Dead Winter: A gripping crime thriller full of suspense

by Jack Parker

  "She was in some serious pain, kept switching between normal and infected. It almost looked like she was switching between personalities or something." John continued, seeming to be having trouble finding a way to explain what we had seen.

  "And then?" Shaun enquired, his face was out of my vision, so I could not tell what expression he was wearing.

  "She asked me to end it, so I.. did." John said in a sombre tone, lowering his head as he spoke.

  We walked for several minutes down the street, taking a turn through some alleyways as we encountered another overturned truck laying in our way. I grew weary of all these detours, wondering if we'd ever reach our destination.

  "Watch out, got a rambler over there." Vincent warned us, pointing to the corner of the alleyway, where a person could be seen. They were simply standing there, as though they were merely waiting for someone.

  "Rambler?" I enquired, curious as to why he'd chosen that word out of all the possibilities. The word 'rambler' brought back a couple of memories from our encounter with the hunters, who has also called them by that name. Vincent merely shrugged and watched as John moved towards the infected, weapon in hand.

  Sneaking up on the infected, John prepared to take a swing at it with his kukri. As he was about to deliver the attack, the infected turned to face him, letting out a growl which could only be heard for a second as he planted the blade in its skull.

  "That's that, street ahead looks clear from where I'm standing." John said, swiping off some of the blood that had gathered on the blade of his weapon. John had a clear view of the street ahead from where he was standing.

  I caught Claire staring at me for a few seconds, her face full of concern and fear. Though the moment I noticed her looking at me, she quickly turned away and started to walk over to John, who had begun to move into the next street.

  We weaved around car after car, abandoned vehicles were extremely common in the cities it seemed. The pain was growing more and more intense as I walked and I suddenly found myself losing my balance a little as we walked. Slowing down, I fell behind the rest of the group as an ungodly amount of pain erupted in my head. It felt like my very mind were on fire as I ceased to walk, staggering across the tarmac.

  "We're nearly the- Ethan?" Shaun said, cutting himself off as he glanced over his shoulder at me. On those words, everyone turned to face me, walking back over to where I was stood.

  "I'm... fine." I muttered, finding my voice. The pain grew only more intense as the second ticked by. Clutching my head, I swayed on the spot as my balance was snatched out from under my feet.

  "You.. don't look fine." John said very slowly as I walked towards a wall and leant against it, my hands still firmly placed around my head. Every word and little sound resonated in my head to excruciating effect.

  My body felt hot, but freezing cold at the same time, constantly switching between the two extremes as the pain only got worse. My left eye suddenly felt very hot and began to tear up, so I rubbed at it. In the distance, I swore I could hear laughter.

  What the hell was this?

  "Your eye, Ethan.." Claire stammered, pointing at me with her index finger. On her words, I gradually made my way over to a nearby abandoned car and examined myself in the wing mirror.

  My left eye had gone completely bloodshot with not a dot of white in sight, and the warmth in it could only be related to the amount of blood flowing through.

  This was it, I was infected. Red eyes were one of their most distinguishable characteristics.

  "I knew it, he's infected!" Vincent roared, staring into my eyes as I glanced at each of the group in turn. I suddenly felt very queasy, and proceeded to vomit all over the side of the car, swaying on the spot as I wiped my mouth clean.

  "Resistant at the very least.. He doesn't have very long.." John mused, rubbing his chin in contemplation.

  "What do we do?" Shaun demanded, his hands instinctively grabbing the rifle that was slung over his shoulder. Was he going to shoot me?

  My eyes swept across the street, examining every little detail in everything before returning to the faces of my group. My left eye still felt very warm, and continued to stream for some reason. I let out the deepest sigh I had ever done in my entire life and proposed my own ultimatum.

  "Leave me.." were the words that I uttered, speaking as clearly as I could so nobody could misunderstand. My balance was slowly coming back to me, but the sickness remained.

  "What? You want us to just go!?" Shaun asked, his expression was priceless, pure shock.

  "Yeah, leave me. They won't let me on the boat like this." I said, my voice coming out in a very monotone fashion. I had to think logically on this one, my heart demanded that I continue and escape from this hell, but my mind knew better.

  "We can't just leave you here, man. You'll be done for!" John exclaimed, making wild hand gestures as he spoke.

  My thoughts were electric, every word surging through my mind at a thousand miles per hour. I felt like I was burning out, breaking up in the atmosphere as I plummeted to Earth, I even felt like I was actually falling for a second as everything went black for just a single moment before returning to normal. It was starting.

  "You can, and you WILL!" I spat, pointing to the street ahead of us, in the direction they had to go in order to finally escape.

  "No!" Claire said defiantly, crossing her arms in panic.

  "I will NOT be responsible for all your deaths!" I roared, finding myself grow intolerably angry for some reason, as though every emotion in my being were amplified to the extreme, my fuse felt very short right now and I was so close to snapping.

  "What will you do?" John asked me very carefully, he was being very delicate about this whole ordeal.

  "I dunno. Take a nice stroll? Take in the sights and then kill myself. Sounds good." I said, my tone rife with sarcasm. I felt my brow furrow as I found my vision go slightly blurry and I tried to compensate by narrowing my eyes.

  "That's.. We just can't leave you, man.." Shaun sighed.

  "You will. GO!" I demanded, my headache growing a little stronger with all the stress. Shaun seemed taken aback by my tone of voice, and we started unzipping his back, taking out the spare assault rifle that he kept in there. I thought I saw Vincent's eyes widen at the sight of the gun, which Shaun proceeded to hand to me.

  "You'll take this. If you're going down, take as many of those fuckers with you as you can. I hate this, but if you're insist we leave, I guess we must." Shaun said in defeat as I took the rifle from him. It was unexpectedly heavy as I slung it over my shoulder, staggering back a little from the weight.

  Motioning for them to leave, they slowly turned around and began to walk in the direction that lead to the port. I sat down on the curb for a few minutes, disturbed only once as everything went black, and then red before my vision returned to normal and I found myself stood up a few metres away from where I had been standing.

  I'm all alone again, winter had never felt so cold.

  I began walking back the way we came, wandering aimlessly through the streets as my symptoms only grew more severe as time went on. I stared up at the sky, but saw nothing but static in the air, obscuring most of its usual magnificence as though I were watching the world through an old television set.

  "What the hell.. am I going to do?" I said to myself, taking the rifle in my hands as I trudged down the road, bumping into the sides of cars that were in my way, losing my balance every now and then.

  "Kill yourself." I heard a voice say to me from through the din, I looked around wildly to identify where the voice had come from, but found nothing.

  There was a presence on this street. And with the presence, I turned around in time to see a man leap down from the top of a car, he began to stride towards me. As he did, his features came into view and I realised who it was. It was none other than the 'Executioner', Lucas.

  I swiped at him with my free hand, finding my arm go right through him. His being vanished for a moment, before reappeari
ng to my left with a massive grin stretching wide across his face.

  He looked like the Cheshire Cat.

  "Great. Not only does my head hurt, but now my conscience too?" I spat, continuing my journey to who knows where. I had no destination, no great goal, I was merely drifting through the last moments of my life, trying to find a good place to die.

  And then everything went red. I wasn't full unaware of what was going on around me, but I couldn't really see anything either. From the deafening haze came sounds reminiscent of rambling and shouting. This continued for a minute before my senses came back to me, and I found myself at the end of the street.

  "Looks like this is the end for you, kiddo. Was it fun?" Lucas chuckled, walking backwards in front of me.

  "You know the answer to that, bastard." I growled, continuing my non-existent quest.

  "Not even a little bit? A teensy-little bit?" Lucas exclaimed, a look of apparent surprise visible on his face. Why was he even here? It was bad enough with him haunting my sleep, but now he was in my reality too?

  "What do you want from me?" I asked, looking up from the ground to gaze into his eyes as we walked, his mocking grin irritating me to the extreme. I raised the heavy rifle and pointed it at him.

  "Now, now. That'll do you no good!" he sang, waggling his index finger at me as I lowered the rifle. He was right, what use was shooting at a hallucination, if that's what this was. It must be, I didn't believe in the supernatural in the slightest, so I must simply be going crazy.

  "What... do you want from me?"

  "Ethan, my boy! There isn't a thing I want from you, but since I'm apparently stuck with you, I thought I'd make conversation!" Lucas exclaimed, making some rather vivid hand gestures as he spoke.

  "You're so annoying.." I sighed, now finding myself at an intersection. I turned onto the road on the left and continued to trudge my way across the tarmac.

  I could hear other voices coming from a side-passage and I started walking backwards as they grew louder and louder. Lucas hummed a eerie melody from behind me as footsteps came within earshot.

  "Uh oh!~" Lucas exclaimed, raising his hands to his mouth in a mocking gesture.

  Those were the last words I heard as everything went red again and I found myself feeling completely detached from my body. From the red static, I could hear panicked shouts and screams and my own voice, rambling to itself. A gunshot rang out through the void, bringing me to my senses a few seconds later.

  I was a little further down the street now, standing over a couple of bodies which began to jerk and twitch uncontrollably as something took them over.

  Did I do this?

  "Oh god.. Shit.." I stammered as what I assumed were the people in the alleyway started turning into infected. I must have bitten and cut at them in my unwilling frenzied attack, as they were covered in little scratches and a couple of bite marks to the neck. My mouth tasted of blood.

  Pulling out my knife, I plunged the blade deep into their heads, one at a time as they started to shout in delirium, no longer the people they had been only moments ago. I felt insanely guilty as I ended the lives of something I had created.

  "Oh...god.." I said to myself, dropping the knife and walking backwards until I hit the wall of the alleyway behind me. I sunk into a sitting position and pressed my head against my knees, trying not to look at the corpses.

  I sat there for a good twenty minutes, my eyes tearing up slightly every now and then as my thought drifted from what I had done to what I should do with myself. My rifle had apparently fallen onto the ground next to the corpses as I shot a look over at the bodies before closing my eyes again.

  "Get up, Ethan." a voice said to me. It was different from Lucas' sing-song tone. It was a deep, rough and familiar voice. As I opened my eyes, I found them slowly moving up the figure of a man standing before me.

  Smart dress shoes, black trousers. My eyes continued to move upwards, my gaze running across the black business suit and the matching tie until it reached the face of the man. He had stubble on his chin and a knowing expression on his face.

  "It's me." the man said to me as I realised who it was. He began to straighten his tie and ran his fingers through his hair. I waved my hand through the air, trying to touch his leg, but found that my hand merely just went through the person, the same as with Lucas.

  It was Dave.

  Chapter Thirty

  Day Seventeen (6th January – 12:25PM)

  Every breath could be my last, and they came out deep and rough; I trembled with every little intake of air as I sat there in the dimly-lit alleyway. My gaze was still fixed on the face of the man, who I was desperately trying to touch; but no matter how much I wanted it to be real, it was still just a figment of my imagination.

  "You know I'm not really here, kiddo." Dave said to me, crossing his arms across his chest.

  "Shame, could've done with some company." I admitted, my head still pounding with the most intense pain I had ever experienced. It strained my eyes just to look up at him.

  "Clearly. It's not pleasant. I only felt it for a few seconds, but it was the second worst feeling I've ever experienced." Dave mused, rubbing his chin as he patted himself down in search of something.

  "Second? What was the first?" I asked curiously, lowering my gaze to look at the ground, watching a bug crawl its way across a piece of paper.

  "You already know the answer to that." Dave said, sighing at the end of his sentence as he finally found what he was looking for; a pack of cigarettes.

  Even his ghost smoked. Huh.

  "Yeah.. So this is it, huh?" I said, pausing slightly mid-sentence as I returned my eyes to Dave.

  "How do you mean?" Dave asked, while taking out a cigarette and lighting it. It all looked so real, I could even see the smoke as clear as day.

  "Doomed to die in an alleyway, forgotten by everyone?" I lamented, taken slightly aback by how depressed I sounded, though I suppose I did have a good excuse, given the circumstances.

  "Is that what this is?" he remarked, his words coming out as smoke that hovered in the air for a few seconds before breaking up into nothingness.

  "Huh?" I said, confused by what he was asking me. I wiped my eyes dry with my sleeve and looked into his eyes. His look was stern and serious.

  "You've crawled into an alleyway to what? Kill yourself?" Dave spat, clearly irritated by the assumptions he was making.

  "What else is there to do? I'm not turning into one of those things." I sighed, looking off to the side as I spoke, I couldn't bear to look him in the eyes right now.

  "Get up, we're taking a walk." he said sternly, commanding me to my feet. I swayed a little as I got up, still dizzy from the pain in my head.

  We left the alleyway and moved back onto the street, carefully walking over the corpses of the two people I had infected in my craze. I was merely following Dave, who was always a few steps ahead of me. Some birds flew over the rooftops as I cast my gaze skywards for a few seconds.

  This'll be the last blue sky I ever see.

  I found it incredibly strange how something I had previously taken for granted every day could suddenly have so much meaning now that I was on my last legs. It was eerily beautiful, and I felt my eyes water as I took it all in.

  "We've been through some rough shit, haven't we?" Dave said quietly, still puffing on his cigarette as we walked, turning a corner onto one of the streets we'd cleared.

  "Yeah." I said, thinking about all the times we'd gone through.

  "The police, the hunters, Sanctuary.." Dave mumbled, listing them off on his free hand.

  "The bridge, now this.. It's been one hell of a ride." I said, concluding the list of the important events that had unfolded in my journey.

  "Indeed it has.." Dave agreed, looking ahead to make sure the coast was clear. For a figment of my imagination, he was pretty concerned about his safety. I felt an overwhelming pang of guilt as we kept walking.

  "I'm.. really sorry, man." I blurted out, unable to c
ontain my guilt any longer.

  "For what?" Dave inquired, a puzzled look playing across his face.

  There were more bodies on the ground as we passed the place where I was bitten, their eyes were glazed over and unfocused. My attention was drawn to the leaper that had inflicted me with this curse, and I kicked it onto its back, where it merely gazed blindly up at the sky.

  "I couldn't finish you before you turned. You asked me to, remember?" I said, stepping over the body and continuing our little journey to wherever he was taking us.

  "It's fine, you did the job before I could hurt somebody else. Don't sweat it, you did just fine." Dave said, trying to assure me that it was fine. I wondered if the real Dave would have said the same thing.