The Snow (A Post-Apocalyptic Story)

by Joseph Turkot

  “I want you to warn me,” he says before he leaves us for the snow and the wind. “If anyone else, besides the two, appears, warn me. Give me a chance to react.” But how will we warn you from here? asks Dusty. But I’ve already figured that out. I’ll shatter the window, I say. That’s it, nods Ernest. And then he’s gone. He opens the broken door and bears a brutal wind that beats snow past him and onto the floor of the hallway. Then the door shuts behind him and he’s off. I look out through the window and see him almost jogging through the snow, his head down on his feet, his right hand tucked against his side to conceal his gun from the elements. Come on, let’s get it upstairs, I order Dusty. And we start breaking the tent down and hauling everything upstairs.

  We bring the gear down the hallway, past the lobby, and all the way to the other side of the building. I look back and see a stream of white at the other end of the hall—the entrance has been blown open by the wind. Snow is getting inside. But I can’t think about fixing it yet. We find the stairwell, the last door on the right, climb up and then turn and continue to climb up. At the top of the stairs we push into a stale hallway with the same oily smell from before. And then, we go through the first door on our right that we see. It pushes in without any effort. The apartment is as empty as the other one was. I drop the tent on the floor and go to the window. It’s a clear view of a long white street that leads all the way down, between rows of apartment buildings, to the industrial building by the cooling tower. And I see the three dots right away—two of them are about three buildings down, walking right in the center of the snow-packed road. And the third, a rogue form, darting along the edges of the buildings, peeking out and then bolting forward very fast. Approaching the other two from behind. Ernest.

  I look everywhere I can for a sign of someone else out there, another snow walker somewhere on the streets. There’s no one else. Just the three. The hunter and the hunted. Ernest and his prey. I see him, I tell Dusty. Okay, keep an eye on him while I get this together again, he says. He walks the tent up right behind me and I feel the poles hit me a few times as he gets everything snapped in place again, as close to the window as possible. The snow walkers struggle through the deep snow, but they don’t look like they’re in a hurry, and now Ernest is only a building behind them. They’ll hear the crunching of his footsteps any second. I tell this to Dusty as he finishes up the tent and lights the primer stove. Can you kneel with your feet by the stove and still see out the window? he asks. He wants me to warm my feet up before they crack off. I try to kneel and still see outside, but I’m too short, and I can only see the roofs of the buildings. I stay on my feet and he stands next to me. Together we watch and wait. Voley doesn’t seem to care, and he’s already back inside the tent, curled by the heat.

  Now all three of them are in the middle of the road. Ernest is stalking them in plain daylight, heading right toward them from behind. It’s like they haven’t even heard him coming yet. It all looks very small from so far away, almost four apartment buildings down from us now. We hear nothing but don’t even breathe. I pray to Poseidon that this is our answer—that they’ll know where Russell is. They’ll have seen him. And that they’ll be friendly, at least as friendly as Dusty and his father were. Thoughts of what will happen in the next few seconds swirl through my head, but part of me knows that none of them are close to what’s really going to happen.

  The two walkers finally turn around, and it looks like Ernest must have finally called out to them to stop walking. He’s hollered for them to turn and face him. It doesn’t look like they can see his gun. They all look still from up here, like a conversation has starting. Then one of them walks toward Ernest very fast and Ernest raises and lowers his gun threateningly. Like he didn’t ask for the man to approach him. The man backs away and freezes. The snow walkers look at each other, as if they’re contemplating whether or not to tell Ernest something he’s asked them about. Their secrets. Where Russell is. But then something strange happens—they start turning to the sides of the street, looking around, as if there’s something out there on the side of the road, or behind the buildings. Or in the buildings. I don’t see anything but I get the urge to shatter the window anyway, buy Ernest a moment of distraction. Ernest doesn’t seem to pay any attention to their strange behavior. In my head I hear him calmly asking them to talk to him. Tell him what they know. Trade information like he’d wanted to do with us when we first met him. I hear him asking them what’s become of Leadville? Have you seen an outsider passing through? But everything isn’t calm, because Ernest hasn’t lowered his gun. And then it happens.

  In one bang that I can hear from all the way back here, like a clap of thunder, Ernest goes down. I can’t believe it though, because the two men are so far away from him—ten feet at least. And neither of them have guns in their hands. But something hit him. And he’s struggling to move, to stand up again, to crawl through the snow, but it’s too deep. He’s wiggling in place and the two are walking up to him. I turn and start to run toward the door, to the stairs, to the broken and open and waiting door down below that will put me on the street and running toward him, to save him. But Dusty’s wrapped me up in his arms, put me in a vise that I can’t move from, and turned me around so we can see what’s happening. You’ll be killed, he says, constricting me from escaping. I know he’s right but I don’t care. Even without a weapon—I want to try to help him. And then it becomes clear what really happened out there.

  Another man walks out from the side of the street, from one of the apartment buildings. He’s carrying a terrifyingly long rifle in his hands. He aims down into the snow and points it right at Ernest’s struggling body. He means to end it with one more shot and I look away. Then, after a long moment of silence, buried in Dusty’s arms, I realize there is no second shot. No loud thunder again. And Dusty says at last, They’re taking him. When I look back out to the road, I see only two again, and they’re carrying Ernest, dragging him through the snow very slowly. And there it is—a line of red in the snow. I say he must be alive, and they’re taking him in to question him. And that they’ll give him medical care and bring him back to health and ask him very friendly questions about where he came from and who with. But then I know it’s bullshit, and the real reason that they’re taking him is probably for food. That’s what they need to drag him for, to struggle like that, hauling an enormous man. They need his body for food. But still, they never shot twice, and the man had been pointing down with his rifle to do it. How could one bullet kill a man like Ernest? He is a god. Of water and wind and snow. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. The impossibility of everything starts to come up through my gut like a volcano, and I feel sick with sadness. I heave into Dusty’s arm, blotting out the disappearing vision of Ernest. Tears run warm and waste my water on the stupid and senseless thing that I’m not supposed to give a shit about. That I’ve been conditioned not to care about. That Russell always told me if I grew a skin thick enough it would protect me from and keep me from getting killed. But I can’t now. I have no skin. Just raw exposure. I slip out of Dusty’s arm and crawl into the tent next to Voley. I pull alongside the stove and close my eyes next to his warm fur, and fall asleep to my own sobs.

  When I get up, Dusty tells me he’s sealed the door downstairs with furniture. No one can get into the building. I tell Dusty about my dream. I was fighting with Ernest, arguing against his going alone after the men in the snow. I had realized that the part of me that wanted him to go so bad was desperate. Desperate for a sign of Russell. Greedy. Arrogant that Ernest’s invincibility was real. That no one could hurt him. And in the dream I realized that my judgment is broken now because of having too much hope.

  He’s the one who acted reckless, says Dusty. He’s the one who became desperate. It happened after we found Clemmy. I know it did, Dusty goes on. But it doesn’t matter, I think. The reasons don’t matter now. We’re alone. I tell Dusty we’re fucked. We can’t be, he says. He looks to Voley. Then to me. We can’t be because there
are still three of us, aren’t there? You want to just give up? Let Voley and me die too? I think that he means I have some role to play in keeping them alive. That I’m part of what’s keeping us going. And it all hits me—I’ve let Russell die and now I’ve let Ernest die. Self-pity rips through me like a storm. I tell Dusty I’m a curse, and that he’s better off going back to the ship without me. Even if I wanted to, he replies, I’m no sailor. I can’t keep a ship that big above water.

  If he’s right, then I know for sure that we’re screwed. Because I only know how to row and bail. But then I say, Maybe it’s easier than we think. And all at once I drop the whole line of thinking, because I realize something that I can’t get around—we’re not leaving Leadville. Something fills my head, assuring me we will never escape these white mountains. And there’s no reason to leave, another voice in my head replies. Russell’s still here somewhere. You’ve got to find him.

  I feel like I’m slipping into insanity. Dusty brings me back by asking me how my feet are. For the first time since I’ve woken I notice that I can feel them again. I can move my toes, every single one of them, and notice them touching my sock. They’re okay, I say to Dusty. Voley opens his eyes and crawls close to me and licks my rain suit. Then he pushes his cold wet nose in at my face and licks my cheek. I can’t help but smile, even though there’s nothing left to be happy about. Dusty tells me that he’s searched all the rooms in this building and there’s nothing here. Just the flyers all over the place, the same red ones. And the furniture. No food. No more fuel for the stove. No weapons. Except what we make out of the furniture. The place has been ransacked, he says. Or just evacuated, like the paper says. He holds out one of the flyers for me to read. I tell him I’ve already read it, and that it means we’re not even in the right Leadville. He asks what I mean, and I tell him to look again. He does, and it’s so dark now that he has to lean in against the stove. I look outside while he rereads the flyer. The windows show me the deep gray of night, a darkness that envelops Nuke Town. Hides all its monsters and secrets.

  “New Leadville?” Dusty asks finally. Yeah, I say. I think it connects to the power plant. New Saint Vrain, New Leadville. I don’t think this is the right place. What’s to say it isn’t, though? he replies. Maybe this is Leadville now, and the old one never really mattered after the rain. I don’t know, I reply. I’ve never heard New York called York, I say. My logic doesn’t hold up with Dusty. He ignores me and puts the flyer down. He tells me we’re going to have to try to build a fire because we’re going to be out of fuel soon, and if we run out of fuel, we’ll freeze to death. How do we do that without burning the apartment down? I ask him. He says he doesn’t know. What about the sinks or the tubs? I ask. He tells me he already checked and they’re plastic, even the toilets. He’s afraid to try the fire in them. We’ll have to gather cement from somewhere to make a fire pit. My mind already goes to the smoke the fire will make, and how we’ll probably suffocate ourselves or attract the attention of the snow walkers, even if we do manage to prevent the building from going up in flames. And then I press the real question, uncertain about how long it’s been since we watched Ernest dragged off toward the nuclear building, how long I’ve been asleep: What about Ernest?

  Dusty gets quiets and pets Voley. It’s like he’s been thinking about this, preparing an answer for me while he barricaded the door shut downstairs, knowing I would ask. But he’s not willing to give it to me. I’m not sure is all he says. Then he comes out with it: I don’t think we can help. He’s probably dead. I tell him that they dragged him off without shooting him again, and there has to be a reason for that. That they did that to keep him alive. And that somewhere way down at the end of the snowy street, through the darkness, he’s trapped in that nuclear building. And maybe Russell is too. Dusty looks at me after I say all of this, a look that tells me he’s wondering if I’m still sane. He ignores my ideas and says they didn’t shoot again because he was already dead, and they didn’t want to waste ammo. Then he takes out food from one of the bags. It’s our last can of beans. He pops the aluminum and props it on the primer stove. I almost forgot my hunger. We split the beans and it sends me to the bathroom at the end of the hall right after I finish, where I open the toilet to find it empty of water. I go anyway, and close it, hoping the smell won’t drift down to find us. On the way out of the room, I peer out the window into the blackness. Everything is so peaceful and quiet out there, just a gray darkness and dancing snow drifts. The mountains are nowhere to be seen, just the walls of the other buildings. When I get back to Dusty, he looks like he’s made up his mind about what to do, because he’s standing and pulling on his boots again.

  “Where are you going?” I ask him. On the way in, he says, I saw a building with a broken wall. The bricks were exposed. So? I ask him. I’m going to get them, he answers. Bring them back for the fire pit. Are you serious? I ask, in disbelief he’d leave me all alone, like Ernest did. Head out into the night. We have to, or we’ll freeze. We can’t light a fire on the rug, can we? he says. I don’t know how much time we have left with the stove fuel, but it’s not much, he goes on. Maybe an hour, maybe thirty minutes. I shouldn’t have waited this long.

  We don’t even have any weapons, I say, understanding now how right he is but not wanting to deal with it. And I know, too, that I’m going to go with him. I have to, or else we’ll never get enough bricks back in time to get the fire started. We do have weapons, he answers. Then he shows me more of his handiwork from when I was sleeping. He draws out two legs of chairs. Thin and pointed with screws at the end where they went into the seats. Thin enough that they’ll probably snap over someone’s back before hurting them, but maybe enough of a weapon to jab out someone’s eye. Are you coming with me? he asks. In his voice I hear the need, the tone he’s trying to hide –that he desperately wants me to come with him, and not let him go out alone into the dark quiet snow. Of course, I say, and I look at Voley. He’s pushed himself up onto his hind legs and is looking out at the snow through the window, down at the dark street whose scar of Ernest’s blood is now hidden under new drifts of powder. I walk up to the window and look out, as if I’ll see everything happen over again. Ernest sneaking up on the men, them trying to come at him but retreating. This time, Ernest shoots first. And he gets away, because no one is hiding in the building on the side of the road. It was unfair, I tell myself as I scan the murky streets, unable to see anything but fog and flurries. And then my eyes glance along the rooftops before I turn back into our room, which is dimly lit by the primer stove’s last bit of fuel. As my head turns across the distant apartment roofs, I see a strange point sticking up out of one of them. A stick rising from one of the roofs, way down—maybe three buildings down and on the right side of the street. I stop and look at it, wondering if it’s a small radio tower, the source of the transmission I heard. And as I wonder this I realize it’s too short to be a radio tower, and I call Dusty over to look. I don’t remember seeing it during the day, I tell him. I ask what he thinks it is. Dusty doesn’t say anything. He seems to know already. Down, he says. I duck down with him, and then together we peek out the window again. Right away Dusty slides back and starts to move the tent away from the window, pulling it across the floor, careful not to upset the primer stove. Need to get the light away from the window, he says. He keeps going until the tent’s in the hallway and down a few feet more, between two apartments with their doors closed, leaving me in nearly total blackness by the window. I get it all of the sudden—he thinks it’s a person. And then I see the stick move. He’s right. It’s a person on the roof. Walking around now. Looking out over the dead town from above. Some kind of night watch. Dusty gets back to me and asks if they saw us. I tell him I have no idea, but I don’t think so. Damn that was too stupid, he says. We shouldn’t have had the stove so close to the window. They didn’t see us, I tell him. The man paces back to the other side of the roof and stands there, the snow hitting him. He’s indifferent to the weather. Again he’s
the stick. Still and part of the building.

  We’ve got to move, Dusty says. What about him? I say, looking at the distant roof. I don’t see any more out there, do you? Dusty asks. I tell him I don’t know but that I’d better check the windows down the hall. I run through each dark apartment, avoiding collision with the tables and peering out at the neighboring buildings. There are no more watch men at the top of any of the closest buildings. I bring Dusty my verdict and he says it’s time to go. As we head down the stairs Voley follows us, as if he’s going to come along. Should we make him stay? I ask. He could give us away. Then Dusty says very harshly that there’s a better chance he’ll save our lives. I don’t argue, because he’s right. Voley’s done it before. But I’m worried once we’re all the way down the hallway and I see the height of the window we’re going to climb through. Dusty orders me to climb through first. He extends his hands for me to step on and I wriggle up and over and then drop. I sink to my knees in the snow. He gets down to lift Voley up. The street is dark out here and the wind and pellets hit me right away, stinging so much that I can’t see anything for a moment. When my vision comes back to me I try to ignore the feeling that I’m being watched and focus on guiding Voley through the window. He gets through okay on my arms and then drops into the snow. Right away he starts to shake the snow off and it flies in every direction. Then he hops off, almost to the corner of the road, but comes back. It’s like he’s got an endless stream of pent-up energy, and he’s ready to charge down the ghost roads of nuke town. But the powder is tough, and he has to hop like a deer to make any progress. Dusty gets through the window at last, and we move out into the center of the street. Do you remember where the building was? I ask him. I think so, he says, and I’m not comforted at all by the fact that we’re on a brick scavenger hunt with people watching us from roofs. Probably with rifles. I tell Dusty this and he just picks up the pace to avoid talking about it. After ten more feet I stop and turn back to look at our building’s windows. I don’t see any light, not even in the apartment closest to where our tent is, buried deep in the center of the hallway. They can’t see our spot, I say.