THEY CAME WITH THE SNOW
Christopher Coleman
They Came With The Snow © 2017 Christopher Coleman
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Title Page
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THEY CAME WITH THE SNOW
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THEY CAME WITH THE SNOW
WHEN A MYSTERIOUS BLAST goes off in a small college town, triggering a blizzard, the few survivors must decide whether to stay or leave and face the monsters who came with the snow.
The snow fell everywhere now. And the crabs kept coming.
For a while, before the grid failed and the batteries in the radio went dead, rumors hovered around that the blizzards had yet to reach a few of the tiny islands off the coast of South America, and that due to the isolation of those places, safety and warmth were still viable in this world.
But it was all theory and gossip. And even if it was accurate, what did it matter? Those lands were far too remote for us to reach, even if we could have made our way to the coast. We had neither the resources nor the skill to navigate thousands of miles of sea. I suppose there were some scattered sailors and a few wealthy folk with vessels capable of making the journey, but we fell into neither of those categories.
And besides, suppose a few islands had been spared from the cataclysm, how long until they too fell under the blanket of white and the terror that followed? Another month?
“We can’t stay, Dominic. I know it’s hard for you to think about leaving right now, but we saw another one last night. And where there is one, there are at least two more. And maybe this time they don’t leave.”
Naia is right, of course. The longer we stay on the campus, bunkered in the flimsy safety of the student union, the narrower our window of escape becomes. “It’s too cold now,” I reply. “Look at the thermometer.” It reads four degrees.
“Do you think it’s going to be in the high sixties tomorrow? In case you haven’t noticed, Dom, the weather isn’t trending toward spring.”
I close my eyes in frustration, both at Naia’s persistence and the truth of her words. “The clouds are thinning, the flakes are smaller than they were this morning. Hopefully by tomorrow it will have stopped. If the sun is shining, we’ll go then.”
“Sun?” Naia erupts in laughter. “The last time I saw the sun was three days ago. And that lasted what, an hour? At most?”
“Yes, but that was at sundown,” I add quickly. “The sky was clear for most of that night.”
Naia snickers and shakes her head unconvinced, never taking her eyes off me. “And what if it doesn’t stop? What then? What if it just keeps snowing? There will be more of them. And where there is one, there are—”
“Two more, I got it.”
“At least.”
I hold Naia’s stare for a moment and then stand. “The fire needs a log. I’ll be back.”
“I’ll go, it’s my turn.”
I ignore her and walk from the dining area to the stairway that leads down to the double doors which lead out to the main quad of Warren Community College. I test the doors, just as I do every time I pass. There is a large deadbolt, but we no longer possess the key required to lock it, so the handles are threaded with a metal dog leash and a pair of thick fabric jump ropes. Whether it will be enough to keep them out when they finally decide to come, there’s no real way to know.
I turn and begin to walk down the long, dark hallway that feeds into a rotunda that spokes off into various offices, as well as a large bookstore. The store has been our lifeblood to this point, stocked with a variety of things ranging from spirited pull-overs (Go Warriors!) to pocket knives. As I pass it, I notice for the first time the depletion. It looks paltry, as if picked through by wayward scavengers. We still have plenty of food in the freezer in the back of the upstairs restaurant, but the bookstore reminds me that none of it will last forever.
I move through the rotunda, down to the end of the hallway until I reach the door at the back of the building. The rear doors are identical to those in the front, except they lead out to a small clump of woods that is our fuel. I pick up the axe by the door, one salvaged from a supply closet, and grip it high on the neck.
As I stare through the lofted rectangular window, I’m entranced by the snow piling up around the base of the trees, and note that it isn’t just the supplies in the store that are dwindling.
To this point, the firewood we’ve used to keep us alive has come from the branches of these trees, but the trunks are quickly becoming barren. Soon, the only ones that will remain will be too high to reach. Naia and I came to an agreement on the limits of our perimeter, but once the wood is gone, we’ll have little choice but to breach it. Wood is everything right now. It keeps us warm, yes, but we also use it to cook the chicken, which, blessedly, stays preserved by the temperatures. Once the wood goes, and we’ve burned whatever there is left from within the building, we’ll need to explore further into the campus.
Or beyond.
Naia and I have been alone here for five weeks. Before that, before the blast and the snows that followed, I had been a professor at Warren for seven years. Naia was in her third semester as a student, working her way up the collegiate ladder toward a four-year degree in something that was sure to be antiquated and snooty. Philosophy or art history, perhaps. Maybe literature.
Our relationship was just beginning its second month—and what was likely to be the last—when the event happened. And despite the illicitness of our relationship—and the secret we’d managed to keep from both my wife and the Warren Human Resources department—it was the affair, I know, that is the reason I’m still alive. Before Naia, any warm Sunday at noon in the beginning of May would have been spent on the back nine of the Twin Lakes Golf Club, rueing my putting stroke and shifting my focus toward the nineteenth hole, licking my lips at the anticipation of a thick iced mug and an IPA.
But after I met Naia, things changed.
I was attracted to her, of course, she’s young and beautiful, but so are a quarter of all my female students. Naia though, was unique in her aggression toward me. Her pursuit, I guess you would say. She was flirty from day one, asking me questions about my childhood and my goals and political leanings. She knew of my marriage—there is a picture of my wife hanging on the wall of my office even now—but it made no difference to her. If I had had kids, which thankfully I don’t, perhaps that would have backed her off. But Sharon made no difference to Naia. She pretended my wife didn’t exist.
So, as our affair developed, my Sunday tee times became trysts with Naia at my place of business. It was all too easy.
Even during the school year, with the exception of a few maintenance workers a
nd the occasional campus cop, Warren is a deserted palace, and it remains virtually unpopulated until the first cars begin to pull into the lot early Monday morning.
It was the perfect spot for romancing a young co-ed. Particularly when you have a key to the main building and a private office to carry out the deeds. It is not only convenient, it’s far cheaper and less sordid than a motel.
But now the place is ours every day. There’s no one else. Except for them.
The crabs.
I shake myself to the moment and unclasp one of the dog leashes and thread it through the handle until it snakes to the floor. I watch it coil at my feet before beginning on the second leash.
And then I see it.
From the edge of my vision I detect a motion through the window, beneath the snow, twenty yards or so in the distance, directly in line with the back entrance. It’s not a quick or obvious motion, but it’s there. A slight rise and dip of the top layer of snow.
I pause for a moment, and then begin to reverse my work, quickly re-clasping the bolt snap on the second leash as I reach to the ground for the first. My hand doesn’t find it immediately, so I look away for an instant to locate it, finding it with my fingers, pulling it toward me.
I rise back up until my face is level with the door window, and as I regain my focus on the world outside, a section of the white snow is now dotted by a pair of black eyes.
The eyes are fixed on me. They blink once, then again, but never shift.
The twenty yards of distance between me and where the movement occurred just seconds ago has been cut in half. The thing is only paces away now, just beyond the door.
Despite its closeness, the head peeking up from the snow is virtually invisible. Were it not for the blackness of the thing’s irises, I wouldn’t see it at all.
The wood will have to wait until tomorrow.
WE CALL THEM ‘CRABS’ because of the way they move.
Actually though, to be more accurate, the movement is probably closer to that of a chimp or some other primate. But on that first night we saw it, just after WBXO broadcasted the military order to stay inside and off the roads, Naia saw it from the window above the quad. A crab, she said, and the name just stuck.
Are they dangerous? It’s hard to tell.
They don’t appear aggressive or hungry, and their movements are more like those of a surveyor than a predator, like they’re inspecting us to make sure we’re not dangerous. But who can really tell? A circling shark would appear that way to someone who didn’t know better.
So we keep our distance, monitoring them from afar as well as we can.
They usually show up in threes, one first, followed by two more within the day. But sometimes it’s more. There were seven of them staring at us from the steps of Dryden Hall less than a week ago.
A narrow ray of sun knifes through the venetian blinds and hits the top of one of the tables in the main dining area of the restaurant.
We’ve made our camp here, in the dining area, both for access to the kitchen and because of its second-floor vantage point. It has the added bonus of being the only area of the building with wall-to-wall carpeting, adding a few degrees of warmth to the setting.
I hold my breath and blink twice, never shifting my gaze from the sunbeam, testing my subconscious for trickery.
But the beam remains, and I stand and walk to the window, peeking back once at Naia who is still asleep in the nest of sweat clothes and fabric that is our sleeping quarters.
I scissor open my two fingers at the top of the blinds and look out at the blue sky and sun shining above. My eyes fill with tears at the sun’s heat radiating through the glass. It feels medicinal. I have to steady myself on the sill to keep from buckling to the floor. I take a deep breath and smile, debating whether to wake Naia. She’ll want to leave instantly, but...
I hear a sound from the ground below. It’s a shuffling, wet sound, like the sound of batter being poured onto pavement.
I want to rip the venetians, but I know instinctively to keep them intact, so I pull the cord down slowly, revealing the full glory of the sun and the horror on the quad.
“Oh my god.” It’s Naia. I hadn’t noticed her behind me as she made her way to the window.
“There must be thirty of them. Fifty maybe.” My voice is a whisper, disbelieving.
“Jesus, Dominic. What are we going to do?”
I ignore the question. “Look at them. It’s like they suspected we might leave when the sun came out.”
“I always thought they would melt or something. I always thought the snow was their...I don’t know...energy.”
“Let’s get away from the window.”
“What are we going to do, Dom! I told you we needed to leave! This is what we get for waiting for the sun!”
I suppress the urge to argue, to tell Naia that if we had left yesterday, as night was falling along with the snow, we would have likely frozen to death in a matter of hours. And even if we had made it off campus, even if we didn’t freeze and weren’t attacked by the white crabs, we would have just ended up in a strip mall restaurant or the convenience store section of some abandoned gas station. Same situation, different place. How would that help us?
As if hearing my thoughts, Naia says, “There have to be people out there, Dominic. There have to be. Maybe we could have gotten to them.”
This has been the elephant in the room since the day Naia and I saw the first of the white creatures hopping around in the snow. I decide not to ignore it any longer. “Don’t you think they are the people?”
Naia looks away immediately, and I detect a look of disgust on her face. Not at the idea I have just expressed, but at me, personally, for expressing it.
“No? I’m crazy? Where did they come from then? Did they all fall with the snow?”
“Damn you.” Naia’s voice is low, teeth clenched. “Damn you for losing hope right now.”
“I’m not losing ho—.”
“You are losing hope! We don’t know what happened. There was a blast, the world shook for a moment, and then it started to snow.”
“In May,” I remind with a smartass lilt.
“Yes, in May! I get it! But we don’t know what happened. The broadcasts hinted at a meteor, but that was never confirmed. And maybe those things out there did used to be people. Maybe they’re all your colleagues and my classmates and pizza delivery guys. But we don’t know. And if I’m going to die from this...event...I don’t want to die waiting by the last log in the kitchen of the Chicken Coop, never having made the effort to find out.”
I bow my head, succumbing to Naia’s feistiness. “What do you want to do, Naia? They’re out there now.”
“We’ll make packs, supplies, enough for two days. If we’re out longer than that we’ll be dead anyway. We’ll keep them distracted here at the front—I’ll work on that plan—and then we’ll head out the back door through the woods. Balmore Plaza isn’t a half-mile once you make it to the clearing. I’ve walked it two-dozen times.”
“In three feet of snow?”
“The sun’s out, Dom. Let’s not forget this was your plan from yesterday. ‘If the sun’s shining’ you said, ‘we’ll leave then.’ Well the sun’s shining, cowboy, and if we don’t see any of these assholes outside the back door, we’re going to give it a shot.”
NAIA AND I STARE OUT the rear door, scanning the scene for crabs while measuring our path through the woods. The blast of sunlight off the snow’s crust is blinding as I look through the trees to the clearing and the shopping center just beyond.
Balmore Plaza.
With the snowfall now subsided, the storefront seems so close. Almost close enough to make it.
“I saw one out here yesterday,” I say, wanting to give full disclosure about the situation we’re about to put ourselves in.
“When?”
“When I went to get wood. There was one buried in the snow. I didn’t see him at first, and then suddenly a pair of eyes was just staring
at me. It was the same look as those ones out front. Not mean really. Just watching.”
Naia closes her eyes and snickers, exhausted. “Buried beneath? Well that’s not really fair.”
“Do you still want to do this?”
Naia pauses. “It was just the one?”
“That’s what I saw.”
Naia unwinds the second dog leash around the door handles and slings it to the floor, and then buttons the top coat of her Warren College jacket. “I don’t know what other choice there is.”
“We could stay?” I smile.
“And do what, Dom?”
“Wait for them to leave. They always leave.”
“Look Dom, if you want to stay, stay. I know you never loved me. I know you regret everything that happened between us. I know you feel guilty about not being with your wife when all this happened. You don’t owe me anything.”
Naia is tightening the wrists of her gloves, moving quickly through her final preparations. I can sense she’s on the verge of tears and wants to leave before they start.
I don’t respond to anything she’s just said, mainly because it’s true. Except the part about owing her. I owe her for my life.
“I’m leaving, Dom. Can you at least follow through on the distraction? I need the ones out front to stay focused on the front.”
Naia’s plan was this: just before we made a run for it out the back door, I was to throw something heavy through the window, the same window where we stood in disbelief and watched the crabs that had assembled below. Once the window was blown and the glass had cascaded to the ground, the crabs would be hypnotized by the whole production, and we would have a better chance of making it through the clearing to the shopping center.
It wasn’t a horrible plan. Except of course if we discovered while on our run to the woods that a tunnel of these monsters had burrowed beneath the snow and were waiting for just this opportunity.
“I’ll get the oven ready.” I found a large Dutch oven in the kitchen supply closet, cast iron; the thing must weigh fifty pounds.
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