Colder than Hell

by Anthony Neil Smith

Kiefer picked up the chant. “She’s not us, she’s not us.” The boy looked around, then seemed to remember something and headed to the SUV. He went around to the driver’s door, opened it, and then came back with his dad’s pistol. “She’s not us, she’s not us.”

  He pointed it at his mom, too fast for either her or this man Matt to react. He was already running toward her son when Kiefer squeezed the trigger and—

  Nothing. Stan hadn’t loaded one into the chamber yet.

  Claire moaned and stamped her feet. “She’s not us!”

  That was enough for Rhonda.

  This Matt character grabbed her hand and started running, pulling her along like a rag doll, Jimmy following close behind. She let him lead, twisting around cars and semis and vans, cringing when a gunshot echoed behind them. She pulled back, slowed down.

  “Stop, please, I have to go back!”

  “They’ve loaded the gun, I bet. Not right now.”

  “But…but…they’ll die!”

  Matt took a deep breath and bent over, hands on his knees. He took his time. Then, “No, they won’t. Like I said, as long as no one else like you or me tries to kill them, they won’t die. This thing, I don’t know much about it, but it needs to spread. Once it has, it keeps them warm, keeps them safe. We’re the ones in danger.”

  He reached back for one of the water bottles on his backpack and handed it over. “Drink this.”

  She took it, nearly dropped it. “It’s freezing!”

  “That’s the idea. Keep yourself cold.”

  She popped the top and squeezed some into her mouth. The bottle was crunchy with ice, and the water hurt her teeth. But she swallowed, more pain all the way down her esophagus, and felt a little better. Her head wasn’t so cloudy. She didn’t want to laugh anymore. At least for a few seconds.

  She took another swig, gasped, and then found her voice again. “This is crazy. What’s going on? Who are you? Why does he have a guitar? How do you know about this? Why aren’t we like them?”

  “Whoa, whoa.” Matt waved his palms at her. “Let’s take ’em one at a time.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Several hours earlier

  Matt sneezed again, and a jolt ran through both his shoulders. He hugged himself tighter and closed his eyes. Whatever sort of cold or flu he had caught, his usual quick healing wasn’t helping so much. Three days of this so far. And he wasn’t dressed for the weather, either. He had lost his jacket in a Burger King when he got up to grab some napkins, and his boots had been ripped to shreds and soaked in blood during a fight with some nasty pieces of work outside a Whole Foods in Omaha. So he’d had to replace them with cheap sneakers and a Windbreaker. His feet hurt, the cold seeped through the thin jacket, and he was in a generally foul mood.

  The trucker in the driver’s seat didn’t seem to mind. He would toss out a quick “Bless you” after every sneeze and keep right on with his stories, one after another, sometimes veering off into a new one without finishing the one he’d started.

  “So like I was saying, this winter? It’s like summer, might as well be, and I know we say it every year, but it’s just not like it used to be, and it really isn’t, it’s not just talk, ya know. I’m from up around Duluth, ya know? And even there you can really tell the difference. So after all this, here I am with a big haul, and now it’s gonna blizzard? Shit. Now, don’t get me wrong. I love the cold. If I didn’t, I would’ve moved to Florida a long time ago, wouldn’t you say?”

  All Matt could do was nod and agree. He once tried to break in with, “I’m from Washington—”

  “Like the government, Washington? Yeah, bunch of crooks down there, and we keep electing them. We tell ourselves, ‘They may be crooks, but at least they’re our crooks!’”

  And so on.

  It wasn’t that he was a bad guy. Not at all. A little goofy, with his walrus mustache and wraparound sunglasses, and maybe a tad too folksy for a guy his age, which couldn’t have been more than forty-five, but he just wouldn’t shut up. Not to mention that he kept the radio on ear-bleedingly loud while he talked, too. Matt had hoped for a little sleep on this stretch—Otto had picked up Matt in Sioux Falls after his third thousand-dollar car in a row had up and died—to Fargo, where Matt was headed to see one of the oldest men in the United States.

  Well, if not in the entire US, the paper claimed that Esau VanNevel, at 110, at least tied with the oldest in the Midwest. He credited his longevity to “beer, cheese, and cold-assed women,” that last because he and all six of his former wives had been members of the Polar Bear Club. He’d worked for forty years at the same company, retired forty years ago, and since then had been traveling the country as a judge for barbecue competitions. One more thing: he’d apparently died in Vietnam before coming back to life in the back of a truck on his way to the morgue. His wounds from the explosion had already begun to heal.

  Also, buried near the end of the article, the reporter asked about his religious affiliation. Esau said, “I believe in good and evil, yes, I do. If a man’s got evil inside him, you’re going to see it. It’s just that simple. But if we’re already rotting away here on Earth, I don’t hold up much hope for what we’ll look like in heaven.”

  So maybe, yeah. Matt had met others like himself already—those who had died yet had somehow clawed their way back to the land of the living, only to be cursed with this ability to see evil in others, usually brought on by the touch of a shadowy jester who called himself Mr. Dark. In at least one other case, a woman named Abbey, who was apparently ageless, caused Matt to wonder if he would be frozen in time like he’d been frozen in the avalanche that killed him. She was also bat-shit insane and in league with the Dark Man himself, so there was that. At least ol’ Esau looked like an old man, as far as Matt could tell—with an old-man slouch and wrinkled hands. He couldn’t tell by looking at his face, though. In the photo from the paper, Esau didn’t have much of a face left. It was all rot, worms, and skull. Was this what happened to all of them? Did they try to fight the influence of evil in the beginning before becoming seduced by it?

  One more piece of the puzzle, worth another long hitchhike along the I-29 corridor during the most unseasonably warm winter in tears, as Otto kept reminding him. “But don’t say it’s global warming. I mean, maybe it is, but that just sounds crazy that all of the sudden we’ve gone and wrecked our whole planet, especially if it’s been here so long already.”

  Had Matt felt better, he might have patiently explained that it wasn’t all of a sudden, that this had been ongoing for years but no one was taking it seriously, and that the correct term was climate change. But all he wanted to do was be lulled to sleep by the long o’s of Otto’s Minnesota accent and nod when necessary.

  Until the driver said, “Well, wouldn’t you know it. See what I mean? If it’s global warming, then explain how this snow’s about to slow us to a crawl.”

  Matt opened his eyes to a few snowflakes beginning to blow around in the air outside. Beyond that, a dark cloud had spread itself across the sky. They had been hoping to beat the weather, but it looked like there was no hope of that now. It looked as if a whole bunch of brake lights were flashing miles ahead, just as the snow began blowing harder against the side windows, already heavy enough to cover the road.

  “You’ve heard of flash floods?” Otto grinned. “Well, this here is ‘flash snow.’”

  “Mm-hm.” Matt nodded and stared out the window, the throbbing in his sinuses taking a backseat to the real headache he knew was just around the corner.

  The truck slowed to a crawl within a handful of miles as the light snow turned into a full-on blizzard. After a few stop-and-go jerks, they couldn’t move forward anymore. The line of angry red eyes all blinked off as drivers accepted the inevitable and threw their cars into park, idling and hoping it wouldn’t take long. Within twenty minutes, most of the cars were covered to the tops of their tires with snow.

  The heater had dried out Matt long ago. He felt like a husk, and the skin
around his nose crinkled and tore when he sneezed. Just a burning mess. He tried to keep cool with a bottle of water, but it was going warm, too. Otto said he had some in the back—the “apartment,” he called it, a very nice home on the road, with a decent bed, TV, minifridge, and microwave. He’d brought along a cooler, too, full of ice, water, and 3.2 beer.

  “Nothing warms you up like a cold beer on the road.”

  Matt was surprised that a trucker who advocated drinking and driving wasn’t rotting away. Then again, this wasn’t evil talking. This was stupidity. Matt wished he could see the dumb ones as, like, clown faces or something. Anyway…

  He shook his head. “I’m good.” Took another sip of lukewarm water.

  At least Otto had finally switched the radio over to FM. Sterilized radio country was better than all the buzzing talk. But just as soon as he’d found some poppin’ fiddles, the DJs broke in with a weather report. Bad, bad, bad, and it wasn’t going to get any better until morning. And then, “We’re getting calls from some people stuck on I-29 about sixty miles south of Fargo in some kind of snowstorm. Jim, what about that?”

  “We’ve had twenty-five calls, and I’m hearing from a couple of friends at the TV station that they’ve had more than that. I suggest that if you’re out there on the road, get cozy. You’re not going anywhere for a while.”

  “How about the police? Any word from them?”

  “Not yet, but we’ll check it out. Here’s a hot track from Miranda Lambert to warm you right up.”

  Otto nodded. “She is hot, I’ll give ’em that.”

  Matt reached for the volume knob and turned down the sound before the honky-tonk started. “I don’t like it.”

  “Well, sir, it is my truck, and I can listen to whatever I like.”

  “No, I mean the weather. All that snow brings up some bad…memories.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The guards were getting antsy. George didn’t like it when guards got antsy, because that’s when they began goofing on him, and before long they would find excuses to tighten the handcuffs or threaten him with the Taser. Goddamn guards. Worse than the criminals, if you asked George.

  He was in the back of a police transport van, on his way to the penitentiary after receiving the death penalty for first-degree murder. He couldn’t argue, although his lawyer did the best job he could for the money. He had to hire someone outside of his own firm because, after what he did, none of his partners or associates wanted anything to do with him. It was pretty open-and-shut. George didn’t know what had come over him, but he’d planned the whole thing over a few weeks’ time, pretty sure his wife was seeing one of George’s best friends, one of the founding partners in the firm. He’d arranged some convenient excuse to bring them together, although they had no idea it was George pulling the strings so that he could videotape the whole thing and then confront them with it.

  Somehow, the “confrontation” part morphed into “take them out with a chainsaw.” George had never handled one before. The clerk had to teach him how to use it before he left the store. Why a chainsaw? Why not a gun? Why not a knife? And why did he forget that the whole thing was being taped as he ripped them limb from limb and then smeared the blood all over himself and fucked his wife’s torso?

  The day they played that in court, seven jurors threw up. The others looked pale. George just shrugged at them. What’re ya gonna do?

  Insanity defense? Even temporary? George wouldn’t hear of it. It didn’t feel right. No, he was going to take it head-on. Yeah, that’s me on the tape. Yeah, I cut them up pretty damn good. Yeah, I’m pleading not guilty.

  Worse, of course, there was absolutely no proof that the wife and partner were having an affair. What the tape showed before George went all Texas Chainsaw Massacre on them was a couple of acquaintances talking about the good old days, drinking coffee, and George’s wife apologizing for not knowing about any file the partner was supposed to pick up, per George’s request.

  Why was George so sure? Huh. Could’ve sworn…

  Off to Prison. Big P Prison. The sort where he would be in solitary for twenty-three hours a day, closely supervised for his one hour out in the yard. A man with a trigger this light needed constant watching. He’d already bitten a chunk of cheek from one bailiff and dislocated another guard’s shoulder. It was easy. He had the element of surprise—he was a lawyer, for fuck’s sake, and fifty years old. Not very muscled, and except for this chainsaw thing and the bruised feelings of a few paralegals he had yelled at, George didn’t have a history of violence.

  The guards chosen to transport George to the pen were the toughest that could be found. Weight lifters. Former marines and army. Trained in hand-to-hand. Lightning reflexes. Even the driver and his backup were top-of-the-class badasses. It also helped that George was shackled, wrists and ankles, a chain connecting those so that he couldn’t stand up while they were en route, plus a D ring on the floor to make absolutely certain. The guard sitting next to him didn’t have the keys. That honor went to the guy in shotgun, who could be seen through the mesh twirling them on his finger. Taunting. George didn’t care. There wasn’t anything to gain attacking these fellows except a boatload of pain. Wait until prison. That’s when the fun would begin.

  The guard next to George, McMurray, said, “Wow, that’s a shit-ton of snow.”

  The killer hadn’t even noticed. Too busy in his own head. Outside, the snow was coming down in thick sheets, blowing horizontal. A blizzard.

  They had already slowed to the point that walking would be faster. George didn’t want to spend any longer than necessary hunched over with the chains biting his skin. He didn’t want to play nice with these hulks who were looking for an excuse to strike him down. George wanted his cell, silence, and a good night’s sleep.

  The guard one bench up was the smallest of them, but still in prime shape. The others called him Quaker. No idea why. He sat up straight. “So we’re going to get stuck?”

  “If worse comes to worst, I’ll throw on the lights and siren.” This from the driver. “We’ll take the shoulder all the way to prison.”

  McMurray smirked at George. “I’m sure you don’t mind. A little winter wonderland for you before we lock you inside hell.”

  “Thank you. I appreciate it.” Thinking: Rather be in hell than next to you.

  The driver was trying to radio ahead, see how bad it was up north. But he had a hard time hearing through the static. George pulled his lips over his teeth and listened to the driver dial in different channels. He got through, but just barely.

  McMurray was getting restless. Of all the guards, he seemed the type most likely to torture kittens. “What are we going to do about it? Just sit here?”

  “Lighten up.” The keymaster in the passenger seat had a sleepy voice. “Ain’t no need to get all peeved, all right? Stay cooooool.”

  McMurray gave him a bad glare.

  Keymaster turned and grinned at them through the metal screen. “You know, George, we can understand you killing her. Shit, that’s not what got you here.”

  The driver shushed him. A grown man shushing another grown man. Wow.

  He kept on. “No, listen, this makes sense, right? Because let’s just say you had shot them, right? Or strangled her. It’s the mess that got you put on death row. I swear, if you’d eased off the gore some, you’d be in for life, maybe get out in forty-five years.”

  “Hey, let’s cut this out.” Quaker sat up, leaned toward the keymaster, and lowered his voice. “What are you trying to do?”

  Didn’t faze the guy. “We’ve got time now. I’m making conversation, that’s all. When are we ever going to get paired up with a guy like this ever again? Hey, George, tell us what it felt like, actually taking them apart piece by piece.”

  “Hey!” McMurray, supposedly the guy in charge here, looked like he might get out and make his colleague do push-ups. “Enough.”

  George mumbled, “I don’t remember.” But he did. He really did. It was like sl
icing through warm butter. He felt more vibrations from the engine itself than he did when the chain struck bone, again and again. It was smooth. Perhaps it was his purchase of a particularly fine chainsaw, top-of-the-line, that gave his cuts such ease, unlike in the horror movies, where they bucked and chattered on flesh and muscle. It made for a great effect, but in real life? Might as well have been marshmallows.

  The thought made him smile, made him want to cackle like Vincent Price.

  And he really needed to take a piss.

  “Do we get bathroom breaks?”

  The guards looked from one to the other as if it had never occurred to them. Of course it hadn’t, not before the blizzard. But now the thought George had put into their heads would make them all start feeling it soon, he guessed. Pushing, pulsating.

  McMurray said, “Do we have any cups?”

  The driver held up his travel mug. “You’re not using this.”

  “Can’t I go in the snow?”

  “Shit, in front of all these people? With smartphones? We’d go viral—guards let convicted murderer out to take a leak. Right.”

  “There’s that rest area back there.”

  The guards looked behind them, and sure enough, they had stopped near a rest area that had been closed down. The entry and exit were barricaded. The signs had been removed.

  McMurray shook his head. “It’s all boarded up, chained shut. Been like that for, what, three years?”

  “I thought they were going to remodel it.”

  “Keep dreaming. Your tax dollars at work.”

  Keymaster said, “Maybe yours. I live in South Dakota. The good one.”

  “Excuse me,” George said. “But if I go right now, you guys have got to smell it the rest of the trip.”

  McMurray blew out a sigh. “Really? No cups at all, guys?”

  Quaker said, “Look, just pull onto the shoulder, drive around the barricades, and we can at least see, right? Maybe there’s a trash can. Or an ashtray on top.”

  “Fine, fine, better than nothing at all.”