by Logan Keys
He was shouting so loudly that he wasn’t surprised that Jean had come outside and was trying to inject herself between them to no avail. “Guys, stop! This doesn’t help!” Her eyes flashed at Luckman, trying to anchor him, but he was slowly unraveling.
“Hey, let go!” Holtz shouted, but Luckman wasn’t finished.
“It’s guys like you that put us in this situation. Yes. You. Selfish to the last second.” With disgust Luckman pried his hands from Holtz’s coat.
“Go inside!” Jean begged Holtz, afraid of what Luckman would do.
Which was telling. He must have looked insane. Good. He felt it.
“You both just need sleep,” she said, moving close so Luckman could hear her. “We’re exhausted. Tearing each other apart won’t fix this, Lucky. He’s on our side.”
“How do you know that?” Luckman asked, ignoring the nice feeling of her calling him his nickname with such familiarity.
Jean’s gaze was sad. That he had fallen so far. That he trusted almost no one but German. That he’d become a crazy person who wanted to drag Holtz out of the cave once more and beat him to a bloody pulp. He shuddered with the rage still beating through his veins. “Because,” Jean offered. “It’s us versus the end, Lucky. It’s not people versus people anymore. Don’t you see that?”
Luckman opened his mouth, but she was already moving back inside of the cave. He felt properly chastised. It was the wakeup call he’d needed. Jean was right. It was them against the weather. The Killing Cold against humanity. He wouldn’t forget that again.
Chapter Two
New York
Mr. Chung drove Donny’s car back to the house, following behind Michelle and Bob. He was a terrible driver but managed to keep from sliding off the road. He’d stayed inside the car the entire time that the altercation had gone down, even after seeing Donny had been shot, such was his fear of being killed himself. Mr. Chung had tried to apologize, he’d shook and cried, but Michelle had told him over and over that she understood. Because she did. The cops…she’d never even tried to help them either as they’d been beaten to death not twenty feet from where she’d hidden. Not that she could have done anything, but still. And she’d said the same to Mr. Chung. He could not have saved Donny. None of them could stop a bullet.
Michelle had then driven Bob’s truck while he’d sat in back with Donny’s body, now cold and long since free of his soul. Every few feet Michelle had checked the rearview mirror and flinched to see Bob’s face was drawn and defeated. It scared her. Blood covered her clothing and the iron tang was stronger with the heater blasting. It had turned the air sour and it made her mouth water from nausea.
The drive had felt longer. Like an eternity.
Bob’s house now seemed gloomier, darker, and just plain uninviting. Nothing like before. Before it had been a joy-filled place, a happy reunion with Bob’s family. Now, a place for the dead. A cemetery.
Michelle wasn’t sure of the plan. Certainly, Bob would want Carry there before they buried their son, but even now, it would be nearly impossible to drive across the bridge to New York city, and night was falling. It would be full dark before anyone else made it to the house. It would be more than dangerous---deadly---to attempt a crossing with the temperatures and ice.
Donny’s body had been moved to the bed where Mrs. Haverstick had been a short time before. It felt like days had gone by, but they’d only spent one whole one burying the old woman and now Bob’s son waited for his turn when less than an hour before he’d been by their side. Michelle shuddered at the memory of them all carrying Donny, now lifeless and still bleeding into his old bedroom. She’d cleaned up the drips along the way because she had wanted to keep her hands busy.
And maybe to erase the proof so Bob didn’t have to look at them every second of the night.
Bob approached her side and stood next to her. It was a tight fit before the smaller window in the kitchen, and so he was pressed against her to be able to see outside. His body was chilled to the bone, just like hers. He was giving her, literally, a cold shoulder. So, she decided to give him one back, well, a shoulder to cry on that was. Michelle turned and pulled Bob into a tight hug. He tried to pull away, but she held on, clinging until he relented. When he did, it was a with a muffled sob. Then he squeezed her like a life line, so tightly in fact, that her ribs creaked, and it was painful. But she didn’t care. Feeling something…it meant they were alive. Both of them. And that also meant that they both had to live after this. Somehow.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered as his body wracked with grief. “I’m so, so sorry.”
It seemed like forever before they pulled apart, and Bob cleaned his face, and Michelle hid her dry eyes. She was too much in shock to cry. She was also trying to be strong for Bob’s sake.
She opened her mouth to speak when she noticed a strange thing on the window. “What is this?” she asked, and Bob glanced at the filmy substance.
“Ice,” he said, but they both watched closely as it climbed like a vine, and then another started next to it. The white lines both crawled across from the bricks below the window onto the glass like living things.
“Strange,” Michelle breathed.
The streaks went up and up until the entire window was covered when they were finished. It was as if invisible spiders had spun a web of ice across the entirety until they could only see a blur of the front yard.
Michelle hated to ask. Anything besides addressing the death of his son felt insensitive, but still, the ice growing like that bothered her. It seemed to also thicken at an unreasonable rate, right before her eyes. “Do we still have firewood?” she asked, and Bob nodded. He continued to watch the ice move as well.
Michelle was happy to see that it was distracting him momentarily from the horror of losing his first born.
“Yeah, we have wood,” he said, “but it’s in the garage.”
“We’d better get it now,” she answered as a strange sound pricked their ears from above. The ice was crackling its way across the roof. “Am I crazy or is this weird?” Michelle asked quietly, as if the tinkling ice could hear her, but Bob was rushing towards the door.
He fought the large wooden door that had stained glass in three small windows up top, all covered in ice as well. He struggled to get the door open for a moment, the bottom seemed stuck, and then he finally got it yanked open. The entire walkway was full of snow before, but now it was hard ice too. Hard as nails. Slick and deadly to walk across. Nearly impossible to climb over.
“We better get that wood, now,” Bob said, and his determined jaw made Michelle feel like perhaps there was hope to be found within him. He still had his other children and Carry to live for.
“Help me break this up.” Bob motioned for Michelle to hand him something and she glanced behind the front door and saw the large crowbar propped there, probably for protection. She handed it to him and he began whacking at the ice to get through to the garage.
Michelle found a bat in the living room too, she grabbed it and proceeded to help him beat a path through the several-feet-high snow that was now ice. Bob had tried to climb up on top of it, only to crash down onto the walkway. It was too slick to walk across. And it was hardly giving way to the beating. The more they went, the harder it got.
They worked at it for what seemed like an hour, finally deciding to wait and strike the same spot and take turns on the path they’d created, barely going a foot at a time towards the garage. What had been passable only hours before was now like being stuck in an igloo surrounded by frozen snow. Michelle’s teeth chattered from the cold, her hands numb, and her eyes burned from the cold. But she didn’t dare quit. They needed to get the wood, it was obvious that their lives might depend on it through the night. They would also need it for so many things: Boiling snow, heat, cooking what food they could find if they even found any.
It was their survival.
It was their savior in this strange, increasing freeze.
And though it was
only a few tens of feet away, it felt like a mile.
The sun sank behind the blanket of white as they worked, and somehow, she knew as it left them, abandoning them to the ice, they might freeze to death without a fire. It put her into a frenzy that Bob seemed to sense, and they worked more quickly, chopping away at the hard, unforgiving chunks. Yes, even inside of the house they would be too cold in this once they had no sun to give what little heat it provided. Which would have seemed ludicrous only an hour ago…but that was before the strange-crawly ice.
**
They were exhausted, but a low fire burned in the chimney. A barely there but dire thing that put off only a tiny bit of heat. The ice kept on, cracking and shifting and growing outside. After their trip to the garage, the ice slowly encased them inside the house like a prison. They’d built a fire as fast as they could, but it was hard to keep it going. Their breath puffed as fog into the dark room. The moon had finally risen to give them tiny rays of light to go by. There were no generators left, no food, and no one had even tried to make water or drink/eat any of the snow.
“It’s so cold,” Michelle said, once again trying not to think of the dead body in the next room. Even though Donny had been a friend for a short time, it was still eerie to try to sleep with the empty shell he’d left behind. It was still scary in the dark to think of him laying so very still in the same house.
There wouldn’t be much sleeping tonight, she bet.
Bob stared into the fire, bundled up with what they could find, same as Michelle… same as Mr. Chung. They sat in a huddle and it was not even midnight, if that, and Michelle lost feeling in her toes, then her legs. Mr. Chung’s breathing was labored, and he coughed several times as if the chill burned his lungs.
“Are you okay?” she asked him, but Mr. Chung spoke in his native language to answer.
Finally, he nodded, his head drooping onto his chest as he shivered.
They were all in shock, she knew. One disaster after another.
“Do you think the city is like this too?” Michelle asked Bob…she had to ask it. She had to finally voice her fear. Across the bridge on this side they were getting some sort of strange freeze, but perhaps it was because they weren’t exactly landlocked, providing more of a marine layer…she wasn’t certain.
“Not sure,” Bob replied, obviously fighting to keep his teeth from chattering.
“Is there anything else we could burn?” she asked, and the fire seemed to almost respond by sputtering and dying. A cold breeze blew down the chimney and Michelle gasped as ice formed before her eyes on the inside of it. “What the…”
Bob shakily got to his feet. “I’ll see if I can find something.”
Michelle wanted to follow him, she really did, but it was as if she was frozen to the floor. She glanced over at Mr. Chung. He was deadly still. “Mr. Chung?” Michelle reached over and touched his shoulder.
Mr. Chung slumped to the side and she cried out, throwing her blankets off and pulling them over him. His breathing was faint but there. “Bob!” she shouted. “Bob, help!”
With the blankets off, Michelle felt as if someone had dumped buckets of cold water onto her. She shook so uncontrollably she was accidentally slapping Mr. Chung in the cheek as she tried to wake him. “You… are… going… to…be…”
Her teeth bit off the end of her statement. They chattered so hard she thought they might shatter. Her joints ached. Her body felt as if it were on fire. A cold breeze blew down the chimney and coated her with a thin layer of moisture that immediately turned to ice.
“Bob,” she whispered, though she knew no one would hear it. “Bob,” she tried again but her head grew heavy, her body stiff, and she was suddenly exhausted. Her hands, she realized were no longer obeying her. She couldn’t hear Bob moving around in the other room as the minutes ticked bye.
Michelle slumped over, pulling just enough of the blanket over herself to share with Mr. Chung. The ice had climbed out of the chimney and it was moving along the ground, onto her legs and feet, into her eyes…at least, that’s how it felt. What if she shut her eyes for just a minute? A little bit of rest and then she’d rise and help Bob find some wood.
Just a couple of minutes, Michelle told herself. Just a short nap and she would…what would she do? She couldn’t remember. Her thoughts scattered.
Michelle closed her eyes and she dreamed she was back in her cubicle. She jumped with a start to realize she’d fallen asleep at her desk—she wasn’t in Bob’s house anymore. She was warm and dry and at her old job in the city. Her boss stood over her. “Did you get that report on my desk?” she snapped.
Michelle glanced around, but the desks quickly turned into a block of ice, melting and pooling all around her. She glanced back at her boss and found her a frozen statue, immobile.
Michelle stood, and ice cracked from the ceilings, and her chair was also ice. The entire room had changed, and everyone was frozen at their desks. Dead. Gone.
Everyone will die in this, she thought. Everyone will die, and New York will be like a wax museum of millions and millions of people for the survivors to find…
Chapter Three
Just Outside of Chicago, Illinois
Colton stood near the burned down house with anguish gripping his heart so that it felt like it was stuttering to a halt.
Rufus cleared his throat. “You sure this is the right place, son?”
Colton nodded his head. He couldn’t feel his limbs. He couldn’t feel his face. Everything was spinning around him. They’d arrived at the farm house and he’d expected to find Bart, the kids, and at least promise them that Brittany was out there somewhere looking for them, too… that she’d gotten away, but Justice hadn’t…no… Colton had made sure of that by putting down the rabid dog himself.
Speaking of dogs. Rex whined and was digging through some of the ash until he retrieved a sleeping bag that made Colton’s knees weak. It was obviously the same bag one of the kids had used.
“Was this…” Rufus trailed off when he saw the confirmation in Colton’s gaze.
Colton couldn’t grasp it all. He wouldn’t. Not without finding his brother’s body, the children.
As if he read his mind Rufus gently called, “There’s someone over here.”
Colton closed his eyes. This couldn’t be happening. He swallowed a lump too large to fit in his throat and finally turned and made his way to Rufus’s side.
“A woman,” Rufus said, covering his nose. Even in the cold air there was the stench of burned flesh that stung Colton’s nostrils. But he didn’t try to shield himself from it as he bent over and pulled the blanket far enough down to show her face. He knew it wasn’t Brittany---prayed it wasn’t her. What were the odds of her being here? That she had found a way back and then burned in the house with the kids and Bart?
That seemed impossible and Colton stared at the dead woman hard. But her face was too burned away to tell, too charred. Some hair was left but it was covered in ash and he couldn’t bring himself to touch it, to see coloring. It was light enough to be Brittany’s, he could tell.
Colton gagged when he saw maggots moving amidst the ruined flesh. He quickly covered the woman’s face. She couldn’t be Brittany. He wouldn’t believe it and wasn’t sure just how much proof he needed.
“I’m not sure it’s her. Them. But those sleeping bags were the kid’s.” His shoulders slumped, and he glanced at Rufus with despair. “I’m just not sure.”
“Well, best cling to that hope, son. No good to jump to the worst conclusions. It’s night soon. We better hunker down,” Rufus said patting him on the back. “If you want, we can dig through the rubble in the morning. Hopefully they all got away. Maybe this isn’t your friend at all. Maybe these were other folk who came and stayed here. Seems like it was a nice place for that.”
Colton nodded. “Maybe,” he said though he felt far away, like he was watching the scene from some place less horrible. “Can we camp somewhere else?”
“Sure. I think th
ere’s a farmhouse just over there we can camp out in.”
“You want to get back to your daughter?”
Rufus gave him a sad glance. “I’m no help to them. The army has them and will keep them as safe as possible, I hope. But seems like you could use a hand. And a truck.”
Colton swallowed. “Thank you.”
He glanced away in shame. Rufus knew he’d killed Justice. He knew Colton had dealt out what he saw as the right punishment. Justice was evil. He’d stolen Brittany and who would have been next? There were no prisons to keep him. Nothing to stop him from hurting more people. If Colton had let him go…
He hadn’t. Nuff said.
**
They had a fire. They had some sleeping bags and food. They had everything they needed, and still, Colton felt cold. He felt empty. He hungered for the last few days to disappear and for him to have them to do all over again. He’d have made sure “Rick,” who was actually Justice, had gone his own way instead. He would have slept with the kids and Brittany inside the house. He never would have separated from his brother or the kids afterwards.
His mind went over the mistakes again and again. How could he be so stupid? So naïve? Trusting a stranger was so unlike him. But had it been him who’d done the trusting? It was Brittany who’d offered. She had been the one to reach out a hand and help and look where it got her.
Possibly missing.
Gone.
Or worse… maybe that was her burned to death.
“Beating yourself up won’t help, son,” Rufus said, interrupting dark thoughts. “The best you can do now, is move forward until you know for sure it’s them. If it’s not, we can start looking for them first thing. Focus on that.”