by Tim Lebbon
The sky was a clear blue. The sun rose ahead of us as if mocking the frozen landscape. Some days it started like this, but the snow never seemed to melt. I had almost forgotten what the ground below it looked like; it seemed that the snow had been here forever. When it began our spirits had soared, like a bunch of school-kids waking to find the landscape had changed overnight. Charley and I had still gone down to the sea to take our readings, and when we returned there was a snowman in the garden wearing one of her bras and a pair of my briefs. A snowball fight had ensued, during which Brand became a little too aggressive for his own good. We’d ganged up on him and pelted him with snow compacted to ice until he shouted and yelped. We were cold and wet and bruised, but we did not stop laughing for hours.
We’d all dried out in front of the open fire in the huge living room. Rosalie had stripped to her knickers and danced to music on the radio. She was a bit of a sixties throwback, Rosalie, and she didn’t seem to realise what her little display did to cosseted people like me. I watched happily enough.
Later, we sat around the fire and told ghost stories. Boris was still with us then, of course, and he came up with the best one which had us all cowering behind casual expressions. He told us of a man who could not see, hear or speak, but who knew of the ghosts around him. His life was silent and senseless save for the day his mother died. Then he cried and shouted and raged at the darkness, before curling up and dying himself. His world opened up then, and he no longer felt alone, but whoever he tried to speak to could only fear or loath him. The living could never make friends with the dead. And death had made him more silent than ever.
None of us would admit it, but we were all scared shitless as we went to bed that night. As usual, doors opened and footsteps padded along corridors. And, as usual, my door remained shut and I slept alone.
Days later the snow was too thick to be enjoyable. It became risky to go outside, and as the woodpile started to dwindle and the radio and television broadcasts turned more grim, we realised that we were becoming trapped. A few of us had tried to get to the village, but it was a half-hearted attempt and we’d returned once we were tired. We figured we’d travelled about two miles along the coast. We had seen no one.
As the days passed and the snow thickened, the atmosphere did likewise with a palpable sense of panic. A week ago, Boris had pointed out that there were no ‘plane trails anymore.
This, our second attempt to reach the village, felt more like life and death. Before Boris had been killed we’d felt confined, but it also gave a sense of protection from the things going on in the world. Now there was a feeling that if we could not get out, worse things would happen to us where we were.
I remembered Jayne as she lay dying from the unknown disease. I had been useless, helpless, hopeless, praying to a God I had long ignored to grant us a kind fate. I refused to sit back and go the same way. I would not go gentle. Fuck fate.
“What was that?”
Brand stopped and tugged the little pistol from his belt. It was stark black against the pure white snow.
“What?”
He nodded. “Over there.” I followed his gaze and looked up the sloping hillside. To our right the sea sighed against the base of the cliffs. To our left — the direction Brand was now facing — snowfields led up a gentle slope towards the moors several miles inland. It was a rocky, craggy landscape, and some rocks had managed to hold off the drifts. They peered out darkly here and there, like the faces of drowning men going under for the final time.
“What?” I said again, exasperated. I’d slipped the shotgun off my shoulder and held it waist-high. My finger twitched on the trigger guard. Images of Boris’s remains sharpened my senses. I did not want to end up like that.
“I saw something moving. Something white.”
“Some snow, perhaps?” Charley said bitterly.
“Something running across the snow,” he said, frowning as he concentrated on the middle-distance. The smoke from his joint mingled with his condensing breath.
We stood that way for a minute or two, steaming sweat like smoke signals of exhaustion. I tried taking off my glasses to look, but the glare was too much. I glanced sideways at Charley. She’d pulled a big old revolver from her rucksack and held it with both hands. Her lips were pulled back from her teeth in a feral grimace. She really wanted to use that gun.
I saw nothing. “Could have been a cat. Or a seagull flying low.”
“Could have been.” Brand shoved the pistol back into his belt and reached around for his water canteen. He tipped it to his lips and cursed. “Frozen!”
“Give it a shake,” I said. I knew it would do no good but it may shut him up for a while. “Charley, what’s the time?” I had a watch but I wanted to talk to Charley, keep her involved with the present, keep her here. I had started to realise not only what a stupid idea this was, but what an even more idiotic step it had been letting Charley come along. If she wasn’t here for revenge, she was blind with grief. I could not see her eyes behind her sunglasses.
“Nearly midday.” She was hoisting her rucksack back onto her shoulders, never taking her eyes from the snowscape sloping slowly up and away from us. “What do you think it was?”
I shrugged. “Brand seeing things. Too much wacky baccy.”
We set off again. Charley was in the lead, I followed close behind and Brand stumbled along at the rear. It was eerily silent around us, the snow muffling our gasps and puffs, the constant grumble of the sea soon blending into the background as much as it ever did. There was a sort of white noise in my ears: blood pumping; breath ebbing and flowing; snow crunching underfoot. They merged into one whisper, eschewing all outside noise, almost soporific in rhythm. I coughed to break the spell.
“What the hell do we do when we get to the village?” Brand said.
“Send back help,” Charley stated slowly, enunciating each word as if to a naïve young child.
“But what if the village is like everywhere else we’ve seen or heard about on TV?”
Charley was silent for a while. So was I. A collage of images tumbled through my mind, hateful and hurtful and sharper because of that. Hazy scenes from the last day of television broadcasts we had watched: loaded ships leaving docks and sailing off to some nebulous sanctuary abroad; shootings in the streets, bodies in the gutters, dogs sniffing at open wounds; an airship, drifting over the hills in some vague attempt to offer hope.
“Don’t be stupid,” I said.
“Even if it is, there will be help there,” Charley said quietly.
“Like hell.” Brand lit up another joint. It was cold, we were risking our lives, there may very well be something in the snow itching to attack us … but at that moment I wanted nothing more than to take a long haul on Brand’s pot, and let casual oblivion anaesthetise my fears.
An hour later we found the car.
By my figuring we had come about three miles. We were all but exhausted. My legs ached, knee joints stiff and hot as if on fire.
The road had started a slow curve to the left, heading inland from the coast toward the distant village. Its path had become less distinct, the hedges having sunk slowly into the ground until there was really nothing to distinguish it from the fields of snow on either side. We had been walking the last half-hour on memory alone.
The car was almost completely buried by snow, only one side of the windscreen and the iced-up aerial still visible. There was no sign of the route it had taken; whatever tracks it had made were long-since obliterated by the blizzards. As we approached the snow started again, fat flakes drifting lazily down and landing on the icy surface of last night’s fall.
“Do not drive unless absolutely necessary,” Brand said. Charley and I ignored him. We unslung our rucksacks and approached the buried shape, all of us keeping hold of our weapons. I meant to ask Charley where she’d got hold of the revolver — whether she’d had it with her when we both came here to test the sea and write environmental reports which would never be read
— but now did not seem the time. I had no wish to seem judgmental or patronising.
As I reached out to knock some of the frozen snow from the windscreen a flight of seagulls cawed and took off from nearby. They had been all but invisible against the snow, but there were at least thirty of them lifting as one, calling loudly as they twirled over our heads and then headed out to sea.
We all shouted out in shock. Charley stumbled sideways as she tried to bring her gun to bear and fell on her back. Brand screeched like a kid, then let off a pop with his air pistol to hide his embarrassment. The pellet found no target. The birds ignored us after the initial fly-past, and they slowly merged with the hazy distance. The new snow shower brought the horizon in close.
“Shit,” Charley muttered.
“Yeah.” Brand reloaded his pistol without looking at either of us, then rooted around for the joint he’d dropped when he screamed.
Charley and I went back to knocking the snow away, using our gloved hands to make tracks down the windscreen and across the bonnet. “I think it’s a Ford,” I said uselessly. “Maybe an old Mondeo.” Jayne and I had owned a Mondeo when we’d been courting. Many was the time we had parked in some shaded woodland or beside units on the local industrial estate, wound down the windows and made love as the cool night air looked on. We’d broken down once while I was driving her home; it had made us two hours late and her father had come close to beating me senseless. It was only the oil on my hands that had convinced him of our story.
I closed my eyes.
“Can’t see anything,” Charley said, jerking me back to cold reality. “Windscreen’s frozen up on the inside.”
“Take us ages to clear the doors.”
“What do you want to do that for?” Brand said. “Dead car, probably full of dead people.”
“Dead people may have guns and food and fuel,” I said. “Going to give us a hand?”
Brand glanced at the dark windshield, the contents of the car hidden by ice and shadowed by the weight of snow surrounding it. He sat gently on his rucksack, and when he saw it would take his weight without sinking in the snow, he re-lit his joint and stared out to sea. I wondered whether he’d even notice if we left him there.
“We could uncover the passenger door,” Charley said. “Driver’s side is stuck fast in the drift, take us hours.”
We both set about trying to shift snow away from the car. “Keep your eyes open,” I said to Brand. He just nodded and watched the sea lift and drop its thickening ice-floes. I used the shotgun as a crutch to lift myself onto the bonnet, and from there to the covered roof.
“What?” Charley said. I ignored her, turning a slow circle, trying to pick out any movement against the fields of white. To the west lay the manor, a couple of miles away and long since hidden by creases in the landscape. To the north the ground still rose steadily away from the sea, rocks protruding here and there along with an occasional clump of trees hardy enough to survive Atlantic storms. Nothing moved. The shower was turning quickly into a storm and I felt suddenly afraid. The manor was at least three miles behind us; the village seven miles ahead. We were in the middle, three weak humans slowly freezing as nature freaked out and threw weeks of snow and ice at us. And here we were, convinced we could defeat it, certain in our own puny minds that we were the rulers here, we called the shots. However much we polluted and contaminated, I knew, we would never call the shots. Nature may let us live within it, but in the end it would purge and clean itself. And whether there would be room for us in the new world …
Perhaps this was the first stage of that cleansing. While civilisation slaughtered itself, disease and extremes of weather took advantage of our distraction to pick off the weak.
“We should get back,” I said.
“But the village —”
“Charley, it’s almost two. It’ll start getting dark in two hours, maximum. We can’t travel in the dark; we might walk right by the village, or stumble onto one of those ice overhangs at the cliff edge. Brand here may get so doped he thinks we’re ghosts and shoot us with his pop-gun.”
“Hey!”
“But Boris …” Charley said. “He’s … we need help. To bury him. We need to tell someone.”
I climbed carefully down from the car roof and landed in the snow beside her. “We’ll take a look in the car. Then we should get back. It’ll help no one if we freeze to death out here.”
“I’m not cold,” she said defiantly.
“That’s because you’re moving, you’re working. When you walk you sweat and you’ll stay warm. When we have to stop — and eventually we will — you’ll stop moving. Your sweat will freeze, and so will you. We’ll all freeze. They’ll find us in the thaw, you and me huddled up for warmth, Brand with a frozen reefer still in his gob.”
Charley smiled, Brand scowled. Both expressions pleased me.
“The door’s frozen shut,” she said.
“I’ll use my key.” I punched at the glass with the butt of the shotgun. After three attempts the glass shattered and I used my gloved hands to clear it all away. I caught a waft of something foul and stale. Charley stepped back with a slight groan. Brand was oblivious.
We peered inside the car, leaning forward so that the weak light could filter in around us.
There was a dead man in the driver’s seat. He was frozen solid, hunched up under several blankets, only his eyes and nose visible. Icicles hung from both. His eyelids were still open. On the dashboard a candle had burnt down to nothing more than a puddle of wax, imitating the ice as it dripped forever toward the floor. The scene was so still it was eerie, like a painting so life-like that textures and shapes could be felt. I noticed the driver’s door handle was jammed open, though the door had not budged against the snowdrift burying that side of the car. At the end he had obviously attempted to get out. I shuddered as I tried to imagine this man’s lonely death. It was the second body I’d seen in two days.
“Well?” Brand called from behind us.
“Your drug supplier,” Charley said. “Car’s full of snow.”
I snorted, pleased to hear the humour, but when I looked at her she seemed as sad and forlorn as ever. “Maybe we should see if he brought us anything useful,” she said, and I nodded.
Charley was smaller than me so she said she’d go. I went to protest but she was already wriggling through the shattered window, and a minute later she’d thrown out everything loose she could find. She came back out without looking at me.
There was a rucksack half full of canned foods; a petrol can with a swill of fuel in the bottom; a novel frozen at page ninety; some plastic bottles filled with piss and split by the ice; a rifle, but no ammunition; a smaller rucksack with wallet, some papers, an electronic credit card; a photo wallet frozen shut; a plastic bag full of shit; a screwed-up newspaper as hard as wood.
Everything was frozen.
“Let’s go,” I said. Brand and Charley took a couple of items each and shouldered their rucksacks. I picked up the rifle. We took everything except the shit and piss.
It took us four hours to get back to the manor. Three times on the way Brand said he’d seen something bounding through the snow — a stag, he said, big and white with sparkling antlers — and we dropped everything and went into a defensive huddle. But nothing ever materialised from the worsening storm, even though our imaginations painted all sorts of horrors behind and beyond the snowflakes. If there were anything out there, it kept itself well hidden.
The light was fast fading as we arrived back. Our tracks had been all but covered, and it was only later that I realised how staggeringly lucky we’d been to even find our way home. Perhaps something was on our side, guiding us, steering us back to the manor. Perhaps it was the change in nature taking us home, preparing us for what was to come next.
It was the last favour we were granted.
Hayden cooked us some soup as the others huddled around the fire, listening to our story and trying so hard not to show their disappointment. Br
and kept chiming in about the things he’d seen in the snow. Even Ellie’s face held the taint of fading hope.
“Boris’s angels?” Rosalie suggested. “He may have seen angels, you know. They’re not averse to steering things their way, when it suits them.” Nobody answered.
Charley was crying again, shivering by the fire. Rosalie had wrapped her in blankets and now hugged her close.
“The gun looks okay.” Ellie said. She’d sat at the table and stripped and oiled the rifle, listening to us all as we talked. She illustrated the fact by pointing it at the wall and squeezing the trigger a few times. Click click click. There was no ammunition for it.
“What about the body?” Rosalie asked. “Did you see who it was?”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Well, if it was someone coming along the road toward the manor, maybe one of us knew him.” We were all motionless save for Ellie, who still rooted through the contents of the car. She’d already put the newspaper on the floor so that it could dry out, in the hope of being able to read at least some of it. We’d made out the date: one week ago. The television had stopped showing pictures two weeks ago. There was a week of history in there, if only we could save it.
“He was frozen stiff,” I said. “We didn’t get a good look … and anyway, who’d be coming here? And why? Maybe it was a good job —”
Ellie gasped. There was a tearing sound as she peeled apart more pages of the photo wallet and gasped again, this time struggling to draw in a breath afterwards.
“Ellie?”
She did not answer. The others had turned to her but she seemed not to notice. She saw nothing, other than the photographs in her hand. She stared at them for an endless few seconds, eyes moist yet unreadable in the glittering fire light. Then she scraped the chair back across the polished floor, crumpled the photo’s into her back pocket and walked quickly from the room.