Snow! The Series [Books 1-4]

by Clifford, Ryan

  Copyright © K C Eaton 2018 – v1

  SNOW! Series: books 1 – 4

  an opportunity to read the full horrific

  story by Ryan Clifford in one volume

  KEVIN C EATON has asserted his moral right and his right under sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  All of the characters and locations in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to places, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher and/or author.

  SNOW!

  by

  Ryan Clifford

  First of the SNOW! series.

  ‘Heavy snow has brought disruption to many parts of Britain, with many road closures and flight cancellations.

  Up to 10cm (4in) of snow have fallen in some areas, and icy conditions have prompted warnings from the Met Office as the skies clear temporarily during the day.

  Scores of road accidents were reported overnight and on the M40, about 200 vehicles have been stranded.

  A third of flights from Heathrow have been cancelled and some trains and Tube services disrupted.

  Snow fell over parts of Scotland, Wales, northern England and the Midlands on Saturday before sweeping down to London and East Anglia.

  Church Fenton, in North Yorkshire, reported 10cm (4in) of snow, contributing to more than 80 accidents on the region's roads.’

  PROLOGUE

  Vicky Walker was absolutely freezing cold! She’d been at work in the central sorting office since 5.30am and having prepared her postal round, had been dispatched in a little red van to deliver the Royal Mail on her patch in the suburbs of Norwich, in East Anglia.

  The snow was falling harder now and driving was becoming difficult. A few other cars were around, but not many. She well knew that today’s mail must be delivered like every other day, despite the conditions. Vicky had seen worse weather, and no doubt this would soon clear up, as it always did in the UK. Nevertheless, she definitely needed to get the post round completed on time today, as she had a very important dental appointment at two o’clock. Therefore, she could not afford to be held up for any reason. Her dental surgery was not the most sympathetic to missed appointments.

  Vicky drove through the outskirts of the city, towards the leafy lanes surrounding the local caravan campsite, where she would be making her deliveries. After two hours of delivering letters and small parcels, she turned into Martineau Lane for the final part of her round. It was only 12:15pm, so there was still plenty of time to keep her appointment at three o’clock. She passed under a low railway bridge and pulled up at the first house in the road, which was a large, old mansion set back about fifty metres from the road. She climbed out of the van, and only then fully appreciated the extent of the lying snow in this part of town. It was quite deep here and she sank up to her ankles. Nevertheless, Vicky trudged around to the back of the van with a handful of mail and opened the gate to the house. That task was tricky enough as drifting snow was blocking the garden path. Eventually, after a few seconds of violent pushing, she forced the metal gate open just wide enough to squeeze her small frame through.

  She turned towards the house and set off up the forty or so metres of driveway and because of the heavy snow, Vicky didn’t see the small wheelbarrow, which was semi-buried and lying just off the side of the path. One of the heavy metal handles caught her in the thigh, just above the knee, which caused her to stumble and reach out wildly for something to steady herself. However, there was little within range – so she grasped at nothing but thin air, dropped her package of mail into the snow and tumbled head first over the wheelbarrow.

  She landed heavily and even though the snow cushioned her fall, the barrow had been at the edge of a small ditch which ran alongside the pathway. Vicky slid and rolled the five or six feet to the bottom where she hit something very hard. It was an old millstone – placed in the ditch as a garden ornament, or perhaps it had just been abandoned. However, for whatever reason it lay there, it didn’t change the outcome for Vicky - her head slammed into one edge of the hefty stone and her shin into another.

  She shrieked loudly in shock and pain and briefly blacked out.

  Thirty seconds passed before she regained consciousness and in her woozy state, Vicky swore silently under her breath. How could she be so careless? She shook her head in an attempt to clear it and then looked up at the offending wheelbarrow. Conscientious to a fault, she immediately scanned the ditch for the missing mail, but there was no sign of it.

  ‘It must be at the top of the ditch,’ she guessed correctly.

  She’d have to climb back up there right away and that might not be so easy in this snow. She rolled over onto her side, tried to push herself up a few inches and then screamed loudly, in excruciating agony, as a terrible, shooting pain surged through her lower leg. She instantly slumped back feebly into the ditch.

  The vicious throbbing had really kicked in now, and she was extremely angry with herself for falling into this damned ditch. It had become patently clear that she had broken something as a result of the tumble. Vicky tried moving again and this time the pain was even worse. She cried out loudly – more in frustration than because of the stabbing pain.

  The snow continued to fall heavily, and she was becoming rapidly colder.

  Vicky took a deep breath and tried to think clearly. What time was it? A glance at her watch told her it was 12:19pm. The occupants of the house at the end of the pathway would be out – she knew this because she delivered here every day. So no help would be coming from that quarter. The houses next door were too far away for her to be heard – even if her pathetic cries for help carried over the howling wind.

  Then she suddenly remembered.

  Her mobile phone!

  Of course! A massive surge of relief washed over Vicky - everything would be fine. She could call the sorting office for help, and they would get an ambulance out to her in no time at all. Vicky dug around in her pockets searching frantically for the handset. Then she remembered and slowly realised, with abject despair, that the phone was still plugged into the van – re-charging.

  ‘Oh, dear God!’ she murmured to herself.

  Excruciating pain and the secondary shock were now starting to kick in and the seriousness of the situation had fully dawned on her. The snow kept falling and as she looked up at the pathway, a large dollop of the damned white stuff slipped from a branch and cascaded onto her head.

  She lay back in misery and once again passed out.

  Vicky Walker wasn’t due back at the sorting office until 1pm, and today her colleagues knew she’d be rushing off to the dentist, so nobody missed her. Even her postal van became covered in snow within minutes, quickly resembling every other vehicle parked on the roadside.

  She froze to death in less than an hour.

  INTRODUCTION

  Annually, in the United Kingdom, around November through to February, a small amount of snow will fall. Normally, it is reasonably localised and moderate. Nevertheless, every year, when this sprinkling arrives, all and sundry are taken completely by surprise and general chaos ensues. Transport links and infrastructure instantly suffer severe strain, even though the snow often quickly disappears - usually within a few days. The BAA is on record as stating that they are ‘overwhelmed’ by as little as six centimetres (two inches!) of snow lying at one of their airports. Flights are cancelled and travellers suffer inexcusable inconvenience and disruption.

 
Therefore, just imagine, what would happen if, one winter, the snow didn’t stop and melt away, but kept falling - relentlessly - for more than just a few days?

  This is one interpretation of what the consequences might be and the effect on ordinary people up and down the land.

  Day 1

  Sunday 15 December – 5:00pm

  ‘This is the BBC with the five o’clock evening news. The Meteorological Office has issued the following Red weather warning for the entire mainland of the United Kingdom. Heavy snowstorms will occur in most regions. Drifting and accumulations of up to thirty centimetres are expected over the next 24 hours.’

  Day 1 - Grantham, Lincolnshire – 6:00pm

  ‘It’s snowing!’

  Andrew Brady stood at the first floor window of his living room looking down into the street below. A few flakes were falling and settling quickly on the frozen pavement.

  ‘Maybe we’ll get a white Christmas,’ he called down to his family, who were still seated in the kitchen-diner finishing their evening meal of roast chicken and all the trimmings.

  He turned, descended the stairs into the kitchen and re-joined his wife and two children as the snow started to build up on the road surface outside.

  ‘Maybe we won’t have to go to school tomorrow,’ piped up his twelve year-old son, Alan. ‘Maybe we can go out sledging in Astbury Park?’

  Brady started to reminisce.

  ‘You’ll be lucky! This will probably stop in ten minutes, as usual, and we’ll have a street full of slush to cope with. I can remember when I was your age – we used to get piles of snow every winter - enough to build proper snowmen and sledge for days. Now we just get dribs and drabs which melt away in a few hours. It's probably that ‘global warming’ that's to blame.’

  Brady’s wife cut in quickly and pointed out that the evening news had mentioned that they could expect to get up to twelve inches of drifting snow, and that there was a Red weather warning in force for the whole of the East Midlands – where they lived.

  ‘I very much doubt it,’ retorted her husband and then reminded the children that this was the third such weather warning in the past fortnight, and nothing very much had come of any of it.

  The children just looked hopefully out of the kitchen window and watched the flakes getting encouragingly larger.

  Day 1 - Long Bennington, Nottinghamshire – 7:00pm

  Twelve year old Chris Davies was in his bedroom, upstairs in the small terraced house he shared with his mother. He was finishing off his homework before returning to school for the last week prior to the Christmas break. They were due to finish on Wednesday but Mr Cullingworth, the chemistry master, had insisted on finishing the Periodic Table that term and there was a ‘symbol’ test the following morning. Chris, a slight, studious child with a shock of blond hair and deep green eyes, wasn’t keen on chemistry – he much preferred physics, so this homework was proving difficult and tedious.

  As the boy looked outside, his heart leapt a fraction. The revision was not going well and the semi-blizzard thrashing against the house gave him a pretty fair chance of not getting to school in the morning. After all, it was a forty-five minute journey on the bus, and then only after his mum had dropped him off in the village. If this snow continued all night then he was quids in! He put his book down and stood expectantly at the window. There was a good covering on the ground already.

  Day 1 - Warwick, West Midlands – 8:00pm

  ‘I’ve got to go, Jake! For the last time, it’s an important interview and could get me a load of kudos with the editor.’

  Jane Kelly was getting exasperated with her partner who was complaining again that she had to go to Lincoln in the morning to interview a Judge in Chambers regarding a case concerning a local man. She was a young crime reporter on the local rag and very ambitious, but took her job far too seriously according to Jake. He wondered why she didn’t flash her pretty smile and show a bit more cleavage to help climb the greasy pole of success. However, Jane wasn’t that kind of girl. She preferred to use her writing talents rather than her particularly good looks to get on. She was determined to banish all ‘blonde jokes’ from the office!

  Nevertheless, Jake persisted.

  ‘Anyway, you won’t even get the car out of the driveway if this continues – it must be a couple of inches deep already’

  Day 1 - Slough, Berkshire – 9:00pm

  Pardeep Aluwahlia was a second-generation Indian immigrant, whose parents had left India during the troubles in 1947. He had been born in Slough in 1954 and had lived there all of his life, going to the local Grammar School and then on to university. After gaining a good degree at York, he built a fine career in the banking industry and now commuted daily by train from Slough into London.

  When the snow had started on Sunday evening Pardeep had been at a family gathering in the town. He was at his daughter’s house enjoying his grandson’s fifth birthday party. It had been a great success and everyone was in a festive mood. Christmas was just around the corner and the whole family was looking forward to an enjoyable holiday season.

  However, the snow that evening worried him and he planned to leave as soon as possible to avoid any problems on the short trip home. Having said his goodbyes he and his wife, with his parents, set off in their BMW 5 Series. He would deliver his parents to their home on the Uxbridge Road and then drive back to Langley, to his modest but detached home in a quiet cul-de-sac.

  The journey to his parents’ bungalow was only fifteen minutes and he made sure they were safely inside before continuing the journey home. He made good time and arrived in his driveway twenty minutes later, after a cautious journey delayed slightly by the gathering snow.

  Nevertheless, all was well and Pardeep and his wife unlocked the front door and settled in for the night. He was glad to be home but didn’t relish the journey to the railway station the following morning. Perhaps he would be lucky and the snow would stop and then he could make the ten-minute commute as normal and catch the train to Paddington. However, as he viewed his front garden from the bedroom window he was not at all confident that it would stop snowing and consequently he spent a restless night worrying about what the morning might bring.

  Day 1 - Central London – 9:00pm

  Quincey Roberts was on the Sunday evening duty slot, covering news and weather for ‘News South East’. He had been in at work since midday and was keeping a wary eye on the weather forecasts. They had been getting progressively worse as the afternoon went on.

  Firstly, low pressure was moving in from the west. This was due to meet low pressure being squashed into the UK by a giant, blocking, high-pressure system over Germany. To make things worse the extended period of really warm and stable weather in Spain was keeping the low-pressure systems stationary over the UK as well. The final straw was the movement northwards of the upper jet stream that trapped a massive cloud of volcanic ash from Iceland overhead Scotland. To make things worse, yet another blocking high south of Iceland was causing a tighter squeeze.

  The resident weatherman had tried to explain: ‘If the blocking high is located near to or north of Iceland, as it was for long periods during December, it opened the back door to a northerly airflow plunging across the British Isles directly from the Arctic, and it is at times like this that the weather becomes exceptionally cold and wintry.’

  The weathermen were frantically trying to make sense of it all. The combination of complex low-pressure systems was unprecedented. As usual, no one had seen it coming until it was too late. So now, a Severe Weather Warning had been issued for the UK – all of it. Northern Ireland and Eire might get away lightly in the short term, but the majority of the mainland was going to get the mother of all storms. Moreover, it might last several days or even a week.

  Quincey was thinking about his Christmas trip abroad. He and his wife were due to fly to Cyprus tomorrow lunchtime from Stansted Airport. It was a trip he had been anticipating for some time – trying to get a well-deserved holiday at
their swish villa near Paphos, at the western tip of the island. However, this damned weather was putting a huge spoke into his plans. He hadn’t had a break for several months and Quincey had been putting in extra hours to cover for cutbacks in staffing. His job was on the line and this trip abroad was a welcome relief of pressure he really needed. He wasn’t getting any younger and if he wanted to keep his job for another five years or so until retirement, he had to make himself appear indispensable.

  Quincey walked out of his office and walked along the corridor to chat to Fred, the weatherman, to try to elicit an accurate update – not just the dumbed down version that the viewers caught on TV. Fred was sitting at his desk looking glum. He turned to face Quincey as he entered the small forecasters’ room. He didn’t get a chance to pose his query.

  ‘You can forget bloody Cyprus, pal! In fact, you had better get out the old camp bed and prepare to settle down for the night. It’s getting pretty vicious out there and they’ve sent all non-essential personnel home already. Just a skeleton crew are left to cope with the late news at ten o’clock.’