The Ghosts of Winter

by Christopher Coleman

  I held my ear to the air, trying to detect from which direction the attack would come, and thinking the attacker was still only a few steps into the next aisle, I decided I would lure it to the back, away from the exit path. Then, as if I were tossing a cornhole beanbag, I threw the can of tuna high in the air and outward and waited the second or two it took to come crashing down at the back of the aisle.

  I heard the slap of the creature’s feet once more, scurrying toward the sound like a frightened rodent, and I immediately re-gripped the flashlight and shined it toward the back of the aisle, anticipating the appearance. Almost instantly, it was in front of me, entering the light’s beam like a circus showman, though hunched and balled in posture, its face a mask of white, its eyes squinted in a way I’d never seen from them before, bothered by the light.

  “Come on,” I said quietly, gripping the cart handle and flashlight simultaneously as I backed my way to the front of the aisle, pulling the cart toward the awaiting door that led to the Lawn and Garden section.

  At first, the White One simply studied me, but then, as if fearing I was drifting too far away, it began to follow, one limb at a time to start, and then at a lope.

  “That’s it,” I said, “keep coming.” I was out the door now, into the nursery area, my car only twenty yards or so to my right at the curb.

  The mutant once again entered my sights now at the doorway, still inside the store, staring out at me, hesitating, as if it knew it had been led to a trap. I held the flashlight and magnum both like pistols toward the creature now, ready to fire, but before I could pull the trigger, it darted to the right, out of the path of my beam, disappearing into the far front section of the store. And as it did, it cleared the way for the beam of my light to shine down the main aisle of the Wal mart, to the opposite end of the store, and there, in a gallop, I could see them coming.

  12: The Fear

  I was at the driver’s side of the car now, door open, and there was nothing but pure fear in me now, an animal sense of self-preservation. I focused not on the approaching horde, but only on piling what I could from the basket into the car while still leaving enough time to get in myself and drive off. I figured fifteen seconds total, ten for the loading of items and five to escape.

  I wrapped my arms fully around the top pile of clothes and tossed them to the driver’s seat, and then dug beneath for the cans, which I could only grip one at a time.

  Six cans were loaded when I heard the crash of flesh against metal shelving, followed by the destruction of pottery on cement, and I quickly used my last selection on the tent, which I clutched to my chest as I snaked myself into the driver’s seat and closed the door.

  They were at the car now, surrounding it like a mob of rioters, but unlike a crush of people, I had no obligation to consider the lives of these demons, and I started the Monte Carlo and steadied it forward as if I was pulling out of my own driveway.

  The creature in front hopped to the side, as if sensing I was prepared to squash it, and unlike at the motel, none of them pursued the car. I watched them in the mirrors turn like a flock of birds back toward the store, where they were obviously sustained by god-knew-what inside.

  It was still dark when I arrived at the Lake Sloman sign, and by the time I entered the hidden road that led back to the cabin, I knew something was wrong.

  Very wrong.

  My palms began to sweat, my throat tightening, and as I entered the darkness of the driveway, the sting of tears formed in my eyes.

  I drove the car all the way up to the cabin, banging the front porch with the bumper of the Chevy, and I immediately leapt from the car and ran to the house. The front door was unlocked, but I knew I had locked it, and I instantly ran inside and back to the bedrooms, first to the boys’, then to Emerson’s, and finally to ours.

  Empty.

  “No!” I screamed, the tears already on their way down my cheeks. “No! No! No!”

  I walked from the bedroom and stood at the intersection of the three bedrooms, the flashlight now lit and searching the tiny cabin for clues. I couldn’t breathe; fear was consuming me, and I felt my legs begin to wobble.

  I closed my eyes in a long blink, trying to find a reserve of courage and level-headedness. I opened my eyes again and walked back to the main area of the cabin, then to the kitchen, all of which seemed to be in relative order, though not exactly as I remembered. A few blankets and pillows in disarray. A plastic cup on the floor.

  And then my eye caught something else: the gun locker.

  It was open, and the Mossberg Patriot was gone.

  I put a hand to my mouth, trying to decide whether the open locker and the missing gun was a good sign or one to be dreaded, and I quickly decided on the former. My family was gone, which was almost unbearable, especially after I had left them in secret; but the gun was gone too—as was Newton—and that meant that Charlotte had had enough time to prepare for an escape.

  But to where? And how? I had the only mode of transportation, and if they’d been attacked—either by men or monsters—leaving on foot with three kids would have been suicide.

  As I stood in the silent house, racking my brain for possibilities, the crackle of steps came from outside; I could hear them through the kitchen window, which was slightly cracked, and as I gazed toward the screened opening, I recalled the incident from a month earlier, only a day after the breach, when Emerson and Ryan had been playing on the pier one moment and were suddenly gone the next. The fear I’d experienced then had been unique to me, and that was after only a minute or so of not knowing where my children were.

  But now they really were gone, as was Charlotte and Nelson, and the more I thought it through, gun or not, the chances they were still alive were faint.

  The rustle again, this time more erratic, and I was thrust back to the moment, out from the darkness of my dismay. Dawn was beginning to break above the lake, and I walked to the window, where my eyes fell upon something on the ground, moving slowly along the shoreline, away from the pier toward the tree where Emerson had dried off that day so many weeks ago, just after emerging in defeat from beneath the water.

  A surge of hope suddenly flooded me, and I cocked the revolver and headed for the porch, clearing the steps in a single spring as I ran for the lake.

  And three steps in the direction of the water, I knew exactly what I was seeing.

  A White One, with a dried red exit wound like a bloody eye on the right side of its back, was crawling through the reeds and stones and sand of the lake shore, heading toward a grassy bank that led to the woods, presumably looking for a place to die.

  I swallowed and took in a large breath, and then I pointed my weapon at the creature, my hand shaking now, tears streaming my face again as a vague anger—anger at the creature and the world and my decision to leave without warning—now replaced the fear and anxiety from moments earlier. I didn’t know if the creature lying wounded on the ground should be taken as a sign of encouragement or despair—on the one hand, it was injured and dying; on the other, I knew where there was one, there were always more. As Ryan had noted one day: There was never just one Corrupted.

  But whether the damaged beast was a blessing or not I couldn’t decide in that moment, so overwhelmed was I with pain and fury, energy and motivation. The sun was now risen, and in the openness of the lake shore, I had a clear view of the morning chaos, and I strode with purpose toward the creature until I was within a pace or two of it. The thing seemed unaware of my presence still, or perhaps it was too injured even to make the turn of its torso to see me. I absently debated whether to use one of my two remaining bullets on it or to simply let the nature of the wound run its course, thus allowing it to die a slow and, presumably, painful death.

  But as the decisions played out against one another in my mind, a different thought, one from only moments earlier, wedged itself back inside.

  There was never just one.

  It was as close to a fact as I could state about the creatur
es, and it was one I had forgotten—almost fatally—back at the Wal mart. I lifted my chin suspiciously and turned back toward the cabin, and then I took a step in the direction of the house, my intention to enter it again and conduct a second search, this time in the new, better light of the rising day. After all, I thought, if Charlotte had managed to fire off one round, certainly she could have gotten of another, perhaps even two more, any of which could have found its way into the body of a White One, just as the first one had.

  I was suddenly buoyed with hope, now believing that I would find one of the creatures dead somewhere in a corner, or perhaps beneath the porch; and as I prepared to break into an all-out run for the cabin, I stopped as if I’d hit a stone wall and then slowly turned toward the water. There was another White One, not dead at all, but sitting in the grass some twenty yards down from the pier where the outboard motorboat had been beached for the past three months. Beside the creature was a second one, and both were watching me from the same meditative pose, arms sprawled out by their sides, each studying me like nonchalant albino orangutans, and I some new species of animal that had just climbed from the lake water.

  I squinted in their direction as the anger from earlier boiled again within me, and with little concern for the ensuing consequences, I took several quick steps toward the creatures, my neck forward, eyes wide and searching, studying their faces and bodies for remnants of flesh or blood, any indicator that my family had been slaughtered by them.

  But I couldn’t see any evidence of violence upon their faces, and I was now only twelve or fifteen feet away from the creatures, well within striking distance of them, suicidal in my proximity had I been unarmed.

  But I was armed, and this time I raised the magnum with a steady right hand while stabilizing the gun with my left, and when my first target—the one to my right—fell into its proper place within the sight, I fired.

  The bullet entered the beast’s forehead perfectly, as if I’d measured for the true center of the skull and then placed it there by hand, and I thought back to all the hours I’d spent on the shooting range, a hobby I’d taken up soon after the army, never believing the practice would ever pay off in the wild.

  I fired again, and the next White One fell beside its partner seconds later, and like that, two of the marauders—perhaps the killers of my family—lay in a grotesque fleshy mound in front of the lake, like corpses being prepared for discardment into an earthen pit of a prison camp.

  I hung my head for a moment and breathed for the first time in minutes, and then I quickly thought of Charlotte and the kids again, considering where to go from there. I was out of ideas for an explanation; the only thing to do then was to drive the area around the cabin and patrol the woods on foot, increasing the perimeter with each pass as I called their names, and then hopefully find them walking the street or hiding somewhere beyond the tree line.

  I lifted my head to turn back to the car, but before I took my first step, my gaze caught the line of the shore again, just beyond the lumps of dead flesh that I’d left littered there moments earlier.

  And there I saw nothing.

  The beach was empty.

  The boat.

  It was gone.

  13: The Trail

  I was at the Lake Sloman overlook in three minutes, and with the binoculars I’d retrieved from the Explorer, I stared down to the lake as far east as I could see before the tufts of treetops shrouded the view beyond. I only prayed I would catch sight of the boat on the water before it was too late; even if I was at a distance too far to call out for them—which I almost certainly would be—just knowing they were alive and heading in the direction of the Mississippi would bring new life to my lungs and legs.

  That prospect was too easy of course, and though I desperately scanned the water and landscape for any sign of my family, the only life I could find was a single blue heron steadfastly keeping watch over his lake. But my hope had still been salvaged. The boat was gone, after all—which I knew for certain it hadn’t been the day before—and that meant Charlotte and the kids had escaped.

  Of course, the lake didn’t reach all the way to the waters of the Mississippi—not even close—but it was a good seventeen miles wide, and if Charlotte kept the boat heading east and stayed on the water for as long as possible, she could arrive at the end of the reservoir a little over six miles from the mighty river. And from there they could walk the remainder of the way, Charlotte leading the kids to an early bank of the river, perhaps finding another boat there that she could get out on the water and sail across. And then, with luck, perhaps a ferry or helicopter or...

  I closed my eyes and cleared my mind. I was mentally rambling. The possibilities about what might happen were endless; there was no point playing such a futile game. I just needed to head in the same direction they were traveling, to follow them on land as best I could. Charlotte knew the lake reasonably well and had a good sense of direction, better than I on both counts, and I would have trusted her more than myself to get us to the end.

  The challenge was that there was no real way for me to travel on foot along the banks of the lake, not in a way that I could keep an eye on the water the whole time. Most of the shoreline in any direction was buttressed by sheer earthen faces and trees, with only a scattering of beaches at various points along the way, respites that had been carved into the banks by machine.

  And that meant the only real way to follow the flow of the lake, albeit from a distance, was along Flint Trail.

  Flint Trail was just over twenty-three miles long, most of which traced Lake Sloman like the outline of a shadow. I’d never taken the trail to its full extent (though I always declared I would run it one day and count it as a marathon, explaining to Charlotte that she would need to pick me up at the other end), I knew the place on the map where it ended, an opening in the trees just west of a large wilderness refuge, less than a half-mile from the Mississippi. If I made good time, I could traverse the trail, get to the end, and then backtrack a few miles north and west and hopefully run into Charlotte and the kids.

  Along the trail were several outlooks, just like the one at the trailhead, and from what I knew about the portion of the trail that I’d traveled previously, the waters could be spotted at various points throughout. It was from one of those points I was praying to catch a glimpse of some movement below, any sign of hope that Charlotte and the kids had passed through.

  It was all wishful thinking, of course, especially the first part about beating them to the end of the trail. Even with the ancient outboard motor attached to the even older boat (‘vintage,’ Charlotte liked to label them), they would still be traveling way too fast for me to keep pace. And unless they ended up camping somewhere along a bank—and I doubted Charlotte would ever make that choice—the likelihood of me spotting them from the trail was not good.

  Still, there was a chance, and a chance is all I would have asked for back at the cabin the moment I knew my family was gone. Besides, they couldn’t have gotten more than an hour or so head start, and though I was exhausted and weak and would certainly have to stop at some point along the twenty-three miles to rest, there existed still the breath of hope in my chest.

  And then suddenly that breath appeared before me like a ghost, hovering in the air before me like a numinous mist, and I felt a sting in my toes and ears and at the tips of my fingers.

  The temperature had begun to drop like a stone. It was getting cold. Very cold.

  I looked to the sky, which had suddenly gone from a brightly lit blue to a linen white; in the distance grayer blankets threatened. And as I pondered the cloud cover, my mind sparked of the first stories that began leaking from Warren County, stories that at first made only the tabloid news shows and papers, but which quickly became lead stories—then the leads—for the more mainstream outlets. Snow had burst through the atmosphere in May, they had reported, witnesses on the outside were sure of it, and though the specifics of what had really fallen from the sky that day had nev
er been confirmed, there was little doubt in my mind (and most citizens, I assumed) that a connection between that detail and the White Ones that followed was one that could assuredly be made.

  Six months. That was all the time that had passed since the story first broke, an unbelievably short amount of time in comparison to the shift the world had taken. And now winter was almost here—the first winter of the new world—and the snows that, presumably, had created the enemy loomed.

  I put my hands to my mouth and blew a warm blast into my palms, heating them for only a cruel moment before the surrounding bitterness took hold once more. I looked out again to the river and shivered my shoulders, knowing the chill I was feeling was careening down upon my family as well.

  Charlotte would have dressed them appropriately. Layered them up with everything she could find in the cabin. Sweaters—she had mentioned sweaters—and she always fussed over winter.

  And with that prompting thought, I walked quickly to the Monte Carlo and began scavenging for those items I would need for the trip ahead, beginning with two of the Wal mart pull-overs which I forced onto my body with some effort. The tight fit was far from comfortable, but I would make it work. I then pulled one of the knit hats down taut against my skull and loaded as many of the other pieces of clothing into the tent bag, which I then strapped across my back like a mountain climber. Finally, I stuffed the hunting knife into the hollow above my backside (the empty .357 I left behind), picked up the Remington rifle that I’d retrieved from the gun locker, and with my gear loaded, I began my track down Flint Trail, taking the path in a sprint for as long as my lungs would allow me.