Without the storm, their adventures would be over. Time was a ticking clock, and no clock ran backwards.
Karl’s hands raised towards the mask, the very act of wearing it on his head becoming claustrophobic. His breath misted the inside and heated up his face. It became unbearable. As he stalked through the snow, hunting for footprints and searching for his sweet darling daughter, he removed his jacket. Pleased by the drop in his own feverish body temperature. Beneath the jacket was a long-sleeved cotton shirt, a bib of crimson staining the front. The snow attacked the cotton until it was dripping wet and white and soon that too was gone.
To be shirtless was to be free. To be one with the storm was a blessing, each snowflake like the tongues of a thousand heated whores, attentive to each throb and desire that came to his imagination. Strolling in the snow was ecstasy, the chill becoming a part of his system as his skin turned white beneath the thick wires of dark hair that matted his chest. His shins felt none of the ice the snow had to offer, instead appearing to melt with each trudging step forward, allowing his passage through the worst of it.
A door opened up to his right, a man standing in the arch with a shotgun pointed directly at Karl. A familiar voice called, “Karl? Is that you? What are you doing out in the storm like that? Get inside, get warm. Come on in.”
Karl obliged, accepting succour for the duration that it took to pin old Charlie Moxon up against the wall and crush his windpipe in one clenched fist. A young man who had inherited his father’s house, Charlie lived alone, and that was a shame. As Karl sank his teeth into Charlie’s neck and tore at the wiring of his biology beneath the flesh, he only wished there would be a sweeter reward for his efforts. Charlie’s blood gushed to the floor, pulsing like a broken faucet until Karl’s arms were too slick with the stuff to hold him airborne any longer. But the Masked One had prepared him for such, and to dine on all fours was a pleasure in itself. To bear down like the animals we once sprang from gifted Karl with an erection that pressed against the fibres of his trousers and made him ache with pain.
And then he was back out in the storm, free of all clothing. A stained trail of red in the snow that was gone in seconds. He licked his lips and cleaned the last of the warm liquid from his face as his stomach digested the bits of Charlie that were chewy and nourishing.
Not that the nourishment and satisfaction would last for long. Only a minute later, his stomach ached once more, longing for that which he could not find. Calling out for sustenance.
Karl growled, baring his teeth like a rabid jackal. The growl grew to a bark to a roar of rage. His muscles coiled as he belted his frustration out at the storm, adding to the cacophony of torture being sung around the town.
He roared until he was breathless, then doubled over and fell forward into the snow. His hands pressed into the fresh powder, sinking several feet, his face imprinting on its surface. The snow was wet and refreshing, but it did little to abate the gnawing sensation in his stomach. He pushed back onto his knees and was alarmed to notice that the thick padding of abdominal muscles he had earned from years of hunting and manual labour had shrunk, had diminished just a little, as if something was eating him from the inside out.
Panic set in as a glimpse of the reality of his situation called out to him. If he didn’t eat, he would starve. If he didn’t sustain his strength as he sought to find his prize, he would have no strength left of which to hunt and capture her. And then what would the Masked One say? What would they do?
He sniffed the air, closing his eyes to draw more attention to his senses. Something familiar swept along the current of the breeze, a tickle of something he had smelled before, but now struggled to identify.
Karl looked out at the white street behind him, a wicked grin growing on his face as he licked his lips and climbed to his feet.
4
Cody Trebeck
The good news was that, once they had made some progress through the tunnel, Travis seemed to find his his legs. Instead of Cody and Sophie holding him upright, it wasn’t long before Travis took his first independent step, and lessened their load.
The bad news was that the tunnel was endless, and Kyle was nowhere to be seen.
Cody’s phone torch only stretched so far into the darkness, and those parts which did illuminate didn’t fill them with much hope. A hundred feet into the tunnel the walls were nothing more than cracked, ancient brick, slick with a thin layer of damp moss and lichen. Along the way, chunks of the wall were missing, revealing only dark, packed earth beyond. With every step the temperature dropped, increased the chill. All too soon they were well and truly removed from the pair they’d left behind.
Sophie and Cody hardly talked. With Travis acting as a social barrier between them, there was no opportunity to say what was on either of their minds. Cody still felt the soft warmth of her hand and only wished he could grasp it now, offer some kind of comfort to her. The edges of her features caught the glow of the light, harsh and shadowed on one side, but even he could read that she was uncertain of their way ahead. The same question plaguing both of their minds: what if this leads to nowhere?
Travis, meanwhile, muttered to himself, his limbs occasionally jerking in random motions. It seemed that lack of food, and a heavy blow to the head occasionally removed Travis from the knowledge that he was standing beside other people. “Never going back now. Nah-uh. Make it out of here. Find him first. Woop.”
Cody did his best to ignore him, but the truth was that he was concerned. On the rare occasions Travis did look ahead, his eyes were glassy, pupils dilated. Something wasn’t right, but what was he to do? None of them could do anything until they’d figured out a way out of here, and even then, what was waiting on the outside? How quickly could they bring him medical attention?
Twenty minutes into their walk, they came to a fork in the road. Here, the tunnel stretched wider, allowing them a little breathing room from the cloying closeness of the length they had travelled so far. When Cody and Sophie stopped to examine which route they might take, Travis continued ahead, acting as though he hadn’t noticed either of them stop.
“Travis,” Cody called. “Travis!”
Travis stopped, ears pricking up as though he had just woken from a dream. He whirled unsteadily and raised an arm to block the stream of light which attacked him and lit him up in white. “Dude, switch that thing off. I can’t see.”
“You won’t be able to see anything at all with it off,” Sophie said, moving to Cody’s side and lowering his hand so that the beam pointed at the floor and softened the glare. “Are you okay, Travis? You don’t look so hot.”
“I’m fine. Just dandy.” His eyes narrowed as he turned in a slow circle, hunting for something neither could see. “Where’d Kyle go?”
Cody and Sophie exchanged a look.
“Kyle went ahead,” Cody replied. “Don’t you remember?”
Travis raised an eyebrow and chuckled. “Don’t be stupid. Kyle wouldn’t leave me behind. We’re best buds. He wouldn’t.” Although he protested, there was doubt in his eyes.
Sophie stepped cautiously forward. “Travis, I know you think you’re feeling better, but you’ve got to take it easy. I’m worried about you.”
“Worried?” Travis waved a hand and laughed. “Worried about what? That me and Kyle are going to save the day and you’re both going to be nothing more than a footnote in story of bravery? Seriously, where the hell is Kyle?”
“We don’t know,” Cody raised the torch at each of the tunnels. The smell of damp and rot was overwhelming, and it wasn’t until he raised the torch to the ceiling that he saw why.
There was a hatch above them, square and wooden, the beams bent and sodden with damp. Mushrooms and moss grew in the cracks, and in certain areas they could make out the white of snow.
“What do you think that is?” Cody asked. “A way out?”
Sophie brushed her hair from her eyes. “If it is, there’s no way we can reach it. It’s too high.”
&nbs
p; “Yeah, if you’re a pussy.” Travis laughed. “That can’t be more than ten feet up. I’ve dunked that high before.”
Sophie rolled her eyes. “I call bullshit.”
“Oh yeah?” Travis said, eyes narrowing. He crossed to the wall and examined it, brushing a hand across the slick surface. “If that wall wasn’t wet, I could use it to pop myself up and grab those beams.”
Sophie folded her arms. “Well the wall is wet, so what do you suggest instead?”
Travis chewed his lip, then took a step back.
“Don’t even try it,” Cody started, but before he could finish, Travis ran at the wall. He raised a foot and hooked it into a small crevice, using the traction to push up and gain extra height. His body raised, gaining enough distance that his fingertips scraped the beams. A moment later, he was heading towards the ground.
Cody anticipated this move and was there to catch him. He hooked his arms under Travis’ armpits and supported him, the pair of them collapsing onto the floor, Cody landing on his ass, Travis landing on Cody’s lap.
“Get off of me,” Travis declared, rising quickly to his feet. His eyes drew slightly inward as he swayed, a hand moving to his head as he fought to maintain his balance.
“Are you trying to kill yourself?” Sophie shook her head at Travis, then offered a hand to Cody and helped him up, handing him back the phone. Her eyes lingered on the display screen. “Your battery is running low.”
“I know.”
“Which way do you think we should take?” She turned from one tunnel to the next. “See anything useful?”
Cody cupped his hands around his mouth and spoke towards the center of the fork. “Kyle? If you’re down there, give us some kind of sign of which direction you chose.”
He paused. Listened. Nothing.
“Worth a shot.”
Travis managed to stabilize himself, a drunken grin on his face. “Let’s just pick already. No sense wasting time, is there? Not like we’re getting there any faster by being hesitant.” A look of confusion came over him as he stared intently at Cody.
“What is it?”
“Where’s your ball?”
Cody looked down at his feet, as if the basketball was going to be there and waiting for him. A wave of sadness crested as he pictured his prize basket ball somewhere in the school, left behind in their desperation to escape the creatures. It all seemed so long ago now. Another age.
Cody closed his eyes and composed himself. When he opened them, he walked past Travis, aiming for the right-hand tunnel. Sophie followed behind him, taking a moment to wave Travis ahead of her as they crept on further into the darkness.
As their footsteps clattered around the stone tunnel, the echoing sound masked the gentle steps that approached from somewhere in the tunnels.
5
Alex Goins
Alex stood by the door, his ear pressed against the cold wood. Outside, the wind erased any real possibility of hearing oncoming danger, but he still wanted to be careful. The church had more entrances and exits than Harvey’s house, and any wrong move could leave them all vulnerable to the predators.
For that’s what he saw them as now. Predators. Hunters. Alex, Tori, Damien, anyone left alive and breathing in the town, they were nothing more than fodder for these things. Nothing more than prey for…
…the wendigos.
Alex knew how crazy it sounded, and there was a part of him that was concerned for his fertile imagination. For years he had dreamed up fictional scenarios for characters, stretching the truth to suspend the disbelief of his readers, just so he could add a little entertainment to their vanilla lives. In each book, he made a point to explore the macabre, the forgotten, the wonderful, the extraordinary.
Which category did these creatures fall into?
His breath came in short bursts. As much as he maintained his composure around Tori and Damien, he was terrified. Alaska was a world away from England and, in that moment, he had never felt farther away from the familiar. He wished he was home. More than that, he wished he hadn’t dragged Cody along on this journey with him. Everything would have been okay if they’d simply stayed put in the dreary landscape of foggy old London.
He teased open the door, glad to find little resistance from the snow. Beyond the door was a short entryway that blocked the worst of the slush from piling up and blocking him in. He closed the door behind him, then crept forward and pressed his back to the stone walls.
The place was deserted. Nothing more than a clean white postcard painting, reminding Alex of the time he had fallen asleep in class at school and woken to a full panorama of a blank sheet of A4 paper. To his left, the grey stone walls melted into white, but not before he could make out the odd dark shape in a soft bed of snow.
Keeping the rifle trained ahead, he strafed to his left, walking with determined purpose until he found the object. He breathed a sigh of relief, identifying the poor bird lying dead in the snow. A song sparrow, if he wasn’t mistaken. Its beak was crushed, its neck bent at an odd angle. Its wings were spread wide, already clumped with the snow that showered from the sky. It wouldn’t be long before the sparrow was just another creature buried and lost in the storm.
Alex cast a glance to the window, wondering what the hell the bird was doing out in the blizzard. To his knowledge, animals hid away when the elements were against them. With a freak storm like this, he would have imagined that they would be extra careful, their instincts tuning into the instinctive protection frequencies that humans had lost long ago.
With a final sympathetic look down at the sparrow, Alex started back to the door. He kept his gaze on the horizon—what he could see of it—but no threat came.
From that direction at least. The screaming was coming from inside the church.
6
Amy Lawson
Everywhere Amy turned, it was like looking through a tunnel of fog. The edges of her vision were framed in a haze of smoke, her exhaustion forcing her eyes closed while what remained of her common sense fought to stay awake.
She couldn’t imagine what the time was anymore. There was no way to know what the weather was like outside, or if anything had changed since their descent into this non-protective underground bunker. Life existed in a vacuum, and she was little more than a witness to the horror that plagued her since they had arrived at the school.
She thought it would be different. She knew that she was taking a chance in dating a younger boy—one from the year below, no less. But Kyle was a shiny object, the king of the roost, and she knew that there was little the bitches in her year could say to her that would make her change her mind. Amy thrived off rebellion. Her mother baked it in her blood. If her father was still around today, he might have a few words to say, but he wasn’t, was he? So, what was the point in concerning herself with the disapproval of ghosts?
Life was hard and living at home only exacerbated the problem. There was no sense of control in Amy’s life. No discipline, no real reason to try. While dating Kyle felt like an effective way to stick a middle finger up to the girls in her own grade, she soon found that she had fallen for him.
Fallen hard.
Kyle acted older than his age. He was a man among boys. Certain to be a future prom king. The cream of the crop.
And didn’t Amy deserve the best? Hadn’t her life been a hunt for the best, a desperate effort to keep the things that mattered close to her, no matter how material those items truly were?
Amy knew she was conventionally pretty. Boys had fallen at her heels since the moment she looked into the bathroom mirror and saw the first sign of her breasts coming in. Small mounds which had already matured to the point that the underwire of her bras were biting into her flesh. The other girls spoke behind her hands in envy, boys in the lower grades stared. It was all the attention that Amy craved, and she rode that theme park ride to the top. She played the game of high school, knowing which levers to pull and which pitfalls to dodge. If the big wide world beyond was nothing mo
re than a high school, she’d be the triple letter signature at the top of the arcade’s leader board. AMY. Three letters. Complete.
But life wasn’t a high school, was it? She was learning that the hard way. In the moments where the world scrambles what is known and distorts the lens of your reality the truth breaks out without remorse. Kyle’s true nature had been shown, and it was grotesque and heart-breaking.
Initially, she had thought Kyle was playing around with his snappy remarks to Travis, Cody, and Brandon out in the snow. She figured that maybe things were just getting a little heated when Kyle headbutted Cody in the gymnasium.
She had no excuse for Kyle’s behaviour when he hit Sophie. Her dear friend Sophie. The only true friend she had. The one girl who listened when she was upset, and with whom she could trust a secret with. What had Kyle done to her? Where was she now?
When the monsters came, that had been the final shattering blow. The glass floor cracked and fell away and all that Amy knew was fear as she fell. She wasn’t prepared for this moment, to be trapped in a cold, dingy room with a boy she had hardly noticed in the halls, but yet here she was. Paralyzed, drained, and hardly present.
When Winter Comes | Book 3 | Black Ice Kills Page 3
