It was a half an hour after the sun dropped below the horizon to the west that Will caught the sight of a tent flapping and fluttering at the edge of the illumination provided by the headlights. They all recognized their luck in stumbling upon it. If Will had blinked at that moment, they would have been lost and continued on through the dark and freezing night. They hurriedly set up the final tent by the illumination of the headlamps of the snowmobiles. Will, Bjorn, and Chris passed out as soon as they crawled into their tents, the day of hard travel and freezing temperatures taking its toll out of all of them. Bjorn rubbed at the painful little patches of dead skin that were forming on his toes. Jen, Tim, and Nick continued their rotation of watches from earlier in the day.
*
The rest of the men in the room sat silent for many moments after Tar finished his impromptu speech. Tar scanned the room, expecting to find more challengers. Instead, he found only pensive, scared farmers. Almost to a man, they sat with their heads bowed, looking through the tables in front of them. Finally, Ed Weatherby rose to his feet in the back of the room, rubbing his beard. After a moment, he spoke.
“I can’t speak for no one here but myself and mine, Tar. I don’t like it. I don’t like it one bit. But, I’ll abide.” The man looked Tar straight in the eye and breathed twice before speaking again. “We all appreciate what you’re doing Tar, trying to save the town and all. Me and mine will throw our hat in with you.”
“Hats ain’t what’s needed. Cattle is,” Horace Debs called from the side of the room. “I get what you’re saying, Tar, ‘bout us needing each other and all. You gotta admit, though; it’s a bitter pill to swallow.”
“Be that as it may, Horace, we stand as a community. If we divide into factions, we are all weaker for it,” Tar stated, drumming the toe of his boot on the carpeted floor before finishing his statement. “I have faith that once heads cool over there, that Tyler and the rest will see the sense in this.”
“Have you met Tyler?” Horace asked quietly.
Tar nodded abruptly to end the line of conversation.
“Unless any of you have any questions for me, that’s all I needed to speak to you all about. Someone will come out to pay you a visit in a few days’ time to get your final answers.”
Tar scanned the room twice as the men stood, straightened out their hats, smoothed out their jeans or otherwise meandered about. He knew they were dawdling to see if anything else was going to happen. He turned his back on them and sat at the counter to have another cup that Darla poured for him. As the minutes ticked past, the men started filtering out into the failing winter light. When nearly all the men had left, Horace came and sat a stool away from Tar. Darla moved to refill the man’s cup before moving around the corner by the bathroom to give the men a sense of privacy. In reality, she could hear every word that was said, but knew that if she were in sight they might mince words.
“You know I’m not kidding about Tyler?” Horace said without looking at him.
Tar nodded and lit another cigarette.
“He said as much before you got here, Tar. Be careful with that one.”
Tar sat in silence for a minute. He was sorting through his feelings, trying to quell the storm brewing in his mind. He finally spoke to the man as Horace started to stand to leave.
“I didn’t ask for this shit you know.” His eyes burned with a fire as he stared at the man.
“But it’s yours now, nonetheless,” Horace replied grimly as he stood and walked out the door.
Tar nodded again, downing his cup and standing. He had never had an opportunity to get to know Horace; the man was in his late forties when Tar graduated high school. He had looked the same as far back as he could remember, gray beard and a western hat that never left the man’s head. They hadn’t exchanged more than a glance and a nod in the past thirty years, but now, in this situation, Tar was drawn to the man. His words rung as sage.
*
The next two days moved much the same as that first full day on the ice. The snowmobiles shifted the gear, then went back for the people. They were blind in their course, however; both of the compasses they had brought with them had frozen solid and popped their tops off, rendering them completely useless. This left them relying on the early morning and evening sky to set the day’s course. In the middle part of the day, it was nearly impossible to tell one shade of gloomy, snowy gray from another, so they plodded on until the setting sun allowed them to correct their bearings. On the third full night atop the frozen lake, once they had reunited and pitched the last tent, Tim finally spoke about what he had been thinking about all day.
“I think we may need to try and get ashore pretty soon here,” he said, his statement meeting with silence from the group. “We need a working compass, badly. For all we know, we could be running in circles.”
“We aren’t,” Bjorn said confidently.
“Then why are we about to start our fourth day on the ice when we had planned for two?” Tim barked back, referring to their time table for Lake Erie. “Without a compass to guide us, we are moving on a wing and a prayer that we haven’t strayed too close to Detroit. Even some of the smaller cities around there could be disastrous. I think we need to cut straight north and get off the ice.”
“Tim, look, man, we were in a rush to get moving from the shore; the dead were on us. I didn’t realize the compass would freeze and break,” Bjorn cast back, a bit defensively.
“I’m not placing any blame, man. Trust me, I’m not,” he said moving closer to his friend. “I just don’t want to gamble anymore out here. Forget about the undead for a minute, we are getting low on stove fuel. We could easily freeze to death.”
“Okay,” Bjorn said after a moment of thoughtful contemplation. “Tomorrow at sunrise we will head straight north. If we haven’t strayed too far off course, we should hit land by the time we rest.”
Tim nodded, and for the hundredth time since they stepped foot on the ice, he regretted having left the house in Hancock.
The next day, they plotted a course northwards, toward what they hoped was the south shore of Ontario. Tim stayed behind that day, as he had every other day. He preferred to stay behind, resting during the day and taking guard duty at night. He had a lot on his mind lately, much of it surrounding the onus of responsibility for his family. That burden made him doubt the others’ ability, or at least his faith in them, especially at the wee hours when sleep called. His paranoia kept him awake anyway, so he figured he would at least make himself useful.
The day went as the previous three had: uneventfully. When they regrouped late in the afternoon, they were all disappointed at the news that the forward group hadn’t yet made the shore. Bjorn reassured them that they were close, but it did little to ease the blow it struck to the already deflated morale of the group. Everyone was too tired and cold to argue or fuss. Instead, they climbed into their sleeping bags and tried to keep the nightmares at bay long enough to get some rest.
*
Tim was first aware of movement when the rear end of the teenager’s tent collapsed and started flapping in the gentle wind. He stood immediately, peering into the darkness from atop the snowmobile were he stood guard. A scream from within the tent spurred him to movement. He pulled his mitten off and grabbed his pistol out from his coat pocket. The cold, oiled steel of it clung to his warm skin, damp with perspiration from hours inside the sub-zero gloves. As he moved towards the tent, pistol in one hand, he clicked on the flashlight he held in the other.
The flashlight revealed an undead lying atop the flailing, struggling form of one of the teens inside the tent. The only thing between the gnashing, biting mouth of the undead and the person inside was the thin nylon fabric of the tent. Tim ran over and grabbed the undead by the foot, dragging it bodily clear of the tent before he stomped its head repeatedly, until it stopped struggling to rise. As much as he would have loved to keep his distance and shot the thing, he worried that the sound of a shot might draw many more upon them.
“You guys alright?” he called to Nick and Chris who were struggling out of their sleeping bags and into their clothes inside the tent.
A flashlight clicked on inside, casting an orange-ish light outward from the gaudily colored tent. Tim watched patiently as the beam of light danced around the interior of the tent, until Nick finally spoke.
“Yeah, no bites, well, none that got through the sleeping bag at least.”
“Sorry, guys, I couldn’t hear it over the wind.”
The light clicked off inside the tent and Tim pulled the tent guyline, moving to re-affix it to the stake that had gotten pulled free so the teens could get some sleep. A shuffle of movement in the darkness beyond sent a shudder through him. He panned the flashlight he held in his right hand upwards, immediately seeing a host of undead ambling towards them. They were covered in a rime of ice and crusty snow with blood and ichor staining the white in places. He tried to gauge a number but the light, shadows, and the heavy snow played with his head as he shone the little flashlight around in a semicircle.
“Get up now!” he screamed at the camp around him, raising his pistol.
Lanterns and flashlights clicked on and a violent flurry of movement came from the tents around them as people rushed to don their clothes and boots. Tim struggled awkwardly to steady the pistol while illuminating his targets with the flashlight. He finally rested the grip of the pistol atop his flashlight hand. Bjorn came up next to him, naked from the waist up, struggling to keep a hold on his rifle and at the same time get his arm into the sleeve of his bright red coat.
“Half-dozen at least,” Tim said, drawing a bead on the nearest one.
As the firing began, Christine and Jen joined them with their rifles, relying on Tim’s flashlight to direct their shots. Tim emptied his clip, taking seven of the undead down to an icy rest before he started steering the others to fresh targets with the flashlight. It was twenty minutes later, with the undead still rolling in from the west, that they began to suspect that this wasn’t an isolated attack. Bjorn spoke first.
“Everyone get up, get dressed, and get out of the tents,” he called back towards the cluster of tents behind. “Start packing backpacks for us all and as much gear as can fit on the snowmobiles in a hurry.”
Tim went pale at the instructions. He feared this attack would last some time, but figured they would see it through to the end. He had no desire to flee from the dead on the frozen lake in the pitch black of night.
Will dragged himself clear of the tent he and Jen shared a moment later and hobbled over to the snowmobiles. He started fueling them up, discarding the gas cans as they emptied. They were down to two full cans, forty liters total. Two more days…at most, he thought. He moved to the toboggans behind the machines to stow gear as Laura and Nick lugged it over. Shots rang out increasingly as the minutes ticked by. Bjorn even switched to full automatic as a group of a dozen came in on their flank, closing to within fifteen feet before they were noticed. When everything was stowed that they could fit, Nick ran to Bjorn, Tim, and Jen.
“The sleds are set!” he screamed over top the sounds of gunfire.
“Cover me for a minute,” Bjorn said to him, handing him his M4.
Bjorn moved off to the backpack he kept his clothing and gear in. He took his coat and pants off and redressed in his cold weather gear as quickly as possible. His skin turned white and he shivered uncontrollably for many minutes after he was fully geared up. When he returned, he was dressed as if he were going skiing, even down to goggles and ski poles. If not for the rapidly decaying scenario, Tim would have laughed at his friend’s appearance. As it was, he briefly considered making a joke before resuming flashlight duty. The undead, rather than thinning in numbers, seemed to be amassing in greater and greater concentrations. Bjorn took his rifle back from Nick and spoke.
“Come on, let’s get on the snowmobiles and get moving. I’ll provide rearguard,”
The entire group scrambled back to the snowmobiles and filed on with Bjorn firing at any undead that came too close. Nick and Will were together on one and as the track struggled to get the snowmobile moving, Tim stepped away from Laura and Luna to help. He ran alongside, pushing it until it started to gain its own momentum. Jen sat astride another with Sophie and Chris. Tim had to repeat the maneuver to get theirs moving as well. Once the second snowmobile buzzed away, he looked from the final snowmobile, holding his wife and child, to Bjorn, carefully firing his weapon at the undead.
Tim looked at his friend soberly, suddenly realizing the reason for his extra gear. He spent a moment trying to assess the man’s mental state. He knew his friend was devastated at the loss of his wife and son, and worried that he might be trying to make the ultimate sacrifice when it was necessary. Looking at the man, however, he could tell by his attire and the set of his jaw that he was not committing suicide; rather, he was well-geared for the weather, with an ammo can worth of insurance that he would come through the other side of it.
“Bjorn!” he yelled to be heard over the gunfire and the growing noise of many undead moaning.
“Go!” the man screamed without looking back.
“Keep moving, man. When the sun comes up, head north. We’ll come back for you,” Tim screamed back.
After casting one last look to Bjorn in hopes of catching his eye, he finally moved to join Laura and Luna on the last of the machines. Laura started the sled moving at Tim’s request and he ran alongside it, pushing it like he had with the two others. Bjorn ran past as Tim pushed, starting off into the night at a jog.
Tim hopped on the snowmobile when it had enough speed that he didn’t worry that it would stall or bog down. They passed Bjorn trotting across the ice a few minutes later, leaving him behind in absolute darkness. The machines fared better on the hard ice than they had that first day on the thick snow with their burdens. Although the load of food and fuel was much less than it had been, the engines still cried and strained as they buzzed across the surface of the lake. The three snowmobiles grouped together on the ice, traveling in a line through the darkness. The leader had to remain cautious of the ice ahead, so they took turns in that role so the others could relax and follow for a while.
Two hours later, the sky ahead of them began to lighten, showing them that in their furious flight that they had drifted back eastward. They adjusted their course back to the north and continued on. Tim was growing more concerned about the distance they were putting between themselves and Bjorn, especially since they were so far off course. He was eager to get the group settled down somewhere so he could go back for his friend. Without speaking to anyone about it, he decided that they would stop in the next couple hours, whether they found land or not. It was as he made this decision that Will’s voice called out to the rest.
“Land Ho!” he shouted above the whine of the motors, pointing ahead.
Tim scanned the horizon ahead of them, and sure enough, he could see the tops of snow covered conifers in the distance.
“Wooo!” he yelled, eager to have a stand of trees to shelter in and get out of the wind.
An hour later, they pulled the sleds up a rocky slope to a dense group of forty-foot-tall pine trees. Tim left the snowmobile idling and hacked at the triple threads of parachute cord holding the toboggans on with his pocketknife.
“You all stay here and set up. I’m going back for Bjorn,” he called to them, as he refilled the fuel tank on the machine.
Laura climbed off and moved to her husband.
“Can’t Nick or Will go?” she asked softly.
“I can’t leave him, Laur. I owe it to him, for Sophie, if not myself. I couldn’t trust that they would give it the effort that I will.” He paused, gathering his thoughts before continuing. “I need to go. I love you guys. I’ll be back, I promise.”
He adjusted his rifle on his back and made sure his spare clips were still in place, tucked away in his pockets, before pulling away. He looked long into his wife’s eyes as he sped out of sight. His hear
t was heavy as he steered westward, on what he hoped was an intercepting course with his friend. Worry nagged and gnawed at him, both for his friend as well as for his family that he’d left behind in the hands of virtual strangers.
About an hour later, Tim slowed down the machine and cut the engine. He stood atop the seat and strained his ears, hoping to see or hear some sign: gunfire, yelling, anything that might clue him in to a direction to head. Nothing came back to him but the frigid wind whipping across the surface of the lake and the occasional cracking and groaning of the ice below as it heaved and contracted. Every few minutes, he would repeat the same ritual of listening and looking before resuming his zig-zagging course across the ice. Another hour crept past before the sound of an isolated shot echoing loudly off the ice drew his attention. The way sound traveled over the ice was disorienting and he stood atop the snowmobile for a long minute before he was able to zero-in on a distant dot to the west.
Tim dropped heavily into the seat of the machine and twisted the throttle. He had the thing wide open, the bumps and valleys in the ice caused by the snow crusted to it made him skip over the ice in a few places. A few moments later and he could see it was Bjorn, sitting atop the ammo can, waiting for him. He had a big smile on his face when Tim pulled the sled up next to him.
“The fuck are you smiling about?” Tim asked.
“Nothing, you just seemed a bit lost out here, figured I’d let you know I was here.”
“Hop on. Where’d they all go? Or, should I not ask?”
“Nah, I only killed the few that forced me to,” Bjorn glibly replied. “You know I used to run track in high school?”
Harvest of Ruin (Book 2): Dead of Winter Page 29