Whiteout

by Gabriel Dylan

  In the falling snow, just visible in the darkness, a score of quick figures darted here and there, like wolves on the hunt. Some were huddled over their victims, who struggled and writhed beneath them in the snow. Charlie pictured Kelsey and the creature that had caught her in the dining room, and he tasted warm blood in his mouth as he bit into his lip. Other shapes dragged their prey away through the blizzard, out of sight. From far away, Charlie heard himself swear. He turned to Hanna.

  “What … what are they? What the hell is going on?”

  Hanna stared at him for a heartbeat then shook her head slowly. She didn’t seem scared, but her grey eyes were wide, her breath coming in quick shallow bursts. “I don’t know. But I’m not staying here.”

  She turned and darted back to the others. Charlie moved as if to follow her, but something caught his eye.

  Far below, near the entrance to the hotel, a lone figure stood – unmoving, long dark hair whipping this way and that in the breeze. For some reason it reminded Charlie of a conductor, a still figure in charge of the chaos all around it. He couldn’t make out any more than a shape, a single point of calm among the storm, but there was no mistaking it. As if the figure sensed it was being watched, it started to turn slowly and deliberately in Charlie’s direction.

  Before he saw its face, Charlie ducked down and scuttled after Hanna, his socks sopping in the thick snow.

  One of the rugby boys, Malachi, was crying, his face hidden behind his fingers. An athletic, dark-skinned girl called Shiv pulled him close to her. Tara sat huddled into Ryan, his arm around her like a shield. There were no more than a dozen or so of them in the small group.

  Charlie found himself wondering if they were the only ones left alive.

  Tara pulled her face away from Ryan’s sopping shirt. “I want to get away, please, please, I need to get home, I shouldn’t be here, please!”

  Her voice became higher, hysterical, and Hanna glared at Ryan. “You need to shut her up, or I’ll do it. Right now.”

  Ryan nodded numbly and pulled Tara’s face against his chest, muffling her sobs. Hanna stared at the girl venomously for a moment and Charlie found himself thinking back to their meeting on the mountain, wondering if there was a reason for the hostile way she seemed to treat everyone she ran into.

  Hanna raked her eyes over the rest of the group. “We can’t stay here. We’ll be dead from exposure in minutes if we stay in this storm. I’m going to get inside. Not here, somewhere else. You can come with me if you must, but if you make a sound, if you make those things hear us, whatever they are, I’ll leave you down there alone.”

  Malachi looked at her imploringly. “Please. We just want to get away.”

  Hanna nodded. “I know. I do, too. So I need you to do exactly what I say.”

  Chapter Ten

  Hanna led them over the side wall at the back of the hotel, then down a set of fire stairs that zigzagged down to the ground below. She didn’t wait to see if the others were behind her. Instead she darted across the empty space behind the hotel, in the direction of the lift station.

  Charlie was next in line and he followed her as she scrambled along in front of the row of deserted shops and cafés at the back of the hotel, keeping as low as he could. He had no idea where they were going but he kept close to their guide, only looking behind once to see if the others were still there. He counted four of them trailing behind him before he had to carry on for fear of losing sight of Hanna.

  He rounded the corner of the village’s lone ski-hire shop and barged straight into her. She was crouched down at the side of the building, her eyes fixed somewhere in the distance. She ignored Charlie and fumbled around in her pocket for something. She swore in German, struggled some more, then pulled out a bristling set of keys. She pressed down on one of them and twenty metres away Charlie saw two sets of lights glitter orange through the falling snow before blinking off.

  Without a word, Hanna stood and started to run.

  Charlie struggled to keep up with her as she sprinted across the open space between the back of the shop and the parking lot in the distance. As he ran, he saw the shape of a minibus come into focus through the darkness.

  Hanna half fell in the thick snow, recovered, then reached the minibus and put her back against it, fumbling with the keys again. She pressed a button, reached out and gently pulled the side door open, sliding it back just enough for a person to slip through.

  “Whose is this?” Charlie gasped against burning lungs.

  Hanna glanced sideways at him. She seemed barely out of breath. “It belongs to the hotel, but it’s used by anyone who needs it. They always keep the keys behind the bar, for running things and people to the lifts and back. I just hope it starts.”

  Hanna stepped on to the minibus and ducked down by the steering wheel. Charlie climbed up and dropped down in the first seat he came to. He watched anxiously as other figures started to make their way up the steps. First Poppy. Then Ryan and Tara. He counted seven of them apart from himself and Hanna.

  The last one to step on to the minibus was Jordan. He didn’t look at Charlie as he ducked down in the aisle next to him. Hanna stared across at his pale, stony face. “Is that it? Are you the last?”

  Jordan seemed to come out of a daze. “Yeah. Yeah, I think so.”

  He took a deep breath, rubbed at his hair, frozen like steel wire and looked back towards the doorway. “I think … I think maybe there were some others but I’m not sure they saw where we were going.”

  He paused, shook his head. “Shit, I think I lost them. I should have waited, shouldn’t I? I think that was my fault.” He wiped at his nose and lowered his head, then started to shiver and sob.

  Shiv reached out a hand from the seat next to him and rested it on Jordan’s shoulder. “It isn’t your fault. Nobody knows what the hell is going on. Try not to think about it.”

  Shiv glanced across at Hanna, sitting low in the driver’s seat. “What are we doing? You going to start this thing?”

  Hanna shook her head slowly, looked through the driver’s door at the storm, then sank down into the aisle and made her way to the seat in front of Charlie’s, near where the rest of the group had congregated.

  “For now we stay here. I don’t know if the minibus will even start. I don’t think its been used for a few weeks. And I don’t want to let those things know where we are.”

  Ryan swore loudly, his breath fogging out in front of him in the half-light.

  “What were they? I saw one of them drag Jacob out through the window like he was nothing. I feel like I’m dreaming. Did anyone else see that? Christ, Jacob weighed sixteen stone. It’d take three of us to lift him like that. Whatever it was that came in through the window pulled him outside as if he was lighter than my little brother. What the hell is going on?”

  Hanna ignored Ryan’s question and glanced around the group. “Can anyone drive?’

  Charlie nodded. “A little. I’ve driven a little, tractors, cars. I don’t have a licence, but I can drive.”

  Hanna scrutinized him for a moment then handed him the keys. They felt hot and heavy in his hand. When she spoke, her words were barely a whisper. “If we need to go, you start this thing and get it moving. Go and have a look now, check that you know where the key goes.”

  Charlie nodded and moved down the aisle, into the driver’s seat, glad to have a purpose. He put his foot on the clutch and played with the gearbox. Finally he put the key in the ignition, checked it turned and clicked it back off. From high up in the driver’s seat, he could see the tree-lined road winding away down the hill towards the lift station, a deep layer of snow hiding where the markings should be.

  He left the key dangling in the ignition and crept back down the aisle. A couple of the group had commandeered discarded jackets and coats that had been left in the minibus. Ryan pulled on a hoodie that was far too small for him and passed a coat over to one of the girls. Charlie reached down and pulled off his soaking socks. His toes were painf
ully numb and if he had to run again it was going to be a problem. Hanna saw what he was doing, reached past him and handed him a pair of furry boots that had been left on the seat behind. They were badly worn, and at least a size too small, but Charlie managed to squeeze his foot into the fleecy lining.

  A few seats away, Tara wiped at her eyes and shook her head. “Can’t we just go now? Why are we sitting here? Why are we waiting for those things to find us?”

  Hanna stared at her coldly. “What if we start the minibus and it doesn’t work? What if those things are as fast as they are strong? It’s not a chance I’m willing to take. For now we just need to stay still. We’re dry, we’re safe in here, and I don’t want to send those things an invite to find us.”

  Tara stared back at her.

  “Who put you in charge? Just because you spend your day bossing people around on the mountain doesn’t mean that you can tell us all what to do.”

  For a moment Charlie thought Hanna was going to swing for Tara, then she shook her head and swore in German. “I didn’t ask you to follow me. Any of you. And if you don’t like what I’m doing you’re welcome to leave. There’s the door.”

  Tara followed Hanna’s line of vision and sniffed. “Maybe I will.”

  The wind rocked the coach gently to and fro. Malachi started sobbing again. “What is going on? What were those things? Where did they take the others? I saw one of them grab Amy by the hair, and just drag her along the floor. It looked like … like…”

  He started to cry harder, his words lost among a series of choked sobs. Hanna shook her head. “Pull yourself together. If those things hear you, you’ll draw them over here. Then you’ll be just the same as your friends.”

  Charlie looked out at the storm. The snow seemed to be falling heavier than ever. Jordan rubbed at his eyes and looked around the group.

  “Malachi’s right, though, what were they? They were like something out of a film. I’m sure they were … shit, I saw one of them eating one of the girls. Like she was a burger. Proper eating her.”

  In the aisle, Shiv nodded. “I saw that, too. Like demons, or vampires, or—”

  Hanna swore and cut her dead. “There’s no such thing. There isn’t! I don’t know what they were, some psychos in masks maybe. So we need to—”

  Ellie’s voice came from the back of the vehicle, sounding on the verge of hysteria. “Oh my God, there’s one of them down there, near the shops. Look, it’s got one of the girls. I can’t watch, I can’t…”

  Hanna scuttled down the aisle and slid alongside Poppy and Ellie on one of the seats on the right-hand side of the bus. Charlie followed her, some of the group crowding around him. Hanna slid slowly upwards, so that her eyes just rose above the windowsill to let her see what was happening outside.

  Charlie did the same and instantly wished he hadn’t.

  About thirty feet from the back of the minibus, just before the point where the falling snow made visibility fade to nothing, one of the creatures had paused in the snow. It looked back over its shoulder furtively then glanced down at the girl at its feet.

  Charlie recognized her. He thought her name was Chloe. She was a bubbly, cheerful girl that was often on duty in the common room, telling others to put their rubbish in the bin, to keep the place tidy, to respect the school facilities. The kind of girl that always did the right thing.

  Now she lay slumped on her back, eyes wide, snow settling on her face. Her dressing gown had fallen open and the T-shirt underneath had ridden up so that the pale skin of her belly was exposed.

  Ellie turned to the others. “Shouldn’t we… Shouldn’t we help her?”

  Hanna shook her head slowly. “Nein. Not yet. Not until we know a little more.”

  Jordan swore quietly. “She was right behind me. Then when I looked back, she was gone.”

  Chloe’s attacker stood up as if stretching the muscles in his back and lifted his head up to the sky. He looked almost like a normal man, short, stocky, bald-headed. He was dressed in a ragged pair of worker’s dungarees over a tattered, faded shirt, like the attendants who ran the lifts on the slopes. There were dirty, brown stained bandages around his hands and on one of his arms, as if he had cut himself on some machinery. But there was something wrong with his face and his mouth.

  The man’s features were jagged, angular, feral and far too pale to be normal. His mouth seemed too wide for his face somehow. And maybe it was a trick of the light or the storm, but Charlie thought he saw gums lined with jagged teeth, far larger and thicker than those of a normal person.

  Ellie’s eyes were wide, frantic. “We need to help her!”

  Hanna shook her head. “No, we don’t.”

  The thing paused in its stretch, looked down at Chloe’s still form. It seemed to Charlie as if she was alive but too scared to move, too scared to do anything but stare, her twitching pupils betraying the fact that she was conscious. The creature studied her for a moment longer before it lunged its face down towards the skin of her belly, its teeth slashing this way and that.

  Blood started to splatter on the snow, and Chloe’s limbs twisted and jerked as if she was on strings.

  A few seats down from Charlie, Jordan started swearing frantically.

  Hanna flickered round, her voice little more than a hiss. “Nein! Shut up! Shut up!”

  Poppy whispered at the back of the bus, her words full of despair. “Oh no … it heard us. It knows we’re here.”

  Charlie looked back out of the window then ducked down. The thing had stopped feeding and it stood stock still, staring at the minibus, its head cocked to one side like a dog. Charlie had only gotten the briefest of glimpses, but even so there was no missing the slick of blood that ran down the creature’s mouth and chin.

  Hanna slid back into the aisle, moved halfway down the minibus and looked around. “Nobody move. Nobody make a sound.”

  She glanced across at Charlie. “Charlie. That’s your name isn’t it? I need you to make your way along the coach, to the driver’s seat. Slide into the foot well. But don’t start the engine unless I say.”

  Charlie did as he was told. As he made his way along the aisle, he saw the faces of the other students, eyes wide with terror, backs against the inside of the bus, their shallow breath dancing around them like mist.

  Charlie made it to the front, and then slid into the foot well. Just before he sank down, he caught a quick glimpse of the creature through the door opposite the driver’s seat. It stood perfectly still, eyes fixed on the bus.

  “Nobody move,” Hanna repeated.

  Charlie watched her lift her head slowly above the glass, trying to work out what the creature was doing without being seen.

  There was a thud as Hanna slammed back down on to the seat. Then a long, low, hungry howl echoed around the car park.

  Chapter Eleven

  Hanna heard the words fall from her lips at the awful howl, felt the eyes of the others jerk in her direction. “Scheisse, it saw me! It knows we’re here! Charlie, start the engine, start it, start it now!”

  Charlie scrambled up out of the foot well, turned the key and Hanna heard the heavy engine start to grumble and labour. Then it died. Charlie tried it again, only for it to fade once more. Hanna made her way along the coach, her eyes darting out into the storm.

  The creature that had savaged Chloe was running towards the coach. Other shapes were approaching too, in the distance, just past the shops.

  Charlie turned the key again, the panic in his voice palpable. “There’s more, three of them! They’re coming!”

  Hanna arrived at his shoulder, her hand on the seat. On the fifth turn of the key the ignition caught and the whole coach started to rumble and quake as it fought to get warm against the freezing night air.

  Hanna gripped his arm, trying to ignore the ominous figures approaching through the blizzard. “Drive! Get us out of here!”

  Charlie let the clutch slip and stamped on the throttle. The minibus lurched then fell back. He swore, rele
ased the handbrake, then stamped on the pedal again. The vehicle started to move, then froze again. Hanna could hear the wheels spinning uselessly as they tried to get purchase.

  Charlie slammed his hand on the steering wheel and looked back at Hanna. “It’s stuck, it’s stuck fast! I can’t get it moving, the snow’s too deep!”

  There were screams and yells from the back and two heavy thuds as something climbed on to the roof.

  Shiv’s voice echoed off the walls. “They’re here! They’re on the bus! Please, drive, somebody drive!”

  Charlie stamped on the throttle again, the minibus refusing to obey. “We’re not going anywhere. I can’t get out of the snow!”

  Hanna heard heavy footsteps above her head. “Nein, nein!”

  She pointed down at the gearbox, then stared at Charlie. “What do we do? What do we do?”

  Charlie put his hand on the stick and looked back up at her. “Reverse?”

  Hanna nodded frantically. “Slam it into reverse and stamp on the throttle as hard as you can!”

  Charlie engaged the clutch, ground the gears and forced it into reverse. Then he stamped down on the pedal and closed his eyes.

  There was the harsh sound of the tyres searching for purchase then suddenly the bus flew backwards. Hanna lost her grip on the back of Charlie’s chair and found herself tumbling back down the aisle.

  When she heaved herself up, the world around them was moving, the car park a blur. A set of tyre prints unravelled themselves in front of the window as the minibus gathered speed. Behind Hanna, the other students screamed and shouted. Through the side mirror, she saw a figure ram into the back of the vehicle and vanish under the winter tyres, the minibus lurching upwards over the obstacle. Hanna tried not to dwell on the noise that accompanied the impact.

  Charlie’s voice dragged her back into the world. He glanced back over his shoulder, his hands on the wheel. “Where am I going?”