Gray Snow: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller

by Paul Curtin

  He sank down into his seat and looked out the window into the field of ashen snow across the street, at the pine trees caked with muck. Even though there had been little accumulation, it all looked like a giant mud pile from his view. He imagined someone walking over that hill, a stranger in thick clothing, laboring through the deep snow. Saw himself raising the bead of the scope onto him. He shook his head, shuddering. God forbid it ever came to that. But then again, God didn’t seem to forbid much of anything anymore.

  Elise

  She forgave Sean. She really did. Or at least that was what she told herself.

  She had always said she would be the kind of wife that would stick with her husband through anything. When she spoke her wedding vows, they weren’t a trivial string of words. She had dedicated herself to him, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health.

  But when she closed her eyes, she saw his hand swinging toward her, stopping short, the fury in his eyes, the spittle flying from his lips. In that moment, he had transfigured into something she had never seen before. It was as if a beast had emerged within him, possessing him, taking control.

  And his words. They sunk deep into her like a serrated knife between her ribs. You killed us. Maybe she had. She had tried to do what she thought was best. Sean had scared her in the days beforehand with his muttering to himself, with the way he looked at his axe and his guns. She didn’t think he would hurt anyone—just himself. But it was she who ended up hurting everyone instead. In a way she wished he had gone through with the slap. Maybe she deserved punishment. Many days she felt like it would have been right.

  Then again, that was what all battered women said. That they deserved it. Not that she was a battered woman. He hadn’t even hit her. He had asked for forgiveness hours later, and she gave it to him. But the look in his eyes kept coming back into her mind. Those eyes.

  She was always surrounded by the people she was ashamed to look at. Her children—the prospect of them starving because of her. When she hugged Aidan particularly, feeling his ribs under her arms, guilt simmered deep inside her gut. It would be her fault. All her fault.

  She ended up spending the most time with Kelly, maybe because Elise’s guilt about what happened to her was strongest, the replay always at the front of her mind. For the first few days, sitting there with her, a hand resting on her knee, Elise couldn’t find the words to say anything other than how sorry she was. What else was there to say, that she thought inviting Travers in was compassionate? That she didn’t know he would bring his friends or what they would do to her? And if Sean hadn’t done something, there would have been much more of that. Poor consolation.

  Then one day Kelly spoke. “I’ve been thinking.”

  Elise, her hand over Kelly’s, turned from the fire toward her.

  “I’m glad it wasn’t Molly, you know?”

  Elise gripped her hand tighter.

  “Because if it was anyone,” Kelly whispered, tears lining her eyes, “I’m just glad it wasn’t her. She wouldn’t have deserved it.”

  “You didn’t deserve it either.”

  Kelly gripped her hand. “You’ve raised such great kids.”

  “Kelly—”

  “They’re so strong,” she said, eyes dripping. “So much stronger than—” She paused. “You’re so strong too.”

  But Elise didn’t think so. Most of the time, all she could see was weakness.

  She spent days sitting with Kelly, silently moving through the darkness with her, speaking little but feeling connected to her sister-in-law for the first time. When she wasn’t with Kelly or making food, she busied herself around the house even though the cold made her toes and fingers numb. The walls pressed in closer to her. She cleaned. She tried to insulate the home, sealing everything with caulking, but it felt like a losing battle.

  With a caulking gun in her hand, she filled one corner of the mudroom and then covered it with duct tape when it dried.

  She didn’t hear the footsteps behind her. Startled, she leapt to her feet and twisted around. Sean.

  “I didn’t mean to scare you,” he whispered.

  She held her hand to her chest. “It’s okay.”

  He looked toward the kitchen and then back to her. “Listen, I don’t know what’s going on, but this doesn’t feel like us.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re avoiding me, is what I mean.”

  She set the caulking gun down on top of the washer. “I don’t really know what to say.”

  “I don’t know either. But we need to say something.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize. We both—” He looked down the hall. “We both did things we’re not proud of. I get it. But we need to move past it.”

  “I agree,” she said in an annoyed tone.

  “What’s that about?”

  “I’m sorry about my—”

  “You know, I have always felt like you had my back.”

  “I do.”

  “But you don’t. I don’t know how many times I can say I’m sorry before you’ll drop the ice queen act.”

  Elise frowned. “I’m sorry.” She took a step forward toward him and paused, closing her eyes, almost a wince, and moved closer until her head touched his chest. Her arms shook, so she put her hands on his shoulders to steady the tremor. Even with the layers of clothing, he was so thin, thinner than in their early twenties when he had been a rail. He released a deep moan and squeezed her in his arms, resting his chin against the top of her head. She took in shallow breaths.

  “I was thinking,” he said, looking back down the hall, “remember before all this started, when we would fight, and we would say, We just need to have sex?”

  She stepped back. “I don’t know, Sean. I’m not sure about that right now.”

  He refilled the space between them. “I feel distant from you.”

  She put a hand on his chest, but it didn’t stop his advance. “Not right now.” His body forcing itself closer.

  He stopped. “Really? Still?”

  Elise looked away.

  “I thought we moved on—God, Elise, do you even love me anymore?”

  The question hit her hard. She hadn’t had sex with him in a while, long before the house was invaded. She looked in his eyes and loved him. It was love. She wanted to make him happy and support him. But that hand primed to deliver the slap… “Later,” she said.

  “You always say that.”

  “I just need time.”

  “And I don’t?”

  A deep voice came from the kitchen. “Hey Sean, you back there?”

  Michael. Sean stepped backward as her brother came around the corner. Michael pointed away. “I can come back.”

  Elise shook her head. “You’re fine. What’s up?”

  “I need Sean to explain how to sharpen the axe again. I keep trying to work it, but the stone keeps slipping.”

  Sean motioned for Michael to lead the way, not looking back to her again, leaving a chill crawling over her skin.

  Elise woke in the night and her husband wasn’t next to her. She turned over, the firelight dim. All the kids were there. Kelly and Michael too. Andrew on the couch. No Sean. He was upstairs at the rifle again. Had to be.

  She listened to the wood crackle in the fireplace and pulled a few more blankets on top of her sleeping bag. She looked up at the ceiling. A creak in the wood upstairs. As if hallucinating, the ceiling pulsated in waves, creeping toward her. She blinked, and it stopped. There wasn’t enough room to stretch her legs, confined to her sleeping bag, so she wiggled around, turned to the side.

  Her daughter and son slept next to her. She wondered if they were warm enough. They seemed peaceful, but she read somewhere that freezing to death was a peaceful way to die. It was like falling asleep. The ceiling creaked again. Always expandi
ng and contracting.

  A loud pop rang out upstairs. Elise jerked up. Another loud pop. A gunshot. Aidan screamed, sitting up. Molly leaped over to him and covered his mouth. Another shot echoed from upstairs.

  Michael jumped out of his sleeping bag toward the shotgun. “Was that a gunshot?”

  “It sounded like it,” Elise said, throwing off the covers, the cold flooding into her cocoon of warmth. She crawled out of her sleeping bag. Stood up.

  “Get down,” Michael hissed. “It might be the guys coming back.”

  Kelly clasped a hand around her mouth. “Sean said they weren’t coming back.”

  “Sean might have been wrong,” Michael said. He looked around the room. “Is he upstairs?”

  Outside, a voice started in a low groan and rose to a blood curdling screech. A woman’s voice. From the sound of it, it came from the front yard. Elise grabbed Michael’s arm, and the moan rose into a guttural cry for mercy. The woman cried out to God and whoever else listening. Finally, she shouted, “You killed him,” and screamed it repeatedly.

  Michael looked at Elise. “The hell’s going on?”

  Footsteps thundered down the stairs. Elise held onto her chest. Sean came to the base with a shotgun in one hand, a pistol in the other, and one of his hunting rifles slung around his shoulder. He ran up to them and extended the weapons, the shotgun to Elise and the pistol to Michael. When Michael showed him the shotgun he already had, Sean nodded and offered the pistol to Molly. She looked down at the weapon but didn’t move.

  “Sean, what’s happening?” Michael said.

  “I don’t know yet,” he said, shaking the guns. “Come on. Take them.”

  Elise and Molly looked at one another and took the weapons from him. He slung his rifle around his chest and put the stock to his shoulder, the barrel pointing at the floor. The woman’s cries of pain seemed to pierce into Elise’s ears. “Did you shoot someone?” Elise said.

  “I shot two people.”

  “You—” Michael started.

  “They were approaching the house. I think one’s dead.”

  Elise shook, but she sensed nothing of the same in Sean. He was matter-of-fact, calm. “You killed someone?”

  Andrew said, “Are those men coming back?”

  Sean extended his hand to silence everyone. “I think I killed one of them. Got him with one shot. The other scrambled. I think I hit her too, but I don’t know.” The woman wailed from outside. “Pretty sure I did.”

  “Who were they?” Michael asked.

  “Don’t know. She fell behind a snowbank. I can’t get another shot on her.”

  “You don’t know?”

  Sean stared him down. “We’re really going to have this discussion right now?”

  “Listen, I’m just—”

  “No, you listen. This isn’t the world we had before.” He shook his head. “They raped your wife, and you still don’t get it.”

  “Fuck you, Sean.”

  “What’s rape?” Aidan asked.

  Elise shut her eyes.

  “Great, just great,” Sean said.

  “I’m just trying to wrap my head around this,” Michael said.

  “Wrap your head around this: there might be more coming. They sent reconnaissance before, there might be more to come. Elise, go cover the garage door. If anyone tries to get in, you shoot. Michael, cover the back. They might try to get in through there. I’ll be scanning the front and back. Molly, take everyone downstairs. Grab the blankets and heat packs.”

  Everyone scrambled. Elise stumbled toward the den. Her vision blurred as if she was drunk. All the blood seemed to drain from her head. She kneeled behind a chair that faced the garage door and readied the shotgun in that direction. The woman screamed and moaned into the cold, dead air, the sound muffled by the walls. Elise’s sight narrowed over the weapon. She wondered how someone with evil intentions could scream like that woman. Maybe, she considered, most people would scream like that as their life approached such a dramatic end. Both good and evil people, if there was any distinction.

  Sean

  No one tried to invade the house, but that didn’t mean the woman outside died peacefully.

  When the sun rose, she started wailing and moaning again. Sean couldn’t escape the sound no matter where he went in the house. It was like a sharp pick slicing through his ear canal and scratching against his skull. She wouldn’t stop. She wouldn’t die.

  He suspected people may be watching the house, waiting for an opportunity to ambush. It was Elise’s turn to cut wood, but he wouldn’t let her. For an hour midmorning, the woman made no noise and he let his hopes rise, but she returned with an even more bitter scream. She cried for the man lying dead next to her. She cried out to God to end her life. Sean wanted the same thing. He guessed she would freeze to death sooner rather than later, but she wouldn’t give up her life.

  He tried to put on the best face he could, act like he was in control of his emotions, but inside he was breaking down. By noon he was at his scoped rifle in the upstairs window, hoping she would pop her head up so he could finish it. She wouldn’t feel any more pain. But she stayed hidden and wailed on.

  It wore on everyone else too. Sean caught Molly in a secret meeting with Michael, Sean coming around the corner, Molly shooting a glance back at him and then turning away. Michael tried to act like they were just chatting, but Sean saw. Yes, he saw. Molly never had a problem looking her father in the eye before—he knew his daughter. And he knew Michael. Could imagine Michael turning her against him, whispering deception into her ear. Telling Molly how brutal and unnecessary his actions were—like he wasn’t making the hard choices to defend his family. Michael had never understood the situation they were in and still didn’t.

  They parted, and Sean followed his daughter into the kitchen. She tried to rush out toward the living room. “Molly,” he called out.

  She stopped and turned, her face splotchy, cheeks a hint of red. “Yeah?”

  “Is everything okay?”

  She forced an unnatural smile. “I’m fine, Dad.”

  “You sure?”

  She put her hands into the pocket of her oversized hoodie. “It’s okay.”

  The woman outside wailed, and Sean cleared his throat as if it could cover the noise. “You know why I did it, right?”

  “Did what?”

  “Shot the woman. Listen, I wish it hadn’t happened this way. I just don’t know—”

  “That’s not it, Dad.”

  He didn’t believe her. If she was telling the truth, she would look him in the eyes instead of tilting her face toward the ground. “I know some people think I didn’t need to shoot anyone. But you have to understand, I did what I thought was right. Everything I do, I do because I’m looking out for you guys. I know the woman is in agony, and I’m not happy about it. I wish I could stop her pain. It’s awful—”

  A tear dropped from one of her eyes. “Dad—”

  The woman outside screamed again, and for the first time yelled a name:

  “Sean!”

  He froze. Then she said it again. Molly covered her mouth. He stared past her toward the door. The woman called again, asking if Sean was there. He saw beyond the wall to her, taking a step forward. Molly’s voice became muffled and distant as he moved closer to the front door. He came into the living room, and Elise emerged from somewhere, shock etched into her face, shock that he could have hurt someone that knew his name. Her lips moved, but he heard nothing. Just kept looking toward the front yard. The woman outside would turn everyone against him.

  She needed to go.

  His intestines twisted like he was digesting razor blades. He had killed someone before. He had shot the woman’s companion just last night. He could do it again.

  His thoughts bounced to the opposite conclusions—ones that told him it was murde
r and he should bring her inside. She knew Sean. That had to count for something. The woman screaming outside wasn’t trying to invade their home. She didn’t have evil intentions. He shook his head. She needed to go. They had nothing to give her. She was a goner. And his family was beginning to hate him over it.

  She knew him, yes.

  But she had to go.

  He turned to leave, Elise calling out for him, her words drowned out by a loud ringing in his ears. The ringing beckoned him toward what he needed to do and killed any dissenting thoughts. “Travers was right,” he said, interrupting whatever Elise was saying. She stopped. He said, “We’re still living in our sanitized little world like we can still live by the same rules.”

  “Sean—”

  “Sometimes we need to make the hard decisions. Do hard things.”

  He marched toward the garage where he dressed in his outdoor gear until his body was covered except a small slit for his eyes. He grabbed his rifle from just inside the door. Elise stood nearby with her sweater pulled tightly over herself. “Sean, you don’t have to do this.”

  Her expression told him otherwise. He said, “I did it. And I’ll finish it.”

  He exited and sealed the door behind him. He pressed the stock of his gun into his shoulder and wrapped his finger into the trigger guard. Used his other hand to unlock the latch for the huge garage door and pull it upward, the sound of the wheels scraping the track like a cry from hell until the door came to rest in its upward position.

  The cry was replaced by a rush of wind blowing against his clothing. Not a fast wind, but every gust seemed to bring the temperature down twenty degrees. He breathed into the cloth covering his mouth to warm his lips and took the first few steps out into the snow and ash. The vast land surrounding him looked like the remnants from a snowplow pushing slush to the side of the road. Grimy, ugly, black. The air smelled charred and sulfuric. The snow was up to his knees. He wobbled in the muck, his eyes set on the place where he knew the woman lay.

  The breeze kicked up ash and snow across his field of vision, sometimes blinding him for a second or two. He watched for any movement in the distance and step by laboring step approached the snowbank.