by Jason Davis
BREAKING FATE PUBLISHING
Published by
Breaking Fate Publishing
© 2017 by Breaking Fate Publishing
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic and print editions, and do not participate in or encourage any form of piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author's rights is appreciated.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Edited by Kim Young
Cover Art & Design by Jason R. Davis
Copyright © 2017
Winter had never been a friend. The cold days followed by the colder nights stretched long into eternity. The days filled with a soul-draining gloom of gray skies and colorless dawns. It made the time drag on to the endless song of its own desolation.
And with all the dreariness of the dark tidings, you had to deal with the cold and the snow. Will wasn’t sure which he hated more. He had never liked snow, but being out in the cold was its own kind of torment. He was a warm weather man and there was no number of layers that would ever be enough to warm him when the temperature lowered to below freezing.
One would never know he was born and raised in Illinois. If it weren’t for the massive amount of Bears gear…blankets, jerseys, sandals, and even bath towels…it would be impossible to tell he grew up in the northern part of the state. A state where, once winter hit, snow came and didn’t leave until spring, where many considered forty degrees to be t-shirt and shorts weather.
He just wasn’t as warm-blooded as most people. As he watched the snow fall outside his window, he dreaded having to go out to shovel the long driveway. It looked like there was already five inches on the ground with no sign of stopping. Everything was white. His mailbox was covered, and only the faintest depression in the snow allowed him to make out the sidewalk.
It was early. He still had another hour before people in his neighborhood started their trips to work. Those who rode the bus would walk past his house, so he knew that if his part of the sidewalk wasn’t clear, he would receive another citation in the mail.
He saw his neighbors on both sides had already shoveled once, but their work was quickly getting covered in a fresh coat of white powder. He figured he’d wait another half-hour before starting. He hoped the coffee would warm him enough that he wouldn’t be too chilled.
“I thought you were going to shovel?”
A shiver ran down Will’s spine as he turned. There she was. The woman he had married three years ago. Her stomach bulged from the soon-to-be bundle of joy they both looked forward to, although they had been fighting a lot lately. When she approached, he realized there had been a sharpness to her tone.
He wasn’t sure why, but something about her made him uncomfortable. He felt himself getting angrier as she walked closer. It didn’t feel right. Why was he so upset with her? He couldn’t think of a reason, but just the sight of her caused his teeth to clench. He had to work to control his breathing.
Then the feeling passed. He picked up his coffee mug from the table and watched her as she smiled coyly.
“I will. Just wanted to give it a little more time before I headed out there.”
“Okay, well…” The woman approached and gently ran her fingers along his crotch. His reaction was immediate. “I was getting ready to take a shower and figured once you were done, maybe you could join me.”
She turned and walked toward the door. He didn’t remember where it went. The house seemed strange to him. She felt strange to him, like she shouldn’t be there.
“That is, if you feel up to it,” she teased, stopping in the doorway. He hadn’t noticed what she was wearing, now seeing only a towel wrapped around her. Her back still to him, it fell to the floor, then she was gone.
He quickly grabbed the shovel by the door and went outside.
* * * *
The hot water should have burned his skin. The steam swirled. The room seemed dark past the mist, but he still saw himself as he ran his hands along his skin.
Another shiver ran through him. He turned the knob and felt the spray get hotter, but it didn't help. No matter how warm the water, it couldn't push away the feeling of cold that had burrowed into his bones. The water burned his skin, the steam boiling his flesh, but the chill remained. It had become a part of him, like a limb. It was part of who he was and would always be there.
"Do you want some company?"
"Sure," he said, even though he really didn't. Something about that voice… When he heard it, it didn't comfort him. He wasn't soothed as he felt her hand run across his chest. She pressed her body against him. He felt the rise and fall of her breasts, but it was alien to him. As her hand went lower, he quickly spun to face her.
"What's wrong?" She looked down, pouting briefly before glancing back up with a smile. She reached out, but he maneuvered by reaching in and pulling her into a hug.
"Nothing. I just finished up and was about to get out. You can finish."
"You don't want me to wash your back?"
He knew she wanted to do more than just wash his back. He couldn't, though. He needed to get out of there. It felt too tight, too hard to breathe. The mist was heavy and hurt his lungs. She was too close to him. Why couldn't he stand to be around her? She was his wife. They had a daughter together.
Ex-wife...
No, wife. They had a house. He was there with her. He loved her. He left to go on the road because he was an over-the-road truck driver.
Space trucker.
His head throbbed as he reached for a towel. The mist evaporated and he could see the well-lit bathroom. He grabbed the towel and draped it around him as he emerged from the hot water.
None of this is right. I shouldn’t be here. I can hear a voice screaming at me, but I can’t quite understand it.
* * * *
Even though the room was filled with the hot steam from the shower, it was still cold. It felt like he had stepped into a walk-in cooler. He had driven a refrigerated truck for a while, but this was worse. It didn’t help that he was naked, except for the towel.
He didn’t wait to dry himself. He was cold, and he wanted to be anywhere else. He quickly ran to the bedroom and jumped under the covers.
"Too cold. Too cold. Too cold," he chanted as he pulled on blanket after blanket. He had cranked the heat up before getting into the shower, making sure the dial was set at eighty. Still, the room didn't have any warmth to it, and it was so dark, he could barely see the wall, even with the flashing light from the strip club across the street.
Wait, that isn’t right. We’ve never lived across the street from a strip club. We own a house.
The light continued to flash, the bright red almost hurting his eyes as it penetrated the darkness. He could almost see the lettering on the bedroom wall, but not quite. It didn’t matter. It probably said what dancer would wrap her legs around the pole that night. It was annoying, but he didn’t care. He just wanted to get warm. Nothing seemed to be working.
He pulled the covers tighter around him.
“Getting yourself wrapped up in your bu
rrito?”
“What?” He looked at the door to see her standing there, naked. He looked away as another shiver ravaged him. The cold violently burrowed deep into him. He would never get warm again.
He thought he felt something when he had first gotten into bed, some kind of warmth. He had felt a heat scorching across his flesh, then it faded. Now only chilled air surrounded his already cool skin. There was no warmth left inside him.
“You always do that. You always run to the bed as soon as you get out of the shower. You would think with all the hot water that you’d be sweating. That you wouldn’t want anything to touch your skin.” She walked closer. “How about I warm you up.”
“I’ll be fine.”
But he wasn’t. He felt the winter’s touch reaching into his chest, making it hard to breathe. This wasn’t how it should be. This wasn’t how it was. He knew she was something else now. She was cold… She was a cold-hearted bitch. She was…
No, there had been another cold-hearted one he had dealt with. He tried to remember it. Somehow, he felt like she was still there, trying to get in.
Something was trying to pull at him. He felt the tug. The dark room beyond grew darker yet, slipping away. He watched as parts of it stretched away, elongating, becoming distant.
Then she was gone and everything was dark, except for the pulsating red light. It began to burrow in, attacking him in some way he couldn’t quite comprehend.
* * * *
He was alone in a black box. He recognized it, although he couldn’t see much. A haze had materialized, his slow breaths forming crystals in front of him.
It is beyond the freeze of the deepest cooler.
He didn’t know how he was still alive. He shouldn’t be. It didn’t make sense…unless there were some kind of backup system keeping him that way. Was there more to the box than he realized? He guessed that made sense. He wasn’t a tech, but only the gear-jammer behind the wheel of the proverbial space beast.
He saw the red flashing light from the tablet controls in front of him. He couldn’t quite make out the writing on it as his vision was blurry. He could just see the large text blinking at him, urging him to do something.
* * * *
"My water just broke,” she yelled. Even though her voice was calm, he heard it in her tone. There was anger seething there, but what did she want him to do? It wasn't like he could change the weather.
The snow came down in a mass of white flakes. Everything was pale, color having been completely washed away in the blizzard. White covered the road, the shoulder, and the world around him. It was impossible to tell the difference between the interstate and the empty fields to the side of it.
When a shiver ran through him, he reached up, risking taking his hand from the wheel to hold it over the heating vent. The windshield wipers had a hard time keeping up, the frost and snow building up along the bottom. His hand met cold air, no warmth coming out of the vent at all.
An unfamiliar red light started to flash on the dashboard. It wasn’t the check engine light. He had seen that plenty of times before…usually right before having to sit on the side of the road for eight hours. This light was a triangle with an exclamation point in the center. It was bright, blinding him.
“Will!”
He heard her voice, but it sounded distant. She was yelling at him, her scream piercing, his anger rising. He should be worried about getting home, wanting to be there for their baby, but something was different. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. He was there when his little girl was born. It had been one of the happiest moments of his life. Looking into that precious face as those large, round eyes opened for the first time to look up at him. Those chubby little cheeks and the hand that closed around his little finger.
The cold penetrated his bones. He heard the windows crack, snapping as they got colder than they were designed for. He saw the splintering of the glass, the spider webs forming in front of him.
He knew he wasn’t going to make it home. He wouldn’t see his daughter’s birth. The weather would be the end of him, the cold pulling him deeper into its grasp.
* * * *
He wasn’t in his truck. He wasn’t back on earth. What was he thinking?
The question had already been answered. He was anywhere other than there. Why would he stay there for his death?
I always thought I would die in my sleep...
But he was asleep. He was also awake and drifting in between the two states. He was losing himself to his unconscious mind, but what did it matter? He was dying anyway. He just wanted it to stay that way. He wanted to die in his sleep and not know when the time came.
Then there was the flashing red light that kept penetrating his dreams. Every time it felt like he could just slip away and enjoy the last moments of his life, that bright light would reappear and rip it away.
It was still there. He was pretty sure he was awake again, or close to it. It was hard to tell because there was so little light and a dense fog both in mind and vision.
The one constant was that he still felt bone-devouring cold. He could just make out the flashing red light coming from the controls. He tried to get a better look, but couldn’t. He felt like a prisoner in his own body, paralyzed by some unseen force.
But he hadn’t moved, had he? He remembered looking at the flashing red light on the tablet. The last time he was awake, it had been visible, but he had a hard time making out what it said. He couldn’t even see it now. Just the reflection of the flashing light as it lit up the small space.
That was where he was. Space.
He had been outside. His rig had some kind of leak and the damn automated system couldn’t fix it, so he had to. He had gone out in this suit, which looked more like a coffin than anything he had ever seen in old TV shows, and fixed the air leak. Once he had, though, the automated system kicked back in and he was thrown clear. His tether had snapped, leaving him behind.
He was left alone out there to die in space. No one would come back for him because the ship was a one-man space truck. Much like the rigs back on earth, there was no second driver to split the work. The space trucks were so automated, he was there just to fill legal requirements.
And now his truck had left him behind.
Yeah, the damned electronic heap had probably become sentient and decided to get rid of his useless carcass. It would have been nice if it could have waited for him to be dead before dumping him out like yesterday’s rotten meat.
Maybe there was some truth to it, though. It was a waste of money to have him on the ship. Maybe some number cruncher had decided to code something in the computer to get rid of him and have the rig fly itself. There would be no problem for it to get to Mars without him. It would be the test case to get rid of other unneeded drivers. Then the number cruncher could point to this case and tell Congress, “See. We don’t need drivers. Our systems are so amazing, they can run themselves.”
The number cruncher wouldn’t be wrong, but it would suck for him because, well… He had to die in order for people to know that. It would also suck for all those other drivers because they would be out of jobs. It’d be hard to go back to just driving a rig back on earth. As much as he complained about it, he would never return to being a regular truck driver. How did you pass up the chance to be in space just to go back to driving a semi on earth?
Most of those drivers would probably end up killing themselves. There was a high rate of suicide among drivers who went from doing this back to driving on earth. It was just hard to go back to terrestrial travel once you’ve been to the stars.
Still, he got the shaft on this one. He was still going to be the one to die just to prove their test case.
The more he thought about it, the more he had a hard time not believing it, although he wasn’t sure how they manufactured the air leak. That was the only thing that didn’t make sense. It seemed like a big chance and a huge risk of money if he hadn’t been able to fix it.
Who knows? Maybe the sys
tem in the suit was more automated than he realized. Maybe he hadn’t done as much as he thought he had when he secured the hole.
This had been a long four months. He wished he could go home and see his daughter. He still remembered that last message she had sent just before the connection between the rig and his suit had completely lost range. He saw her angry face as she paced back and forth, upset with her mother for lying to her. If she hadn’t lied, they would have gotten a chance to spend some time together before he had gone back out. Her mother had, once again, done what she does—ticked him off and kept him away from his daughter.
He had obviously done something to the woman that had changed her. He had no clue what, but something made her always figure out ways to keep him from his daughter.
How had he ever been married to such an evil woman? She wasn’t like this before, he was certain of it, but something had turned her into this vile monster who now spit fire whenever she talked to him.
Now his daughter was affected by it, as well. He had hoped to always protect her from that. She was his baby. He never wanted her to see the way her mother screwed him over. It was his job, wasn’t it? He was to be the protector. He didn’t want her to know some of the evils in the world. Hers was supposed to stay perfect. Now that perfection was cracked and he didn’t know if he would ever be able to fix it.
She had asked if she could come out there with him. He wanted to say yes. It would make it easier to protect her and keep her safe from so many of the horrors she would someday face.
It would also mean losing her education and the future he envisioned for her. If he brought her with him, she would not be the computer junkie he’d hoped for. He wanted her to be one of the ones making the world, not one of the slaves to it.
What did any of it matter? He was as good as dead. She would have to stay there, which would be a good thing. She should never have to risk her life like he did. He wouldn’t want this for her.
