Night of the Wendigo

by William Meikle

  The pressure made it worse.

  Cole looked at the furnace, then at the wooden staircase.

  It was still dark up there, but it was starting to look more appealing. There was someone’s place of residence up there. That meant medicines; painkillers even.

  Hell, even a bottle of bourbon would do the trick.

  The pain ratcheted up a notch.

  Cole made his decision. He put the journal back in his satchel, then packed old papers from the cardboard box underneath his clothes, stuffing them in until he felt like he wore a padded suit, but not so tight that his movement was restricted.

  Might have to move quickly.

  For long seconds he stood at the foot of the stairs looking up.

  Okay. Tonight is turning into a horror movie. I’m not seventeen, I’m not female, and I’m not blonde…So WHAT THE FUCK am I doing going up a flight of dark stairs?

  The pain pulsed in his hand again in answer.

  Just until I get something for the pain, he told himself as he stepped up the first step. I’ll be back at the heat before you can say Jackie Robinson.

  He stood onto the second step. It was already noticeably colder.

  “Jackie Robinson,” he muttered. He looked back at the red glow of the furnace.

  His hand rubbed against the rough cloth of his satchel and he had to stifle a scream.

  Okay, I get the message.

  He went up the stairs slowly, the only sound the paper crackling under his clothes. He could now see that the staircase led to a strong wooden door.

  Maybe it’s locked.

  Part of him almost hoped that was true…then he’d be able to legitimately return to the furnace without doubting his own courage.

  He felt almost disappointed a minute later when the handle turned under his right hand and the door swung open to reveal a dark empty hallway beyond.

  He didn’t call out. If there was anybody in the house, he’d find them soon enough without signalling his presence.

  He could just make out two doorways at the far end of the hall. The first was a coat cupboard. He thought about taking more clothing with him, but none of the jackets hanging on the racks was any thicker than the coat he wore already. He couldn’t wear any more layers.

  His hopes rose when he opened the second door. He was in a large kitchen. Someone had spent a lot of money on the antique oak and stainless steel; that much was obvious, even through the thin, glistening layer of frost that covered the room.

  Cole opened cupboards at random. He began hopeful, but his heart sunk steadily. He found plenty of muesli, tofu, seaweed and mineral water, but no medicines, nothing alcoholic.

  And nothing to keep a grown man alive in a blizzard. Where do these people think they are, California?

  His hand still throbbed with a deep pain worse than any toothache. He tried to run some water from the sink tap, but the pipes coughed twice and refused to work; frozen solid.

  Cole stood in the centre of the kitchen trying hard not to cry.

  Think. Don’t fuck up.

  He knew that his next move should be to look for the bathroom, to check for a medicine cabinet. But the red glow of heat in the room below was big in his mind; calling him back to a place of relative comfort where he didn’t have to be afraid of icy shadows and dead men walking.

  Pucker up time.

  He found a large, heavy, cleaver beside a chopping block on the work surface. The weight of it provided some reassurance as he moved back along the hallway towards the rest of the house.

  He passed the cellar door.

  He looked down. The furnace still burned red, but he resisted its call; the pain in his hand was almost unbearable.

  Farther on the hallway opened up into a larger reception area inside the main door of the dwelling, with rooms to the left and right and a grand mahogany staircase leading to the upper floors. A glass panel above the door showed only the fact that thick snow was still falling, the white of the snow casting a ghostly shimmering light onto the ceiling above the door.

  He went left first, into a large living area. There was a sixty inch plasma television and full home studio system in front of enough leather sofa to hold a football team, and a library of DVD’s that Cole would kill to own.

  But there was nothing to kill the growing pain in his palm. No cocktail cabinet…no booze of any kind.

  Don’t these guys ever throw a party?

  The room to the right wasn’t any better. At first his heart leapt…it was a walk-in bathroom, floor to ceiling green slate with gold plumbing fixtures, a dream of Grecian splendor. And, wonders will never cease, a chrome mirror-faced cabinet on the wall.

  “Drugs. Gimme drugs,” he whispered as he opened the cabinet door.

  He was to be disappointed. Not only were there no drugs, there were no manmade medicines of any kind. Sure, there, was plenty of ginseng, and iron tablets, but there was nothing even slightly resembling painkillers.

  “Simple,” Cole muttered bitterly. No booze, no need for headache tablets.

  He wondered if it was even worthwhile checking upstairs. People who lived so frugally were unlikely to have a stash of Novocain at their bedside.

  He went back into the hall and stood at the foot of the stairs, looking up. There was more blackness up there, more quiet cold.

  I may not be young and blonde, he thought. But I’d still be chancing my luck if I went up there.

  The cellar, and the heat of the furnace, called to him again.

  He looked at the open cellar door, then back to the stairs.

  Someone was coming down.

  Someone small, with perfectly formed, perfectly manicured feet. Everything about them would have been perfect…if they hadn’t been cold and blue.

  Once more Cole looked at the cellar door. It was only a short dash.

  I could be in there and have the door shut behind me before they get to the bottom of the stairs.

  Except Cole knew that wouldn’t be the end of it.

  He’d be trapped in the basement, knowing that one of the cold ones was above him. He didn’t think his nerve would take it.

  Whatever he was going to do, he’d better make it fast. He could see legs now, cold white legs with blue veins standing out proud. The top of the legs was covered with a flimsy pink nightdress, one with a floral pattern; the kind a little girl might wear.

  Doug had one last look at the passageway to the cellar, then turned and headed for the front door.

  It was locked.

  Behind him soft footsteps reached the bottom of the stairs.

  * * *

  Mina turned, concerned, when Jackie Donnelly moaned in her sleep, but the archaeologist’s eyes stayed closed.

  “How bad is she?” Mike asked.

  “When that thing had her by the leg, it gave her frostbite,” Mina said, shuddering at the memory of the ruination of Jackie’s leg. “All the way down to the bone by the look of it.”

  “Will she lose the leg?”

  Mina made a seesawing action with her hand.

  “Touch and go. And if we don’t get her to a hospital, the shock might kill her.”

  Mina stared out through the windshield, not seeing anything. Her mind still replayed scenes from back in the bar.

  “What the hell has happened?” she whispered again.

  “Judgment Day,” Mike said. “Or so says Tom down at the docks.”

  Mina snorted.

  “Smoke and mirrors. That’s all religion is. These frozen people are here; they’re real. There must be a biological basis, some kind of natural freezing process we’ve never seen before.”

  “Natural my ass,” Mike said. “Listen to yourself. You’re trying to rationalize away fucking frozen zombies!”

  “I don’t know how else to deal with it.”

  “A big gun and a flamethrower,” Mike said. “Does it for me every time.”

  Mina tried to smile back, but couldn’t put much heart into it. She knew Mike was trying hard to
keep the mood light, but despair was eating away at the back of her mind. It might not be too long before it overtook hope.

  “Okay. So you want to rationalize?” Mike said. “Think on this. Why are only some of the dead getting up and walking?”

  “You’ve seen dead who don’t…don’t come back?”

  Mike nodded grimly.

  “There are frozen bodies everywhere you look; under the snow, in the cars…hell, the buildings are most probably full of them.”

  “And how many of the turned have you seen?”

  “Just two,” Mike said.

  “Four for me,” Mina said, then remembered. “Except on the television. There were dozens of them down in the subway.”

  “Then where are they all?” Mike asked. “Is there a zombie convention somewhere we don’t know about?”

  “Maybe they’re all queuing up for name tags and seat numbers,” Mina said. This time she did laugh at the absurdity of the image.

  “That’s better,” Mike said softly. “Glad to have you back.”

  Mina took a long pull on her cheroot.

  “Speculation isn’t going to get us anywhere,” she said. “What we need are facts. Have you tried the radio recently?”

  Mike shook his head. “There was just more speculation. Nobody outside the island knew anything, and nobody inside was talking.”

  “Try again.”

  Mike switched on the van radio. He only got dead air on the local channels, but the nationals were more than making up for it.

  “We’re here at the Brooklyn Bridge as the Marines prepare for an expedition into the stricken city. A fleet of snowmobiles are just making their way onto the bridge, and I can see that the first one is approaching the edge of the storm, which hangs, a sheet of snow, about half way across this historic landmark.

  “We have all seen the horrific pictures that have come out of Manhattan this evening. Although this small fleet of snowmobiles is carrying emergency supplies, the military are taking no chances. The Marines are equipped with assault weapons specially rigged for arctic conditions, and the men have been told that this is a live situation.

  “The air down here is tense with expectation, and the first snowmobile has just breached the storm, swallowed up immediately in the swirling storm.

  “The rest are following, a silent procession.”

  Suddenly there was the distinctive crackling of automatic weapons fire.

  “Something’s happening,” the broadcaster said. “Marines on foot are retreating out of the storm, firing back into the snow at something we cannot see.”

  The sound of gunfire got louder.

  “Wait. There is something there. Shapes are emerging from the snow…

  “Oh god. They’re people. Frozen people. The Marines’ weapons seem to be having little effect.

  “More and more of them are walking out of the snow, the press of their bodies filling the bridge from side to side. God help us. There are thousands of them.”

  The broadcast dissolved into a chaotic jumble of gunfire and screams, and then there was only the hiss of dead air.

  Mina and Mike looked at each other.

  “I guess the convention’s under way,” Mina said.

  Neither of them smiled.

  * * *

  Cole smashed the heavy meat cleaver against the lock of the door again and again, frantic, and afraid to turn unless the sight itself froze him to the spot.

  Don’t fuck up. Don’t fuck up.

  The wood around the lock finally splintered and gave. Cole pulled the door open, just far enough that he would be able to slip through.

  He almost didn’t make it.

  As he pulled the door closed again behind him, a tiny hand came round and grabbed at the edge.

  Cole didn’t think. He swung the cleaver…and four icy fingers fell, pitter-patter, to the ground.

  He made the mistake of looking down. They lay, partially embedded in a fall of snow; tiny blue fingers, showing frozen pink at the cut edge.

  Cole retched, but nothing came up. For the time being, he was glad he was hungry.

  He turned, breaking into a run. He headed once more for the street. Behind him he heard the door swing open.

  He tried to speed up, but the snow was piled up around his knees. Although it was soft and powdery, he could manage little more than a controlled lurching stumble.

  I’m not going to make it.

  He tripped against something large and heavy underfoot, and almost fell. He had to put a hand out to regain his balance, grabbing at the nearest thing that would stop him from tumbling over. His left hand closed around an iron railing. He managed to keep himself upright, but the blister on his hand burst, sending a fresh lance of pain through him. It felt like he’d grabbed a hot poker.

  Suddenly he was angry; angry at the storm for inflicting this on him, angry at life for being so shitty, angry at himself, for just about everything.

  Come on then. Let’s get this done.

  He turned and raised the cleaver.

  There was no one behind him.

  The only footsteps in the snow were his own. The door of the house he’d come from was partially open, but there was only darkness in the hallway.

  “Come on then,” he shouted, his rage taking over from any better judgment. “Here I am. Don’t you want me?”

  There was only silence.

  He noticed, belatedly, that the snow had stopped falling. Above him, the sky was slate grey, but even as he looked up, a tear formed in the cloud, revealing a black starry sky beyond.

  The silence suddenly seemed overwhelming. The only time Cole had experienced anything like it was at Carnegie Hall, in the seconds before a performance of Handel’s Messiah. This had the same sense of almost religious anticipation.

  Something’s coming.

  Once more he thought about crawling back into the cellar. Indeed, he might well have done just that if he hadn’t heard the distant sound of a car engine.

  Somebody else is alive!

  He turned towards the sound, just in time to see an ambulance cross the junction two blocks farther down the street.

  “Hey,” he shouted. He pushed his way through the snow.

  “Wait up.”

  It took him a while to reach the junction. When he did, there was no sign of the ambulance. Nor could he hear an engine.

  But there was a fine set of tire tracks in the new snow.

  Cole got a second wind.

  He ran, faster now, down the line made by the right-hand tires.

  * * *

  Mike brought the ambulance to a halt looking over a small public park beyond which lay the county forensic department.

  The clouds had rolled away in the last five minutes, revealing a bible-black sky studded with stars set in it like gemstones. The Milky Way stretched across the sky like a silver river. Far to their left a yellow-white full moon rose among the skyscrapers.

  Mina was transfixed.

  “I’ve never seen a sky like that.”

  “Honey, nobody’s seen a sky like that for decades in this city; street lighting did away with that,” Mike replied. “But, forgive me if I’m wrong, didn’t we have a full moon last week…when we went to the ice rink?”

  Mina nodded.

  “I remember you commenting on it.”

  She chewed at the cheroot.

  “Something’s not right here,” she said.

  Mike laughed.

  “You mean, something else? Let’s just get our friend here to safety, that’s all I care about right know. The serious thinking can wait till we’re warm.”

  “Amen to that,” Mina said. “Let’s roll, big boy.”

  Mike put the ambulance in gear and pressed the accelerator.

  The back wheels spun on the loose snow.

  The vehicle didn’t move.

  “Shouldn’t have stopped to look at the view huh?” Mina said.

  “When we get out of this, remind me to tell you what I think about sar
castic women. In the meantime, get in the back, would you, honey? We need some weight over the rear axle.”

  “Are you calling me fat?” Mina said as she crawled between the seats.

  “It’s hard to tell in that outfit. It makes your ass look big.”

  “You’ve never complained before.”

  “You’ve never looked like a walrus before.”

  Mina went as far back in the ambulance as she could get.

  “A walrus, eh? You’ll pay for that later.”

  “I hope so,” he said. “Hold on to something. This could get a bit bumpy.”

  Mike gunned the engine. The van juddered and shook, then moved forward, very slowly.

  Mina was thrown sideways.

  She leaned against the back door, and looked out the window.

  Half a dozen lumbering shadows headed towards the van, less than ten yards away.

  “Mike. We’ve got company.”

  “How many?”

  “Enough.”

  “Get up here and strap yourself in. It’s time for some fancy driving.”

  Mina had a last look out the window.

  “They’re gaining.”

  “Thanks for sharing. Now get that fat ass up here.”

  Mina crawled into her seat, just as Mike hit the accelerator hard.

  The ambulance lurched forward. Mina almost fell into the footwell.

  She clambered back into her seat and buckled herself in.

  “Now’s probably not the best time to tell you I’ve got a Molotov cocktail in each pocket.”

  “Let me guess? You were waiting for an opportune moment?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Just don’t burst into flames,” Mike said. “I’m trying to concentrate here. A hot babe might distract me.”

  The ambulance moved faster now. Mike had to use all his skill to keep them on something resembling a straight line.

  Mina checked her mirror. The frozen ones were thirty yards back now, but they hadn’t given up the chase.

  She rescued her cell phone from the depths of her suit and dialed a number.

  He answered on the first ring.

  “Jon. It’s Mina. Do you have power?”

  “Yep. The generator kicked in just fine.”