Hacking and coughing in the dense smoke which I now had to duck beneath to see or breath, I broke out the other window with Mark's hatchet, clearing the clinging shards away with my rifle butt. It wasn't an expert job and I heard something tear as I threw myself through the frame and out into the frigid night air.
The aurora glowered in the sky above with a baleful light, like a spectral hand snaking out from the North to loom bright and menacing above the cabin.
Fleshless fingers scraped at my pack like gnarled twigs as the dead inside reached for me. They couldn't get a decent hold and I crashed into the thick snow. A staggering contrast to the dense heat inside.
I didn't even give myself a moment to recover, forcing myself up on two feet and away from the burning cabin. There were still a few zombies outside that spotted me. The snow slowed them down, giving me enough time to snap on my skis.
I was about to slide away when like another cruel twist of fate, the little girl from the supply-store stood in my path. Her head a shattered ruin. If Mark hadn't been enough proof, then this was it. Destroying the brain didn't stop them.
The girl, an obscene rotten doll, a mockery of the innocence of the girl who had once been, now cruelly corrupted.
She grinned at me.
There was an unmistakable and malevolent intelligent lurking there. Just like with Mark. Some unhinged cruelty, rather than raw animal savagery.
Everything I'd been through blossomed in shrieking rage as I took the hatchet to her with a savage ferocity, blindly hacking, shearing away limbs, hearing the dry crack of her little bones, her hissing and snorts and chattering of teeth as she tried to bite me.
I left her there, dismembered in the snow.
Much of the throng burned with the cabin behind me as I skied away, but many did not. Escaping the blaze they shuffled after me in the harsh winter night their eyes blazing with the same eerie green that writhed above. It wasn't long before all I could make out of the cabin was a distant glimmering, like a stray star fallen to earth.
Soon, even that was eclipsed by the night and the rising flurries of snow.
I had survived for now. Where I would go, I wasn't sure. The most reasonable course of action would be to ski cross-country to the Pine Lodge resort. Maybe there were people there, maybe there weren't. All I knew was that I had to try something, and that I would not likely last through the night out in the open like this. Winter has yet to unleash her true bite, and as the season deepens it will become harder to survive for those left living.
But I push on. It's all I have left now.
Above me the stars glitter like diamonds. But to me me they seem to burn cold.
DEAD OF WINTER 2
Prologue
I've been running for what feels like hours. When I say running, I mean skiing. The night transformed from clear and pristine to a howling maelstrom of bitter cold and mocking winds. I can't feel my fingers on the poles, but just keep pushing anyway.
Gotta keep going, Kerry.
Gotta keep moving.
They're coming. If I stop they'll catch up with me. Do to me what they did to Mark.
Oh my god, poor Mark!
What they did to his face...
No, can't think about him now.
My clothes are haphazard and torn, not enough protection against the fierce Norwegian winter. The storm seems to be actively trying to stop my progress. Every slide of my ski an aching effort pushing my body against the storm-winds.
I'm so very tired.
If I stop I don't know that I will be able to start again. I'm so exhausted, battered and beaten. I'm not sure how much more I have in me. I just need to ski. To get away. I haven't been able to see the glow of the burning cabin in quite some time.
If I stop I'll freeze.
If I stop they'll get me; tear me apart and feast on my flesh while my heat pours out into the snow.
If I stop...I die.
The wind isn't just howling at me, it's laughing. Cackling malicious laughter. Hoots and barks. Shout and screams. Must be my imagination playing tricks on me. Every time I look up horrendous shapes leer and writhe about me. Riding the snowy gusts; forming from the clouds of sleet; all touched by that hint of eerie unnatural green...
I've stopped being able to feel my injuries. That's probably a bad sign. I have icicles forming on my nose and chin. No scarf or mask to cover my face. The hood of my parka keeps blowing back. My ears ache. Which won't be a problem soon. They, like everything, else will go numb.
I don't even know if I'm going in the right direction, the storm is disorientating. All I know is I have to move away from the ruins of the cabin. Where was I heading again?
There was somewhere...
...I...
...wanted...
NO!
Stay awake!
Keep going!
One foot after the other, Kerry. 'Atta girl.
Left, right. Left, right. Keep going.
Listen to the steady shuck-shuck of my skis.
Don't stop.
You stop, you die.
Between the swirling snow and biting wind the sky glimmers with that obscene green light. The Aurora, menacing and low, glowering.
Don't look at it.
I shake my head and squint into the blinding gale. The snow and ice stinging my eyes. That's good, the pain will keep me awake. I must be close to somewhere, I have to be. I left the cabin in such a panic. Am I even heading in the right direction?
Mind playing tricks on my again.
More menacing figures streaking towards me in the the wind, half-formed and spectral.
I must be losing my mind, it looks like there are hands coming out of the snow now. Don't pay any attention to them Kerry, keep going. They're not real.
Eyes so heavy.
When I look again twisted human shapes crowd ahead of me.
How?
They were behind! Chasing me. Have I gone in a circle? Spun around by the rising storm? They stand in clusters – dozens of them – not moving. Frozen stiff. Somehow that makes it worse. Creepier.
Come on Kerry, get a grip.
It's not real.
Got to keep...
...keep moving ahead.
Just...keep...moving...
...keep...moving...
...just...
...want...
...to...
...lay...
...down..
– I –
FROZEN STIFF
Brennen is watering the dead again. It was an odd habit he'd gotten into. The water quickly freezing to form another layer around the statue-like forms crowded below. He has a hose pipe fitted to a hand-pump spraying the frigid liquid out in a glittering fan from his comfortable seated position on the roof.
It's an effective method of immobilising the dead.
Besides, there isn't much to do up here in the mountains now that they have to ration the use of the generator. So Brennen likes to come up here on the roof, take in the majestic view of the mountains, sit in a fold out chair and water the dead. The figures now frozen stiff in anguished poses, reaching upwards with bared teeth and clawing fingers. The coating of ice glitters; they are strangely beautiful, in a morbid way.
Lars doesn't judge.
Brennen is Brennen and this is what he likes to do. In fact it has effectively dealt with any dead that roam the grounds of the little isolated resort.
Furu Hyette, The Pine Lodge, a cross-country ski resort complete with hot springs – this is their home now. Has been for almost a month since the chaos in the cities. A few days of panic and then it got worse...it got quiet.
No news, no phone calls. Nothing.
Too far away from civilisation to have internet access.
So there's nothing to do but wait for word from the outside world.
“How they coming along?” Lars asks, popping his head through the trapdoor in the garage's roof.
Brennen doesn't take his eyes off his sculptures, “Good. Trying to g
et the icicles to touch the ground.”
He chuckles causing little blasts of his breath to steam in the air.
Lars stands next to Brennen, eyeing out the strange forms below. They were all people they had known; other employees and early guests. They'd gone out to see the Aurora Borealis. Recently the phenomena had been wide spread and vivid. Before communication went dark, people from all along the Arctic Circle – and below – came out to see the natural beauty. The lights were visible in parts of the world that had never seen them before.
That's when it started.
After that first night all those who went out to look, stayed out looking, all night. And were not the same men and women who had pointed and marvelled the previous night.
Now they were strange, violent.
Then it got even worse.
The violence led to killings.
Then the dead began to rise.
Nothing they could do would stop them, so after barricading themselves in the main building of the lodge Brennen started coming up here and watering the dead.
It worked.
Now they could do quick runs to the other cabins without the constant fear of being attacked.
“I heard a theory,” Brennen begins from his chair, “That we're overdue a magnetic pole swap. About a thousand years overdue. Maybe that’s what is going on? Apparently when that happens the Aurora Borealis and Australis split into many smaller auroras that travel slowly across the Earth eventually to join at the opposite pole; but this can take anywhere between fifty and several hundred years to occur.”
Lars scans the horizon for any movement, using his binoculars to check on the outlying cabins. Bjornnir and his family are holed up in one of them. No word from them in days.
Lars can't help but worry.
After a moment Lars responds to the young man's musings.
“When I was young-”
“Back in the Dark Ages,” Brennen teases.
“When I was young, my mother told me never to stare at the Northern Lights, that they were really evil spirits, and that to stare or especially to point at them, was to invite their attention. She was superstitious, but she firmly believed that the lights would snatch those who drew its attention. Evil spirits of the dead. When the lights came out she didn't leave the house.”
“She was Sami, wasn't she?” Brennen asks.
“Yes, but the same myth was shared by the ancient Norwegians. I used to think she was overly superstitious. If there is one thing I've learned from fifteen years up here in the mountains, it's that people can sometimes go missing...they wander off the trail, avalanches, dozens of ways to die out here, we didn’t need more...” he points at the closest frozen corpse, “These things make me think twice.”
Neither man speaks for a time, ruminating on the theories they've just espoused.
“You know,” begins Brennen pumping more water at the dead, but he doesn't get to finish his statement before Lars is pointing and raising his binoculars.
“What's that?”
The wind is rising bringing up snow and obscuring vision.
“Someone, or something, is coming...”
...I'm naked in a field of white...
...while the sun dies behind the crooked fang of a mountain, setting the sky blaze...
...something is on the field with me...
...strangely enough I'm not cold or embarrassed by my state of undress. It feels natural, it feels right...
...it is a stag, no wait, a reindeer moving slowly along the crisp whiteness towards me. It's antlers translucent...glass?...no, ice – intricate and sparkling, catching the silent radiance of the visa behind it. The reindeer is slow yet graceful, it isn't timid or frightened of me. Nor I of it.
This place is peaceful.
The sun itself is behind the crooked mountain and the vista of oranges and pinks receding against the slow violet bleed of night. Stars begin to unveil themselves. Dazzling points, diamond-like against the velvet of encroaching night.
The white reindeer is close now. I watch his breath in the air. There is a serenity about the beast as the last of the light seeps from the sky to leave us in starlight.
The glitter in the darkness lasts only a moment before an ethereal glow begins. The Northern Lights, spreading like unfurling talons from the mountain, framing it like titanic spectral wings.
Everywhere that eerie light touches I see not pristine snow but bleached bones – human bones – piled high and frozen together by the northern chill. Skulls look back at me from the field, new stars now burning in once empty sockets.
The sickly light spreads quickly. All too soon touching the flank of the reindeer before me. As it does the flesh falls away. Not in bloody hunks but withering, crumpling – as though the flesh were ancient. Smooth bones like cold marble protrude from the once proud beast. Eye sockets gape hollow as the skull is revealed.
I am terrified yet unable to move or scream.
The emerald light stretches closer threatening to flood over me. Will it wither my flesh as it has the reindeer? I close my eyes. I don't want to see it happen. I don't want to watch myself rot away.
A chill spreads across my skin, raising gooseflesh. I can't help it, I peek out.
The reindeer is gone, replace by something much worse...
...Mark...
...torn and mangled as the dead had left him, flesh peeled from his skull. Yet unlike back at the cabin, there is no blood. His flesh is pale as marble. Yet the slight motions tell me he is not a statue.
The same green stars that haunt the empty sockets of the leering field of skulls rest within his.
I blink and he is as I knew him.
Restored, but not the same.
His skin is still pallid, his hair and beard a silvery white. His eyes in life an icy blue are now a vivid green. No sign of the mutilation or trauma inflicted on him by the ravenous dead.
He stands nude as I am.
Kerry – it's not a voice, Mark doesn't open his mouth, it is my name whispered on the cold wind.
He looks so much like he did that I can barely hold onto the tears that threaten to spill. My husband brought back to me...
...but this is not my husband. This I know, to my very core. I watched my husband die screaming only to rise up and attack me. I crippled that monster and left it to burn, so this thing before me is not my husband, it is not Mark.
Kerry.
This time Mark, or what looks like him raises his hand, reaching for mine, offering it up.
I know he wants to lead me somewhere...
...the mountain?
You're not Mark, I try to say but instead the thought drifts on the wind.
His face turns sour, angry.
I blink and the entire field of bones has stood up, skeletal frames menacing, jaws flung wide with inhuman shrieking as the north wind rushes, biting my exposed skin, stinging my eyes.
My god, there are so many of them.
The spectral green talons descend as hundreds, maybe thousands of angry eerie eyes burn at me with nothing but a fathomless hatred.
*
There are hands on me, grasping tight.
“No!” I call out, my vision a haze of shapes.
The field of bones has gone, replaced now by glaring light from a hand held lantern, hovering above my face. Blurry shapes move at me, speaking in a tongue I don’t quite understand.
“No, get away from me!” I struggle and flail, my limbs numb from the haze of unconsciousness.
The strange lilting language changes.
“It is all right,” the voice is deep, masculine but kind. The concern evident behind the accent, “You are safe now.” He keeps repeating that softly, “you are safe.”
Safe, is it possible?
Or another cruel trick of fate?
My vision resolves slightly. Two men hover above me. The one standing holding the lantern is tall and lean, he doesn't look pleased to see me. The other, the one with his hands on my shoulders is
a bear of a man; physically huge but there is a softness to his eyes. Both men have facial hair but it is the bear that has a full bushy beard – laced with steel grey.
I stop struggling, focusing on the two strangers. I'm in a room, laying on a bed. My mind goes to a dark place; am I their prisoner? Why am I on a bed? What have they been doing to me?
Last I can recall I was delirious out in the cold wilderness.
Comprehending my fear the large man releases my shoulders and sits back, giving me some space. I shift slightly away from him, propping myself up on my elbows.
“What the hell is going on here!?”
The two men share a glance and then look at me once more.
“We found you half frozen outside. You've been out of it for several days. You're in our clinic. You had been exposed from quite some time,” the heavy-set man tells me.
The thin man spoke, his accent thicker, less confident with his English, “You are lucky to be alive.” His scowl tells me that he probably would have preferred if I hadn’t.
“Where am I? Who are you?” All I can do is shoot questions and suspicions at them. I am not keen on the fact that I am not wearing my own clothes. Someone has redressed me in a white long sleeved under-shirt and thermal leggings.
“Forgive me,” says the bear, “I am Lars, this is Herryk, the closest thing we have to a doctor.”
I pull back into a sitting position. The men give me space.
“You are at the Hytte...um...” Lars struggles to find the right word in English, “...Lodge. A ski lodge.”
“Pine Lodge?” I ask, then remember the Norwegian, “Furu Hyette?”
“Yes,” Lars nods, “Pine Lodge.”
“I made it.” Relief floods my being. I can't believe it. I actually did it. I managed to find it during the storm.
Lars stands to his full height, “I'll get you something to wear, Herryk will see to your wounds. Then we will talk.”
With that Lars exits the small room, taking a lantern with him, leaving me with the stern Herryk.
Dead of Winter Collection Page 3