Suddenly Mike had the image of the totem-pole from the morning, big and in full Technicolor in his mind.
Or maybe somebody’s getting their dick torn off and forced into their mouth?
Mike unholstered his revolver.
Spit or swallow time again, Mikey. What’s it going to be?
Throughout his career, there had only ever been one answer. To back off would go against everything that made him a cop.
He stepped forward into the snowstorm.
The scream cut off, as if a needle had been lifted from a record.
Mike was left in a whirling, dancing, silence.
It was like being wrapped in cold wool; an all enveloping blanket of white. He couldn’t see anything, couldn’t hear anything.
For the first few yards the snow underfoot was only an inch or so deep, but two steps farther and it was up over Mike’s ankles. Deep cold bit hard at his shins.
When he’d been a rookie on the beat he’d worn thermal long johns under his uniform. As a detective he thought he’d earned the luxury of dispensing with them…but there and then he’d have been very grateful for them.
He peered, trying to see through the candy floss. There was only more snow ahead of him.
“NYPD,” he called out again. “I’m armed. Come on out with your hands up.” His voice echoed back at him and no one replied.
He stopped. By now the snow was up to his knees.
He could barely feel his feet. He hadn’t come dressed for arctic conditions, and the clothes that earned him posing points in the squad room weren’t going to keep him alive out here for long.
He backed off, slowly at first, and then with more urgency as he realized that the snow wasn’t thinning…the blizzard had kept pace with him.
He turned, and broke into as much of a run as he could muster, a human snowplough forcing his way through the drifting mounds.
Off to his left, a shadow rose out of the maelstrom and made a grab for him.
Mike registered dead, milky-white eyes and black frozen lips drawn back from too-white teeth.
Instinct kicked in. His pistol came up. He fired, in one smooth movement.
The noise of the shot sounded muffled, as if he had used a silencer. The shadow fell silently away.
Mike shouted in relief as he pushed out of the candy floss and onto the bone-dry dock beyond.
He wasn’t allowed time to stop. Behind him the wall of snow came after him, creeping inexorably up the dock at a fast walking place.
There was movement to Mike’s left. He turned and looked over the dock to the adjoining dock. Lights blazed inside the skeleton framework of the new warehouses. He heard the distant clash of metal on metal as girders were moved. Brian Johnson’s team worked nightshift, blissfully unaware that the domed whirlwind of snow even now crept across the dock towards them, freezing the water beneath it as it went.
Mike forced himself to break into a run.
* * *
The crowd around Cole had swelled since his arrival.
He’d spent the last ten minutes inching his way forward, one rank at a time, but now he seemed to be stuck, two rows back and with only a partial view of the dock gates.
“Let me through,” he said. “I’m a doctor.”
“Yeah? And I’m the Queen of England,” the man in front of him said. “But that’s not getting either of us any closer than this.”
“What’s happening,” he said, but the guy in front had already turned back.
“I can’t tell,” a tall elderly man said beside him. “They’ve only let one person in since I’ve been here. I think he was a detective.”
The man in front of the tall gent turned round. He carried a pair of high powered binoculars. He also had a black eye, a broken nose and a split lip that didn’t stop him from sneering.
“That just goes to show how little you know, old man,” he said. “The one they let in was also here this morning at the other incident. He looks like a military man to me…NSA for sure.”
Cole kept his mouth shut. He’d been around enough conspiracy theorists to know one when he heard one. Besides, Cole had his “smoking gun”, in the journal in his satchel. That put him much higher up the ladder than anybody with just a pair of binoculars and a theory.
The elderly gent at his side wasn’t about to let it go.
“If that was a military man, I’ll eat my hat,” he said.
“You can eat my shorts, Granddad,” the man with the binoculars said. “Military men are cut from the same cloth. He looked like all the rest…a thick dimwitted fucktard only capable of obeying orders.”
Quick as a flash the older man delivered a one-two, so fast that by the time Cole turned round to look it was all over. The man with the binoculars fell away to one side, clutching his hand to his face, blood spurting from between the bandages that masked the mashed ruin of his nose.
“That’s what a military man looks like,” the tall gent said quietly. He stepped forward into the vacated space. Cole stepped up beside him. The rest of the crowd moved up with almost military precision. The binocular man was lost from view.
Cole now had a much better view, over the length of the dock down to where it turned past the old timber yard. There wasn’t much to see. The dock was quiet and empty.
“Where’s all the action?” he said.
“Somewhere past the timber yard,” somebody said. “Three cops went down there earlier. Maybe they’ll bring the bodies out soon.” He sounded almost eager.
Cole took out the digital camera and snapped a picture of the empty yard.
“Not much value in that,” the elderly gent said.
“Maybe I’ll get a ‘before and after’ picture when something starts happening,” Cole replied, but the tall man wasn’t listening. He stared off down the dock.
“Somebody’s coming,” the elderly gent said.
A figure came at a staggering run past the old timber yard. Cole recognized him immediately as the detective he’d seen talking to Jackie Donnelly earlier.
Flash bulbs popped. Reporters at the front of the cordon shouted out their pointless inane questions that would never have got an answer, even if the detective had been in the mood for stopping.
“Is there any blood?” Cole heard an old woman shout.
The running man kept going, turning just before the cordon and heading down the adjacent dock.
“Well, that was edifying,” Cole said.
“Stand firm, lad,” the elderly gent said at his side. “The excitement isn’t over yet.”
He pointed out over the dock.
A white cloud rose slowly and silently over the old timber yard and fell towards them like an ash flow tumbling from an erupting volcano.
* * *
Mike Kaminski ran, faster than he’d managed at any time since high school. When he sped past the flashbulbs he felt like stopping and doing a victory bow, but by then his breath was running hot and his chest burned with a deep pain. It was only the thought of the men in the warehouse, unaware of what was bearing down on them that kept him going.
He arrived on the dock at almost the same time as the rolling cloud. Snow flurries tickled his eyelashes as he burst, a bundle of arms and legs, into the warehouse.
Johnson was the first to see him.
“Mikey, where’s the fire?”
“No fire, BJ. Get out of here. We’re in trouble.”
Mike pointed out over the dock. The big man’s eyes went wide.
“Blizzard?”
“Worse,” Mike gasped.
Grabbing hold of the man’s arm, Mike pulled him away from the snowstorm, in the direction of the far end of the warehouse.
“My men,” Johnson shouted.
Several of the workmen were already running away across the empty skeleton of the warehouse.
“They know,” Mike said. “Now will you get a move on? I’ve seen what this thing can do. Unless you’ve always wanted to be a Popsicle, I suggest we run.”
All of the workers had now seen the storm…they couldn’t miss it. The dock end of the structure was already filled with an angry rolling ball of swirling snow.
Mike and Johnson were joined by a group of six men as they ran for the north end, just staying ahead of the tumbling snow, the cold biting at their heels all of the way.
* * *
Cole lifted his camera above the crowd and took pictures, clicking again and again, while the blanket of white slowly covered the dockside.
“I think it might be best if we beat a strategic retreat,” the elderly gent said.
“I can’t,” Cole said. “I need these pictures.”
“You won’t be able to use them if you’re dead. I’m going. And you’d be wise to come with me.”
The older man turned and made his way through the crowd.
Cole took two last pictures.
The slow moving storm was almost at the cordon. As if waking from a hypnotized daze the front row of reporters tried to back away. They were met by the crowd surging forward for a closer look.
Cole found himself swept off his feet, caught tight between two much larger men as they moved forward with the flow.
Too late, he realized it was time to get moving.
He squirmed, first left, then right. He ducked out of the row he was in. He turned into the crowd, trying to follow the back of the tall man, but he was caught again in the surging mob as it moved backward, then forward again.
Up front at the cordon someone screamed, but the sound was quickly cut off.
Cole was forcibly turned back around.
Snow whipped into his eyes, momentarily blinding him. He managed to get an arm up out of the crowd and wiped the snow away with his sleeve.
He immediately wished he hadn’t bothered.
The front row of the cordon was just visible through the thickening blizzard, but they wouldn’t be running far…They were all frozen in place, like snow sculptures, white eyes staring in fear.
A young cop sat in the guardroom, frozen solid as he reached for a pistol that was never going to help him. An old woman leaned over the cordon, pleading for help, frozen solid with her mouth wide open. She’d bitten her tongue. Blood froze even as it spilled over her chin.
The throng, as one, realized it was time to back away, but they were almost too late. The wall of snow fell on the ambulance crews just in front of the cordon and the crowd finally broke apart in a screaming, jostling melee.
Cole suddenly found space to move. He was caught by a stray, flailing arm and staggered.
He almost fell. That pause came close to finishing him. He staggered upright.
The snow tugged at his coat tails, icicles formed on his ears and his nose. He fixed his eyes on the back of the person ahead of him and ran, full tilt, away from the dock.
* * *
The fleeing men almost reached the far end of the warehouse before the maelstrom of snow hit them, but almost wasn’t good enough.
Johnson reached the tall sliding door first. He grabbed at the handle to try to pull it open wider. Metal grated against metal. The door moved by two or three inches, then stuck fast, only open wide enough for one man to get through.
“Bloody shoddy workmanship,” he said, turning to Mike and giving him a huge grin.
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” Mike said, wiping snowflakes from his eyes.
“What kid doesn’t like snow? Loosen up, Mikey…”
Johnson stopped, eyes widening, looking at something over Mike’s shoulder.
Mike turned, just as the last of the group of men was engulfed in the storm. There was a scream, cut quickly short. For a second a patch of the snow blossomed blood-red. It was quickly overwhelmed in white.
“Run!” Mike shouted. He slapped Johnson hard in the face and turned the big man towards the door. Snow flurries danced all around them. Deep biting cold ate into Mike’s face and hands.
Johnson’s men pushed through the doorway until only Mike and the big man were left. By this time Mike could barely see Johnson, never mind the doorway.
“You first, Brian,” he shouted.
Johnson shook his head.
“All for one and one for all,” he called back. “Just like back in the old days.”
The big man grabbed Mike and swung him towards the door.
“I’m right behind you,” he said.
Except he wasn’t.
A figure lumbered out of the snow. It wore a cop’s uniform, but anything in it that had once been a beat cop called Tommy Takake had long since gone. Milky-white eyes stared balefully out of a blue, frozen face, black lips peeled back to show yellow teeth in a blood-filled mouth.
It grabbed Johnson.
Before Mike could even think about moving, it dragged the big man backwards. He was lost from sight in an instant.
The snow blossomed pink once more.
Mike waited for a scream, but none came.
“Brian!” he called.
His voice sounded dull, swallowed by the candy floss whiteness.
A shadow moved.
“Brian? Is that you?”
Mike took one step into the blizzard.
A white-eyed face loomed forward.
Tommy Takake’s bloodied lips turned up in a smile.
CHAPTER 3
From alt.uk.tv.misc
Those of you with satellite access should tune to channel 142. There’s some pretty weird shit going down. I’ve just watched what looked like the old dock area in New York get overtaken by a snowstorm that quite literally sprung up out of the ground. It might be the biggest hoax since the War of the Worlds radio broadcast, but it certainly looks real enough. It’s still going on as I write this, and the snowstorm is growing. It all looks a bit symmetrical now so it’s probably just a bit of fancy CGI. Bloody Americans, eh? What will they think of next?
From usa.politics
BIG HAARP SPIKE! 23 minutes ago. Look out for a weather anomaly any minute now. I’ve been monitoring the relay for the past three years. This is one of the biggest spikes yet. I TOLD you they were up to something. I TOLD you they were close. Well now they’ve done it. They’ve perfected Tesla’s scalar weapon. They control the weather! Last week there was rain and flooding in Washington DC, before that it was mudslides in Guatemala. Tonight it’s the Big Apple’s turn. When will the world wake up? IT COULD BE YOUR TURN NEXT!!
From alt.prophecy
I’ve been meditating on the current situation of the planet all of yesterday and into this morning. Something doesn’t feel right. As you all know I’ve been expecting earth changes for some time now, but I’ve always believed it would be volcanic and fiery, centered on LA or Frisco. Just lately, my dreams have been full of ice and cold. I wake, every night, shivering. It’s been getting worse all this week. I keep getting this picture of the old liberty gal wearing a fur coat, and deep snow collapsing the roof of “The Garden.” And just this morning there was a thin layer of ice on the water on my bedside table. It might be time to head south, people.
From the Christian Rapture Forum
Praise the Lord. The time has come; the faithful are being called up to grace and glory. Only twelve by twelve thousand will be saved. Can you afford not to be one of them? How much is your immortal soul worth to you anyway? Repent sinners, for the end is nigh. Call 800-Rapture for all the latest news and payment options. Calls cost $2.00 per minute.
From Celebrity Big Brother
Tonight it’s eviction night. And it looks like a frosty reception is waiting for tonight’s loser. Who are you going to kick out into the cold?
* * *
Mina and Jackie finished their third beer just as things went bad.
“…So she told him he was an asshole, and super-glued his dick to his belly,” Mina said, finishing off a particularly ribald anecdote.
Jackie laughed loudly.
“Shush,” one of the guys at the bar said, glaring over at them.
“Shush yourself,” Jackie shouted,
“We’re having fun here.”
She hoped for a riposte, but the guys weren’t interested in taking it further. They stared at the big screen at the far end of the bar.
“Hey Bob, turn it up will ya?” one of them said. “Something big’s occurring…and fetch us another round of beers here before we die of thirst.”
The barman turned up the sound. The booming voice of a newsreader drowned out all other noise in the bar.
Jackie couldn’t see the big screen from her position, but she didn’t need to; the report was graphic enough for her imagination to take over.
“News is just coming in of more freak weather conditions, centered on the scene of last night’s tragedy at Hunter’s Dock. A police cordon and several ambulance crews have been overwhelmed by a blizzard that, according to eyewitnesses, blew up out of nowhere. There are reports of people being flash-frozen, and we are already hearing of multiple casualties and a mass panic in the docklands as survivors flee for their lives. We go over live to Gail Collins at the scene. Gail, what’s your situation there?”
“Well, Kate,” another female voice began. “Things are chaotic down here. We are just behind the police cordon, and it’s hard to make out what is going on. There seems to be some kind of localized storm centered over the docks. People have been running past us shouting and wailing, but it has been hard to get any sense out of them. Just a second ago, I managed to get one to stop long enough to talk, but he could only mutter about “the blue meanies”…hold on, what’s that? Oh shit…”
The bar filled with the sound of screaming.
“There’s something in the snow,” someone else shouted on air. “It’s got Gail. Oh my God, it got Gail. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
Night of the Wendigo Page 9
