A Solar Winter

by Ryan Casey

  But winter had to pass, eventually.

  If it didn’t… he might as well dig his own grave and everyone else might as well join him.

  He’d made a good trade with the Hopkins group. He was carrying with him a load of fresh eggs, some meat from chickens and cows of their own. They had a real good load of stock, dairy, and this would be enough to get Mike’s group by for at least the week. It’d require another visit soon, but that was okay. The Hopkins group had a good number of supplies. And if they didn’t, there were other groups, other alliances.

  Of course, something bothered Mike about what Jim Hopkins told him. He’d said something about a band of looters going around terrorising people. He said they weren’t like the usual bandits. They weren’t looking to gain anything in particular. To quote one of his favourite movies, Jim quite simply said they wanted to watch the world burn, and not a lot else.

  Mike felt a little uneasy about them of course, especially being out here, away from Kelsie, away from camp. But at least he was on his road home now.

  He thought about Claire. What she’d said to him about buying her a drink. He looked into one of his rucksacks and saw a bottle of expensive Scottish whisky he’d traded medical supplies for with Jim Hopkins. He smiled when he saw it. He didn’t even know if Claire liked whisky or not. But at least it was something.

  Claire was interesting, to say the least. She was very committed to what she did at the camp, which didn’t leave a lot of time for chatting in all truth. But Mike liked her, and she seemed to like him.

  It wasn’t like they had something between them, say. But there was definitely unexplored chemistry there. And Mike figured that what better than to explore that chemistry a little more, especially if he was going to be living at Grey Lodge for a long time?

  He thought of Caitlin. Of what she’d think. Of what she’d say.

  Then he thought of Alison, and he stopped.

  His heart beat faster. The image of Alison flickered into his mind. Her hair. Her smile.

  It was months since he’d seen Alison, the officer who had arrested him for drink driving right at the start of the EMP disaster. He knew he should have learned to let her go by now.

  But he couldn’t deny the way she made him feel.

  He couldn’t deny that there was something beyond chemistry with Alison. Something definitely unexplored.

  But it was going to stay that way. It was going to remain unexplored. He had to accept it.

  He took a deep breath and carried on walking through the woods.

  That’s when he saw them.

  There were just two of them, up ahead. They were trying to hide behind trees, but they hadn’t done a very good job of it.

  But Mike just had to keep on going, acting as if he hadn’t seen them.

  All the while reaching for his trusty Becker BK-2 knife…

  But just before he could grab it, he heard the ground behind him crunch.

  “Stop right there.”

  Mike stopped. There was no point fighting, no point resisting, not now he was outnumbered by at least three to one.

  The two people ahead of him—a man and a woman—emerged from behind their respective trees. Both were holding blades.

  “Good,” the voice behind Mike said, as the footsteps got closer. “Now we know where you’ve been. We watched you make that trade with that nice little farm group back there. So don’t even try denying it. You’re gonna drop everything here for us. You’re gonna hand it right over.”

  Mike tightened his grip on his knife, heart pounding as the two ahead of him got closer. Did he have time?

  There was only one way to find out.

  He swung around at the guy approaching.

  Before he could hit him with the knife, he watched as the man knocked the blade free with a long-spiked piece of metal he was holding.

  He watched the knife fall to the ground.

  Mike knew then he was defenceless.

  The man who was talking—gaunt and lanky—shook his head, poking the sharp pole right at Mike. “Bad move,” he said. “Real, real bad move. But that’s okay. You’ll make up for it. We’ll make sure of that.”

  Then he jammed the sharp pole towards Mike.

  “Whoa,” Mike said.

  He dropped the rucksacks to his side.

  He lifted his hands.

  “Whoa,” he said. “Just take it. Take whatever you need.”

  The man smiled. The two people approaching were close behind now. “See. I told you. Things didn’t have to get so dramatic here.”

  They grabbed the rucksacks, all of them. Emptied some things out of them, things they didn’t think they’d need, but for the most part they looked impressed with their haul.

  Mike felt disappointed in himself for letting them just take his stuff like this. But at the end of the day, his survival was more important, because at least then he could get back to look out for Kelsie, to protect her—to warn the rest of the group if needed.

  If his stuff was gone, and he was dead… then there was nothing that could be done.

  “Oh, jackpot!” the man said, as he pulled out the bottle of Scotch. “Why don’t we all have a glass, hmm?”

  Mike felt his fists tightening. “That’s not for you.”

  The man laughed as he pulled out three plastic cups from the rucksack. “Not for us?” he said, pouring the whisky into them. “We need some Dutch courage before we kill you. Ain’t that right, team?”

  They tapped the cups against one another. And as Mike watched them gulp the drink back, he didn’t know how he was getting out of this situation, only that he had to get away. Fast.

  But then something happened.

  The man who’d been doing all the talking started coughing.

  Then the woman started coughing.

  And then the other man.

  And before he knew it, all three of them were on their hands and knees, coughing away, spewing up their guts, then spitting blood, their faces turning pale and purple, their lungs gasping for air.

  And then moments later, just moments, dead.

  Mike stood there, totally silent. He looked, stunned, at the scene.

  And he looked at those cups of alcohol, and that bottle of whisky, running off into the grass.

  He walked over to it. Lifted it up. It looked normal. He couldn’t figure out what’d happened. Had the Hopkins’ spiked it? And if they had… why?

  He went to put the bottle down when he saw something attached loosely to the label.

  A note.

  He pulled it out.

  When he unfolded it, he wasn’t sure what he was looking at. Not at first.

  Then he recognised it as Jim Hopkins’ writing.

  There wasn’t much written there. But what was written was enough to send the hairs standing on end right at the back of Mike’s neck.

  DON’T DRINK.

  GET BACK.

  THEY’RE COMING FOR YOU TOO.

  Mike looked at the bodies. Something told him it couldn’t have been these people who had laced the drink with whatever had killed them. It just didn’t add up.

  But he trusted Jim’s word.

  Someone must’ve got to the drink.

  Someone must’ve made Jim give Mike this specific bottle.

  And Jim had tried to warn him.

  GET BACK.

  THEY’RE COMING FOR YOU TOO.

  Mike grabbed the rucksacks, threw them over his shoulder. He lost a few items in the process, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was getting back. Fast.

  He ran. Ran through the woods, past the trees. He felt his ankle almost give way a few times as he traipsed through the snow. He actually tumbled a couple of times. A stitch almost stopped him after an hour’s running.

  But it didn’t matter. He just had to keep moving.

  He just had to keep on going.

  He had to get back to camp.

  He gasped when he reached the overarching tree in the middle of the woods, a landmark
that signalled his proximity to home.

  He told himself he was just being paranoid, and that the note could be wrong. Or even if it was true, that didn’t mean whoever had laced the drink had got to Mike’s people yet.

  He ran past the tree, over towards the buildings, when he saw it.

  The smoke.

  Then, as he got closer, the flames.

  And then something else hit him.

  The screams.

  Grey Lodge was under attack.

  Someone was attacking the camp.

  THEY’RE COMING FOR YOU TOO.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “Tommy!”

  Ian raced through the woods in search of his son.

  But he couldn’t shake the growing feeling that it wasn’t going to be a happy ending.

  The early morning sun was suffocated by the trees. The frozen snow made it difficult to run, even if it had melted in some places. It was disorienting, too, the bright white of it. Every time Ian turned, he swore he saw Tommy. But it was just a trick of the light. Just a hopeful deception of his imagination.

  But he was out here somewhere.

  He was out here, and he had to find him.

  He kept on running further through the woods in the direction of the traps that he feared Tommy had gone towards. Sofia was close behind. He could hear her panicked words, and he didn’t want her to worry. He wanted to reassure her that everything was okay. That they weren’t going to lose another kid.

  But he couldn’t. Because he was terrified himself.

  Terrified to the point he wasn’t even sure he wanted to find out the truth.

  He ran further through the woods, his legs achy with running through the snow. He was dehydrated. He was hungry. His stomach ached to the point of agony.

  But all that could wait.

  His boy was out here.

  And it was the thought that he’d come out here simply to help that hurt Ian the most.

  He’d wanted to prove he was tough enough to handle this world, as much as Ian reassured his boy that he didn’t have to prove anything at all.

  But he’d wanted to.

  He’d wanted to, God bless him.

  “How much further, Ian?” Sofia shouted, her voice shaky. “How much further until… until we know?”

  Ian slowed down and stopped.

  Up ahead, he saw the traps. The ones that he’d shown Tommy.

  They were untouched. Tommy was nowhere to be seen.

  There was no sign he’d even been here at all.

  A sense of dread washed over him. Because this changed things. If he wasn’t here, it meant he’d got lost. Which meant he could be anywhere out there.

  He stumbled forward, right over to the trap.

  “What’s wrong, Ian? What—what is it?”

  Ian swallowed a lump in his throat. “He’s not here, Sofia.”

  “But what does that mean?”

  “It means he’s out there somewhere. It means he’s lost.”

  Sofia’s eyes streamed tears. She looked just like she had when they’d lost Corey. And Ian felt that pain rising all over again, even though it wasn’t confirmed, even though he didn’t know what had happened to Tommy.

  He walked over to Sofia. Held her. “We’re going to find him, okay?”

  Sofia shook her head. “I—I can’t do this. I can’t—”

  “You can do this. You have to do this. Tommy’s out there somewhere, and we’re going to find him, okay? We’re going to find our boy.”

  Sofia smiled. Just for a moment, Ian felt hope. He felt like she believed in him. Which since losing Corey, had been few and far between, even in the moments he’d more than proved his worth.

  And then he heard the gunshot.

  His body froze. His thoughts stopped.

  He looked off into the woods.

  “What…”

  And then he heard another gunshot. Somewhere right in the distance.

  He looked back at Sofia. Saw that her faith in him had gone completely. There was only fear now.

  They were still for a second.

  Then they both turned and ran.

  The closer they got to where the gunshots had come from, the more the tension grew. Ian tried not to think about what those shots might mean. He tried not to think about why they might’ve been fired.

  All he could think about was his boy.

  And all he could fear was that his boy had been caught up in those gunshots, somehow.

  He kept his head down, kept on going. He heard another gunshot, but by this point they were just background noise, they were just fodder.

  Just had to keep on pressing.

  Just had to keep on—

  He slipped.

  He fell face first into the snow. Smacked his chin on a rock. He felt dizzy right away and tasted blood.

  But he saw something when he lifted his woozy head.

  Sofia was walking on.

  She was walking on, frowning, like she was worried about something.

  Like she’d seen something.

  “Sofia,” Ian said, getting back to his feet.

  She kept on going.

  “Sofia, wait…”

  That’s when he saw it.

  He didn’t process what he was looking at. Not right away. It didn’t seem to make any kind of real sense.

  But when he stood up properly, steadied himself, it clicked.

  It clicked hard.

  There was someone lying in the snow right in front of a bush.

  Someone small.

  Someone bleeding.

  “Tommy,” Ian said.

  He heard Sofia begin to wail as she fell beside her boy. But as he rushed over to his son, he denied it. He couldn’t face it. He couldn’t accept it. Not his Tommy. Not his boy. Anyone but his sweet boy.

  “Tommy,” Ian said.

  He reached Tommy’s side, and he saw the damage right away.

  His neck was bleeding. His eyes were wide.

  He was dead already.

  But Ian fell beside him. He pressed against his chest, desperate to bring him back. He pushed his lips against Tommy’s, breathed into his lungs, tried to just spark any bit of life back into him that they could work with. And then he tried to close his neck, tried to cover the wound, all the while wailing, all the while listening to Sofia wail, unable to face up to it, unable to accept the truth.

  But no matter how hard he tried, no matter what he did, Tommy wasn’t responding.

  He fell onto his son’s body. Pressed his head against his chest, shaking it, crying, begging this not to be true.

  It had to be a nightmare. He’d had nightmares like this, and this is what it always felt like, only this was worse. This was far worse.

  He looked up into the trees, tears in his eyes, trying to wrap his head around what had happened, trying to understand.

  That’s when he saw her standing there.

  The woman.

  The woman with the short-haired girl by her side.

  Knife in the girl’s hand.

  Blood dripping from the knife.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Holly looked at the boy lying across the ground, blood spilling out of his neck, and every muscle in her body went weak.

  The wind blew steadily through the woods. Everything was silent, other than the racing of her heartbeat in her skull.

  She could see that little boy trying to move. She could see him trying to writhe back to his feet.

  But he didn’t struggle for long.

  He smiled. Muttered something like, “Did I do good, Dad?”

  Then he went still.

  Holly heard Alison say something. She looked at her, saw the shock in her eyes, saw the despair. The tears building up. The paleness of her face. And Holly didn’t need to see these things to understand the severity of what she’d done. She didn’t need to see the reactions of others to understand just how bad a situation this was.

  She might believe in taking people out, ruthlessly in some c
ases.

  But this…

  This was different.

  She saw that.

  “Holly, we—we need to help him.”

  Alison went to move. As she did, Holly grabbed her arm.

  “He’s already gone.”

  Alison yanked her arm free. “We have to at least try. We can’t just give up on him. We can’t…”

  That’s when she stopped. She’d heard it, just as Holly heard it.

  Someone was coming.

  Not the armed people they’d gone to steal from, either. They seemed to have passed by, somehow.

  There was someone else coming from the other direction.

  “Oh no,” Alison said. “Please no.”

  Holly didn’t understand, not at first.

  And then it clicked.

  A man. A woman. Both calling out a name.

  “Tommy?”

  Their parents.

  Their damned parents.

  Holly watched as the mother approached the child with despair. She watched as the father went totally pale, as his shoulders dropped, as the life disappeared from his body.

  She watched as he walked over to his son, crouched beside him, tried to do everything to help him.

  Then she watched as he collapsed onto his son’s body, in total despair.

  “We have to go out there,” Alison said.

  Holly shook her head. “We can’t.”

  “Holly, we—we can’t let them suffer this alone. They need to understand. They… they need to know.”

  Holly felt the guilt running through her. Guilt unlike anything she’d felt in a long time.

  She looked at Alison. Heard the crying. And she wanted to run from this. She wanted to turn away and run.

  But she couldn’t.

  Alison was right.

  She had to face up to this.

  She had to accept it.

  She tightened her grip on the blood-stained knife once again, just in case.

  She took a deep breath, and she nodded.

  “Let’s do this,” she said.

  Alison nodded back, but it was half-hearted. And it was gutting to Holly, in a way. Because she could tell from the way Alison looked at her that she only saw a monster now. She’d been trying to still see Holly for a long time. That had changed.

  She stood up, then. Stepped out from the bush, Alison by her side.