We pass into the nuke town and go by several of the apartment buildings, one of them falling apart in the corner, bricks and cement crumbled beneath snow. But most of them look perfectly intact. Ernest finally orders us to march up to one of the nearest apartment buildings so we can get inside and warm up. He says we’ll set up the tent and then do a search of the town.
We look for a door. The first one we come to is metal and has no handle. It’s key-locked and sealed shut. Ernest slams it a few times and says he wishes he had a crow bar, but he doesn’t, so we keep moving around. We trace the building’s walls for more doors. My eyes drift up to the dark windows that watch us from above. I expect to see ghosts moving in them. Some shape or movement hiding up there, knowing we’re here. But they all look the same and empty and plain. I think about what Russell would do if he made it here. He’d build a fire somehow. But there’s nothing he could have built a fire with. Somehow I convince myself he did it anyway. Or he’d have the primer stove because it really wasn’t lost in the wreck. I search high and low for the sign of a flame against a window pane, Russell’s fire, but I never see it. I tell myself I just can’t see it because I have to wait until darkness comes.
We turn a corner and trudge up to a long mound of snow that’s blowing into the windward side of the building. Ernest thinks there’s a door under the dune, and looking at the rest of the buildings, if they’re all built the same, he’s right. We start to shovel out the snow with our gloves and I wonder how long the body can last in cold temperatures. If the blood turns to ice eventually, and explodes out of the soft veins. And that must be what numbness is—the ice forming in the veins. I look at Voley while I dig to get my mind off the fact that I can’t feel my feet or my hands or my nose—just keep going, and hope there’s a door. Otherwise, Ernest says, We won’t last. Not camping outdoors again. I don’t know what this means for our return trip, so I try not to think about it. How else could we get back to the Resilience without spending another night in the snow? Another screw up like last night will kill us. It would have been easy never to wake up from that mistake—letting the pilot on the stove go out. Voley is bounding through the snow like a bunny, and I think he’s doing it now just to stay warm. He starts to bark and looks off into the maze of apartments, at the opposite road from the one we came in from. Dusty stops digging. Ernest only pays it a quick glance, but I keep looking and I see Voley’s hair standing in a ridge along his back. Like he sees something out there. He keeps barking and Dusty hikes over to him and asks, What is it boy? Dusty faces out to what Voley’s looking at. Anything? Ernest calls without taking his eyes off the snow, like he doesn’t think there could be a soul out here, not even Russell, and that Voley’s barking is a mistake. Hope rises in my heart anyway. I dig faster because we’re almost through to the door. Nothing there, I don’t see anything but snow, Dusty calls to us. Come on boy, he says to Voley, and he comes back to help us finish shoveling. Voley stays put though and barks again. He doesn’t move an inch, and his hair stays up. Something’s out there, whether we see it or not.
Hey, come on boy, Dusty orders as we stand up, finished digging, backs aching, but the door exposed now. The wind blasts us. There’s no window on the door, and it’s sealed with a strange rim, something to keep water out, says Ernest. It makes me wonder if it used to rain here all the time too, before it all turned to snow. How do we get in? I ask. The door is locked but it has a handle. I expect Ernest to just charge at it and barrel through. But he just says, Easy, and takes out his pistol. It’s been in his pocket this whole time. He points at the lock next to the knob and fires. The metal clangs loudly and he fires again. The brass circle drops inside the apartment and clanks twice on the floor, then Ernest just pushes the door in. We walk in and Ernest closes it behind us. Out of the wind it feels a hundred times warmer already. Ernest and Dusty go right to work setting up the tent and the primer stove. The warmth is an illusion though—we’re still freezing to death, just more slowly without the wind. They don’t even pause to look around the dark apartment, in case someone else is hiding in here. They leave that up to me, and I head down the dark hallway.
Chapter 8
The rug of the hallway has no snow on it and the endless crunching is gone. I can’t believe that I can lift my legs freely again. And the constant pellets grinding my face away are no more. Everything is dark and quiet, despite the white glow poking in through half snow-covered windows. Thin beams of light show me down a corridor that only gets darker with each step I take. I think I hear Dusty and Ernest calling me back to them but it’s just the wind. It sounds like it’s rushing in to get us from every side. Then the corridor opens up and I’m in a lobby. I wonder what the hell I’m doing exploring on my own when a monster could jump out at me. I think of Blue City and the nonstop stream of face eaters, rushing through the tight tarp hallways. Jumping out from each hidden corner. I don’t even have a knife now, let alone a pistol. As far as I know, Ernest only brought the one, and it’s in his pocket.
I shiver and breathe solid fog out of my mouth, looking at everything in the lobby, deciding whether or not to turn around. The wallpaper looks new, like it hasn’t been worn down one bit. I know something isn’t right though, because as pristine as the place looks, there’s not a soul in sight. This isn’t how Leadville sounded in the stories. And I get the sinking feeling that not only is the entire building abandoned, but that the entire complex of buildings is abandoned. The whole nuke town. All of it obvious because of the radio warning. Radiation. The invisible death. Right next to the cooling tower. And then I see it—the first door to one of the apartments. It’s just past a chair and a wooden desk that has some papers and a couple tin boxes on it. I hesitate, unsure whether or not to push in without Dusty and Ernest here to help in case something’s waiting on the other side.
I can’t help it—I go in anyway, promising myself just a few more steps—just a quick peak. I need to see what we’ve found. What will be inside?—Will there be a kitchen? Food on shelves? The apartments all seemed empty from outside, but we could only see through the slits where the snow let us. The door swings inward. I place my foot inside.
The whole place smells funny. I can’t place my finger on it. It’s a cross between oil and the fish Ernest serves. It hits me in waves—there, almost overpowering me one moment, and the next, it’s gone. The room is empty and plain. Nothing but another couch, a small table with four chairs, and a kitchen with all its cabinets flung open—bare and empty as the lobby. This place has been cleaned out. More papers are scattered on the table, just like in the lobby, and something catches my eye—the color. The papers are red and black, just like the lobby papers were. They’re all the same. I walk into the room and hover over the table. I pause to listen, in case Dusty and Ernest are calling me and I’m too zoned out to notice. No sound. I sit in the chair and draw myself up to one of the papers. It’s a flyer. There’re three or four of them. All copies of the same message. A bright warning. The print is huge. There’s a strange circle symbol with a dot at its center. I read the message:
EVACUATION ORDERS
May 22nd
New Leadville evacuation will commence on May 23rd and complete on May 24th. Please make the necessary preparations by the 24th and meet for group departure from East Gate Compound at 6 o’clock.
BE ADVISED:
The hike to East Harbor will be strenuous as the weather continues developing. Gear yourselves accordingly.
Strict limitations of 40 pounds carry-on per traveler will be enforced. This is a limitation of the sea vessel and will not be negotiable.
I put the flyer down and let the words sink in. New Leadville. This can’t be Russell’s Leadville. How could it be? A power plant…My head starts to reel, and I start to add up the facts before I even know them, making new ones to fill in the blanks. They must have built a new power plant nineteen years ago, right as the rain started. But why would they do that? Something went wrong though, everyone had to leave. And by
the look of the room, and the lobby, it didn’t happen too long ago. I try to remember what the date is, and I wish that Russell was here because he somehow always knew. I think it’s November for some reason, but I’ll have to ask Ernest. I grab all the copies of the warning message and stuff them into my pocket. I do one more quick search over the room for any kind of supplies or weapons but the place is a skeleton. Nothing. No food, no ammo, nothing useful at all. For some reason I check the knobs on the sink. They barely move, and when they do, nothing comes out. I think that at least we can break apart the chairs for weapons and fire wood. And then I see something, just as I turn to leave. It’s a dark splotch outside the window, just enough to catch my eye and turn my head back to double check. I look again and it’s not there. I can only see the white outside and just a sliver of it through the piled drift against the pane. Where the snow is piled on the glass it’s as dark as the hallway and everything else in this creepy place. I rush up to the bright slit of outside and look at the snow covered road between the apartment buildings. There it is. Someone. Walking right down the street. My heart drops as I register that it’s no rain suit from the Resilience. They’re wearing a dark brown coat. Moving quickly through the snow, in a hurry, and then, they turn—left, right toward the door we shoveled out. There’s no question that our digging and our tracks will be seen. I run.
When I get back into the first hallway where Ernest and Dusty are, I stop to listen, as if I’ll hear the foot crunches through the walls of cement. There’s nothing. Ernest has the primer stove going and he’s setting up the tent now to keep the heat in one place. But he stops when he sees me because he senses my alarm right away. I point at the window that’s closest to the door. The way that I point makes Ernest sneak right over and edge his head into view of the cold white outside. He must see the walker right away because he double takes, moving away and then back again, just enough to keep watching outside. He pulls his gun into his hand and silently orders Dusty and I to get flat against the door so we can’t be seen from outside. Voley seems to understand too, because he doesn’t bark and give us away, and he squats right next us as we lean right into the door, sitting on the snow we tracked inside. And as quiet as we are now, I still hear the faint crunching from outside. Footsteps. It sounds like they’ve turned down this street, but I can’t tell if they’re walking to the door or not. The noise seems steady but without direction. I’m tempted to peek and check the traveler’s location, but Ernest stops me with his hand on my shoulder. He just puts his finger up to his mouth, his gun ready. His eyes show me that he’s going to take care of us if the snow walker tries to come inside.
And if the door pushes in, we’re all against it. He won’t be able to push his way in. Not with our combined weight, and probably not with Ernest’s alone. Then I think of how quiet the snow is—so much quieter than the rain. The footsteps become so much louder than anything else. And in the snow quiet, I think about how a gunshot will travel forever, bouncing off every wall of the apartment maze. It happened that way in Indianapolis—we couldn’t ever fire the gun without the scavengers hearing it. And then they’d be on us—the ones Russell called the bone pickers, who comes to clean the bones of the dead and dying, the bodies that are left over after gunfire battles. There used to be something called burials, before all of this, Russell once told me. I think about Clemmy and if that counts as a burial. And in Nuke Town the snow walkers must be the bone pickers, I tell myself, now that we know it’s not a ghost city. The flyers explain what happened here, and I want to tell Dusty and Ernest right now about the evacuation—the final proof to justify my story about the radio transmission. And New Leadville, whatever that means. Just like the power plant’s name: New Saint Vrain. But I hold off on telling them and wait for the noise outside to change.
All of my thoughts die with the utter silence—the crunching footfalls just outside the door have stopped. Ernest whispers that he’s seen us now. And to keep our weight against the door. I do as he says, and so does Dusty, even though all I can imagine is that if this person has a gun and shoots in at the door just like Ernest did, he’ll kill one of us. The footsteps start up again, and this time, they’re right here, as if they’re in the room with us. Ernest pushes me a bit, and then moves himself some, and a beam of light enters the hallway. He’s moved off of the emptied lock hole. I wonder if the person outside noticed the hole in the door change from dark to light, or if he would at all, and only we would notice the difference from inside. Then, I feel a gentle push against the door.
The push stops right after it starts. Like they thought a gentle nudge would be all it takes. The force comes back harder—with it comes a grunt. But for all its force, which I feel against my back, the door doesn’t move in one inch. Then a man shouts.
“Hello?” he says. Some base part of me still hoped it would be Russell, but now I know it’s not. The voice is too high, and beaten by the snow and the cold. It almost sounds like someone who’s lost, and I wonder if this person missed the departure on the flyer, and has been roaming the frozen streets looking for help. Food. Shelter. Real people.
No, I tell myself. The evacuation on the flyer said May. It must be late November by now. They would be dead if they hadn’t found some way to survive. Something else tells me that we’re the ones who are lost, and coming to this town was big mistake. The snow walker lives here. I think of the patrols that the face eaters had in Sioux Falls. And I bet that this is the same kind of monster outside the door.
We wait out three more shouts and two more pushes, and then, all of the sudden, the snow walker’s curiosity is gone, frustration in its place. He can’t understand why a door without a lock isn’t budging. And he must have seen our tracks leading in. Maybe he thinks we barricaded in with something other than our own bodies, because he continues walking down the street without shooting in or attempting anything else at all. After an endless minute, Ernest checks the window again. Can’t see him anymore, he says. I need to get to the second floor to look out. Stay on the door, he says. And then he leaves us all alone.
I almost shout after him, tell him that we might not be able to keep it shut by ourselves, but instead I put all my trust in Dusty. He looks as confident as Ernest, and I wonder if I’m mistaking confidence for drowsiness, that he’s just falling asleep from being out of the snow and the wind. I see something move in the hallway in front of us and start to panic for a moment, but then I realize it’s just Voley walking inside the tent. His shadow stops and he turns around in a circle, and then he plops down by the stove. My body is so cold, and I want to join him. I wonder how much of our limited supply of gas is left, and how it’s being wasted on Voley alone right now. I wiggle my toes but I still don’t feel them. And my hands are starting to go too. All I want is to get into the tent and warm up finally. I wonder if Dusty can hold the door alone. Neither of us have a weapon, and I know that if someone got inside without Ernest here, we wouldn’t stand a chance. Unless Voley was close enough. But right now Voley looks like he’s falling asleep too, and everything is dead silent again. Then, all at once, I hear thundering footsteps over our heads. Running above the ceiling. I have no idea if it’s one person or three because of how hard it breaks the quiet. Then the noise settles and becomes clear. It’s someone upstairs running back downstairs. It’s Ernest. Something’s spooked him.
He reappears down the hallway, running all the way up to us and then stopping to explain. He tells us what he’s seen. There are two people now, walking together. I interrupt him and ask if one might be Russell and he says no. He doesn’t know who they are, but that they’re heading away now, in the direction of the power plant building next to the cooling tower. He lets us know he’s trying to decide whether or not to go talk to them. Are you crazy? asks Dusty. They don’t look armed, Ernest says. We’re nearly frozen to death! Dusty reacts, angry at the thought of leaving the building. It’s the first time in days we haven’t been exposed, and from the edges of life we’re clinging to hope again
that we might at least survive long enough to return to the ship. But as much as I understand Dusty’s complaint, and as close as I must be to losing my feet, I volunteer to go with Ernest. No, says Dusty, You can’t. You’ve got to warm up. We don’t know who they are or how many of them there are or anything. If they’re dangerous. Ernest looks down at Dusty and says that there are two of them, and if we want to find Russell, we can’t waste time. But that he doesn’t have to come, and neither do I. It might be better, he says after a moment, if we stayed and guarded this building as a base. You can move the tent to the second floor, he says, You can see the whole town up there. What about the door? asks Dusty. Use furniture to block it off is all that Ernest says. I wonder how the man isn’t as cold as us, and I think maybe his gear is better—that his gloves are warmer, his hat thicker, or his layers of clothing more resistant to the snow and wind. But then I think it’s just his enormous body, and in it he has five times the heat of ours. And I want him to go out and get the information he thinks the snow walkers might have—I want him to go desperately before it’s too late and they’re lost to the snow. Okay, we’ll set up on the second floor, I say. Dusty quietly agrees, and Ernest lets us know he’ll be approaching them on the road. And that from up on the second floor, we should be able to see everything.
The Snow (A Post-Apocalyptic Story) Page 6