Dead of Winter Collection

by Benjamin Knox

  Lars' plan is a good one. It sure as hell beats staying here to be swarmed.

  My thoughts are cut short by a gasp from above me.

  I look to see Kristen disappearing upwards. I can’t be sure of what I see, it happens so fast. It's as though she fell up, vanishing into the seething green above that shifts now forming shapes and patterns. I swear it yawns wide like a maw snarling cosmic rage down at me.

  The mesmerising coils and movement showing me horrors. I don't want to move, there is no point. All of this struggle is for nothing. I know that now. We are only delaying the inevitable. Soon life will be extinguished from our world, where only the dead will reign. Forever.

  Lars hauls me away from the ladder, breaking my gaze with the lights.

  I snap out of it. For the moment shrugging off the abject despair that washed through me.

  “We need to go,” Lars says, axe still in hand.

  I can hear the rumble of the truck engine now.

  We run.

  The front door barricade caves in under the force of the truck's plough blade, tearing through the wooden structure with ease. Instantly dead, ghoulish figures leap from the vehicle that is now half-in half-out of the lodge.

  The dead we'd seen so far were horrendous, but these things...

  My mind rebels at the image of their twisted mutilated forms. Body cavity emptied like the rest, but that is not where it ends. Much like the first snowmobile rider these undead have turned their bodies into weapons. Sharp spikes and bits of ragged metal jut from their torn flesh. Several wear masks and helmets, like nightmare bikers from hell.

  Some have closed torn openings with industrial staples, making them look like Frankenstein's monster. Pale frost encrusted flesh breaking away to expose darker tissue or in some places bone.

  There is a sense of purpose to these modifications.

  A cruel intelligence.

  It's like hellish war paint. Making them appear fierce. A warrior's mantle. Weapons are carried yet many have turned their limbs into weapons. A shiver ripples through me as I catch sight of one of the creatures having replaced its forearms and lower legs with metal spikes. Each festooned with screws and blades and hooks, welded to the shafts. It moves like a human spider.

  These dead from the city have waged a war with the living, now with their enemy sundered they've moved northwards like an army on the march.

  They're following the Northern Lights!

  It's the cause of all this madness. The unnatural phenomena not only causing the dead to rise and turning the living brutally insane, but also a call to all those under its mastery.

  Brigid and the girl hold the doors to the spa area open as we race to them. The horde spills through the rupture made by the truck. Dozens lurch after us, calling in wordless rasps of rage. Eyes burning with emerald light.

  Herryk sprays blood from his mouth as a metal hook pierces his cheeks. Another quickly finds purchase in the meat of his side. Barbed chains run from the hooks to a revenant standing on the other side of the broken wall. Wind whistles by sending flurries of snow inside.

  I race into the gift shop to help him, sword raised.

  Herryk looks at me with anguish and pain, his hand at his ruined mouth. A sharp tug from the walking corpse outside hauls Herryk off his feet and into the snow. His steaming life-blood stark against the pale snow.

  The undead figure grips the chains in each withered hand. The chains disappear inside the empty body cavity where they are looped in coils. I can make out where the anchor hooks protrude from the inside between the ribs forming a pattern of curved vicious spikes over the chest, sides and back. The creature's face sunken and scarred; nose missing, lipless grin, shattered teeth. Burns and stables mark the bloodless skin, old tattoos from a life before death. Purple musculature showing through where the skin has been ripped away.

  With the chains, leather trousers and biker boots it sort of reminds me of that comic-book with the guy with the burning skull for a head.

  Herryk lays gurgling and bleeding outside.

  I hesitate, knowing to step outside will certainly leave me trapped. The sick bastard corpse is baiting me with Herryk's suffering.

  I can't.

  I want to help, but I just can't.

  The corpse snarls at my reluctance, eyes flaring, and begins to drag Herryk through the snow.

  “Shit!” I yell, frustrated.

  The lobby floods with rasping deadly forms. Dozens of them.

  No time!

  I don't even have the time to line up a mercy shot and put Herryk out of his agony.

  I turn an snatch a pre-prepared pack of climbing gear and run.

  Brigid waves me closer to the doorway as the horde closes in. Taking a shortcut over the counter I dash into the main hallway as a crowd of snow-caked dead funnel in.

  I hear Herryk scream from outside, followed by the revving of snowmobiles and the clink of taught chains. A wet tearing sound suggests they've pulled him apart using the chains and snowmobiles.

  I don't want to think about that.

  I can't.

  Only a few meters left. Brigid is ready to slam the spa's double doors behind me. I just need to get there.

  The dead are wordless but not voiceless. Hollow rasping and screeching fills my ears as the dead close in. I don't want to look behind me, I know they're right there.

  At full sprint I stumble through the threshold, collapsing on top of the pack.

  Brigid slams the doors closed and is instantly rebuffed as the dead smash into it from the other side. She regains her footing forcing the widening gap back closed.

  “Help me!” she screams at me.

  It's only now I notice the little girl hiding behind her teddy bear beside us.

  Scrabbling to my feet I add my weight to push at the doors, easing them closed. I slide the replica sword through the handles effectively barring the doors which rattle as the dead pound them.

  I'm still panting from my run.

  Brigid looks at me wide eyed, “Shit, didn’t think you’d make it.” A manic smile on her face. We did it. We're safe!

  The door lurches, the sword straining but holding, yet opens just wide enough for an icy hand to slip through and grab Brigid's hair. The fingertips have been replaced by scalpel blades that slash through her scalp to the bone. The fist full of her blond curls as bright red runs down Brigid's face. The hand pulls her back against the door.

  Brigid shrieks in fright and pain.

  I'm already beside her trying to pry the fingers loose.

  They're unnaturally strong.

  “Help me! Oh God! Help meeeeaaahhhh!” Her pleas distorting to screams as the bladed fingers wrenched back tearing skin and peeling her scalp from her skull. It doesn't come off in one go, instead in a sequence of sharp ripping tugs.

  My hands are slick with her blood and I can't get her loose. She's still screaming. More hands find the gap latching onto her clothes and digging in. Faces appear pressed between the arms to snarl and spit and bite.

  There's no way I can free her. Less chance that she'll survive even if I do.

  I won't make the same mistake I made with Herryk...

  Releasing her I step away and raise my rifle. I can't see her expression through the rising blur of my tears. But I can see enough to line up the shot. I wipe my eyes and peer down the sights.

  “I'm sorry,” I tell Brigid, then fire.

  The shot is loud in the tight confines of the wood panelled corridor. The girl jumps, a frightened squeak bursting from her lips.

  Brigid's head snaps back and her eyes go vacant. Her screams silenced by a tiny piece of lead. She doesn't fall, the dead have her firmly in their grasp.

  This is the second friend I've had to shoot today.

  Two bullets left.

  “Come on,” I tell the little girl as I stoop to the climbing pack. Quickly I pull out a climbing pickaxe. There's rope and crampons and other gear in there. I can search it later, right now I just need a wea
pon.

  The girl doesn't move, instead her gaze is fixed on the twitching form of Brigid.

  “Hey,” say softly, then remember the girl probably doesn't know English. I try and recall the basic Norwegian I know and ask her to take my hand.

  She pulls her eyes away from the horror to look at me, then my outstretched hand. It's like she doesn't know what to do with it. She must be in shock.

  I take her hand and lead her farther down the gloomy corridor. The dead relentlessly battering at the door as we go. Brigid's body shaking like a broken marionette, until the violent attacks rattle the sword so violently it dislodges and slips free of the handles allowing the tide of voracious undead through in a howling savage mass of frozen twisted flesh and glowing eyes.

  Hand in hand with the girl I dash for the service entrance to the garage, where the remaining snowcat sits by the generator.

  I get the door open just enough to see Lars pouring gas from a can into the snowcat, before a spear made from roughly welded steel embeds itself in the door inches away from my face. I recoil blinking splinters from my eyes.

  Another homemade spear lances forward from the encroaching mass, this one forcing me to step back and away from the door to avoid it impaling my foot.

  Shit!

  Every time I move near the door vicious projectiles are sent my way. A forerunner breaks from the seething throng; coils of barbed wire where its guts used to be, forearms bound in duct-tape. It must have held something large and heavy in each taped hand as each arm ends with a thick not of tape turning them into heavy crushing weapons. Knife blades protrude along the outer length of each weaponised limb. This monster has made its purpose clear, to rend and crush and tear.

  “Lars! We can't get inside!” I scream over the raspy wailing of the dead, bringing my climbing axe to bare on the forerunner. My blade bites uselessly into the taped forearm as the creature blocks my attack, then attempts to pummel me with its own.

  I notice now that its head is held together with belt-straps. A sign of some earlier trauma.

  Pulling my climbing-axe free I dart away from the blade bristled fist the monster is trying to gut me with. The ragged blades succeed in tearing my parka, but not my flesh.

  Lars is at the door, but the mass of the dead are too close. He sends a molotov into their ranks and shouts, “Through the cave. There's a service exit. I'll open the side door. Go! Now!”

  He is able to roll another molotov into the horde before he is forced to close and lock the door.

  The forerunner, the only undead in view not burning, slashes at me again. This time it gets close enough to draw thin rills of blood from my side.

  There is no time to dwell on pain.

  The girl and I can only retreat to the hot springs, the dead at our heels.

  *

  Two sets of doors lead from the corridor to the cave, I jam both in an attempt to slow our pursuers. Even a few seconds could mean the difference between life and death. The air is thick and humid here, a distinct change from the chill of the rest of the lodge. I instantly break out in a sweat.

  I lead the girl by the hand. I don't know her name and she hasn't said a word. Though to her credit she's held herself together for the most part. She one tough little cookie.

  I'd try to get her to talk a little if we weren't fleeing for our lives. My fresh wounds burn in the damp heat of the cave. We pass the wooden steps and stride across the path weaving by the bubbling pool.

  What I wouldn't give for another session in that pool.

  The light is dim, the reflections causing the shadows to ripple and dance. I'm seeing things in the shadows. Too worked up from all the sudden violence. From watching a strong group – people I had come to begin to think of as friends – get torn apart in mere minutes. I had thought that if any group could last the winter, it would be those in the lodge. Now it's just the girl, Lars...and myself. Maybe Kristen was right, maybe I am bad luck. Maybe I am cursed.

  Following the curve of the cave I spot the carvings on the wall – the pictograph Brigid had called it. With all this heat and moisture I can see why the ancient Sami didn't just paint their strange image on the rock wall, but carved it there. They wanted to last.

  Looking at it again, the reindeer and the mountain surrounded by weird versions of the human shape, I can't help but feel this was a warning. My dream comes at me in waking flashes. The similarities cannot be mere coincidence. Then there are the old stories, legends and myths, Lars told me and the scientific team researching them at Hunter's Peak. Researching the same myths and superstitions mere weeks before all this started.

  Too many coincidences.

  I shake away my theories. This is no time to dwell on such things. We need to navigate our way to the end of the cave, use the maintenance entrance, then sneak through a statue-garden of frozen dead to reach the garage. No small feat, especially with a seething tide of angry undead after us.

  Another, smaller, pool comes into view, sending ripples of illumination crawling over the uneven walls. The girl pulls herself close to my leg, her hand in mine. She gasps and stops.

  “This is no time to stop. We have to go...”

  I trail off. The girl sees something I don't.

  I have no flashlight, but I raise the climbing axe in readiness. Sure enough a darker set of shadows shifts against the rest and twin points of green appear.

  Shit!

  One got ahead of us!

  But how?

  The service entrance must be compromised. No matter. We can't go back, we can only push onward. Gamble that this is but a stray.

  “Siiiiiiilllljjjeeeee...” a long rasp from the shadows. The girl tightens her grip and whimpers against my leg. The shifting light off the pool's surface reveals a single shape. A shape both the girl and I have seen before.

  “Mama,” the girl whimpers at my side. I realise now the rasp must have been the girl's name; Silje (Sil-yeh).

  I move the girl behind me, keeping my hand tightly around hers.

  “Silje?” I look down and ask her and she looks up reiterating her name. The rest I say in stilted Norwegian, “Don't look. Close your eyes real tight and hold on to me.”

  Oddly enough the girl obeys.

  The withered hag before us moves forward. I can now see the disgusting details I missed at the cabin. Her soiled dress torn away at the front and stained with dark patches now frozen from exposure to the outside elements. Frost still clings to her flesh and forms icicles of her hair, but I can see water droplets falling off of her. She's not been inside very long.

  Worse than the bedraggled appearance and battered face with its eerie too-wide-grin and glowing insane eyes, is what she has done to her torso. Like many of the other dead I've seen she's emptied herself, but where others have spooled chains and barbed-wire she has ensnared a young boy, bound in frozen cords of her entrails. The boy's arms reach out from the wounds clawing the air, a second set of glowing green points burn from within. He's nestled in the cradle of her pelvis – a brutal parody of mother with child.

  The fact that the creature can form words is another surprise heaped atop dark revelations of what the dead are capable of.

  She rasps the girls name again, and she flinches against my leg.

  In the distance I can hear the horde at the door to the cave. It won't take them long to breach it.

  Checking to make sure Silje has her eyes shut I edge towards the hag that was once her mother, two sets of arms reaching for us. I have to do this right and I have to do it quickly.

  I move Silje's hands to my belt so my second hand is free. Then, as the grotesque abomination opens its grinning mouth wider still, tearing at her cheeks, I swing my rifle around on the strap with one hand and fire from the hip. An unnatural way for me to shoot but at this distance all my winter biathlon training means I do not miss. The small bullet shatters the hag's kneecap, hyper-extending the joint backwards.

  One bullet left.

  The hag's weight shifts and has
it does I swing a backhand slice with my climbing-axe. The serrated prong slashing her face and scoring bone, knocking her head to the side, further unbalancing her, sending her towards the bubbling pool of spring water. Impossibly strong fingers latch onto my sleeve. The boy's arms grab me as he leans out of his mother's interior, seeking to drag me in with them. I know that if they do I'm done for. They'd drown me while tearing me apart.

  Straining against their weight I hack at the boy's hands with the axe and rifle butt, gouging dead tissue away in chunks.

  My boots lose their grip for just a second, dragging me to the lip of the pool, just as the boy’s fingers break apart, coming loose like cooked meat from the bone in a frosty cracking followed by a wet schlucking.

  The monstrosity falls into the bubbling surface, I stumble back collapsing into the girl.

  I've only gotten to my feet, Silje now opening her eyes, when the hag lunges from the pool in a torrent of frothing water a howl on her lips, the ice and frost melting making her dead flesh sag and slough away. Without the ice she's melting apart.

  I know this is merely the dead tissue becoming weaker after having been frozen. She won't melt away, but the appearance suggests she just might.

  Silje and I leave her howling and trashing, nails breaking away as she claws at the wooden decking.

  Seconds later we're bursting through the service door and into the bitingly frigid night.

  *

  The dead are all around us.

  Frozen stiff.

  Glinting in the Aurora's furious veil. It seems to stretch out from the mountain range like vast wings. Within the shifting eerie light nightmarish shapes dance and morph; maws yawn wide, faces leer, claws rake the night.

  A lone figure stands upon the valley of snow to the North, catching my attention. As though I could sense them before I physically saw them. The figure is tall and pale and...familiar.

  Around Silje and I another cluster of Brennen's immobilised dead, wrapped in layers of ice. Horrendous statues of twisted agony, hunger and dark need. Their eyes glint from under the caked ice.

  Silje flinches as soon as she sees them.