Night of the Wendigo

by William Meikle

  “Well, that’s kinda the point of keeping it secret. It ain’t the sort of place you tell a cop about,” Tom replied. “Although with the shit that’s going down tonight, I don’t think legal distinctions apply here any more.”

  “What do you mean?”

  The old man took the handkerchief away from Mike’s head and nodded.

  “The bleeding’s stopped. You might have a new scar in a couple of days, but you’ll live.”

  He moved away from the sofa, and switched on the television.

  “All kinds of weirdness out and about tonight,” he said. “If I didn’t know better I’d swear it was Halloween. Watch and weep, boy.”

  Tom went to fire up the coffee machine, but Mike didn’t notice. He was transfixed by the series of scenes being shown on the television.

  “These pictures came in over the last half hour,” the CNN reporter said. “From MBC news, broadcasting live from the affected area.”

  Mike watched the same sequence that Jackie had watched a couple of miles away in The Woodsman; the dome of the storm hanging over Manhattan, the arctic conditions on top of the Empire State Building, the carnage in the Wall Street subway, and finally the dead white eyes of the newsreader as she joined the others.

  “What the hell is going on?” Mike whispered.

  “My best guess? Judgment day is upon us. Repent or die; heaven or hell; it’s decision time, boy,” Tom said.

  “I don’t believe in any of that religious stuff.”

  “What’s not to believe? The dead are walking the Earth. Deal with it.”

  “I don’t believe that either,” Mike said, but even to himself he didn’t seem too sure.

  “Well, I’m double-damned sure that wasn’t Brian Johnson whose head I blew off out there. Oh, it looked a bit like him, but I’d say that the BJ we knew had already gone to meet his maker a whiles before I blew his brains out.”

  Mike nodded.

  “BJ wasn’t there. He’d have listened to me if he was there. But the dead walking the earth? No way. There must be a scientific reason for it.”

  The old man did the disgusting thing with his false teeth again.

  “Science is it? Well, if science can explain all the things you’ve just watched on the television, I’ll bow down before it. But in the meantime, I’m considering a miraculous conversion back to Christianity. I figure getting baptized at the Church of the Holy Rood seventy years ago is enough to get me an even chance at redemption.”

  “As long as it’s not a death bed recantation.”

  “Oh, I’ll be around for a while yet,” Tom said. “All these years I’ve been waiting for the Russkies to bomb us,” he said. “I never figured it would be the Lord himself laying his wrath upon me. Wanna pray with me, Mikey?”

  The old man laughed and did the thing with his teeth.

  “I never was one for praying,” Mike replied. “Hard liquor is my solace in times of trouble.”

  “Funny you should say that,” Tom said.

  He handed Mike a tall cup of coffee, and went to the back of the container. He came back with a bottle and two glasses.

  Mike took a slug of coffee. It was piping hot, but he welcomed the warmth as it hit his stomach. It spread a warm glow out from within.

  “Jamaican Blue Mountain,” Tom said. “Best damned coffee in the world.”

  “Are you developing a taste for the finer things in life, Tom?”

  “Hell, you’ve got to take your pleasures where you can when all you’ve got left down below is a chipolata and a couple of wrinkled prunes. It’s caviar and lobster thermidor every night down on the docks,” the old man said. He cackled again. “And there’s nothing but the best will do when it comes to the liquor.”

  He held up the whisky bottle to the light, letting Mike see the almost luminescent golden color of it.

  “This is Highland Park. Scotch. Made from the spring waters of the Orkney Islands, aged for twelve years in oak barrels, and just about the finest liquor in the whole damned world. If I catch you pouring it into your coffee I’m going to have to kill you.”

  He poured a large slug, which Mike knocked back in one gulp. It joined the coffee, spreading the warmth through his body.

  “Sacrilege,” the old man said, sipping at his own. “You want another?”

  Mike shook his head. “Something tells me I need to keep sober tonight,” he said.

  “If you’re thinking of running about in the snow again like an excited child, you’re in no fit state for heroics,” Tom said.

  “I’ve been worse. I’m as fit as a butcher’s dog.”

  In truth, he was starting to feel almost alive.

  “That’s the whisky that’s talking for you,” the old man said. “The Scots don’t call it the water of life for nothing. I’ve seen men get out of their beds that you’d think would never walk again after a slug of this stuff.”

  The old man poured himself another large one.

  “Maybe you should lay off the juice,” Mike said.

  “Can’t see any reason to do that,” Tom replied. “If the end of the world is here, there’s no way I’m going to meet it sober. Not when there’s shit like that going down.”

  The old man pointed at the television.

  “Have a closer look, Mikey,” he said. “And maybe you’ll reconsider your decision to stay off the booze tonight. I’ve got another bottle of this, so there’s enough to anaesthetize both of us.”

  Mike sipped at his coffee while staring at the big screen. It showed only the interior of the television studio, the frozen things shuffling around in a cavernous room which now had icy stalactites hanging from the ceiling.

  “Is there anything on other channels?” he asked.

  “Same old same old,” the old man replied. “City in crisis, storm of the century, ya-dee-ya-dee-yah…”

  He pointed at the scene inside the television studio.

  “That tells you everything you need to know. Ain’t it a kicker…..Pat Robertson was right all along.”

  Mike nodded.

  “I guess I’m going to have to modify my religious beliefs somewhat.”

  “We all are, son. I think we all are.”

  A frozen oriental female walked in front of the television camera. Mike suddenly remembered his phone ringing earlier.

  Mina.

  He speed dialed her number.

  She answered on the first ring.

  “Hello, big boy. Glad to hear you’re still with us. But I can’t talk now, we’re a bit busy.”

  “Where are you?”

  “In The Woodsman, but I’ve got a feeling we’ll be on the move soon.”

  Mike could hear a deep thudding in the distance behind Mina’s voice.

  “Are you in trouble?”

  “Constantly,” she said. “But don’t you worry your pretty little head about it. It’s nothing I can’t handle.”

  The thudding got suddenly louder; a shot rang out, loud in his ear.

  “Mina!” he shouted.

  He was cut off, left with only the ringtone.

  He stood quickly, slopping coffee over his legs.

  “I’ve got to get to her.”

  Old Tom put a hand on his shoulder.

  “Not in this weather. And not with those things walking about. It’s suicide boy. If I owe your father anything, it’s stopping you from being stupid.”

  “I’m not going to let her die,” Mike said.

  He pushed passed the old man.

  “Oh well, I suppose if there’s a woman involved, your Dad would definitely understand. But if you go out again in those clothes you’ll be dead in minutes,” Tom said. “Come with me. I can help with the clothes…and with a weapon.”

  “I’ve got a gun.”

  “No, that’s a pea-shooter,” Tom said.

  He showed Mike the sawn-off shotgun again.

  “This is a gun. But I can do even better. Come with me.”

  He led Mike out to the middle “U” of the area
and opened one of the huge wardrobes.

  Outdoor clothing filled the space wall to wall…fur coats, oilskins and, most bizarre of all, a wet suit.

  “Why do you keep all this stuff? Are you in training to be the next James Bond?”

  “Only if I get some of his action with the ladies. I used to be a Boy Scout,” the old man said, laughing. “Be prepared…for anything.”

  “And how long have you been collecting this shit? Some of it looks almost new.”

  “Oh, it comes and goes over time,” Old Tom said, suddenly looking guilty. “But I ain’t telling a cop about my business interests. I’ll go get you tooled up. You pick something that will keep you warm.”

  The old man moved away to the other side of the container.

  Mike surveyed the rack of clothes. Tom was obviously ripping stuff off from the cargo that got unloaded at the docks. It wasn’t a new trick. Mike’s own father had been a dock hand down here. Mike well remembered the steady flow of goods that passed through the house when he was a kid. That was where he’d first met Old Tom.

  He hadn’t been “Old Tom” back then; he’d been a burly docker, with a wicked laugh, a huge belly, and a penchant for fat Cuban cigars that filled their back room with smoke on the nights that Mike’s dad hosted the fortnightly poker game.

  That had all stopped when Mike’s dad died under Crane No 3, but that was an old story, gone over far too many times.

  Mike pulled himself out of the reverie and went back to looking through the rack of clothes. He saw what he wanted straight away.

  Ten minutes later he stood at the container door. He was dressed in a full US Marines arctic survival suit complete with face mask and goggles. He carried a flame thrower strapped across his back, a shotgun slung across his shoulder and wore a cartridge belt round his waist. Inside the suit he had two holsters, one for his service revolver, and one for a flare gun. A deep pocket in the suit held spare flares and in another he carried a flask of Old Tom’s coffee, into which the old man had poured a liberal helping of the Scotch.

  “I thought it didn’t mix well with the coffee.”

  “Oh, it mixes with just about anything,” the old man said. “I just hate to do it. If you get back here alive, I’ll cook you up some haggis and turnip. Then you’ll see how it’s meant to be taken.”

  Mike zipped up the suit.

  “I feel like a Ghostbuster,” he said.

  “Yeah, but you look like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man,” Tom replied.

  “The chicks will love it…especially Mina. You know what they’re like with uniforms.”

  “You find her, you bring her right back here,” the old man said. “I ain’t had sight of a decent piece of ass all day, and I’m starting to feel horny. Three, two, two, three, right, left, right, left. That gets you out, reverse gets you back. That’s the way from the cranes entrance. If you do get back knock three times and ask for Tommy.”

  “You’re a good man, Tom,” Mike said, shaking the old man by the hand.

  “Remember to tell the Lord that if you see him before me,” the old man said. He did the disgusting thing with his teeth.

  Mike opened the door, and stepped out into the storm.

  * * *

  After a while Cole was forced to crawl out from under the furnace. It was just getting too warm for comfort under there. That, and the fact that he jumped at every flickering shadow, combined to get him on the move.

  Once he stood, having to massage back muscles that were complaining about the rigors of the past few hours, he realized that the cold was not as intense as it had been earlier.

  But better to be safe than sorry.

  The furnace greedily accepted another bucket of coal and roared a deeper red in gratitude.

  It really is almost too cozy in here, Cole thought, and giggled.

  He stifled it quickly. That way lay madness.

  For the first time since throwing himself through the open grate, he made a full survey of his surroundings.

  There wasn’t much to see. Apart from the furnace and the small pile of coal there was only a large cardboard box full of rotting paper. Off to his left a flight of rough wooden stairs led up to the house proper. Cole wasn’t about to investigate where they led. It was dark up there. Cole wasn’t yet ready to leave the warmth of the furnace.

  Not yet. Maybe later. After I’ve had a little rest.

  He dragged the box of papers over in front of the furnace and sat down. The box sagged alarmingly beneath him. He swayed, as if he was in a boat in a heavy swell, before he caught his balance.

  The cardboard wouldn’t last long, but for now it beat sitting on the stone floor.

  One of the papers stuck out near his left hand. He slipped it fully out of the box and read the heading:

  “The Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence (WASI): An Overview and Case Studies in Occupational Assessment by Thomas Garland”

  He put it down again.

  Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence?”Sounds like a CIA initiative to me.

  Cole sat for a while with the furnace door open, just staring at the flames, but soon his mind gave him pictures, almost as vivid as the ones stored on his camera.

  The binocular man was well to the forefront, jaw gaping as it closed on the military gent’s neck.

  Cole needed to re-evaluate his world view, and quickly. It was now blindingly obvious that what was happening here was a bit more than an abduction scenario.

  Abductees don’t generally come back as flesh eating popsicles.

  Okay, so in “The Thing from Another World” James Arness had been a frozen vegetable, but that was a long way from a bunch of reanimated corpses roaming Manhattan in a freak snowstorm.

  No. This was something else.

  He wondered if the problem was purely local, or whether, even now, all over the world, snowstorms raged, storms in which the dead walked.

  If so, I’m in BIG trouble.

  One of Cole’s intermittent mind games was figuring out how he’d go about surviving a global holocaust; he’d even got as far as making a list once upon a time. Guns, food, water, and family; those were his top priorities to be sorting out. He had always carried, at the back of his mind, the dream of a cabin in the Rockies with a secret basement filled with everything he’d need to ride out any trouble.

  He laughed bitterly. He hadn’t even bought enough warm clothing for a typical New York winter, never mind the shit-storm going down outside.

  I just didn’t expect it to ever happen.

  Now here he was, stuck in somebody’s basement. No weapon, nothing to eat, nothing to drink, and no means of contacting what few members of his family cared enough to listen.

  I just wasn’t paranoid enough.

  Normally that thought would have given him some comfort. It would have let him prove to himself that he hadn’t quite yet reached total geekhood in his obsession. But tonight, with the world crashing down around his ears, he wished he’d taken time to squirrel away provisions against a rainy day…or a snowy one.

  I wonder how the snow managed to blow up so fast out of nowhere?

  He’d spent enough time online to know that the conspiracy buffs would be all over this like flies on shit. He wondered who was getting the blame for this one.

  Weather modification had been a hot topic a few years ago, when the HAARP relay had been set up in Alaska, but things had moved on among the further fringes of the community, with Gamma Ray manipulation being the latest topic that had the net jangling. Out there, whole armies of lonely youths would be beating each other up over the minutiae of who said what, to whom, and when, and whether it actually meant anything. Cole used to be one of them, but he’d learned something about himself in the course of this long, endless, day.

  If I get out of this alive, I’m going to party. I don’t care if it’s not 1999 anymore.

  But even while partying like there was no tomorrow, he’d still want to know what happened. The snowstorm wasn’t natural, and the
hulking frozen things that stalked the living were definitely wrong. He just wished he knew where they’d come from.

  He realized that all the speculation in his head was useless. He decided to leave it to the scientists to figure out after the event. All he wanted to do now was sit tight and let it all blow over. Food and drink would have to wait for better weather conditions.

  Then the thought struck him.

  Maybe a scientist has figured it out already?

  Earlier in the day he’d discovered that North’s notebook was more than just a journal…it was a blow-by-blow account of all the finds on the digs, and North’s conclusions about them.

  He took the notebook out of his satchel and held it as close to the furnace as he dared. He opened a page at random. The glow from the flame was just enough to let him read.

  The captain’s chest is definitely from the right period. The wood is teak, South American in origin. Carbon dating places it in the late 16th Century, plus or minus 40 years. The three panel molded lid sits above a similar design front. The lunette carved frieze above molded frame is inlaid with holly and bog oak dog tooth design and the whole is supported on beautifully carved strap work stiles. The chest still retains the original iron staple hinges & till, and is a large example of the type, being over a meter in width at its widest. A close examination of the brass label inside shows the name William Kerr, cabinetmaker, of Beith, Ayrshire, and it is dated, 1578. Given that…

  Cole skipped ahead.

  The skeletons have been fused together by the great heat. It is only where their chests have met that anything survives from the fire. The skeletons were both male, and both aged between thirty and fifty judging by the teeth. A further examination of the bones will be necessary to glean any further information, but there is evidence of a long chain hydrocarbon being used as the accelerant and…

  It still wasn’t what Cole was after. He skipped further, nearing the end of the notebook and beyond anything else he’d read so far.

  The motif is almost certainly Scandinavian in origin. We are in the realm of Sky Gods and Ice Giants here, in a land where the Jotun still walk. The entire encounter with the crew of the Havenhome feels European rather than American, resembling a folk memory from the Teutonic races rather than dealing with the animalism and trickster gods of the Native American. The Ragnarok or end of the world archetype looms large. Ragnarok, also called Götterdämmerung, means the end of the cosmos in Norse mythology. In the old stories it is said that it will be preceded by Fimbulvetr, the winter of winters.