Gray Snow: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller

by Paul Curtin

  The snow crunched under his feet like stepping on dried leaves. He pointed his rifle forward at the snowbank. When he was five feet from the edge, he heard the woman shift around and moan. He stopped, aimed his weapon up toward the sound. “Why don’t you come over here?” the woman called out. He didn’t move. Calmed his breathing. She called out again, “I could hear you coming. Come on over here.”

  His mind was telling him to walk away, but his gut told him otherwise. And his gut hadn’t been wrong yet. He sidestepped, aiming down the sights of his rifle, and the woman came into view. First, he saw her feet buried in the snow. Then, her legs. A chunk of flesh was missing from her thigh. The snow around it was partially melted and stained a deep red that mixed with the soot.

  She didn’t move a twitch when he came full into view and aimed his rifle at her chest. The dead man lay next to her, a splatter of blood curled around him where he had twisted and fallen after being shot. The woman was dressed in a thick jacket and her face was exposed, showing her blackened, frost-bitten skin. Her nose was the color of coal and her forehead was peeling. And Sean knew her.

  “That you, Sean? It is, isn’t it?” she said, wincing. “You shot me.”

  “Lilly,” he said. His neighbor from down the road. Sean and Elise had never gotten to know the older couple. He wasn’t sure why. They seemed friendly, but life always got in the way.

  “You’re still alive,” she said.

  He swiped his hand against his lips.

  “Was it you who shot me?”

  “I thought you were trying to get into my house.”

  “Well, we were. Me and Tom,” she said, motioning to the dead body.

  His throat filled with phlegm. He killed Tom. Old Man Tom. “The hell were you doing out here?”

  “What everyone’s trying to do,” she said as if it were a dumb question. “We ran out of food two weeks ago. We thought we would forage around.”

  “You ran out of food?”

  “It runs out, eventually. Tom didn’t have much longer. His lungs—” Her voice grew tight. A tear froze on the corner of her eyes. “I’m actually glad he’s not suffering anymore.” She coughed. “We had two options: stay and die or try to find some food people may have left behind. Didn’t think we’d see the chimney smoking at your house.”

  “We prepared well.”

  “So did we,” she said with a weak smile, “but it’s almost April, Sean. April. This winter isn’t going to stop any time soon, and we’ll still need food.” She chuckled, but it sank into a round of awful, painful-sounding coughs. He looked away. She said, “Nothing’s right anymore. I never thought anyone’d shoot Tom. How’d we get to that?”

  He opened his mouth and closed it.

  Pointing at his weapon, she said, “Can you point that away from me?”

  “When did you know you wouldn’t be able to make it anymore? In your home?”

  She looked down the barrel then back to him. “It’s simple math. We rationed first, eating less than we needed, but enough to keep us alive. But it caught up to us.” She winced and reached out her hand. “I’m tired, Sean. Help me up.”

  He kept the barrel trained on her. She exerted herself to extend her hand an extra inch. “Sean, come on. I can’t move on my own.” He stepped back. She rested her shoulders back against the snowbank. “Sean.”

  “I’m sorry, Lilly.”

  She put her hands up, fingers splayed. “No. Please. Come on. I know you have food in there. Just one meal.”

  He took another step back. She yelled, “Please, don’t. Please. Just let me warm up in front of your fire. Just for a few minutes.”

  “Look at your leg.”

  “We can patch it up.”

  “Look at it, Lilly.”

  “Sean, I just want to get warm. One more time, okay?”

  He raised his rifle. “We can’t help you.”

  “Sean, stop.”

  He hesitated.

  “You killed my husband, all right? You owe me. You owe me.”

  “I’m sorry, Lilly.”

  “Sean, no. Please. Sean, for the love of God just stop—”

  He squeezed the trigger and shot her in the chest. Her life was over just like that. He stared for a minute at the dead woman before him, her mouth twisted, eyes rolled back into her head, eyelids frozen in a wide expression of terror, her chest wound oozing out the last warmth from her body. He moved his finger off the trigger guard. When he thought about it, it almost seemed easy; he relieved her suffering. Most people had to keep going, without hope of anything better. With no relief.

  Michael

  He jumped when he heard the shot. The scene in his imagination played out: the woman shouting at Sean, scared, her contorted face begging before being blown to hell.

  Sean shouldn’t have shot the woman in the first place. Bad people had invaded their home. It didn’t mean everyone else would try the same thing. Just because one group of men had reverted to the blackest depths of human nature, it didn’t mean everyone would be the same way. He had to believe that.

  He wished he believed that.

  The door to the garage creaked, and Sean walked in. He set his rifle down. Elise, who had been biting her nails since Sean had gone outside, stood up from her chair in front of him. She was about to say something when Sean pulled down his mask below his chin. “Let’s not talk about it.”

  “She shouted your name.”

  “She’s dead.”

  “Who was it, Sean?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Her face scrunched. “Was it someone we knew?”

  “What difference does it make now?” He sighed. “I’m going to chop wood,” he said and turned back toward the garage door, slamming it behind him.

  Elise turned around, staring past Michael. She shook her head and passed him without saying a word. “Elise,” he said to stop her, but she didn’t listen.

  She disappeared into the living room. He put his hands on his hips. Michael just wanted to hear Sean’s thoughts, to be assured that he wasn’t sharing the home with a budding psychopath who would snap one day. That assurance shouldn’t have to be bargained for. It shouldn’t have to be discussed.

  He sat down in the dining room, put his head into his hands, and pressed his thumbs against his eyes until his eyelids splashed with color. The image he had concocted of the woman dying outside popped into his mind. He opened his eyes. He watched Elise rub Aidan’s back as he threw seasonings into the cast iron pot over the fire. Aidan smiled at her, and she smiled back. It even looked genuine.

  He lowered his head and didn’t raise it until someone sat next to him. Molly adjusted herself. “Uncle Mike.”

  He bowed his head, whispered, “I overheard you with your dad.”

  “Uncle Mike—”

  “What were you thinking?”

  “I don’t know. I thought maybe he would be okay with it.”

  He said, “Now can’t be the time. With everything happening.”

  “Andrew said the same thing.”

  “Because he’s not going to be okay with this. He just won’t.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I do. Trust me. I don’t have any doubt he loves you. That isn’t what we’re talking about here. We’re not talking about whether he’ll love you no matter what. But we’re talking about a man who’s not in a stable place right now.”

  “I know.”

  Michael waved his hand and nudged his chair closer to her. “You don’t. Molly, it’s easy to see the people we love as better than they are. Do you know how many people I saw in my work—parents who could not conceive that their children could do wrong? I had one mom sit and listen to the details of how her son had driven drunk and plowed into a church van filled with kids—killed all of them—and still refused to ac
knowledge that it was her son that did it. That he was a little shit.”

  “I know my dad’s not perfect.”

  “Maybe. But you aren’t seeing the whole picture. You don’t see what’s behind his actions. Trust me. Your dad needs to be let down easily or he will go off.”

  The sound of the garage door latching. Sean coming back inside. Michael took his niece’s hands. “One day, your father will be so happy to hear he’s going to be a grandfather.”

  She smiled, and a tear sank down her cheek.

  “You just need to wait for the right moment,” he said.

  A loud voice shouted from behind them, “You’re pregnant?”

  Kelly. His gut lurched. Elise froze. Her eyes widened and rose to meet Michael’s. He hadn’t seen Kelly behind them. He hadn’t known she would hear.

  Oh, shit.

  Molly looked up at her aunt like a deer about to be smacked by a Mac truck. Kelly, even more excited, squealed so loud that it hurt Michael’s ears. After Kelly’s prolonged sulking, he thought any happiness would be welcome. Now he just wanted her to stop.

  “You’re pregnant!” she shouted.

  She burst ahead and threw her arms around the terrified teenage girl who stared back at him over her aunt’s shoulder, asking him with her eyes to do something. Anything. Michael grabbed his wife by the shoulders and tried to pull her off as gently as possible. “Please, Kelly, stop,” he whispered.

  She didn’t respond. “This is such great news. Oh my God,” Kelly said, holding Molly tighter and beaming.

  Elise was already on her feet, one hand gripping at her chest and the other holding onto Aidan’s shoulder. “Kelly, please stop,” Michael said.

  She seemed to be in a different world, touching Molly’s stomach. “Oh, Molly. I thought you were just being comfy putting on extra layers. You must be five months along by now,” she said, caressing the curve of her baby bump.

  Michael yanked at Kelly’s shoulder. She rolled to avoid the pull, turning around, fuming with anger, her palms raised upward. “What?”

  “Please, stop,” he said.

  “Or what?” a deep voice said from the living room.

  Michael tilted his head to see Sean standing there, his brow damp with sweat and his dirty axe resting on the ground. He gripped the handle in his left hand as if choking it, his other hand resting near the pistol holstered on his hip.

  The entire room froze. Molly rose from the chair and faced her dad.

  “Sean, please just listen for a moment,” Elise said behind him.

  “How long’ve you known?” he asked, not looking back at her.

  The question seemed to hit her like a punch across the jaw. “Sean, just please listen—”

  “I asked, How long’ve you known?”

  Her voice trembled, and she stammered, looking back to Michael as if he could give her something to say.

  “Dad, I—” Molly began.

  He extended his hand out to her. “Molls, don’t. I asked your mother a question.”

  Elise said, “About a month.”

  The expression on Sean’s face didn’t change, but his eyebrow flinched. A rage boiled deep inside him behind the stoic expression on his face. Even his eyes were cool puddles, reflecting nothing. He laid the axe against the coffee table and put his hands on his hips. Hands near that pistol.

  He turned to his daughter. “How far along are you?” Molly looked back at her uncle, but Sean said, “I didn’t ask your Uncle Mike.”

  She looked down at the floor. “We think about twenty weeks.”

  Sean allowed the first expression of his emotions when he wiped his face from his forehead down to his mouth. “You said you wouldn’t do this.”

  “I don’t know—”

  “What don’t you know?” he said. “That I specifically told you this would happen? That I told you not to trust that little son of a bitch?”

  Michael said, “Andrew’s a good kid.”

  “A good kid who I let stay here—to live here because of my good graces—and has been sneaking around with my daughter behind my back. In my home.”

  A chill vibrated up Michael’s spine. “They’re teenagers, man. Hormones.”

  Sean’s neck tightened, and his face flushed red like a flash fire tearing through dry woods. “In my home,” he screamed, and a wad of spit flung off his lips.

  The cold room heated, no one knowing what to say and too afraid to move. Sean was the first to budge. He angled his head toward the ground and shook it over and over. Michael watched like he was witnessing two chemicals reacting with each other violently, waiting for an explosion. And, finally, it happened.

  Sean’s fingers searched for his gun. He squeezed the handle, not removing it, and then wiped his face with the same hand. “He’s a dead man,” he said and turned to the stairs.

  The room erupted into yelling. Molly rushed forward, but Michael grabbed her shoulder and pulled her back, Molly stumbling into her chair, Michael rushing ahead of her. He sprinted toward Sean, who was stomping toward the first stair step. Sean realized it too late. Michael drove his shoulder into Sean’s side and peddled, drilling him into the wall.

  Elise screamed. Michael didn’t know what to do once he had Sean pinned against the wall. With his head just below Sean’s armpit, Sean pounded his elbows into Michael’s back, and Michael’s guts rattled around his ribcage with each blow. Sean shifted his foot and tripped Michael, shoving him down. Before Michael could react, Sean was over top of him, raising his foot, bringing it down like a hammer onto his temple. Then again.

  Michael’s head filled with a hazy fire, and his vision burst with flashes of light. He rested his ear against the step and viewed everything as if in slow motion, hearing Elise’s shouting and Molly’s crying and the ground rumbling like extended bouts of thunder, elongated and terrifying, as Sean stepped past him and marched up the stairs.

  He looked up. The world had only a vague sense of reality. The sound from Sean’s steps seemed on delay, like it was reaching Michael’s ears a second too late. His vision blurred a few times. He saw Molly step over him and run up the stairs, tripping and scrambling on all fours. His hearing was a speck of its full potential, but he heard Molly. Heard her cries. And then he saw Andrew step into view at the top of the stairs. Oh, God. Run, kid.

  Sean was going to kill Andrew.

  He was going to kill Andrew.

  “Stop!” he remembered yelling, though he couldn’t be sure if he had made any sound.

  Despite feeling like he was enclosed in a shrinking cocoon, he willed himself to move. His sister screamed something indecipherable behind him. Sean was at the top of the stairs yelling something.

  Michael got himself upright, wobbling like he was drunk. His limbs felt encumbered, and he kept seeing blazes of fire in the corners of his vision. Andrew raised his hands. Molly ran up to her father and grabbed onto his shoulder. He shrugged her off, and she slipped a step backward, balancing herself on the railing. His hand was now on his weapon. Still in the holster, but there.

  Molly rushed to her dad again, crying out something at him. Michael saw it before it even happened, and the heightened slow motion made it more agonizing. Molly lunged behind Sean to grab onto his arms, and he threw his shoulder back harder this time.

  And Molly tumbled.

  Her hand reached out for the railing again but couldn’t get a grip. Her feet lost traction, and she rolled. Michael watched her head slam against the wall with a hard whack, and her body topple end over end. Near the midway point, her head landed against one step and her neck snapped to the side—way too far to the side—and that was when her voice cut out, like a needle being lifted off a vinyl record, and her limbs flopped around loosely the rest of the way. She came to a stop soon after that.

  Michael raised his hands to his head, unable to move. Andrew’s face
wrenched in pain. He screamed and ran around Sean, throwing himself down the stairs toward Molly, pressing his face to her chest, pulling her into a lifeless hug as her arms hung limply against the ground. He languished, petting her hair, calling out that he loved her. Sean had turned on the top step, looking down at his palms, his mouth hanging open. He reached out as if to brace himself against something, anything, but couldn’t find rest.

  Eventually, Michael’s hearing nearly phased out. He collapsed backward, everything a blur, reality now just a distant concept. Elise passed him and ran toward Molly. Andrew pounded his fist against one step as he looked up at Elise, tears in his eyes, horror and shock and grief on his face. Michael leaned his head against the wall and heard the pounding noise continue like a heartbeat until it gradually ceased.

  Andrew

  They buried Molly in the woods behind the backyard in a cleared space where the sun’s rays used to break through the trees and the dust danced in them like a fireworks display. There was no sunshine that day, nor would there be for the rest of days—just low hanging clouds that pressed the warmth out of their bodies.

  Everyone was bundled up so most of their skin was covered. The shades of color in their coats and pants were muted by the surroundings. Sean insisted on doing the digging. The cold sank into Andrew’s clothes, Andrew watching the others shaking, their tears freezing into the cloth around their faces. He winced each time Sean brought the shovel into the hard ground.

  Molly’s body lay next to the forming hole, half submerged in the ashen snow. Her skin was a pale white and blue, drained of her vibrancy. She wore a printed floral dress and long-brimmed hat—the same dress she had on when he first saw her, Molly walking into his trigonometry class, clutching her bag in front of herself, not raising her eyes to anyone as she searched for a seat, Andrew thinking then, This is the girl I want to spend the rest of my life with. Just like that. A girl so delicate and shy and beautiful couldn’t be wrong. So he motioned to her that there was a free seat next to him and introduced himself. When he heard her voice for the first time, his heart melted to a puddle. And continued melting as the days passed. He never knew such a thoughtful and caring and smart person in his entire life. And he resolved, right there, that he would do everything he could to not screw it up with her.