Bitter Cold

by J. Joseph Wright

  She frowned. “I…I can’t take this.”

  “Why not?”

  “You know. It belonged to your wife. It just wouldn’t feel right.”

  “Don’t be silly. I don’t think she’d care. She’d like you, in fact.”

  “What makes you think she’d like me?”

  “Well, for starters, you tried to help save Logan’s life. That goes a long way in my book, and I’m sure it would in hers.”

  “You said for starters. What else?” she tilted her head.

  He paused, feeling a rush of blood saturating his face. “I just think she’d like you. That’s all.”

  She stared at him. He wished to hell he could read her mind. He wanted to pull her close and lock his lips onto hers so tight she’d feel it for days. It had been so long since he’d kissed a woman. He didn’t want to think about how long. His heart raced. It made his head spin, yet he decided it was now or never. He cleared his throat leaned toward her when she sat to look at the little basket.

  “It is pretty nice. Oh, Chamomile…and clove oil, I love Chamomile and clove oil.”

  He went to the door. “You know what? Suddenly I feel like an intruder. You have yourself a nice bath. I’ll be downstairs. Hey, uh, are you hungry? Because I’m fixing something.”

  She began to unbutton her blouse and faced him. “Sure. Just make me one of what you’re having.”

  He turned before she undressed fully, though it seemed she wanted to show him. He just couldn’t. Inside, he heard Logan’s voice calling him a chicken. He chuckled to himself. He was a chicken. “Okay, then. I’ll heat up some pizza for you, then,” he fumbled, his voice cracking a little. “Pepperoni okay?”

  She giggled. “That’s fine. Now get out of here!”

  WITH FIVE MINUTES left on the oven timer, Jeff jumped from the kitchen barstool and stood fully alert. He’d heard a noise that startled him. Then he heard it again and his feet moved before he could think, taking him straight upstairs where April was supposed to be relaxing.

  She didn’t sound relaxed.

  She sounded terrified.

  “Oh my God! Help me! HELP!”

  Her shrieks filled the house. It made Jeff’s hair stand on the back of his neck. Logan met him at the top of the staircase.

  “Dad! Is she all right!”

  “Jeff! HELP!”

  “Go back to your room!” Jeff dashed down the hall. Logan stood motionless. “Go!”

  He nearly broke the door off its hinges getting in.

  “What! What is it!”

  She splashed at the water, kicking the bubbles. Then she tried to pull herself out of the tub, but slipped and dunked under, coming up spitting and coughing. She reached for him. “It’s here! It’s here to get me!”

  Without a thought, he yanked her straight out of the water. She landed on her feet in the middle of the bathroom, fully nude and shivering. Jeff looked away. He found a clean towel and gave it to her, handing it over behind his back.

  She took the towel and stepped back from tub, out of breath and crying. “That-that thing was in there, I swear! It was in there, in the bubbles!”

  “In the bubbles?” Logan peeked in.

  “Logan, get your ass in your room, now!”

  “Okay, sheesh,” he rolled his eyes and disappeared.

  April clung to Jeff when he moved toward the bathtub. “No! No, don’t do it! Don’t go near it!”

  He hesitated. Then his protective instincts kicked in.

  “No,” he puffed his chest. “If something’s in my bathroom, I want to see what it is.”

  “I’m telling you what it is! It’s that thing! That fuckin’ monster! It tried to get me!”

  He pried loose, stepped to the tub, and threw aside the flimsy, stained curtain. Nothing. Just bubbles and soapy water.

  “What?” he held open the curtain. She didn’t move, huddling in the furthest corner in the room. He reached and splashed in the tepid water and repeated, “What?”

  She frowned and lowered her shoulders, then took two tentative steps toward him. “You-you don’t see anything?”

  “Just Mister Bubble, or whatever you used. There’s nothing here, April.”

  Keeping her hand on the towel around her chest, she inched to the edge of the clawfoot. She looked in and inhaled quickly. He saw her fear wash away, in its place a genuine confusion. He would have thought it a joke if she didn’t look so perplexed.

  She reached and slapped at the water. “It was here, dammit! I saw it, in the bubbles, just like in the snow, but it was in the bubbles.”

  He tried to touch her shoulder. She winced and pulled away. Her refusal didn’t deter him. He tried again, this time she let him. She put her head on his chest.

  “I must be having nightmares. I keep seeing it, having dreams about it. I must have woken up and saw the bubbles and thought it was snow and…oh, it was so horrible! That thing,” she looked him in the eye. “You saw it, right? You’re not just saying you did?”

  He shook his head. “I was there, remember? I was right there just a few feet away when it took Dexter’s foot.”

  “I know you were, I know,” she rubbed her eyes and leaned against the clothes hamper. “I’m sorry. It’s just that…that it was so dark, like a hole into hell. But holes don’t move. What the fuck, Jeff? What the fuck is it?”

  “I thought you knew,” he kept his staring at a minimum, though the loose towel made it difficult. It draped over her leg, exposing a smooth thigh. She must not have noticed, or cared.

  She looked at her feet and shook her head. “I don’t know anything anymore. I thought I knew. But where’s my car? If I had an accident, if I flipped over that embankment, where’s the car? There was nothing. Just a few tracks. The cop was right. It didn’t prove anything. Well, it did prove one thing. It proved I’m crazy.”

  “Listen, if you’re going crazy, then it means I am, too. I mean, what is this? Some sort of mass psychosis? What about the Daniel Applegate story? And what about…” he stopped. No need to go down that dark path. But April insisted on dredging it up.

  “Your friend Eddy? He was killed by that thing, wasn’t he?”

  Jeff still felt like it had happened yesterday. “I’m certain of it now.”

  She nodded solemnly. “It’s strange, but it proves maybe I am crazy after all. I’ve been thinking all along that monster in the snow was caused by the radiation leak. But you said your friend was attacked years ago, and the Daniel Applegate incident happened over a century before that. It doesn’t add up. It must have been caused by something else.”

  “That may be, but I can tell you this: it can move, now. At one time it was stationary.”

  “So,” she reached for her clothes. “Before this winter, that thing existed, but it was immobile? And now, for some inexplicable reason, it’s become mobile?”

  He nodded. “And you wanna know something else? It’s getting bigger. It used to be just a few feet across. Now something’s changed. Something’s happened that lets it do things it couldn’t do before.”

  “A spent fuel leak from the nuclear plant,” she pulled up her jeans without exposing so much as an inch of skin. “It caused some sort of spontaneous mutation.”

  “What, are you some kind of scientist, now?”

  “No,” she tossed a towel over her hair. “I’m not. But I’ve been a reporter long enough to learn a thing or two. It might be a rare, lethal algae bloom or something. The radiation from Trojan could have altered its DNA and made it even deadlier. I know it’s happened before. Mutations are common in radiation exposure cases.”

  “You think it’s some sort of mutated algae?”

  She pulled on her socks. “I don’t know what it is, but I’m almost certain the radiation from those spent fuel rods affected it somehow.”

  “I really don’t care how or why. I just know we need to keep everyone outta there.”

  She tugged her shirt over her head, then unwrapped the towel. “Sunshine’s the best di
sinfectant. The boys at NWP don’t want anyone to know about their little fuckup, so much so that they’re willing to commit murder. I’ve got to get this story out. You have internet access, right?”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  “Good.”

  An ear-splitting alarm shattered the calm. BEEEEP! BEEEEP! BEEEEP!

  “DAD!” Logan screamed above the shrill noise. “The Pizza!”

  “Shit!” Jeff rushed to the door.

  She laughed. “You know, you’re not supposed to use smoke alarms as oven timers.”

  He gave her a wry smile and made it to the first floor in record time, barely touching the steps. The stench of charred crust filled the kitchen, smoke rising from the oven. The pizza was ruined. He flopped it into the sink and ran the cold water. FUCK! He slammed the counter.

  In the hall, April yanked open the smoke detector and pulled out the nine-volt. “Don’t worry about it. I wasn’t that hungry, anyway.”

  “I was,” he snorted.

  Logan dredged up some old, freezer-burned fish sticks and fries and they salvaged some kind of meal, though April said she only wanted coffee. She sat with her laptop and her voice recorder the rest of the night, typing and typing. Jeff had never seen anyone type so much so fast. He left her alone after the second time he tried talking to her. He could tell she strained to be polite, but her body language said, ‘Leave me the hell alone!’ So he did.

  After watching most of Lord of the Rings with Logan, he left the boy snoozing on the couch to find April sleeping in the den. Out of coffee, she’d slumped in the office chair, her fingers still on the keyboard, whining lightly when she exhaled.

  Outside, a gust of wind seized the falling flakes and stirred hundreds of them into a tiny tempest. On the windowsill, a small accumulation clung to the corners. It looked so innocent, so unassuming, like a Hallmark card. The very thought of snow made him feel innocent and whimsical. How could something so wonderful harbor such evil?

  With some effort getting her out of the chair (the casters kept swinging her sideways), he lifted April and carried her upstairs to his bed. He debated on whether or not to undress her. His better judgment won the argument, and he slid her under the blankets fully clothed. He didn’t want that conversation in the morning.

  After hauling his son to bed over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, he went back downstairs and turned off the TV. Then he switched off every light in the house, flipped on the exterior floods, and sat in a recliner facing the family room picture window. Another two logs on the fire meant a few more hours of soothing warmth as he watched the winter storm, watched the night, watched the shadows.

  SEVENTEEN

  HE COULDN’T REMEMBER WHEN he’d closed his eyes. Something jarred him from his comfortable position, shocked him into sitting up straight.

  “Huh?” he said involuntarily, his heart pounding from the sudden activity. He’d been startled by something. A noise. Steady, rhythmic. A drum beat. It sounded close. Right outside.

  He went to the door. Getting his shotgun crossed his mind. It was downstairs, locked away in a gun safe. He didn’t need it, though. Something told him to just go, to follow the sound of the beating drum. He opened the door and the winter wind whipped his clothes, forcing pins of ice against his skin. He squinted and walked down the steps.

  A dense layer of clouds blanketed the moon, yet the night had an unearthly glow, bathing everything in colorless light. In the whistling gale, the drumbeat sounded further off. He felt he had to catch up with it. He had to find its origin. His house was the only source of artificial illumination in the inky shroud of night, and it was getting dimmer and dimmer behind him as he pushed through the knee-high snow. The constant drumming beckoned him. It tormented, yet eased him with its rhythm. On and on and on, like his footsteps. Soon, he found himself walking in perfect cadence with the drum, picking up his tempo as it did. Faster, faster.

  BOOM!BOOM!…BOOM!BOOM!…BOOM!BOOM!

  His pace became a full sprint.Up the driveway, past the gate, and onto Jack Falls Road. From there he went left. He realized where his feet were taking him, though he had no idea why.

  He glanced down and gasped, seeing he was wearing black, cracking cowhide boots with looped pull-up straps. The boots galloped onward quite on their own, not giving him any choice but to pass the driveways on Jack Falls, through a trail made by ATV riders and deer, to a clearing that belonged to nobody in particular. As he crossed the meadow, something else joined the drums, another noise breaking the monotonous beat. Laughter. The childlike, giddy giggling of grown men getting drunk on either booze or something just as intoxicating. It made him want to stop. His feet kept going against his will, step after step through the heavy snow.

  He noticed more strange things about his clothes. His pants. A pair of heavy tan canvas trousers, not his Levi’s. He also had on a dark blue wool flannel fatigue coat. It didn’t look good on him, either. A horrible fit. The coat sleeves were too long and the pants were too short. Then, as he continued to stride through the white, sparkling field, he saw something that made his heart stop.

  He was carrying a rifle.

  Looked like an old Springfield Carbine, though he couldn’t tell for sure. He wanted to study it closer, but found he couldn’t control his arms or his legs. He couldn’t control his mouth or vocal chords, either, otherwise he would have screamed. He wanted to call out to his neighbors, to his son, to anyone that could hear. His mouth remained closed. His voice remained mute.

  The laughter got louder as he approached the edge of the clearing, a break in the treeline near a rocky outcropping. He’d been there many times, though this felt much different. He felt an evil presence. It didn’t come from the bottom of the canyon. It came from somewhere else.

  The frivolous banter turned suddenly serious. He heard a voice clearly over the others.

  “Get yer ass over here, Samuelson! Yer a part of this fire team, too, Buck Private! Now, hotfoot it!”

  More laughs and snorts of happy men. Not normal happy, though. Vicious, ravenous happy. The howls of hungry coyotes before taking down a hare.

  Automatically, Jeff followed the direction of the noisy group. He bowed and pushed through some heavy, low-hanging pine branches. The boisterous teasing grew even louder. The last limb swished past his face and he saw five men, all wearing the same clothes as his. Uniforms, dark blue and heavy. They also had identical rifles, each pointed into the canyon below.

  “Get over here, Samuelson,” the man closest ordered. He had the stripes of a sergeant. “Yer not gettin’ outta this! We’re all in it together, now come here and take aim, yuh son of a bitch!”

  Jeff inched closer, toeing the rocky rim that overlooked the canyon. At first, he saw nothing out of the ordinary. A few groups of trees, steep, stony sides, various miniature caverns and rock formations, and a narrow, level floor. Then he saw what the men were laughing at while aiming their guns. He didn’t want to believe it, but the truth pummeled him like a bag of bones. When he heard a baby crying, it sunk into his chest with the force of a sledgehammer.

  A dozen or so people stood in the valley, wrapped in blankets, but still shivering. Despite the dark, he could tell they didn’t look modern. Come to think of it, neither did anyone else.

  The sergeant took his eyes from his sights and looked at Jeff again. “Samuelson! What’re you up to? You want a court-martial? I won’t hear any more of it. We’ve got a job to do, and by thunder we’re gonna do it. Now AIM!”

  Completely against his will, Jeff raised his weapon to his shoulder and directed it toward the cowering group. They stood petrified, staring at the soldiers.

  He saw a man and woman, bent with age, leaning into each other’s arms. The heavy, coarsely stitched blanket they used as a covering made the two of them seem as one. He noticed their faces. Folds of skin curled over their eyes, deep wrinkles and grooves in their cheeks and brows.

  Next to them were several women, one of them clutching a tight bundle. She
turned to shield her baby from the relentless gusts which tossed her long, black hair. Then she faced Jeff. He stood straight, stepping away.

  “Samuelson! What did I tell you?” Jeff wanted to point his gun at the sergeant and kill him. Nothing those people could have done, no crime on God’s green earth could have warranted such cold-blooded punishment. His arms wouldn’t move, though. Jeff wasn’t in control, and that drove him insane with helplessness.

  “Team ready!”

  His rifle barrel fixed on the elderly man. He felt his trigger finger twitch, though he wasn’t moving it himself. Some other person, Samuelson, readied to let loose with an explosion of malicious violence.

  “FIRE!”

  To his surprise, the gun didn’t shoot in the direction of the old couple. Instead, it fired just to the left. He felt an instant rush of relief. The sensation washed away in a wave of grief as bodies fell anyway. The other soldiers were not as principled as Samuelson. Or maybe they feared retribution more.

  A vivid moonglow cast cruel light on the scene, allowing Jeff no reprieve from the horror. He had to watch it all. Bodies falling on bodies. Bloody spray mists mingling with the haze and steam from their belabored breaths.

  After the first volley, most of the people were down. The old man and woman lay unmoving in the whiteness, with dark pools oozing from serious wounds in their necks and heads. Despite their trauma, they held tight to one another. Nothing could murder their love.

  Three remained on their feet. Two girls and the woman holding the child to her chest, running like deer.

  “Reload!”

  Jeff watched Samuelson’s hands move swiftly. The actions came as instinct, as if the exercise of loading had been repeated over and over until the task could be performed in his sleep. Within three seconds, each man in the fire team had his rifle recharged, ready, and resting in the pits of his shoulder. The women had only made it a few feet in the daunting snow cover.

  “Aim...FIRE!”

  He flinched and the rifled kicked once more, the Crack! causing his ear to ring and go deaf. All three women went down. He wasn’t sure if Samuelson had shot one or not. His heart said ‘no,’ but his gut told another tale. He doubled over, a river of bile burning his throat as it spewed onto the ground. Putrid ooze came out his nose. He wiped it off on his oversized cuff and stood at attention at the officer’s command.