Sub-Zero

by Robert W. Walker

  SUB-ZERO

  ROBERT W. WALKER

  Copyright © 2010 by Robert W. Walker, www.robertwalkerbooks.com

  Cover copyright © 2010 by Stephen Walker, www.srwalkerdesigns.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Robert W. Walker.

  Prologue

  The snow began as large flakes the size of leaves, lovely to watch as they floated like feathers from above, lazily at first, bumping one another with little kisses, and this is how it all looked to Arlene Stephanuk when she glanced out her living room window for a final look before making the attempt to get to the sitter’s and then to work before the storm might grow in intensity—as the newscaster on TV warned. She turned and saw her little toddler playing about in his tee-pee, a cardboard thing that he loved to sleep in and play in all day long if she let him. But for now, she must disturb his play, strap him into the backseat of the car out in the garage, and off they must go so she could make the rent and pay for the groceries and all manner of sundries needed for a single mom and her babe. She was sure the weatherman was exaggerating conditions, and they had been living in sub-zero weather now for what, two months? Life and strife as her dear mom was fond of saying, must go on.

  It was no more than ten minutes and she was out the door with everything little Stephen would need at the sitter’s—a day care, really—and in a moment the garage door opened and she backed out into a snowfall that was not so sweet anymore. The leafy large flakes had transformed into a driving rain-like pelting of beady snow like rice making noise against the windows and hood. For a second, she thought to just pull back in, call in and tell them it was not safe, but then she chastised herself for being a wimp, hit the automatic to close the garage door before her and backed out, careful around the snow banks like bunkers all around them when a snow plow with either a drunk driver or a fellow up for forty-eight hours came within inches to hitting them as it barreled by and shoveled huge globs of snow onto their car, frightening Stephen and setting him on to tears and wailing.

  Arlene did her best to calm him from the front seat as she drove for the day care center, unaware that already her car top was covered in white as if some giant had worked to make it disappear against the snow covered landscape all around them. Arlene drove on, despite the early morning darkness and despite the radio voice saying that “if at all possible, remain in your homes today. This will be a killer storm folks.”

  “Yeah, and a career killer for mommy,” Arlene said to her baby, “if I miss another day.”

  Stephen burped loudly in response at the same moment the car hit a patch of black ice and spun out of control, careening to one side of the road and then the other, and slamming to a jaw-jarring, abrupt stop when it dove into a snow bank.

  With Arlene dazed and the baby staring at the blank whiteness all round them, the snow outside saw the victims and directed more snowfall to cover and claim them. Arlene came to and realized that she was pinned in her seat where the door had wrinkled in on her bleeding leg. She panicked for a moment before blacking out altogether. Stephen by contrast played with a chew toy, teething.

  1

  Dateline Chicago, April 14, 2020 United International Weather Services

  Arctic conditions grip much of us Great Plains regions, the entire Midwest, and most of the Northeast-reaching as far south as Missouri, Kentucky, and the Virginias, have claimed an estimated 1,984 lives over the past three days.

  While figures remain unofficial, they are not expected to exceed the great storm of December 23, 2019, less than six months ago, which took the lives of thirty-eight hundred Americans. However, state and local officials in areas hardest hit by the storm are reporting higher fatalities in their regions than they’d experienced with the blizzard of 2019.

  Death tolls as they stand to date, by city and state, are as follows ...

  A runner stood at the electronic teletype machine, oblivious to the staccato rapping of the keys as the machine seemed to drone on endlessly like a sewing machine on automatic pilot. The runner was a young man of eighteen years, a would-be reporter after four years of college. The tele-tape sheets had run down to the floor and covered his neat, square-toed boots looking like the ticker tape of the Stock Exchange. The stories had long since lost their appeal for the student. All of them were weather reports of one sort or another. A bridge at Wabash had collapsed due to the amount of ice piled there by the three-day-old blizzard. It had happened three days ago but only now was it discovered. Traffic congestion hampered rescue efforts until it was decided that all efforts were too dangerous. Not even the newly developed Cyclonic Helicopters, more powerful than earlier aircraft, could withstand the howling winds, ice, and snow.

  The runner knew he would not be returning to his apartment in nearby Evanston for a long time, and that his snowhorse—a snowmobile of gargantuan strength, purchased for him by his parents when he started college, would be under several feet of snow by now. The storm meant he’d miss another week of classes. But so, too, would his profs and the entire academic community in Evanston. Then he wondered if anyone had been trapped in classes. His heart leaped, going out to whatever poor soul got stranded with Professor Leper. He had once. Before they’d been able to get out of English 10 I, the students were nearly ready to murder Leper, who had kept them on a schedule of class work the whole time. They’d gotten half way through the classics in three days. The students conspired to murder Leper and blame it on the weather. Fortunately for Mr. Leper, the weather broke.

  For the runner, all the news stories amounted to one big pain in the ass, a huge stack of paper he had to cart to the newsroom on the 99th floor. He’d been given strict orders not to take any of it up until now. By usual standards, the tape was running slow. Most of the remote terminals were inoperative, probably because no one could get to them to report a story. Much of the material coming in, ironically, was from the outside-National Weather Service, United Press. So the boss, Mr. Sirotto, said let it pile up. The runner, being an obligingly correct young man, let it pile up.

  While it piled up, he’d become bored stiff with the stories, all of them weather-related. Everything that happened had a weather tie-in, cause, or angle. Sometimes the death tolls from weather-related accidents, stranded motorists, and the like, were higher than those from the war in South America. Electric power in many parts of the Midwest, and along the Ohio and Tennessee Rivers, was either lost or going again. Another dam had sustained structural damage as a result of ice-laden rivers that had begun to move in the manner of small glaciers across the Great Plains, the Northwest, the Midwest, and New England. Canadians continued to pour across the American border, which was largely unpatrolled, adding to the joblessness, hunger and degradation in North American cities. North America’s war over the Panama Canal was only the beginning. America had its eye on Peru. Once dominated, Americans meant to occupy the vast acreages left untouched by the Peruvian Government, then build farms to provide food for the starving masses in cities all across the sun belt-where massive population movement into California, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Louisiana, and Florida had caused overcrowding and resulted in so much human suffering. Thousands died annually on the streets of Orlando and St. Petersburg from sheer hunger. The U.S. program aimed at “spreading the wealth” was a monumental failure.

  All the stories were the same-the weather around the world was responsible for a wave of terror, famine, and death.

  The runner took
his box of tele-tape to the elevator, and soon faced the messy newsroom where the reporters were sprawled about their desks and chairs, some sleeping, others talking. Paper cups and cigarette butts were everywhere. The room was filled with a haze that smelled of smoke and perspiration. They’d all been trapped in the building for several days. When the elevator door opened, those who were awake instantly looked to see who it was, to see any new face.

  “Ah! Something to do!” shouted one reporter. “Something besides filing my nails,” said Joanna Sommers, a tall, willowy blonde whose features changed with her steps from demure to aggressive. “I’ve got dibs on the Coulton stuff!”

  “Better than cleaning my desk again,” one middleaged, glassy-skinned reporter said to the man beside him.

  “Coulton?” cried a voice from across the newsroom. “What do you have going with the Coulton investigation? That’s my story.”

  Joanna Sommers saw a thick-bearded, long-haired man coming at her with full force; his eyes softened a little, as he let them go over her. She’d heard about Tim Crocker but they had never met. Some of the newsmen joked about his appearance, calling him Davey Crockett, after some mountain man in America’s past who’d died at the Alamo in a buckskin coat. Tim Crocker had his infamous buckskin coat on now. From the smell of it, it’s the one Crockett wore at the Alamo, she thought. It was certainly not an imitation. She wondered where he picked it up.

  Crocker stammered somewhat, realizing he was up against a woman, Joanna thought. His dimples could be seen below his bearded cheeks. With a hot shower, a shave and perhaps a shampoo, he might be a handsome man, she thought. His eyes were a beautiful, sincere blue as deep as she’d ever seen. It was a pity they were covered with thick glasses on wire rims.

  “I’ve been following Coulton from the beginning,” he managed to tell her. “I know all there is to know about the case. Why don’t you just ask me?”

  “Do you think he’s guilty, like they say?” she said directly.

  “Well, sure. I mean it’s obvious.” “Not so obvious,” she countered. “Okay, not so obvious.”

  “But you’re pretty sure he’s guilty.”

  “I’ve been at most of the hearings, and I have come to the conclusion that he is,” said Crocker loud enough for everyone to hear, an edge in his voice.

  “Do you really think he deliberately left his wife and children to die, knowing where he might find shelter? That his plan called for a knowledge of just how long he could survive in the cold himself? He’d actually plotted the time he would fall through the door of that diner out in the middle of nowhere on I-55?”

  “I do, after seeing all the evidence laid out by the prosecution.”

  “So, even though the man may still die of pneumonia, and although he almost froze to death himself-leaving his car eight miles from the diner and trudging through the worst blizzard of 20 19-it’s an absolute certainty that he’d driven out there with the express purpose of doing away with his entire family?”

  “Read my articles. All the facts presented by the prosecution are there and they all spell murder, m-u- ... ““Okay, I know how it’s spelled.”

  Crocker’s eyebrows went up at this. “What’s your concern?”

  “Such crimes are on the rise and I think they’re linked to two things. One we can’t do much about. The other-new laws enacted to keep people like you and me in our place, is another thing.”

  “Bully! Bully,” Tim Crocker said, raising his arms mockingly. “We have a damned inalienable right or two left! You tell them!”

  “We know the Annery-Sideon Act is unconstitutional,” she answered.

  “What can we or anyone do about the Annery Act? It’s not only law, Miss, Miss - what is your name?”

  Joanna was surprised. She was a minority in the newsroom, though there were’ several other women, but her star had risen far above any other female reporter on either of the Fieldcrest papers. “Sommers, Joanna Sommers,” she answered.

  He had to look slightly up at her when he talked. She was perhaps an inch taller. “Well, Miss Sommers, as I say, it’s not only law, it’s survival! Limiting population and controlling the density of masses in areas below latitude 40 North has become top priority for our southern congressmen, who happen to be running the country these days, as you know.”

  “Yes, I know it well. They’ve got all the capital, all the millions to build on, while we’re left in a crippled world where anyone can get in, but no one can get out.”

  “All you need is a visa, a work permit, and a job waiting at the other end, if you want out, Miss Sommers. Really not so much to ask. If you did go to say, sunny California, where I understand the average temperature is now 15 above, the sun continues to shine but has no warmth, you’d probably starve to death. Unless, of course, you took up hooking, but even there we’ve got an oversupply.”

  Joanna’s face reddened a little, not over the remark but because she didn’t know if Crocker was being cruel or not. She’d been sleeping with Mark Wertman, Fieldcrest’s highest paid Climatologist, for less than a year. She was sure the rumors were flying.

  “Hey, I’m sorry,” said Crocker. “Come over here and sit down. I’m tired too, drained. It’s the drudgery of all this. After a while it starts working on you, you know. I’ve managed to alienate just about everyone in the newsroom and I’m working on the girls in the cafeteria. The only one who cares about me at all is Marie at the receptionist desk. She gets a little teed-off when she thinks I’m not taking my coffee break, or when I’m not in the office for seven or eight days. Thank God we’ve got the Computa-punch cards. Even as it is, if I don’t get to a terminal to punch in my time, they dock hell out of me, and how’s a guy supposed to punch in and out when he’s working on a story in this madness? Once, for eleven days, I was snowed in-almost starved in my own apartment-and on the eleventh day I realized I hadn’t punched out at the University terminal. Do you think they’d overlook that and pay me around the clock? No way. They made it straight time. There’s a girl in bookkeeping crazy about me. So crazy that, if she ever saw me when she was holding a gun, she’d surely kill me.”

  “You’re really a talker when you get going, aren’t you,” said Joanna.

  “Yeah, I guess I am. I talk easiest with beautiful women,” he smiled.

  She returned his smile. “Well, you answered my question and, since you’re sure Coulton’s guilty, I’ll use his case in my story tomorrow.”

  Crocker’s eyes narrowed again. “You can’t say he’s guilty-the verdict’s not in.”

  “Don’t worry, I’m hardly an amateur. I’m just going to point to his case as another example of what’s happening to us all.”

  “What’s happening to us all,” he repeated.

  “Like the girl in bookkeeping you mentioned, Mr. Crocker. She might easily hunt you down one of these mornings and kill you, if she is given a steady dose of weather-fever, or what I’m calling in my article ‘the cold inside,’ meaning in here.” Joanna pointed to her head.

  “Another story about weather and human behavior,” said Crocker, unimpressed .”I hope it will be more than just another story, Mr. Crocker.”

  “Hey, call me Tim, or Crocker, okay?”

  “Sure,” she said, leaving for the elevator, “call me Joanna.”

  He smiled, watching her measured, graceful steps as she walked away from him. She was, Crocker had to admit, too classy for him. He wondered if the rumors about her and Wertman were true.

  “Hey, wait a minute.” Crocker caught up to her. “Yes?”

  He stammered more, and she thought he was going to ask her for coffee or a date. “What’s the first thing?”

  “The first what?”

  “You said such crimes as Coulton’s are on the rise and they are related to two things, the Annery Act which contains us in our frozen States and ... “

  “Hey, nice pun,” she smiled. “You should be doing political cartoons.”

  He ignored her and continued, stammering a li
ttle.

  “And, and something we can’t do anything about. What’s the something?”

  “The pressure, Tim. Don’t you feel it? I can see it in just about everybody, especially those who haven’t lived here all their lives. It comes with the years, the near escapes, the rising number of friends, relatives, and loved ones who’ve been caught and killed by the ice.”

  Crocker only lowered his head and nodded a simple agreement as Joanna boarded the elevator, a partial tele-tape clutched in her hands. “When I get through with these stories on Coulton, I’ll send them down. I’m going to observation.”

  The door closed on Crocker’s protests.

  2

  In all of his years as a copter pilot, Marlo Cigliani had never felt so much frustration and hatred due to a storm. Everywhere he turned he was thwarted, and he knew it was madness to remain aloft another minute, much less the time it would take to get to Meig’s Field. Still, there was no landing on the top of the Fieldcrest building. The helipad was completely gone, buried beneath several feet of snow. The building top itself was nearly indistinguishable in the raging white outside the helicopter. And now Mark Wertman was pulling his Doctor Wertman routine-pulling rank, like so-called buddies in the service always wound up doing once they moved up the scale.