Dead Frost

by Adam Millard

  Terry had never heard it put like that before, but it was an apt description of the trouble they were about to face.

  Then, Victor said something that neither Terry or Moon expected. 'Tell you what, old boy. You give me Shane and the doctor, and I'll let you and the other one live. You can come back to the barracks with us. How does that sound?'

  Terry was speechless; it was the kind of offer that he would have jumped at, once upon a time. The other one – Jared – was never making it back to the barracks, though, not unless they could find a mop and bucket, and Terry knew that he couldn't betray Shane and Marla like that.

  'Sounds like you've got yourself a deal,' Terry lied. Even though he hadn't meant it, he felt a pang of remorse as the words passed his lips.

  Terry led Victor and his trigger-happy minion down the corridor, away from the room where Shane and Marla slept. He had no idea where he was going to end up, or what he would do when he got there, but for now it was all he could do. He was in no position to take the men on, and even if he made a move for the rifle in Moon's hand the chances are he would end up decorating the school walls with his own lifeblood.

  As the air palpably altered – it was almost as if it thickened, making it more difficult to breathe – Terry hoped that he had rediscovered his faith in time. He had lived so long without it, perhaps God had forsaken him. Maybe, and this is the part that frightened him the most, it didn't make a blind bit of difference whether he had faith or not. What if he was going to die, anyway, regardless? What if those years as a Padre had been wasted, and there was nothing but darkness and eternal sleep?

  As those thoughts mercilessly assaulted him, he had to fight back the urge to turn to Victor and inform him of the real whereabouts of Shane and the doctor. He just about managed to retain what little faith he had, and pushed on up through the corridor, heart racing so fast he could hear nothing else.

  As he reached the next passageway, he knew that enough was enough; he could lead them on a merry-fucking-journey all night long, but that didn't detract from the end-product.

  He was going to die.

  He was simply prolonging the inevitable.

  'They're through there,' Terry said, pointing towards a door that could lead to anywhere. 'But you have to promise me that you'll make it quick, while they sleep.'

  'Sorry,' Victor said, in a voice that suggested he was anything but. 'I need to have a little parley with that fool before Moon shoots him.'

  As if the mere mention of his name excited him, the soldier patted the side of the rifle with a mixture of pride and anxiety.

  'So be it,' Terry said. The Captain's response didn't change anything, for the room was severely lacking in potential marks. 'Can I stay here? I don't want them to know that I led you to them.'

  Victor sighed, glanced at his colleague, who was shifting nervously from one foot to the other. When he turned his attention back to Terry, there was a slight glint of compassion in his eyes, very obscure, almost nonexistent, but it was there.

  'Okay,' he whispered. 'But don't try nothing, or you'll die here, tonight, along with them, you understand?'

  Terry nodded.

  'Okay, let's get this over with so we can go home.'

  Terry watched as the two men headed for the door. He knew that the room on the other side would be empty, and yet he anticipated a miracle of sorts, anything to stop the maniacal Captain and his overgrown henchman in their tracks.

  They pushed the door open and stepped into the darkness.

  Terry closed his eyes and silently prayed.

  *

  The room was some kind of theatre, with seats laid out in rows from the front of the room to the very back. There was a stage at the head of the room, elevated from the ground by roughly three feet. At the side of the stage were little wooden steps leading up. The curtains were pulled shut, but there must have been an open window somewhere because they flapped with each new howl of the wind.

  Victor signalled to Moon: Move quietly. It was quite the request for somebody of his stature, but he would try his best not to knock anything or cause a row since it was liable to get him shot.

  Behind them, the door clicked shut. They both turned, not knowing what to expect, and the relief hit them as they realised that it was just the door.

  The floor was soaked, and they tread carefully as they moved up the centre-aisle. At first Victor thought there must have been a leak in the roof, or perhaps the water-mains had burst and flooded the entire hall.

  And then he realised that it wasn't water, at all.

  Blood. Enough to cause ripples in the surface as they walked, at least five millimetres.

  The aisle was wide enough for three people, maybe four, which relaxed Victor somewhat; there was very little chance of his accompanying ogre from kicking a chair and warning the deserters of their presence.

  Victor had Terry's shotgun strapped to his back, which seemed to take the edge off. He pulled it out and quietly removed the safety. There was no point going into this half-cocked, and he forgot to ask the old one if Shane was armed.

  The wind kicked up a fuss, howling like an escaped lunatic, and somewhere in the room a window rattled in its frame. The curtain danced on the stage, and then it opened a little.

  Through the tiniest of gaps in the material, Victor could see movement.

  They were definitely back there, hiding behind the curtains like some agoraphobic neighbour. The room was dark, but the moonlight had offered just enough of a glimpse to prove the old man had led them to the right place.

  As they reached the end of the aisle, Victor pointed to the left; the place where he wanted Moon positioned. He would take the right.

  The soldier nodded and moved across. Once there, he settled down just in front of the curtain and pulled the rifle into position just below his cheek. He watched as the Captain moved away, but he could see a thin smile begin to curve up on his lips as he stealthily shifted.

  David Moon had seen very little in the way of wartime; apart from a short stint in Iraq, but that had simply been a peace-keeping tour, nothing nasty. This, however, made his heart race so fast he thought he might piss himself. He was literally buzzing at the thought of what was going to go down.

  Victor climbed slowly onto the stage, and for an older guy he was still pretty lithe. Moon expected to hear bones cracking, or something.

  The Captain took a long, silent breath before pulling the curtain across. With the shotgun raised, ready to fire, he screamed at the top of his lungs, 'YOU FUCKED WITH THE WRONG GUY WHEN YOU STOLE MY FUCKING JEEEEEEEEP!'

  On the other side of the stage, pulling the curtain so hard that it almost came unhooked at the top, David Moon powered forward, his face exhibiting several expressions at once: anger, hatred, excitement...and fear.

  He was caught off balance for a moment as he realised what he had launched himself whole-heartedly into.

  The prick and the doctor were nowhere to be seen on the stage.

  Instead there were children, dressed up in various colourful costumes, but one things was immediately made clear.

  They were hungry.

  'What the fu―' Victor managed before a three-foot lurker dressed as a lion launched itself towards him. The whole thing was so surreal that Victor didn't fire straight away; he was too hypnotised by the strange sight in front of him.

  As the lion came down, another joined it, this one painted silver and wearing tin-foil as a hat. Black goo drooled down in strings from both of their lips as they lunged forward, and now Victor finally managed to reach his senses.

  Just in time.

  He pulled the trigger and took the entire left side of the tin-man's face off. It cartwheeled in the air, the power from the shot enough to take it a few feet backwards.

  The lion, though, kept moving forward, growling, drooling, screaming.

  Moon still couldn't get his head around what was happening. What should have been an easy hit had turned into his worst nightmare, and now he was faced
with an army of mini-lurkers dressed up in silly outfits. At the front of the pack was a girl – or at least she had been when sex had been determinate – dressed in a blue and white dress. Her hair was pigtailed up in an innocent style, but as she shambled towards him he knew that she was far from innocent.

  He managed to fire off two rounds, taking out two of the munchkins flanking the girl. The third and fourth shots managed to hit the girl, splattering her dress and knocking her back a few feet, but it wasn't enough and she kept on coming.

  Most of her right cheek was exposed, and moon could see her teeth chattering away through the flapping skin. He was about to fire what would have been the final shot, the one that counted, when something latched onto his ankle. The pain down there was immense, and he was momentarily too scared to look. He shot and the lurker in the blue dress – Dorothy? - didn't have time to react as her head exploded in a geyser of blood and gore.

  He kicked out with his foot, the one that nor hurt like a sonofabitch, and connected with something hard. Finally, he glanced down to find one of the mini-lurkers crawling back for another bite. Leaving a trail of straw as it army-crawled forward, Moon could see even through the darkness that it was a scarecrow.

  How very odd, he thought, just before he brought his foot down on the back of its skull. There was a meaty crunch as he made contact, and the creature lay inert.

  Moon could see bone through the glistening hole in his leg, which made him want to upchuck, if only there had been anything inside of him to bring up.

  He glanced across at Victor Lord, and knew that the Captain was in serious trouble. There were six of them, the little bastards, crawling on top of him, trying to get a decent purchase on any piece of flesh they could. Victor was wriggling, trying to knock them off so that he could reach the shotgun which had been taken away from him and lay useless on the stage a foot away from his grasp. He screamed as a witch bit down on his throat, and then he gurgled as she yanked away the flesh and began to chew frantically. The others, who were all dressed as winged monkeys for some reason, soon managed to find flesh, and they began to devour Victor Lord alive.

  Moon knew he had to run, and dropped his injured foot to the stage. The searing pain was enough to cause dancing white spots between his eyes and his eyelids. There was no way he could run, not now, thanks to a fucking scarecrow.

  He turned and threw himself off the stage, trying to keep a hold of his rifle. Landing somewhere between row three and four – and knocking chairs everywhere – he tried to clamber to his feet, but the blood-coated floor was too slippery and he found himself face-down in it, water-boarding himself.

  He lifted his head and saw, through the pain and sticky blood that coated his eyebrows, a shadow at the back of the room.

  Terry.

  He lifted his hand, urging the old man to come and help, but he didn't move.

  'Help me you fucking asshole!' Moon cried, trying to pull himself up using one of the small, plastic chairs. It fell from underneath him, though, sending him sprawling back to the ground.

  The man at the back of the room made the sign of the cross and raced for the door.

  'You get back here!' Moon screeched. 'Fucking get back here, or I'll―'

  And then more pain. He felt something land on his back, the weight forcing him into the ground, pushing his head down into the puddle of blood. He managed to roll over and found himself staring into the eyes of a wizard.

  The wonderful wizard of Oz...

  The creature snapped with savage teeth, tearing Moon's nose clean away from his face with one solitary bite.

  Moon screamed as the flying monkeys went to work on the rest of him.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Shane and Marla were on their feet in less than a second. Terry screaming at the top of his voice had woken them, and they stared towards him with pure confusion and utter dread.

  'What is it?' Shane asked. He had the pistol in his hand and was aiming it towards the door that Terry had just barged through.

  'We need to get moving,' Terry said. 'Lurkers, lots of fucking lurkers.'

  Marla's concern was palpable, and she was already hoisting up Shane's Bergen and shoving it in his direction.

  'Where?' Shane said. He took a few furtive steps towards the door. 'And why did you go out there? You could have gotten yourself killed.'

  Terry wanted to tell them how close they had all come to being killed, but it didn't seem like the right time.

  'Never mind that,' Terry said. 'I found a school-bus, our ticket out of here. Let's just hope it fucking goes.'

  Shane was about to continue with his reproach when the thought of moving on hit him like a slab. 'Take us to it,' he said, shouldering his bag and ushering Marla towards the door.

  'Okay, but we need to move fast,' Terry said, moving out to the corridor. 'Those little bastards are quicker than you might think. Victor and Moon didn't stand a fucking―'

  'Wait,' Marla said, both hands extended and trembling as if she was afflicted with something particularly nasty. 'Victor was here? What the―'

  'We don't have time,' Terry interrupted. 'I'll explain everything,' though he doubted he would be able to give them every detail, 'once we put some miles between us and this godforsaken playground.'

  Shane nodded; he had expected Victor to send someone out after them, but hadn't quite anticipated the big man himself.

  'The bus,' Shane said, urging Terry forward. In his head, visions of his family swam merrily around.

  He was so close, now.

  Yet farther than ever.

  *

  'What happened to the shotgun?' Shane asked as they raced through the school towards a bus that may – or may not – still function.

  'They took it,' Terry breathlessly replied. 'I didn't have time to go grab it, not once those things started crawling out of the woodwork.'

  They entered a narrower hallway, which had been decorated with painted letters of the alphabet and zoo animals. At the end of the passage, a door with frosted glass was all that stood between them and the freezing-cold night. The snow was visible through the door, and the alacrity with which it fell reminded Shane that even if they were to make it onto the bus, it probably wouldn't start. They had no idea how long it had been sitting for; a dormant engine in a snow-covered steel shell.

  Terry pulled the door open and allowed Marla to pass him.

  'That's never going to work,' she said, crunching her way around the bus and surveying it as if she were a first-time buyer on a used-car forecourt. The yellow paint of the bus was only visible on sections of the side-panels; the rest of it was blanketed with inch upon inch of snow.

  'We don't know that,' Shane said. He dropped his Bergen next to the door and located the handle. As he pulled it across, the door folded and opened halfway. There was a pile of snow on the step, enough to keep the door from opening fully. With his foot, Shane began to kick the snow away.

  'I have a question,' Marla said, an undertone of pessimism already tainting her words. 'Have either of you ever hotwired anything before? I mean, I know you were both criminals, no offence, but if neither of you can make this thing go then aren't we just wasting our time?'

  Shane sighed. 'First of all,' he kicked the remainder of the snow away and pulled the handle once again. The door opened fully, and he turned to smile. 'No offence taken. Secondly,' he stepped up onto the bus and pulled down the driver's side visor. A set of keys fell down, which he caught one-handed. 'Bus-drivers aren't known for their originality.'

  Marla smiled and climbed aboard. 'Fluke,' she said. 'You would've looked like a complete moron if those hadn't been there.'

  Shane stepped down and grabbed the Bergen. Terry climbed the steps; Shane could tell by the look on his face that something was wrong.

  'Hey,' he said, pulling Terry up. 'Are you okay?'

  Terry sighed; a plume of white fog danced in the air an inch in front of his face before dissipating. 'I guess,' he said. 'I just wish things had been differen
t in there.'

  It took Shane a few seconds to realise that Terry was talking about Jared, and the loss thereof.

  'There was nothing we could do for him,' Shane said, patting the side of Terry's arm. 'We just need to count our blessings that we made it out of there in one piece.'

  'Err, guys?' Marla said. She was already seated and was rubbing her hands together and blowing hot-air into them. 'I hate to be a pain, but is there any chance we can try to get this fucking thing moving?'

  Terry smiled. 'The queen has spoken,' he said, brushing aside the morose memories of a fallen friend. 'You never know,' he said. 'This thing might even have heating.'

  'We can only hope,' Shane said.

  With everybody on board, he pulled the lever next to the steering-wheel and the door mechanically shut. He grappled with the keys for awhile – his frozen hands were doing everything apart from what he wanted them to – before managing to get them into the ignition.

  'Please,' he whispered.

  He turned them slowly, and was pleasantly surprised to hear the engine trying to turn over. Not quite starting, but almost. It whirred, looped a few times, and began to dip a little, which was Shane's signal to turn the keys back and try again in a second. It certainly wanted to go, so there was no point in pushing it, not yet. Flooding the engine was something he didn't care to think about.

  'See,' Marla said, rubbing her hands together so hard that if she was made of wood she would have started a fire. 'Probably not even got fuel.'

  Terry shushed her, which she didn't appreciate at all. To Shane, he said, 'Try it again, this time with the pedal.'

  Shane turned the key and pushed the accelerator down to the floor. Once again, the engine fought for life. He pumped the pedal, hoping to give it just enough to spark the beast into action. After a few seconds, he turned the key back and relaxed in the seat.

  Outside, the wind howled and rocked the bus gently from side to side. Everything on the inside, though, remained quiet.