground was submerged in fog. I stuck close to Castle.

  “Do you think they can come out on days like this?” My boots scuffed the frosty ground beneath me, crunching on branches and stones. “The rotters, I mean.”

  “They can come out anytime.” His pace remained slow enough for me to keep up; my limp had gotten better, the pain in my ankle had dulled to an ache, but I still couldn’t walk properly. “You’ve seen them,” he said. “The ones without nests wander during the day. It’s only when they’re together in a pack that they become nocturnal.”

  “You ever wonder why?” I asked.

  Castle looked down at me. His fading tan revealed a smooth, pinkish glow to his cheeks summoned by the cold bite of the air. “The sun slows them down,” he said. “It’s the heat that does it. Even the ones who do come out during the day stick to shaded areas mostly.”

  I drifted closer to him. The arms of our parkas touched and made a horrid sound; one that reminded me of a zip. His indifferent mask stayed firmly in place, but he didn’t pull away.

  An awkwardness had blossomed between us. It was the only indication I had that he remembered the kiss. But neither of us mentioned it. Castle isn’t one for talking about his feelings or discussing what happened between us.

  The flush of my cheeks burned into my skin. At least Castle would think it a side-effect of the cold breeze and not the memory of the kiss.

  “Doesn’t it worry you how smart they are?” I asked.

  “No.” He glanced down at me with those eyes that resembled the chilled air, with a sharp green beneath it, like a mint leaf frozen over. “They’re not as intelligent as we are.”

  I was reminded of when he’d compared them to packs of wolves. Organised and strategic.

  A silence swallowed us. The only sounds were our boots thudding against the frosted gravel. There were no chirps of the birds or howls of the coyotes. Sometimes I think we took those songs of nature for granted before the end. Now, the earth was in a stagnant state of silence—only interrupted by the whispers of stray survivors like us, or the hungry howls of rotters.

  “You still have two guesses,” I said. It was a long walk to the main road, and I couldn’t stand the silence any longer. Because in that silence between us, there were unspoken words about what had happened the night before. “Wanna play?”

  Castle dug his hands into his pockets and braced against the wind.

  “I’ve been thinking about it,” he said.

  My brows arched as I tugged the hood over my head. It was surprising, I thought, that Castle would spend any time at all giving thought to me or my life before this.

  “And?” I pressed.

  “And I don’t believe it matters what your job was.”

  My lips creased into a flat line.

  “You could’ve been a barista, a surgeon, a lawyer—it doesn’t matter,” he explained. “Because whatever it is you did, you didn’t love it. It wasn’t a part of you. It was a means to an end, something to pay the bills and that’s all.”

  “Even if you’re right,” I said quietly, “that’s not the game, and you’re down to one guess.”

  His gaze stayed fixed ahead on the eternal fog that blocked the view. He pulled up his hood.

  “I was a hairdresser,” I said. His eyes touched to my face. “I was an apprentice hairdresser, actually. And you’re right. I did it to pay the bills, to keep Cleo and me off the streets.”

  “You say it like you’ve been on the streets before.” The cold of his eyes burned into my cheeks, but I knew him better now—it wasn’t an icy glare, it was the touch of his gaze. “Were you?”

  The fur-hood bounced as I nodded. “For over a year,” I said. “And that’s where I met Cleo. She was a stray, and I guess I was too.”

  Castle stepped closer to me. It was discreet; so discreet that I only noticed when our arms touched again. “You told me you moved to LA because that’s where the bus took you. What were you running from?”

  I let the quiet slip back over us. He didn’t press for answers; we walked in silence.

  Soon after, the dark shadows of the main road began to pierce through the fog.

  We were almost there.

  “My foster family,” I said. “I was running from them.”

  Castle’s eyes swerved to me, as if startled that I’d finally answered his question.

  “They weren’t good people,” I said. “I was sixteen, and I couldn’t stay there any longer. I packed up my things and left.” At this, I lifted my gaze to trace his. “Everything I owned fit in a plastic bag. And everything I stole from that family paid for one thing: A bus ticket.”

  “What about your sister?” he asked. “Where was she?”

  “Oxford University.” My voice held whispers of bitterness. “Her foster family wasn’t like mine. And she’s smart. She won a scholarship.”

  “It was just you, then?”

  “Just me, until I met Cleo. And then it was the two of us.” I shrugged. “We were on the streets for a year. But I got into this outreach programme, and they helped me find a job and a place to stay. After a few weeks, I had enough money to rent a room in an apartment. Everything was looking up.” I smiled at him from the shadows of my hood, a bitter gesture. “And then the world went to shit.”

  Castle sighed, a sound so quiet that it almost got lost in the wind.

  “I misjudged you,” he said. “When I met you, I thought you were another Rose or Zoe.”

  “Is that an apology? If it is, it’s not very good, is it?”

  Castle raised his brow and shifted his gaze back to me. “It’s the closest to one you’ll get from me.”

  It didn’t faze me. I marched—well, hobbled—beside him to the clearing fog above the road.

  “Vicki told me about Zoe,” I said. Castle tensed; the parka shifted over his muscles and seemed to tighten. “She said that you and Zoe had something and that Rose bullied her out of the group to get rid of the competition.”

  Castle didn’t say anything.

  We reached the asphalt road, covered in a light spray of mist that seemed to drift up from the concrete like steam. The wisps parted as our legs swept through it.

  “There it is,” said Castle. He gestured ahead with his gloved hand. And sure enough, as I gazed down the road, the rough outline of the auto shop came into view.

  “Doesn’t look like anyone’s there.”

  “They could be hiding,” he said. “Or inside. We don’t like to leave signs of our presence at the meet-points.”

  In case the defected deltas come by, I finished to myself.

  We walked down the middle of the road. I watched my boots, black and scuffed, step on the tarmac. I tried to stay on the fading white stripes.

  “Do you miss Zoe?”

  I can’t be certain, but I suspect Castle stopped for a second. Though, when my gaze drifted to him, he was strolling beside me, no hint of any hesitation or emotion on his stony face.

  “No,” he said, and looked directly at me. I saw the sharp truth in his eyes. “I don’t.”

  The auto and repair shop looked abandoned from the outside.

  Castle held his gun in his gloved hand and ran his gaze over the shop’s front. The doors were chained shut and the windows were boarded over.

  My fingers were tucked underneath my coat, where they lingered over the handle of my gun. The holsters Castle had given me had proven themselves useful.

  “One of the survivors could’ve done that,” I whispered, inclining my head to the shop’s windows. “To stop the rotte
rs from getting in. They could be inside, waiting for the others to show up.”

  “Or,” he said, “we’re the first ones here.”

  I hoped we weren’t. But I wouldn’t have been surprised if no one was in there.

  “There might be another way in,” said Castle. “Come on.”

  His fingers lightly clasped around my wrist before he led the way down the side of the building. He didn’t need to tell me—I’d been with him long enough now to know when we were in ‘silent mode’. As he released my wrist, I slipped out the gun from my holster and shadowed his every move.

  At every window, we stopped. But they were all boarded like the ones at the front. Castle and I shared a look before we crept further down the building. What was strange about the windows was that they were boarded from the outside, not the inside.

  It was as if someone had wanted to keep something in, not out.

  After the last window, Castle pressed his back against the wall. His free hand gestured for me to do the same. I snuck up beside him.

  From his pocket, he slipped out a shard of glass. It was a fragment of a mirror; he stretched it out to the edge of the building and studied the reflection. From my angle, I couldn’t see what he did in the mirror-piece, so I waited for the next gesture; the ‘all clear’.

  It came in the form of a nod.

  We crept around the corner to the back of the building. There weren’t any cars parked or signs left by the group. I doubted anyone had arrived yet. We might’ve been the first, I thought.

  But then Castle stilled in front of me. I stopped behind him.

  He raised his gun and aimed it ahead. I couldn’t see what he was pointing it at other than the withering trees across the way.

  “There’s movement,” he said in a whisper. “Someone’s over there.”

  He meant the trees. But they stood against the cold far ahead; I can’t imagine how he’d seen movement from that much distance. Though, Leo had done the same once. Back when I’d first joined the group, Leo had thought he’d spotted movement on a bridge farther down the highway. And he’d been right.

  As I made to step around Castle, something touched the back of my hood. But before I could lift my hand to touch it, I knew what it was. It pressed against the cold fabric of my hood, digging into my pony-tail, and sprung an image to mind. An image of Leo.

  ‘The barrel of a gun silenced me. It pressed against my temple. I recoiled, clutching Cleo even closer to my chest. I didn’t need to face the barrel to know who had me at gun-point. Leo didn’t offer an explanation.’

  I froze.

  I wanted to call out his name. ‘Castle’ hung on the tip of my tongue. But speaking could get me killed. Instead, I reached out my hand and grabbed onto Castle’s parka. I tugged it.

  Castle made an impatient sound.

  I licked my chapped lips, hearing the heavy thud of my heart in my ears.

  Gripping onto the fabric, I tugged again. This time, I pulled harder and the pressure on the back of my head grew.

  I winced, shivering between the pressure and Castle.

  Castle turned to look at me, to tell me off for distracting him. His gaze swept the scene for a mere second—he whipped around and aimed gun to what stood behind me.

  Castle saw. He saw the person behind me, pushing the barrel of a gun against the back my head.

  And I trembled, waiting for the first blast to blow my head off, to end my life.

  All with the tug of a trigger.

  CASTLE’S UNVEILING

  ENTRY TWELVE

  Time stood still.

  My eyes watered; wide and fixed on Castle’s face, hidden by his hood. He didn’t move; he stayed as still as time did—we all did. But I waited for time to move again, and when it did, the trigger would be squeezed and I would crumble.

  I would fall in heaven, as Castle had fallen from heaven.

  My ears rang; they thrummed with the heaviness of my heart and the twist of my uneasy breaths. My gun was limp in my shaky hands, but I daren’t drop it—I daren’t drop it or raise it. Not until the gun moved from my head.

  “Before you even think about pulling that trigger,” said Castle, the restrained fury clutching to his growled words, “I’ll empty this entire clip in your head, soldier. Drop it.”

  “Castle?” The voice came out in a rushed rasp, nearly lost on the breeze. “Is that you?”

  The barrel still touched my head through the hood; it burned my scalp.

  I saw a flash of recognition in the shadow of Castle’s eyes, almost hidden by the drawn hood. But his gun remained up and aimed.

  “Castle, it’s me,” said the man behind me. There was something to his voice, a familiar roughness that filled me with nostalgic disdain. I didn’t like him. “It’s Adam.”

  Adam. Fucking Adam.

  I wasn’t surprised he still pressed the gun to my head.

  “I know,” said Castle dangerously.

  There was an uneasy moment that passed between us. Adam was one of the deltas, one of Castle subordinates. But his gun was raised, and aimed at my head. Castle didn’t back down.

  “I told you to drop it,” said Castle. “That’s an order.”

  “Oh.” Adam immediately lowered the gun and stepped back. “Sorry about that. Just—I don’t know, just surprised to see you is all.”

  The moment the pressure lifted from my head, I sprung to Castle’s side. He lowered his gun too, then peeled back his hood.

  Adam grinned at the sight of Castle’s face. It was then I remembered they were friends, not just deltas from the same team. Adam tucked his gun away and moved in to embrace Castle. They hugged, but it was one of those awkward ones that men sometimes share with stiff limbs and strange back-pats. I wonder if it makes them feel manly to hit each other while hugging.

  When they pulled away, I drew back my hood. Adam’s light gaze—full of relief and joy—drifted my way. He looked at me, but didn’t really see me. As he made to speak to Castle, it hit him; his eyes suddenly hardened and swerved back to me.

  “Winter,” he said. A mixture of disappointment and shock clutched his words. “You’re … alive.”

  I shot a scathing look at him. “Obviously.”

  Adam’s upper lip twitched. I suspect he wanted to retort, to spit a few insults my way—but then the flood of realisation swept through his eyes, and he looked at Castle.

  I think we both puzzled it together at the same moment. Castle had threatened him, knowing it was Adam, for aiming his gun at me. He’d threatened to empty his gun into his head if he didn’t lower it—he’d threatened one of his own to protect me.

  With a frown, I watched Castle. I didn’t quite look at him, but I watched him—the tightness of his jaw, the way his frosty eyes met mine before swerving away as if ashamed, and the way he cleared his throat as though it would shatter my realisation to pieces. It didn’t.

  “Is anyone else with you?” asked Castle. He did a poor job of discreetly steering the attention to something other than his actions.

  Adam was thinking the same as I was; I could tell by the constant shift of his gaze between me and Castle. He likely thought I was an apocalyptic gold-digger, jumping from Leo to Castle. But he had no idea what had really happened between any of us. He just assumed.

  “What?” said Adam. He blinked and settled his gaze on Castle’s impatient expression. “Oh right—Yeah, I’m with others.”

  Adam jogged out from behind Castle’s shadow, lifting his right arm in the air. He signalled, then looked back at Castle with a proud grin.

  “I was alone for a week,” he said. “Then I bumped into those two on my way here. Can’t say I’ve enjoyed being the third wheel.”

  My legs carried me forward, as if they had a mind of their own. My gaze raked up and down where Adam had gestured—the trees. Something moved through the trees, or out of them. No, definitely out of them. And it moved closer to us.

  Two people; silhouettes in the distance.

  Castle spo
ke to Adam; “When did you get here?”

  “A couple of hours ago—we saw a car coming down the far road. Decided it was best to not make ourselves known right away.”

  “A Jeep?” said Castle. “That was us. We parked a few miles off the road.”

  Their voices were like whispers in my mind. I could only watch the silhouettes draw closer.

  “What do you think?” said Adam. “Should we check out the shop? Looks like no one else is here.”

  Castle made to speak, but words spilled from my tongue first; “Who are they?”

  Adam fought the sneer from his face as he looked at me. I only spared him a swift glance, before looking back at the nearing silhouettes. Only, they weren’t silhouettes anymore.

  Their faces came into view; they were halfway towards us.

  As my hands slapped to my wide grin, Castle moved to stand beside me.

  We all watched them approach: A burly guy, wrapped in black, with yellowish hair and kind eyes; and a plump woman, with sleek black hair for days, and diamond-blue eyes on her youthful face.

  It was Vicki and Mac.

  “They made it,” I squeaked into my hands.

  Castle stayed beside me; Adam turned his head to face me.

  My attention had shifted to a black blur at Vicki’s feet. It seemed to move faster than Vicki and Mac.

  Adam sneered before he said the words that rattled my twisted soul, that shattered everything I knew and drowned me in relief.: “And they have your little rat with them.”

  MY BABY, MY WORLD, MY CLEO

  ENTRY THIRTEEN

  “CLEO!”

  I didn’t care about the pain jolting up my leg. I didn’t feel it. My ankle shook under the pressure, but my legs kept moving. I raced across the cold, hard grass, moving like a savage rotter.

  Castle shouted after me. His voice was drowned out in the adrenaline pumping through my veins. My only thought was her. The black blur raced closer. I scrambled to reach it, to meet it before we could ever be parted again.