by Luke Duffy
I’ll burn that bridge once I’ve crossed it and live or die with whatever decision I come to, she thought to herself as she watched her brother sitting slumped against the wall.
She still needed to check the office and on further inspection, she realised that there was another room beside it. The light in her hand reflected off something shiny and metallic. It was large and she knew what it was before she had taken another step towards it. It was the cold storage room. Inside would be where the meat, fish, and vegetables were stored to keep them fresh. At the rear of it would be the freezer. The door was closed and appeared to be secure. However, the office entrance was not sealed and she could see there was a gap between the door and the frame of about ten centimetres. She would check that room first.
She did not need to check on her brother. She was well aware that she would be doing it alone and no help would be coming from him. She could not even rely on him to keep an eye out for her while she went inside. He sat there grunting and sputtering, and breathing heavily through his mouth. Each intake of air was a wheezing gasp.
She paused at the door and looked back across the open space of the warehouse. All was quiet and still apart from her brother’s panting. She glanced down at him. She knew he could not hear her but she had to voice her thoughts.
“Jesus, Christopher, I hope to God I find a treadmill in this place because you’ll be spending a fucking lot of time on it.”
In the office, she found nothing. Desks, filing cabinets, and the usual stationary equipment that could be found in any administration area was all that was inside. With a sigh of relief she stepped back out into the cool spacious air of the warehouse.
Next, she turned her attention to the cold storage door. She hesitated for a moment and took in a deep breath. The crowbar was held aloft and to her rear and was ready to be brought forward with all the power she could muster. With her left hand, whilst keeping a precarious grip on the torch, she fumbled with the handle. It needed to be pulled towards her and she would have to use all the skill and dexterity that she could in order to keep hold of the light and manipulate the locking mechanism at the same time.
With a heavy clunk, the lock slipped from its housing and the door came open. It was thick and heavy and needed to be heaved away from the frame. As the black rectangle of the dark interior grew before her, Tina jumped back and angled the torch so that the light illuminated the inside of the room.
A gust of icy air moaned out towards her. She could detect the scent of cold meat within the breeze as it mixed with the warmer atmosphere inside the main storage area. Inside, from within the blackness and set into the far wall, a red light was blinking away and another open doorway appeared from within the murky interior. The room still had power.
“Hello?” She hissed in through the doorframe.
The inside of the cold storage was not the only thing that was chilled. Her blood was becoming frozen from the terror she could feel creeping through her system. She could leave the door locked and barricaded but there could be things of use to them in there and if there were any infected inside, they needed to be dealt with. She did not like the idea of any of them being inside the building with them, no matter how difficult she made it for them to break free and get to her.
There was nothing but utter silence greeting her from within the darkness. Tentatively, she crept forward and over the threshold. Her breathing was shallow and silent. Each breath quickly misted before her eyes as she exhaled and concentrated all her efforts on making no sound, but her heart was beating like a brass band in her ears. Her feet crunched against the frost that had seeped out from the open door of the freezer and everywhere she looked, the ice crystals that coated every surface sparkled back at her like a blanket of stars in a clear night sky.
The further in she went, the colder it became. Shelves loaded with frozen vegetables and fruit flanked her on either side as she made her way along the central aisle. They were devoid of their usual colours and had become a mixture of white and cold blue as the frost had coated them along with everything it touched.
She was soon standing before the doorway that led into the freezer compartment. Its dark opening gaped back at her forebodingly, almost daring her to step inside. She shuddered. It was not the cold that made her muscles and nerve endings twitch. It was the almost impenetrable blackness of the next room that gave absolutely no hint of what lay beyond.
Again, Tina steeled herself and drew on every bit of her resolve to continue forward. She took in a deep breath and stepped towards the open wintry chasm. Her light flickered across more of the same that she had seen in the space behind her. A thick blanket of whiteness coating every surface. More shelves revealed more frosted goods but there was something further along filling the centre of the aisle. At first, it looked as though some of the large slabs of meat had fallen from the stacks on either side but in the back of her mind, she knew that they were not sides of frozen beef.
“Oh my God,” she gasped involuntarily.
What she was seeing were dozens of people. They were all sitting huddled together on the floor of the freezer compartment and perpetually frozen in time. The frost clung to their cold flesh and formed icy stalactites that hung from their features. Their skin was a multitude of greys, blues, and deep purples and some of them still remained with their eyes open and staring out at their surroundings. There were men, women, and children of all ages among the petrified heaps. They had sheltered there, hoping to get away from their attackers and had slowly frozen to death.
Tina was unable to move. She stood in the doorway staring at the unfortunate families who had tried to save themselves but had inadvertently sealed themselves into an icy tomb. She guided the beam of her light over the faces of the dead. Their flesh glittered and the open eyes seemed to stare back at her accusingly as her torchlight caused them to sparkle.
It was the bodies of the children that horrified her the most. Some of them could not have been much older than two or three, and they would not have understood why they were slowly freezing to death. She could almost hear their quivering, echoing voices and cries as they beseeched their parents to provide them with warmth and comfort. Their faces, frozen with the innocence of youth, looked almost peaceful in their deaths. They did not look as though they had died in pain but Tina knew that the latter stages of hypothermia were usually accompanied with a feeling of euphoria and sleepiness. It was the uncontrollable shivering and excruciating pain of the cold, creeping along their limbs and over their bodies in the earlier stages that would have been the hardest to suffer. She could only imagine how it must have been for the parents to watch their children slowly die around them when they realised that they had locked themselves inside the freezer with no way out.
Most of the adults were virtually naked, having removed their clothing and wrapped them around the children. It had done them no good and had more than likely only prolonged the suffering of the young.
A shadow flickered across from behind her, accompanied by a low rumbling groan. She spun and raised her heavy bar as a stifled yelp forced its way up from her throat. She released the tension, brought the curved end of the crowbar forward, and aimed for the head of the lumbering figure behind her.
Christopher stood staring at her in fright. He could not speak or even raise his hands to protect himself. Instead, he winced and waited for the inevitable impact of the heavy metal against his skull. It did not arrive.
Before it was too late, Tina realised that it was her brother and averted a catastrophe by throwing herself off balance and slamming her body into the doorframe.
“You dick,” she gasped. “I nearly killed you, Chris.”
“Yeah, I’m glad you didn’t, sis,” he quipped with one eye open as he watched Tina correct herself and regain her balance.
Tina showed him what she had found and for a while, they both remained at the doorway, unable to take their eyes away from the scene. Both remained silent and lost in their own thoughts as th
ey took in the tragic spectacle.
“Poor buggers,” Christopher sighed thoughtfully as he imagined the suffering that had taken place within the room.
“Yeah,” Tina nodded as she turned and made to walk away.
“What do you think happened?”
“It’s obvious, don’t you think?” She shrugged as she pushed passed him. “They froze to death in here.”
“Yeah, but how?” He replied as he turned after her. “I mean, why would they all go and lock themselves in here?”
“Desperation,” she grumbled over her shoulder. “Maybe they had absolutely no choice and preferred dying in here instead of out there with the others? Who knows what happened and why it happened.”
“Yeah, but why lock themselves in?”
Something had been troubling her and Christopher’s final question reminded her of what had been on her mind when she first entered into the cold storage room. She paused and slowly turned around. She caught sight of the blinking red light again and realised what it was. Subconsciously she had wondered to herself why they had not shut down the power to the freezer but when she examined the control box, she realised that it had not been through their lack of trying. The shutdown switch was set behind a thick glass panel and it was obvious to her from the damage to the surrounding casing that they had repeatedly attempted to open it and turn it off. For whatever reason, they had been unable to access it and the freezing air had continued to be filtered in through the vents. To add to their misfortune the interior door handle had failed them and left them trapped inside with no way out and no way of turning off the power.
“They had no chance,” Tina sighed as she stepped back out from the cold storage room and into the warmth of the warehouse.
Christopher followed her closely. He did not like being separated from her and he especially did not like being in the freezer while she was outside.
“Do you think the place is safe now?”
She nodded.
“Yeah, I think it probably is,” she replied solemnly.
“What about all those people that are in the fridge? Do you think they’ll come back to life, Tina?”
“They’re frozen solid, Chris. I don’t think we have much to worry about from them at this moment in time.”
Christopher stayed standing behind her for a while. He could tell that what she had seen in the freezer had deeply affected her but his sister’s upset did not distract him from the painful rumbling that emitted from his empty stomach. He silently agreed to himself that he would give her a few moments to herself before they began rummaging through the food stocks. He owed her that much at least.
As Tina turned and walked towards the wall of the office, her torch light reflected from something close by to where Christopher was standing. While his sister pulled out a chair and sat herself down with a heavy sigh, he stepped closer to investigate what the dull black glint had been that he had seen in the light for just a fraction of a second. He checked over his shoulder and could barely see her. She was too far away to be able to see what he was doing and he crouched down, blindly feeling for the object over the dusty concrete floor. Then his hand brushed against it.
It was cold and heavy and made from metal. He folded his hand around the hard plastic grip and raised it up close to his eyes for inspection. He kept his body turned away from Tina so that she could not see the treasure he had found. Affectionately, he ran his fingers over the smooth steel and along the length of the top-slide. He could feel the tiny grooves of the lettering stencilled along the side of it and although he could not identify the exact make of it in the darkness, he had played enough video games and watched enough movies to be able to make an educated guess that it was a nine millimetre calibre.
He felt for the bottom of the pistol grip and the magazine that was still securely inside the housing. He did not want to release it and check if there were any rounds inside. The noise would alert Tina to his find. Instead, he tucked it into the waistband of his jeans and ensured that his t-shirt covered any sign of it. He would examine the weapon in private later and away from prying eyes.
“Should we get some food?” He suggested merrily as he turned back to his sister and hungrily rubbed at his bloated abdomen.
6
Back at the barn, Danny and Bull hefted their cargo out from the rear of the Land Rover and carried it towards the house. Stan was standing, watching them and as usual, he gave off no indication of whether he was happy to see them or not. The large red scars, sustained during the battle at Manchester airport, running down the side of his face and neck made him appear more ferocious than ever.
“How did you get on?” He asked.
“No dramas,” Marty replied as he climbed out from the driver’s door, clutching a cigarette between his teeth. “I think they have everything they need now and I get the impression that the counter offensive is going to begin pretty soon.”
“You think so?”
Marty slung his rifle and pack over his shoulder, and shrugged violently to encourage the heavy equipment to sit comfortably on his aching muscles. Stan turned and they walked side by side back towards the front of the house.
“Well, yeah,” Marty grunted as they entered in through the wide doorway and placed his kit down beside it. “There’s a lot of prep going on down there at HQ and all the brass are running about like headless chickens.”
“Yeah, I’ve had a warning order from Gerry,” Stan replied while his attention was focussed on the crate that was being placed in the centre of the floor. “He says that it could begin within the next couple of weeks but since most of our forces never made it back from the Middle East and Korea, they have decided on narrowing the spearhead instead of the Blitzkrieg style offensive they were hoping for. They’re concentrating their efforts on just a handful of cities to begin with now and then, moving on to further ops once the initial objectives are complete and secure. What have you brought back?”
Bull looked across at Marty then grinned back at their commander. He snapped the locking clasps up and with the toe of his boot, he kicked off the lid to the armoured box and revealed its interior.
Inside Stan saw the four car batteries, fuse boxes, transformer, and a mass of cables and other electronics and testing equipment that he had ordered them to bring back. There was another crate within the box and Stan blinked with disbelief when he read the yellow stencilling and saw the warning labels. He took a cautious step back and looked at Marty.
“What the fuck are you doing with a bunch of S-Mines?”
“We found them,” Marty replied casually.
“We thought they would come in handy when the fight for the mainland starts,” Danny added as he looked down into the box with an admiring eye.
Stan rubbed at the irritating fresh skin around the scars on his cheek and continued to stare down into the box. He had seen the carnage caused by those mines throughout Africa and Bosnia. They were effective and completely indiscriminate.
Commonly known as a ‘Bouncing Betty’, the S-Mine was an anti-personnel mine that when triggered, would spring up from the ground and detonate at waist level. Throwing out hundreds of high-velocity ball bearings, they were designed to maim rather than kill. As a result, soldiers that would otherwise be continuing the battle would instead find themselves trying to help their wounded comrades. Designed by the Germans in the Second World War, they had since ceased to be used by western armies but variants of them still existed in the east and other parts of the world.
“It’s okay, Stan,” Danny assured him as he reached in and removed the box of deadly explosives. “We’ve checked them and they’re safe. I’ll keep them stored out of the way where they can’t do any harm.”
“Whatever you say,” Stan shook his head and watched as Danny carefully walked away with the mines. Then he saw the bottles of whisky and vodka and just as Samantha had guessed, a pile of adult magazines.
Realising that Stan was saying nothing, Bull felt obliged to justify
their other items. He stepped closer to the box and began pulling out various items.
“Well we had to bring something back for the rest of the kids, Stan. You couldn’t be the only one getting presents. That wouldn’t be fair, and besides,” he grinned, “pickings are pretty slim around here in the way of female company. Danny won’t wear the lingerie we got him so what else are we supposed to do?”
“Fuck off, Bull,” Danny called from the next room.
“Hey, Danny, it’s not our fault you have an arse like a ten year old boy, is it?”
Stan knew that it was pointless to protest over the alcohol and now that the stuff was splayed out in front of him, the idea of having a few glasses of whisky in the evening were becoming more appealing. He shook his head and leaned in to retrieve the batteries with his good arm. Since the explosion at the airport that had killed Brian, the nerve and tissue damage to his right arm had rendered it almost useless and he had come to rely more upon his left.
Bull was watching him intently as he manipulated the heavy batteries.
“You right or left handed, Stan?” He asked innocently and with a frown of contemplation creasing the skin on his forehead.
“Right handed,” Stan replied. “Well I used to be before it was shredded and turned into Swiss Cheese. Why?”
Bull shrugged indifferently as he picked up one of the adult magazines. It had been a Christmas edition from the previous year and displayed an extremely attractive blonde woman dressed in a provocative and seductive version of a Sanata Clause outfit on the front cover. He began to flick through the pages, pausing briefly when a particular picture caught his eye.
“Just wondering how you manage to wank is all.”
There was a sharp audible intake of breath from around the room but Bull was not deterred. He barely noticed that everyone had become frozen statues, waiting to see what was going to happen next. He trundled on with his vocalised thoughts in spite of the glares from his commander. As usual, the big man did not have his filter in place and his thoughts were pouring from his lips with no consideration to where his words could lead, or the damage they could cause.