Storm Front

by Robert Conroy

  * * *

  “Tits on a boar,” Wally Wellman snapped, and then threw a wad of paper against the wall. “We’re as useless as tits on a boar!”

  “Haven’t heard that one in a while,” laughed news director Ron Friedman. “But I understand your frustration. Here we have the biggest news story of the year—hell, maybe the decade—and we can’t get out of this building and cover it. For all we know, people are dying all over the place and we don’t know enough to report it. Golly-damn, we ought to be out there running around on snowmobiles asking people how they feel about freezing to death.”

  “Balls,” muttered Wellman. “I don’t care a rat’s ass about your fire-of-the-day journalism or the idea that if it bleeds it leads. I just want to know why this damn thing sneaked up on us and why we can’t figure out when it’s going to end.”

  “When you do, you’ll actually be God,” Friedman said with a yawn. “Instead of merely thinking you were.” It had been a long day and no end was in sight. “You heard that the governor has declared a state of emergency, haven’t you?”

  “Yeah, and a fat lot of good that’ll do. I guess she has to do something, though, even if it isn’t an election year.”

  “Didn’t you used to know her?” Freidman asked.

  Wellman paused thoughtfully and nodded. “It was a long time ago in a galaxy far away.”

  Lauren Landsman was a second-term governor, a Democrat, and a woman Wally had known before he’d met his late wife. There had been few contacts in the last couple of decades. “Iron” Lauren Landsman was a primly attractive woman who’d patterned her behavior after England’s legendary Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher. It had made her respected, but unloved, unlike the woman he’d known in college so long ago. Wally wondered just what the hell she was up to and just how declaring a state of emergency would change things. State of emergency my ass, he thought, how about a state of chaos.

  * * *

  “Can we keep this thing quiet?” Mayor Calvin Carter asked hopefully. He had just received the report of the two dead bodies in the Sheridan Motor Inn and was digesting the possibility—likelihood?—that a pair of killers was on the loose in his beloved city.

  This meeting was in Chief Bench’s office, with Bench and Mike Stuart the only attendees. Detective Hughes remained at the crime scene and the public works director was simply absent. Mike was mildly annoyed at being included because he had so much else to do, but understood. He’d actually seen what the killers had done. Still, there was not much he could add, even though he had been on the scene at the motel. He wanted to get back to his office. He had rescue operations to plan with his snowmobile force.

  “Keep it quiet? Not a chance,” answered Bench. “I’ve already gotten calls from television stations, and there’s a reporter on the way on a snowmobile.”

  “Damn it,” muttered Carter.

  “Well, what the hell did you expect?” snarled Bench. “We sent six people in there armed to the teeth and looking like a bunch of Darth Vaders. The motel might have been almost empty but that’s a long way from actually empty. Our people have been keeping the few remaining motel guests away from that wing and the motel has moved a couple of people to other rooms to help us secure the scene. Add to that that half the staff called their families to tell them the exciting news, and I’m surprised that more people don’t know.”

  “And the bodies?” Carter asked.

  “Packed in ice and still in the bathtub,” Mike answered. The scene was almost nauseating, but it was necessary. “Right now we don’t have a safe way of transporting them. They’ll last.”

  “Christ,” muttered the mayor.

  “We don’t lack for snow and ice,” Mike added. Detective Hughes was there trying to lift fingerprints and identify the two killers.

  “But do people actually know there’s a pair of killers loose?” Carter asked.

  “Probably.”

  Carter looked whipped. “Will someone please tell me they’ve fled the area on those snowmobiles they stole and are now somebody else’s responsibility?”

  Mike and Chief Bench looked at each other and the chief nodded at him to answer. For the moment at least, Bench was functioning competently. He and Bench had talked it over and Mike responded.

  “Sorry sir, but we think they’re still in the area. First, we don’t think they know that much about running snowmobiles, although you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to learn; and, second, the weather is still too rotten to travel far. The snow front extends fifty miles to our south if the weather people can be believed. We think they’ll hole up and wait for the weather to break, steal a car when the roads are clear, and drive off.”

  Bench nodded his agreement. “They’ll likely break into an empty house and live there as long as they can. I think they’ll try to avoid houses with people, even though they are murderers. It’s safer that way for them. With so many people unable to get home, they’ll have a lot of choices.”

  Carter shuddered. “What’ll happen when the owners finally come home?”

  Bench shook his head sadly. “We don’t even want to think about that.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Officer Stan Petkowski was cold and wet, but glad to be out of the station and doing something useful. He shared a snowmobile with a civilian, a young man in his twenties named Stu or Steve or something. It didn’t matter. A dozen or so teams like this were scouring the streets and trying to maintain order. Cars and trucks were now dinosaurs, confined to fossil-like stillness while snow blanketed them. Steve or Stu commented that archeologists might not uncover them for centuries the way the snow was falling. Then, he added, they’d probably think they had religious significance. Petkowski thought the kid was a bore, but he was a volunteer and trying to help. It was also the kid’s snowmobile.

  EMS technicians rode other snowmobiles as did the fire department. Some came from private individuals, and a couple from dealerships that “donated” them. They didn’t have much in the way of equipment that the vehicles could carry, but the techs did have knowledge, and the ability to communicate via hand-held radios and cell phones. A couple of bright guys had rigged sleds that carried some additional equipment.

  It was a jury-rigged emergency response system, but it sort of worked.

  Petkowski’s crew was checking cars on MacArthur Boulevard, not very far from the police station. Word had come from on high that people in cars could die if they remained there. Freezing to death was a strong possibility. The temperature was only slightly below freezing, but that was cold enough to kill if you weren’t dressed or otherwise prepared for it. If someone ran out of gas, or just decided to turn off the engine, they would get cold real fast. It was a virtual certainty that few drivers or their passengers were wearing proper cold-weather gear like the snowmobile suit Petkowski had on.

  At least if someone was freezing, they stood a chance of knowing it. Carbon monoxide, on the other hand, crept up on you. If you kept the engine running to provide heat, you might just go to sleep and never wake up. It wasn’t called a silent killer for nothing.

  Petkowski swore under his breath. People didn’t want to give up their cars; he wouldn’t want to give his up either. A car was so much more than transportation. It was freedom. It was safety and security and an extension of home. And for many people it was part of their identities. Too many would remain in their cars and hope the tooth fairy would blow the snow away.

  You could only go so fast on a snowmobile in a storm without endangering yourself, and the short trip to MacArthur had been slow. Except for a few people the cops thought of as flaming assholes, snowmobilers were driving slowly and tentatively. There were no groomed trails, only hints as to where a road might have been. Fences, shrubs, rocks, and fire hydrants lay underneath the deceptively gentle snow, waiting to attack the unwary.

  Steve or Stu stopped the snowmobile and both men got off. Volunteers on other snowmobiles did likewise and fanned out. They began to wipe snow off the windows and windshi
elds of the endless lines of stalled vehicles. The shined their flashlights inward and scanned for people. If they found anyone, they were to exhort them to leave their cars and they would be taken to the safety of nearby buildings. If they didn’t want to go, Petkowski had decided he would break a window to ensure that carbon monoxide would not build up. If, after that, they still wanted to stay in their car and freeze their asses off, then fuck ’em. He’d brought a pipe wrench for that purpose. Chief Bench or Mike Stuart might not like it, but he wasn’t going to leave someone to die in their car even though they volunteered for the honor.

  Car after car was checked and found empty. Surprise, he thought. Maybe people were smarter than he gave them credit for. He sure as hell hoped so. Shops and stores alongside the road were filled with astonished and sometimes frightened people wondering when the snow would end and they could go home to hearth, family, and a good martini.

  The snow was deep and drifting. At the low points, it was well over his knees and walking was reduced to lurching around the unmoving cars. He was beginning to think it was an exhausting fool’s errand.

  Petkowski wiped the snow off the driver’s side windshield of a Ford mini-van. He leaped backward and nearly fell. A man’s face stared out at him. The eyes were open, but unfocused, and the man’s head was back. He’d adjusted the seat back so he could almost recline. There was no movement.

  “God damn it!” Petkowski screamed and others came running as quickly as they could.

  He swung the pipe wrench and shattered the side window. He reached in and opened the door. Hands pulled the driver out, inert, pale, and uncomplaining.

  “There’s a passenger,” Petkowski yelled as someone started CPR on the driver. He unlocked the minivan’s doors and pulled a woman out. She was in her thirties, limp and gray. An EMS snowmobile had been nearby and their people began to work frantically.

  Then Petkowski saw the back seat. “No,” he moaned. “Oh, Jesus, no!” He sat back in the snow, covered his face with his hands and began to weep. This was worse than pulling the dead teenagers from the car and finding his niece was one of the beheaded corpses. That was hell and this was worse than hell. He groaned and shook as others pulled the three small children from the back of the van and began the work of trying to revive them. One EMS tech looked at another and sadly shook his head.

  * * *

  Wally Wellman and anchorman Mort Cristman sat behind the familiar TV6 news desk.

  Cristman was the new kid in town. Not yet thirty, he’d been imported from a much smaller out-of-state channel a few months earlier. He usually did the noon anchor only, but today he was going to do the five o’clock news for the simple reason that the station’s A-team hadn’t made it in. Wally thought Cristman was a good enough kid, but inexperienced and with a tendency to be pompous. Wally also wondered if Cristman knew where half the now snowbound suburbs even were. He still sometimes mangled the names of streets, which resulted in angry phone calls from people who wondered why the station hired such a dummy.

  “The weather is still the number one story,” Cristman said with a bow to the obvious. He expected to be a major presence in either New York or LA before very much longer and spent a lot of time working on his delivery.

  “However, it is now getting lethal,” Cristman said, nodding his head solemnly. “TV6 has just learned that five people were pulled dead from a car stalled on MacArthur Boulevard in Sheridan. Carbon monoxide poisoning had killed them all even though they were within walking distance of safety. As a result, Governor Landsman has urged all police agencies to begin checking cars in the streets if they haven’t already done so. Along with the numerous heart attacks and other injuries that have occurred, this sudden snowstorm has turned into a killer.”

  Wally shook his head imperceptibly. Most cities covered by the snow emergency had been doing exactly this for hours, as had Sheridan. Cristman was beginning to take credit for the discovery of sunrise.

  Cristman turned to Wally. “Can you tell us when this scourge is going to end?”

  Wally gagged. Scourge? Please, he thought, war was a scourge. So too was the Black Death. This was a fucking blizzard. “No, Mort, I can’t, and neither can anyone else.”

  “Well—” Cristman started to say, but Wally cut him off. He had something to add.

  “Before I deliver some thoughts on the weather, please let me amplify on what we should all be doing. Police and fire personnel are too widely spread out to be everywhere; therefore, it’s up to all of us to get involved and not wait for help. The people who can help out are those of you watching and listening to this broadcast. Here’s what you should do. Check on your neighbors. Call them. Walk over to their houses if you can. Form groups to check on others. Carbon monoxide is a huge danger as people get sealed into their homes and cars. New vents for super-efficient furnaces are sometimes only a few feet above the ground and may be buried. The five dead people in Sheridan aren’t going to be the last. Hell, they’re merely the first we’ve found and, count on it, there will be more.”

  Cristman got the hint that Wally had taken over and nodded solemnly as Wally continued.

  “Inventory what medical supplies you have on hand and what medical skills people have. You don’t have to be a doctor to help save lives. CPR and first aid training will help, and, if you haven’t had that, just use common sense. Some of you have snowmobiles and other winter gear that can help. Figure out who has generators and knows how to use them. So far, power outages have been few and far between, but they can and will occur more frequently as this goes on. The weight of the snow is going to do some strange things.

  “Finally, get those idiots off the roofs. A number of people have been injured trying to clear off sloped roofs. Most sloped roofs probably won’t have any problems, but flat ones might,” Wally said. Actually, he had no good figures on that, but it did sound plausible.

  “It’s just early evening,” Wally added, “and we’ve officially got more than three feet accumulation, much more in some places, and not a clue as to when it’s going to slow down, much less stop. All I can tell you is that it isn’t going to stop anytime soon, so everyone get mentally, physically, and emotionally ready for a nasty long haul. I am very afraid that what we see now is just the beginning.

  “Weather forecasters like me are going to get crucified for failing to predict this, and I accept that. Criticism goes with the job. However, please remember that weather forecasting has been a science for a very short time, actually little more than a century. We don’t know if this type of storm has occurred before or not. We can tell from tree rings whether the winter of 1815 was a cold one or not, but nobody can tell whether it snowed like this anytime that year, or any other. We also know that freak storms are just that and can occur. In 1888, New York City was inundated by about fifty inches of unexpected snow causing drifts up to fifty feet high and a number of people were killed. And don’t get me started on whether or not this is a manifestation of global warming, because the New York storm of 1888 clearly wasn’t. Personally and professionally, I think this is just a freakish, nasty snowstorm and not the end of the world.

  “Folks, I’m not terribly religious, but I sort of do recall a quote by somebody. It went, ‘Man proposes, but God disposes,’ and that is precisely what is happening today. Every one of us is as helpless to change or influence what is happening.” He turned to the now astonished looking young anchor. “Back to you, Mort.”

  * * *

  The young girl, a second-grade student, ran up to Maddy with a look of panic on her small tear-streaked face. “Miss Kovacs, Tom Harper went outside. He was crying and said he wanted to go home. I told him not to, but he went anyhow.”

  Maddy had been sitting on the floor, using her coat as an inadequate cushion. Whatever way she sat or laid down, her butt hurt. She jumped up and ran stiffly towards the open door at the end of the long hallway. Snow was swirling in, almost immediately covering the tile floor. She stepped outside and was slapped in the f
ace with wet snow.

  “Tommy Harper, where are you? You get back in here!” So we can kill you, she thought. Why was she surprised? Almost a hundred students still remained and, as night began to fall, the unpleasant reality of spending the foreseeable future in Patton Elementary was upsetting a number of them. Tommy Harper was a third grader and a pretty good kid. Now, though, he was just a scared little boy who wanted his mother.

  Maddy bulled her way through a snowdrift that was almost waist high. She could see where Tommy’s small body had tried to push its way through. She plowed her way in his quickly fading tracks.

  And then they stopped. Why? Had he collapsed? Oh, Christ. She dropped to her knees and groped around through the snow, trying to feel flesh. She dived under the snow and felt like a swimmer, a diver, holding her breath and trying to find a treasure. Once she’d had to do much the same thing looking for a boy who’d drowned in a shallow pond. Fortunately, she hadn’t been the one who’d found the boy’s body.

  “Tommy,” she screamed after raising her head. Snow was in her hair and piled on her shoulders. It was futile. He wasn’t in sight and, if he was buried under the snow, he doubtless couldn’t hear her or respond to her even if he could. Tommy might be six inches out of her reach and she’d never know. She would have to go back to the school and get more help. She cursed herself. That’s what she should have done in the first place. Now a little boy was freezing to death, perhaps even drowning, while precious seconds she’d wasted ticked away.

  Damn, Maddy groaned. What would she say to his mother? It was scant consolation that Tommy wasn’t one of her students and that he’d snuck out by himself. He was a little kid and she was supposed to protect him. Damn it!

  She groped around some more, getting tired, wetter, and colder. Unlike when she’d gone out to the cars, this time every inch of her was getting soaked. She hadn’t bothered to put on a coat and this time even her underwear was cold and wet. Maddy knew she couldn’t keep this up much longer. Maybe some of the others were coming to help her. She started to shiver. She had to get out of this before she was overwhelmed and collapsed.