“You robbed them?” I asked.
Mia looked me in the eye and answered. “Well, I didn’t physically take anything. Didn’t tie them up either. But I stood by and watched it happen, and I sure as hell ate their food and wore their extra clothes without a guilty conscience over the next few days. Billy convinced me it was fair game, ‘cause everything was fair game when the world was ending.”
No one spoke for a long moment…at least until Stone broke the silence. He was good at that.
“So…I’m guessing you’re gonna rob us too?”
“We don’t have much,” Ell said. “Pretty much nothing, really.”
“I’ve been wearing the same underwear for, like, two weeks,” Mikey added, and that shattered the seriousness Mia’s story had brought on. We all laughed. Hell, I laughed so hard, my stomach was actually sore an hour or two later.
Stone said, “Wait a minute, Mikey. Two weeks? We’ve only been outta Helga’s for a day—if that.”
He shrugged. “It was a…joke.”
I don’t think it was.
“That’s nothing new for Mikey,” Ell added. Mikey raised his middle finger, a bad habit he must’ve picked up from Stone and me. Instead of being offended, Eleanor gave it right back.
“So you ain’t gonna kick me out?” Mia said after a moment. “On account of me being a shitty person?”
I cleared my throat, thinking about the dead boy, thinking about Ed Hark, thinking about Jonas lying on the kitchen floor, blood leaking from him and spreading into a crimson pool on the tile. I shook my head.
“We all do things we aren’t proud of. That’s the way of life. It’s unavoidable.”
“Yeah,” Stone agreed. “A week before this all happened, I ran over a groundhog with my van and still feel like a piece of shit about it.”
I neglected to tell my story. The dead boy was a part of my past; I wanted him to stay there no matter how many times the wraiths tried reminding me.
“See?” I said. “All we can do is put it behind us, and then try to be better than we were the day before.”
“Well said,” Ell told me.
“Philosopher Grady in the house!” Mikey bellowed.
Stone grimaced. “More like off-brand Mr. Rogers. Man, where’d you steal that line from, one of those chick books you were reading at Helga’s?”
“You mean the books you acted out in a makeshift wig with Mikey over here, falsetto voice and all?” I replied, smirking and giving Stone a wink. He shut up pretty quickly after that.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Mia said as she raised her hands, palms out. “What kinda freaky shit are you guys into?”
Eleanor explained more in detail, much to Stone and Mikey’s dissatisfaction. Mia didn’t get it, and to be honest, neither did I. But we had to pass the time somehow at Helga’s. It made us laugh, and it took our minds off of the bad. Somewhat, at least.
Not long after that, we slept. Mia, surprisingly, was the first to clonk out. I thought she’d be sleeping with one eye open all night, but she snored like a damn chainsaw. I was okay with it; so was everyone else, it seemed.
One of the many things I hate about the apocalypse is the silence. I think I’ve said that before. I hate it so much, however, it bears repeating.
I wanted to stay on watch, but Stone wasn’t having that and he took the job instead. Besides, I was so exhausted I’d probably have dozed off an hour in, and we all know how dangerous that was with the noise of Mia’s snowmobile undoubtedly bringing the wraiths’ attention our way. However, it apparently hadn’t. No calls in the dark nor apparitions of dead boys or demented doctors holding sword-like syringes roaming the drifts of snow outside disturbed me, and, for the time being, we remained safe in the abandoned gas station.
Eleanor shook my shoulder. She was standing over me with a somber smile on her face. Naturally, I expected some bad news. When you live in a world that’s nothing but bad news, your brain doesn’t consider the possibility of there ever being good news—or even neutral news.
“Huh?” I grumbled sleepily.
There was that familiar-unfamiliar few seconds of not knowing where I was. It only lasted until the rest of my body woke up and the cold bit at my skin. The worst kind of reminder. There’s not many things more terrible than waking up to the cold. Even after doing it however many odd days, I was pretty sure I’d never get used to it.
“Stone and Mikey got one of the pumps working,” Ell said. “Slow going, but one can is already filled up. They’re working on the others as we speak.”
“Why didn’t you wake me?”
Ell scowled. “You needed to sleep. You were like a zombie last night.”
“I was managing.”
“If by managing you mean acting like you were totally zonked, then yeah, I guess you were.”
I sat up and stretched my arms above my head. My spine crackled almost painfully, but the relief outweighed the discomfort. “Guess I do feel a little better.”
Truth is, I felt about a million times better, and when Ell relayed the news of the gas pumps working, that million changed to a billion. I had no idea how we were going to get them working. I only told Mia we could the day before because I didn’t want her to leave us. Not because I was worried we’d never make it to Avery’s Mills—it was about a mile up the road, and we had traveled much farther already—but because I’d never forgive myself if I let a young, defenseless woman try to survive this on her own. A young, defenseless and pregnant woman.
Sometimes you just have to tell them what they want to hear. Yourself included
Ell offered her hand. “C’mon, let me help you.”
I took it, and she pulled me to my feet. “How long was I out?”
“Eight or nine hours.”
“What?”
“Yeah, you got a full night’s sleep, Grady. We all mostly did.”
“She ain’t lying,” a voice called from the front of the store. There, sitting on the checkout counter with Chewy in her lap, was Mia. “I feel fuckin’ great!”
“That’s crazy,” I said, shaking my head. I reached down and grabbed another coat, threw it on.
“What are you doing?” Ell asked.
“Going out to help Mikey and Stone.”
“Not without eating breakfast.”
I chuckled, but Eleanor didn’t echo. My smile waned. “Wait, are you being serious?”
Ell planted her hands on her hips, frowned. “You don’t wanna find out just how serious I am, pal.”
The smile came back, spreading wider than before. “I don’t know about that… You’re pretty cute when you’re all stern like this.”
Ell’s serious expression cracked. “Grady Miller, you dog.”
Mia gagged, and I turned and said, “Yeah, yeah, get a room, right?”
“Exactly. Or, you know, I can just skedaddle on somewhere else and leave you two to it.” She winked.
“Nothing’s happening until Grady eats something,” Ell said, remaining the levelheaded one of us three. “And anything is better than nothing, so c’mon.”
From seemingly out of nowhere, she produced a shiny silver package, which I recognized as a Pop-Tart.
I grimaced. “Strawberry?”
“It’s all that’s left…”
“Blah.”
“Hey, I’ll eat the strawberry one, no questions asked,” Mia offered. From her lap, his beard all ruffled, Chewy barked and she patted him. “Yeah, man, I’ll share it with you too, calm down!”
“Please, be my guest,” I began, but Ell was suddenly grinning. I cocked an eyebrow. “What is it?”
“Grady Miller, do you honestly think I’d hand you a strawberry flavored Pop-Tart?”
“Is it—don’t mess around, Ell—is it brown sugar cinnamon?”
She nodded. “It is.”
I tore into it like an animal, teeth and nails clawing at the packaging. That first bite…man, that first bite was heaven on earth.
Ell leaned in and kissed one of my c
heeks. Her lips were warm, comforting.
Mumbling, I said, “You’re the best.”
She said, “I know.”
Hopped up on sugar and more awake now, I went out and helped Mikey and Stone siphon the last bit of gas into the other cans. We had six of them when we were finished. Well, the last only made it about three-quarters of the way.
But hey, we’d take it.
Then, a day or two later when the sun shone bright, we made for Avery’s Mills.
Which brings me to—
“Grady!”
It was Eleanor, her voice carrying on the wind. She sounded both distant and right next to me. I turned and shielded my eyes. Not from the brightness, but from the falling snow. This newest storm was one of the worst since the initial blizzards on July 4th. The temperature had also dropped, believe it or not. It used to be you could walk around outside and you’d be okay as long as you were bundled up. Those conditions weren’t ideal, no, especially not in what was supposed to be the middle of the summer, but they were better than what I was standing in then. I thought I’d known what a frozen hell was before. How wrong I was.
Through the curtain of snow, I saw the dull blue color of Eleanor’s coat. I couldn’t say how far away she was. I guessed not far, but like her voice, she somehow seemed both distant and within reach. I raised a hand, doubted she could see it, and yelled, “I’m all right. Get back to the sled!”
That’s what Mia called the snowmobile.
Ell gave what I thought was a thumbs-up and disappeared back into the white haze, where she would hopefully crawl into the shelter of Mia’s enclosed vehicle until I gave the signal, which I hadn’t given yet because the dead body, not the terrible cold, had slowed me down.
Once, after a viewing of The Thing took me down an internet rabbit hole concerning Antarctica and the researchers who spent many months there in the name of science, I found the coldest temperature ever recorded was -128° Fahrenheit.
Northeast Ohio wasn’t quite there yet, but it felt pretty damn close. If the numbers kept dropping at such a drastic rate, we would soon swipe that record from Antarctica. One thing’s for sure: we were already giving that frigid continent a run for its money.
With this newest blizzard and temperature decrease, I wasn't so sure we would’ve been able to last as long as we had after Helga’s burned down. Even when the sun was out, the cold wasn’t what I was worried about.
It was the wind.
The wind stole warmth the same way the monsters stole life.
Still, we were running against the clock. Always running against the clock. I once observed the sun’s rare appearances from the relative safety of a lake house, jotting down notes of when it showed through the clouds and when it left. I thought I was cracking a code, like a scientist or something, but that research didn’t matter in the long run. Some days the sun stayed out for an hour or two; other days it stayed for only a few minutes, if it showed itself at all.
One good thing was how it didn’t just turn off with the flick of a light switch. Instead, the sky would darken, giving us a warning before the black clouds swallowed it up entirely. When that happened you had to find shelter, because, as you know, the monsters thrived in the dark.
Hastily, I buried the visible parts of Billy’s body because Eleanor would be on her way over to me soon enough. The task only took a few seconds; he was, for the most part, already buried. No matter how much I kicked the snow around, however, the pinkish red of his blood stood out. I hoped Ell wouldn’t notice, but she was no dummy. She knew Billy’s body was here somewhere.
I turned my attention to the small garage about a hundred feet away from me. Half of the double doors and the roof were the only parts marking its location. One of those doors was halfway open, though the fresher snow had choked the entrance. Moving with my makeshift snowshoes—better equipped for such conditions thanks to the time, shelter, and resources the gas station offered—wasn’t easy, but I got to the place eventually, and I wasted no time in digging a hole large enough for me to get through. Anything to be out of the wind.
Inside, the darkness ruled. I found myself trembling less from the temperature and more from fear. The shadows hid many things, things I didn’t exactly want to find.
With my numbed, gloved hands, I pulled out the keychain flashlight from my right pocket. Fumbled with it. Finally pressed the button down. The little beam lit the garage up as if it were on fire.
Speaking of fire…I would’ve killed to be next to one at that moment.
In my other pocket was a can of bug spray and a Bic lighter. I thought of taking them out and getting one of the flame jets going, just for a few seconds to warm me up before I started doing the heavy lifting this job required, but decided against it. That would only make this trip longer than it needed to be, and like I said earlier, we were against a running clock.
In the far left corner were two snowmobile-sized lumps covered with gray tarps. A third tarp lay forgotten on the snow-dusted floor. On top of it, lying on its side, was a plastic gas can. Icicles had formed on the handle. I wondered how that was possible.
Being out of the wind hadn’t given me the strength I needed, but it offered me a little rejuvenation, and that was better than nothing. I moved across the garage with relative ease, even in my snowshoes. I reached out and pulled the tarp from the nearest lump, revealing a rust-orange colored snowmobile. It looked well-used, but serviceable; the only problem being it wasn’t enclosed, and in this weather, in this situation, we needed one like Mia’s.
I stepped around it, my right snowshoe knocking against the empty can and sending it skittering in the shadowy corner, and grabbed the tarp covering the other vehicle.
Before I pulled it off, I thought: Please be enclosed, and please work. Please—
If not, our journey ended here. There was no way we could survive in the gas station, living off candy and chips and frozen Pepsi. We needed heat, the company of others, and most importantly, a good ol’ shot of hope to keep us going.
I took in a deep breath, feeling icy daggers of air stab my lungs, and breathed out.
Then I pulled the tarp off.
The snowmobile looked almost identical to the one Mia drove, maybe slightly older. On the wall behind it hung a pegboard with two sets of keys dangling from it. I grabbed a pair, opened the enclosure’s door, and climbed in. The key fit, but it didn’t turn. I tried it again. This time it turned and the engine caught, purring to life like the damn thing was fresh off the assembly line. Looks can be deceiving, I guess.
I couldn’t have been happier. In fact, I actually shouted with joy and pumped a fist over my head. Unfortunately, the enclosure wasn’t very roomy and I ended up punching the ceiling, but fortunately my hand was numb and I barely felt it.
The needle on the gas gauge settled around E, and I doubted the weather was to blame. Mia told me it’d need gas. Luckily for us, we had plenty of it.
This part of the trip a success, I got out of the snowmobile, climbed the short but growing mound of snow, and came back to the surface. The engine continued to run. Apparently, you had to let them warm up a while to get the best MPG, and we certainly needed as much MPG as we could get.
Here, I took out my bug spray and lighter—one of those long ones used to ignite grills and pilot lights—and then I shot a jet of flames into the sky.
A moment or two later, my flames were answered by a distant honking: Ell and Mia letting me know they had gotten my signal. Now Ell would start climbing the hill to the garage and Mia would stay behind because we weren’t sure if the snowmobile could make it up the incline or not. Mia assured us it would, but we decided it wasn’t worth the risk of getting stuck.
Ell emerged through the white haze a few minutes after I sent the signal. She held one of the red gas cans in hand. I watched her give the spot where Billy’s corpse was a wide berth, thankfully.
“You okay?” I shouted over the howling wind. Then, as soon as she was within reach, I took her in
to my arms.
Her teeth were chattering as she nodded and kissed me. She said no words, not yet. It was so cold out here, talking proved almost as difficult as walking.
A great gust of icy air nearly knocked us off balance. I steadied Ell before we could fall, holding her close and taking in her warmth. Once the wind died down, the snowmobile’s running engine caught her ear and she perked up.
“So it works?”
“Looks like it,” I said. “Now all we gotta do is get it out of the garage and onto the snow. Shouldn’t be that hard.” Maybe that was a too-optimistic statement, but I had to keep a positive outlook here.
“Let’s do it.”
So we did.
It took us about twenty minutes of digging. We made a ramp out of the hardpack and navigated the snowmobile up it. I never realized how weak I’d become until then. I wasn’t exactly Arnold Schwarzenegger before all of this, but I could hold my own. As a firefighter you had to be. Now, though, my arms were wet noodles and my core strength was nonexistent. If not for Ell’s help, the sled would’ve never reached the surface.
Ell and I climbed in. As we did, our weight sunk us down a bit, but the hardpack beneath the fresh powder kept us afloat and the snowmobile moved almost seamlessly.
“We did it,” Ell said. Her eyes were the only visible part of her face, the rest covered with a scarf and the low-hanging hood. I could tell she was smiling by the way her scarf rode upward.
I let out a sigh of relief. “We did.”
I was thinking the hard part was over. We had vehicles capable of traversing the snow, we had gas, and we had our lives. Things were looking good, for once.
Of course, I was wrong; I just didn’t know it yet.
“Let’s get going,” I said.
“You know how to drive one of these?”
I shook my head. “Not really. But I don’t have much of a choice, do I?”
Whiteout (Book 3): The Numbing Page 2
