Whiteout

by Gabriel Dylan

  Chapter Nineteen

  Hanna had been right.

  It had been madness to go out into the storm.

  They were lost, freezing, starving and exhausted. And the daylight was almost gone.

  When they’d first left, Shiv had been filled with hope. The three of them had buzzed with a heady relief as the grey buildings of the village faded into the blizzard behind them. Kaldgellan was like an abattoir now, the stink of death all over it. And the thought that those things might come out again once it grew dark was too terrible to consider.

  Shiv had jumped on board Ryan’s plan without a second thought. The wind had been ferocious, the snow relentless and the drifts waist-deep in places, but she’d have taken the hellish conditions any day, rather than sitting in the village, waiting for the weak daylight to fade away.

  For a while it had seemed makeable. Shiv could more than keep up with the boys, and she had spent countless hours in the gym, training, rowing, squatting, sweating. She had little doubt that if it were a matter of strength and endurance, she would make it down to the valley. Ryan had taken Hanna’s advice and followed what was once a gentle blue run. But now it was impossible to tell where the slope started and finished, and the snow had been far too deep to ride.

  Shiv had skied before and she was competent, but all the same she couldn’t make her way through the thick, cloying powder. And even if she could have done, she would still have had to wait for Ryan and Malachi, who barely made it a dozen metres before losing their skis and poles. In the end, they had started to wade through the snow, staggering onwards, trying to keep the descending slope in front of them.

  It had been hopeless.

  There was no way of knowing which direction they were headed in, other than downwards, and they couldn’t see more than a few feet through the blizzard. The snow was chest-deep in places and at one point they had had to dig Malachi out from a huge drift that swallowed him up to his neck.

  All the time, the wind tore at them, pushing them this way and that, and the cold gnawed into their bones. As they struggled on, Shiv slowly started to lose the feeling in her fingers and toes.

  It felt like they had been walking for hours, barely making any ground, when Shiv stopped and turned back to them, her words torn away by the keening wind. They had chanced upon a lift hut, away at the side of the slope they clung to, and Shiv suggested they shelter there and get their breath back. As fit as she was, Shiv had been almost sobbing with fatigue. The others had been too tired to even reply.

  The tiny lift station was locked, but Shiv used her skis to break the glass next to the door handle. The hut was cramped, little more than a wooden shed with a control panel and a chair in one corner, but it was out of the wind and the blizzard, and the three of them had slumped to the floor with exhaustion. Nobody had really bothered to speak, or to voice what Shiv supposed they had all been thinking. That Hanna had been right.

  It was just as the light drained out of the sky that the noises found their way into the tiny hut. At first Shiv told herself it was the howling of the wind. But as the light on the slopes outside slipped from blue to grey, Shiv found Ryan’s eyes meeting her own.

  They had been friends since primary school, never crossing the line into anything more, but Ryan was someone she always turned to, always sought out when she needed a confidant.

  When Ryan’s mum and dad had split up when he was eight, before his move to the flats, they had sat in the den up in the tree at the back of his garden and talked about whatever they could think of to block the shouting and screaming from the other side of his parents’ patio windows. And when Luke had dumped Shiv last year, it had been Ryan who had taken her down to the waterfront for a beer and a chat, and Ryan who had reassured her that she was better off without him. In all they’d been through, she had never seen him scared before. And she’d never heard fear in his voice. Until now.

  “That noise is getting closer. We can’t stay here. Shit!”

  Shiv nodded and kicked Malachi awake from where he was curled up on the floor of the hut. His eyes looked delirious, exhausted, and when another howl echoed in the twilight his face looked as if it might crumble and break.

  The three of them scrambled outside. It was as if someone had turned the storm up to an even fiercer setting and the wind almost knocked Shiv flat on to her face. She helped Malachi to stay upright, and her eyes caught a glimpse of movement at the top of the slope above their heads.

  Shapes.

  Figures.

  Coming closer.

  Shiv heard herself screaming. Somehow she couldn’t stop. When she turned towards Ryan, her voice no longer sounded like her own.

  “Jesus, they’re here, they’re coming for us, we need to move, now!”

  Chapter Twenty

  Charlie sat by the window, peering out at the wintry scene below through the tiniest crack in the shutters. Between the raging blizzard and the faintest glimmer of light from the moon, it was hard to make out much at all. But although he could hear shrieks and howls on the wind, there was no sign of movement on the street below.

  It was cold in the hostel, so cold that his breath hung around his face, still and unmoving. He slid down from the window, zipped up his sleeping bag a little higher then wriggled across so that he was next to the small huddle of figures that lay on the wooden floorboards. A rumble of wind seemed to rock the building and one of the group swore quietly. Charlie saw a vague movement as the figure lying nearest to him turned in his direction.

  “Anything out there?”

  Charlie just made out Leandra’s profile in the gloom, her long black hair and the dark hollow of her eyes. The words were barely a whisper.

  “No. Nothing. I can hear them out there, somewhere nearby. But I can’t see anything moving except the snow.”

  Leandra slid closer to him in her sleeping bag, so that her shoulder almost touched his. “I’m scared. I can’t stop shaking. What time do you think it is?”

  Charlie shrugged. “One a.m., maybe two.”

  It felt as if a chasm separated them from the dawn. Leandra sighed quietly next to him. “Can we talk? I can’t sleep, and I don’t want to think about, about—”

  Charlie cut her off before she could finish. “Yeah, if you want to. I don’t want to lie here counting the minutes either.”

  Leandra moved an inch closer, her hair brushing Charlie’s ear. “We were in English together, weren’t we, and art? We never really talked, though, did we?”

  Charlie didn’t answer, his mind revisiting all the times when he’d needed somebody to talk to and nobody had been there. A longing screech echoed on the wind. Leandra shuddered next to him.

  “I loved our art lessons. I could have sat in that classroom all day long. That’s what I wanted to do with my life – be an artist, a painter. I’d give anything to be back there now.”

  Charlie pictured the small monochrome classroom, the dead afternoons spent watching the clock and doodling on the back page of his notebook while the teacher droned on to a uninterested, disaffected audience. It seemed a lifetime ago now.

  Leandra breathed out through her nose. “What do you think’s happening? What do you think those things are?”

  Charlie chewed at a piece of chapped skin on his bottom lip. “I don’t know. I really don’t know.”

  The silence seemed to stretch on for minutes, hours. Somebody snored and coughed on the other side of the room. Leandra shuffled an inch closer to Charlie. “Can I tell you a secret? My friend, Fatima, the Muslim girl with the nose-ring, she had a thing for you. She told me she used to sit there and stare at you all lesson. You remember her? Pretty, short, used to sit at the back of the English class?”

  Charlie shook his head slowly. “No. I mean, I think I know who she was, but I had no idea…”

  Leandra’s head jiggled next to his as she nodded. “She knew you didn’t. Still liked you, though. Said she didn’t care about what people said about you, that you were a lot more interesting t
han text transformation.”

  Charlie didn’t know what to say. He’d never even spoken to Fatima, and wouldn’t have known what to say if he had.

  Leandra turned her mouth closer to his ear. Her voice seemed to drop a little lower, her lips only a few inches from his skin. “Can I tell you something else?”

  Charlie nodded. He was suddenly almost as anxious about Leandra’s closeness to him as he was about the storm outside. His mouth felt dry when he replied. “If you want to.”

  Leandra was still, unmoving, seeming to weigh her words. “I was going to run away. I was going to get back from this trip, get home, pack as much crap as I could fit into my backpack, and I was going to go.”

  Charlie tried to pinpoint her wide eyes in the darkness. “Where? Why?”

  Leandra rolled on to her side so that she faced him, and her fingers drifted up towards her face, twisting in her hair. “They were going to marry me off. My mum and dad. Had it all planned, the guy picked out. As soon as I hit nineteen, that was going to be it. But you know what…”

  She fell silent for a moment, and Charlie thought she might be crying. She sniffed and shook her head.

  “You know, I thought screw you. I’ll do what I want. I’ll run away, down to London, stay with friends there, find someone I love, not someone I’m told I’m going to be with, find—”

  A low shriek rose with the storm outside and Charlie felt Leandra jump next to him, her words caught in her throat. She was quiet for a few seconds then she took a deep breath and spoke again, a little louder now.

  “I told my dad once. Told him I didn’t want to get married to someone he’d picked out. Told him I wanted to marry someone I loved, or at least someone I fancied, wanted to be with, you know. And you know what he said? He said God wanted me to marry Subith. And he was worried that if I didn’t, I’d go to hell.”

  She fell quiet and Charlie started to wonder if she was going to speak again. He realized he wanted her to. Anything was better than just lying there, waiting to be discovered.

  She swore quietly and sighed. “And I wonder if this … if he was right, and this is it. Hell.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Charlie jumped at the new voice that hissed in the darkness. Hanna sat up, clicked on the lantern then shielded it with her blanket so that it gave off only the faintest glimmer of light. Even so, Charlie could see the anger in her eyes.

  “He was wrong, your father. There’s no heaven, no hell. And to say that because you wouldn’t do what he told you to? When you get back, you can tell him that.”

  Leandra stared towards the source of the words. “You believe that? That we’ll make it home? I want to. I want to so much.”

  Charlie saw Hanna sit up in the twilight, her black hair sliding forwards into her eyes.

  “Think about your life back home. Fix on it, fix on your hopes, on being that artist you wanted to be. Focus on whatever you can if it helps you to get through this.”

  Tara’s voice came from somewhere down by Charlie’s feet. “There was so much I wanted to do with my life.”

  Poppy groaned in her sleep somewhere in the darkness, muttering to herself. Leandra glanced in her direction then looked over at Tara.

  “What did you want to be?”

  Tara yawned and sat up. “Be? I didn’t really want to be anything. I was going to travel around the world, ski in the mountains, walk along the beach in Thailand, safari in Africa. I was going to have such an amazing life. I shouldn’t be here. This shouldn’t have happened to me. None of it.”

  Hanna swore in German. “What a shame that the poor little rich girl didn’t get to live her life of vacant blandness. Scheisse.”

  Tara’s whispered words were tinged with bile. “Rich enough so that I wouldn’t have to work as some butch guide in the mountains, dying my hair black and shaving it half off and dressing like a man.”

  Hanna stared at Tara through the half-light. “My hair’s black naturally. And this butch guide is the reason you’re still alive. The reason you’re still bitching and whining and telling us about the ridiculous life you had planned. You know, I’ve met people like you before, dozens of people like you. My brother died because of people like you.”

  Tara sniffed. “You don’t know anything about me.”

  Hanna snorted. “Ja, I do. I’ve spent the last two years showing idiots like you around the mountain, making sure that they don’t get lost, fall off a cliff, freeze to death. Rich idiots that think they own the world, and that they can speak to the rest of us like crap. People that have it all. People just like you. You’re all the same.”

  Tara shook her head, her eyes poking out from the top of her silver sleeping bag. “I’m not. Not any more. Maybe I was, once, but two years ago my dad lost his job, then he and my mum broke up and we had to sell two of our houses. We might even have to sell my mum’s place in Switzerland, that’s how bad it’s got. That’s why I came on the trip, because we couldn’t go to Verbier this year. That’s why I’m at our awful school instead of one of the private schools around Bristol. We haven’t got any money, not any more. I wish it wasn’t true. I wish we could get it back. But we can’t.”

  Charlie watched as Hanna wound herself up again, but he leaned across in her direction and whispered her name before she could speak.

  “Hanna, how did your brother die?”

  Hanna glanced at him, the fire fading from her eyes, her face suddenly unsure. “Another time. If we make it through tonight I’ll tell you.”

  Nico’s head appeared over by Poppy, the bobbles on his orange hat shifting in the shadows. “What are they? I know you … I know Hanna doesn’t want to talk about it, but what are those things? That’s all I can think about. I can’t sleep for wondering what the hell is going on. What are they? Where did they come from? Why is this happening?”

  Hanna glanced in his direction. It looked to Charlie as if she wasn’t going to answer, then she shook her head wearily. “The old folk in these mountains say they’re haunted. Cursed. There was a story they told us, when we were little, before I moved away. About creatures, things that came out at night. But they were just the kind of stories lots of parents tell their children. Just mull, what would you English say, crap, a load of old fairy tales. I don’t know what those things are. And what help would it be anyway?”

  Charlie couldn’t shake the odd sensation that Hanna knew more than she was letting on, but Nico continued to stare at her.

  “But they … they ate some of the others. I saw them. And they only seem to come out at night. And … their teeth. Like … like a shark’s, but bigger, worse. I’ve seen Dracula, Fright Night, Nosferatu. They … they’re vampires, aren’t they?”

  While Tara rolled her eyes, Hanna fired an angry reply in Nico’s direction. “There’s no such thing as vampires! They’re people! That’s all they are, and something’s happened to them, something’s—”

  Charlie sat up, held out his hand. “Can you hear that? There’s someone out there, calling. Listen.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Even with Nico’s sight restricted by the tiny cracks in the shutter and the blinding force of the blizzard, there was no mistaking the figure that trudged through the snow below.

  Nico had no idea where Chris had been for the past twenty-four hours, how he could have escaped, or where he could have hidden. But now his best friend was outside the hostel, staggering from door to door, desperately searching the neighbouring chalets for help.

  Chris loved Warcraft, as much as if not more than Nico did. The two of them would sit there, side by side, or connected from their houses by headsets if it was late at night.

  And now, as Nico watched Chris stagger like a drunkard into the force of the wind, he wanted to run down, shout to his friend, drag him in from the storm.

  Instead he found he couldn’t move.

  In the virtual world they explored together, Nico had carried out all manner of heroic tasks, taken on any number of unholy monsters. Noctu
rnal demons had fled from the bite of his sword, wealthy lords and kings rewarding him for his exploits and skill.

  But now, when things mattered, he was frozen to the spot, no better than the worst kind of coward.

  Instead, it was Charlie who backed away from the shutters and turned towards the door. He held an axe in one hand, its red handle catching in the light of the lantern. Nico watched as Hanna’s hand shot out and caught the sleeve of Charlie’s jacket.

  Her words were a snake’s hiss in the darkness. “What the hell are you doing?”

  Charlie tried to pull his arm away and found it held fast. “I’m going to go downstairs, open the door, let him in. We can’t just leave him out there.”

  Next to Nico, Ellie put her hand over her mouth. “What if they … what if those things are out there? What if they see?”

  Hanna nodded slowly. “She’s right. There are seven of us up here. And there’s one boy down there. There’s a chance this might be a trap.”

  She looked from face to face, struggling to discern the reaction of her audience in the low light. “We need to see what they do, how they hunt. We need to find out all we can. And if we let him in, if they’re watching, they might just kill us all. It’s not a risk I’m prepared to take.”

  Her voice was cold, calculating, and even though it was his friend on the street below, Nico found himself more than thankful. But underpinning his relief was a strong tide of guilt, shame even. Nico’s virtual alter ego would have gone after his friend in a heartbeat.

  Charlie stared at Hanna, his voice a whisper. “I’m not sure it’s up to you.”

  Nico moved away from the shutter and stepped between them. “Chris. His name’s Chris. We’ve been friends since we were at pre-school. He’s my best friend.” He stared at the floor, unable to meet Charlie’s eyes. “But I don’t think we can let him in.”

  Charlie shook his head. “Well, I’m not going to just leave him out there.”

  Hanna let go of Charlie’s sleeve. Nico noticed that she tightened her grip on the bloodied metal hockey stick in her other hand.