Whiteout

by Michael Sawicki

  WHITEOUT

  BY MICHAEL SAWICKI

  Visit Michael Sawicki on the web at:

  www.MichaelSawicki.com

  This story is a complete work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents

  either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance

  to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  “Whiteout”

  Copyright © 2008 by Michael Sawicki

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  COVER ART AND DESIGN BY MICHAEL SAWICKI

  First published in February 2008.

  Printed in the United States of America

  1

  Police Chief Charles Budlick, kindly referred to as “Butt-Lick” by most of his deputies behind his back, drove up to the front of the Wheeler house on the east side of Rockland. Three other police cars were there. The fire fighters were already climbing back into their truck and that could have been a good sign, but in this case it would be bad. Yellow police tape ran around the perimeter of the Wheeler property. A few faces peered from the other houses in the early morning gloom. Light flakes of snow had started falling an hour before and now it started to come down pretty good. Budlick had no idea what he was about to see (and smell…that awful raw smell).

  Carlson met him at the front door of the house. Carlson was a young guy, twenty years junior to Budlick and was an exceptional lieutenant. Budlick hardly ever acknowledged it; his own ego was too big for that, but he liked the kid and tried not to yell at him so much. But sometimes he just couldn’t help it.

  “Carlson, tell me why I was pulled out of bed at three in the morning,” Budlick barked. He stepped into the dimly lit living room and stomped his wet boots on the rug.

  “You don’t know yet?” Carlson said. Even in the murkiness of the room, Carlson’s face seemed oddly pale.

  “What the hell’s going on in here?” Budlick shouted. “I got a call from Stanwick a few minutes ago, sounding like somebody had kicked him in the balls or something, telling me that there’s an emergency of some kind.”

  Carlson looked at him peculiarly. “Chief, why don’t you come upstairs? You’ll see what he was trying to tell you.”

  “You don’t sound good either, Carlson,” Budlick said, chuckling the way he did in odd situations. “Somebody kick your balls, too?”

  They walked into the kitchen where Stanwick was sitting at the table, wiping his hands on a towel covered with spots of blood. Murray, the other deputy, stood at the sink. He looked like he had just finished puking down the drain.

  “Stanwick, what the hell you sitting around for and doing nothing?” Budlick shouted. He looked over at Murray. “What’s the matter with you?”

  “Chief...it’s bad,” Stanwick said and buried his head in his hands.

  Murray wiped his mouth against his sleeve. “I gotta get some air.” He quickly slipped past them and went out the front door.

  Carlson led Budlick up the small flight of stairs, up where the bedrooms were. They walked a short way down the dark hall and then Carlson stopped.

  “I’m not going any further,” Carlson said. “I can’t.”

  Budlick looked at him confused. “What the sam hell happened up here?”

  “If you want to see what happened, just go look in the master bedroom over there,” Carlson said. “But I’m telling you, it’s horrible. I’m not sure, but I think the man…he must have gone crazy. He went after the kids, too. There were three of them.”

  Budlick’s eyes widened. “What are you saying? This Wheeler guy, what, killed his family?” He let out his signature chuckle, but this time it sounded half-hearted.

  “Yes, and then he killed himself,” Carlson said steadily.

  “Is this a joke?” Budlick said, but he knew by Carlson’s face that it wasn’t.

  Budlick glanced down the dark hall, toward the partly opened door of Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler’s master bedroom. He started to walk toward it slowly.

  “Chief, maybe you shouldn’t,” Carlson whispered.

  “Stop acting like a baby,” Budlick said, but he was alarmed by Carlson’s demeanor. Carlson wasn’t normally a man that was easily disturbed. Today he seemed a fragile shell of himself. It seemed almost laughable. Carlson was acting like a scared child. On any other day, in any other situation Budlick would probably tease him for it but not today, because Budlick himself was feeling a little uncomfortable. It wasn’t often around these parts that he’d heard of a man deciding to kill his family. Maybe over in Hartford or down in New Haven, but certainly not the little town of Rockland.

  Budlick reached the door and pushed it back. It was too dark to make out anything at first, but all at once the raw stench of blood surrounded him and hit him so violently that he reeled back.

  “Are you sure you want to go in there?” Carlson asked, his voice sounding alien. He sounded like he was struggling to keep himself together.

  “I can handle it, Carlson,” Budlick said but he could feel his stomach become upset. He had almost decided not to flip the light switch, but he simply needed to see. It was a strange, compulsive need that he shared with most other humans. The smell was awful, but even that could not hold him back and his instinctive curiosity.

  He leaned into the room and felt around with his hand for the switch. The wall was covered in what felt like wet paint. He frowned and flipped the switch. The room appeared before him in painfully bright light. He blinked his eyes a few times as they adjusted and the sickening scene suddenly came into focus before him. He at first thought the room’s walls were painted red but then saw that the floor and most of the ceiling was red, too. The entire room was covered in their blood. The odor hit him again and suddenly he felt his head spinning. There were small pieces of torn flesh laying about the wet floor, like raw turkey gizzards. He felt his stomach lurch. He started to hyperventilate. He saw the body of the woman that had been Mrs. Wheeler lying at the foot of the bed, her night gown soaked red and shredded against her body. Her head appeared to have been ripped off her. It lay in the far corner of the room, tossed aside like some undesirable piece of meat by the butcher. There was another head laying on top of the bed, presumably Mr. Wheeler’s, but...there was no other body.

  “Carlson, I can’t understand—” Budlick stammered. He was leaning against the doorway, clenching the wall, trying to steady himself. “Carlson, are you there?”

  Carlson shouted from behind him. “I’m not going in there!”

  Budlick was gasping for air. He started sinking to his knees. He felt like he was drowning. “Shit, Carlson!”

  The last thing Budlick saw before he fainted was the chainsaw. He suddenly noticed it, bits of burnt flesh and greasy blood on its teeth, sitting on the floor beside the night table as he stumbled forward, flailing onto the ground. He went out cold and fell on top of the spilled blood.

  2

  Three miles west of the Wheeler house, Fred Caldwell awoke and pushed away his cover. A soft glow filtered through the window. Half asleep he crawled out of his bed and stood in the middle of his bedroom among the school books that were scattered about the floor. He rubbed his eyes and saw the dim light at the window. With the sudden electrified curiosity of a thirteen year old kid, he pushed back the curtain.

  It’s snowing! Yes!

  Fred felt butterflies stir deep in the furrows of his stomach. It was like the feeling he had experienced when he went to ride on the Black Widow last summer, but not nearly as bad. It had been way too hot that day (finally when his mother had decided to take him and his brother, Mother Nature had decided to turn on the blast furnace). Waiting in line that hot and humid August afternoon to ride thi
s wooden beast of a roller coaster, his stomach had begun to tighten and quiver until he hurled its entire contents: a hamburger and beans from lunch. He ended up passing out and falling onto the sweltering hot asphalt with his mother kneeling over him and a throng of people gathering around him. He was fine ten minutes later. Those butterflies weren’t as intense today, but he could feel them stirring.

  He watched the snow coat the lawn and could see that this storm meant serious business. The cottony flakes were building on top of what already looked like a foot of snow.

  Quickly, he rummaged through clothes scattered about the floor and found a pair of jeans that he slipped on. Glancing over at his nightstand he saw the digital clock glaring its red digits through the dark. It read 6:04 AM. He put on a shirt that he also picked up off the floor and hurried quietly across the hall to Sam’s room. Sam, who was two years younger than Fred, was sprawled out over his bed and asleep amidst the jumble of bed covers.

  “Sam?” Fred said and kicked one of the bed’s posts. “Wake up!”

  “No…I don’t wanna go…” Sam muttered sluggishly. His eyes still closed, he said, “I’m tired. I hate school.”

  “The storm,” Fred continued. “Remember? They said we’d get a few inches…if we’re lucky.”

  Sam sprung up suddenly, popping out from beneath his cover like a jack-in-the-box. “So? How much did we get?”

  Fred pulled back the curtains from Sam’s bedroom window. “Why don’t you just take a look?”

  Sam quickly climbed out of bed and came to the window. What he saw held his gaze like a hypnotic spell. He could hardly get himself to look away, but when he finally did the look upon his face was one of pure, unfettered exhilaration.

  “It’s really coming down!” Sam cried. Then his mind turned to the real matter. “School’s closed, isn’t it? It has to be!”

  “It should be,” Fred replied and suddenly turned to leave the room. “I’ll go check the radio right now.”

  He went and tuned the radio in his room, but kept the volume at a minimum. He could hear his parents downstairs and didn’t want to draw their attention, at least not until he knew for himself whether he would have to suffer another day or whether he could sleep until ten and then spend the whole day sledding down Grove Hill with the other kids from the neighborhood. Boy, would he prefer the latter and he had a feeling that school had already been cancelled for the day. How could it not be? Just look at how deep it already was!

  Sam threw on a t-shirt and jeans and hurried over to Fred’s room. They huddled around the radio and listened quietly. Some lame music cued before an over-zealous announcer who sounded like he shot caffeine up his arm before coming on air began to shout over the speakers:

  “Well, dear friends, it’s eight minutes past six on this morning of the third of January. But it’s no bright and shiny morning today! No, my friends, there’s a classic nor’easter moving over the region. Thousands are already without power, many schools are shut down and it’s only getting started. Yes, my friends and loyal listeners, another foot or more is still on its way!”

  “Yeah! Oh, boy!” Sam shouted. Fred motioned for him to knock it out and swung his leg at him.

  “What the hell?” Sam hissed under his breath. He clenched both hands over his crotch, forming a protective shield.

  “Keep quiet! I want to hear what he’s saying!” Fred whispered.

  “School’s out. We can do whatever we want!” Sam cried.

  Suddenly, another cheap synthesized musical theme came from the radio. The announcer started to read off a list of local towns that had decided to shut their schools down for the day.

  “Ashland public and private…CLOSED! Bridgeport public and private…CLOSED! Cheshire public and private…CLOSED! Watertown public and private…ARE ALL CLOSED! Friends, let me remind you: this is a big one so there are sure to be many cancellations still to come. The list continues to grow longer but that’s what we have for now.”

  “W-w-where’s…Rockland?” Sam stammered.

  “What the hell!” Fred shouted.

  “Hey, you boys knock it off up there!” their father suddenly barked up the staircase. “Come down and eat your breakfast.”

  A strong wind suddenly blew across the bedroom window and made a loud whistling noise. They could hear the roof above them creaking as the wood shifted ever so slightly. Fred got a sick image in his head of the wind suddenly pulling off a few shingles, then a few beams and then with one vicious blow the whole roof.

  “I’m going to look at the street,” Sam said. He went down to the other end of the second floor hallway. They had a large window that faced out directly over a two-lane street that ran parallel to the front yard. When Sam looked out this window he was pleased to see everything buried. The street was nearly indistinguishable from the yard and driving down it would have been risky…especially for a school bus. Sure, the fat hairy guy that usually drove their school bus was a decent driver but Sam would like to just see him try and drive through this. He dared him to bring that ugly yellow sardine can with wheels down this road.

  He looked beyond the road and at the trees which swayed heavily in the wind. The gusts picked up and let off violently every few moments reminding him of waves on a stormy beach. In his short lifetime he had only once seen anything pass through his neighborhood that had looked this bad. He had been six-years-old and remembered dreading his second day of kindergarten. The first day he had been bitten on the arm by one of the other students and then he had shit in his pants after getting lost on his way to the bathroom. He had walked back to the classroom and sat down quietly at his desk, thinking no one would notice, but the sudden awful stench gave him away. He was sent home and his second day didn’t come until Monday because on that Friday, Hurricane Betsy came through with a tree-splitting violence that little Sam and his brother Fred—a second grader at the time—had never witnessed before. He remembered peaking through the window a few times, against his mother’s will, and watching as walls of rain and fury pounded against the houses, the cars, the trees and anything else that dared stand in its mighty way. Most frighteningly he remembered standing at the window when an old tree a few houses down the street, its trunk thicker than any he’d ever seen before, was suddenly uprooted by the violent wind and came crashing down in what seemed like slow motion onto a parked car below. It had left a deep, ominous impression on him.

  “Sam?” someone called from behind him. It was his father. “Good morning, son. Why don’t you start getting ready for school?”

  Sam turned to see him coming up the stairs with a mug in his hand. “But Dad! It’s snowing like crazy!”

  “I’ve been watching the news,” Charles Caldwell said and took a sip of the hot black coffee in his mug. “School’s still open, so you should get ready.”

  “But look outside! School should be closed!” Sam said desperately, like his father could do anything about it. “Look at how hard it’s snowing!”

  “I’ve been watching it since I got up,” his father replied. “I just called city hall. They still want me to come in.”

  His father, who worked in the D.O.T. at Rockland’s city hall, never missed a day regardless of the circumstances—even if, in this case, the biggest snowstorm of the century was preparing to pile another foot of snow on top of the one that was already in place.

  “Are you going to work today?”

  “Absolutely, I am,” his father said. “And so long as the schools are open, you’re going to school. Now, go get ready.”

  “But, Dad, how will you get to work? It’s so deep already,” Sam said, in slight disbelief.

  “I have a friend, he’s got a big four wheel drive,” replied his father. “He’s going to pick me up. We should be alright.”

  “What about Mom?”

  “They shut her place down,” his father said, sipping his coffee. “She’ll probably drive you boys to school.”

  He sipped his coffee and turned to go back downstairs. He s
topped on the top step.

  “You and your brother ought to get ready,” he said. “Mom’s cooking some eggs for you boys. When you’re ready come down and eat breakfast.”

  “Okay,” Sam said. “We’ll be down in a minute.”

  Sam reluctantly went back to his room and started to shove his books into his backpack, but still felt that it was pointless. They were surely going to announce the cancellation on the radio soon.

  Fred came into the room. He had kept an ear to the radio when Sam had been talking to their father and he now had a great look of disappointment on his face.

  “Let me guess...school’s still open,” Sam said.

  “It’s a load of bull.”

  Sam shoved some more junk (mostly overweight textbooks) into his bag and sat back down onto his bed. He glanced over at the clock on his night table. It read 6:24 AM.

  “There’s still time,” Sam said. “Maybe they’ll cancel it before we have to leave.”

  3

  He felt a hand press against the side of his face and then heard a distant, muted voice. He opened his eyes and saw Carlson and Stanwick standing over him. He could see their lips move but couldn’t clearly make out the words. They both took a leg and started to drag him out of the room. He tried to sit up but his head was still swirling. He tried shouting at them, but couldn’t tell whether his mouth made any audible noise.

  They dragged him into the center of the hall and finally set his legs down. Stanwick leaned over him. “Chief? How are you feeling?”

  His hearing was coming to him and he felt steady enough so that he could sit up. “How did this happen?”

  “You mean, that?” Stanwick said, pointing into the room.

  “Yes, that!” Budlick shouted.

  “The man must have gone insane,” Stanwick said. He was visibly shaken. He couldn’t stand being in this house, let alone this close to the room which looked like the inside of a human slaughterhouse. The rooms of the three children weren’t any better.