Whiteout

by Gabriel Dylan

  Tara had been convinced that this was the end, and that within minutes the awful creatures would find their way inside. Then suddenly Poppy had sat up, and Tara had realized with chilling clarity that none of them had been able to see what had been happening, right under their noses.

  Poppy wasn’t Poppy any more.

  Maybe it was the strange words Poppy had spoken or the awful noises she’d made, but Tara had shrunk into her sleeping bag and left Ellie to look on in horror. Nico had done the same, and the two of them had wriggled as far away as they could. Even so, Tara had still seen far more than she wanted.

  While Hanna and Charlie had been investigating the creatures that raged outside, Poppy had attacked Ellie, smashing the side of her head against the hard stone wall again and again until all that remained was a sticky mess of blood and bone.

  Just as Tara had thought it was her turn, Poppy had suddenly lurched up and gone after Hanna, slashing at her with the scissors and driving her towards the front of the chapel.

  It was only when Poppy had Hanna choked against the chapel door that Tara had gone to the Austrian girl’s aid. She had no idea why she’d done it, nor would she ever consider doing such a thing again. But before she’d known what was happening, she’d retrieved Hanna’s lost hockey stick. And then, just as the thing that had been Poppy was about to take out one of Hanna’s eyes with the scissors, she’d found herself swinging the stick with what little strength she had.

  It hadn’t taken Tara long to realize that her ill-advised rescue attempt had been a mistake. Poppy had barely flinched at the impact.

  But somehow Tara’s distraction had given Hanna enough time to snatch the scissors away from Poppy.

  And Hanna had done the rest on her own.

  Tara still struggled to understand what had made her rush to help Hanna, a girl she despised. Hanna antagonized and belittled her at every turn and went out of her way to make her even more miserable. But maybe it was a good thing that Tara had saved her. Maybe once Poppy had finished with Hanna, she’d have opened the door, let the other monsters in, then come back and started jabbing away with her scissors at Tara and that loser Nico.

  Maybe Tara had done the right thing, but she still didn’t feel good about it.

  And even worse than the horrific attack were the implications of Poppy’s transformation. While Tara had managed to try to tell herself that Ellie had imagined seeing Malachi, changed into one of those things, wandering around in the storm, now she’d seen Poppy with her own eyes there was no denying it.

  Malachi had changed.

  Poppy had changed.

  And that probably meant Ryan had changed, too.

  Ryan wasn’t coming back. Unless it was to eat Tara. Or make her like him.

  Tara put her hands to her face, stared at the pool of blood by the front of the chapel, and knew that even if she did stop crying long enough to go to sleep, Poppy’s hideous leer would be waiting for her, once more, in her dreams.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  It was almost dawn when Charlie found Hanna.

  After the attack, she’d stayed huddled up by the front door, her knees hugged to her chest, her face a watercolour mess of blood and bruise. Only the shock in her eyes had given away the fact that she was alive at all. And while Charlie had tried to clean up as many signs of the horror as he could, she’d never moved, her eyes locked on Poppy’s body as it lay face down, the curved orange handle jutting out of one eye socket.

  Charlie had dragged the bodies to the far side of the chapel, wiped away as much of the blood as he could, then stared up at the windows, watching the daylight struggle to gain a toehold against the darkness. Every time he’d closed his eyes, he saw a montage of images from the night before.

  Ellie, sprawled on the floor, her pale eyes unseeing, streaks of blood matting her long blond hair.

  The side of her skull, caved in, the dark slick on the wall betraying the cause of the wound.

  Opening his eyes with a jerk, he glanced around and realised that Hanna was gone.

  She hadn’t spoken since what had happened and Charlie felt sick as he searched the echoing chapel for any sign of her.

  He didn’t have to look far.

  She was sat on the floor in the small room to the side of the altar when Charlie found her. The bottle of wine she had in her grasp was already half empty. Another one stood by her at the ready, a bottle opener next to it on the cold stone floor.

  “What are you doing?”

  Hanna wiped at her mouth with the back of her hand. Her breath fogged around her face when she spoke. “I’m getting drunk. I nearly died tonight. That bitch cut me to pieces. So I think I’ve earned this.”

  As if to stress her point, she took a huge swig from the bottle. Charlie stood uneasily in the doorway to the storage room, not sure what to say or do next.

  Hanna looked like she had been in a car crash. There was blood down one side of her face and her left eye was crusted and blackened. She had stitched the slash on her bicep herself with the kit she had brought to treat Poppy’s injuries, and a long slick of blood ran down from the clumsy needlework. The cut on her collarbone was still open and raw, a slow crimson trail seeping down her chest whenever she lifted her arm to drink.

  Hanna felt Charlie’s eyes studying her, and she glanced up at him warily. She sat with her back leaning against the single bed that was against the far wall. It was freezing in the small room, but Hanna didn’t seem to feel it. Charlie hadn’t been able to stop shaking since earlier, and as much as he tried to tell himself it was the cold he knew it wasn’t.

  His breath fumed in front of his eyes as he spoke. “You OK?”

  Hanna put the bottle in her lap and fixed him humorously with one angry grey eye. “I’m wonderful. Why? Don’t I seem it?”

  She took another mammoth drag from the bottle. “I’m sorry about your friend. I liked her.”

  Charlie pictured Poppy, lying on the chapel floor, the scissors protruding from her eye socket like some misshapen fungus. “I barely knew her, not before all this. But I liked her, too.”

  There was an uneasy silence. Hanna looked back up at Charlie, a playful smile on her torn lips. “You want to sleep with me?”

  Charlie felt like he had fallen from a great height in his sleep. “What?”

  “You want to sleep with me? I’m told it helps people get over times of great stress or trauma. And there’s a bed just here.”

  Hanna tapped her bandaged hand on to the covers just behind her.

  Charlie shook his head slowly. “Not right now.”

  Hanna laughed and took another swig from her wine. “Shame. I know I look a mess right now, but we would have enjoyed it. That girl, Leandra, had good taste. You’re not bad looking.”

  She continued to stare at him, into him, and Charlie licked his lips warily.

  “You’re drunk.”

  Hanna’s grey eye bored into him. “So?”

  Charlie shook his head and sighed. “You … you want me to go?”

  Hanna stared at him for a heartbeat. Then she seemed to crumble. It was as if something broke inside her, some wall that held everything at bay.

  Tears shone in her eyes and she shook her head. “That thing tonight. It wasn’t Poppy. It knew me. It spoke to me. It was something … else. I’ve never believed in anything, any greater power. But that thing…”

  She wiped at her eyes then laughed bitterly. “Worst of all, the little princess saved me. How will I ever live that down?”

  Hanna snorted and drained the last of the wine from her bottle. She rolled it away then started to try to open the second. Her hands shook as she fumbled with the foil on the neck of the bottle, bloodstained fingers barely managing to grip the bottle opener.

  Charlie moved away from the door and sat next to her. Gently, he took the bottle away from her and put his coat around her shoulders, draping it over her like a blanket. Hanna pushed him away and shook her head.

  “You don’t have to do
that.”

  Charlie ignored her and held her close so that her head rested on his shoulder. The skin of her bare arms was freezing, and her body shivered next to his.

  She moaned, shook her head and sank into him. Seconds later she was fast asleep.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Hanna jerked awake on the bed in the small room by the altar. For a moment she struggled to recall where she was, what had happened, then she tried to move and her body screamed out in protest, each stabbing pain bringing with it a terrible recollection from the night before.

  She rolled on to her side, saw Charlie lying next to her and tried to piece together as much as she could. The process of remembering was like walking on a beach peppered with needles and glass. There were certain places Hanna didn’t want to stray too near to, jarring images that flashed up with every hesitant misstep.

  Charlie stirred, saving her from a tide of grisly snapshots. Hanna stared at him with her one good eye, neither of them speaking, both struggling to process all that had happened the night before.

  It was Charlie that buckled first. Hanna watched him struggle up, heard his footsteps take him out towards the back of the chapel. Freezing air caressed her skin from the blast of wind as he unchained the door. When Charlie came back into the room, he held a small bowl in his hand, filled with snow and ice.

  Hanna’s voice sounded far away in the cotton wool of her head. “Anything?”

  Charlie shook his head. “It’s still snowing. Still stormy. But I’m pretty sure those things went as soon as you killed Poppy.”

  Hanna felt herself start to tremble at the memory, and she struggled up to a sitting position, catching sight of herself in the mirror over the sink.

  The creature looking back at her resembled a walking corpse. Much of her skin was coated in dried blood, most of it her own, and her face was bruised and swollen. Her left eye was almost sealed shut. She glanced down at her chest and arm, catching glimpses of the cuts there, unsure as to how bad things were going to get.

  Charlie took a cloth and some antiseptic from the medical bag by the bed and dipped the cloth in the wet snow. Hanna watched him and took a deep breath when he started to clean and wash her cuts.

  “How are you feeling?”

  Hanna felt her one good eye flick open and closed. “My head’s pounding. I hurt all over. But I’ll live.”

  Charlie dabbed the blood from her neck and she tasted the sour, dry alcohol lingering on her tongue when she spoke. “Thank you.”

  Charlie shrugged. “You don’t need to thank me. I’d have died a long time ago without you.”

  She groaned while he cleaned a split on her top lip then peered at him through one slitted eye. “I don’t think so.”

  Hanna drew in a sharp intake of breath, her mind flicking through the past few days. She heard the words tumble out before she could stop them, felt tears hot and unwelcome on her cheeks. “I was going to use you. All of you. To find out what those things were. If they had anything to do with what happened to my brother. They never found his body, you know. I always knew that wasn’t right. I was going to use you all to find out what I could. I was going to do whatever it took.”

  Charlie shook his head and gently cleaned the wound on Hanna’s collarbone. “But you didn’t.”

  Hanna hissed as the cotton caught the edge of the cut, tugging at the skin. “The others?”

  Charlie looked away and shook his head slowly from side to side. “Ellie’s dead. She came with me, the night when the hostel burned down, to look for you. She was braver than the rest. Kinder. It seems so unfair. And Poppy… Well, you know what happened to her.”

  Hanna nodded slowly. “And the other one. The one with the orange hat?”

  Charlie washed the cloth in the bowl, turning the snow pink. “Tara and him, they both hid when it started. Poppy sat up, grabbed Ellie, smashed in her skull. Nico said he hid under the sleeping bags, closed his eyes and waited for it to be over.”

  She pictured Nico, buried under a sea of quilts, praying that some divine force would transport him elsewhere, while Poppy dissected Hanna one cut at a time. “He froze. Useful.”

  Charlie shook his head. “You can’t blame him.”

  Despite herself, Hanna felt a flicker of a smile tug at her torn lips. “I’d rather it had been him that saved me than the little princess.”

  “I’m glad somebody did.”

  Their eyes met again and Hanna found herself forced to look away, overcome by the rush of emotions that swept over her. Charlie blushed, then dabbed at the stitches on Hanna’s arm, gently cleaning around the pale, puckered skin. It was freezing inside the small room, and goosebumps rose on Hanna’s pale flesh. She grunted as the cloth tugged at a rogue stitch, and then sighed and rubbed at her head.

  “So when you found me last night … what happened? My head’s pounding, not just from being slapped, and the taste in my mouth…”

  “You were drunk. I put you to bed. That was all.”

  Hanna closed her good eye and tried to piece together what she had said to him. “You’re a good liar. Where are the others now?”

  Charlie glanced back over his shoulder. “Asleep.”

  They stared at each other for a moment, both aware that there was something neither of them dared to mention. In the end, Charlie asked the question, even though Hanna was fairly sure he must have known the answer himself.

  “What the hell happened to Poppy?”

  Hanna drew the blanket around her shoulders. “It … it terrifies me to think of it. It was like she was possessed. She wasn’t herself. Her voice. The noises that came out of her. The things she said. The way that those things outside just stopped when she caught hold of me. And her strength. I think she was changing, Charlie. Changing into one of them. I don’t know why I didn’t realize it sooner. And if Tara hadn’t had come over when she did…”

  Hanna stopped before the tears could come and reached out with a shaking hand, catching the front of Charlie’s jumper. “I can’t do this on my own. I thought I could. But I can’t.”

  In the pale dawn light, Charlie looked suddenly older, the beginnings of stubble on his chin, his hair jutting out at unnatural angles, a scarring knowledge in his eyes from all the things he’d seen.

  He squeezed Hanna’s fingers. “You don’t have to. Whatever we do, whatever happens, we’re in this together. I promise.”

  Chapter Forty

  Nico sat behind the altar, his sleeping bag pulled up to his chin, his eyes fixed on Charlie as he made his way to the heavy wooden door at the front of the chapel. Next to him Tara slept, but from the way she moaned and thrashed, her dreams were anything but peaceful.

  The open space of the church echoed as Charlie undid the heavy metal latch, pulled the door open a fraction, then closed it behind him. The keening wail of the wind rose for a moment then was quickly cut off. Nico lay back in the nest of coats and blankets he’d made for himself, trying his best not to think about all that had happened hours before.

  After a while, the heavy door swung open again. Charlie came back into the chapel and made his way down the aisle and past the pews. His dark hair hung into his eyes, and his khaki jacket was covered in snowflakes, the laces on his boots leaving a trail of snow as he walked.

  Nico heard his own voice bounce off the cold walls as Charlie came closer. “What’s it like out there?”

  Charlie seemed to come out of a daze and he made his way towards Nico and sat down in front of him. “Cold. It’s more exposed up here, I suppose, and that wind bites right through you.”

  “I’m guessing it’s still snowing.”

  Charlie nodded. “As much as ever. What time is it?”

  Nico looked down at his Lego Batman watch, a gift from his mother. He pictured her for a moment, thousands of miles away in Bristol, going insane with stress and worry. When he spoke, his voice trembled and shook. “Seven fifty-five. Feels later. It’s like I don’t even need to sleep any more. It’s like I can’t st
ay asleep now after all the things I’ve seen.”

  Nico watched as Charlie’s eyes drifted towards the bloody smear on the rough stone across from them. Charlie had tried to wash away the hair and bone but the blood was harder to shift. Nico felt a twist of nausea in his stomach and nodded towards the front door. “Those things, are they…?”

  Charlie shook his head. “No. There’s nothing. Even their footprints are nearly gone. The walls are scratched, there’s nail marks on the wood. But I think it’ll hold another night. It’s weird, but it seems like … like they didn’t really want to get in at all.”

  Nico stared at the far door. “I might be useless in a fight, but I do know my vampire lore. And in most of the films I’ve seen, vampires aren’t allowed on holy ground. Maybe they just couldn’t come in.”

  There was a noise from their right and Hanna stepped gingerly into the room. She had her blue ski jacket on, her beanie pulled down low on her head. Strands of black hair poked out from under the hat, obscuring her swollen eye and much of her face. She glanced down at Nico and sighed.

  “Well, that’s a reason to think everything’s going to be all right, then, isn’t it?”

  For a moment Nico studied Hanna’s face. She looked like she had done three minutes in a cagefighting arena. After a few seconds he found his words again.

  “The stories must come from somewhere. If that old man said they’d been around for ages, then surely they must have fed into the myths and stories we hear? Vampires don’t come out in the day. These things don’t. And they can’t go into churches. So maybe these can’t.”

  Hanna stared at him for a moment then shook her head. “We don’t know what these things are. And I’m not going to risk my life on something that you’ve picked up from Dungeons and Dragons, or from some episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. We need to be realistic. There are only four of us left now. We might not last another night.”