Dead Frost

by Adam Millard

  She moved, her machete swinging beside her, out onto the corridor and into the jaws of death.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  'There's a sign coming up,' Shane said as he tried to keep the bus steady on the increasingly slippery road. 'Can one of you try to see what it says?'

  Marla stood, cracked her back in a less than feminine fashion, and said, 'I'm hoping it says something about food.' She made her way to the front of the bus, keeping a hold of the aluminium railings either side of her. As she reached the front, she glanced out through the windscreen at the blanketed road ahead. 'Shit, Shane, how are we even moving?'

  He sighed. 'Slowly. Very slowly.'

  The snow was so deep in places that the school-bus lifted from the road. Beneath the bus, the soft noise of snow as it scraped the undercarriage was not too comforting, but they hadn't beached, yet, which was probably down to sheer luck rather than anything else.

  The sign came up on the left-hand side. JACKSON - 3 MI.

  In his seat, Shane shifted nervously. Although he had requested help with the sign, he had managed to prise his eyes away from the road long enough to read it himself.

  Marla put a hand on his shoulder. 'If they're there,' she said, softly rubbing his collar, 'we'll find them.'

  He sighed, an amalgamation of relief and tension, which were the toughest combination imaginable.

  Terry was a few seats back; he'd been given the unenviable task of cleaning Shane's pistol, which in all fairness looked about ready for scrapping. When he heard the whispering at the front of the bus, he reassembled the gun in quick-time and headed up to see what was going in.

  'We're nearly there,' Marla said. Her look told Terry everything he needed to know; the moment of truth was fast approaching; time to put up, or shut up...

  'I'm annoyed at losing the Remington,' Terry said, unprompted. He was, of course, referring to the shit-state in which Shane's pistol now found itself.

  'Not your fault,' Shane reminded him. 'You kept us alive by leading them away to that room. I'm eternally grateful for what you did; losing the shotgun was a small price to pay.'

  Marla planted a small kiss on Terry's cheek, which shocked him completely. 'Yeah,' she said. 'We might never have woken up if it hadn't been for your self-sacrifice.'

  Terry had known the risks, yet he hadn't considered himself a hero, not even when the Captain and that fool, Moon, were getting devoured.

  He didn't speak, or couldn't. Marla's kiss had silenced him.

  'So, this is the first time we've been back to Jackson since jail,' Marla said. 'The old gang, back together again, huh?'

  Shane smiled. 'I thought I'd put this place behind me for good,' he said. 'Just shows how fucked up a thing guilt is.'

  'We had to run,' Marla said. 'If you remember, we were surrounded by fucking lurkers, and that helicopter wasn't going to wait all day for us. It's easy, thinking back, to say that you would have done things differently. I don't think that you could have, under any circumstances. We ran, we're still alive, and we're here now. If Megan and...' Shit, she'd forgotten what his wife was called.

  'Holly,' Shane said, trying not to sound too annoyed at her for the absent-mindedness – though maybe she had subconsciously forced the name from her memory; her feelings for Shane had been made apparent back at the school.

  'If Megan and Holly,' she continued, 'had been there, had seen what we were up against, they would have told you to do the very thing that you did.'

  Shane thought for a long moment, then nodded. Marla was right, as always, and though it pained him to admit it, he knew that there was nothing else he could have done back then.

  'Hey,' Marla said, more excitable than she had been the rest of the journey. She jabbed towards a small window above what looked like a strip-bar. The neon lights were still working, even after a month; two flashing female legs opening and closing incessantly. 'Guess who used to live in that apartment?'

  Silence.

  Then Terry laughed. 'You didn't?'

  'I did,' she said, laughing along. 'Three years I had to listen to porn-music from downstairs. It was back when I had been training for my doctorate, and it was the only place I could afford at the time.' She paused, trying to remember something, some little detail that might have eased the tension further. Then, she said, 'The landlord had been a right bastard. I remember his name, now. Jebediah Crunt.'

  At first Terry didn't speak. Instead he gave her a disbelieving look, testing for holes in the story.

  'I swear,' she said, chuckling. 'I used to call him Jeb the cunt. Sonofabitch wouldn't even give me my fucking security-deposit at the end. Said I'd pissed all over the bathroom carpet, which I hadn't. How can a woman piss on the carpet?'

  Shane piped up. 'You'd be surprised.' He laughed.

  They all laughed, thanks to Marla's moment of reminiscence, and whether it was true, or not, the tension slipped out of the bus and stayed out for the last mile to Jackson.

  The final mile, though, was where the nightmare began.

  *

  They stared up to the road ahead, none of them able to speak. Cars were strewn across the road, covered with snow. A vehicle-transporter lay overturned and stretched all the way from one side of the street to the other. People had been attacked in their cars on the day of the outbreak; either that or they had run for their lives, leaving their vehicles where they sat. The transporter was covered by a thick drift of snow, the Hondas it had been carrying barely visible thanks to the appalling weather.

  'Do either of you get the idea that we're not meant to get to the city?' Marla finally asked.

  'I expected this,' Shane said, turning the key in the ignition of the bus. The silence that came was more terrifying than the view through the windscreen. 'We were lucky to get this close.'

  'Really not feeling lucky right now,' Marla said.

  Shane pushed himself up from the driver's seat and turned to Terry, who handed him the recently cleaned and loaded .22.

  'What do you think?' the old man asked. 'It's about a mile into the city. Whereabouts did they – did you – live?'

  'They lived with Holly's mother the last I heard,' Shane said, slightly perturbed by the current direction of the conversation. 'In a house not far from the museum. I reckon we can make it in less than half an hour.'

  'Without taking into account the lurkers,' Marla said, ever the optimist. 'And the fact that we're in the middle of a fucking blizzard.'

  Shane sighed. 'I understand if neither of you want to get off the bus,' he said, trying not to make eye-contact with either of them. 'You've already done enough for me, but you know this is how it has to be. I ain't stopping now.'

  'Are you saying that you want to do this alone?' Marla asked, slightly dejected and annoyed with Shane.

  'No, of course―'

  'Then we're getting off this bus together,' she said. 'Look, Shane, we know what your family mean to you. Shit, I'd be doing exactly the same fucking thing if I thought any of my friends were still alive. We've come this far together, and we're seeing it through, together.'

  Shane smiled.

  'I will never forget this,' he said.

  'We won't let you,' Terry said, pulling the zipper on his jacket up so high the lower half of his face disappeared. 'But can we just get moving, before I have the sense to change my mind.'

  Shane pulled the lever on the dashboard and the door at the side noisily folded and opened. Marla held her hand out flat, gesturing to the open door which was already allowing snow onboard.

  'After you,' she said.

  Shane turned and carefully lowered himself from the step. The last thing he wanted to do was slip, fall on his ass and make a complete idiot of himself.

  Though the hand that grabbed his ankle made sure he did all three.

  Marla tried to reach for him, but it happened too fast. Initially, she thought he had simply gone over, landed with a thump in the snow, but as he flipped over, she could see that he was genuinely terrified, staring under th
e bus as if the devil himself had made a camp there.

  Terry launched himself outwards, avoiding whatever Shane was staring at. He landed in the snow, turned, and immediately recognised the creature staring back at them from the darkness.

  Victor Lord's face was mostly gone, but his one cheek remained, flapping about on his oozing skull. Back at the school he had been missing one arm; now, though, everything from the waist down was gone. He had somehow managed to hold on to the underside of the bus for forty miles, his remaining limbs must have been torn from him during the journey, his face scraped off by the harsh road-conditions.

  'Stubborn fucker, I'll give him that,' Terry said.

  He noticed an unlit cigar, tattered and useless, protruding from the creature's breast pocket – the only bit of camouflaged material that remained.

  'Do you want to do the honours, or―'

  Shane lifted the gun, and with one shot managed to tear apart what remained of Victor's head. Bone fragments and flesh spattered the snow beneath the bus. The creature's teeth chattered maniacally for a few seconds, and then its head fell forward into the soft, white blanket.

  Shane kicked the still-twitching hand off his ankle and lay still for a few seconds, trying to comprehend what had just happened. How the fuck had he managed to survive for forty miles? Was he that desperate to make them pay for stealing the Jeep, or was it simply the creature's inane relentlessness that drove it forward?

  Shane clambered to his feet and began to brush the snow from his clothes. His ass was soaked, and he wasn't looking forward to spending the next few hours with his jeans clinging to him like cellophane.

  Marla was standing in the bus door looking genuinely terrified. 'Am I okay to come down, now?'

  Terry smiled before offering his hand to her, which she duly took. As she stepped down, she glanced under the bus. The fragment of burnt camouflage gave it away, and she gasped, her hand slapped to her mouth.

  'Wow!' she said.

  Shane half-expected her to follow it up with OMG, or something equally as annoying, but she didn't.

  'Guess he really wanted to get his Jeep back,' Terry said, dusting himself off. 'Sonofabitch doesn't know when to stop.'

  'Are we going to stand here all day,' Marla asked, 'or are we gonna go find your family?'

  Shane liked her attitude. He pointed over to where the car-transporter lay in the road, like a dead mammoth in the middle of an ice-age. 'That's the best way on foot,' he said. 'We leave the Bergen here; I doubt anybody'll steal our shit.'

  'Why not?' Terry said. 'We would?'

  Terry was right, but Shane shrugged it off; there was no way they could carry the weight, not when they needed to be quick, and what if they came across a lurker, or worse? The packs would slow them down, no doubt about it.

  'Come on,' Shane said.

  He took one step before a guttural moan stopped him dead. They all glanced over to the blockade, to where the noise had apparently emanated from.

  They were right.

  A lurker, then another,. And pretty soon a small horde, appeared from behind the transporter. They hadn't spotted the survivors yet, but they would.

  'We need to get moving,' Shane said, sidling away to the right. Terry and Marla followed. 'They can't see us if we stay in the shadows.'

  'They're in our fucking way,' Terry whispered. 'What are we gonna do about that.'

  Marla shrugged. 'I know this city like the back of my hand,' she said. 'There's a shortcut to the museum over by the bank, providing you don't mind climbing a little.'

  'How do you know that?' Shane asked, pushing himself against a shop-front. 'You used to go fence-hopping when you lived above the strip-bar?'

  Marla nodded. 'Something like that.'

  They headed for the bank, keeping to the shadows, and trying to ignore the incessant racket of the shambling horde.

  *

  She pushed forward, through the increasingly crowded corridor. The creatures snapped for her, tried to grab onto her with broken fingers and bloodied maws, but she gave them very little opportunity to get a purchase. They were slow, awkward, and she was lithe, like a Russian gymnast, and she danced through them, heading for the museum entrance. As she slipped past one final creature, it almost hooked her. She spun to find a cowboy – or what appeared to be a cowboy – reaching for her with arthritic fingers. She was so unsure at what she was seeing that she almost tripped over.

  The corridor opened up into the museum-foyer, and she knew that she could make it. Shambling towards her were at least ten of them, apparently led by the cowboy, who was eagerly lunging towards her with both arms, its hat held on only by a piece of elastic beneath its chin.

  She was so focused on the surreal creature that she almost didn't spot the one sneaking around to her right. Its grunt gave it away, though; she was thankful that they didn't seem to be able to keep their mouths shut, even when their food was at stake.

  She whipped the machete through the air and decapitated the cadaver where it stood. Its head shot across the room, hit a wall, bounced off, knocked over what was probably a priceless artefact which smashed into more pieces than anybody would ever want to count, and rolled to a stop, still blinking. By the time she realised what was happening, the cowboy had launched itself towards her.

  The machete, on its return visit, sliced the cowboy's face off completely, and the brim of its hat. She dropped to one knee and pushed the blade up through the cadaver's jaw, up through its brain and out the top of its head. The hat lifted a few inches, balancing on the tip of the machete. As she retracted her weapon, the hat came back down onto the confused-looking cowboy's head. To an observer, it would have looked like the cowboy was merely being polite. 'Thank you, Ma'am.'

  It fell to the ground as she pushed herself up onto her feet.

  She turned and ran for the entrance, for the cold of the night. As she lunged through the door, she realised that her fight had only just begun.

  A hundred creatures – maybe more – were shambling around the museum grounds, falling over each other, bumping into things. She raced out onto the snow, the group of cadavers approaching from behind giving her no other option.

  She whipped the machete through the air and took a deep breath.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  At first, the snow was nothing but a hindrance, something that slowed them down. They were covering ground as if they were wearing ice-skates on concrete; very fucking slowly. But the snow had its perks, as they found out.

  'I never came to this side of the city,' Terry whispered, breathlessly. 'I was more of a west-sider.' As he spoke, a plume of fog filled the air in front of his face, obscuring him completely. 'Mind, I didn't see much of anything after the nineties, so I can hardly comment on the changing face of the city.'

  He was, of course, referring to the fact that he had spent almost twenty years incarcerated for the murder of a priest. One that had made the mistake of molesting him, but a priest nonetheless.

  'You didn't miss a lot,' Marla said. 'Just the Spice Girls and 9/11.'

  'Holy shit,' Terry said. 'I forgot about that. What an absolute fucking nightmare. The goddamned Spice Girls...'

  He waited for them to get the joke, and when they did it was hard to stay quiet. Marla actually had to stifle herself, shoving a hand into her mouth to prevent the laughter from echoing around the silent street. Shane finally hushed them cocking his head to one side as if he was trying to hear something.

  'What?' Marla whispered. 'Shane, did you hear something?'

  He nodded. They were standing just outside a coffee-shop, the kind of place that costs real money to drink at. Across the road lay a car on its side, the door jutting up into the air showing that the passengers had either managed to escape, or been dragged kicking and screaming.

  Shane was looking past the car.

  'I don't see anything,' Terry said. 'The wind―'

  'It wasn't the wind,' Shane mumbled. He readied the pistol in his hand, awaiting...well, nobody knew,
but it was clear that he was spooked, and that was enough to set the others on edge.

  'Maybe,' Shane said after a few moments, 'I got it wrong. The sounds travel in this weather, don't they?'

  He was about to lower the .22 again when it appeared, just jumped out of the open car door, a dog, or so they thought at first.

  And then it landed, a few feet in front of the overturned vehicle.

  All three of them recoiled; Marla actually squealed, which was a rarity in itself.

  Shane held a hand up, a sign for them to make as little sound as possible. The gun in his hand rattled, though, as he kept it trained on the prowling monster.

  A tiger, an actual, full-grown fucking tiger, in the middle of the street. You heard about things like this in Africa, but now it was happening in the middle of an American city.

  Shane didn't know what to do. The animal was obviously uninfected – was it even possible for them to contract the virus? - but it was a maneater, nonetheless. They had slipped even further down the food-chain in a matter of seconds.

  Marla's eyes bulged from her head as she struggle to control her breathing. She had seen tigers before, at the zoo where they belonged. There were no safety fences now, though, and she had never been more terrified in her entire existence. Lurkers were slow, they could outrun them; a tiger would chase them down and tear them to shreds before they even had a chance to turn.

  The beast slowly stalked the road. Shane tried to recall the countless nature programmes he and Holly had watched together, but there had been nothing on there about fending off one of the predators should they appear in the middle of the fucking street. He knew that you should punch a shark on its nose, and if a pit-bull latched onto you the best way to get it to open its jaws was to shove a finger up its ass. Shane didn't think either of those methods would work on a 700 pound tiger.