First Edition

Published by:
DarkFuse Publications
P.O. Box 338
North Webster, IN 46555
www.darkfuse.com

Night Of The Wendigo © 2012 by William Meikle

Cover Artwork © 2012 by Zach McCain
All Rights Reserved.

Copy Editors: Steve Souza & Bob Mele

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are
either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any
resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely
coincidental.
For Sue, who puts up with me.
 PROLOGUE

No lights showed at the dig site when Dave Jeffers got back from the
diner.
That in itself wasn’t unusual. The generator the university had so
gracelessly provided was well past its sell-by date and prone to sudden cut-
outs, usually at the most inconvenient moment.
“Hey guys, coffee’s up. Get it while it’s hot,” he called. No one called
out in reply.
That was unusual. Archaeological dig sites run on liquids; beer
usually, but coffee will do at a pinch.
“You’d better not be swinging the lead,” he called. “Or Dick North
will chop off your balls and make them into a soup.”
All was still silent. As yet Dave wasn’t worried. The team had a habit
of playing practical jokes on one another in moments of tedium. This could
well be one of those times. The digging had been slow all day. It looked like
they’d brought all of the good finds out of the site already. Now they were
just shifting the mud, hoping against hope that there was some other gem,
some new treasure, at the bottom of each bucketful. Diggers get quickly
bored in such circumstances.
The tray of cups jiggled as he descended the ramp to the bottom of the
old dock. He almost toppled one of the cups as he pushed through the thick
tarpaulin sheet that protected the site from the elements, but a quick
shimmy of the hips saved the situation.
“The old quarterback body swerve never fails to save the day.”
Dave waited for the laugh that was bound to follow. He was one of the
most unlikely candidates for the football team you’d ever see. His team
knew it. It was unlike them not to comment, but there was no giggling, no
stifled laughs. The dig lay quiet.
Now he felt the first twinge that something might be wrong here.
“Come on guys. The coffee’s getting cold.”
 He stood just inside the tarpaulin, letting his eyes adjust to the
darkness. He knew there was a series of planks laid over the dig site as
walkways, but, here in the dark, he couldn’t yet make them out.
“Olly olly oxen free,” he shouted.
He laid the coffee tray down on the ground at his feet. There was no
way he’d be able to navigate across the site while carrying them. And
besides, he felt just about pissed off enough to kick the cups over and stomp
them into the mud.
“Okay guys. Fun’s over.”
They all knew him well. And they’d recognize the tone of his voice
now; the tone that said that playtime was over and the serious work needed
to be done.
Still silence.
His eyes adjusted to the dim interior under the tarpaulin. He could
make out the faded yellow bulk of the generator in the far corner of the site.
It might be a heap of crap only one level above a nine-volt battery, but it
was his only hope of getting the lights back on.
He headed out gingerly, watching his feet, trying to keep to the planks.
The wood squished, forcing liquid farts from the mud underfoot.
And still there was no noise.
There was no one here; that noise alone would have sent the little kids
inside of them squealing with delight.
He made it halfway across. He stood at just about the darkest point of
the site. The heavy tarpaulin rustled behind him. Something tumbled in his
stomach, the same giddy feeling he got when he had to talk in front of an
audience for the first time.
“Who’s there?” he called, turning. There was a noise that could only
be the coffee tray being kicked over. A dark shadow moved, fast as a cat,
between him and the tarpaulin.
“That’s it. I’ve had enough.” Dave shouted. He walked quickly back to
the entrance.
The coffee cups were strewn over the ground, the brown liquid seeping
into the dark soil.
“You inconsiderate bastards!” he shouted. “That’s the last time I get
anything for you.”
It got suddenly colder. Much colder. Dave’s breath steamed, icy
against his cheeks. The spilt coffee at his feet froze, a hard sheet of ice
crackling as it formed, faster than a blink.
Off to Dave’s right something moved and the tarpaulin rustled again,
louder this time.
Screw this, Dave thought.
He put out a hand to push the tarpaulin aside. When he tried to draw it
back, the tarpaulin came with it. His hand had frozen solid to the heavy
plastic sheet.
Bone-deep cold drove through his palm, up to his wrist. A layer of
frost ran over his knuckles up over the back of his hand.
Dave whimpered, but the noise seemed too loud. He covered his
mouth with his free hand.
The darkness shifted. Heavy footsteps echoed along the planks.
The board Dave stood on bounced and vibrated in sympathy.
There’s somebody behind me!
He tore his hand away from the sheet, leaving a layer of skin behind.
There was no pain…his palm was too cold for that. There was only a chill
that speared all the way through his body.
Adrenalin kicked in and got him moving. He hit the ramp at a run. The
old planks they’d used for the makeshift pathway iced up even as he stood
on them. His feet slipped away from under him.
He landed face down on an icy patch. He left the skin from his top lip
behind as he tore himself free and scrambled up, skidding and slipping all
the way towards the dockside.
“Help,” he called, but his voice came out as little more than a feeble
squeak.
When he breathed in, it felt like he was swallowing razor blades. Icy
needles pierced his tongue and his mouth. Finally it found his throat. His
next breath felt like trying to breathe through a snowball.
I’m drowning.
He staggered away from the dig, his face reddening as he gasped
unsuccessfully for air. In the distance, the old timber yard was lit up in
green and yellow lights. As snow fell around him Dave had time for one
last thought.
It’s Christmas!
An icy hand gripped his heart. It squeezed, just once.
Dave Jeffers was dead before he hit the ground.
 CHAPTER 1

From TheComingApocalypse.net

At 2:00am EST this morning there was a noticeable temperature dip

across a wide zone of the harbor area of New York. Does anybody else find
it peculiar that this happened EXACTLY 23 minutes after a ten second high
intensity burst from HAARP in Alaska? They say they’re not working on any
weather modification systems, but after Katrina and the purposeful way
they cleared out New Orleans, who knows what city they might choose
next?
From alt.archaeology.north_america
Anybody heard from Dick North recently? Wasn’t he supposed to be
reinventing the history of the east coast for us? Last I heard he was up to
his bollocks in cold river mud over in the Big Apple trying to prove that
Scotsmen were on Manhattan Island before the Dutch. Come on, Dick,
where are you? We’ve been waiting so long now for this one that our asses
are getting tired. Put up or shut up, Dick. I seem to remember I bet you a
beer on this one. I’m feeling thirsty.
From a rejection letter
Dear Mr. Barter. While your prose style is sturdy and robust, your
subject matter leaves much to be desired. The market for UFO-based
conspiracy theories died with the X-Files. I might have looked more
favorable on your theories if you had been able to offer even the slightest
hint of proof for any of the points you have tried to make. Come back to us
when you’ve got something more substantial. Irrefutable photographic
evidence would be a start. Photos always help sell books, and can hide any
stylistic issues with the text itself.
From alt.prophecy.dreams
It’s Tessa from the Big Apple here. Don’t know what it means, but last
night I dreamed of snowballs. I was looking out over the city from a high
vantage point. Giant snowballs fell from the clear sky. They destroyed
everything they landed on, smashing the city into a pile of slushy rubble.
Anybody else getting this weirdness or is it just me?

***

The sun came up on another day. The streets were quiet, almost calm.
It was an illusion. Mike Kaminski knew that. Under the surface bad
shit was going down…it always was. But on this particular morning, if the
city wanted to pretend to be a pussycat, Mike wasn’t going to argue. Last
night had been one of the best nights of his life. Nothing would wipe the
smile from his face for a while yet.
He was only two blocks from his apartment when the call came
through, on his way home. He’d spent the night at Mina’s place, but he
hadn’t yet got around to leaving any clothes there. If he went into the
squad-room in the same clothes as the day before someone was bound to
notice…and Mina wasn’t ready for the publicity just yet.
“Possible homicide on Hunter’s Dock,” Vicki said on the squawk box.
That was enough to get Mike on the case. Nobody died on his old
stomping grounds without him knowing it. He did a U-turn at a quiet
junction and headed for the shore.
Driving down towards the dock felt like taking a journey back in time.
He spent his first five years on the force here, walking these streets. He
knew them intimately. There was the liquor store where he’d made his first
arrest, there was the bar where he’d had to use his gun for the first time, and
there on the corner just outside the gates were the hookers waiting for the
boats to come in. They hadn’t changed much over the years; different girls,
same old job.
Old Tom stopped him at the main gate of the dock and asked him to
wind down his window.
“What’s the rush, Mikey?”
Tom had been sitting in the same guard room since Mike joined the
force. He looked to be about eighty years old, but he’d looked that way to
Mike for the last twenty years. Local rumor had it that he was over ninety,
but Tom himself pleaded ignorance.
“Hell, by the time I started counting, it was too late to know,” he said.
This was usually accompanied by a lopsided grin and a disgusting
movement of false teeth over his lower lip and back in again. The harbor
company employed him because he knew more about these docks than any
man alive. Mainly though, they used him because he was cheap. He used to
be a dock-hand himself, but an industrial accident—a fact of life down here
—had pensioned him off to guard duty. He might not be fit enough to tackle
any wrongdoers, but he knew everybody that had legitimate business out on
the docks…and most that had illegitimate business as well. Mike knew
there was a sawn-off shotgun, kept out of sight inside the guard room beside
the gates, just in case.
“I caught a call,” Mike said. “One of the beat cops called in a possible
homicide on Hunter’s Dock. I was in the area…”
“And you couldn’t keep away.”
“You know me, Tom. Like a bloodhound on the scent.”
“You always were too nosy for your own good,” the old man said.
“Am I first on the scene?”
“A youngster went over there on his rounds half an hour ago or more.”
“I’d better get over there then.”
The old man cackled.
“You’d be better off crawling into this guard box here and keeping me
company. Leave the running about to younger men…they’ve got more
energy for it.”
Mike laughed.
“Maybe so, Tom, maybe so. But the dock’s embedded deep in my
blood…I couldn’t let a call to investigate down here go.”
“There was a time when you were pretty quick in running off this dock
rather than onto it,” the old man said.
He cackled, and did the thing with his teeth again. No matter how
many times Mike saw it, it never ceased to disgust him.
“I don’t need reminding of my misspent youth, Tom. I remember it
well enough.”
“That’s more than I can do of mine,” Tom said. “You really should do
more drinking.”
“Maybe so Tom. But I can’t sit here jawing with you…I’ll come back
later if I’ve got time and you can fill me in on what I’ve missed in the past
couple of months.”
“Same old same old,” Tom said. “But I’ve got a hip flask here that
helps with that. There’s a slug for you if you want it…”
Mike had already sped off across the docks.
 He reached the dock still doing thirty and realized, too late, that the
whole area was a pan of matte black ice. Somehow he managed to control
his skid, missing the young beat cop by an inch.
The officer was bent over, peering at something on the ground. He
barely moved, even as the car screeched past him and slid to a halt just feet
from the twenty foot drop down into the dark water below.
Mike sat, white knuckled, gripping the steering wheel, willing his
heartbeat to slow, telling himself it was all right to breathe. It was several
seconds before he could take his hands from the wheel, turn his head, and
look at the cop.
He didn’t recognize the kid, but that wasn’t out of the normal…beat
cops got rotated around fast down here. No one liked this beat, no one
wanted it. Mike shivered at his own memories, even though they were years
old. He pushed them back to where they’d come from, to a place where he
never had to look at them again.
It was time to go to work.
He got out of the car gingerly, planting his feet firmly before moving.
The memory of the skid was still big in his mind. When he spoke his breath
steamed. The cold gripped at him through his leather jacket.
“What have we got?” he said, showing the beat cop his badge.
The cop didn’t speak, just pointed at the bundle at his feet.
Mike walked gingerly over. The whole dock was frozen with a thin
layer of ice. It was like trying to walk in normal shoes on a skating rink. He
put his arms out from his side and tried to maintain his balance, taking only
small steps and approaching cautiously. As he got closer he could make out
what was at the cop’s feet.
It was a body. The last time Mike saw anything like it had been in the
refrigeration unit of a butcher’s shop. The victim hadn’t just been lying in
the cold night air…they had been frozen solid, as if dipped in liquid
nitrogen.
Mike bent for a closer look.
“Don’t touch it,” the young policeman said. He peeled off his left
glove and showed his fingertips…they were red and puffy, as if badly
scalded.
“I felt for a pulse,” the cop said. “Next think I know my fingers are
stuck. I left skin behind trying to pull away.”
The young cop couldn’t take his eyes off the body.
 “At first I thought it had fallen off one of the meat wagons…I found a
side of pork last week. But that looked better than him. Far better.”
“When did you find him?” Mike asked.
“Ten minutes ago.”
“Is this your first body?”
The cop nodded.
“It was. For all of five minutes. There’s more, over at the dig site.”
Like everyone in the area, Mike had heard of the dig. It had been on
the news a month ago. A four-hundred-year-old boat had been found under
the old dock when they started taking it down to rebuild it. Somebody had
called it the single biggest find ever in the history of US archaeology. To
Mike it had looked like a muddy dock.
“More dead?”
“Not just dead,” the young cop answered. He went suddenly pale. His
eyes showed white all around the pupil. He swayed, suddenly unsteady.
Mike put a hand on his shoulder.
“Easy, kid. Take deep breaths. If you are going to chuck up, do it well
away from the crime scene,” Mike said.
“Too late,” the cop answered ruefully. “But I hope you haven’t had a
big breakfast, Detective.”
“Son,” Mike said softly. “Nothing is going to surprise me any.”
“Would you like a bet on that?” the cop said under his breath.
Mike walked towards the dig site. The young cop made to follow. Just
then a squad car pulled onto the dock, brakes squealing. It did a 360 degree
spin that took it even closer to tumbling into the water than Mike had come.
“Stay here and warn the troops,” Mike said. The cop nodded. He
looked grateful.
“They couldn’t pay me enough to make me look at that again.”
As Mike walked towards the dockside and the ramp heading down to
the dig, a warm wind got up. The ice underfoot melted like a piece of time-
lapse video, so fast that by the time he walked down the ramp, the sun at his
back felt almost warm.
That changed as soon as he descended into the shadow afforded by the
old dock walls. Going down into the bottom of it felt like climbing inside a
fridge.
The dig site was covered with a heavy tarpaulin draped over a
framework of wooden piles. The tarpaulin crackled. Large chunks of ice fell
from it as Mike pushed it aside. He let the plastic sheet fall back into place,
and noticed the red palm print, with flapping scraps of skin frozen solid
onto the sheeting.
Just how cold did it get down here? It’s late March!
He walked farther into the dig itself. There were four disturbed coffee
cups on the ground by his feet. Frozen liquids had been spilled over a large
area. He stepped over it, knowing that Mina’s wrath would be explosive if
he was to be the one that screwed up the forensics. He walked out onto the
wooden boards that led across the dig.
The first thing he found was the already partially frozen remains of the
beat cop’s breakfast.
Diced carrots. Why is it always diced carrots?
All other thoughts were pushed from his mind when he saw what sat
on the ramp just ahead, placed at the head of the trench that was the main
focus of the dig.
At first Mike thought it was a totem pole, a smaller wooden version of
the big one over in the park. But as he got closer he realized with horror that
these weren’t faces carved in wood…these were heads, three of them,
frozen into place on top of each other, glued together by bloody chunks of
ice. He had to walk down the side of the trench to see the full effect. He
soon wished he hadn’t bothered.
The top head was male, an African-American with a beard etched pure
white by frost. His eyes were milky white, reflecting what little light there
was like silver mirrors. The eyes looked extra large, straining out of their
sockets, staring over the dig. Black frostbitten lips hung loosely away from
teeth that looked too white against the blue of his flesh. His nose was gone.
From Mike’s experience of clearing up bar fights it looked like it might
have been bitten off.
The middle was a young white woman, caught and frozen in
permanent fear. She too was almost blue, but she only had deep black holes
where her eyes had been. Something had also taken her ears…ripped them
from her, leaving behind slivers of torn, bloody flesh.
The third, and bottom, was the worst. It was an oriental male. His eyes,
white and unseeing, somehow spoke of acceptance and sadness. His lips
had been torn from his face, leaving behind only frozen bloody pulp that
looked like beef mince. But that wasn’t the worst. An erect severed penis
jutted out from between his teeth like some obscene joke cigar.
 Mike couldn’t take his eyes off it. He was still standing there,
dumbstruck, when Mina and her forensics team arrived ten minutes later.

***

Jackie Donnelly didn’t often run late, but when she did, it was
spectacular. Normally the alarm clock was enough to get her up, but
yesterday had been one of the toughest days on the dig. She’d shifted tons
of mud, and spent hours afterwards in the lab starting to catalogue the finds.
When she’d got home she’d fallen asleep in a hot bath, which was stone
cold when she woke, disoriented. She’d dragged herself into bed and slept
the sleep of the just.
But she’d forgotten to set the alarm.
She’d only woken fifteen minutes ago, late and hurried to distraction.
She’d already partially flooded the bathroom, poured hot coffee across the
kitchen floor, torn three buttons off her favorite shirt, and fallen down the
front stairs of her apartment block. Luckily the fall had done no more than
wound her pride, and amuse the postman.
Now she ran full pelt for the dig site while juggling a piece of
undercooked toast in one hand and her cell phone in the other, trying to dial
Dave Jeffers’ number.
“Come on Dave, pick up.”
She took her life in her hands and dodged traffic to get across the road,
bringing a chorus of horns and curses, but she didn’t slow, even as she
turned into the dock itself.
Old Tom tried to stop her at the dock gates.
“Ms Donnelly…wait. You shouldn’t be going down there this
morning.”
Jackie ignored him.
“Ms Donnelly,” he said again, more insistent this time. Just then a
radio station van pulled up beside the guard room.
“Hey man,” someone shouted, “How much to let us through.”
“Fifty bucks,” Tom said.
“WKMC told us twenty.”
“That’s inflation for you son. Fifty bucks now. It could be a hundred in
five minutes time.”
Jackie was able to slip past.
 “Ms Donnelly…”she heard Tom call at her back. You really don’t
want to be going down there.”
She slipped under the stop barrier and out onto the dock. Life was just
too short to show the same pass to the same old security guard every day.
Especially one as lecherous as Old Tom. If she had to watch him do that
thing with his false teeth again, she’d scream.
She ran full tilt along the dock, listening to the phone ring at her ear.
“Come on guys,” she shouted. “Answer the damned phone.”
No one picked up. She brought the phone closer to her face, checking
the number. That meant she didn’t notice that the normally empty dock was
full of television crews, radio vans, policemen and gawkers. She ran
straight into the back of the crowd and bounced off a man who luckily was
built like a brick wall on steroids.
“Hey. Let me through,” she shouted, trying to push her way through
the scrum. “I work here.”
The huge man turned and looked down at her.
“Lady, ain’t nobody works here no more. They’s all dead.”
The piece of toast fell to the ground unnoticed.
“There must be some mistake…”she started.
“No mistake, Miss. There are cops and paramedics and all sorts of shit
out there. The last one to come back said there was no rush…they’s all
dead.”
“Dead? No! What’s happening here?”
“I told you”, the big man said. “Some drug deal went wrong and they’s
all dead. Cut up bad I heard.”
The tall man next to him sighed theatrically. He used a large pair of
binoculars and jumped up and down to try to see over the heads of the
crowd. “It was a team of archaeologists from the university. They probably
uncovered some old plague…I saw the CDC guys go in ten minutes ago.”
The guy with the binoculars looked like he was spoiling for a fight, but
Jackie couldn’t wait to see the inevitable outcome. She pushed through the
crowd, all the time trying to dial Dave Jeffers’ number.
There was still no answer. She let it ring.
Probably too busy, she thought. But they’ll pick up when it pisses them
off enough.
She kept pushing through the crowd of people. When she got to the
front she was brought up short by the crime scene tape.
 She saw a man, a cop she presumed, bend and look under a yellow
plastic sheet. He came up with a cell phone. It was ringing. When he
answered it Jackie heard his voice in her ear.
“NYPD. Detective Kaminski here. Who am I speaking to?”
“Over here,” Jackie said into the phone and waved it over her head.
“Behind the tape.”
He saw her and headed over, slowly, warily. He didn’t quite put his
hand on his gun, but Jackie didn’t think he was far off from doing it.
What is going on here?
She felt panic growing, but forced herself to take deep breaths…
panicking people and nervous cops were a bad situation…even in her
confused state she realized that.
“Okay, Miss,” the cop said. “I’m coming over. Just keep calm.”
She couldn’t take her eyes off the yellow sheet.
Something lay under it, something the shape of a human body.
The cop was so close that Jackie had to stand on tiptoes to keep an eye
on the sheet, willing there to be some movement under it, some sign that it
wasn’t actually a dead person. But it didn’t move.
“What’s under there? My god…who is under there?”
The detective looked her in the eye as he came up close.
“You tell me, Miss…?”
“Donnelly. Jackie Donnelly. I work here. Please, tell me…who is
under the sheet?”
“You tell me. You’re the one that called him.”
By now he stood directly in front of her, blocking her view.
“It’s Dave, isn’t it? Dave Jeffers,” she said quietly.
“If that’s who owned the phone you rang, then, yes,” the detective said
softly. “Did you know him?”
Jackie ignored him.
Dave? Dead? No, he can’t be.
Then she remembered when she’d last seen the rest of the diggers.
“Was it Johnson?” she said.
“Who?” The cop seemed taken aback by the sudden change in tack.
“That construction manager. The bastard’s been leaning on us ever
since we started. It must have been him.”
Then it struck her…there was only room under the yellow sheet for
one body. If that was Dave, then where were the others?
 “Is everybody else okay?”
The detective shook his head.
“I’m afraid not, Miss.”
“They’re all dead?” Jackie whispered.
He nodded.
“We think so…but we’ll need someone to ID the bodies.”
ID the bodies?
Suddenly she felt nauseous. Her world shrank down to a long dark
tunnel. At the far end she could just make out the buttons on the detective’s
flannel shirt.
At that same point, the fight that had been brewing in the crowd turned
into a full blown fracas. Brick wall man was pounding binocular man into
the ground while a little old lady aimed some kicks at both of them for good
measure.
“Shit. It never rains but it pours. Stay right here,” the detective said.
“We’ll need to talk to you later.”
Jackie barely heard him. When he moved aside she was looking from a
far distance at something yellow, out of focus. Her brain wouldn’t let her
make sense of what it was. All she knew was that she didn’t want to look at
it any more.
She turned and walked away.

***

Cole Barter saw his chance when the woman left the policeman’s side.
Be cool, he told himself. You can do this. You NEED to do this.
He’d overheard some of her conversation with the detective. She knew
the victims. She’d be the perfect one to ask.
Just don’t blow it.
She looked dazed, almost shocked. She seemed unsure as to what she
should do next. She walked slowly, mumbling to herself, so low that Cole
couldn’t make out what she said.
Cole was torn, the little angel on his right shoulder telling him that she
should be left alone to grieve, the little devil on the left telling him to get on
with it.
She’s the answer…if you’ve got the balls to ask the questions.
The little devil won.
 Cole walked over and took her by the arm.
“Excuse me, Miss,” he said, trying his hardest to sound like a cop.
“There’s just a few follow up questions.”
“I told the other detective…”she said.
“I understand that,” Cole said. “It won’t take but a moment.”
Cole gripped her arm harder and pulled her along with him. To his
amazement she followed him meekly. He led her away from the crowd,
expecting at any moment to hear a clamor at his back. But none came.
A woman wearing a yellow coat walked towards them. Jackie shied
away, like a frightened horse, almost pulling out of Cole’s grip. She stood
still, as people moved around them. Tears were gathered at the corners of
her eyes. Any minute now she might let go. And if she did, Cole might have
lost his best chance for a glimpse of the truth.
“You look like you need a coffee,” he said. She nodded, but didn’t
speak, which he took as a yes.
“I know this great place,” he said. “It’s just outside the dock gates. I’ve
been going there for years, ever since I was a kid…black coffee, and a
cream cheese bagel…they know my order by heart and it’s waiting for me
almost before I know myself that I want it. I…”
He stopped. He realized that he’d gushed. Cops in this town didn’t do
gushing. But he’d got away with it. She hadn’t taken any notice of him.
The crowd was thinner here, just behind the throng that jockeyed for
position at the cordon. Cole moved the woman along a bit faster. He needed
to get clear before anyone took any notice that he was, for all intents and
purposes, abducting this woman.
He was almost clear when a television reporter approached them and
shoved a microphone in his face.
“Officer. Could you tell us…?”
He pushed her away, a bit too brusquely.
“No comment.”
She came right back at him. He’d pushed her too hard…her color was
up. She pushed the microphone at Jackie.
“Miss? Are you a witness?”
“Leave her alone,” Cole said. He pushed the reporter away again.
“The public has a right to know…”she began.
Cole laughed at the irony of it.
 “No comment,” he said. “We’ll be letting the media know through the
proper channels. I’m sure the Lieutenant will be more than pleased to have
a press briefing later at the precinct.”
He started to enjoy himself.
“Don’t worry, Miss,” he said, loud enough that all around would hear.
“I’ll protect you from these parasites.”
He led her along the dock away from the reporter. As he got around the
corner past the timber yard and out of sight of the crime scene his
confidence grew.
I wonder what her story is? If I do this right, it could be just what I
need.
She still hadn’t said a word, but maybe coffee would loosen her
tongue.
As they walked he muttered to himself.
Don’t screw up. Don’t screw up.
It had become his mantra over the past lean years, the tenets of which
he didn’t always follow.
But this time will be different.
He gave Old Tom a nod as he passed the gates, hoping the old man
wouldn’t speak. He should have known better.
“Cole. Still hunting after the great unknown?” the old man said.
“Keeper of the Faith and Defender of the Truth, that’s me.”
“Well, if you bring me a quart of something strong and Scottish, I’ll
see if I can lead you a bit farther on the path to enlightenment,” Old Tom
said, and cackled.
“Not today, Tom. I’m on a trail of something. It could be big this
time.”
Tom cackled again.
“I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve seen a youngster convinced
he’s onto a big score.”
He noticed Doug’s companion for the first time.
“Got yourself a woman at last, I see? And a purty one at that. Hello
again, darling.”
Cole kept walking.
“I don’t have time to talk, Tom. I’m just taking her for a coffee. She’s
had a bit of a shock.”
The old man did the disgusting thing with his teeth again.
 “Coffee is it?” He made an obscene gesture with a rolled up fist and
his forefinger. “Well, give her a black one from me.”
Cole turned away before he had to see the false teeth thing again, but
he couldn’t escape the old man’s cackling laughter. It reminded him of
failure.
He turned to look at the woman. She was still out of it, not paying any
attention to her surroundings.
Cole Barter, you really are a Grade A Shit, the angel on his right
shoulder said. It was getting louder, but he’d manage to ignore it for a while
longer.
By the time he got the woman to the diner she seemed to be coming
out of it.
Maybe there’s time.
He ordered two coffees and led her to a booth. He sat down opposite
her and took out his notepad and pen, hoping they would pass muster as
something a policeman might carry.
“Now, Miss,” he said in his best official voice. “If I could just have
your name please?”
He hadn’t planned any of this. He’d been sitting at home, catching up
on the overnight news, when the reports started coming in. And once he’d
seen where it had all gone down, he knew he just had to see for himself.
And when he’d seen the woman leave the cordon in a daze he’d taken the
chance.
Now nerves were starting to get to him…her lack of response was
giving him plenty of time to get twitchy.
“Miss?” he said, maybe a bit too urgently. “Your name please?”
“Donnelly,” she said. “Jackie Donnelly.” She spoke as if she wasn’t
interested in much of anything, but there was a haunted look in her eyes that
showed there was plenty going on under the surface.
What does this woman know?
“And how do you know the deceased?” he said.
She jerked her head at the word.
Shit. I’ve blown it, Cole thought, but her eyes took on the dazed look
again.
“I work with them. They’re my friends.”
Them, he thought, excitement rising. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a
multiple.
 “You know all of them well?” he said.
And suddenly Cole didn’t have to say any more. It all came out of her
in a rush.
“It should have been me. It was my turn for the night shift, but Rachel
wanted to switch…something about a new man and a hot date later in the
week. Dick North gave it the okay. I spent the night sleeping in a cold bath
while my friends died. It should have been me. It could have been me. Who
would want to kill a bunch of archaeologists? What sense is there in that?”
The coffees turned up. She paused to take a sip. Cole waited until the
waitress moved on before continuing.
“Dick North? Is he your boss?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Head of the Archaeology Department. He’s been taking the most grief
from Johnson.”
“Johnson?”
“I told the Detective at the scene…”
Suddenly she stopped talking. Cole hadn’t been paying close enough
attention. Her eyes had cleared and she no longer had the dazed look. She
looked puzzled.
“And aren’t you supposed to be taking notes?” she said.
He looked down, realizing he hadn’t written a word…his pencil still
sat on the table beside the notebook. He made a grab for it, misjudged the
distance, and sent the pencil skittering across the table and down onto the
floor where it rolled towards the counter. Cole got out of his seat and chased
it, catching it at the base of one of the stools.
When Cole got back to the booth he blushed as red as a hot baby.
Jackie Donnelly had a thin smile on her face.
“You’re not a cop,” she said.
It wasn’t a question, which was just as well, as Cole didn’t really have
an answer. He sat down and stared back at her, unsure what tack to take
next.
“So what are you? A reporter?” she asked.
“No…Well, yes…Sort of.”
She hadn’t left yet. He took that as a good sign and ploughed on.
“I’m researching an article on the history of the docks…well, that dock
in particular, Hunter’s Dock. You see, there’s been weird shit going down
over there for decades…centuries even…and I thought…”
 She stopped him with a wave of her hand. He realized too late that
he’d made her angry.
“I’ve got four friends lying dead out there and you’re feeding me some
X-Files bullshit. Jesus! Go and talk to Dick North…he’ll like you.”
With one smooth movement she stood, lifted her coffee. She threw it
full in his face.
He was still dripping as the diner door closed behind her.
Cole ruefully wiped off the coffee, thanking his lucky stars that it had
cooled during the conversation. But he had something to go on…a name,
and a possible sympathetic ear…Dick North.

***

“Okay, Tom,” Mike said. “Wanna tell me how all those media types
and gawkers got past you?”
He was back at the gates. Two hours had passed. He was tired, pissed
off, and ready to chew somebody out.
“Must have slipped in when I wasn’t looking,” Old Tom said.
He did the thing with his teeth.
“I’m an old man. I have to siphon the python every ten minutes or so
these days. They could have got in anytime.”
Mike sighed.
“How much did you get?”
The old man cackled.
“Around a grand all told. Not bad for a morning’s work. I told you that
you should have joined me in the guard room. You could have had a cut.”
“You know me better than that, Tom,” Mike said.
The old man nodded, looking suddenly serious.
“What happened out on the dock, Mikey? I heard it was bad. Bad and
weird.”
“Yep. Both of those. But you know Hunter’s Dock…there’s always
something different.”
“Don’t I know it,” Tom said. “I remember when…”
Mike nipped that in the bud. Old men who started sentences with those
three words needed to be closed down quickly, lest they steamroll you into
an afternoon of anecdotes. Not that Tom’s storytelling was necessarily a bad
thing. Mike had spent many a long hour sitting in bars and diners listening
to the old man; tales of One-Armed Tommy, the first policeman to patrol
the docks, stories about Sad Sam, and his partner Itchy Nose, the most
cunning of a long line of thieves in the history of Hunter’s Dock. He told
stranger stories yet, of Indian drums in the night when the skies were clear
and the air was cold. The allure of the tales was still as strong now, many
years after their first telling. Mike would gladly down a couple of beers
about now to listen to some of them again.
But duty calls.
“Can’t wait, Tom. I need to pay a call on BJ.”
“The big man? He’s involved?”
“His name came up, that’s all.”
“With BJ, that’s never all,” Tom said. “Best find him quick. If he hears
he’s in the frame he’ll be off and away. You remember how good he is at
running?”
“I remember,” Mike said softly. “How could I forget?”
Mike headed off across the dock, leaving the old man counting a pile
of cash. He disagreed with Old Tom. Brian Johnson, the big man, BJ to his
friends, wouldn’t be going anywhere.
Not that Mike thought that Johnson was guilty…not of murder
anyway. He might lean on people sometimes, especially those that were
costing him money, but murder was beyond him. He had to question him
though…his name had come up in a witness statement.
At least Mike knew where the big man would be. There was a new
warehouse development going up on the adjoining dock to the murder
scene. Johnson had been bragging about the size of the contract he’d been
awarded the last time they’d met for a beer. That’s where his boys would be
working.
And that’s where he found the man himself, just ten minutes later.
He heard him before he saw him, the booming voice echoing among
the partially constructed buildings.
“Anderson! I swear, if you don’t get your ass in gear, I’m going to kick
it from here to eternity.”
Mike came up behind Johnson and clapped him on the shoulder. “How
are they hanging, big man?”
“Like a pair of badly coordinated coconuts,” Johnson replied. “How
are you doing, Mikey? Looking for a real job?”
 “The day I agree to work for you is the day you’ll know I’m ready for
the funny farm.”
“Is that what they call the precinct these days?”
Mike had known the big man most of his life. Even at eight years old
Johnson had been big. He’d learned early that bulk meant strength in the
pecking order that existed in the school. Unfortunately, picking on a young
Mike Kaminski was a big mistake. What Mike had lacked in bulk, he more
than made up for in temper. He’d pounded Johnson’s face into the dirt, and
then helped the big boy home so that he could apologize to Johnson’s mum
for ruining his school clothes. From that day on they’d been friends, not as
close as some, closer than others. They met up about once a month for a
couple of beers and a pizza, both gently pumping the other for information,
neither really caring much about any that they got.
“You’re here about the dig site?” Johnson said, having to shout to
make himself heard above the clang of metal on metal and the rough hum
of cranes and forklifts.
Mike nodded.
“Walk with me,” he shouted back. “We need to talk.”
They walked out onto the dockside where the noise dimmed to almost
tolerable levels. Across the dock the tarpaulin above the dig blew in the
wind. There was still a lot of activity over there, but most of the gawkers
had already drifted off, bored with the lack of excitement. Mike could have
told the crowd hours ago that there would be nothing to see. Crime scenes
were places that had already seen too much excitement. All that was left
was routine and ball-breaking work.
“It’s been a lot of years since Hunter’s Dock saw that much activity,”
Johnson said. He took a crumpled, hand-rolled cigarette from behind his
ear, straightened it out, and lit up. “What happened? Did the old dock
collapse? I told them it wasn’t safe…I said to that North…”
“It wasn’t the dock,” Mike said softly.
He looked Johnson in the eye.
“It was a multiple homicide. A bad one. Your name came up in
conversation.”
Johnson stopped in mid-puff, almost choking.
“Me? You don’t think that I had anything to do with it? You know me
better than that, Mikey…”
Mike patted the big man on the arm.
 “No. I don’t think you had anything to do with it. There was blood.
Lots of it. I remember all too well your reaction to that.”
Indeed, at the very mention of it, Johnson went white as a sheet, his
eyes threatening to roll up in their sockets…just like when they were eight
years old and Mike had given him a nosebleed.
“Hey,” Mike said. “Come back here.” He grabbed the big man’s nose
and pinched, hard.
Johnson shook his head violently. His eyes came back into focus. He
took a long drag from the cigarette, holding the smoke in as if it would
somehow steady him.
“Sorry, Mikey. You know how it is?”
“Yep. I know. That’s how I know it couldn’t have been you. But your
name came up. There are four people dead, and a lot of media interest. So
spill, what have you been up to?”
“Mea culpa,” Johnson said. “So maybe I leaned on them a little. I’m
losing a grand for every day late on the contract while they fiddle with their
bits of rotted wood and old bones. What’s a man to do?”
“Stay within the law would be a start?”
“It was only a gentle lean…I never threatened anyone, just made my
displeasure clear.”
“I can imagine. You’re a bit on the heavy side for even gentle leaning.
It looks bad, BJ.”
“I’m telling you straight Mikey. It wasn’t me. I wouldn’t have been
able to get the men to work there anyway…not on Hunter’s Dock.”
Something went ping on Mike’s cop radar.
“What do you mean?”
Before replying, Johnson put the cigarette out with his fingertips and
let the remnants scatter in the wind.
“You must remember?” he said. “That dock’s been bad news since we
were kids. Hell, from a long time before that.”
“Fairy tales and hocus-pocus, big man. I didn’t have you down as the
type to scare easily.”
“You’ve been off the dock too long, Mikey. Work enough nights down
here and you’ll get to believe almost anything.”
“So what are you telling me? Old Joe Doyle is back eighty years after
the mob made him some concrete shoes?”
Mike laughed, but the big man didn’t join in.
 “All I can tell you is that my men won’t work on Hunter’s Dock…not
even for double pay. Hell, it’s hard enough getting them to work nights way
over here. Speaking of which…listen to that.”
“I don’t hear anything.”
“That’s what I mean. I’ve got to get back. The slackers down-tools
every time my back is turned.”
Johnson turned to walk away.
“We’ll probably have to talk again,” Mike shouted after him.
“Officially this time.”
“You keep right on talking, Mikey,” Johnson called back. “That’s all
you were really good for anyway.”
Mike watched the big man until he was back in the skeleton of the
warehouse.
He took one last look back at the dig before leaving. The tarpaulin
stretched in the wind.
A cold chill washed across the dock.

***

Mina got the first of the bodies onto the slab in the morgue less than
twenty minutes after leaving the crime scene.
Jon, her senior lab technician, helped her lift the body off the gurney. It
felt unnaturally heavy. Cold seeped from it, even through the plastic
sheeting.
“This is going to be a bad one,” Jon said, looking along the line of
trolleys. At the moment all four of the bodies were covered, but Mina knew
that very soon now she would have to lift a sheet and get to work.
“It’s no worse than that street crawler we had in last week,” Mina said.
“At least this time the smell won’t be quite so bad.”
Jon paled at the memory.
“Do you need me for the first one?” he asked. “I’ve got tissue samples
from under the nails of one of the deceased…the woman. I was hoping to
get them analyzed straight away.”
“Get on with that then,” Mina replied. “I’ll be fine on my own for a
while. I need to concentrate on these bodies. There’s going to be shit
coming down from high places at some point soon. I’d rather have a strong
umbrella when it happens.”
 Jon moved off, but Mina had already stopped noticing him. She tied
her hair back into a tight ponytail, put on her white coat, and snapped on the
latex gloves. She was ready for work.
She lifted the sheet to reveal the first of the bodies.
It was the oriental male. The body was headless. For that she was
almost grateful…she’d seen the bizarre totem pole. That was more than
enough for one day. The image of the penis jutting, stiff and glistening,
from the mouth, might yet put her off sex for a month of Sundays.
She’d been wrong about the smell. Even on the short journey back
from the dock the body had thawed rapidly. The tell-tale odor of decay rose,
thick, almost chewable, from the body. All of the exposed skin was black
with frostbite. She touched a patch on the chest. It slid off under her finger,
grey dead flesh slipping across a still frozen spot beneath it.
“Jon,” she called out. He lifted his head from where he’d been looking
down a microscope. “Find out what the temperature got down to overnight
last night.”
Another thought struck her.
“And find out if there was any liquid nitrogen on that site.
Archaeologists sometimes freeze delicate finds…and these frost burns are
far too extensive to be anything else.”
“Is that what you think caused this?” Jon asked.
Mina stayed silent.
“Maybe there was an accident,” somebody said at the far end of the
room.
“I think three accidental decapitations might be stretching that theory a
bit,” Mina said. There was some nervous laughter, but Mina didn’t join in.
She was already back working on the body.
The three headless bodies had been found, totally nude, lined up side
by side at the bottom of the trench, looked over by their disembodied heads.
Whatever had taken the heads off, it hadn’t been clean. Back at the
scene Mina thought they might even have been torn off, forcibly. She’d get
to that, eventually. First she wanted to have a closer look at the other
wounds. They’d been too solidly frozen at the site to examine properly, but
now in the relative heat of the lab, she could have a closer look.
She examined the exterior of the first body. It was hard to determine
anything through the frostbite. The main thing she noticed was a gaping,
ragged hole in the groin, where the organs had been roughly torn from the
body. That, or the decapitation, or the freezing itself, were all possible
candidates for cause of death.
Or maybe he died peacefully in his sleep.
She learned a long time ago not to jump to conclusions…she left that
to the media, and the cops.
She’d heard the speculation back at the dig…everything from chemical
spill to aliens. And the press, starved of any input, were making their own
leaps of fancy. None of their musings came close to matching the reality,
but it was only a matter of time until there was a leak. Then the shit really
would hit the fan. This case already had all the hallmarks of turning into a
media feeding frenzy. She was determined not to be eaten.
Mike had asked for an early heads-up, but even he didn’t get
preferential treatment once the body was on the slab. The dead deserved
respect. Mina made sure they got it.
She turned her attention back to the body. Taking a scalpel, she made a
Y-incision. She stripped back the skin. The top layers peeled back easily,
but beneath that everything was still frozen solid, like a beef joint just
removed from the freezer.
The only way I’m going to get through that is with a pick-axe.
She checked the rest of the bodies. Under the top layers of skin all of
them were as hard as stone…frozen to the core.
“Somebody has screwed up,” Jon said at her shoulder. “The only way
these bodies could get like this is to have spent a week in the freezer.”
Mina shook her head.
“I checked with the detectives. They say the victims all came on shift
on schedule last night.”
“How is that possible?”
“I don’t know…yet,” she replied. She went back to work.
She examined the area around the torn groin. There were several
pieces of ripped and mangled flesh around the wound. When she looked
closer her suspicions were confirmed. The wounds had been caused by
teeth.
“Have a look at this,” she said to the technician, pointing at a ragged
piece of flesh.
The technician bent and peered at the wound.
“Bites?” he said. He went pale again.
 “Yes,” she replied. “And I’ll bet you a beer that they’re human.”

***

Mike Kaminski arrived at the morgue in the late afternoon.

“Hi handsome,” Mina said.
Mike merely grunted in reply. They were alone in Mina’s office.
Normally by now he’d have Mina in his arms, but today had started badly
and got steadily worse.
“It’s not going well?” Mina asked.
“It’s hardly going at all,” Mike replied. “I let a possible suspect give
me the slip, another, the archaeologists’ boss, has gone AWOL, the
Lieutenant wants to core me a new ass, and there’s a howling pack of
reporters just waiting for me to fuck up. I need good news, and I need it two
hours ago.”
“No,” Mina said. “I know what you need.”
She came to him. Mike raised his arms for a hug, but dropped them
again when he saw her checking the window to make sure no one was
watching.
“Still ashamed of me, huh?” he said. He backed away.
She kept coming, and grabbed him round the waist.
“It’s not that,” she said into his chest. “You know it’s not. It’s just that
I’m the boss…someone’s got to maintain some decorum around here.”
“I don’t think the stiffs care,” he said, ruffling her hair. Her hug was
having the desired effect. The hard ball of tension in his gut eased, for the
first time since he left the dockside.
He returned the hug, but Mina backed off.
“Later,” she said. She straightened her hair and stood back, pretending
to look at something on her desk. Mike turned. Jon, the senior technician,
stood at a microscope adjusting the focus.
It was a new thing, this romance. Mike was struggling to define their
terms of engagement. Here in the lab everything was prim and proper, sewn
up tight as a drum. But last night, for the first time, she’d been like a tigress,
all over him. Now it was back to square one again. He knew it was the
work…she was just so damned serious about it. He might wish she’d loosen
up more, but he didn’t think it would happen anytime soon.
He took his lead from her.
 “So, have you got anything to show me?”
“Plenty,” she said. “And you’re not going to like any of it.”
She led him through to where the bodies were laid out.
Mike held his nose.
“That bad huh?” he asked.
“We’ve got the recyclers turned right up,” Mina said. “But some
smells just seem to linger.”
“So, was the freezing natural or not?” Mike asked.
“Definitely not,” she replied. “At first I thought it must have been a
liquid nitrogen spill…”
“I thought of that. I had it checked. There were no canisters at the
scene,” Mike interrupted.
“No. There wouldn’t be,” Mina continued. “This was something else.”
She led Mike to a body that had been stripped open; ribs cracked and
forced wide exposing the chest cavity.
“Have a look,” she said.
“I’d rather not,” he said, trying to get a smile from her, and failing.
“You need to see this. It’s important.”
“He’s dead. What more do I need to know.”
“Are you going to look or not?”
Mike bent over the body, trying hard not to gag.
The interior of the body was a mass of ice crystals and frozen organs,
gleaming silver and pink under the harsh neon.
“Not liquid nitrogen? What else could do this?”
“A week in an industrial freezer,” Mina said. “But I understand these
people were walking about this time yesterday?”
Mike nodded. He couldn’t look away from the frozen body.
“The cell cultures all tell the same story,” Mina continued. “Almost
instantaneous freezing through the whole body. These people died from
billions of tiny ice crystals lancing through every cell simultaneously.”
“And that was the cause of death?”
Mina nodded.
“The decapitations and the…other wounds, all happened post-
mortem.”
“Other wounds?” Mike asked.
“Bites. Human bites. We found lumps of flesh missing from all the
bodies. But it’s got us stumped. Whoever chewed those holes would have
had to have the jaw strength of an alligator.”
“And that’s what you’ve got for me?” Mike said, sighing. “I’m looking
for someone with a snout full of big teeth and a by-line in freeze-drying?”
This time he almost got a smile. It was a thin thing, but better than
nothing at all.
“We’ve got a bit more than that,” she said.
She held up a small sealed jar. Inside lay something that looked like a
thin slug, black and glistening.
“We found this in one of the wounds. It’s a frostbitten lower lip…and
it doesn’t belong to any of the victims.”
“Can you pull DNA from it?”
She nodded.
“If they’re in the database, we’ll have a name for you by sundown.”

***

Cole had no difficulty making his way into Dick North’s office. His
disguise consisted of a pair of spectacles, a satchel and a black Nirvana
sweatshirt. He chose the name of a student at random from the online list on
the University web site. That, a diffident manner, and a hard luck story
about losing his security pass to a mugger, was enough to get him past
security and into the Archaeology Department.
He stood outside the professor’s door, unsure what he would say if the
man was in there. So far he’d been running on instinct.
Next time, it might be a good idea to have a plan.
It was too late now to back away. He rapped hard on the door three
times, and then held his breath.
Nobody answered.
He waited until the corridor was empty, then tried the door. It opened
first time. He let himself in.
The room was everything he imagined a professor’s office would be.
The space was dominated by a huge oak desk, piled high with books and
bones. Cole recognized one as a human jawbone, but the rest could have
been anything. Old books lay open on every available surface.
The place smelled of must and pipe tobacco. On the desk was a large
picture of a thin, wiry man with a grey goatee beard. He stood over a
trench, pointing down at what looked like two skeletons clasped in an
embrace at time of death. Cole guessed the man must be the professor.
He realized he was prevaricating. The longer he stood here in the
centre of the office, the more chance there was of him getting caught. But
now that he was in, Cole was unsure what to look for.
If he was working on something to do with the dig, it will be on his
desk…close at hand.
He moved to the other side of the desk and sat in the huge leather
chair. He looked down at the desk. A handwritten journal lay in front of
him. Cole picked it up and read.
This is it, the passage began in a scrawled hand. I finally have the proof
I’ve been looking for. These men were here before the Dutch! Just as I
suspected.
The rest of the writing was in a calmer, more precise hand, as if the
writer had been taking extra care to make it legible.

***

Taken from the personal journal of Captain John Fraser, Captain of the
Havenhome, a cargo vessel. Entry date 16th October, 1605. Transcribed and
annotated by Dick North, 13th March.

My dearest Lizzie. Today has been the worst day of my life. As I

sit here, warm in my cabin, whisky at hand, I can scarcely believe the
deprivations suffered by the brave people of this far flung outpost. I
should have stayed at home like you asked. You would have kept me
warm. If only I’d done as you asked, then I might have been spared the
terrible sights that met us at landfall.
We had no thought of winter when we left home port. Do you
remember? It was a bright Scottish summer’s day. You cried as we
parted, and the sun made rainbows of your tears. I can still see you
now, standing on the dock, waving us off. How I wish I could look at
you, just one more time, one more time to warm my heart against the
cold that has gripped us all.
After the auspices of its beginning, our voyage soon reminded us
that the sea is not always benign. After four months at sea my crew
expected some ease from the biting winds and cold autumnal spray,
some shelter from the elements that had assailed them so assiduously.
And some were expecting something more, having heard tell of the
harbor tavern of our destination, and the warm doxies who waited
there.
Cold comfort was all they found.
We arrived under a slate grey sky, having to tack hard against a
strong offshore wind that faded and died as soon as we entered the safe
haven of the natural harbor. I thought it passing strange that there was
no one on the dockside to mark our arrival. We have been looked for
these past two months, and the Havenhome is tall enough to be seen
from many a mile. And yet no smoke rose from the colony, despite the
chill in the air and the ever-present autumnal dampness. There was
already a pall over my heart as we hove to.
“Mayhap there is a town meeting,” the Pastor said as we stood at
the prow.
“Aye, mayhap,” I said. But my heart did not believe it. I knew
already there was some dark power at large. Perhaps I do have a
touch of the Highlander sight after all.
Jim Crawford was ashore before anyone else, running down the
dock.
The First Mate called after him.
“Do not tire the doxies out, Master Crawford.”
“I will have first choice,” the deck hand shouted, laughing. “I’ll
leave you the ugly ones. But if you want any ale, you’d best be quick,
for I have a terrible thirst.”
We found him again when we disembarked and headed into town.
He was first at one thing…he’d been right at that…he was first, but by
no means last, to fall in a dead faint.
At our last visit some three years ago this was a thriving town of a
hundred souls, living off the land that God gave them, and maintaining
peaceful trading relations with the natives. There had even been talk of
expansion, with land to the south earmarked for a church.
Now it will only be used as a cemetery, for they are dead…every
last soul of them.
The fortifications have not been breached and there is no
evidence of a fight. There were just the bodies of the dead, as if the
Lord decided in that instant to take them to their heavenly rest. They
lay, scattered on the ground like fallen leaves, faces grey, ashen and
almost blue. They are cold to the touch, their eyes solid and milky, like
glass marbles sunk in a ball of snow.
It was all the First Mate and I could do to keep the men from
fleeing. Some did indeed fall to their knees in prayer and supplication.
“What could have caused this, Cap’n?” the First Mate asked.
“Mayhap t’was a freak storm,” Coyle the cook said. “For surely
we have seen the same thing happen to a man at the mast in the far
north waters?”
“But these are not the north waters,” the Pastor replied. “This
land is most clement, even in comparison to our own home. Men do
not freeze in October. This is the Devil’s work, mark my words.”
As for myself, I kept my peace then, but as I saw more of what lay
on the streets I came to think they might both have been right.
I was in the courthouse, standing over the still, dead bodies of
Josiah MacLeod and his family and trying not to weep when the
Pastor made his final report.
“We have searched the whole town, Captain. As far as we can tell
the entire population has been felled, for no one answered our calls,
although our entreaties have been long and loud. God rest their
souls.”
The Pastor looked afraid. That’s when I felt the first icy cold spike
of dread for myself, for the Pastor is afraid of nothing, except the
wrath of his God. And even then, had the two of them met, I might have
been tempted to bet for the Pastor.
“Have you checked all of the houses?” I asked. “Mayhap some of
the women and children…”
“Nay, sir,” the Pastor replied. “We have been in every home, in
every cellar. All we found was more of the same, more cold death. And
in the tavern, there has been carnage. Some wild beast has got among
the bodies and desecrated them vilely, with tooth and claw, leaving
naught but a charnel house of blood and gore.”
I visited the tavern for myself. The Pastor would not come with
me.
“I have seen too many sights already this day that mortal men
should not have to bear,” he said. “I entreat you, Captain, do not
enter. The sight has me sair vexed. I would not wish it on any other
man.”
“I have to see it,” I replied. “No matter how hard it may be. For
it will be my responsibility to report this to the proper authorities to be
dealt with.”
“The only authority with the power to deal with this is the Lord
himself,” the Pastor said quietly. “And I fear this is not of his doing.”
The First Mate came with me. The Pastor had it right. What lay in
the tavern was something that no Christian man should have to
endure. I hope to God I never have to look on such a sight again. I
have had the building locked for now. Only I, the Pastor and the First
Mate have seen what lies within. The Pastor has his Lord to sustain
him, no matter how much he is vexed by the sights he has seen, and the
First Mate is strong in ways that neither I nor the Pastor can muster.
As for myself, all I wanted to do was curl up in my cot and let
sleep take me, but I had to talk to the crew. I needed volunteers for
burial duty.
At first the men refused to touch the bodies.
“There’s disease to be thinking of,” sail-master Thomas said.
“Plague even.”
“Aye,” called out Jim Crawford. “Mayhap we should up-anchor
and make for clean waters.”
“These are Christian folk and require Christian burial,” the
Pastor called out.
“Then I suggest you get to it, Pastor,” someone called. “We will
return for you in the spring, when there is no more chance of this
deviltry.”
Rough laughter rang out over the deck. There were more calls for
us to sail off immediately, and even one call to go, “Whether the Cap’n
likes it or no.”
“Belay that!” I called. They fell quiet, but I faced a sea of sullen
faces.
“The Pastor has it right,” I called. “These are Christian folk. And
I for one will not deny them Christian charity and a speedy trip to
Paradise and the right hand of our Lord. Now who is with me?”
No one stepped forward.
 I do believe there might have been mutiny. If the First Mate had
not finally stepped to my side, I might now be lying cold with the
others.
“As ever Captain, I’m by your side. But if I may suggest, the men
would prefer if, once the burials are done, mayhap we can make for
Elizabethtown? I hear that, unlike here, the doxies there are yet
warm.”
“Elizabethtown it is,” I said. “And I will pay for the first night’s
grog.”
At that they cheered as one. The burials began. I vowed never
again to underestimate the seaman’s capacity for hard work, given the
promise of grog and a warm doxy.
“Pastor,” I asked the only man left beside me. “I have a favor to
ask.”
“Ask, and it shall be given,” the Pastor said.
“I would have you aid me. You and I will take the hardest part of
this burial duty. If you will do it, I would have us deal with the little
ones, the children.”
He went pale at that, but grasped me by the arm.
“Thank you, Captain. It will be an honor.”
“I would not ask anyone else to take the task,” I said. “For I need
the doughtiest man in the crew.”
He smiled at that. I managed a small smile of mine own in reply.
That was the last merriment that passed between us for many an hour.
God help me, I don’t know how many more dead children I can
touch.
The smallest ones are the worst. The sun has partially thawed
their bodies, but when you lift them you feel the hard frozen core
inside. It is all that you can do to keep from weeping as you lay them
into the too-small holes.
The Pastor and I laid twenty and two children in the ground;
twenty and two innocent souls sent to their maker before their time on
this earth had scarcely begun. Hard men, men who have stood
unbending in battle as the cannons roared and muskets sang, have
been brought to their knees by grief. There is a part of me that will for
evermore lie in shadow.
 Darkness has fallen. My crew is spent, their eyes near as dead as
those they have buried. Yet I have to ask the same of them on the
morrow, for the Pastor tells me we have buried less than a half of
them.
May God preserve us all.

***

Somebody knocked on the door of the professor’s office. Cole closed

the journal and held his breath, but whoever it was didn’t try to enter. A
shadow moved away from the door and Cole breathed.
He placed the journal in his satchel and slipped out of the room,
closing the door quietly behind him.
His heart pounded loudly in his chest.
This really could be it…this could be my chance.
Outside, afternoon was winding down towards dusk.

***

Tommy Takake was royally pissed. Not only did he have tickets for the
fight at the Garden, not only was he on a sure thing with Rhona from the
Radio Room, but he had been stuck with scuttlebutt night shift guarding an
empty crime scene. The sun was only now going down…he had hours of
this to go yet.
He stood just inside the taped-off cordon, looking over the empty
dock. The circus had moved on, splitting itself into two camps—one at the
morgue, the other in a ring-fenced area across the road from the precinct
house. All Tommy had for company was a slightly battered van from a
radio station at the bottom end of the dock…the occupants of which had
already closed up shop for the night. The soft thump of a rock station was
all that showed there was someone there.
I should have been a bank clerk, like Mother wanted, Tommy thought.
Warm office, regular hours and a decent pension.
A wind blew across the concrete, a forewarning of the night to come.
Tommy pulled his jacket tighter around his body.
And I’d be able to take Rhona to the fight.
 He’d been working on Rhona for weeks now, the flirting and innuendo
getter ever hotter, ever closer to the point where she’d say yes. And just last
week he’d been hit with one of life’s wonderful coincidences…he landed
two tickets for the Garden, and on the same morning, found out that Rhona
was a fan…not just a fan, but a historian of the sport. She took no
convincing at all to accompany him, and Tommy was on cloud nine…right
until the Sarge told him he’d pulled sentry duty. He’d tried to get out of it,
but there was no denying it was his turn…he’d swapped too many in the
past, now it was payback time.
Should have been a bank clerk, he thought again.
Cold seeped in at his ankles, his feet feeling like lumps of metal. He
knew of old there was only one cure for that.
Time to walk the rounds.
Tommy walked the perimeter, but there was nothing more to see. The
clang of metal on metal carried on the wind from across the dock. Arc lights
suddenly blazed on, white against the gathering dusk. The night shift was
getting prepared over there, but for now, they’d be sharing coffee, cigarettes
and companionship.
Never mind bank clerk. Should have been a fuggin’ metalworker. At
least they get to keep warm.
He was in a foul mood as he headed down the ramp and into the dig
itself.
All alone in the dark. And what the hell am I supposed to be guarding?
Two piles of dirt, a big hole and a generator that doesn’t work.
He kicked out at the generator and it gave out a satisfying clang. At the
same time his radio crackled.
“I don’t believe you’re standing me up,” the soft female voice said.
“Rhona? Best keep it off the air darling. You’ll get us both in trouble.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that,” she said. “The new VOIP is fully
encrypted and the OSPF Routing Protocol is more secret than a very secret
thing that’s been to spy school. There’s only a billion to one chance of
anybody being able to hear us.”
Tommy had no idea what she was talking about, but she sounded as
sexy as all hell saying it.
“Are you alone?” he asked.
“All alone and feeling blue,” she said in a sing song voice. “Why, do
you have any suggestions for cheering me up?”
 “Listen. I’m sorry about tonight,” he said. “I’ll make it up to you.”
“Oh, I’ll be making sure of that. And it’s such a shame. I could get all
dressed up for you. Tell me, Tommy…do you like suspender belts?”
“Cut it out, Rhona. You’re killing me. Here I am stuck in this dark,
cold hole…”
She came back fast.
“When there’s a dark warm hole waiting for you right here.”
He heard the laughter at the other end of the line.
“Don’t mind me,” she said. “I’m just pulling your chain.”
“I’d rather you were pulling something else,” he said.
The laughter was louder this time.
“I hear tell the uniform trousers get a bit tight when you guys get hot?
Can you confirm that, Officer Takake?”
“I’m straining against the zip here,” he replied.
“I’ll tell you what,” she said. “Come round to my place after your shift
and we’ll see what we can do about warming you up.”
“Lady, you’ve got yourself a deal.”
The line went quiet. For a while the memory of the conversation gave
him a warm glow inside, but as the darkness gathered he began to get
jumpy.
Shadows crept in the dark corner. The tarpaulin rustled and scraped, as
if someone was moving around, just out of sight.
Tommy hadn’t seen any of the victims…few had besides the detectives
and forensics. That hadn’t stopped speculation from spreading like wildfire
down the station house. A lunatic with a spray gun of liquid ice was ahead
in the guessing sweepstakes. Tommy had put himself down for a buck on
that one.
But they wouldn’t put me out here on my own with a maniac on the
loose.
Something shifted at the far end of the dig.
“Hello?” he shouted.
There was no reply. He took out his flashlight, switched it on, and
moved forward.
“I’m a police officer. And I’m armed,” he said.
The rustling noise from the far end got louder, like someone
scrunching up a large piece of paper.
 As Tommy got closer he realized the noise was coming from down in
the main hole of the dig.
Oh man, I don’t like this, he thought as he shone his light downwards. I
REALLY should have been a bank clerk.
He stepped back slightly, unsure of what he saw.
The floor of the pit was a seething mass of semi-frozen slush, rippling
out in long waves from a point at the far end. Intense cold seeped up
through the ground, causing Tommy’s ankles to go numb even through his
heavy duty socks. Shards of ice floated in the slush. The cracking noise
came from them as they were thrown together by the action of the small
waves.
Suddenly the slush lifted, pushed upwards from underneath. A pale,
almost grey, head broke the surface, lanky hair frozen in a tangled mass,
plastered over the skull like a surrealistic crown. Tommy’s torch beam
reflected off a pair of dead, milky eyes. Frost-blackened lips raised slowly
in a smile above a snow-white goatee beard.
A scream froze in Tommy’s throat. Fast as thought the slush flowed
up, as if alive. It washed over his legs and Tommy instantly lost all feeling
below his knees. He turned, thinking only of running, but his legs would not
obey…his feet were frozen to the ground as if glued in place.
He thought of Rhona, felt a momentary burst of warmth in his heart,
and then died.
The ice flowed over and around him.
In the quiet dark, where there was no one to hear, teeth crunched on
icy flesh.
 CHAPTER 2

From alt.dreams

I had this weird dream last night. The whole world was under a single
sheet of ice. The long night had come, and any thought of summer sun was
little more than a memory. Trees and grass, fish and fowl, everything lay
frozen under a white blanket of snow. Violent snowstorms, like dust devils,
whirled across the wasteland, freezing everything in their path. It was a
scene of utter and complete desolation. Only a few people were left alive,
foraging for what small heat they could find, locked in a desperate battle
for survival in the cold places of the night. They were being preyed on by
huge white furry things with enormous teeth and fangs, like that cave beast
in the Star Wars movie. Anybody got a lightsaber I can borrow?

From ufo.net.forums

Bad news folks. My little grey buddies are getting agitated. They took
me again last night. This time they dispensed with the probing and poking…
something to be grateful for at least. They sat me down in a huge, empty
white room and talked to me as if I was an errant child. They seemed very
worried, but they wouldn’t tell me what about, only that I should seek
shelter for the next few weeks. I’m telling you straight guys, something’s
going down big time, and, surprise, surprise, the government is keeping a
lid on it. Watch the skies, keep watching the skies.

Transcript from talk radio phone in, caller identified only as CB.

Listen, I’m telling you, this is huge. It’s going to blow the lid off all the
secrets back to Roswell and beyond. Hunter’s Dock has been a weak spot in
the fabric of space time for as long as man has been here. If you could only
see half of the stories I have collected over the years about the place. But
that’s not the biggie…I now have concrete proof going back to the
seventeenth century. I haven’t read it all yet, but frozen bodies were turning
up even back then, alongside freak weather conditions. Sound familiar?
And I can tell you now, there’s no ‘scientific’ explanation that’s going to
hold water. This is way beyond today’s scientists with their blinkered
viewpoints and their patronizing belief that they know everything that needs
to be known.
I know what’s been doing the freezing…or I will by the time I’ve read
the whole thing. The cops are all talking about liquid ice, but there’s
another place where a body could get into that condition…Do you know
where that is? Outer space. Why is nobody talking about that? I think we’re
looking at mass abductions and returns over a large number of years…and
this journal is going to help me prove it…just see if it doesn’t.

From alt.chaos.magick.workings

I think I did something naughty.

***

Jackie Donnelly spent most of the day in a daze, angry at herself for
having been duped.
Can’t even spot a geek at five paces, she thought scornfully. I’m losing
my touch.
After leaving the diner she’d walked mile after mile, with no clear
destination in mind, just letting the city remind her she was still alive. She
deliberately chose not to think, letting her feet take her where they would.
She turned up at her apartment block sometime after two, surprised at
where her feet had brought her. She’d half-expected to turn up back at the
dock, where there would be no crowds, no policemen, just Dave Jeffers
smiling at her with that coy, little boy grin of his as he showed her the
night’s finds. That thought brought her back to reality. Tears came at the
corners of her eyes.
Joe the doorman gave her his usual smile. Normally they indulged in
some gentle flirting that they both knew would never lead anywhere, but
today she was too far out of things to even respond. His smile turned
quickly to concern.
“Miss Donnelly? Are you all right?” he asked, but she brushed past,
barely registering his presence.
She was almost surprised to find her handbag was still slung over her
shoulder, her keys snuggling at the bottom of it. The door shut with a loud
click behind her, echoing emptily in the long hall that ran up the spine of
her apartment. It took her a second to register that the red light was
flashing, showing there was a message on her answer-phone.
Don’t answer it. It’ll just be more bad news.
But her fingers had already betrayed her and hit the button to recall the
message.
“Ms Donnelly. I hope I have the right number…you’re the only J
Donnelly in the book. It’s Cole Barter here…from the diner?”
He sounded hesitant, worried.
“Listen. I didn’t mean to mislead you…I just…”
She deleted the message without listening to any more and walked into
her living room.
She stared towards the window.
Yellow curtains.
Yellow, like the plastic sheet at the dock, the sheet she tried hard not to
think about.
Tears threatened to come, but she pushed them away. She tore the
curtains violently from their fittings. Plastic curtain rings fell around her
and danced on the hardwood floor. She bunched the curtains into a rough
ball and stuffed them away out of sight behind the sofa, feeling marginally
better.
The apartment felt cold, empty, and far too quiet. Turning on the radio
didn’t help. First she got the news, and a breathless female reporter talking
about “A night of violence on Hunter’s Dock.” After that she got Roberta
Flack singing “Killing Me Softly.” She turned it off when more tears rolled
down her cheeks and she found it hard to breathe.
She sat on the sofa for a while, staring at the window, not seeing the
view beyond. The quiet, broken only by the solemn ticking of the wall
clock, ate into her brain until she felt ready to scream. She thought about
the vodka bottle she knew was waiting, unopened in the kitchen. Then she
thought about it again.
 Get on the move girl. Booze won’t help. A wash and a coffee…start the
day again from scratch. Maybe it will improve.
A slow shower made her feel slightly more human, but more coffee
only reminded her of Cole Barter and the diner again. That brought back the
anger. She needed something to keep her brain busy, something that might
quieten the screams that lay just beneath the surface.
She phoned in to the department. It was answered on the second ring.
“Professor North’s office. How can I help you?”
“Angela? It’s Jackie. Is Dick there?”
The woman at the other end of the line sounded nervy, as if she’d been
crying.
“No. He hasn’t been seen all day. And, excuse my French, but
everything has turned to shit. I take it you’ve heard?”
“Yes. I was down at the dig earlier. Is anybody at all in the lab?”
“The police were here earlier, but they’ve gone now. Apart from
myself, there’s only Jon, the placement student. If you’re up to it, I think he
could do with a hand. There’s still some of yesterday’s finds to process. He
says they’re deteriorating too fast for him to keep up. And there’s nobody
here…”
The other woman stopped, a sob in her voice. There was just a hint of
the same hysteria that Jackie herself felt.
“I’m on my way,” Jackie said. “Keep the fires burning.”
“Only if you’re sure…”
“I need to work, Angela. It’s either that or the vodka bottle.”
“I hear you,” Angela said. “There’s a quart of rye with my name on it
at home waiting for me. I’m counting the minutes. I’ll be well along the
road to oblivion before you even get to the campus.”
“Have one for me,” Jackie said.
“Hell, darling,” Angela said with a sob just before she hung up. “I’ll be
having one for everybody.”

***

Dusk was falling as Jackie drove over to the campus.

Where did the day go?
She remembered the detective at the dig. She also remembered the
geek prick who’d tried to pump her for information, but the rest of the time
was just one long blur, her and her memories trapped in a series of loops;
Dave Jeffers drunkenly trying to pick her up at the Xmas party, Rachel’s bra
failing as she bent over a find, Dick North chewing peyote “Just to share an
experience with our finds.”
And even now if she closed her eyes, she could still hear them, still see
them, standing on the dockside, laughing and excited as they prepared to go
down to the site for the first time. That was only two weeks ago.
Now I’ll never see any of them again.
Hot tears ran down her cheeks.
A horn honked behind her. Jackie jerked to attention…she’d been
drifting, her car half over into the adjoining lane.
She corrected her steering and tried to focus.
She tuned in to the news on the radio.
“In the latest development in the sensational Hunter’s Dock slayings,
we ask, ‘Is there a sexual motive?’ We’ll be talking to members of the
faculty who’ll suggest that all was not just old bones and dusty books in the
halls of antiquity.”
She turned the radio off.
They’re only asking the same questions that everyone will.
She realized that people would come looking for her…more police,
possibly reporters. Then she’d be forced to think…think about what lay
under that yellow sheet for one thing.
The thinking, the why and how, could wait. First she had to come to
terms with the bald fact that her best friends had all died. She set the radio
to a country station. She sang along with Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers as
loud as she was able.
By the time she pulled into the department’s parking space she felt
slightly better. The sight of Dick North’s battered SUV in its usual place
cheered her further. Maybe he’d be able to help her make sense of what was
going on. And at the very least he’d be someone to talk to, someone who
would understand.
She strode into the lab shouting his name, but the place was empty.
Yesterday’s finds lay on the long gun-metal trestle that dominated the
centre of the room.
“Dick?” she called again.
Her voice echoed back at her.
“Jon?…Anybody?”
 There was still no reply. Jon’s camera lay beside his notebook. She
went over and, using the digital display, checked the time of the last photo;
five thirty-two, less than five minutes ago. Knowing the youth, he’d
probably slipped out for a smoke.
She considered joining him; she’d given up herself, nearly two years
ago, but if ever there was a day to get her going again, this was it. To take
her mind off it, she walked down the trestle examining the finds.
They’d thought they’d hit the jackpot last week when they found the
Captain’s chest, his journals still intact inside layers of oilskin. But the
bodies they’d brought up yesterday surpassed even that.
There were two of them, caught in a clinch, like lovers. At some point
they’d been burnt in an intense fire, but when you looked closely you could
make out, at the chest where they were clasped together, that large
fragments of their clothing remained.
At least it had when she’d last looked. Jackie gasped, horrified, when
she saw that the bodies had been roughly pulled apart, bones and cloth
strewn haphazardly across the trestle. Something small, dried and crinkled
caught her eye. She bent for a closer look…just as a cold hand fell on her
shoulder.
She jumped, letting out a stifled yell before turning.
“Jon! Shit, you nearly gave me a heart attack.”
The lanky youth’s usual friendly grin turned so quickly to damp-eyed
sorrow that she couldn’t help but forgive him.
She patted his arm.
“It’s all right. It was just…coming across the finds in this state…”
“I know,” he replied. “I tried to find the Prof to tell him, but he’s not
around. Who would mess up the bones like that?”
“Not an archaeologist, that’s for sure. And that’s not the worst of it.
Look here.”
She pointed at the small dried lump in front of her.
“What is it?”
“It’s a heart. A human heart from one of these bodies. And in the past
twenty-four hours, somebody has taken a bite out of it.”

***
 Cole Barter could hardly contain his excitement. The notebook he’d
taken from the university had promised much, but delivered way beyond
anything he’d expected. Just that first fragment he’d read earlier had
whetted his appetite, but what followed had his heart pounding…To him it
looked like a first hand account of an abduction and return. When he’d first
furtively browsed over it on the subway, he’d quickly caught its gist. When
he’d got home, he just had to phone the story in to the radio show.
When he got off the phone he felt like the geek that Jackie Connelly
accused him of being, but he was way too excited to care. For years he’d
been researching and writing, a magnum opus that would provide a single
unifying theory for all the diverse kinds of UFO activity seen over the
centuries.
And now I have it. The proof I need. A seventeenth century multiple
abduction and return. They won’t be able to explain this one away as
government conspiracy.
He was desperate to read more. There might be even more he could
use.
Hell, there might be a whole book just from the material in this journal
alone.
His daydream of the large publishing deal was an old one; book
signings, television appearances and big bags of cash featured large.
But this time, it might be more than just a dream.
He went to the fridge, moved a three-day-old plate of leftovers aside,
and got a cold beer. Taking it and the journal, he settled down in his favorite
armchair and read. Soon he was lost to all else but the rhythm of the words
talking to him across the centuries.

***

Taken from the personal journal of John Fraser, Captain of the

Havenhome, a cargo vessel. Entry date 17th October, 1605. Transcribed and
annotated by Dick North, 16th March.

That which we have feared most these last few days has come
among us. Hope is lost. Faith is lost.
My darling, it is likely that we will ne’er meet again. Nevermore
will I see the rolling hills of home; nevermore will I hear your sweet
voice call out to me from the dock.
We are dead men. It is only that we have not learned to accept the
fact yet that keeps us still warm. I have seen things, terrible things,
beyond anything that mortal man should endure on this earth. Yet I am
still alive. Surely the Good Lord has spared me for a purpose, but if
that is so, I have no thought as to what it might be, save to narrate our
tale, so that others may read it and tremble.
After two days and nights I had begun to believe that the worst
was over. We had interred most of the dead. I had even prevailed on
the strongest of the men to clean out the tavern on the promise of free
ale and grog.
Most of the men have spent the nights on the Havenhome,
preferring the comfort of the known to the silent, eerie darkness of the
dead town. I have been setting watches, but I suspect the men spend
the bulk of their time staring seaward to avoid looking at that which
has them so afraid. I do not blame them a jot.
After the burials were finally complete our pastor called for a
service of remembrance, but I knew the mood of the crew better. I had
the cook break open our cargo and prepare a feast while I myself
ensured that the tavern was made ready. The men had made a fair pass
at clearing up the stench and gore of the carnage that had been
wrought there. I was able to hide the last stains of blood with the
judicious application of straw and wood chippings. What I couldn’t
mask was the memory; of the sightless eyes and the strewn limbs that
had so recently laid scattered on the floor. I could only hope that a
flagon of grog and the hearty company of my shipmates would dispel
the chill that had fallen on my heart.
We set a great fire roaring in the hearth, and cracked open what
barrels we could find. We set to feasting and drinking with a gusto that
only men far from home and long at sea will understand. Any guilt we
might have felt at such merriment in a place where so much
destruction had been wrought was quickly assuaged by the warmth of
the fire and the sweet tang of the ale.
The evening began in fine fashion. The chef excelled even his own
high standards. He managed to turn a few stone of potatoes, a leg of
salted pork and some rough vegetables into a mouth-watering feast for
each of us. Ale flowed freely. For a while we were almost warm.
 The Pastor recited “The Lay of Lady Jane”, as bawdy a verse as
any old sea-dog might muster. It was all the better coming from such
an austere man of the cloth. Jim Crawford told a tall tale, of a man
from Orkney who was twelve feet high with a two foot cock which he
used to beat off foreign raiders. The room was filled with laughter.
“A tune from Stumpy Jack,” came the call. When the eldest of the
crewmen started on the squeeze box we could almost believe ourselves
at home port once more. All went quiet as he started up, a slow dirge
that we all knew well, for we had sung it many times afore, albeit with
lighter hearts and warmer circumstances.

Our ship is weel rigged

And she’s ready to sail
Our crew they are anxious
To follow the whale;
Where the icebergs do float
And the stormy winds blaw
Where the land and the ocean
Are covered wi’ snaw.

There was an outcry. The squeeze-box died with a last wheezing

drone.
“Let us have no talk of sailing towards snow and cold,” Jim
Crawford shouted. “’Tis sun we need, and hotter climes.”
“Then mayhap you’ll find this more to your liking?”
Stumpy started again.

Once more we sail with a northerly gale

Through the ice and sleet and rain.
And them coconut fronds in them tropic lands
We soon shall see again.
Six hellish months we’ve passed away
Sailing the Greenland seas,
And now we’re bound from the arctic ground,
Rolling down to Hispaniola.
 Stumpy Jack was old, but his voice was as clear and true as a
young man’s. It rang through the rafters, promising of hot sun and
even warmer women. We all joined in on the chorus.

Rolling down to Hispaniola, my boys,

Rolling down to old Hispaniola.
We’re southward bound from the arctic ground
Rolling home to old Hispaniola.

Bald Tom found a tavern wench’s skirts. There was much bawdy
laughter as he moved among the tables pretending to be a doxy. If the
talking and laughter was somewhat muted, and if some drank more
than was good for them, we pretended not to notice. The Ulsterman
told of his exploits against the Turks in Vienna, Bald Tom, still wearing
the wench’s skirts, regaled us with tall tales of the Amsterdam brothels.
Stumpy Jack sang the old whaler’s songs before starting up that old
sailor’s favorite, “The Girl from Brest.” We sang along at the top of
our voices. The tavern rang loud, keeping the cold at bay, for a while
at least. For that short span, we made a common bond that life was
good once more. It nearly was.
By the time things went bad most of the crew were too far into
their cups to notice.
“Bald Tom went out to the privy some ten minutes ago. He has
been gone too long,” the First Mate said to me.
“’Tis not unknown for him to linger over a shit,” I replied.
“Aye sir,” the First Mate said, “But even for Tom this is too long.
Especially when there is free ale and meat on the table.”
He had it right. Bald Tom often loitered over his ablutions. He
was teased mightily over it, but this was overlong, even for him. The
Pastor and I, being the two men least addled by the drink, went out
into the night in search of him.
The cold was like a wall, hitting us square in our faces and taking
our very breath.
“Let us leave him to his business,” I said. “’Tis too cold to go
looking for the steam from his doings.”
In truth, it was not just the cold that had me trembling. I had the
fear of the Devil in me. The memory of the fire inside the tavern was
fading fast.
But the Pastor was made of far sterner stuff than I.
“Let us continue and look a little further. He may be in trouble,”
the Pastor said. “And there is evil afoot tonight. I feel it in my bones.”
“Then have at it man, but make it quick. Already the cold bites at
my ankles. At the rate the men are drinking, there will be none left for
our return.”
He led the way round the corner of the tavern, tall and proud in
his faith while I cowered, cowed behind him like a whipped scoundrel.
I am not sure if the Pastor prayed, but I was surely calling on God’s
protection more than enough for both of our souls.
Bald Tom will be on the privy for the rest of eternity. We found
him in the shed, squatting over the rough hole in the ground, skirts
pulled up around his waist. He was no more a cold block of flesh;
frozen solid in mid-shit. Had the Pastor not been there I believe I may
have laughed…in jest at first, then later in hysteria.
“Lets us have him inside by the fire,” the Pastor said. “Mayhap
he can yet be revived.”
I nay-sayed him.
“Leave him be. He is deader than anything I have ever clapped
eyes on. Deader even than Jim McLean of Banchory, and he had his
head taken off by a corsair.”
The Pastor stood over the body to say the words that would speed
Bald Tom to paradise, but I had known the man well. I’m certain that
the resting place of his soul would be more than warm enough to thaw
any part of him that was yet frozen after the journey.
The Pastor was taking overlong over the formalities, while all I
could think about was the fire in the hearth, and a flagon of spiced
rum. I was about to turn away when it suddenly got colder…colder
even than the time the sea had frozen around us off Trinity Bay in
Newfoundland and we’d been locked in place for a month with naught
but salted fish to sustain us. Ice formed in my beard. It crackled to the
touch. The last half-inch of my moustache came away in one piece in
my palm.
We looked at each other, the Pastor and I. I hope my own eyes
held less abject fear than I saw in his, but I cannot guarantee it.
 “Have you finished telling the Lord of Bald Tom’s piety?” I asked,
speaking loudly, as if the very sound of my voice would keep the cold
at bay.
“That I have Captain,” he replied. “But it is my own soul that
concerns me at this moment.”
“I have found that a flagon of spiced rum is good for most things
that ail the soul,” I replied.
“Then let us retire within, and you can show me,” the Pastor
said. “For it is colder than a fisher-wife’s teats out here.”
Outside the shed something moved, a shuffling, stumbling. Then
came a moan, as of a man in pain.
The Pastor instinctively moved to help and stepped outside.
“No,” I called. I put out a hand.
He was dead before I could help him. He froze, stiff as a board in
the wink of an eye. One cold eye stared up at me in amazement before
it too froze, all sight going as life left him. He fell, solid as a stone,
part in, part out of the privy door.
The sound of shuffling got louder. The cold cut deep, reaching my
bones. I am ashamed to say it, but I was mightily afraid, struck
immobile with terror as whatever manner of thing was beyond the
door crept closer. The noise stopped just outside the shed door.
Something pulled the Pastor out of the shed, his body scraping on the
ground like a slab being slid from a tomb.
I bent, thinking to take his arms, to try to counter whatever had
him. But one touch of his bare hand was enough for the cold to burn
my palm to the bone. Whatever had the Pastor tugged at him again.
The body was dragged away out of my sight. But not out of hearing.
My ears were assailed with cracking and crunching…teeth
grating on icy flesh and bone. I could not tell you what manner of
creature made such foul sounds, for I could not bring myself to look.
The sounds continued for some time while the cold crept ever
deeper through me until finally I could take it no longer…I squeezed
past Bald Tom and made an attack on the shed’s rear wall.
The noises of feeding stopped. Behind me the privy door creaked
as something pushed inside.
I renewed my attack on the wall, kicking and punching like a man
possessed. The wall fell before me like dry kindling. There was a single
 moment of icy cold, a breath on the back of my neck that I will
remember for whatever life I have left, then I was away and heading
for the tavern as fast as my legs would take me.

***

Cole put the journal down…his hands trembled so much he could

hardly hold it. He took a long swig of his beer.
It’s there. In black and white. He was nearly taken. They WERE here,
even then.
He’d always known that Hunter’s Dock was special. For the last year
he’d been trying to prove it. Now it looked like he had a chance.

***

Johnny Campbell sat in the WEIR radio van dreaming of network

glory. He’d been dreaming about it for a long time now…since way back in
junior high school when he used to practice mock reporting of his family’s
habits at the kitchen table, from high school when he must have written
thousands of letters to stations begging for a job, any job, and through to
more recently, where he had a job, but glory still seemed some ways away.
At this moment it seemed like an awfully long way away. When he’d
answered the ad for WEIR, they’d promised excitement at the cutting edge
of the modern media. He hadn’t realized that meant sharing a cold, draughty
van on an empty dockside with a man who had the eating habits of a
starving mongrel.
“Tell me again,” he said to Frank Riardon in the passenger seat. “How
exactly is this helping us up the greasy pole to network stardom?”
Frank turned and gave him a big shit-eating grin full of burger with
extra ketchup. It was a full minute before he’d finished chewing enough to
speak. By then a goodly portion of the ketchup had found its way onto his
jacket.
“As I said earlier,” Frank said, wiping the stain in to blend with the
others already there. “All the other broadcasters are either down at the
morgue or outside the police precinct.”
“That’s where the action is,” Johnny protested.
 “Yes,” Frank said, as if explaining something to a particularly stubborn
child. “And if anything happens there, everybody gets the same story.
Nobody gets happy. Whereas if something happens here…”
Frank waved his arms expansively, sending a scattering of shredded
lettuce across the dashboard from his rapidly disintegrating burger.
Johnny picked a stray piece of greenery from his sleeve and deposited
it in the ashtray. He pointed out over the empty dock.
“There’s only that one bored cop here. He’s hardly going to start
anything, is he?”
“Oh ye of little faith,” Frank said through another mouthful of burger.
“It’s obvious that your brain needs stimulation. ‘Frankenstein’ to ‘Top Gun’
in two.”
“Too easy,” Johnny replied. “Karloff to Nicholson to Cruise.”
Frank smiled, a film of ketchup oozing across his upper lip
“By the end of the night I expect you to come up with one that’ll
stump me…otherwise you get to buy breakfast.”
They’d been playing this game off and on for about a year now. Frank
usually had the edge due to an almost encyclopediac knowledge of movies,
but Johnny knew more about Frank’s one blind spot—westerns.
He worked on getting from ‘Angels with Dirty Faces’ to “The
Unforgiven.”
Frank finally finished the last of the burger and swept the remains off
the dashboard to join the flourishing communities of previous meals on the
floor. He saw Johnny looking.
“It’s the maid’s day off,” he said, smiling. “Besides, you should be
more worried about how you’re going to pay for my breakfast. I hope
you’re working on it?” he asked.
“Yep. I hope you’ve got plenty of cash yourself,” Johnny replied. “I’ll
have two full cooked breakfasts if you’re going to keep me out here all
night.”
Frank took a chocolate bar from his shirt pocket. When he opened it
Johnny noticed that it was partially melted, brown stains immediately
covering first Frank’s fingers, then the front of his jacket.
“We’ll give it till midnight,” Frank said. “All the cool stuff always
happens at midnight.”
Frank went quiet for a while. Johnny went back to trying to come up
with the film links.
 His mind kept wandering. They’d arrived late at the scene, after the
cops had cordoned everything off. Frank had managed to get some opinion
pieces from the usual kooks in the crowd, but had wanted more. While
Frank went looking for a cop, Johnny had sat in the van, looking out over
the scene to where they were loading one of the victims onto a stretcher.
And that’s when he’d seen it. When they lifted the stretcher, one of the
medics had failed to get a proper grip. The yellow sheet slipped. An arm
slid into view…a blue arm, with a hand showing black nails, an arm that
made a noise of stone grating against stone as the hand hit the ground.
The medics had tucked it back away under the sheet, but it was too late
for Johnny…the image was already seared into his mind. He tried to think
of films, of Eastwood or Van Cleef, Leone and Morricone, without much
success. He was grateful when Frank broke the silence.
“Say. When was the last time that cop did the rounds?”
“About an hour ago,” Johnny replied. “Why?”
“Beat cops like to be regular. Something’s up. Watch the shop…I’m
off for a look-see.”
“Frank. Wait.”
The older man was already out of the door and away across the dock.
“For a man who says he’s watched so many movies, you know jack-
shit about horror,” Johnny shouted after him, but he got no response. He
watched Frank slip under the cordon and cross the dockside to stand above
the dig.
Johnny rolled down his window and shouted out.
“Can you see anything?”
Frank turned, made an exaggerated Shhh with his finger. He headed
down into the dig out of sight.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Johnny waited, for a gunshot, or a strangled scream, but there was no
noise. He put his hand on the door handle. He drew it back immediately…
almost burned by the searing cold.
A fine spider’s web of frost painted itself on the windshield in front of
him. He cranked up the heater, setting it to demist. The windscreen slowly
cleared, but only long enough to show a whirling snowstorm rise like a
waterspout from the dig, rising up in slow-mo, a twister made of snow,
rolling and tumbling silently above.
 It climbed high up over the dock, then, collapsing on itself, dumped
snow on the van, as if someone had just emptied a dumper truck full of
earth. The van shook, and the suspension squealed.
Nothing could be seen out of the window but a wall of snow.
He tried the wipers. They strained, moved an inch, clearing just
enough to show Johnny that it was still snowing heavily outside.
The weight of snow pushed back against the wipers, which strained
and wheezed with the effort. After a second Johnny smelled burning. Red
lights flashed on the dash…he’d just burnt out some of the electrics. The
wipers died with a final whistle. Snow filled the whole windscreen.
Johnny put the van into reverse and stamped his foot on the
accelerator. Wheels spun and the engine roared like a trapped beast, but it
was going nowhere. He kept his foot pushed down, hard.
The engine roared, coughed twice. Everything went suddenly quiet as
it cut out. The heater groaned in sympathy, before it too failed. Cold seeped
through the door, digging deep into Johnny’s bones.
Well, you wanted something to happen. Now what are you going to do
hotshot?
The radio buzzed.
“Johnny? Frank? Anybody there? You’d better not be sleeping on the
job.”
Johnny made to reach for it, but an icy lethargy had him in its grip.
Outside the driver’s side window something moved in the snow, a
human shape, a greyer shadow amid the white.
“Frankie? Help me!” Johnny whispered.
The van door was torn open and the blizzard poured in. A myriad of
biting flakes, as sharp as razors, blasted Johnny’s face into raw meat.
His sight began to dim.
The looming figure moved to fill the doorway.
“Frank?” Johnny breathed.
The last thing Johnny saw was a closeup of the stained jacket as Frank
climbed into the cab.
“Bringing up Baby to Tombstone in two,” he screamed.
But Frank wasn’t listening any more.
And soon neither was Johnny.
 ***

“Let me get this straight. You left me standing like a dork on the dock
while you left the scene. Now you’ve brought me all the way out here to
look at that?”
Mike Kaminski looked down at the dried-up thing on the trestle below
him.
Jackie Donnelly nodded.
“I’m sorry about walking off earlier…it was the shock.”
“Just like the one I got when the Lieutenant found out,” Mike replied.
“I really am sorry. But I think this relates to your case.”
“I might think so too, if I had any idea what I was looking at?”
“It’s a heart.”
“That thing?”
Jackie nodded in reply.
“It’s a human heart. And someone has bitten into it.”
Mike bent for a closer look.
“I’m no archaeologist, but it looks like an avocado stone with a chunk
missing.”
“Trust me, I’m a doctor,” Jackie said. “This used to be beating inside a
human being.”
“But how does it fit into the case? This is centuries old, right?”
Jackie nodded again.
“Bear with me. Yesterday this was inside a skeleton we brought up
from the dig.”
“A skeleton? Did anybody call the cops?”
“Hundreds of years old…remember? We brought it straight here for
analysis. These things are fragile and need to be handled with care.”
Mike looked down at the strewn bones.
“Looks like someone forgot that bit.”
“And if I find out who, I’ll rip them apart in the same way,” Jackie
said. “Someone tore the skeleton to bits looking for something. They found
this heart…and the bite is fresh…it was done sometime in the last twenty
four hours.”
Mike began to pay attention.
First he had to try very hard to lift his eyes from Jackie’s shirt. The top
three buttons were undone. She showed off an impressive expanse of
cleavage. It seemed as if Mina’s voice played in his head.
Looky, but no nooky.
He smiled at the memory, and then realized that was the wrong thing
to do, given where he was staring.
She saw him looking and gave him a thin smile back.
“Tell me when you’re coming over next time…I’ll wear a bikini.”
“I didn’t…”
“Yes, you did.”
She pulled at the shirt, covering the view as best she could.
“Look, I’m sorry…”Mike started.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. She pointed back at the heart. “This is
what’s important.”
“Does your boss, North, think so?”
“He hasn’t seen it yet. Nobody’s seen him today.”
“I’ve been trying to track him down myself,” Mike said. “We get
suspicious when somebody who knew the victims disappears just after a
murder.”
“You think Dick’s a suspect? No…You’re wrong there. Dick’s a
pussycat. A very weird, focused pussycat.”
“Weird in what way?”
Jackie suddenly backtracked.
“Oh, I didn’t mean…”
Mike had seen it in witnesses many times. They say a bit too much,
realize they might have implicated a friend, and then try to repair the
damage. It was time for the softly, softly approach.
“We just need to contact him,” Mike said. “To make sure he’s okay. If
we’re to find him it would be good to know his habits.”
“Dick has many habits, detective. Most of them bad.”
She went back to staring at the dried up heart.
“He’s a bad boss? A bit of a tyrant?”
She shook her head.
“No. But he’s got high standards. And he takes his subject very
seriously. He believes we can’t understand archaeology unless we
experience what the people we’re studying have experienced.”
“How does he manage that?”
Something tickled at the back of Mike’s mind, his cop instincts kicking
in at the sniff of a lead.
 “Take last year for example,” Jackie continued. “We were down in the
Yucatan cleaning up after an oil company almost flattened a three-thousand-
year-old Mayan mausoleum.
“Dick deciphered some writings that showed the indigenous people ate
the genitals of bulls raw to give them strength. Next thing we know he’s
down the local market haggling over a pizzle. Later, after he’d chopped it
up into little pieces, he tried to get us all to have a taste, telling us it was a
local delicacy.”
“Did anybody take him up on it?”
“No. Everybody knew his tastes for the exotic. We were all suspicious.
That didn’t stop him from wolfing the lot down though. He said it was
delicious. He swore it did actually make him stronger.”
Mike looked at the dried up piece of flesh. The tickle was stronger
now.
“Did you ever see him eat anything else that was exotic?”
Jackie saw where he looked.
“No,” she said. “You can’t think…?”
“These aren’t the only bite marks I’ve seen today,” he said.
He took out his cell phone and hit his speed-dial number for Mina. She
answered on the second ring.
“Hi, big boy.”
He’d forgotten to turn the volume down…her voice came through loud
and clear. He saw the smile that curled on Jackie’s lips.
“Big boy, huh? Consider us even.”
He walked away from the trestle to the far end of the lab.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“About to head home for a shower,” she said. “Care to join me?”
“Hold that thought till later,” he said. “I’m still working. Any ID on
the biter yet?”
“Nope. The search came up blank. Either he’s not been in trouble
before, or he’s not from around here. Jon’s checking out the national
database, but that takes a while.”
“I’ve got something that might speed things up. Can you bring some
pictures of the wounds and meet me at the campus Archaeology
department. I’ve got something you need to see.”
“A match?”
“Maybe.”
 Mike’s radio crackled. It was the precinct. The voice at the other end
sounded concerned, maybe even panicky.
“Mike? We’ve got a situation developing at Hunter’s Dock. We need
you over there ASAP.”
“What’s going down?”
“Nobody knows yet. But we need you out there.”
“Mina?” he said into his phone. “I’ve caught a call. Come over here
anyway. My spider senses are tingling…I think we’re on to something.
You’ll be meeting one of the archaeologists, Jackie Donnelly. She’ll show
you what you need to see. I’ll catch up with you later.”
He hung up on Mina and looked towards the far end of the lab. Jackie
Donnelly stood, hunched over the finds.
“Did you get any of that?” he asked.
“Only the gist. Who’s Mina?”
“She’s in forensics, in charge of the bod…of the deceased. She’ll need
to see the bite marks.”
“The bodies were bitten?”
Mike nodded.
Jackie suddenly looked pale, eyes sunk back farther in her head. Mike
thought she might faint on him. He had already stretched out a hand to
steady her when she pulled herself together.
“How…?”Jackie started.
“Listen, I don’t have time. Mina will bring you up to speed. I’ve got to
go.”
“Go then, I’ll wait for your friend…big boy.”
He let her have that one; he was in too much of a hurry.
Five minutes later he was in his car, heading at high speed for the
docks.

***

Cole sat at the rack in the corner of his room trying to tune in to the
police band. Something was going on; he’d heard the sirens, watched the
cops speed past just below his window.
He had two choices; chase them on foot and possibly lose them, or
find out where they were going.
 The radio unit crackled. He’d bought it at a UFO conference years ago.
“It picks up everything,” the seller had said. “Police bands, Air Force, hell,
I’ve even heard broadcasts from the Black Helicopters over Dreamland.”
Cole knew at that moment that he had to have it, just as he also knew it was
illegal.
For most of the time he was afraid to use it.
But this is the big league now. Time to step up to the base and take a
swing.
He swung the dials. He got air traffic control from JFK, a pilot tug out
in the harbor waiting for instructions, and a traffic cop calling in a fender-
bender in Times Square. Finally he found the dispatch frequency he looked
for.
“All units. Please be advised. A security situation is in progress on
Hunter’s Dock.”
Security situation, my lardy ass. After last night it can only be more of
the same. Somebody else is going to get taken!
He got an extra sweater and his winter coat from the wardrobe before
heading for the door. He stopped to double check that the journal was still
in his satchel.
No way am I letting you out of my sight. No way, Jose.
He’d left the television running. Just as he opened the door, a special
bulletin interrupted the rolling news.
“Reports are coming in of freak weather conditions in the docklands
area. At present details are sketchy, but it seems that abnormally low
temperatures are being experienced over an ever-widening area. More news
as we get it.”
Not if I get there first, Cole thought. He left the apartment.
Five minutes later he was in a cab heading for the dock.
“Hunter’s Dock,” he said. “There’s an extra ten bucks in it if you can
get there in ten minutes.”
“Ambulance chaser,” the driver said. “Am I right or am I right? I heard
there was something big occurring. Cops, ambulances, frigging Special
Forces helicopters for all I know. And what does it say on the radio?
Abnormal frigging weather conditions, I’ll tell you something for nothing…
when I was a boy we never had no abnormal friggin’ weather. I blame the
A-bomb myself. All you have to do is look at the temperatures since. When
I was a boy…”
 Cole tuned him out. Cab drivers were like little old ladies. They never
really expect an answer. They just have to talk to remind themselves that
they are still alive.
He checked the contents of his satchel for the third time since leaving
the house. The journal was still there, alongside his notebook and a digital
camera.
Just in case.
He’d never been so excited. His breath came too fast. His head felt
light and floaty. He let out an involuntary moan.
“Hey. You all right back there?” the driver said. “You ain’t gonna die
on me or nothing are you? I had somebody die on me once. Big guy, looked
like a footballer. Coughed once and keeled over. I was balls-deep in
paperwork for a month. Do you like lawyers? I hate the scumbags. I had
that OJ Simpson in the cab one night. I can tell you a story or two. I
remember when…”
Cole tuned him out again. He took the journal from the satchel and
opened it, having to peer in the dim light to read the small neat writing.

***

Taken from the personal journal of John Fraser, Captain of the

Havenhome, a cargo vessel. Entry date 17th October, 1605. Transcribed and
annotated by Dick North, 17th March.

Once I made my escape from the privy I was too afeard to risk a
look backwards. If I had seen the Pastor’s fate I do believe I may have
given up my soul to the Lord there and then. But all I could see in my
mind was the roaring heat of the fire, a beacon calling me to safety. I
was close enough to hear the crew singing:
“There was a young lady from Brest,
Who had an enormous chest
You could place a whole city
On each of her titties
And hide a small hill in her vest.”
I mouthed along with the words. Although I was afraid to speak
them aloud, the very nature of them, reminding me of home and the
fireplace around the inn on the harbor of a summer’s evening, gave me
what strength I needed to keep moving.
I had a bad moment when my feet slipped, and threatened to give
way under me.
In my mind’s eye I saw something reach for me, something foul
and cold from the worst nightmare of my childhood. I felt its cold, dead
breath on my neck. I thought that my Maker had finally called for me.
I do believe I screamed, alone there in the dark. I may have lain
there, unable to move if I hadn’t at the very moment thought of you, my
dearest Lizzie. It was the memory of you on the dockside that got me
moving. I managed to scramble away and I burst like a fury into the
tavern.
Some of the crew turned and, on seeing me, laughed. But there
must have been a fell look in my eyes, for their laughter died on their
lips. The room fell suddenly quiet.
“What has happened, Cap’n,” the First Mate called.
I had no time to answer. I turned and slammed the oak door
behind me as soon as I was full inside, but even then I felt the cold
seep through the wood to my hands.
“Stoke the fire,” I called out.
No one moved. They were all stuck immobile by the shock of my
sudden entrance.
I backed away from the door as a silver sheen of hoar frost ran
across its surface.
“Where’s the Pastor? Where’s Bald Tom?” the voices cried.
“Dead,” I called out. “As you will be if you do not heed me. Stoke
the fire! It is all that will save us now.”
Young Isaac was having none of it. He was one of the ones who
had helped clear out the tavern earlier; he’d seen at first hand the
slaughter that had happened in this enclosed space.
“I’m not going to be taken like them others. If I’m to die, it will be
out in the open,” he called.
Before I could stop him he stepped forward and grabbed at the
iron door handle…and was immediately frozen in place, icing-white
like a grotesque cake decoration, mouth open in a mix of fear and
surprise, his tongue lying like a cold grey stone in the floor of his
mouth.
 The men stood stock still, staring at what had become of the
young deckhand.
“Stoke the bloody fire!” I called out once more. “Are you deaf as
well as witless?”
The cold leached through the door and started to reach for me.
And still they didn’t move.
“Have you forgotten those that we placed in the earth? Do you
want to be like them? Stoke that bloody fire!”
Finally the First Mate had the sense to respond.
“You heard the Cap’n. Stoke this fire, or I’ll throw you on
alongside the logs.”
Some of the men at last set to piling the hearthside logs on the fire
while the rest of us backed slowly away from the door.
The wood, and young Isaac, were by now covered in a good half-
inch of silver-grey ice, glistening red in the reflected firelight.
“Cap’n,” Jim Crawford said fearfully. “What is it?”
“Death,” I whispered. “As sure as eggs is eggs, ‘tis death for us
all, if we cannot get warm.”
I heard the First Mate call out for more fuel, but I could not take
my eyes from the encroaching edge of the ice.
The extent of it spread even as we watched, crawling along the
walls as if laid down by some invisible painter, creeping across the
floor towards our feet, tendrils reaching out, looking for prey.
As a man we stepped farther backwards, each of us trying to get
closer to the fire which roared at our backs but seemed to give out
little heat. In truth I have never felt such cold, not even in the far north
where the white bears roam. It was as if my very blood thickened in my
veins.
A strange lethargy began to take me. I took a step forward,
towards the door, then another. In my head I heard you, my dear Lizzie,
calling me in from the field, calling me home for supper.
“Captain!” the First Mate cried. He pulled me back towards the
fire, putting his own body between myself and the creeping ice.
“Best warm your hands,” he said. “It’s turned a bit on the nippy
side.”
I turned and faced the fire, feeling the heat tighten the skin across
my cheeks. A layer of frost that had formed on my hands melted away.
My blood began to move again so that I felt I might live, at least for a
short time longer.
“Tell me, Cap’n,” Stumpy Jack said. “Is it Old Nick himself come
to take us? I always heard tell that fire was more in his line of work.”
“I can’t tell you that, Jack,” I replied. “But there’s more than just
Mother Nature working agin’ us this night. Stoke the fire, man. Keep
stoking the fire. It’s all that stands between us and a cold grave.”
I helped Stumpy Jack load more wood on the flames. The fire had
grown so as to fill the grate. We had to stand back and throw the fuel
on, but still the ice crept across the room towards us and we were
forced to huddle ever closer together.
“It’s getting right cozy,” Jim Crawford said. “When I dreamt of
cuddling up with a warm body in this tavern, it wasn’t any of you I had
in mind.”
“I don’t know about that,” someone called back. “Give me a
shilling and I’ll do for you. I’ll even take me wooden teeth out.”
That bought a round of laughter, and raised our spirits. But not
for long.
One by one the men fell silent, each lost in his own thoughts.
There was naught to be heard but the crackle of the logs as the
fire ate through fuel as fast as we could throw it on the flames.
The spread of the ice slowed.
Finally it stopped, a mere six inches from our feet. It did not
retreat, but neither did it encroach any farther. I began to believe that
we might yet survive the night.
“Is it over, Cap’n?” the First Mate asked.
“Mayhap. Just pray it does not get any colder,” I said. “And we
may yet see the morning.”
And then it came, the thing I had been dreading, the thing that
had taken the Pastor.
From outside we could hear shuffling, and a peculiar grunting,
like a pig after truffles.
The wind outside rose, from nowhere to a howling, shrieking gale.
Heavy sleet lashed like musket-shot against the shutters. The ice
crawled once more, began to creep ever faster towards our feet.
“If you have any good ideas, Captain…?”the First Mate said.
 “Truly, I can think of none, for what Christian man has ever
endured such deviltry?” I replied.
“Mayhap we should ask the Lord for some help?” the Mate said
softly.
I asked myself what the Pastor might do, were he still with us.
It took all of my strength, but I took myself farther from the fire. I
put my own body between the ice and my crewmen.
“Lads, we are in a dark place,” I started. “I’ve led you into
trouble aplenty afore now, and I’ve always brought you home safe. And
so I will again. With a little help. The Pastor has gone to join his Lord,
but mayhap he’ll turn back and lend us a hand if he hears us calling.
Let us pray.”
I led the men in the Paternoster. Their voices were strong and
clear, but mine own faltered. I had been watching the ice.
Our appeals to our maker made not a jot of difference. The ice
thickened, inexorably, throughout the room. It still crept slowly
forward, and had almost reached all the way to the toe of my shoes.
In the end it was the practical things that helped most…we
rotated the men round so that all would have a spell in front of the fire,
but even that proved of little worth as the supply of logs dwindled and
the fire burned down.
“Break up the trestles and tables, lads,” the Mate shouted.
“Everything that’s not breathing goes on the fire.”
We burnt whatever we could find around us, from chairs and
tables to the very leg of pork we had been eating earlier. The smell of
cooking meat filled the tavern, but none of us were hungry.
We huddled together until you couldn’t have squeezed a sheet of
paper between us. In that way we kept ourselves alive.
But still the ice crept forward.
“Keep moving, men,” the First Mate shouted. “Give everyone a
sight of the fire.”
The wind howled up a notch. The long night went on.
We shuffled in our tight huddle, looking forward only to our next
spell in front of the fire, dreading our next pass in front of the door.
I came to believe there were voices in the wind, soft voices
whispering hopes of peace and warmer climes if I would only close my
eyes and allow myself to dream.
 At other times I found myself talking to you, Lizzie, saying all the
things I plan to say on my return, if I am spared long enough to see
that day.
At some point in that long night we forgot to shuffle, each of us
lost in our own icy hell. After a while no one stoked the fire. The ice
crept ever closer.
“Goodbye, Jennie,” I heard the First Mate whisper, which was
passing strange, as his wife was named Charlotte. That was the last I
heard. I fell into an icy black hole that had no bottom.
An eternity later I woke, from a dream of sun and hot sand into a
nightmare of icy death.
At first I thought myself back in Aberdeen in my own bed,
wrapped and swaddled in a thick quilt against a winter’s morning.
Then I moved.
A cold blue hand fell onto my face.
It was no bed sheet I lay under…it was the dead, frozen bodies of
my crew. They had done their last duty to me, keeping me alive through
the night.
I crawled, on hands and knees like a whipped dog, pushing myself
through the blue dead forest of my crewmates limbs, promising the
Lord that I’d be his faithful servant if he’d only but grant me one final
glimpse of warm sun on green pastures.
The Lord finally heard me. I dragged my body clear and stood in
front of the dying embers of the fire, tears blinding me as I surveyed
the frozen bodies of my crew.
There came a moan from within the pile.
“Cap’n,” the First Mate cried. “Are we in hell?”
I reached into the pile and found his warm hand. He dragged
himself out as I used what paltry strength I had left to help his escape.
“Not in hell,” I said as I lifted him to his feet. “But as close as
mortal man should get.”
More groans rose from the pile of frozen flesh.
Of thirty men who entered the tavern the night before, only six of
us pulled ourselves from the tangled pile and out into the near-
forgotten warmth of a morning sun.
“Fuck me,” Stumpy Jack said, squinting in the sudden light. “I
ain’t been in a pickle near as bad as that since the son of John the
 Baker insulted the Prince of Prussia’s consort. I thought I was a goner
for sure.”
“We are all only here because of the Lord’s mercy,” the First
Mate said. “Have heart, boys. We may yet see hearth and home.”
“And Jennie?” I said.
The First Mate smiled.
“Don’t be telling the missus, Cap’n,” he said. “Jennie is a widow
in Liverpool…sort of a home from home, if you get my meaning?”
“Don’t worry,” Jim Crawford said. “We will ne’er get home
again, so no one will ever know.”
“Home again?” I said. “We may yet. But we must be strong if we
are to survive another night such as the last one.”
“As long as the sun shines, surely our strength will return,” the
First Mate said.
Indeed, the simple pleasure of the warmth of sunshine on my face
was already pushing the memory of the cold away. I no longer felt that
I might expire at any minute.
We stood, blinking, watching the ice and snow melt away with
unnatural rapidity until all that was left was a dampness on the ground
and the silent dead bodies of our brave shipmates back in the tavern.
And that was when we six made our vow.
“There will be no more hiding in locked taverns,” I said to them.
“We have lost too many friends and we will lose no more. We will
make our stand on the Havenhome. And this time we will be ready.”

***

And this time I’ll be ready, Cole Barter thought as the cab came to a
halt just outside the gates to the docks.
“This is as far as we go,” the driver said. “The cops have got it locked
up tight. Friggin cops…if they’re not sitting in the squad-room doing
nothing they’re out leaning on the innocent. Ten to one this is all just
another publicity stunt for the mayor’s office. I remember…”
“How much do I owe you?” Cole said, trying to head off another
anecdote.
“Six fifty…plus that ten you promised for getting you here faster.”
Cole paid up. The driver was still talking to himself as he pulled away.
 “I wouldn’t be surprised if the Feds were involved. Friggin Feds. I
remember when I worked Vegas…”
Cole turned away. For the first time saw the scrum of people.
The docks were already sealed off, with the cops maintaining a cordon.
A crowd ten deep swarmed among a small fleet of media vans, squad cars
and ambulances.
Cole’s heart sank.
I’m never going to get in there.

***

Mina Wong arrived in the University lab unannounced half an hour

later.
Jackie Donnelly didn’t know what to expect. Her ideas of police
forensics were clouded by “CSI” and Kate Scarpetta. Jackie sometimes
found the crimes being investigated a mite too gruesome, but she took great
delight in nitpicking over the science. When the detective said someone
from forensics was coming over she half-expected a buffed, glamorous
type, with a smile full of perfect teeth, a wardrobe of Armani suits and the
slightly supercilious manner of someone who had all the answers.
What she hadn’t expected was a short, stocky oriental thirty-something
female smoking a cheroot and wearing a Metallica T-shirt.
Mina saw Jackie looking.
“Hey. We were all college students once,” she said. “It just takes some
of us longer to grow out of it than others.”
“Amen to that, sister.”
Jackie nodded towards the bag that Mina carried over her shoulder.
“I don’t suppose you’ve got a beer in there? I’m due one.”
Mina smiled. Jackie realized that she’d just made a new friend.
“I can tell you’re a sister after my own heart. Tell you what,” Mina
said. “Let’s get the work out of the way, I’ll buy the beers, and you can tell
me if the Moose copped a look down your shirt?”
Jackie laughed loudly. It was as if a weight she’d been carrying all day
suddenly lifted away.
“You’ve got yourself a deal.”
“So what do you need me to look at?” Mina said.
 “They’re over here. We brought them up out of the dig yesterday, but
somebody has made a real mess of the finds.”
Mina put the cheroot out, clasped her hair back behind the nape of her
neck and put on a pair of Lennon-style glasses. Suddenly she looked more
like someone who might be a forensic expert.
Jackie took her to the trestle.
“Ah. Old bones…it makes a nice change from fresh ones. Mike said
there was something that had been bitten?”
“Over here,” Jackie said. She pointed at the heart. “It was torn from
the body, some time last night and…”
“And someone had a midnight Scooby-snack,” Mina finished. She
took a sheaf of pictures from her bag and compared them to the marks on
the heart.
“The Moose was right for once,” Mina said when she finally stood
back. “Whoever took the chunks out of the victims at the dig also took a
bite out of your heart here. I’d stake a beer on it.”
Jackie suddenly felt faint.
“Chunks? Out of the victims? They were mutilated? Dave was…“
Her world spun around her. Suddenly the trestle looked to be a long
way away. Jackie swayed, almost fell. She had to sit down. She slumped on
a lab stool and breathed deeply until her eyes were able to focus.
Mina handed her a cheroot.
“Here. Suck on this.”
Jackie took it, Mina lit it. Jackie sucked up a lungful. It felt like hot tar
in her mouth. When she inhaled she choked and her eyes watered. She
immediately coughed.
She handed it back to Mina.
“That is truly terrible.”
“Yep. But it got your brain back into gear. That’s its main use. I usually
smoke them after an autopsy to get rid of the smell.”
The thought of an autopsy made Jackie squeamish all over again.
“Look,” Mina said. “Just sit quietly for a bit. You’ve had a tough day.”
“I can’t stay quiet,” Jackie said in a small voice. “It’s when I’m quiet
that it hits me hardest.”
“I know the feeling,” Mina said. “Some nights I leave the radio on all
night, but I still hear them in my head; the people I have to look at every
day. Let me just call the Moose, then we’ll see what we can do about
getting you distracted.”
Mina took a cellular phone from her denim’s pocket and dialed. Jackie
heard the call ring away in the distance.
“Must be too busy,” Mina said, shutting the phone and putting it away
again. “Are you still up for that beer?”
“At this moment, I can’t think of anything better.”
Ten minutes later they were ensconced in a booth at “The Woodsman”
and laughing at the pretensions of anyone who’d build a plasticized hunting
lodge in the centre of the city.
“How did you find this place,” Jackie said.
“Mike brought me here a couple of weeks back,” Mina said. “The
Knicks were playing, and the place was full of policemen shouting at the
television. Mike thought it was just the right place for a date.”
She laughed, and Jackie laughed along. The knot in the pit of her
stomach was loosening. She looked around her.
“The Woodsman” wanted to be out in the wild, where air is fresh, men
are men, and anything that moves is fair game to be shot at. The owner had
made a collection of hunting memorabilia; bear traps, Inuit sealskin
costumes, stuffed grizzlies, whaling harpoons and much more filled all
available nooks and crannies.
The stuffed head of a very surprised deer looked down at them as they
clicked bottles together. Mina chugged the first straight down and
immediately ordered two more with a circular motion of her hand to the
barman.
“Drink up, Jackie. Tonight, the Moose is paying.”
“Does he know this yet?”
“No. It’s his penance for looking at your tits. He did…didn’t he?”
Jackie nodded, smiling.
Mina laughed loudly. That got her some attention from a group at the
bar. Two men left their bar stools and walked towards the women.
“Don’t bother, guys. We’re taken.” Jackie said, loudly enough for the
group still at the bar to hear.
“Yeah. With each other,” Mina said. She blew a kiss at Jackie. The pair
of them laughed again as the two men slunk back to their friends
accompanied by a wave of laughter.
 The barman came over with two fresh beers and left them on the table
without a comment.
“Thanks, Bob,” Mina called after him. “Always a pleasure.”
“You enjoy ribbing people, don’t you,” Jackie said.
Mina smiled broadly.
“What else is there to do with them?”
Jackie and Mina sat and sipped at their beer.
“So…you and Detective Kaminski? Have you been together long?”
Jackie asked.
“Early days yet,” Mina said. She knocked back most of her second
beer. “But he’s easy to train. I might keep him.”
“Is he as tough as he looks?”
“Nah. He’s a pussycat…a big cuddly pussycat. All I have to do is feed
him red meat and beer, tickle his belly every so often, and he’s a happy
tabby.”
Jackie laughed, but stopped abruptly.
I shouldn’t be enjoying myself. My friends are dead.
Mina must have seen something in her eyes. She leaned over and took
Jackie’s right hand between both of hers.
“Tell me.”
Jackie took a long slug of beer before replying.
“Those people you had down in the morgue this morning?”
“You knew them well?” Mina asked.
That one question was all it took. The floodgates opened. Hot tears
rolled down Jackie’s cheeks.
“I worked with them all for the past three years. And Dave…Dave
Jeffers, we were just starting to get close. He was a really sweet, quiet man.
He never hurt anyone…I just don’t understand.”
“There’s not much to understand,” Mina said softly. “I see it, every
day, the atrocities committed by people against people. I used to look for
reasons. But now I think the Vikings had it right…Eat, drink and be merry,
for tomorrow we die.”
She handed Jackie her second beer. Mina was already near the bottom
of hers. Jackie brushed away her tears and managed a wan smile.
“Aren’t you a bit short for a Valkyrie?”
Mina smiled back.
 “Yep. And not blonde enough either. But they’ll let me in to Valhalla,
or there’ll be trouble. Now get that beer down you. I feel a session coming
on, and I hate tying one on alone.”

***

Somebody had learned a lesson. This time the police cordon was
thrown up along the line of the dock gates themselves.
It didn’t matter much. It was still a full-scale media scrum. Mike had
to park three streets away and walk down to the scene.
“Let me through,” Mike shouted as he was faced with a wall of backs
in front of him. “I’m a cop.”
“Yeah, you and everybody else here, buddy,” a little old lady said.
“Take your chances with the rest of us.”
She dug elbows sharpened by decades of shopping trips into his side,
and pushed through ahead of him. Mike laughed and followed. He caught
up with her near the front. He had to show his badge a few times to get
through, but the old lady had managed to get to the front on will power and
stamina alone.
“Best view in the house for the lady,” Mike said to the beat cop at the
cordon as he slipped under it showing his badge.
But the old woman didn’t need his help. She was already in the front
row, straining over the barrier.
“So what’s up?” he heard her ask. “Is there any blood?”
Mike was always amazed at the capacity of the general public for the
misfortune of others. Every crime scene got them; the bigger the crime the
bigger the crowd, some eating popcorn as if they were at home watching a
movie, others with camcorders and cameras capturing the moment to watch
over and over again at home or to show their friends. They chatted among
themselves, like teenagers in a cinema queue. They bitched and cursed
when there was nothing to see, as if looking at someone else’s misery was
their God-given right. Last night’s news had obviously spread. The prospect
of more carnage on the docks had brought them out in force. The beat cops
were having a hard time controlling the situation.
The young cop who had found the bodies the night before manned the
gate in Old Tom’s place. He looked flustered and harassed.
 “Okay, son,” Mike said, flashing his badge in case he wasn’t
recognized. “Looks like you got handed the wrong beat this week. What
have we got tonight?”
“Nobody seems to know,” the young cop said. If anything he looked
paler than the night before, more likely to burst into tears. “Three of your
guys went down there twenty minutes ago, but no one has come back yet.”
Mike looked around. Just in front of the cordon, two ambulances stood
on the dock, their crews huddled over steaming cups of coffee.
“Any casualties?”
The young cop shrugged.
“Nothing that’s been reported here. And after last night, I’m not that
worried about having a closer look out on the dock, know what I mean,
Detective?”
Mike nodded grimly.
“Me too. I’d rather be at home with a warm woman and a cold beer.
Just keep the cordon up,” he said. “And save me a coffee.”
Mike headed out towards Hunter’s Dock.
He didn’t have to go that far. By the time he turned past the old timber
yard and warehouse it was immediately apparent there was a problem. He
stopped, mouth open, stunned into immobility by the sheer impossibility of
the view in front of him.
Hunter’s Dock was lost from sight, caught inside a blizzard so dense,
so compact, that it looked like someone had thrown a glass dome over the
dock, filled it with snow, then given it a good shake.
As Mike walked closer, soft snow whirled around him. Cold seeped in
from his feet upwards. Everything was deathly quiet except for a soft,
whistling wind, belying the fact that, on Hunter’s Dock, the snow was
already a foot deep. If any other detectives had come out this way, there was
no sign of them now.
It’s getting bigger, Mike thought.
The silent wall of snow crept closer, the cold getting sharper, gnawing
deep, forcing Mike to step backwards.
Deep in the snow lumbering shapes were just visible, darker shadows
against the white swirling wall. There were two of them, tall, man-shaped.
They stood still, as if waiting.
“NYPD,” Mike shouted. “Identify yourselves.”
 There was no reply. The whirlwind of snow shifted. The shapes
disappeared into the deep white void.
A scream rent the air, from deep in the storm. The hairs at the nape of
Mike’s neck rose up. It sounded like someone was being tortured in there.
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.”
Jackie and Mina stared at each other. Jackie saw the same questioning
look in Mina’s eyes that she felt.
Jackie started to speak, but Mina put her finger to her lips…there was
more yet to come.
The bar fell quiet for a second, before the newscaster came back on.
“We…eh…we seem to be having technical difficulties at the scene.
We’ll try to get back to Gail later. Let’s see if our eye-in-the-sky can shed
some light on it for us. Al, what can you see from up there?”
“Well, Kate, it’s all a bit confusing. It’s hard to make sense of what we
are looking at, for none of us have seen the like of it in a combined total of
thirty years in the sky above the island. We’re riding high above a twister,
albeit an extremely slow moving one, and it’s made entirely from snow. I
can’t tell you how or when it formed, but it is growing fast, is already
covering most of the south-side docks. It is spreading out over Manhattan
Island. I’d say it’s a night to be wrapping up warm and staying indoors.”
“We’ve had reports of numerous casualties on the ground, Al. Can you
confirm or deny that?”
“That’s a negative on that one, Kate. All we can see is snow. And it’s
getting closer.” The man’s voice rose in panic. “It’s getting a bit too close.
Climb. Climb.”
A scream rose, but was quickly cut off. Metal screeched.
Silence fell in the bar.
 From where Jackie sat she could just about see the faces of the men at
the bar. Their stunned, wide-eyed look told her all she needed to know.
Anything that could make that lot ignore their beer for any length of time
just had to be bad news.
“Christ. It’s heading this way,” one of the men at the bar shouted.
Everyone who was sitting in the bar area left at a run, their footsteps
echoing up the stairs out of the basement bar, like a manic drummer
warming up for a gig.
“Go check it out,” Mina said to Jackie. The oriental woman took out
her cell phone. “I’ll check in with Mike and see if he knows anything.”
Jackie went slowly up the basement steps, following behind the crowd.
A cold breeze blew through the open door that swung shut at the top of the
stairs.
Outside the air was full of the noise of honking horns and revving
engines. Once she got to the top Jackie pushed the door open farther. She
looked out onto a scene of pandemonium.
Light flurries of snow danced in the air above a grid-locked street.
Traffic was at a standstill. Tempers flared.
One driver got out of his car and pounded a younger man’s head
against the side of a yellow cab. Blood flowed, too red against the white,
but no one did anything to stop the man, even when the younger man
slumped to the ground, leaving a bloody smear down the bonnet of the taxi.
A mother carrying a small child was knocked from her feet, the child
crushed to the snow beneath her. Jackie stepped onto the sidewalk, thinking
to help, but by then the woman had already lifted the child and was up and
away. The last Jackie saw was the woman’s back, but she heard the bawling
of the baby for a long time afterwards. It sounded like death.
Pedestrians scurried, almost running, along the sidewalk from her
right-hand side, casting nervous glances over their shoulders. Jackie stepped
farther out onto the sidewalk and looked up the street.
A wall of snow bore down on her, a swirling cloud of dancing spiral
vortices, so white it hurt the eyes to look at it. Beneath the cloud car roofs
crumpled, as if stepped on by a giant foot.
Screams joined the cacophony. Cars trying to escape slammed into the
cars in front of them. Car alarms and horns joined in, along with the sound
of bending fenders and breaking glass.
The wind rose, from a scream to a howling gale.
 Jackie stepped back inside the bar. She pulled closed the thick wooden
door behind her.
She almost didn’t make it. The wind wanted to wrestle her for it. For a
while it looked like it might win, but a momentary lull meant that Jackie
could pull the door tight. There was a satisfying “click” as the lock slid into
place.
The sound of screams was duller now, but they still echoed in her head
all the way down to the bar.
The place was empty except for the pair of women and the barman.
“It’s that bad?” Mina asked, looking Jackie in the eye.
Jackie could only nod.
“Unless you’ve got a Ski-Doo hiding in those denims, I’d say we’re
going to be here for a while. Did you get your detective?”
Mina shook her head.
“He’s still busy. I expect he’s got plenty to keep him occupied.”
“He went down to the docks, didn’t he?”
Mina nodded. If she felt worried she didn’t show any signs of it.
“He’s a big boy. He can look after himself. He’ll phone in if he gets
into too much trouble.”
“What’s going on here?” the barman asked. “Why all the panic? It’s
just a snowstorm. It’s not as if we don’t get one or two every year.”
“Oh, this is more than just a New York snowstorm,” Jackie said. “Take
my word for it…you’ll only get yourself killed if you go outside.”
“I’ve got no intention of leaving this bar,” the big man said. “Judging
by what we’ve been seeing, I reckon we’re safest staying right where we
are anyway.”
Outside the wind howled. Something heavy thudded into the top door.
The lights in the bar trembled slightly.
Bob turned up the television volume. The happy jingle-jangle of a cell
phone advert filled the bar.
Calls-R-us. Calls-R-us. If you don’t pay, we can’t play.
“No sense in getting ourselves more worried than we need to,” the
barman said. “Can I get you ladies a drink?”
“Well,” Mina said. “If you’re planning to be here for a while, draw a
couple more beers and have one for yourself. We could be in for a long
stay.”
 The barman moved along the bar to get the beers and Jackie joined
Mina, sitting on a high stool with a view of the big screen.
“How bad is it?” Mina asked when Bob was down the far end.
Jackie told her what she’d seen outside. Mina whistled.
“Shouldn’t we get somewhere safe?” Jackie said.
“Bob’s probably right,” Mina replied. “We’re in a basement, with no
windows that can blow in on us. We’ve got plenty of food and drink on
hand, and a front row seat for the big television. Hunker down, kid. It could
be a long night.”
“I’ve always liked women who drink beer,” the barman said on his
return from the far end of the bar.
“I’m very glad to hear it,” Mina said. “No doubt they remind you of
your mother.”
Bob thought about taking offence, but after he took one look at Mina,
he decided discretion was the better part of valor.
Jackie took her drink in her hand, but didn’t raise it to her mouth.
Her head was still full of the sights and sounds of the road outside. She
couldn’t get the sound of the wailing baby out of her head, no matter how
loud the television noise became.
“Are you okay?” Mina asked.
Jackie nodded. She took a slug of the beer, but didn’t taste it.
“How does anarchy manage to descend so quickly?” she said.
“Human nature,” Mina said. “That, and the fact we’re New Yorkers.
Anarchy is closer here than most other places.”
At that the news came back on the big screen. Jackie turned to look.
The newsreader seemed flustered. There was puffiness around her eyes
that someone had tried to hide with hastily applied make up, as if she’d
been crying recently.
“Hello,” she began shakily. “This is Kate Blacklaw, reporting live for
MBC news. Our breaking story tonight…much of Manhattan is already
under a thick blanket of snow as a freak blizzard hits from out of nowhere.
We have no news as yet on casualties, but reports are coming in from all
over the island of ever worsening weather conditions. The snow is falling so
fast that it is difficult for us to contact our outside broadcast cameras, but
there are some hardy types who have found a spot to shelter from the storm.
We go over to Bill Havers, live in Central Park. As most of you know, Bill
is our weatherman, and if he wasn’t out there, he’d be up here, giving us
chapter and verse right about now. Bill, it looks like you finally got a
chance to get out of the studio?”
Bill Havers had a big grin on his face. He wore a tightly buttoned up
suit. He looked freshly washed and shaved, determined to make the most of
his chance at a live news broadcast.
“Yes Kate, as luck would have it I was down here doing a piece for a
station trailer.”
“I bet you wish you were back in the studio,”
“Not at all. I’m glad to be in front of this breaking story.”
His grin looked strangely out of place alongside the worried, drawn
faces of the group of youths gathered around him.
They looked like they had come straight from a basketball match.
None of them was wearing more than a thin sports vest, shorts and trainers.
They already looked colder than they’d ever been in their lives.
“I’m standing here in the shelter of a bandstand alongside a group of
maybe ten others who have been caught by surprise by the suddenness of
this storm. Tell me,” he said, thrusting a mike towards one youth. “How
does it feel?”
“How does it feel? What kind of dumbass question is that? Are you a
reporter or a social worker?”
“I’m Bill Havers, MBC News,”
“Never seen you before man. Where’s that chick Kate? She’s a hottie.”
“No, seriously,” Havers said.
“I’m not joking man,” the youth said. ”She can come and polish my
machinery anytime.”
He did a lascivious bump and grind with his hands at his groin.
Havers giggled nervously. He moved on to the next youth. The youth
had a huge grin on his face as he spoke, straight to camera.
“If you ask me how I feel I’ll shove that mike up your ass…thick end
first.”
Havers gulped down air and looked like a goldfish for several seconds
before he was able to articulate another question.
“Snow has already started falling around us here. Are you worried?”
Havers asked. He wasn’t quite so sure of himself now.
“Of course I’m worried. Do you think I’d be under here with a dip-shit
like you if I was feeling happy?”
“Do you think we are safe here?”
 “Now what kind of stupid question is that?” the youth said. “Are we
safe? It’s Central Park dick-wad. What do you think?”
The youth’s eyes suddenly went wide, looking at something over the
reporter’s left shoulder.
The camera panned round, just as the wall of snow fell on them. The
screen suddenly became a mad jumble of bodies and snow, tumbling as if in
a laundromat drier.
“Bill. Are you there?” the newscaster said, but no response came.
“Bill? Come back to us please?”
The camera picture settled. It was looking directly into Bill Havers’
frozen face.
He got the airtime that he’d wanted. His milky eyes peered into
millions of households, even as one of the youths, himself frozen solid yet
somehow still mobile, reached down, lifted the reporter’s hand, and bit off
two fingers.
Havers’ frost-blackened lips slowly raised into a smile before the
screen thankfully went black.
“Bob,” Mina said, dragging the horrified barman’s gaze away from the
big screen. “Get your heating cranked up as far as it will go. I’ve got a
feeling it’s about to get cold as hell down here.”

***

Mike Kaminski’s phone went off.

The thing that reached for him out of the snow paused, as if confused
by this new sound. It gave Mike the second he needed.
He turned, and threw himself forward, hoping he hadn’t moved too far
from the door.
He tumbled, rolling over on his left shoulder, his right hand reaching
for his gun even as he came out of the roll.
He’d judged it right; the tumble took him out of the warehouse. He
could just make out the dim silhouettes of the doors as he rolled past them.
He had a bad moment when his left shoe slipped. His leg almost gave
way beneath him, but he managed to get to his feet and turned, quick as he
could, gun pointing back towards the door. His finger tightened on the
trigger but he didn’t fire…there was still a chance that Brian Johnson might
come through after him.
 Nothing came through the doorway. All he could see was the thick,
churning white cloud.
“Brian!” he called out.
The snow swallowed the sound.
In his heart he knew it was too late. He’d seen the explosion of pink…
he’d seen the thing that the police officer had become. Brian Johnson hadn’t
stood a chance.
Any guilt Mike might feel about abandoning the big man was more
than assuaged by the fact that if he didn’t get moving, he’d be joining him
soon. Mike turned away and headed out over the dock.
The snow was less thick out here, where he was partially sheltered by
the bulk of the warehouse, but visibility was still less than ten yards.
There was no sign of any of Johnson’s men.
His phone had stopped ringing, but Mike would have had no time to
answer anyway. He used the wall of the warehouse to line up where he
thought he should be and set off at as fast a run as he could manage in the
ever-deepening snow.
The cold tugged at him, like a living thing trying to pull him down to
the ground.
I could die here.
The thought gave him impetus. He ran full pelt.
The snow was still thickening. Shadows moved in the swirling
whiteness, tall, dark shadows shaped like men, but every time Mike lifted
his gun they melted away back into the blizzard, until he felt unsure
whether he’d actually seen anything at all.
Mike pulled his thin jacket tight around his body, but it gave little
protection. The only warmth he got came from his own gasping breath.
Suddenly a shape loomed up ahead of him. He almost fired his pistol
before he realized it was the steel wall of a cargo container.
“Honest, Lieutenant, it came at me first,” he said, but couldn’t even
raise a laugh at his own expense.
Somewhere in the blizzard he’d veered left instead of heading straight
on. He’d walked off the dock, into the cargo storage area at the end.
There was a small city of containers at this end of the dock. Ships
came, dumped containers, and took others away. Lorries also brought
containers, and they too took others away. But somehow the number that
was left sitting on the dockside always seemed to grow.
 Mike had heard rumors of thirty smuggled refugees being found, ten
years later, their mummified bodies packed tight together in a crate that had
been buried under twenty others. On a night like this, all the old stories
seemed somehow more believable.
The large, rectangular boxes loomed over and around him, but at least
they provided some degree of protection, particularly where they were
stacked four high. The snow between the crates was little more than an inch
deep. Only a light flurry made it down the vertical metal alleys.
He needed to stop. His breath came in heavy gasps, cold air
threatening to chill his lungs on every inward breath. His pistol felt like it
was frozen solid against his palm.
He weaved in and out of the alleys between the crates until he got to a
point where the wind had dropped to no more than a slight breeze. The
snow was a mere dusting on the ground. Only then did he feel safe to slow
down. He came to a stop, slumped against one of the crates.
Mike leaned against the cold metal and tried to catch his breath. The
cold was nowhere near so intense here.
Feeling came back, at feet and fingers, bringing a dull ache ten times
worse than toothache. He holstered his pistol and rubbed his chest, as hard
as he could. It helped, but not a great deal. He knew that if he was to
survive he had to keep moving.
Besides, there was more than just the weather to worry him…there
was something with a cop’s uniform and a devil’s face out there that Mike
was trying very hard not to think about.
When he got moving his jacket rubbed against the metal of the cargo
container; a high rasping sound that made him acutely aware of the quiet.
There was no other noise but the crunch of snow underfoot, and the soft
wheeze of his breathing.
Now what, Mikey?
His policeman’s training had prepared him for most of what he’d
encounter out on the streets, but he wasn’t ready for this. “Zombie Icemen
Take Manhattan” might be a great idea for a popcorn movie, but Mike
didn’t fancy it much as a lifestyle choice. He wasn’t about to allow himself
to be cast in the role of “Anonymous Victim number one.” He had little
option but to head for the fastest way out of the docks.
At least that way I might have some chance of survival. If I stay here
I’ll be dead in twenty minutes.
 The containers loomed over him. They were still piled three and four
high in this corner of the dock, hundreds of them, all empty, waiting for the
good times to come back; the days when boats jostled for position on every
dock. Those days were so long ago that many of the containers were little
more than rusted hulks, leaving red runnels of paint flecks and rust on
Mike’s hands when he had to lean against them to maintain his balance on
the increasingly slippery ground.
He kept left as he went, trying to find a way through the maze, but
with little success. When he found a pair of footprints on the ground ahead
of him his heart sank.
I’m going in circles.
Then another thought struck him.
He bent to look at the prints. He wore trainers. These prints were from
heavy workmen’s boots, the deep tread clearly visible, freshly made in the
otherwise virgin snow. They were also a couple of sizes bigger, the prints
both wider and longer than any he would make.
There was somebody else out here with him.
Another survivor?
It could be one of Johnson’s men, taking refuge in the same way that
Mike had. He was pretty sure a good half-dozen of them had made it out of
the warehouse. None of them had been dressed for blizzard conditions.
They’d be in pretty much the same straits as Mike himself.
At first he considered calling out, but at the last moment held his
tongue.
Mama Kaminski didn’t raise any fools.
Instead he unholstered his gun again and moved forward.
At the next crossroads, when the trail of footsteps went right, Mike
went left, into an avenue with a covering of unbroken snow.
There was a loud clang from behind him.
Something heavy had just hit one of the crates. Mike looked around,
just in time to see a dark shadow slip into the darkness just out of sight.
He turned back to his path and ran once more, always trying to keep
left.
Several times he nearly lost his footing. Once he fell heavily, sending a
reverberating boom up and down the alley.
The fall didn’t slow him. Head down, he ran on, hoping at any moment
to come out onto the open dock.
 He came up short when he found two sets of tracks ahead of him…his
own and, overlaying them, the tread of the heavy work boots he’d seen
earlier.
There was no doubt about it now.
He was lost in the corridors between the crates.
And something tracked him.

***

Cole Barter was in hell.

Something was far wrong. In the scenario he’d been building up in his
mind people got abducted first. They only got turned into lifeless blocks of
ice when their return went wrong somehow. The frozen wasteland through
which he ran in a blind panic wasn’t supposed to be part of the equation.
It looked ever more likely that his abduction theory wasn’t going to
hold water. But that didn’t mean that something big wasn’t happening…and
Cole Barter was right in the thick of it. Despite the cold, and through his
fear, there was a spot of warmth inside him; he’d been busy with the digital
camera. He had proof of something at least.
They won’t be able to turn this down.
As he ran, he reviewed the pictures he’d snapped so far.
The first, as he ran out of the docks, was also one of the most graphic.
He had been almost shepherded into one of the tall alleyways between
warehouses, tripping and stumbling through frozen garbage and dead rats
when he’d come across the thing that made him stop. The picture
opportunity was just too good to miss, even with the blizzard close behind
him.
The big freeze had caught a hooker and one of her Johns by surprise
and frozen them in the act.
She was on her knees in front of the man, his dick in her hands. Cole’s
picture caught the moment when the sympathetic vibration set up by the
fleeing crowd caused the frozen flesh to fracture, the penis cracking open at
the root as the hooker fell away sideways.
The flash of the camera caught the John’s expression, pleasure, just
turning to pain as the ice storm hit him.
At least he didn’t live long enough to see the final outcome…he would
probably have died anyway, just from shock.
 The second picture was less spectacular, but more poignant.
It caught a little girl, no more than six years old, her face screaming
out behind the passenger window of an SUV. Cole had started to look for
something he could use to break the glass when he realized he was too late.
She was already dead; hands frozen solidly in place, palms against the
glass, eyes starting to go milky, but still showing the fear and terror that
were the last thoughts in her young mind.
Cole took the picture in the hope that, maybe, when this was all over,
someone might see it and recognize the girl; might at least know what had
happened to her.
The third wasn’t a planned picture at all.
Cole had the camera in his hand as he fled. The flash had gone off as
he inadvertently pressed the trigger.
The resulting picture showed a crowd of people fleeing through a
snowstorm, lit only by the yellow headlights of the immobilized cars that
they crushed past. Most of the people looked back over their shoulders, fear
large in their eyes, as if some monster bore down on them from behind.
Any one of those pictures would be enough to bring him some fame
and fortune should he survive, but the fourth…that was the one that almost
guaranteed a pay day.
He’d been running, no goal in sight other than to keep ahead of the
wall of snow, when he’d stumbled, been brought to his knees, then knocked
all the way to the ground, lost in a forest of feet and legs as the crowd
flowed around and over him.
He cried out as a booted foot caught him on the jaw. He tried to stand
and was immediately knocked over again.
Cold grabbed at him, even through the heavy overcoat. He put his left
hand out, palm down, on the ground, and pushed, but it slid away from him
on a slimy patch of garbage overturned by the mob. He fell back to the
ground, face forward.
He couldn’t find the strength to get his legs underneath him. Booted
feet trampled on his back each time he moved.
Each effort to rise tired him out further. Somebody stood on his right
ankle, the pain like a hot lance in his leg. He thought about lying down,
giving up completely. A hand grabbed his arm and lifted him up. He looked
up at his savior. It was the tall military man from the dockside.
“Come if you’re coming,” he said.
 Cole clasped his arm just above the wrist and pulled himself up, using
the tall man like a climbing pole. It seemed to take forever; like climbing a
particularly tall tree, but finally he got a hand on the man’s shoulder and
pulled himself to stand full upright.
“Thanks,” Cole whispered as he stood. “I know you didn’t have to
come back for me.”
“We never leave our men behind,” the tall man said, smiling. “That’s
something else I learned when I was being taught to be a thick, dimwitted
fucktard only capable of obeying orders.”
And that’s when it happened. A grey shape came from their left;
knocking into them both and sending Cole back to the ground.
He raised his hands, trying to defend himself, realized the camera was
there, and instinctively took the picture.
It captured the military gent and the binocular man grappling above
him.
The binocular man was no longer human. The pair of binoculars was
frozen tight against his coat, which itself seemed to have been welded
against his chest. His skin, where it could be seen, was grey-blue. Yellow
car-lights reflected off the icy white of his eyes as he bent the military
man’s neck backwards, mouth open just before teeth closed on the man’s
throat.
What the camera couldn’t show was what Cole would remember for
the rest of his life; the ice visibly creeping through the military man’s veins;
the anguish in the moan that escaped him as his throat was torn out, and the
white emptiness that came into his gaze as his eyeballs froze and the last bit
of humanity in him was frozen out.
Cole had little recollection of how he’d got from there to where he was
now—running through the streets of Manhattan with the last remnants of a
fleeing mob.
He vaguely remembered scrambling to his hands and knees, then to his
feet, but there had been no rational thought in it, just blind panic and animal
instinct. That, and his foresight in wearing the heavy clothing, was all that
had kept him alive so far.
But maybe not for much longer.
He ran along a sidewalk flanked by tall brownstone townhouses. The
wall of snow kept steady pace behind him.
 Cole knew that he’d be unable to run much farther…he felt tired, leg
weary.
He’d never been much of an athlete. A diet of beer and pizza over
many years wasn’t the best preparation for speedy escapes.
I have to find shelter. And fast.
The trouble was, nowhere was safe, not from this bitter cold.
Except somewhere really hot.
He realized he had been seeing the answer for minutes now, but not
taking in its significance. He’d run over several grates where the snow had
melted on impact; grates that steamed, that were heated from below by old
furnaces in basements.
Cole stopped at the next one he came to, wasting vital seconds as he
tried to lift the grate open. It refused to budge, held tight by a lock on the
underside. He tried to kick it open before he realized he did more damage to
his feet than he did to the grate.
Snow flurried around him like angry bees as he staggered on to the
next grate, then the one after that, the wall of snow getting ever closer
behind him.
All of the grates he tried were securely locked, resisting all of his
efforts to open them, even when he stood directly on top of one and jumped
up and down on the spot.
Open. Open, you bastard!
The metal of the grate either didn’t hear him, or didn’t care.
He was alone now, the rest of the crowd had moved on far ahead. He’d
burned his bridges…if the next grate didn’t open for him; the cold would
take him.
He stumbled along the sidewalk, the storm close on his heels.
Don’t fuck up, don’t fuck up, he thought, over and over.
Steam rose ahead of him. It was another grate.
He took one last picture behind him using the camera…just for luck…
and put it away deep in his coat pocket. He bent to the grate. He pulled at
the handle. It gave, but only for an inch or so, metal squealing against
metal.
The snow fell heavier, so fast that he had to clean an area around the
handle before he could have a second try.
Move, fucker. Come on! Move!
 Slowly, inch by tortuous inch, the grate opened. The cold metal of the
handle ate at his left hand, but Cole gripped tighter.
Nearly there.
Out of the corner of his eye Cole saw something come for him through
the fog, a frozen thing, white as a sheet except for the spatters of ketchup
and chocolate, mixed now with blood, smeared down the front of its jacket.
“Come on, you fucker!” Cole shouted.
With one last pull the grate came open.
Cole threw himself down into blackness.
The grate clattered shut behind him.
He hit the cellar floor, hard.
Unconscious now, he fell into an even deeper dark.

***

Mike Kaminski held his gun out in front of him as he walked, but the
snow was falling thicker. He had little chance of seeing something, never
mind hitting it.
The footprints in the snow ahead of him were mostly covered by the
fresh fall, so that he could no longer tell whether one or two people had
walked there.
He had long since lost count of the number of left turns he had made.
The cold seemed to have numbed his brain. He could think of little more
than putting one foot in front of the other, trudging towards a place he
didn’t know, heading from a place he couldn’t remember.
Something shifted in the snow ahead of him. His gun hand came up
instinctively and he let off a shot. There was no sound of bullet on metal, so
he was confident he’d hit something.
He was proved right second later when he came across a pinker patch
of snow. There was no blood, just small fragments of reddish pink ice
scattered over an area of several square feet.
Mike examined the snow closely.
There was a fresh trail of footprints leading away, but no blood spatter
to indicate how badly wounded his quarry might be.
Mike followed the prints.
He had no idea how to get out of his current predicament, but he was
determined not to go without a fight.
 The footprints ahead of him were fresher now, less snow piled on top.
I’m gaining on him.
Mile smiled grimly. Ice crackled at the corners of his lips.
He turned yet another left-hand corner…and found himself face to face
with Brian Johnson.
His old friend did not look to be in the best of health.
The big man stood, head down staring at his feet. He had a gaping
wound at his neck and another in his left forearm. The one at his neck might
have been a gunshot wound, but the one in his arm looked suspiciously like
a bite. Neither wound was bleeding.
“Hello, BJ,” Mike said. “I’ve seen you looking better.”
The big man’s head came up. A pair of solid white eyes stared back at
Kaminski from a pale blue face. If there was any sense of recognition there
Mike didn’t see it.
“Stay where you are, Brian,” Mike called out. “I don’t want to shoot
you.”
The thing that Johnson had become shuffled forward.
Mike saw with horror that it too had the black lips he’d seen on the cop
who’d lunged at him, the same blind, cold stare.
What the hell is this shit?
He didn’t have time to think. He crouched in the textbook firing
stance, trying to ignore the cold, trying to keep the barrel of the pistol
pointing straight at his target.
“Final warning, big man. I don’t want to shoot you, but I will if you
keep coming.”
It kept moving forward.
Even then Mike almost left it too late…he had to force himself to pull
the trigger.
He fired, hitting the big man full in the chest.
Shards of ice flew, sharp as glass, a large one catching Mike over the
left eye.
He felt blood pour, and was momentarily blinded.
The big man didn’t even slow.
Mike only had time for one more quick shot.
He blew an icy chunk off the side of the thing’s head, then had no time
to think as he was pulled into a cold bear hug, hands pinned to his sides.
Teeth headed for his neck.
 Mike had to whip his head away fast.
He tried a head-butt, then immediately regretted it.
It felt like he’d knocked his head against a brick wall.
Blood ran into his eyes from the earlier cut. Everything took on a red
haze, a haze that grew dimmer with every second he was held in the tight
grip.
Now I really am going to die.
He decided he wasn’t ready just yet.
He kicked out with his feet, using both at once, like a swimmer’s
butterfly stroke.
Ice gave way, frozen flesh crumbling under his onslaught.
But not enough.
The cold crept insidiously into his ribs, trying to reach his heart. He
was only just managing to keep his neck away from the thing’s mouth.
Mike stared into the dead, white eyes of his attacker.
“Brian,” he whispered, struggling to get the words out. “It’s Mikey. If
you don’t put me down I’m going to kick your ass. And you can go home
alone this time and explain to your mother.”
But the big man was no longer home.
The white marbles of the creature’s eyes stared back at Mike as the
bear hug tightened.
Mike’s kicking grew frantic, chunks of dead flesh and frozen clothing
sloughing from around the creature’s knees.
Grey crept in around the edges of his sight.
“I’ll never forgive you for this, big man,” he whispered.
“Look away, son,” a voice said to Mike’s right.
The stubby muzzle of a sawn-off shotgun pressed against the temples
of his attacker.
Mike turned away, just as the boom rang in his ears.
Brian Johnson’s head blew apart, red ice scattering and peppering
Mike’s right cheek. Then he fell away sideways, frozen arms still locked
around his waist.
The impact of the ground soon sorted that out. The icy body broke and
shattered, leaving Mike lying in a pile of pink slush.
Through a film of blood Mike saw a figure loom over him, a stocky
man wearing a huge overcoat, his face covered with wrappings of scarves.
Mike tried to scuttle away, but the figure put out a hand.
 “Christ, son,” his rescuer said, his voice muffled by the scarves. “You
look like shit. Come with me. We need to get you warmed up.”
Mike managed to lift himself off the ground and, leaning heavily on
the other man, allowed himself to be led away.
He had one last look at what remained of his friend.
A single cold, white eye looked back at him from out of the red ruin of
the blasted skull.

***

The Woodsman got colder by the second.

Jackie wished she’d worn some warmer clothing. She held a beer in
her hand, but she’d stopped drinking it. What she really wanted was
coffee…about a gallon of it might be just about enough to warm the chill
that had settled in the pit of her stomach.
“Can’t you crank that heater up any higher Bob?” Mina asked.
“Are you paying?”
“Hey, I’m a customer,” Mina said. “I’m always right.”
“That thing drinks oil like water,” the barman replied. “It’ll cost me a
small fortune.”
“You may not be around long enough to worry about it if you don’t get
some heat in here,” Mina replied. “Am I right, Jackie?”
Jackie didn’t answer. She stared at the big television screen trying to
make sense of what she saw.
A television crew was set up next to the Statue of Liberty, showing a
view out over Manhattan. Or, what would be Manhattan if she could see it.
A white blanket covered the city, a rolling, seething ball of snow, in an
almost perfect dome, sitting under an otherwise clear sky.
“That’s impossible,” she whispered.
“And yet, it’s there,” Mina replied.
“It looks like one of those snow scenes that kids love,” Jackie said.
“You know the ones I mean? The little house inside the glass, the one that
snows when you shake it?”
“Well, somebody just gave the island one hell of a shaking,” Mina
said.
Jackie couldn’t look away from the television.
“It’s not natural.”
 “No shit, Sherlock,” Bob said. “When was the last time the only
customers I had were a pair of broads?”
“Pinch yourself, Bob,” Mina said. “It might just be a dream.”
“No,” Bob replied, “In my dreams, the women are always naked…say
you couldn’t…?”
One look from Mina was enough to silence him.
Jackie was still staring at the television.
The picture cut back to the newsreader in the studio. She now wore a
quilted ski-jacket several sizes too big for her and a knitted cap with the
word “Jets” badly stitched into it.
“We don’t know how much longer we can stay on the air,” she said. “It
is getting increasingly cold here, but we’ll keep broadcasting as long as we
are able as this bewildering disaster unfolds. We have finally managed to
make contact with several crews out in the city, and we go live now to the
Empire State Building and Ewan Toms. Ewan, what’s the situation there?”
Ewan looked more like an Arctic explorer than a news reporter. He
wore a fur-lined, hooded jacket, the hood pulled forward so that his face
was partially obscured. His eyes were hidden behind an enormous pair of
goggles. He only took a scarf away from his mouth long enough to speak a
sentence at a time.
“Well, Kate, temperatures up here are at a new record low for
Manhattan. With the wind-chill factor, this is quite possibly the coldest
place on the planet tonight. This snowstorm holds the city in a frozen iron
fist.”
The camera panned out, showing the view from the viewing balcony.
The snow swarmed in vortices, dancing as if alive. A layer of ice, inches
thick, covered everything in sight.
“We are filming this with the crew inside the elevators,” Ewan said. “I
am standing no more than a foot beyond the elevator doors, but even here I
have to fight to stand up in the wind.
“I’m one of the lucky ones who had enough warning to get prepared
for the conditions, but on our way into the lobby here we passed many,
many people taking shelter, people off the streets who were simply
unprepared for the ferocity of the storm. Even in this building, once an icon
for all that was great about our nation, people are struggling to cope with
what is already being billed as ‘The Storm of the Millennium.’
 A gust of wind hit the man side on. He struggled hard to keep upright,
and needed two attempts to get enough breath to continue.
“Up here it is bad, but down below us, it must seem like hell on earth.
It is difficult to get any report from street level,” he said. “Most New
Yorkers have locked themselves in at home and have turned up the heaters.
The power utilities are drawing power from the national grid, but demand
has soared to such an extent that there are now fears of overload. The power
companies may be forced to introduce temporary blackouts, which would
bring yet more misery to an already beleaguered city.”
It cut back to the studio. Kate the newsreader looked just about as cold
as anybody Jackie had ever seen. Her skin was alabaster-white, her eyes
sunk deep like two black pebbles. She had difficulty lifting her notes to read
from them, due to the fact that she wore an enormous pair of fleece mittens.
Jackie was vaguely aware that Mina had moved off to do something at
the far end of the bar, but she couldn’t take her eyes off the screen for long
enough to check.
“We go over now to the Wall Street subway station,” the newsreader
said. Her breath steamed as she spoke. “Where hundreds of commuters
have been forced to seek shelter. Our reporter is Alice Brown.”
Alice Brown looked even colder than the reporter in the studio. Her
skin had a bluish tinge, and her lips were grey. She wore a thin cotton
jacket, and a short skirt, beneath which her legs looked like two white sticks
veined in blue marble.
Behind her was a crowd of huddled people, most of them also only
wearing normal working clothes, all of them showing the same blue tinge to
their flesh. Steam rose from them; from their mouths as they breathed, and
from their bodies where they were pressed tightly together.
Jackie had seen people with that same lost look on their faces before;
people dispossessed from their homes by earthquakes in Third World
countries with winter approaching. It was not a look she’d ever expected to
see so close to home.
“Kate, the situation here is getting desperate,” the reporter said. “The
cold is almost unbearable. The subway has stopped running, and there have
been no passenger service announcements for nearly twenty minutes now.
We are unable to venture above ground due to the ferocity of the storm
raging above us. We have no heating beyond what we can get from the
press of our bodies.
 “If the authorities can hear us, we beg of you, please get us some help.
There are three hundred men, women and children here. We are dying.
Please get some help.”
The reporter cried.
Jackie felt tears spring in sympathy at the corner of her own eyes.
Mina interrupted Jackie’s viewing. She handed Jackie some clothing
that felt rough to the touch.
“What are these?”
“Inuit winter clothing. I spotted them on display earlier.”
“We can’t wear these…can we?”
“If it’s good enough for the Arctic Circle, it’s good enough for here.”
Jackie stroked the clothes suspiciously. It felt like old leather.
“What’s it made of?”
“Sealskin and polar bear fur I should imagine.”
“But I’m a vegetarian.”
Mina laughed loudly.
“The beasts that were used to make these outfits died a long time ago. I
wouldn’t let it worry you.”
Mina pulled on a pair of sealskin leggings.
“Hey, those are antiques. They cost me two hundred bucks apiece,” the
barman said.
“So sue the city,” Mina replied. “And get yourself something warm to
wear. Judging by what we’ve seen on the screen so far, it’s going to get a
mite colder yet.”
Jackie watched the screen even as she dressed herself.
The old sealskin jacket crackled and complained as she pulled it on but
she felt immediately warmer…and suddenly guilty, watching the plight of
the people still trapped in the Wall Street station.
Alice Brown’s voice sounded dull, dead, devoid of emotion.
“The first child has just died. Her name was Jane Jacklands, she was
nine years old, and she was a Jersey girl, here on a school trip. Sixteen of
her classmates are now in critical condition. We have decided to venture
down into the tunnels, both in the hope of some residual heat, and also to
see if conditions are any better farther up the line…”
She was interrupted by a voice behind her.
“A rescue. A rescue. There’s someone coming up the tunnel.”
The camera swung round to show the tunnel entrance.
 They were packed tightly in, a crowd of what looked like over a
hundred people, coming forward slowly. At first all that could be seen were
silhouettes, dark shadows against the tunnel lights. But when they emerged
into the light and climbed up onto the platform, it became all too clear what
they were.
They had once been commuters; men, women and children like the
ones crowded around the television crew. Now they were something far
different.
White, soulless eyes reflected silver under the television lights and
frozen mouths raised into smiles as they spotted prey.
Then the screaming began.
The point-of-view camera fell, forgotten, to the ground. All that could
be seen was a forest of legs, all trying to flee in different directions.
A foot caught the camera, sending it spinning across the platform, the
screen a sudden dizzying kaleidoscope of feet and limbs. It came to rest
looking down the subway tunnel.
The reanimated bodies of the frozen ones were still streaming out onto
the platform. Yet more crowded behind, jostling to get up to the prey. All
that could be made out of those farther back in the tunnel were the silvery-
white eyes…a small forest of them, all unblinking.
“I think we’re in trouble,” Mina said.
“If those things get out of the subway, then we will be,” Jackie replied.
“No, I think we’re in trouble right now,” Mina said.
She turned Jackie round and pointed to the basement stairs that that led
up out of the bar.
It was only then that Jackie paid attention to what was going on around
her. A dull thudding came from the door at the top of the stairs.
“I don’t think that’s thirsty customers. Do you, Bob?” Mina said.
The barman didn’t speak. He looked from the scene on the television,
then back to the empty stairs, then back to the television.
He swallowed and wiped his lips, as if his mouth was suddenly dry.
“Is there a back way out of here?” Mina asked.
“There’s a fire escape out back that opens onto an alley,” Bob said.
“But I’ll be damned if I’ll let somebody waltz in and take my bar without a
fight.”
He reached behind the bar and came up with a pump action shotgun.
 “I like to keep this handy for close encounters,” he said in an affected
accent.
Jackie didn’t get the reference, but Mina laughed loudly.
“Terrific. All we need now is a pack of cards,” she replied, taking out
her own pistol, having to struggle against the stiff folds of her sealskin
jacket.
“You’d better get yourself one of these suits Bob. We may have to
leave in a hurry.”
“The only way I’m leaving here is out the front door once it’s been
cleared of vermin.”
“That may be some time away,” Jackie said. She pointed at the big
screen.
Kate the newscaster still sat at her chair…but she wasn’t alone. A
crowd of the frozen ones milled around the studio, knocking over lighting
rigs and bumping into cameras.
The camera that had been fixed on Kate swung away, but not before
the newsreader stood. Her eyes, so recently shocking blue, filled up with
white.
Her black lips rose in a smile as she went to join her new friends.

***

Cole Barter came to his senses slowly. He felt heat on his face.
When he opened his eyes he looked up at the base of a cast iron
furnace. It felt as hot as if he sat too close to a fire…somehow, even while
unconscious, his body had crawled to the one place it might be safe.
He wasn’t going to be that way for long.
The basement into which he’d fallen was lit only by the red glow of
the furnace itself, but that was more than enough to show Cole he was in
deep trouble.
Tendrils of ice crept in the corners of the room, a latticework web
getting closer as he watched.
Stoke the fires, lads. Stoke the fires.
He had to force himself to crawl out from beneath the furnace.
As soon as he left the safety of the crawlspace he felt the blast of cold
spreading through the room.
A first glance around almost had him in a panic.
 There’s nothing to burn!
Then he saw it…a coal chute with a pile of coal beneath.
Something knocked against his side as he moved across the room.
It was his satchel. By some miracle he hadn’t lost it while scrambling
around in the snow. He gave it a reassuring pat, as if it was a frightened pet,
before he headed for the coal.
It was even colder on this side of the basement, and much darker. He
made as much noise as he could, even going as far as screaming, but
nothing moved. There was a single dead rat lying near the coal pile, its eyes
milky white.
That’s all I need. Fuggin’ zombie ice rats!
Cole tramped down on it, hard.
He pumped a fist in triumph as it broke into an icy mush beneath his
foot.
He wasted no time in filling a bucket with fuel and making for the
furnace. He had to hide his hand inside his sleeve and use the material to
knock the door open, having to stand back at the sudden wave of heat that
tightened the flesh of his face.
When he threw the coal into the furnace the fire died back slightly at
first, then began to roar with renewed vigor.
Cole grinned.
Try to freeze me now, you bastards. Go on, just try it!
He spent ten minutes working up a sweat, moving most of the coal pile
over next to the furnace, only stopping when all that was left on the far side
of the room was a small pile of black pebbles and soot alongside the
squashed remains of the rat.
Judging by the new pile he’d made, he had enough coal to last for
many hours, maybe even days.
But even here, close to the furnace door, he could still feel a cold
breeze on his neck.
Above his head, cold water dripped through the grate, but only the
occasional snowflake made it through. As the coal took, and the fire in the
furnace got hotter, even that disappeared.
Cole felt warm for the first time since he’d left the cordon on the dock.
He crawled back underneath the furnace, relieved to notice that the
tendrils of ice had, for now, retreated into the shadows.
 He wondered what was going on in the outside world, but after another
quick glance at the pictures on his camera, he realized he didn’t actually
want to know.
Heat and safety. That’s all I need right about now.
He curled up, clutching his knees. He stared into the shadows,
watching for the return of the icy fingers. He tried not to think of the fate of
the crew of the Havenhome, stuck in a tavern a few miles from his position,
separated only by time.

***

Mike Kaminski let the swaddled figure lead him through the maze of
containers. Where Mike had taken mostly left turns, his rescuer led him in
twists and turns, but mostly headed right. By Mike’s reckoning this would
lead them back to the waterfront, down to one of the old docks, but he was
too spent to argue.
Neither of them spoke until they entered a cul-de-sac, three containers
in a U-shape.
“This night, you’re not a cop. Okay?” Mike’s rescuer said.
“If you get me a hot coffee, I’ll be anything you want,” Mike replied.
“Kenyan or Jamaican?” the other man said, and chuckled.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, he almost recognized the owner of
the laugh, but Mike was too tired to think, too tired to do anything but allow
himself to be led.
“This is important,” the swaddled man said. “I need to know that
you’re not a cop tonight. Do I have your word?”
“You have my word, for what it’s worth.”
“That’s always been good enough before,” the other man said.
He opened a door in the left-hand container and led Mike inside.
The door slammed with a satisfying clang behind them. Mike had to
close his eyes against the sudden brightness of neon strip lighting.
When his eyes adjusted he couldn’t quite believe what he saw.
It was an Aladdin’s cave, of fine rugs, antique pictures, ornate gilded
mirrors and heavy mahogany furniture, all piled high on both sides of the
container, with only a narrow alleyway down the centre.
“What is this?” he asked.
 “My nest egg. Remember. Tonight, you’re not a cop,” the other man
said.
By now Mike was almost sure he knew who was under the layers of
clothes and scarves.
They walked past a tall cabinet that looked like it would take most of
Mike’s annual salary to buy. Behind its patterned glass doors was the largest
collection of hardcore porn on DVD that Mike had ever seen.
The other man saw him looking.
“A man has to have some hobbies,” he said. There was a muffled
sound from behind the scarves. Mike was now definitely sure he knew who
had saved him.
When they turned the corner into the second of the three portions,
there was a series of full length wardrobes down the right-hand side. The
opposite wall was covered with a tall display case, filled with weaponry:
knives, handguns, assault rifles and shotguns, with drawers underneath,
some of which lay partially open to reveal cases of ammunition.
“Are you setting up a private army down here?” Mike asked.
“Home defense,” the swaddled figure said, chuckling again. “You
never know when some ordnance will come in handy.”
He waved the sawn-off shotgun in the air. “I bet you’re glad I had this
with me.”
Mike was forced to agree.
“Yep. But I don’t think Brian Johnson would see it the same way
though.”
“I didn’t see anybody of that name,” the other man said. “No man
anyways.”
They turned into the third leg of the “U.” This was piled high with
dried and tinned food and plastic water containers. There was a top of the
line microwave oven and a professional Italian espresso machine on the
left-hand side. The walls were lined with thick insulating material. A four-
bar electric fire glowed in front of a long sofa. The far wall was dominated
by a fifty-inch plasma television set.
Mike sat down heavily in the sofa.
“Quite a place you’ve got here.”
“It’s not much, but it’s home,” the other man said.
He removed the scarves from around his face. Mike wasn’t surprised
to see Old Tom’s wrinkled features smiling back at him.
 “I always wondered where you lived after you moved out of the
project,” Mike said.
“Weren’t any sense in paying rent when I’ve got everything I need
here,” the old man said.
Mike was already starting to warm up.
Blood rushed back into his fingers bringing a dull pain. He moved to
brush some hair out of his eye and winced…the cut above his left eyebrow
reopened. He felt the hot flow of fresh blood on his cheek.
The old man bent over Mike and, using a handkerchief, wiped the
blood gently away. After he was satisfied he did the same for Mike’s right
cheek where the jagged ice had stung after the shotgun blast.
“Tell me straight, Doc,” Mike said. “Do I still have my boyish good
looks?”
“You lost them that night you let Mick the Paddy break your nose in
the alley behind The Woodsman,” the old man said. “You survived that fine
enough. The cuts on your cheek are only scratches.”
He tipped Mike’s head back.
“Hold the cloth to your eyebrow for a minute. The bleeding’s nearly
stopped now. I don’t think it needs stitching.”
Mike screwed up his eyes against the glare of the neon.
“How do you get your electricity?”
The old man tapped at the side of his nose. “I know people who know
people, if you catch my drift. Lighting and plumbing are provided for
services rendered.”
“Plumbing?”
“Yeah,” the old man said, feigning shock horror. “A man’s gotta have
somewhere to do his business. What do you expect me to do…have a dump
over the side of the dock?”
“It never stopped my Dad,” Mike said.
“I remember,” Old Tom replied. “But some of us have higher
standards,” he cackled again. It was so infectious that Mike found himself
laughing along.
“I never knew this was here,” he said. “You do know you’re breaking a
whole book full of different laws?
“Well, that’s kinda the point of keeping it secret. It ain’t the sort of
place you tell a cop about,” Tom replied. “Although with the shit that’s
going down tonight, I don’t think legal distinctions apply here any more.”
 “What do you mean?”
The old man took the handkerchief away from Mike’s head and
nodded.
“The bleeding’s stopped. You might have a new scar in a couple of
days, but you’ll live.”
He moved away from the sofa, and switched on the television.
“All kinds of weirdness out and about tonight,” he said. “If I didn’t
know better I’d swear it was Halloween. Watch and weep, boy.”
Tom went to fire up the coffee machine, but Mike didn’t notice. He
was transfixed by the series of scenes being shown on the television.
“These pictures came in over the last half hour,” the CNN reporter
said. “From MBC news, broadcasting live from the affected area.”
Mike watched the same sequence that Jackie had watched a couple of
miles away in The Woodsman; the dome of the storm hanging over
Manhattan, the arctic conditions on top of the Empire State Building, the
carnage in the Wall Street subway, and finally the dead white eyes of the
newsreader as she joined the others.
“What the hell is going on?” Mike whispered.
“My best guess? Judgment day is upon us. Repent or die; heaven or
hell; it’s decision time, boy,” Tom said.
“I don’t believe in any of that religious stuff.”
“What’s not to believe? The dead are walking the Earth. Deal with it.”
“I don’t believe that either,” Mike said, but even to himself he didn’t
seem too sure.
“Well, I’m double-damned sure that wasn’t Brian Johnson whose head
I blew off out there. Oh, it looked a bit like him, but I’d say that the BJ we
knew had already gone to meet his maker a whiles before I blew his brains
out.”
Mike nodded.
“BJ wasn’t there. He’d have listened to me if he was there. But the
dead walking the earth? No way. There must be a scientific reason for it.”
The old man did the disgusting thing with his false teeth again.
“Science is it? Well, if science can explain all the things you’ve just
watched on the television, I’ll bow down before it. But in the meantime,
I’m considering a miraculous conversion back to Christianity. I figure
getting baptized at the Church of the Holy Rood seventy years ago is
enough to get me an even chance at redemption.”
 “As long as it’s not a death bed recantation.”
“Oh, I’ll be around for a while yet,” Tom said. “All these years I’ve
been waiting for the Russkies to bomb us,” he said. “I never figured it
would be the Lord himself laying his wrath upon me. Wanna pray with me,
Mikey?”
The old man laughed and did the thing with his teeth.
“I never was one for praying,” Mike replied. “Hard liquor is my solace
in times of trouble.”
“Funny you should say that,” Tom said.
He handed Mike a tall cup of coffee, and went to the back of the
container. He came back with a bottle and two glasses.
Mike took a slug of coffee. It was piping hot, but he welcomed the
warmth as it hit his stomach. It spread a warm glow out from within.
“Jamaican Blue Mountain,” Tom said. “Best damned coffee in the
world.”
“Are you developing a taste for the finer things in life, Tom?”
“Hell, you’ve got to take your pleasures where you can when all
you’ve got left down below is a chipolata and a couple of wrinkled prunes.
It’s caviar and lobster thermidor every night down on the docks,” the old
man said. He cackled again. “And there’s nothing but the best will do when
it comes to the liquor.”
He held up the whisky bottle to the light, letting Mike see the almost
luminescent golden color of it.
“This is Highland Park. Scotch. Made from the spring waters of the
Orkney Islands, aged for twelve years in oak barrels, and just about the
finest liquor in the whole damned world. If I catch you pouring it into your
coffee I’m going to have to kill you.”
He poured a large slug, which Mike knocked back in one gulp. It
joined the coffee, spreading the warmth through his body.
“Sacrilege,” the old man said, sipping at his own. “You want another?”
Mike shook his head. “Something tells me I need to keep sober
tonight,” he said.
“If you’re thinking of running about in the snow again like an excited
child, you’re in no fit state for heroics,” Tom said.
“I’ve been worse. I’m as fit as a butcher’s dog.”
In truth, he was starting to feel almost alive.
 “That’s the whisky that’s talking for you,” the old man said. “The
Scots don’t call it the water of life for nothing. I’ve seen men get out of
their beds that you’d think would never walk again after a slug of this
stuff.”
The old man poured himself another large one.
“Maybe you should lay off the juice,” Mike said.
“Can’t see any reason to do that,” Tom replied. “If the end of the world
is here, there’s no way I’m going to meet it sober. Not when there’s shit like
that going down.”
The old man pointed at the television.
“Have a closer look, Mikey,” he said. “And maybe you’ll reconsider
your decision to stay off the booze tonight. I’ve got another bottle of this, so
there’s enough to anaesthetize both of us.”
Mike sipped at his coffee while staring at the big screen. It showed
only the interior of the television studio, the frozen things shuffling around
in a cavernous room which now had icy stalactites hanging from the ceiling.
“Is there anything on other channels?” he asked.
“Same old same old,” the old man replied. “City in crisis, storm of the
century, ya-dee-ya-dee-yah…”
He pointed at the scene inside the television studio.
“That tells you everything you need to know. Ain’t it a kicker…..Pat
Robertson was right all along.”
Mike nodded.
“I guess I’m going to have to modify my religious beliefs somewhat.”
“We all are, son. I think we all are.”
A frozen oriental female walked in front of the television camera.
Mike suddenly remembered his phone ringing earlier.
Mina.
He speed dialed her number.
She answered on the first ring.
“Hello, big boy. Glad to hear you’re still with us. But I can’t talk now,
we’re a bit busy.”
“Where are you?”
“In The Woodsman, but I’ve got a feeling we’ll be on the move soon.”
Mike could hear a deep thudding in the distance behind Mina’s voice.
“Are you in trouble?”
 “Constantly,” she said. “But don’t you worry your pretty little head
about it. It’s nothing I can’t handle.”
The thudding got suddenly louder; a shot rang out, loud in his ear.
“Mina!” he shouted.
He was cut off, left with only the ringtone.
He stood quickly, slopping coffee over his legs.
“I’ve got to get to her.”
Old Tom put a hand on his shoulder.
“Not in this weather. And not with those things walking about. It’s
suicide boy. If I owe your father anything, it’s stopping you from being
stupid.”
“I’m not going to let her die,” Mike said.
He pushed passed the old man.
“Oh well, I suppose if there’s a woman involved, your Dad would
definitely understand. But if you go out again in those clothes you’ll be
dead in minutes,” Tom said. “Come with me. I can help with the clothes…
and with a weapon.”
“I’ve got a gun.”
“No, that’s a pea-shooter,” Tom said.
He showed Mike the sawn-off shotgun again.
“This is a gun. But I can do even better. Come with me.”
He led Mike out to the middle “U” of the area and opened one of the
huge wardrobes.
Outdoor clothing filled the space wall to wall…fur coats, oilskins and,
most bizarre of all, a wet suit.
“Why do you keep all this stuff? Are you in training to be the next
James Bond?”
“Only if I get some of his action with the ladies. I used to be a Boy
Scout,” the old man said, laughing. “Be prepared…for anything.”
“And how long have you been collecting this shit? Some of it looks
almost new.”
“Oh, it comes and goes over time,” Old Tom said, suddenly looking
guilty. “But I ain’t telling a cop about my business interests. I’ll go get you
tooled up. You pick something that will keep you warm.”
The old man moved away to the other side of the container.
Mike surveyed the rack of clothes. Tom was obviously ripping stuff off
from the cargo that got unloaded at the docks. It wasn’t a new trick. Mike’s
own father had been a dock hand down here. Mike well remembered the
steady flow of goods that passed through the house when he was a kid. That
was where he’d first met Old Tom.
He hadn’t been “Old Tom” back then; he’d been a burly docker, with a
wicked laugh, a huge belly, and a penchant for fat Cuban cigars that filled
their back room with smoke on the nights that Mike’s dad hosted the
fortnightly poker game.
That had all stopped when Mike’s dad died under Crane No 3, but that
was an old story, gone over far too many times.
Mike pulled himself out of the reverie and went back to looking
through the rack of clothes. He saw what he wanted straight away.
Ten minutes later he stood at the container door. He was dressed in a
full US Marines arctic survival suit complete with face mask and goggles.
He carried a flame thrower strapped across his back, a shotgun slung across
his shoulder and wore a cartridge belt round his waist. Inside the suit he had
two holsters, one for his service revolver, and one for a flare gun. A deep
pocket in the suit held spare flares and in another he carried a flask of Old
Tom’s coffee, into which the old man had poured a liberal helping of the
Scotch.
“I thought it didn’t mix well with the coffee.”
“Oh, it mixes with just about anything,” the old man said. “I just hate
to do it. If you get back here alive, I’ll cook you up some haggis and turnip.
Then you’ll see how it’s meant to be taken.”
Mike zipped up the suit.
“I feel like a Ghostbuster,” he said.
“Yeah, but you look like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man,” Tom
replied.
“The chicks will love it…especially Mina. You know what they’re like
with uniforms.”
“You find her, you bring her right back here,” the old man said. “I ain’t
had sight of a decent piece of ass all day, and I’m starting to feel horny.
Three, two, two, three, right, left, right, left. That gets you out, reverse gets
you back. That’s the way from the cranes entrance. If you do get back
knock three times and ask for Tommy.”
“You’re a good man, Tom,” Mike said, shaking the old man by the
hand.
 “Remember to tell the Lord that if you see him before me,” the old
man said. He did the disgusting thing with his teeth.
Mike opened the door, and stepped out into the storm.

***

After a while Cole was forced to crawl out from under the furnace. It
was just getting too warm for comfort under there. That, and the fact that he
jumped at every flickering shadow, combined to get him on the move.
Once he stood, having to massage back muscles that were complaining
about the rigors of the past few hours, he realized that the cold was not as
intense as it had been earlier.
But better to be safe than sorry.
The furnace greedily accepted another bucket of coal and roared a
deeper red in gratitude.
It really is almost too cozy in here, Cole thought, and giggled.
He stifled it quickly. That way lay madness.
For the first time since throwing himself through the open grate, he
made a full survey of his surroundings.
There wasn’t much to see. Apart from the furnace and the small pile of
coal there was only a large cardboard box full of rotting paper. Off to his
left a flight of rough wooden stairs led up to the house proper. Cole wasn’t
about to investigate where they led. It was dark up there. Cole wasn’t yet
ready to leave the warmth of the furnace.
Not yet. Maybe later. After I’ve had a little rest.
He dragged the box of papers over in front of the furnace and sat
down. The box sagged alarmingly beneath him. He swayed, as if he was in
a boat in a heavy swell, before he caught his balance.
The cardboard wouldn’t last long, but for now it beat sitting on the
stone floor.
One of the papers stuck out near his left hand. He slipped it fully out of
the box and read the heading:
“The Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence (WASI): An
Overview and Case Studies in Occupational Assessment by Thomas
Garland”
He put it down again.
Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence?”Sounds like a CIA initiative to me.
 Cole sat for a while with the furnace door open, just staring at the
flames, but soon his mind gave him pictures, almost as vivid as the ones
stored on his camera.
The binocular man was well to the forefront, jaw gaping as it closed on
the military gent’s neck.
Cole needed to re-evaluate his world view, and quickly. It was now
blindingly obvious that what was happening here was a bit more than an
abduction scenario.
Abductees don’t generally come back as flesh eating popsicles.
Okay, so in “The Thing from Another World” James Arness had been
a frozen vegetable, but that was a long way from a bunch of reanimated
corpses roaming Manhattan in a freak snowstorm.
No. This was something else.
He wondered if the problem was purely local, or whether, even now,
all over the world, snowstorms raged, storms in which the dead walked.
If so, I’m in BIG trouble.
One of Cole’s intermittent mind games was figuring out how he’d go
about surviving a global holocaust; he’d even got as far as making a list
once upon a time. Guns, food, water, and family; those were his top
priorities to be sorting out. He had always carried, at the back of his mind,
the dream of a cabin in the Rockies with a secret basement filled with
everything he’d need to ride out any trouble.
He laughed bitterly. He hadn’t even bought enough warm clothing for
a typical New York winter, never mind the shit-storm going down outside.
I just didn’t expect it to ever happen.
Now here he was, stuck in somebody’s basement. No weapon, nothing
to eat, nothing to drink, and no means of contacting what few members of
his family cared enough to listen.
I just wasn’t paranoid enough.
Normally that thought would have given him some comfort. It would
have let him prove to himself that he hadn’t quite yet reached total
geekhood in his obsession. But tonight, with the world crashing down
around his ears, he wished he’d taken time to squirrel away provisions
against a rainy day…or a snowy one.
I wonder how the snow managed to blow up so fast out of nowhere?
He’d spent enough time online to know that the conspiracy buffs
would be all over this like flies on shit. He wondered who was getting the
blame for this one.
Weather modification had been a hot topic a few years ago, when the
HAARP relay had been set up in Alaska, but things had moved on among
the further fringes of the community, with Gamma Ray manipulation being
the latest topic that had the net jangling. Out there, whole armies of lonely
youths would be beating each other up over the minutiae of who said what,
to whom, and when, and whether it actually meant anything. Cole used to
be one of them, but he’d learned something about himself in the course of
this long, endless, day.
If I get out of this alive, I’m going to party. I don’t care if it’s not 1999
anymore.
But even while partying like there was no tomorrow, he’d still want to
know what happened. The snowstorm wasn’t natural, and the hulking
frozen things that stalked the living were definitely wrong. He just wished
he knew where they’d come from.
He realized that all the speculation in his head was useless. He decided
to leave it to the scientists to figure out after the event. All he wanted to do
now was sit tight and let it all blow over. Food and drink would have to wait
for better weather conditions.
Then the thought struck him.
Maybe a scientist has figured it out already?
Earlier in the day he’d discovered that North’s notebook was more
than just a journal…it was a blow-by-blow account of all the finds on the
digs, and North’s conclusions about them.
He took the notebook out of his satchel and held it as close to the
furnace as he dared. He opened a page at random. The glow from the flame
was just enough to let him read.

The captain’s chest is definitely from the right period. The wood is
teak, South American in origin. Carbon dating places it in the late
16th Century, plus or minus 40 years. The three panel molded lid sits
above a similar design front. The lunette carved frieze above molded
frame is inlaid with holly and bog oak dog tooth design and the whole
is supported on beautifully carved strap work stiles. The chest still
retains the original iron staple hinges & till, and is a large example of
the type, being over a meter in width at its widest. A close examination
 of the brass label inside shows the name William Kerr, cabinetmaker,
of Beith, Ayrshire, and it is dated, 1578. Given that…
Cole skipped ahead.
The skeletons have been fused together by the great heat. It is
only where their chests have met that anything survives from the fire.
The skeletons were both male, and both aged between thirty and fifty
judging by the teeth. A further examination of the bones will be
necessary to glean any further information, but there is evidence of a
long chain hydrocarbon being used as the accelerant and…
It still wasn’t what Cole was after. He skipped further, nearing the end
of the notebook and beyond anything else he’d read so far.
The motif is almost certainly Scandinavian in origin. We are in
the realm of Sky Gods and Ice Giants here, in a land where the Jotun
still walk. The entire encounter with the crew of the Havenhome feels
European rather than American, resembling a folk memory from the
Teutonic races rather than dealing with the animalism and trickster
gods of the Native American. The Ragnarok or end of the world
archetype looms large. Ragnarok, also called Götterdämmerung,
means the end of the cosmos in Norse mythology. In the old stories it is
said that it will be preceded by Fimbulvetr, the winter of winters.
Three such winters will follow each other with no summers in
between. Conflicts and feuds will break out, even between families,
and all morality will disappear. In Norse folklore this is the beginning
of the end, even of the old gods. Another figure also comes
immediately to mind, and this is Jack Frost, who personified crisp,
cold weather and is thought to have originated in Norse folklore as
Jokul (“icicle”) or Frosti (“frost”), or even a combination of both
words.
It is as if the native shaman tapped into the collective
consciousness of the shipmates and used their own primal fears and
race memories against them. Yet another who must be considered as a
suspect for the roots of this story must be Skynir, a weather god of the
Scottish Highlands and Islands, thought to be responsible for the
coldest of winters, and greatly feared by all in the cold Hebridean
islands. And overlaying these European Myths, the shaman has grafted
one from his own culture; the cannibal of the northern woods, the
weather master; the Wendigo.
 “To a crew of northern seafarers, the risk of death by freezing
must have been constantly in their thoughts. If events truly happened
according to what is related in the journal, the shaman played on these
fears, amplifying and enlarging them until the crew lived in a constant
state of terror and fear. It is either hypnotism on a grand scale, or one
of the finest records of mass hysteria yet recorded. I must find a way of
sharing what that shaman saw. It is vital if we are to uncover the
meaning of what we have found here. I will know more when we
separate the bodies.”

Mass hysteria, my grandmother’s ass, Cole thought, Typical fuggin’

scientist. Once he’s seen what’s on my camera he won’t be so glib.
He shoved the notebook back in his satchel in disgust and went back to
staring at the flames.
Some time later his eyes dropped shut and light snores joined the noise
of the furnace.

***

Mina didn’t have time to say any more to Mike. The outside door of
the bar crashed open. Heavy footsteps thumped down the stairs
accompanied by a chill blast of air.
“Bastards!” the barman shouted, as the first of them entered the bar
itself.
It had once been a woman, dressed in an expensive tweed two-piece
suit and Gucci shoes. Now she missed one of her heels. She lurched from
side to side like a drunken sailor.
The barman gave her both barrels in the chest.
Ice flew.
She staggered backwards, but only for a second. By the time she came
forward again three more of her kind had reached the bottom of the stairs.
Mina felt something tug at her arm. It was Jackie Donnelly.
“We should go now,” the archaeologist said in a small quiet voice.
Mina nodded. She put the cell phone carefully back into her pocket…
she had a feeling she might need it later.
“Bob! We’re outta here.”
 The barman took no notice. He reloaded the shotgun from a box of
cartridges on the top of the bar.
“Goddamn street scum, think they can waltz into my bar…”
He fired again at the lopsided figure advancing on him. The shots
caught it in the upper chest, blowing off the left arm. The limb fell to the
ground with a heavy thud, but the lumbering creature didn’t even slow.
Mina retreated backwards, making sure she was between the things
and Jackie. There was a door at the far end of the bar. She pushed the
archaeologist toward it.
The barman loaded for a third shot, but he never got a chance to take
it. He was fumbling for a second cartridge when the creature knocked the
gun aside.
Bob raised his arm, trying to defend his face. It didn’t help him. The
creature took a bite the size of an apple from his brawny forearm. He only
had time for one scream before the rest of them fell on him.
Mina took aim and shot the nearest lurching creature in the left eye,
blowing a haze of frozen red mist out of the back of its head.
It was too late for Bob. His screams had only lasted seconds before the
other three found first him, then his throat.
“Mina,” Jackie said behind her. “I really think we should be going.”
“I know,” Mina replied. She shoved Jackie farther ahead of her and
headed for the door at the far end of the bar. The two women barrelled
through it at the same time.
Jackie kept going down the corridor beyond, but Mina tried to lock the
door behind her. The handle turned in position, all the way round three
hundred and sixty degrees. There was no way to lock the door.
Well, this night just keeps getting better and better.
She backed away down the corridor. The door swung open, slowly,
revealing the bar beyond. The creatures had already finished with Bob.
Unblinking white stares looked for fresh meat…and found Mina.
They shuffled to their feet and came forward. Mina fired two shots.
They didn’t flinch.
“Left or right?” she heard Jackie say. “There are two doors. Left or
right?”
“Take the left,” Mina said.
Once more they went through the door almost together. Mina slammed
it behind her, but again there was no lock to secure it.
 “Shit,” Jackie shouted at the top of her voice.
Mina turned around. They were in a small storage room. There were
no windows, not even high up. All that was up there was a single uncovered
light bulb, swaying gently on a plastic cord.
We’re trapped!
Outside, heavy footsteps thudded along the corridor as the creatures
came through the first door.
 CHAPTER 4

Taken from a live ABC news broadcast

“We’re here on the Jersey side of the river, trying to make sense of
what we are seeing.
“Manhattan Island, that icon to modernity, has been lost from sight,
hidden by a primal force of nature that has swept in without warning to
paralyze this, the greatest city in the world.
“Of course, we’ve seen winter storms before on the Eastern Seaboard,
but none have ever been so localized, or so darned weird, as what we are
witnessing here tonight.
“The storm appears to hang in a dome over the island. From here on
the Jersey shore, we can see that there is a clear night sky above it. It is as
if the snow is being generated from somewhere deep within the city itself.
“The scientists say they have never seen anything like it. With me here
I have Professor Jack Bayliss, from the National Meteorological Center.
“Professor Bayliss, can you explain what we’re seeing here?”
“In a word…no. It seems to be an inversion effect of some kind, but it’s
nothing we’ve ever seen before…it’s nothing anyone’s ever seen before.
We’re going to have to rewrite a whole bunch of textbooks.”
“Can you tell us how it might develop from here?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. It’s not supposed to be there in the
first place.”
“Thank you, Professor.
“By now you’ve all seen the shocking pictures that have come out of
these stricken streets. Who knows what further atrocities are still being
perpetrated, even as we speak. We haven’t been able to find anyone willing
to talk to us about the frozen people we have been seeing on our screens.
There are rumors flying all around us, saying anything from hoax to
government cover-up. All we know is what we see.
 “Zombies may walk the streets of Manhattan, but it is impossible to
confirm this shattering conclusion. If it is true, it may even shake the very
bedrock of the world’s religious systems.
“One thing is clear. The fallout from this storm will continue long after
the snow itself has passed.
“No one has come out of the island since the storm first hit. But
someone is preparing to go in. From our vantage point we can see troops
being deployed around the bridges, and I have been told that all available
snowmobiles and Ski-Doos are being flown in, some from as far away as
Newfoundland. One trooper has told us, off the record, that whatever this
phenomenon is, it has the top brass so worried that they may be considering
a surgical strike on the city.”

From alt.wilderness.freedom

It’s the UN at it again. I’ve been saying for years that they’re just
waiting for an excuse to walk in and take over. Between them and FEMA it’s
only a matter of time until we’re under martial law. We’ve been seeing
truckloads of foreign troops coming through these last few days. They use
unmarked trucks, but Jean down at the drugstore heard from somebody
over the hill that they’ve been building a big camp for holding dissidents in.
They’ll have to pry my gun out of my cold dead hands first.

From usa.politics

It’s just another smokescreen. Wait and see. Sometime in the next few
days they’ll be blaming a bunch of towel-headed camel jockeys for the
whole thing, and we’ll be off to war all guns blazing again.

From alt.horror

They’ve been saying on the television that we shouldn’t panic, that it’s
a natural storm and will blow over, and that looters will be dealt with using
the full force of the law. Which is all well and good, but I’ve got fucking
frozen zombies banging on my apartment door. Anybody got any helpful
hints?
 ***

Mike followed Tom’s instructions, picking his way back through the
maze of crates. The goggles helped, but visibility was only a couple of
yards. He jumped at every shadow, every slightest movement.
It was worse when he came out of the container stack and onto the
dock itself. The only way to figure out direction was to take a line of sight
along the crates and follow it towards his best guess of where the dock
gates were.
Well, this was a great idea, Mikey.
At least he was warm inside the survival suit. Having the flame
thrower made him feel slightly less exposed as a target.
He headed slowly along the dock, keeping the dark shape of the
container stacks to his left. Just when he thought he might have
misremembered the way, he saw a blue flashing light straight ahead, and a
line of red and blue lights beyond that.
He almost called out, but thought better of it. Nobody else would be
stupid enough to be out in the storm.
He approached the flashing lights slowly. He’d been right. It was an
ambulance, one he’d seen earlier parked in front of the police cordon. And
the keys were in the ignition.
At first he thought he could drive it away, but snow was already piled
up high around the wheel axles. He’d need a shovel to dig it out.
Thinking that there would probably be one in the back, Mike crept
round the side of the van.
There was no noise except the soft crunch of snow underfoot.
The back door of the ambulance lay open.
A body hung, half-in, half-out.
Judging by the clothes it had once been a medical worker, but now it
was another black-lipped corpse, riddled with a host of frozen bite marks.
Mike prodded the corpse with the muzzle of the flame thrower.
It didn’t move.
There was a mystery here that Mike didn’t have time to solve. Not
everybody who got frozen came back like Brian Johnson…but he’d have to
leave Mina to figure that one out.
The shovel, if there was one, would be in the cavity under the floor…
under the body.
 Mike took hold of it by the shoulder, feeing the icy cold flesh even
through his gloves. The body slid easily out of the van and fell to the snow
at his feet with a soft thud.
Mike stepped over it to get to the van.
His scrotum tightened, expecting at any moment that a cold, dead hand
might reach up and tear at him. It was all he could do to stop himself
torching it there and then, but he needed to save the flame…there would be
other, more mobile foes, out there in the snow.
He removed his gloves to work the latch.
Despite the bitter cold in his fingers, he let out a whoop of joy when he
found, not only a shovel, but a set of snow chains in the cavity.
It took fifteen minutes of hard work, all the time looking over his
shoulder into the swirling snow, but eventually he had the ambulance free.
The engine coughed, twice, but when he pressed the accelerator the
van moved off, slowly but smoothly. He couldn’t see more than five yards
ahead, but it certainly beat walking.
Hold on Mina. I’m coming.

***

Mina threw her weight against the storage room door.

“Find something to wedge it. Quick.”
She locked out her legs and leaned into the door, trying to put her
weight just over the handle.
Something heavy hit the other side, hard enough for the door to open
by two inches then slam shut again.
Behind her she heard clattering and smashing.
“If you’re going to do something, now would be a good time,” she
shouted.
The door slammed against her shoulder, opening almost three inches
this time.
“Let it open farther next time,” Jackie said at her shoulder.
“Open farther? Are you mad?”
“Trust me. I have a plan.”
The next time the door slammed against her, Mina let it open slightly
wider.
 Jackie stepped forward and threw something through the gap,
something that smashed in the hallway beyond.
Mina put her shoulder to the door and slammed it shut. This time
Jackie helped her.
“Okay,” Jackie said. “Now I need your lighter.”
Mina managed to dig inside the sealskin suit and came up with the
lighter.
She handed it to Jackie.
“If I say duck, don’t ask ‘Where?’,” Jackie said.
The door slammed hard on Mina’s shoulder. Her feet slid on the floor
as the door opened, six inches, then nine. A blue hand with black
fingernails gripped the door’s inside edge.
Mina heard the distinctive sound of her Zippo being fired up.
“Duck,” Jackie shouted.
Mina ducked. Something flew past her ear, something that burned
yellow.
The hall beyond the door exploded into flame.
The arm fell away from the door.
Jackie moved quickly to close the door and put two thick planks of
wood under the handle. Even though the door was closed the smell of
cooking meat seeped through the gaps.
“Good plan,” Mina said when she’d caught her breath. “What did you
use?”
“Sugar, soap and gasoline,” Jackie said. “It sticks and burns like…”
“Napalm,” Mina said. “I remember. But how does an archaeologist get
to know stuff like that?”
“Two older brothers and an inquisitive nature?”
“Whatever it was, I’m glad you thought of it,” Mina said.
“Don’t thank me too soon,” Jackie replied. “If I used too much gas,
then the whole hallway is ablaze by now.”
Mina put her hand on the door.
It was cold to the touch.
“We’re okay. For a while at least.”
She looked around the tiny room.
Jackie had trashed a wall of shelving. Smashed bottles of ketchup,
maple syrup and BBQ sauce lay smeared on the ground.
“It smells like a rib dinner in here,” Mina said.
 “Looks like one after I’ve been,” Jackie said.
Mina realized that Jackie was trying to keep things light, trying not to
think of what might be beyond the door.
She knew how the other woman felt. Deep down there was a part of
her that felt like putting her hands to her ears and screaming like a teenager.
But no one is ever going to see that.
“Is there more gas and soap?” she asked.
“Gallons of the stuff,” Jackie replied. “And there’s a load of empty
bottles as well.”
“Get going then,” Mina said. “You’re now our official Molotov
cocktail maker. Just don’t blow us up. You owe me a beer and I’m planning
on collecting.”
Jackie moved to the right-hand shelves and filled bottles from a gallon
container of gasoline.
Mina listened at the door.
There was no sound from out in the corridor. She took out her cell
phone and was about to dial Mike when it rang.
Outside in the corridor something hit the wall, hard.
Mina answered the phone, speaking in a whisper. “Mike? Is that you?”
The answering voice came through loud and clear.
“Mina? What’s up? I can hardly hear you.”
It was Jon from the morgue.
“Jon. Keep it down will ya. We’ve got a situation here?”
The man’s voice dropped a notch, but he sounded genuinely puzzled.
“What kind of a situation?”
“Oh, the usual: blizzards, zombies, damsels in distress…you know,
that kind of thing?”
“Blizzards? Zombies? Mina…have you been drinking?”
“Not nearly enough. You mean to say you don’t know about the
blizzard?”
“What blizzard?”
The morgue was a sealed environment, in a deep basement. Jon had
been known to spend days at a time down there. Although they had access
to the outside world by phone and Internet, Jon preferred his own company,
and liked having the use of the equipment in the lab all to himself.
“Look, I don’t have time to fill you in right now. Just stay where you
are. I’ll be with you as soon as I can,” Mina said.
 “Are you okay?” Only now was Jon starting to sound worried. Not for
the first time Mina wondered what it would take to make him lose his cool.
Probably a naked woman.
If Jon had been there in person, she might have taunted him.
“Right as rain,” she said. “Why did you call me?”
“I got a result on the DNA,” he said. “But that can wait. What’s…?”
She never got time to hear the rest of the sentence.
The door behind her slammed hard against the restraining planks. The
noise of splintering wood filled the room as a crack ran down the length of
the door.
Mina cut the call off and pocketed the phone.
“I hope you’ve got some of those bottles made up,” she said. “It looks
like we’re going to need them soon.”
Jackie tore strips of material from cleaning cloths and doused them in
gasoline before stuffing them into the mouths of a row of bottles.
“Nearly there.”
The door splintered and bowed as another heavy crash shook the room.
A hole appeared near Mina’s shoulder. She had to back away as a blue
hand came through and reached for her hair.
“We’re out of time,” she said.
The creature forced the hole in the door wider. Mina joined Jackie at
the far side of the room.
“Watch out for splash-back,” Jackie said.
The Zippo wheel spun.
Jackie lit the cloth wick of the first bottle. She threw it straight into the
face of their attacker.
The bottle smashed on impact.
Flames ran down the creature’s cheeks. The air was filled once more
with the smell of burning meat. Where the splashes struck the door, they
stuck to it, oozing slowly down the wood, burning with a bright yellow that
left afterimages in Mina’s eyes as she looked away.
When she looked back, there was only the burning door, and no sign of
the creature.
“I’d say that was a successful test,” she said.
She filled the pockets of the sealskin suit with bottles.
“Take as many as you can carry,” she said to Jackie. “I’ve got a feeling
we’ll need them.”
 “We’re leaving?”
“Yep,” Mina said, nodding towards the flaming doorway. “This bar’s
got an open door policy, and I don’t like the clientele.”

***

Mike wished he’d stuck to walking.

At first driving inside the van had made him feel safer, less exposed.
But progress was slow around the abandoned cars in the roads. Several
times he’d been forced to back up and try alternative routes.
Loath as he was to admit it, the white emptiness was getting to him.
He hadn’t seen anybody since he’d left the docks; neither living, nor
any of the frozen ones. He had driven over several mounds of snow that hid
suspiciously firm centers, but he tried not to think about that. He could be
anywhere; high in the Rockies, or in the remote northwest of Canada…it
couldn’t look any more snowbound, or any bleaker, than the view out of the
van window.
At the start of the journey he’d tried calling in using the emergency
radio in the ambulance, but all he got was dead air. He hoped it was the
radio that was faulty. The alternative, that all emergency services were out
of action, was just too awful an idea to contemplate.
All his attention was focused on Mina. He tried to ring her a few
minutes ago. He got the engaged tone, which meant she was still alive.
He took a chance and speeded up, but only slightly.
He didn’t get far.
Visibility was still only ten yards. Abandoned cars littered the road,
little more than larger mounds in the ever deepening snow. He crept along,
bashing the dashboard in frustration.
The ambulance was still a long way from the bar, and his speed was
down to less than five miles an hour.
He needed a distraction, otherwise he would go mad.
He switched on the radio and managed to find a news broadcast.
“The crisis in Manhattan is deepening. Contact with the island has
been lost. Gridlocked traffic is blocking the main exit routes. The storm is
defying all known laws of physics and is gathering in strength while
remaining centered on Manhattan Island itself.”
 He switched channels…he didn’t need anyone to tell him how bad the
storm was. All he had to do was look out of the window.
He maneuvered the coffee flask out from the inside pocket of his suit,
got it open without swerving too far off course, and poured a large cup.
It tasted more like hot whisky than coffee, but Mike wasn’t about to
complain.
Thanks, Tom. He raised the cup in mock salute.
He hoped the old man would be okay, back there in his makeshift
bunker.
Tom had been a stabilizing part of Mike’s life for many years now,
ever since that summer’s night a year after Mike’s dad died.
Mike spent the early summer running with Brian Johnson and a small
gang of followers. They’d already graduated from shoplifting to running a
protection racket among the younger kids in the area. Mike didn’t
particularly enjoy what they did, but it put money in his pocket, and food on
his mother’s table. It was the only way he knew how to do it. In a couple of
years time he’d be old enough to work legally on the dockside, but for now,
Brian Johnson was the one calling the shots, the one who promised easy
money and a better life.
One summer’s night he promised them the big job, more money than
any of them had ever seen. That night they crept through the docks, looking
for an easy target. They found one in a cargo that had been unloaded on the
dock but not yet picked up.
Mike was making his escape, as fast as he could while carrying a
Japanese stereo system, when Sam Atkins, a small, thin boy with asthma
and the worst squint any of them had ever seen, fell backwards,
overbalanced by the weight in his arms. The box he’d been carrying made a
loud splash as it hit the water below, but louder still was the crack as Sam’s
skull hit the concrete dock.
“Leave him,” Brian Johnson shouted. “He’ll just slow us down.”
The big boy never even slowed as he ran past Sam’s too-still body.
Mike slowed to a walk. He looked down at the boy, then at the box in
his hands. Selling the stereo would feed him and his mother for a week. He
took a step away, in the direction where Brian and the other boys had fled.
“Take one more step, and you’ll regret it for the rest of your life,” a
familiar voice shouted across the dock.
 Tom stood there, hands on hips, trademark cigar stuck out of the side
of his mouth. His belly had got bigger in the past year; the result of guard
duty instead of dockhand laboring, but that only made him more imposing.
Mike was lost for words. The box felt like a dead weight in his arms,
but he didn’t want to put it down, as if it was invisible while he still held it,
but if he put it down, he’d have to start acknowledging his guilt.
“How’s your friend?” Tom said softly.
He looked down at the prone body, and then had one last look at the
box before putting it down. He knelt beside Sam. The thin boy’s eyes were
rolled up in their sockets, only the whites showing.
“Look’s like you did him a favor,” Tom said. “You’ve cured his
squint.”
There was no humor in Tom’s voice, only a disapproving coldness.
Mike knew that tone well…he’d been hearing it more and more from his
mother lately.
Sam groaned.
“Well, at least you ain’t got him killed,” Tom said. “Not yet anyways.”
Mike didn’t know what to do. He looked at his prone friend, then back
at Tom.
“Help me,” he said. “Please?”
“I thought tonight was all about helping yourself?” Tom said, but he
knelt and checked on the fallen boy.
Mike held his breath.
“He’ll live,” Tom said finally. “But we need to get him to a doctor.
Give me a hand.”
Mike helped Tom carry the boy off the dock to the gate at the harbor
entrance.
“You’re lucky it was me on duty tonight, boy,” Tom said. “If it had
been Jack Rowlins, he’d have fed you to the cops, and you’d have ended up
like me.”
“You’re the best man I know, Tom.”
This time the big man did laugh.
“Son…you need to get out more. I’m just a sorry sack of shit that
never made it above dock hand. You’ve got brains, Mikey. It’s well past
time you used them.”
Tom made a call from the guard box phone. He talked for several
minutes before he turned back to Mike.
 “You’d best be getting on home, Mikey. I’ll be over to talk to you and
your mother after my shift.”
“But Sam. Will he be okay?”
“Too late for you to be worrying about his welfare now, Mikey,” Tom
said softly. “You should have been thinking about that afore now. Long
afore now.”
Mike spent a sleepless night, the only thing in his mind was Sam’s
white, rolled up eyes.
Tom didn’t come by that night, but then, neither did any policemen.
And from then on, his mother would receive a brown envelope full of cash
every other week.
“From the docker’s union,” she said. “Your dad’s pension.”
Mike saw Tom delivering the cash, more than once, but he kept quiet.
And he stopped running with Brian Johnson.
Until tonight.
In his mind’s eye he saw Sam’s white up-rolled eyes superimposed on
Brian’s frozen, black-lipped face. He took another long swig from the
coffee, but now it couldn’t dispel the chill.

***

Mina kicked open the storage room door.

“Stay right behind me,” she said to Jackie. “I won’t be hanging about.”
She threw another lit cocktail through the opening, waiting only long
enough for the first of the flames to die back before jumping through after
it.
The corridor near the door was empty. There was another door farther
down the opposite corridor.
The one we should have taken.
Mina ran for it. It squealed as she tugged on it, and screeched open…
only to reveal a wall of tightly packed snow.
“It’s no-go this way,” she told Jackie as the other woman danced
between sputtering flames to join her. “Our only way out is through the
front door.”
“Maybe we should stay here,” Jackie said. “It seems to have gone
quiet.”
“Don’t you believe it,” Mina said.
 She motioned down the corridor where three hulking figures were
backlit by the light in the bar.
“Show-time,” Mina muttered. “Ready?”
“No,” Jackie replied. “But I was on the track team in my senior year,
so try to keep up. I’m not stopping.”
They lit a Molotov each and threw in tandem.
The whole far end of the corridor went up in a whoosh of bright
yellow flame.
When Mina’s eyes adjusted, she saw the three figures slumped
together, one on its knees, the other two fallen over on top of it, all three
still burning fiercely where the cocktail mixture stuck to them.
Black oily smoke boiled across the ceiling. The walls on either side of
the burning figures burst into flame.
They’re blocking the corridor!
“Come on,” Mina shouted. “Time to go.”
She ran straight for the burning figures, hitting them shoulder on and
forcing her way through.
She let out a yell of triumph as she emerged, unscathed, into the bar
proper.
She turned back to see what happened to Jackie.
The archaeologist almost made it past the burning barrier. One of the
prone figures, still burning, shot out a hand and grabbed her by the calf.
Jackie fell and screamed in pain. The creature pulled her backwards,
towards a face of black, burnt flesh.
“Help me,” Jackie shouted.
Mina couldn’t throw another cocktail, not with Jackie so close.
She stepped forward, and tried to prise the creature’s grip away from
the archaeologist’s leg.
The flesh of the fingers was both hot and cold. Burnt flesh slid away
from ice cold bone as Mina peeled them away from Jackie.
Two of the fingers snapped off, falling to the ground looking and
smelling like overcooked pork sausages.
The remaining fingers and thumb squeezed harder.
Mina couldn’t get them free. Jackie screamed in pain again.
“Don’t leave me,” the archaeologist shouted as Mina jumped up and
headed along the bar.
“No fear of that,” Mina said.
 What was left of Bob the barman lay in a pool of his own blood, blue
eyes staring accusingly. Mina didn’t have time for recriminations. She lifted
the discarded shotgun, having to wipe a smear of cold congealed blood
from her palm onto the legs of the sealskin suit.
She scooped a handful of cartridges from the bar, just as Jackie’s
screams rose to a new level of intensity.
The creature was managing to drag Jackie across the floor to where it
lay pinned under the other, still burning, bodies. Around them, the fire had
taken hold of the bar. Oily flames ran up the walls.
Mina smelled gasoline.
A small puddle ran from the left-hand side of Jackie’s body…when she
fell she must have broken one of the Molotovs. Any closer to the flames,
and Jackie would be going up with the creatures.
Mina stepped forward, trying to find somewhere calm amid the
turmoil, somewhere she would be able to load the gun without her mind
racing and her hands trembling.
“Oh god, it hurts,” Jackie screamed.
Mina got both barrels loaded at the second attempt.
She stepped up close and put the muzzle against the creature’s still
burning head. Even as she did so the milky-white stare melted, revealing a
pair of blue eyes, pupils as small as pin-pricks. They didn’t as much as
blink when she pulled the trigger and blew the whole top of its head
halfway across the bar.
Jackie kicked out.
Finally the hand’s grip failed and fell away from her. She shuffled
backwards until she was backed up against the bar.
Mina saw tears glisten on her cheeks. Jackie’s eyes were wide and
round, fixed on the flames that had now taken hold of the far end of the
room, and on the now almost unrecognizable bodies that burned there.
She’s in shock, Mina realized. And if I don’t get her moving, we’re both
going to die here.
She put the shotgun on the bar, leaned down and took Jackie by the
shoulders, looking her straight in the eye.
“You’re doing well, kid. But I need you to help me here. My mother’s
always saying that spending time in bars will be the death of me. You don’t
want her to be right, do you?”
 Jackie managed a pained half-smile. She tried to speak, but it turned
into a sob.
“Besides,” Mina continued, trying to keep things light. “How could it
get any worse?”
The bar lights flickered twice and went out.

***

Ewan Toms had reported from Canada when ice storms had frozen
power lines solid and brought metal pylons crashing to the ground. He’d
filmed penguins in Antartica in the depths of winter as the wind swept over
fifteen hundred miles of snowfield, and he’d fallen legs first, through thin
ice into an Inuit fishing hole while doing a documentary on global warming
in the Arctic.
He’d never been as cold as he was now.
He stood with a soundman, a cameraman and all their equipment, in an
elevator cab on the top floor of the Empire State building. The cab door had
frozen open. No amount of pulling the doors or pushing on the floor buttons
had any effect.
A snowstorm raged just beyond the open door. Only the fact that the
cab was recessed six feet under an overhang providing them with a scant
measure of protection.
Then the lights went out.
The building’s emergency system kicked in, but here in the cab that
amounted to a single red bulb overhead that lent a pink glow to everything.
“Anything from HQ?” Ewan asked the soundman.
Doug Caplin shook his head. He tapped at the hands-free system
hooked to his ear.
“No. Nothing for ten minutes. Just dead air.”
“If you’re going to do something, do it quickly,” Eric Mann said. “I
think my balls are about to drop off. If that happens, you can coat me in
chocolate and call me a Popsicle, ‘cause life won’t be worth living any
more.”
Eric the camera man was the least well-prepared for the conditions.
Doug and Ewan had some time to get ready earlier, and had dressed
accordingly, but the cameraman had either been too late, or had chosen to
ignore the warnings, and was paying for it now. He wore a leather airman’s
jacket over a pair of blue denims. Normally tanned and fit-looking, his skin
at face and hands had taken on a grey, lifeless tone. He was squashed as
tight into the corner of the cab as he could get, with the other two men
trying to protect him from the brunt of the weather.
“Can’t we just get out of here?” the cameraman said, his teeth
chattering behind lips that were rapidly turning blue. “I heard you were the
expert on macho survival shit? We could use some of that expertise right
about now.”
“I’m open to suggestions,” Ewan said. “I’ve never been stuck on top of
a building in a blizzard before. Have you?”
Doug hit each down button again in turn, and then started over at the
top.
“Would you stop doing that,” Eric said. “And try the phone again.”
Ewan had tried the emergency phone five minutes earlier. At first he’d
got a very drunk man singing “I’ll take you home again, Kathleen,” but the
man had been cut off mid-chorus. That phone too was now dead.
Doug confirmed it with a shake of his head when he put the phone
back on the cradle.
“Come on, Ewan,” Eric said, almost screaming to be heard above the
wind. “Think of something.”
Eric looked at Doug.
The soundman shrugged.
“You know the rules as well as I do…never leave a safe position to
look for something safer.”
“Newsflash sports fans,” Eric shouted. “I’m nowhere near safe. If
you’re feeling so fucking secure, how about lending me your coat?”
Ewan came to a decision.
“Try to keep him warm,” he said to Doug. “I’ll see if there’s another
way down from here.”
Before Doug had time to protest Ewan stepped out of the elevator cab.
The wind hit him as soon as he left the protection of the overhang,
threatening to cut him in half, even through his layers of protective
clothing.
He shuffled sideways, going with the wind. There were two other
elevators on this side of the building, but the doors to both were firmly iced
shut. He let the wind take him to the corner, having to fight to stop himself
from being blown against the safety railings that marked the edge of the
viewing area.
He’d been up here when he was a kid. He had been reprimanded by his
mother for being hyperactive, running among and between the sightseers,
pretending alternatively to be either Kong, or one of the planes trying to
shoot him down.
The planes would never have found the ape if the weather had been
like this.
He took a look out over the city, but there was nothing to be seen but
the swirling wrath of the storm.
He’d got as much help from the wind as he would get. He turned his
shoulder into it. He pushed through the driving snow, heading for the west
side of the building, hoping to find a way down, or at the very least, some
respite from the wind.
He found the way down first, but not before passing three more frozen
elevator shafts.
If anything, the wind was stronger here. He felt grateful for the scarves
and goggles that protected his face.
He began to tire. He knew from experience that if he didn’t stop, he’d
soon be past the point of safe return.
And if I’m out much longer, Eric will be dead by the time I get back.
The night gave him a break just as he was ready to turn round.
There was a swing door ahead of him, partially held open by a wedge
of fresh snow.
He pulled it open just far enough to slip inside.
He realized he had entered one of the buildings emergency stairwells.
Dim red lights led down, a steep chasm into a far, dark distance.
Ewan took the scarf away from his mouth.
“Hello!” he shouted.
His voice echoed back at him. There was no other noise except for the
whistling of the wind beyond the door.
“We need help up here.”
Ewan listened.
Everything was suddenly very quiet, almost eerily so. Something was
missing. It took him several seconds to realize what it was. There was no
whistling of the wind outside. When he pushed back out through the swing
door he saw why.
 The Empire State Building stood four-square in the eye of the storm.
Less than a hundred feet on either side stood towering walls of dense
swirling snow, but at the spot where Ewan now stood all was calm…almost
serene.
He looked up. High overhead, like looking the wrong way down a
telescope, stars twinkled inside the tube formed by the wall of snow.
Ewan suddenly felt very small; the sheer enormity and scale of the
universe pressing down on him. Then his reporter’s instincts kicked in.
Eric’s got the camera. We may not be able to broadcast…but we can
film.
Less than a minute later he was back at the elevators where he’d left
the crew.
The lift doors were shut. When he put his hand against the door he felt
a slight thrum.
The lift’s moving!
He tried to push the button to call the cab back, but the external
controls were frozen solid and wouldn’t respond.
He stood there for a long minute, pummeling the button.
The lift never came.
It got colder.
The hairs on the back of his neck rose.
I’m being watched.
“Eric? Doug? Are you still here?”
He turned. He’d been right, he wasn’t alone. But it wasn’t one of his
crew that he now faced.
“Who are you meant to be? Geronimo? Why don’t you…”
The words stuck in his throat as realization hit him.
The man facing him wore only a thin pair of black cotton drawstring
trousers. His stick-thin upper torso was bared, ivory flesh with blue veins
standing proud. He wore a high, eagle-feather headdress that sat like a
crown and sent a long tail down his back.
That wasn’t what drew Ewan’s attention. The man’s face was drawn
and haggard, a translucent blue-white like fine bone china, with a lipless
mouth pulled back from cracked, jagged teeth. Frozen milk-white eyes
seemed to look straight into Ewan’s heart.
The man made a circular motion with his arms. He slapped his chest
with both hands. He repeated the movement until Ewan got it.
 All of this is mine.
Ewan nodded.
The bloodless lips pulled up into a grim smile. The near-naked man
pointed at Ewan, then out over the city.
Leave.
Ewan hit the railing of the viewing platform at a run.
The iron broke like brittle straws.
Like Kong before him, Ewan discovered that it was a long way down.

***

Cole Barter dreamed.

He was in his bedroom, not at his current home, but in the one he’d
stayed in as a child. He was in the safe place, huddled under the bedcovers
with a torch and a copy of Treasure Island, lost with Jim Hawkins among
cut-throat pirates.
He liked this time; when the night closed in. There was only him and
his stories.
Blind Pew stumped down the hill to the Admiral Benbow. Young Cole
smiled. He knew what came next; the black spot, the sign of death.
He turned the page, and stopped. A noise came from downstairs,
crackling, like damp logs on the fire.
He closed the book and stuck his head out from under the covers.
Nothing moved in the room. The shadows were still, the way shadows
should be in a child’s room at night.
Young Cole shone his flashlight into the darker corners.
Light reflected off the gold-leaf paintwork on his model of the lunar
landing module, but all was as it should be.
Then the noise came again, louder this time.
Cole stepped out of bed, wincing as his bare feet touched the cold
floorboards.
He padded softly to the door and opened it, only a little.
He looked out. The hallway beyond lay in darkness.
“Mum?” Cole whispered.
The crackling came again from downstairs, accompanied by a soft
moan.
 Cole stepped out into the corridor. There were strict house rules about
not leaving his room at night.
But the rules don’t say anything about any crackling and moaning.
His flashlight laid an oval of light on the floor ahead of him, flattening
to a circle on the wall as he reached the staircase down to the living area.
“Mum?” he whispered again.
Another soft moan answered him.
He looked back along the corridor. The door to his room lay open, the
night light gleaming like a beacon, showing him the way back to the
known; the safe place.
What would Jim Hawkins do?
Young Cole knew the answer to that one.
He went down the stairs slowly, to avoid the creak he knew waited
there.
As he turned the corner onto the small landing before the last flight
down, he was bathed in a silver-blue flickering light. But this wasn’t
enticing. Not in the slightest; this spoke of cold and solitude, of the endless
spaces between the stars.
The crackling noise came again, louder than ever.
“Who’s there?” Cole said, his voice small and frightened.
“Come down, son,” a rasping voice replied. “I’ve got something for
you. A present. You like presents, don’t you Cole?”
“Dad?” Cole said.
It hadn’t sounded like his father, but Dad liked playing games.
Especially when he got back from his business trips…especially when he
brought presents.
Cole almost skipped down the last flight of stairs, as excited as a
puppy.
“I didn’t hear you come in. When did you get back? Where’s my
present?”
Mum was in the room as well…but it wasn’t Cole’s father that held her
in a cold embrace.
The man holding his mother, clasped tight, chest to chest, wore only a
thin pair of black cotton drawstring trousers. His stick-thin upper torso was
bared, ivory flesh with blue veins standing proud. He wore a high, eagle-
feather headdress that sat like a crown and sent a long tail down his back.
 That wasn’t what drew Cole’s attention. The man’s face looked drawn
and haggard, a translucent blue-white like fine bone china, with a lipless
mouth pulled back from cracked, jagged teeth. Frozen milk-white eyes
seemed to look straight into his heart.
Beyond, outside the large picture window, the normally sunny view
over the farmland beyond seemed to be a frozen desert of twinkling white.
A filigree of frost drew itself over the window, slowly obscuring the view.
Only then did Cole notice his mother. The white man held her close,
his right hand round her waist. With his left he stroked the woman’s neck,
softly, the way Dad did when he got back from a long trip. The crackling
Cole had heard was his mother’s flesh, freezing under the icy embrace.
Cole jumped down the last of the stairs and leapt across the room.
“You leave my mum alone,” he screamed. “You’re not my dad.”
He raised his free hand to strike the white man.
Quick as thought, the man grasped Cole’s hand, left palm to left palm.
Cold shot through Cole like electricity.
“Soon,” the white man whispered. “Very soon, you will be mine.”
Down in the basement under the furnace, an older Cole Barter woke,
screaming. It felt like someone had driven a nail into his flesh.
There, on the palm of his left hand, bloomed an inch wide, black, frost-
bitten boil that burned worse than any sunburn.

***

Mina and Jackie stood in the flaming ruin of the bar. The whole wall
above the three burnt bodies was now well ablaze. They were forced to
stand back as the ceiling caught.
“Freeze or burn? What’s it to be?” Mina asked.
“I’ll take my chances outside,” Jackie replied.
“I was hoping you’d say that,” Mina said, stuffing shotgun cartridges
into her pockets. “I don’t want to be anywhere near any naked flames, not
with you being soaked in gasoline.”
Jackie gingerly removed a broken bottle from her pocket.
“Do you have any cocktails left?” Mina asked.
Jackie patted her opposite pocket.
“This one is still intact.”
Mina nodded grimly.
 “And I’ve got two. Along with the shotgun, we should have at least a
fighting chance. Are you okay to walk?”
Jackie leaned on her injured leg.
She winced, but the leg held her weight.
“I think so,” she said. “As long as I don’t have to walk too far. Where
are we going?”
“Out of here, quickly,” Mina replied, dragging Jackie towards the
stairs.
Behind them the flames reached the bar. Liquor bottles popped in
small explosions before adding to the conflagration.
Mina reached the stairs first. Only the bottom two were visible in the
flickering light from the fire behind them. The way up the narrow stairwell
lay in deep blackness.
“I’ll go first,” she said. “Watch our backs. If you see anything,
scream.”
“I’m getting good at that,” Jackie said with a rueful grin.
“Yeah, I’ve noticed,” Mina replied, smiling back. “Let me know if you
need more practice and I’ll see what I can do.”
Mina put a foot on the bottom stair.
Something moved in the dark above them.
The outside door swung shut with a clatter. Mina fired a blast from the
shotgun up the stairwell. It boomed and echoed around them.
All went quiet.
“For Christ’s sake, Mina,” Mike shouted down, “Is that any way to
treat your rescuer?”

***

Mike stood to one side, flamethrower at the ready, as the two women
came up the stairs.
When she reached him Mina gave him a quick peck on the cheek. She
nodded at the weapon in his hand.
“You won’t need that just yet,” she said. “We’ve got the hot fire part
covered.”
Down the stairwell there was an orange glow and the pop of bottles
exploding.
“Have you been getting into fights again, sweet-heart?” Mike said.
 “Only a small one,” Mina replied. “The place is still standing…
mostly.”
“The Lieutenant’s going to be pissed. This was his favorite bar.”
“It was nothing special. No more than okay” Jackie Donnelly said as
she passed him. “The atmosphere was cold, the company chilly.”
“It just needed warming up a little,” Mina added.
“Just my luck,” Mike said. “I get stuck in a snowstorm with two
women, and I get the mouthy ones.”
“Is there any other kind?” Jackie said.
I might not understand women, Mike thought, but didn’t say. But even
I know better than to try and answer that one.
Five minutes later they were all in the front seats of the ambulance.
The women were getting acquainted with Tom’s Scotch coffee, and found it
greatly to their liking.
“Where are we going tonight, ladies?” Mike asked. “Kaminski
chauffeur and escort services are at your disposal.”
“Well,” Mina said, “Seeing as we got dressed up special like, I thought
we might try the Ritz tonight.”
“I don’t have a tie,” Mike said.
“That’s okay,” Jackie replied quietly. “I don’t think I’m up to
dancing…whether cheek to cheek or otherwise.”
Jackie was as white as a sheet. She looked like she might keel over at
any moment.
“Shit. Your leg. I forgot all about it,” Mina said.
She turned to Mike.
“She needs a doctor.”
“The hospital’s way across town. We’ll never make it in this weather.”
Mina nodded.
“Take us to the morgue,” she said. “It’s got its own power and
communications system. We could call up the cavalry from there.”
“Okay. Home base it is.”
Jackie had already crawled into the back of the ambulance. Mike
cranked the heating all the way up as the woman pulled down the sealskin
leggings.
“Eyes front, big boy,” Mina said. She moved to climb into the back,
but Mike stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.
“Are you okay?” he said softly.
 “All better now that you’re here,” she replied. “Just get us to the
morgue. I need a cuddle, but I’d rather get out of this costume first.”
“That’s all the incentive I need,” Mike said. He put the ambulance into
gear and headed off slowly up the road.
The snow seemed less heavy now. He could see the looming shapes of
the buildings around him.
“Hey, it could be slowing down,” he shouted.
Mina didn’t reply, but he heard her swear under her breath.
“Her leg? How bad is it,” he said.
“You don’t want to know. Just give me some quiet for ten minutes. I
need to work on it.”
He went back to watching the road. He’d been right; the snow was
easing. He could see the shapes of the buildings on both sides of the road,
like huge standing stones, and the white molded domes of covered cars,
scattered like burial mounds around the ceremonial stones.
Steady boy, he reminded himself. Don’t let the imagination get carried
away. This night is weird enough already.
Mina came up front.
“I gave her a shot for the pain. She’ll be out for a while.”
“It’s bad?”
Mina nodded and took a long slug straight out of Old Tom’s flask.
“Worst case of frostbite I’ve ever seen.”
“What happened?” Mike said softly.
“You won’t believe me,” she said.
“I’ve seen the MBC broadcasts,” he replied. “Did you meet one of the
Popsicles?”
“More than one,” Mina replied.
She shivered.
While Mike drove through the deathly quiet streets, Mina told him
what had gone down in the bar. After that Mike brought her up to date with
events on the dockside.
“Shit, Mike, what’s happened here?”
Mike shook his head.
“I don’t know. It’s got something to do with the bodies they brought up
from the dig on the dock…maybe we’ll find some clues if you re-examine
them?”
Mina struggled inside the sealskin jacket.
 “Anything in there I could be helping you with?” Mike asked.
Mina smiled thinly.
Well, it’s a start.
She came up with her lighter and a cheroot.
“Hey. This is a city vehicle. You’ll be infringing on my personal health
zone.”
“I’ll do more than just infringe it if you don’t just shut up and drive,”
she said. “I’ll stomp all over it.”
This time her smile was broader, not forced. She lit up the cheroot.
Mike pretended to cough.
“I can open the window?” she said.
“I’d rather stay alive.”
“You’d better. I’ve got plans for your ‘personal health zone’ later.”
Despite the cold, there was a place inside Mike that felt warm for the
first time that night.

***

Cole Barter was in agony. The blister on his hand had risen to the size
of a squashed golf ball, grey, slimy, and squishy to the touch.
It felt as if someone had dipped his hand in molten lead.
Christ, that hurts.
He threw another bucket of coal on the fire. He got the journal out of
his satchel once more, hoping that reading might make him forget the pain,
for a while at least.

The perceived control of the prevailing weather is obviously a

well thought out psychological ploy, honed in previous attempts. And
yet, there is no mention of it in any of the folk tales and oral traditions
that we have researched so far. It may be that we are seeing the
manifestation of a weather cult, an ancient mystery tradition to rival
the Greek harvest cults or the river worship of the Euphrates delta. I
must discover how the shaman viewed the world. It is obvious from the
journals that the heart is the key. I am more determined than ever. I
will do it tonight.
 Cole was brought out of his reading by a lance of pain in his hand. He
dropped the journal and shoved the hand under his right armpit,
whimpering like a frightened puppy.
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
sarcastic 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.”
 “Are you up to speed?”
“Big fucking blizzard and flesh-eating cold guys. Does that cover it?”
“Just about. We’re nearly there. Meet us at the delivery bay. We’re
coming in hot, and we’ve got unfriendly company.”
“Left or right?” Mike shouted.
Mina looked up from her phone. They approached the T-junction
where the road split to circle the small park.
“Left or right?” he said. “Quickly.”
“Straight on.”
“Through the park?”
“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s mostly grass. We don’t have time to go
round.”
In her wing mirror she saw that the number of pursuers was growing.
There were at least ten of them now, the nearest less than fifty yards behind
them.
“Through the park it is.”
The ambulance shuddered and jolted as they crossed the park
boundary. If Mina hadn’t been belted in she would definitely be down in the
footwell this time.
Behind her Jackie moaned as her gurney rattled and shook in the back,
but she didn’t wake up.
“Jon? Are you still there?” Mina said.
“I’m on my way to the delivery bay. I’ll be there in less than a
minute.”
“Home, coachman,” she said to Mike. “And don’t spare the horses.”
That got her a thin-lipped grin.
They bounced through the unbroken snow, the ambulance rolling and
yawing like a small boat in a heavy swell.
“If I remember rightly there’s a lake in here somewhere,” Mike said.
“It’s more like a pond,” Mina replied. “Try not to go in it. I’m not
dressed for swimming.”
Their attackers had closed to thirty yards by the time they exited the
far side of the park. They hit something hard, what felt like a small wall
under the snow. The cab suddenly filled with the sound of metal grinding
against stone. The back end lifted two feet in the air, and then fell back,
sending a jolt of pain through Mina’s lower back. There was a bad couple of
seconds when they seemed to stall, but the engine coughed back into life. It
spluttered and wheezed, but provided enough drive to keep them moving
forward.
“That doesn’t sound good,” Mina said.
“Best get Jackie unstrapped,” Mike replied. “I don’t think we’ll have
time to wheel her in.”
Mike had to fight the wheel now. It bucked in his hands like a living
thing.
“One of the back wheels has gone,” he said. “And we’re leaking fuel.”
The forensic building was less than a hundred yards away, the low
concrete building almost hidden by snow. The road here was clear of
abandoned cars, but it was narrow. The ambulance slid viciously from side
to side.
“Will we make it?” Mina said as she crawled into the back once more.
Mike didn’t answer. He floored the accelerator and the vehicle
screeched in protest.
They slalomed down the last stretch of road.
“Hang on,” Mike shouted as they approached their destination.
He spun the wheel to his right.
They slid into a two-wheel turn up the driveway, ploughing snow
ahead of them, slowing all the time. The engine screamed like a dying
dinosaur.
They slammed into a deep drift, sending Mina and the gurney rattling
in the back.
The engine finally gave up as the ambulance tipped over at a thirty
degree angle.
“Everybody out,” Mike called.
Mina unstrapped Jackie from the gurney. She slapped the woman
lightly on the face.
“Time to get up,” she said. But the archaeologist’s eyes were rolled up
in their sockets. She was out cold.
The back door of the ambulance opened. Mike stood there strapping
on the flame thrower.
“Come on,” he shouted.
Over his shoulder Mina saw dark shapes striding through the snow.
They were less than twenty yards away, and closing fast.
 CHAPTER 5

From alt.ufo.kooks

They’re here. The white humanoids are from Rigel B. I’ve seen them
before, on abductions seven and eighteen. Don’t worry. They’re friendly. If
you ask them nicely they’ll even let you sleep with their women.

From the End of the World forum.

Ragnarok! The twilight of the gods is here. Tell me I’m wrong? The
world will turn to an icy wasteland. Fenrir, king of all wolves, will be
unleashed to devour the moon, and even Thor’s mighty hammer will not
save Midgard from the death of all things. The time of men is ended! Put
Wagner on the stereo, break out the mead and pull up a chair in front of the
television. Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen. We’re getting a ringside
seat at the last great battle. Seconds out, round one.

From us.politics

Did anybody tape the broadcast from Brooklyn Bridge? Please tell me
somebody did? Did you see the way it cut off at the end? Somebody pulled
the plug. The goddamn government is censoring what we can see! Don’t
believe them when they tell you it’s localized in New York. I’m out here in
Effort, Pennsylvania. It’s snowing heavily, and there are big critters out
there. But don’t worry about me, friends. If any get close to me,
Granddaddy’s shotgun will take care of business.

From the End of the World forum.

The time of men is ended? Thank fuck for that. It was getting boring
anyway.
 ***

Mike helped Mina manhandle Jackie out of the cab.

“Can you manage her on your own?” he said.
Mina dropped her shoulder and put Jackie in a fireman’s lift. With her
free hand she lifted the shotgun.
“I won’t have time to reload,” she said as she headed round the side of
the van.
“Don’t worry. I’ve got your back. Just make sure the door’s open when
I get there. I won’t be hanging around.”
Mike retreated backwards, putting himself between Mina and the
attackers.
They were almost on him already.
The nearest, a tall man wearing tattered street clothes and half of a pair
of spectacles, was less than five yards away.
“Stay back,” Mike shouted, but he’d have had as much luck shouting
at a wall.
It kept coming. It had the same white-eyed stare Mike had seen before
in the eyes of Brian Johnson.
How the fuck can these things see?
Everything in Mike’s training told him to hold back. Despite the blank
stare it still looked like a civilian, and it wasn’t armed. Under normal
circumstances he’d be under an IA investigation just for pointing his
weapon.
News flash, sports fans. Normal service isn’t about to be resumed
anytime soon.
He pulled the trigger and fired a spray of flame over its head, but it
never so much as flinched.
“That’s all the warning you get,” Mike muttered.
He flamed it from head to toe, having to stand back from the heat.
Even as it burned it kept coming, a human torch of silently roasting flesh.
The snow around it hissed and sizzled like water droplets on a hot plate.
Mike tasted cooking meat in his throat, and felt his gorge rising.
Just let me get out of this in one piece, and I swear to God I’ll never
eat pork again.
“Die, you bastard,” he shouted, and flamed it.
 One of the white eyes melted, flowing like thick yoghurt down a
smoldering cheek.
Finally it fell, face first in the snow where it spluttered and sizzled.
Three more stepped into its space, stamping the smoldering ruin down
into a puddle of grey-black slush.
All of his instincts told him to run, but Mina was somewhere at his
back. He had to buy her some time.
He retreated, washing flame after flame over his attackers.
They burned and they fell, but more always stepped forward to take
their place.
The smell was almost unbearable. Through his gloves Mike felt the
muzzle of the flame thrower growing warm in his hands.
He kept retreating, slow as he dared, hoping that Mina had already
reached safety.
He knew he must be very near the corner. The delivery bay was less
than five yards past that, but he couldn’t afford the time to turn and look.
He had torched six now.
Six people, a small voice said at the back of his mind. He pushed it
away.
Four more still came for him. He had to back off faster to avoid getting
caught in the backwash as he pulled the trigger and sent out another jet of
fire.
The weapon spluttered, almost gave out, and then caught again,
washing over the frozen ones.
Clothes burned and stuck to the bodies. The hair of one that had once
been a young woman caught fire and lit up like a halo around her head.
The air was suddenly filled with acrid black smoke.
Three of the four attackers fell to the ground, still burning, but the
fourth had been partially protected by the others. Although burned and
smoldering down one side it kept coming, a single white eye fixed straight
ahead.
Mike pressed the trigger of the flame thrower.
And nothing happened.
He’d run out of fuel. He let the muzzle fall, swinging by his side.
He reached for the shotgun slung at his back.
It caught in the straps of the flame thrower. When Mike tugged to try
to free it he overbalanced and fell on his side in the snow, trapping the gun
beneath him.
The frozen thing kept coming inexorably on at the same steady speed.
Mike reached inside his suit with his free hand, searching for his
service pistol.
The frozen creature lurched towards him, less than a yard away now.
Mike’s hand closed around the grip of the pistol, but when he tried to
pull the gun out it caught up in the material of the survival suit.
I’m not going to make it.
The creature bent over him, giving Mike a close up of a mouth full of
chipped and broken teeth. Its tongue looked like a dead grey slug, and its
breath stank, of raw meat and congealed blood.
Mike forgot about trying to unholster the gun. He threw a hand in front
of his face, stifling a scream.
Something whirred, an almost metallic sound.
A heavy meat cleaver embedded itself in the creature’s forehead,
almost splitting the skull in two.
Mike kicked out with both feet and the frozen body fell away from
him.
Another shape loomed out of the night, a squat bulky figure in a heavy
overcoat, face white as snow.
Mike finally managed to get his pistol from inside his pocket. He took
aim at the figure’s left eye.
The man blinked, brown eyes staring at Mike.
“Don’t shoot, for Christ’s sake. I just saved your life.”

***

Mina reached the delivery bay doors just as they opened.

She’d carried Jackie less than thirty yards, but the snow had been piled
deep in places. She felt as if she’d done a five-mile run carrying a fifty-kilo
pack.
Jon stood just inside the door, pale and obviously afraid. He held a
pistol in his right hand, but it was shaking alarmingly. She dropped the
shotgun and held out her free hand.
“Give me the gun, Jon. You’ll have better luck handling Jackie here.”
The technician handed her the pistol. He looked thankful to be rid of it.
 “Take her to the lab,” Mina said, almost dropping Jackie into his arms.
“And try not to lose her on the way.”
She turned back to the door, just in time to see Mike run around the
corner alongside a short, stocky figure.
“He’s with me,” Mike shouted. “Close the door. We’ve got incoming.”
Mina moved to one side, giving Mike a free run. She paused, her hand
over the button that would both close the door and bring down the internal
security barrier.
Behind Mike, four of the frozen ones came round the corner.
“Close it. Close it now,” Mike shouted.
Mina counted to three, and then hit the button.
The doors started to close.
Mike and his companion threw themselves forward and made it
through with inches to spare as the sliding glass door shut behind them.
The metal security barrier came down just as the frozen ones reached
it. The outer glass broke as the four bodies threw themselves at it, and then
came the deep thud of icy fists on metal.
The metal buckled slightly in places, but the barrier held.
Mina turned to where Mike and the new man lay sprawled on the
ground.
“Well don’t just laze around there, man. We’ve got work to do,” she
said.
She offered Mike a hand and pulled him to his feet and into a hug.
Their weapons and suits got in the way, but she had never felt so good.
She kissed him, full on the mouth. It lasted for several seconds before
Mina was distracted by an embarrassed cough.
“I take it you two know each other?”
She pulled away from Mike, reluctantly.
“Oh, we’re just good friends,” she said. “Who are you?”
Mike put a hand on her shoulder.
“He saved my life out there. I owe him one.”
“Then I owe you one as well,” Mina said. She stuck her hand out for
the newcomer to shake.
“I’m Mina.”
The man shook her hand while looking around him.
“Cole. Cole Barter. What is this place?”
 “The County Forensics Lab,” Mike said. “But don’t get her started
about it. She’s the boss. She’ll bore you for hours.”
“Forensics? Do have any painkillers?”
He showed Mina the weeping sore on his left palm.
Frostbite. And it’s nearly down to the bone, she thought.
She tried to keep her voice light.
“Normally the people we see in here are way past the point of feeling
pain,” she said. “But we’ve got a full medical kit down in the lab. Jon’s got
our other patient down there. He’ll have broken the kit open already. I’ll
take you down.”
“I’ll stay here,” Mike said. “Just in case.”
“These doors are centrally locked,” Mina said. “They’re steel…an inch
thick. Nothing’s coming through there.”
“We’ll see,” Mike said grimly. “But we’ve both seen the movies. They
always break in. Somehow, they always break in.”
As if to prove him right the pounding from the other side of the door
rose in ferocity.
Mike dropped the flame thrower to the ground at his feet and cradled
the shotgun in his right arm.
“Get our hero here some bandages and Novocain,” he said. “And bring
me back a coffee when you get time.”
“You sure about this?” Mina asked softly.
Mike nodded.
“We can’t be too careful. I’ve no idea what’s happened to those people.
All I know is that they’re fast and vicious. We’ll be in deep trouble if they
get past the barrier. Hurry back, darlin’. I’m missing you already.”

***

When Mina got Cole to the lab, Jon was standing over Jackie
Donnelly. She was still out cold.
The tall technician seemed unsure what to do next.
“I never thought I’d hear myself say this, Jon,” Mina said. “But you
have my permission to take that woman’s trousers off.”
Jon reached down and, very slowly, inched the sealskin leggings down.
Mina watched him for several seconds.
 “On second thought,” she said. “It’s obvious you’re far too long out of
practice. Take care of Cole here. I’ll handle Ms Donnelly.”
Cole Barter jerked as if he’d been slapped.
“Not Jackie Donnelly?”
“That’s the one,” Mina said as Cole walked over and looked down at
the sleeping archaeologist. “Do you know her?”
It took the man a while to answer.
Something’s wrong here. This man looks like I’ve just caught him with
his hand in the cookie jar.
Cole looked away from the sleeping woman. He refused to look Mina
in the eye.
“We’ve met,” he said. He allowed Jon to lead him to a chair. He
intentionally refused to look anywhere near the unconscious Jackie.
He’s guilty, of something at least, Mina thought. I don’t need Mike’s
spider-sense to tell me that.
Mina put it away in the back of her mind to join the other stuff she’d
packed in there to think about later.
Getting busy in there.
For now, Jackie was her priority. She eased the sealskin leggings
down.
Back in the ambulance she’d only had a quick look at the damage.
Now that she had more time, she could see it was even worse than she
thought.
She’d cut the archaeologist’s denims open earlier. Now when she
spread the material apart, dead frozen flesh came away with it, leaving
behind deep weeping wounds.
“Jon,” she said softly. “I’m going to need some help here when you’re
done.”
“I’ll be with you in a minute.”
Mina carefully parted the denim so that the whole extent of the
damage was visible. Where the icy hand had grabbed the archaeologist
around the calf, the muscle had been frozen and killed in a deep, five-
fingered pattern; now no more than five massive sores. In one of them, the
white of bone was clearly visible.
“Shit,” Mina whispered.
Jackie was in for a deal of hurt: surgery, physiotherapy, not to mention
any psychological damage. Currently, in her drugged state, she looked
peaceful, almost calm.
“I’ll try to keep it that way for you,” she whispered. “Jon. I really need
your help.”
“Coming.”
Mina bent over the wounds again, feeling nausea rise. Dead people she
could handle. Live ones she’d been sharing a beer with earlier that evening
were a different matter.

***

Cole flexed his left hand, half expecting a new flare of pain. None
came. The technician had done a good job. With the bandage, and a healthy
handful of painkillers, Cole was pain-free. He felt floaty, slightly
disconnected from reality.
What were the odds? Donnelly turning up here?
At least the archaeologist was unconscious. And judging by the
concern the other woman was showing, her prospects weren’t too good.
Cole felt suddenly guilty. He had to look away from where Mina
worked frantically on the wounded leg. But there was nothing to look at
apart from scientific equipment he didn’t understand, and wall posters
showing graphic depictions of the interior of the human body that made him
queasy.
He took the journal from his satchel. He picked up the story of the
Havenhome from where he’d left off.

***

Taken from the personal journal of John Fraser, Captain of the

Havenhome, a cargo vessel. Entry date 17th October, 1605. Transcribed and
annotated by Dick North, 18th March.

My dearest Lizzie. This may be the last time I write in this

journal, this task that has become so dear to me these last months,
bringing me as close to you as I can get over the reaches of the seas
between us.
Unless God spares me from the trials that lie ahead, it will be the
last chance I have to ever speak to you again. I will miss your soft
words, the feel of your body against mine. But I cannot allow myself to
think of such things now, not when I must be stronger than I have yet
been in this mean, pitiful excuse for a life I am now living.
You will wish to know the fate of the crew, if only to pass on the
sad details to the other wives and sweethearts who wait for those who
will ne’er return. The tale I now relate is one full of dread and fear, but
you can at least comfort the women back home that their men died
bravely. If only they had stayed dead, then mayhap I would not have to
write this note.
At first the six of us who survived that hellish night in the tavern
felt joy at the mere fact we were yet alive, with so many of our
fellowship having fallen. We made our way back to the ship, where I
penned my previous note to you and we tried to warm ourselves as best
we could. I allowed the other five to break open the grog, but limited
them to one mug each, for we had friends to bury.
After I finished my journal, I had a hard task getting them back on
land again, for they had already forgotten the oath we made outside
the tavern, and had a mind to up anchor and leave, never mind it
would be near-nigh impossible for a crew of so few to get the vessel
anywhere in open sea. In the end I shamed them into it, by walking
down the gangplank and standing, arms folded on the dock.
“I stay here,” I shouted. “If you choose to go, you may leave me
behind. Have you so far forgotten the fellowship that we shared that
you can leave your friends where they lie? Would you deny them the
comfort of the words of the Lord?”
None spoke.
“And what of when we six are home and safe? What will you tell
their wives, their sweethearts? Would you be able to ever look them in
the eye again? And when they ask in the taverns how it is that we six
came home yet the others did not? Could you speak up and say that we
ran like rats for the comfort of home while our shipmates lay dead in a
tavern? I know that I could not. I will stay here, until we have eased
the path to Paradise for our fallen.”
“And I will stand with you Cap’n, as always. You have led us
through many dangers. I have trust that you will not betray us now.”
The First Mate brought himself down to join me.
 Together we stood there, while the remaining others stared at us
sullenly, weighing their thoughts of mutiny against their loyalty to me,
their captain.
In truth I myself wanted little more than to flee back to your soft
arms, but I held firm, although I half expected at any moment for a
storm to brew up and freeze me, immobile, to the spot. The storm did
not come, but the last remainder of my crew did, eventually coming
sheepishly down the gangplank to join us.
“The Lord will reward you, in this life or the next,” I said to each
of them.
“Do not be too quick with your praise, Cap’n,” the First Mate
said. “For mayhap they know as well as we do that four men, no
matter how strong, could not even so much as get the boat out of this
harbor, never mind across all the seas that separate us from home.”
“Still, they have shown themselves brave enough to step down
beside us. What each man holds in his heart lies between him and his
maker, but their actions show them to be still true. For that, I give
thanks.”
“Then we will all give thanks together, to the Lord,” the First
Mate said. “The Pastor may not be here, but that does not mean we
should neglect our debts. Let us pray.”
The First Mate led us in prayer, as solemn and faithful as if he
himself was a Pastor. Then Stumpy Jack started up the old songs. We
sang “Wind and Sail, He Watches O’er Us,” at the top of our voices.
We felt stronger than before as we left the dockside behind.
That strength lasted only as long as it took for the cold offshore
wind to reach through our garments and bring a chill to our hearts.
We strode back into the colony with as much bluster as we could
manage, each man talking loudly to the other as if noise itself might
keep the cold at bay. It was only when we fetched up outside the tavern
that we fell silent, each lost in his thoughts of the night so recently
passed.
Once more, all waited. I was the first to make my way into that
hellhole, despite the heaviness that lay on my soul.
“Let us have at it, lads,” the Mate said behind me, leading the
rest inside. “We cannot have our friends lying here in the dark when
there is warm sunshine to be had outside.”
 And so we lifted and we carried, trying not to remember the times
we had spent with those who were now no more than cold meat under
our hands. I will spare you the details, dearest Lizzie, but bringing the
bodies of our fallen out of the tavern was a sore blow to our hearts.
Some of us had a tear in our eye as we laid them in a row in front of
the courthouse. But a far sorer blow was yet to come.
When we went to fetch the Pastor and Bald Tom, neither of them
was to be found.
I stood in the ruin of what was left of the privy.
I could find no sign that Bald Tom had ever been there, save for a
single partially frozen shit on the ground.
Stumpy Jack wailed.
“The Devil has taken them. And it will be us for it next.”
He would have fled there and then if the First Mate hadn’t held
him by the scruff of the neck.
“Have courage, man,” he said, loud enough for us all to hear.
“Last night the Good Lord saved our sorry skins. He has a purpose for
us all, even you, old Stumpy. All we have to do is trust him, and he will
deliver us.”
Those quiet words from the big man gave us all succor, but only
until we dragged to the bodies out to the cemetery.
None of us were prepared for the sight that met us.
This time old Stumpy did flee, screaming back to the boat as if all
the demons of hell were after him.
The graves we had spent the last days digging all lay open, brown
earth strewn every which way. The dead had not lain at rest, despite all
the Pastor’s pleas and prayers. They had risen up, digging their way
out of the cold earth.
There was no sign of any bodies, man, woman or child. Not a
single one slept where we had put them.
“What shall we do, Cap’n? Shall we take them back to the
Havenhome,” the First Mate asked, but I had no answer.
“Leave them here,” Jim Crawford shouted. “Leave them here.
For if those we have said the words over can yet rise, then surely there
is no hope for any of us.”
“I must think on it,” I said. “And I cannot hold a thought in my
head while these graves lie before me. Leave our dead be. I will repair
to my cabin. Mayhap the Lord will send me guidance.”
We followed Stumpy Jack back to the boat, more slowly, but with
no less trepidation in our hearts.
By the time we got back onto the Havenhome, Stumpy Jack was
already blind drunk and no use to man nor beast.
“We have to go back and bury our crewmates,” the First Mate
said.
“Why bother. They will only be up and about again on the
morrow,” Stumpy Jack replied. He wept, a pitiful sight in such an old
sea dog such as him.
“Jack has it right,” Jim Crawford piped up. “Despite all our
efforts, despite all the Pastor’s prayers, they’ve all come up again. And
who is to know, mayhap the Pastor and Bald Tom are with them even
now.”
Dave the Bosun’s Mate and Eye-Tie Frank stayed quiet. I saw
they were already eyeing the grog. I allowed each man another half-
cup.
“It’s up to you, Cap’n,” the First Mate said after swallowing a
mouthful that would have floored a smaller man. “If you say we should
go back and put them in the ground, then I’ll make sure we all go as
one.”
May the Lord God forgive me; I left them there, lying out under
the sun beside the empty graves.
“No,” I replied. “Pull up the gangplank. We will spend this night
on the Havenhome. I will sleep on it, and make a decision on the
morrow.”
But sleep was the furthest thing from my thoughts. I am ashamed
to admit it, but I took to the grog, swilling it down as if the morrow did
not matter, as if I had no responsibilities in the world. I know I
promised you dearest, but my solemn vow was not enough to keep me
from it. I can only say in my own mitigation that I was far from hearth
and home, and sore afeared. And if it is any consolation to you
sweetest, I have no memory of the act, and I suffered the most fearful
of headaches on awakening.
It was the First Mate who brought me out of my stupor.
At first I thought I had taken enough grog to blind me, but it was
only that the sky outside had grown dark. Another night had fallen.
There was a chill in the air.
“Cap’n. You need to see this,” he said.
“Can’t it wait?” I said, groaning as the result of my drinking
gripped my head like a vise.
“Afraid not, Cap’n. If I left you asleep, you might never wake
again.”
“That might be no bad thing,” I moaned.
He slapped me in the face, hard. I was so astonished I almost fell
on my arse. I probably would have done had he not put out a hand to
steady me.
“I’m rightful sorry, Cap’n, but your men need you sober and in
charge. We are in perilous waters, and hard times. That is a mixture
that requires a Captain, not a drunken sot.”
In all our time together he had never raised his voice to me
before, let alone strike me.
I was of a mood to be affronted, but one look at the fear in his
eyes melted all passion away.
“You have the right, sir,” I said to him. “If you see me lift another
flagon of grog you can throw me in the brig and toss the key over the
side.”
“Best save your vow of abstinence for a bit,” he said with a grim
smile. “You might need a brew after you’ve seen what waits out on the
dock.”
He led me up on deck.
Moonlight shone down, illuminating the dock.
A single figure stood there, staring up at us.
It was our first sighting of an aboriginal, one that froze the very
breath in my throat. He wore a headpiece of feathers that rose in a
crown above his head and fell in a long tail down his back. His
clothing looked to be animal skin roughly sewn together. His feet were
bare.
But that wasn’t what drew the eye. I had heard tell that the natives
of these shores were red, almost the color of blood, but this tall man
was white as ivory, as cold as a stone. White eyes without a pupil
stared up at us.
He raised his arms.
It snowed, out of that clear, starry sky.
 The First Mate looked past the native, down into the colony.
“Dear Lord preserve us,” he whispered.
I turned to follow his gaze.
The dead walked along the dock towards us, each of them staring
with that white-eyed gaze. And there, at the front of the mob, stood a
bulky man in a woman’s skirts. Alongside him strode a tall, grim-faced
preacher dressed in black.
Bald Tom and the Pastor had come back to visit their old
shipmates.

***

Mina stood up from her work, groaning as her back complained.

“How is she?” Jon asked.
“I’ve cleaned away all the dead flesh and packed the wounds,” Mina
replied. “But I’m no surgeon. If infection sets in, she’ll lose the leg. We
have to get her to a hospital.”
Jon shook his head.
“No chance. I’ve been following things online. We’re safer here than
anywhere.”
“Things are bad?”
The technician nodded.
“The PC in your office is on the two megabit wireless link.”
“Can you get out an SOS?”
Jon looked grim.
“I tried. I was told to ‘Sit tight and wait it out’. They’re having
‘operational difficulties’ getting anything into the city. But that’s not all.
There’s a streaming video link you need to see.”
“Get a pot of coffee on,” she said. “And meet me in the office.”
She went to the sink to wash up.
“Mr. Barter? Coffee and news update in my office in five?”
The man didn’t look up, lost in his reading.

***

Taken from the personal journal of John Fraser, Captain of the

Havenhome, a cargo vessel. Transcribed and annotated by Dick North, 19th
March.
NB This fragment continues straight on from the Journal Entry date
17th October, 1605. The writing is often illegible, and the writer’s thoughts
are clearly disturbed, but I have made my best endeavors in transcribing it
faithfully.

The First Mate roused the remaining crew, all save Stumpy Jack,
who was so far gone in stupor that Gabriel’s Horn itself is unlikely to
have called him out of sleep.
Our first thought, nay, our only thought, was to raise anchor and
head for open water, but we were denied even that chance. In less time
than the blink of an eye a storm blew up, a wind so cold it would have
frozen us to the deck if we hadn’t had the foresight to wear our winter
furs. Even at that, the cold bit at my nose so hard it felt like a nip from
an excited dog.
“Up anchor,” the First Mate shouted, but too late.
The sea had frozen solid around us.
We were stuck hard in place. Old timbers creaked and moaned as
the ice gripped tight.
“Will she hold?” I asked the Mate.
“She held together when the ice was three feet thick off
Newfoundland two years back,” he said. “She’ll hold now.”
But I was starting to believe that it was colder yet than that day. I
had to keep shifting from foot to foot; otherwise my soles would have
frozen to the deck. By now snow fell so thick that I could no longer see
the buildings of the colony beyond the dock.
“What purpose does it serve?” I said. I thought I had merely
spoken to myself, but the Mate heard.
“The Pastor used to say that everything, good or evil, was God’s
will, all part of a scheme of things, and that we would only ever
understand when we were risen up on the Day of Judgment, and the
veils would fall from our eyes.”
“Then I wish the Day of Judgment would hurry upon us,” I
replied. “For I am sore perplexed, and have long since tired of this
mummery.”
“Be careful what you wish for, Cap’n,” the Mate said. “Be very
careful what you wish for.”
 Jim Crawford came up beside us on deck, musket in his hand. It
fell unused to the deck when he saw what faced us across on the dock.
Stout fellow though he was, Jim Crawford fell to his knees, struck
down in terror.
“We’re done for,” he squealed.
The First Mate raised him to his feet.
“Not if we stand together as men,” he said. “For truly that is the
only way we will see home again. Cap’n…do I have your permission to
break out the powder?”
“You have a plan?”
“More of an idea, but mayhap it will come to something.”
“Then have at it, man, have at it.”
The Mate went below, while Crawford and I stood and watched
the figures on the dockside.
They did not move. Their stares did not wander from where we
stood. The snow got heavier yet, and still they did not stir.
“What do they want from us, Cap’n,” Crawford wailed beside
me. “What do they want?”
In truth, I could not answer him, for fear had taken hold deep
within me. It would not be shifted, no matter how many prayers I
uttered up to the most high. My eyes were fixed on the Pastor and Bald
Tom, two men as far apart in temperment as you are ever likely to
meet. Yet here they were, standing side by side, joined in a new hatred
against their former shipmates that I was at a loss to understand.
The wind howled. The snow bit into my cheeks, but I was loath to
move, loath to take my eyes from the host on the dock lest they creep
up on me unawares.
The First Mate came back onto deck, joined by Eye-Tie Frank.
They carried between them a half-barrel full of thick pitch.
“I’ve mixed in the powder,” the First Mate said. “Remember that
corsair we met off the Azores?”
And indeed I did. In a flash I saw his plan.
“Will it burn against yon cold flesh?” I asked as I helped
manhandle the barrel.
“I know nothing else that might,” the Mate said.
He wrapped a linen cloth around the end of a broomstick and
dipped it in the pitch. He lit it from a small tinder box he kept in his
waistcoat pocket.
“I trust no one but you with the flame,” the Mate said, handing it
to me.
I looked him in the eye, this man who had been my friend for past
twenty years.
“It’s risky,” I said. “I have mind of what happened to Slant-Eyed
Jock,”
“And I,” the Mate said. “But I fear we have little choice.”
He thrust his arm into the pitch. He came up with a handful of
black ooze in his hand.
“Do it quick,” he said. He thrust his hand towards me.
I lit the pitch. The Mate threw the lit mass away from him and it
spluttered and spat as it sailed into the night. It hit Bald Tom on the
chest, and ran down his torso, burning all the time.
The frozen man looked down, as if bemused. His whole face went
up like a torch as the flame reached the powder that had been mixed in
with the pitch.
Bald Tom fell to his knees, dropped forward. He tumbled off the
dock and down to the frozen water below. He hit it hard, dropping
through the ice with a sizzle and fountain of steam before he sank away
out of sight, silent, like a stone.
Jim Crawford shouted in triumph, but the Mate hushed him
sternly.
“I just killed a good man,” he said grimly. “Tis no cause for
celebration.”
“He were dead already,” Crawford said.
“That don’t make me feel any better about it,” the Mate said
grimly.
He stuck his hand in the pitch again, and came up with a second
ball.
“You were lucky with the first,” I said. “Mayhap it is best not to
chance it again?”
“We both know we have no other choice, Cap’n. Light it up.”
For a second time his arm seemed to grow a flame. The powder in
the pitch spluttered before it left his hand. He threw it towards the
dock, but it exploded and fizzled out well short, dropping away out of
sight to the ice below.
 “I can do better than that,” Crawford said.
Before either of us could stop him he plunged his whole arm into
the pitch, coming up with a far bigger ball than the Mate. He leaned
forward and touched the flame to the oily mixture.
His arm immediately burst aflame, fire roaring up the side of his
head, flesh crisping and melting. He screamed, just once, and fell
away from us. The powder went up and the whole right-hand side of
Crawford’s body burst, like a ripe fruit, a dead, smoking, ruin before
he hit the deck.
The Mate looked down at what was left of the man.
“Be careful,” I said.
The Mate bent to get himself another handful, when Eye-Tie
Frank stepped in front of him.
“Mayhap I have a better method,” he said. He removed his cap,
then his belt. He filled his cap with the pitch, and then tied it up with
his belt. He was left with a two foot length of belt with a ball of pitch
on the end.
“Shame on you,” he said to the Mate and me, his slight accent
showing through. “Do you not do this yourselves at home to bring in
the New Year?”
He lit the pitch, swung it around his head and sent in winging
over the dock.
“That we do,” the Mate said, unbuckling his own belt. “Although
I am usually too far gone in my cups to remember it.”
The fireball exploded just above the heads of the throng of the
dead, sending burning flame over five of them.
The Mate sent one of his own after it. The air filled with black
acrid smoke as flesh burned. The ranks of the dead did not move, even
as their neighbors burned.
“All very well,” the Mate said. “But we have a limited supply of
belts and caps. And I’d rather my breeches didn’t fall down…not in
this weather.”
Dave the Bosun’s Mate arrived on deck. We set him to finding
twine and cloth, the better to make more fireballs.
For a while the air was full of flame and fury.
The snow got heavier still. Sometimes we could not even see the
dock, but the smell of burning meat told us we still hit our targets.
 We lost ourselves in a world of burning pitch and whirling snow,
the only sound being the coughing, spluttering rattle of powder
starting to fizzle, and the whoosh of flame as we hit our targets. The
night went on without end.
I know not when the snow finally stopped, only that I looked up to
see stars and a full moon overhead.
“My eyes deceive me, Cap’n,” the Mate said beside me. “For
surely the moon was on the wane when we hove-to here.”
“There is deception here, right enough,” I replied, “But it is not
your eyes. It comes from that one.”
Out over the dockside, the white native with the feather headdress
still stood tall and un-burnt. Around him the ranks of the dead lay,
finally at rest, a smoking chaos of limbs and torsos piled higgledy-
piggledy in a hellish landscape strewn across the dock.
The native thumped at his chest. He made an expansive circle
with his arms before thumping his chest again.
He did this twice before I realized his meaning.
This land is mine.
He pointed at Dave the Bosun’s Mate. The man jerked, as if jolted
by lightning.
To our astonishment he threw himself off the boat, towards the
pier.
It was a prodigious leap. I would not have placed a bet on him
achieving it, but he seemed to have been given wings. He landed, a few
feet in front of the white native.
The native thumped his chest again. He stroked Dave’s face,
gently, as if romancing a woman. Once more we had to watch a
colleague freeze. His body went stiff, and a last plume of breath left
him, floating high in the air. I could only hope it was his soul, fleeing
to its place in Paradise, for the thought of a man being frozen but yet
imprisoned, mute, in his own body, was almost too much to bear.
Finally Dave turned back towards us, blind, white eyes staring
out of a blue face. The native once more made the circle with his arms.
“He’s showing us,” the Mate said. “He’s showing us that all this
is his…including us.”
“It does not include me,” Eye-Tie Frank said. He leapt off the
ship, screaming his defiance. Whether he intended to reach the pier
 itself we shall never know. His leap was well short and he fell away
below our sight, never to be heard of again.
The native stared at the two of us, his black-lipped mouth raised
in a smile. He thumped his chest again. Somewhere, out in the wild
reaches of the night, a wolf howled at the moon. It was answered much
closer, by a pack, a wild, ululating wail that seemed to pierce my very
skull.
The First Mate looked at me, and I at him.
“We have served together over twenty years, Cap’n. I have been
proud to call you my friend.”
“And I you,” I replied. We both had a tear in our eye, there at the
end.
“Goodbye, Cap’n,” he said, as the native on the dock pointed a
long white finger, straight at him.

***

Mina sat at her desk, staring at the computer screen. She could
scarcely believe what she saw.
“It’s a webcam,” Jon said. “Fixed on the Brooklyn Bridge. It’s usually
only used to check for traffic, but the networks switched over to it when
their own cameramen went AWOL. This is a recording from half an hour
ago.”
The bridge was empty save for a lone figure, a thin man, ivory white,
gaunt faced with a small goatee beard. He wore a high headdress of eagle
feathers.
“Get the face-recognition program fired up,” Mina said.
“Way ahead of you boss,” Jon replied. “Just watch. I’ll fill you in
later.”
The white figure turned his back to the camera and made a wide sweep
of his arms, encompassing the snowstorm that hid Manhattan Island from
view. He turned back, and slapped his chest, twice.
“He’s claiming territory,” Mina whispered.
“Not just territory,” Jon said, his voice shaking. “Watch.”
The white figure pointed a hand out towards the camera. People began
to walk into view, stumbling, as if dazed, across the bridge. The frozen ones
came out of the storm to meet them.
 Mina had to look away as the first victim, an old man, was torn apart
before her eyes and a red pool spread in the snow.
Jon leaned over and closed down the window.
“You can guess the rest.”
“They were all killed?”
“Not all. Some were frozen, like the others.”
“And the white figure? You know who it is?”
Cole Barter spoke from the doorway at the same time as Jon.
“Dick North. It’s Dick North.”

***

Mike Kaminski stood in the delivery bay listening to the thudding

beats as the things outside tried to force their way in. For maybe the fifth
time he checked that the shotgun was loaded.
The only time he’d ever felt like this before was at a drug bust.
And that time I was the one breaking in.
He remembered the same fluttering in his stomach; the same buzzing,
like angry bees, in his head. When he heard footsteps in the corridor behind
him he almost fired.
“Hey, relax, big boy,” Mina said. “Your caffeine fix is here.”
He took the coffee, swallowing a too hot gulp, thankful for the
warmth.
“How’s our archaeologist?”
Mina brought him up to speed.
“Dick North? The Professor?”
Mina nodded. “Barter says there’s all sorts of stuff in North’s journal.”
“And how did he get hold of that?”
“He’s not saying. There’s something going on there. He knows Jackie
as well.”
“I don’t like it.”
“What’s not to like? The world has gone to shit, we’re under siege
from frozen zombies…and our generator won’t last forever.”
Mike sighed.
“How long?”
“Six, maybe seven hours.”
“No extra fuel?”
 “Not inside. There’s a small depot maybe twenty yards out, but neither
Jon nor I have a key for it.”
“Any chance of the cavalry coming to our rescue?”
“I doubt it. Whatever North has become, he’s holding all the cards.”
Mike nodded grimly.
“Then we have two choices. Sit tight and wait for the power to give
out…Or find some way to fight back.”
The thudding at the door suddenly stopped. A deep quiet fell on the
delivery bay.
“I vote for fighting back,” Mina said.
“Me too. Let’s go and find out exactly what our friend Mr. Barter does
and doesn’t know.”

***

Cole was sitting in Mina’s office reading the last of the journal when
the detective walked in. Cole knew immediately he was in trouble; he’d
seen that expression on cops’ faces before.
“I’ll tell you everything,” Cole said, even before Mike said a word.
“But I want you to remember. I saved your life out there. I didn’t have to do
that.”
“I’ll take it into consideration,” Mike said. “Now talk. I’ll know if
you’re lying.”
“It started when I pretended to be a cop,” Cole began.
“What!” Mike shouted.
“If you’re going to interrupt every time I speak, this might take a
while.”
“I should kick your ass around this room,” Mike said.
“Save it till the end,” Cole said. “That way you’ll know how many
kicks I deserve.”
Cole was initially just going to give the cop the abridged version, but
in the end he told the whole story. He had Mike, Mina and Jon’s undivided
attention, and he actually enjoyed the story telling.
“The journal,” Mina said when he finished. “That’s what you were
reading earlier?”
Cole nodded.
 “I haven’t quite finished yet,” he said. “But I’ve read enough. Dick
North ate the heart of the native, and turned into…something. Probably a
Wendigo.”
Mina shook her head.
“I don’t believe that.”
The big cop was more pragmatic.
“How do we kill it?” Mike asked.
“I think I was just getting to that.”
Cole opened the journal and read aloud.

***

Taken from the personal journal of John Fraser, Captain of the

Havenhome, a cargo vessel. Transcribed and annotated by Dick North, 19th
March.
NB This fragment continues straight on from the Journal Entry date
17th October, 1605.

What happened next will stay with me for the remainder of what
is left of my life.
The First Mate shook and juddered, in the same manner as Dave
the Bosun’s Mate had done a few moments before. He gritted his teeth.
He stuck both arms into the pitch, all the way up to his shoulders.
Before I could move, he took the torch from me. He leapt from the
boat, straight at the native.
“Havenhome!” he called, his voice ringing out loud and clear in
the night. He landed just in front of the tall, white figure, stepped
forward, and grabbed it in a tight embrace. I have seen men’s backs
broken by that grip, but the native ne’er flinched. The Mate put all his
strength into it, but the white figure was unbowed.
Then, at the last, as the skin in the Mate’s face went blue, he
yelled out once more, a formless word. He brought down the torch, and
set light to his pitch covered arms.
I stood and watched, with tears running through a grim smile, as
the pair of them burned. The feather crown went first, blazing all as
one and sending flames all up the creature’s back. Where the First
 Mate’s pitch covered arms touched its body they stuck, searing huge
patches of flesh at a time.
Together the bodies fell on the dock. The Mate was surely dead by
now, but the creature could not escape from his embrace.
Even then I thought the creature might break free, for the flames
had begun to die down, yet clearly, it still showed signs of what passed
for life in that white frozen frame.
Finally, just as I was starting to despair, the powder in the pitch
took.
A yellow flame shot ten yards into the sky. When it died down
there was nothing left of either body that could be recognized…just
one single, fused mass of blackened flesh.

***

Doug looked up. The other three stared at him, open mouthed.
“That’s how the bodies at the museum got fused together,” Mina said.
“Yep.” the big cop replied. “You starting to believe yet darling?”
“Maybe just a little,” Mina replied. “But it still doesn’t explain why all
of this is happening.”
“I’ve got a theory,” Cole said. “If you’re interested?”
“Go on then,” Mike said. “Let’s hear it.”
“It’s to do with territory?”
“You mean he’s pissing in our pond?”
“No,” Cole replied. “We’re pissing in his. Or rather, the thing that Dick
North has become believes he is an American Native, protecting his lands
from invaders.”
“Bullshit,” Mina said. “Dick North was a white European.”
“Yes. But the heart he ate was Native American. You want a scientific
rationale? How about donor memory translocation?”
“What’s that? More bullshit?” Jon asked.
“Something else I’m not sure I believe in,” Mina said. “There have
been some recent papers that tend to suggest that people who get transplants
can take on some characteristics of the donor.”
“Sure sounds like bullshit,” Jon said.
Mina shook her head.
 “Some of the data is quite persuasive. People claim to take on some
memories from the donor organs.”
“Like that vegetarian athlete,” Cole said. “She got the heart and lungs
from a Hells Angel and now has a beer and fried chicken habit and rides a
Harley chopper.”
“An extreme case,” Mina said. “She might just have wanted a change
of lifestyle after a traumatic operation.”
Cole wasn’t going to be stopped so easily.
“But aren’t there also other studies that suggest that every cell in our
body retains most, if not all, of our memories; down at some molecular
level we don’t yet understand?”
Mina shook her head.
“You’re oversimplifying. Extrapolating a big picture from different
small ones.”
“Yeah. But I could be right. North could have picked up the Native’s
character from eating the heart? It’s within the bounds of scientific
possibility?”
“Barely,” Mina said.
“And still a far cry from a weather manipulating leader of an army of
zombies,” Jon said.
“It’s just too many impossible things to remember before breakfast,”
Mina said.
“At least we know that someone beat it in the past,” Mike said. “That’s
enough to give me hope, however small.”
“All well and good,” Mina said. “But how do we find it. It’s a big
city.”
“I’ve got a theory about that as well,” Cole said. “In Wendigo myths,
the creature always hangs around the same place where it was made. If I
had to guess, I’d say the best place to find it is back where it started; back
on Hunter’s Dock.”
“That figures,” Mike said. “That place always was bad news.”
Cole reckoned that now was maybe not the time for his abduction
theories.
“So what’s the plan?” Mina said.
“You’re asking me?” Mike said, incredulously.
“In case you hadn’t noticed, you’re doing okay so far.”
Mike smiled.
 “Somebody call Guinness; I just got a chance at boss.”
“Make the most of it, Moose,” Mina said, turning his smile. “I might
change my mind if you don’t shape up. What’s first?”
“First up is survival. And top of the list, assuming those things can’t
get in here, is heat. The generator’s good for another six hours. Is there any
other heat source we can use?”
“Short of burning the place down about our ears, no,” Mina said.
“Okay then. Weapons?”
“I’ve got three Molotov cocktails, and the pump-action shotgun from
the bar. Fifteen shells left. Apart from that, you’re the one with all the
armory.”
“And I left the cleaver outside,” Cole said.
“I remember. Thanks. Lastly, food and water.”
“We’ve got several water coolers, plenty of coffee, and a fridge full of
chocolate snacks,” Jon said.
“Everything a growing man needs,” Mike replied.
“Any booze?” Cole asked.
“Just straight ethyl alcohol,” Mina replied. “You’d go blind.”
“It might be preferable, given some of the things I’ve seen tonight.”
“Talking of seeing,” Mike asked. “Do we have any eyes looking
outside?”
Jon slapped his forehead.
“I forgot all about the external cameras. I can get them from here.”
He moved to the laptop. The rest of them crowded round. Cole had to
lean sideways to see past the big cop.
The technician brought up a series of screens.
The first showed the rear of the building; an unbroken snowscape.
“It’s drifted up bad out back,” Jon said. “My car’s under there
somewhere.”
The shot to the north showed more of the same; a buried car park, the
cars, even the SUVs, little more than indeterminate mounds of snow.
Jon moved on to the shot taken from just above the delivery bay doors.
Six figures, silhouetted against blue-white arc-lights, stood, silent and still,
thigh deep in the snow.
“Maybe they’re finally, really, dead?” Cole said.
Mina laughed hollowly.
“You wanna go and check it out for us?”
 Jon moved on to the last camera; a view out of the front of the
building. The camera looked out over the flat landscape of the park. Cole
could clearly see the deep tire tracks left by the ambulance, the ones he’d
followed in. And there was something else; a swift movement just at the
edge of his vision.
“Wait,” he said, squeezing forward between the cop and the technician.
“What’s that?” He pointed at the left-hand side of the screen.
Using the mouse the technician panned sideways.
Long grey shapes drifted like ghosts on the surface of the snow; bushy
tails held high, long snouts sniffing the air as their thick manes swung in
time with their loping walk. A pack of timber wolves, twenty strong, hunted
across the park.
Even from this distance the milky white of their eyes showed silver in
the moonlight.
“Donor memory translocation, eh?” Mike said. “Buckle up boys and
girls. I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”

***

Cole was alone in the office reading the last pages of the journal when
Jackie Donnelly limped in.
“Where’s Mina?” the archaeologist said, just as she recognized the
man behind the desk.
“You should be resting,” Cole said.
Jackie slumped in the visitor’s seat opposite him.
“I’d got that bit already, thanks,” she said. “What I don’t get is what
you’re doing here? This is Mina’s morgue, right?”
Cole nodded. He wasn’t sure what to say, but he knew a place to start
trying.
“Let me tell you a story,” he said. “About a geek, and his obsession
with Hunter’s Dock.”
He told the whole thing again.
“Dick North?” she said at the end. “You’re telling me that Dick North
is responsible?”
“It’s the only explanation.”
“What the hell was in those drugs Mina gave me?” Jackie said. “It
feels like the world’s gone mad and I’m the only sane one left.”
 “Welcome to my world,” Cole said. He leaned forward and brought up
the video clip from the Brooklyn Bridge on the screen, turning it to show
Jackie.
She watched in stunned silence.
“That’s Dick North,” she said incredulously.
Cole nodded.
She didn’t say any more for a long time, merely sitting staring at the
screen, face almost as pale as that of the man she stared at.
“How does it end?” she asked.
“How does what end?”
“Their story. On the Havenhome.”
“I was just reading that.”
Cole picked up the journal and read out loud.

***

Taken from the personal journal of John Fraser, Captain of the

Havenhome, a cargo vessel. Journal Entry date 19th October, 1605.
Transcribed and annotated by Dick North, 19th March.

I am decided. This will be my last ever entry in this journal, made

in the hope that what is related may help some other Christian souls
from sharing the fate of my crewmates. In the meantime I can do little
more than offer up prayers, for the First Mate, and all the other brave
men of the Havenhome who will ne’er return home.
This proud ship, my home these many years, has sailed its last,
and I am no longer Captain of anything other than my own soul. In
truth, I do not think I will ever be able to lead men again. If I make it
to home port alive I will retire.
I will spend my time sipping beer in the harbor and telling tall
tales with the other old gentleman, content to keep my feet warm
before the fires of hearth and home.
But that seems like a long way off, another lifetime where the sun
shines hot and yellow on the fields, and my Lizzie stands at the door,
smiling. I have some of the Havenhome’s tale yet to tell before I can
begin my journey towards that most welcome of sights.
 After the Mate had made his sacrifice I could do naught but stand
there, staring at the smoking ruin of all that was left of my friends and
shipmates. I paid particular attention to the charred mass where lay
the Mate and the native, half expecting at any moment that a white
figure would rise from the dockside to mock me once more.
Nothing moved except the stirring of acrid smoke on the breeze.
The wind died, like the last sigh of an old man on his deathbed. A
cloud ran over the full moon. Slowly at first, then faster until water ran
in runnels off the deck, the snow thawed.
And still I stood there, long into the night, long after the sun came
up and the last of the frost was taken by the morning.
I felt empty, devoid of action, abandoned by hope. I was only
brought out of my reverie by old Stumpy Jack, who emerged, blinking
into the sunlight, looking near as dead as some of those lying on the
dockside.
“Are we alive, Cap’n?” he said, “Or in Paradise?”
“Does this look like any Paradise you might expect?” I said.
He stood beside me for a long time, staring out over the smoking
dock.
“Is it over?” he whispered.
“I know not whether it will ever be over,” I replied. “But it is over
for now.”
It was Stumpy Jack who brought me inside, him who made me
drink and eat, that I might stay alive when all of my brethren lay dead
around us.
And even now, while I write this, the old man is showing more
fortitude than I thought he possessed. He has brought the remains of
the Mate and the native inside the ship.
“The rest of them Cap’n? What shall we do with the rest of
them?”
There are bodies, mostly charred and unrecognizable, strewn all
across the dock. The Mate’s pitch and powder concoction did for them
all in the end.
“By rights, these people deserve a Christian burial,” I said.
“Nay, Cap’n,” Old Stumpy said. “Whatever part of them
belonged to the Lord has already gone. And neither you nor I have the
 strength, or the heart, to waste in spending another night near this
place.”
I reluctantly had to agree with him.
We will scuttle the Havenhome here, on this dock. I will leave my
journal in my chest, wrapped in oilskins. In that manner, if anyone
should chance on the drowned boat, they may, if the Lord is with them,
find this journal first, and stop before they unleash what Jack and I
have left at the bottom of the hold.
We have gathered our provisions. We will leave tonight. The only
other thing I take with me from my cabin is my bible, in the hope it will
give me solace in the nights to come. But I fear I will ne’er find hope
again in the words of the Lord, for I know the Pastor’s white eyes will
ever accuse me, even in the deepest depths of slumber. If the Lord did
not see fit to save such a holy and devout man as the Pastor, what hope
is there for the likes of me, who has done so many things that require
repentance?
Forgive me, Lizzie, for I know now you will never read this. But if
the Lord gives me strength, I intend to head down the coast, for
warmer climes and friendly company. Mayhap I shall return yet to
home port, and your soft arms.
You will fill my dreams until I am once more at your side. Be well
my love. Be well for both of us.
Your loving husband, John.

***

“Is that it?” Jackie asked.

“No. There are a couple more pages. But you look all in. Stay right
there. I’ll go and get Mina.”

***

Mina and Mike were down the generator room. Jon had been with
them but he’d been forced to leave due to the bitter cold. Icicles hung from
pipe work. Mina fastened up the sealskins. Her breath steamed as she
spoke.
“How bad is it?”
 Mike stood over the small generator, which was obviously struggling;
chugging and coughing like the diesel engine of Mina’s old VW Beetle.
“If we don’t get the temperature up in here, it’s not going to last more
than an hour,” Mike said. “The gas gets thick and sluggish, and the engine
burns itself out after a while. Are there any heaters we can bring down
here?”
Mina shook her head.
“And if we try to start a fire the automatic sprinklers will kick in.
We’re running out of options, aren’t we?”
“Yep. If it was only the two of us, I’d say we get out of here and head
for the dock; see if we could end it, one way or the other. But we have
civilians to think about.”
Mina nodded again.
“Jackie won’t get ten yards on foot.”
“Looks like I need to find us some better transport, and fast,” Mike
said.
“You’re not going outside,” Mina said.
“That sounded like an order,” Mike replied. “I thought I was boss
tonight?”
Mina didn’t feel like smiling. She’d had a sudden mental picture of
Mike being pulled down by a pack of slavering wolves, all alone in snowy
wasteland.
She grabbed him in a hug. She held tight. Tears flowed. She let them
come, her shoulders shaking with deep sobs.
Mike lifted her chin and kissed her softly on the lips.
“Hey. It’s okay. I’ll take the heavy ordnance with me. And I’ll be real
careful.”
“I’m coming with you,” she said.
“No way,” Mike replied. “You’re on civilian watch. I need somebody
to hold the fort apart from a geek, an archaeologist and a lab technician.”
The generator wheezed and the lights flickered.
“And I don’t have time to argue.”
Mina stepped away from him and wiped her eyes.
“Okay then,” she said. “You’ll need a diversion though.”

***
 Minutes later all five of them were gathered in the lab once more.
Mina checked on Jackie. She gave her more painkillers, while Mike
outlined the situation to the others.
“I say we stay here; wait it out,” Cole said after Mike finished.
“Yeah?” Mina replied. “Well, luckily we’re not a democracy.”
“And even if we did, you wouldn’t get a vote,” Jackie added.
“Don’t rile the womenfolk,” Mike said to Cole. “You wouldn’t like
them when they’re angry.”
“You’re determined that you’re going then?” Mina asked, hoping this
time for a different answer.
Mike nodded.
“I’ve got a plan. There’s a municipal works depot less than five blocks
from here. I’m hoping there’s a snowplough waiting there with our name on
it.”
“And if there isn’t?”
“Then I’ll find something else. What choice do we have?”
In her heart Mina knew Mike was right. That didn’t mean she had to
like it.
“Okay. But you can’t go out the bay door. They’re waiting there.”
Jon went into the office and checked the laptop.
“Mina’s right. They’re still there. They haven’t moved.”
“How about the front?” Mike called.
“All clear. For the moment.”
Mina looked at Mike. The big man was afraid…she knew him well
enough to see it in the set of his chin and the narrowing of his eyes. She
also knew that he’d made his mind up. She had to resign herself to it.
“I’ll take the bay door,” Mina said. She held up one of the Molotov
cocktails. “When you hear the bang, get running. Jon. You go with Mike
and make sure the door gets shut behind him. Jackie, you watch the
cameras. My mobile is beside the laptop. Dial 199 and you’ll be able to tell
Mike what you see. Cole. You’re with me.”
Nobody complained, which was fine by Mina…she wasn’t exactly in
any mood for backchat.
She grabbed Mike as they left the room. He already had his suit zipped
up. He carried his pistol in one hand and the shotgun in the other.
“If you’re not back in an hour, I’m coming looking,” she said. She felt
tears in her eyes and brushed them away angrily.
 “No,” Mike said. “It’ll be too late either way by then. If I come back
after an hour, check my eyes. And make it quick.”
She understood what he was saying.
“You’d better come back, or I’ll make your life a misery.”
“I’ll see you soon, sweetheart,” he whispered. “I promise.”
He lifted her chin and kissed her softly.
“I love you,” she said. She hadn’t known she would say it, but as soon
as she did, she knew she meant it.
“I love you, too,” he replied. This time he was the one with the tears.
“I’ll be back before you know it.”
By the time Mina wiped her eyes he was gone.

***

The delivery bay was cold and quiet until Mina hit the intercom.
“Jackie. We’re here. What does it look like out front?”
“All quiet,” Jackie replied.
“Okay. Tell the Moose to count to ten, then start running.”
Mina nodded to Cole Barter who stood to one side of the door next to
the controls. The white-faced man hit the button.
The door rose. The quiet was broken by the whirr of the door opening
and the tinkling of shattered glass falling to the floor.
Mina looked out over the courtyard beyond. The six figures stood,
stock-still, backlit by the arc lights.
“Light me up,” she said to Barter, just as the first of the figures
shuffled forward.
Barter moved away from the door towards her, but far too slowly.
“Hurry, man.”
She saw that Barter was only now fumbling to get the lighter out of his
coat pocket.
Dammit. What does a girl have to do around here to get some service?
“Here. You’ll have to do it,” she shouted. “I’ll cover you.”
She tossed him the Molotov one handed. He caught it, almost dropped
it, and in the process sent the lighter skittering away across the floor.
Mina didn’t have time to look to see where it had gone. Three of the
frozen ones were already shuffling towards her.
 She took careful aim and blew the top of the head off the nearest one.
It fell backwards, soundlessly. It was immediately lost in the snow.
The second attacker was almost at the doorway.
Mina was vaguely aware that Cole Barter was scrambling at her feet.
“If you’re going to do something, now would be a good time,” she
said, trying for calm as she sighted.
“Fire in the hole,” Cole shouted.
He threw a lit Molotov straight at the nearest advancing figure.
It hit full in the chest, and immediately engulfed the creature in flame.
Mina leapt forward to hit the door control…just as the creature fell,
still burning, half-in and half out of the doorway.
The door came down and banged on the creature’s torso, lifted an inch,
then banged down again.
Four feet away on the other side of the burning body, the third creature
had reached the door.
Blue fingers gripped the bottom.
The engine whined and complained as the door rose.
Mina took careful aim at the fingers and fired.
A fine spray of pink haze hung in the air. The door fell again, but only
as far as the burning torso.
“Barter. Give me a hand here. We’ve got to move this body.”
But even as Mina bent towards the torso, more hands grabbed at the
bottom of the door and lifted.
She couldn’t stop them.
“Marines, we are leaving!” she shouted. She backed away across the
delivery bay.
The door was now more than half-way up, dark figures crowding the
courtyard outside, too many to count.

***

Mike took off at as fast a run as he could muster in the thick, powdery
snow.
Behind him a shotgun boomed. With all his heart he wanted to turn
around, go back and help Mina. But he knew that was the worst thing he
could do. The generator would still give out, and they would have less
ammo than before; their situation would be worse.
 Besides, Mina would kick my ass from here to doomsday.
At least visibility had improved. The sky above was completely clear.
A huge off-white harvest moon hung high overhead.
There was no sign that there was anyone else alive in the city. The
buildings above loomed dark, like walls of a canyon; no lights showed in
any window, no traffic in the carpeted street.
The gunfire had stopped. Mike hoped that Mina was now safe, locked
inside the complex. Elsewhere everything was a white-blanketed silence.
Mike had dreamed of winters like this when he was a boy, but in the
city, even after a heavy snowfall, the streets get cleared all too quickly.
Unbroken white snow all too quickly turns to dreary grey slush. Except for
tonight.
This is no time to get maudlin, Mikey.
The snow was almost up to his thighs, but it was powdery stuff. He
ploughed a furrow through it.
I’m making good time.

***

Jackie Donnelly looked in horror at the monitor in front of her.

The screen was split in two. One showed the courtyard beyond the
delivery bay, packed with dark shadows pressing forward, disappearing
under the camera’s viewpoint. It was obvious that the door was breached.
The second view was no less disturbing. The furrow that Mike had left
outside the front of the building was clearly visible in the snow. Four
timber-wolves, looking almost silver in the moonlight, crept along the
furrow, in single file, low to the ground, sniffing the air as they went. They
had his scent.
The hunt was on.
 CHAPTER 6

From an amateur radio broadcast, 11:30 p.m., Central Park,

Manhattan.

I feel like a character in an H P Lovecraft short story; sitting in my

high garret, writing one last letter before the nameless dread reaches for me
from beyond the stars.
Nameless dread and stars. I have plenty of both tonight. At least we
have the sky for it this evening. We have never had such wonderful
conditions for star-gazing.
Yet it is to the ground that I look tonight.
It is just as well I’m high up.
Those poor bastards down in the park never stood a chance. At first I
thought it was a pack of dogs. Indeed, at first, I think that’s all they were.
But the coming of the white thing we all saw on Brooklyn Bridge has
changed all of that.
I watched what happened with my binoculars. Although there are no
lights showing from anywhere around the park, that awful, wrong, gibbous
moon hangs over everything, grinning like a rabid animal.
They were only children. Five teenagers, hooded and wrapped against
the cold, trekking through deep snow. They were probably only looking for
what we all need this night; warmth, and some shelter from the deep, biting,
cold. They didn’t stand a chance. The wolf-pack…huge grey timber wolves
like Tolkien’s wargs, encircled them, rounded them up, and pounced, all
done with clockwork precision. Afterwards, all that was left was blood on
the snow and a few tattered remnants of clothing.
Have you ever heard a wolf-pack howl under a full moon? I always
wished I could hear that sound. Well now I have, and I pray that I never
have to endure it again…for the next time I might be the prey.
But another sound now reaches me; drums. War drums, beating from
somewhere out over the park. Maybe the cold is finally getting to me, but
the last time I looked through the binoculars my sight seemed to waver.
There, instead of the winter skeletons of the trees, were beech-bark
wigwams, a whole city of buildings and campfires; there for an instant, then
gone again. But the drums remain. Beating, always beating. I think they are
getting louder.

From CNN News

A nation is in shock tonight after the latest assault on our great city.
The President has put our forces on DEFCON3, but so far no one has claimed
responsibility for which is now thought to be a terrorist attack. It is known
there is weather manipulation involved; a new weapon our top scientists
are currently seeking to nullify with the HAARP array in Alaska, but this is
a technology never before used for this purpose, and success is by no means
inevitable.
The scenes broadcast tonight of our citizens waging war with each
other within the storm have rocked America to its core. The search is on for
the biological agent that has been used to accomplish such violent changes,
but once again, we are unable to bring you any hope of a speedy resolution.
This crisis is not over.

***

Mina tried to keep Cole Barter behind her as she backtracked towards
the door that led out of the delivery bay and back into the forensic labs.
By now the metal door out to the courtyard was forced completely
open. The interior bay was filled with the shambling frozen.
The temperature suddenly dropped; an icy blast that made Mina’s
lungs ache as she breathed. But it gave her an idea.
Barter seemed fixed to the spot. Mina almost fell over him as she
backed away farther.
“The lighter. Where is it?” she shouted at him.
He stared blankly out at the shuffling crowd in the loading bay. If he’d
heard her, he paid her no notice.
She clubbed him on the side of the head with the gun butt. Not too
lightly, but none too gentle either.
Finally, agonizingly slowly, he turned towards her.
 “The lighter! Set off the sprinklers,” she just had time to say before she
had to fire.
She blew the knee out of the closest zombie. It fell, almost at her feet,
impeding the rest. But only slightly.
“It’s cold. Set off the sprinklers!” she shouted.
To his credit, Barter got the message quickly. He stood on tiptoe and
flicked the lighter under the sprinkler head.
It took two seconds, during which Mina had to drop another zombie; a
scantily clad, once-black male who reached for her with black, cracked
fingernails.
Suddenly a klaxon sounded.
Mina grabbed Barter and dragged him into the corridor behind them,
slamming the safety door shut just as the sprinklers kicked in.
Mina made sure the heavy manual lock was engaged on her side of the
door.
She turned and watched through the thick shatterproof glass as the
water from the sprinkler heads sprayed around the room. It hit walls,
floor…and the frozen bodies.
Every where it touched, it froze. Like quicksilver a thick layer of ice
formed.
Her view out into the loading bay dimmed as more ice formed on the
outside of the glass, but Mina turned away with a smile on her face.
They were safe, at least for now. The frozen creatures had been
thwarted by the very thing that made them. They stood, immobile, encased
in an ever thickening layer as the sprinklers kept pumping water into the
room.
“How long will it go on?” Barter asked.
“It’s on a manual switch,” Mina replied, leading him away from the
door. “It’ll keep going until we switch it off, or the fire services turn up.”

***

“Did Mike make it free?” Jon asked. “I saw him get as far as the road,
just before the door came down.”
Jackie closed down the window showing the view out front.
The wolves had moved on out of sight, but she couldn’t tell Jon about
them. She wasn’t even sure she would tell Mina. Nothing would be served
by worrying her now. Mike would either come back, or he wouldn’t.
Trouble was, Jackie didn’t think she could lie with a straight face. She
answered Jon by nodding.
“Thank God for that,” the technician said. “I’ve never been so scared. I
thought I would wet myself.”
Jackie was surprised to find she could still manage a smile.
“I think I already did,” she said solemnly.
The lab technician shuffled from foot to foot, staring at a point over
Jackie’s shoulder. She realized he struggled to find something to say, some
way to start a conversation.
“How’s the war wound?” he finally said.
There was only a dull pain from her leg, but she wasn’t stupid; she’d
seen the amount of painkillers that Mina had fed her. Mina hadn’t spared
the graphic detail either. There may be a nice bandage there, but in her
mind’s eye Jackie was more than capable of imagining the damage.
“I’ll probably live,” Jackie said. “For the next few hours at least.”
“At the moment, that’s all any of us can hope for,” Mina said, arriving
in the room with Cole Barter in tow.
Jackie wouldn’t want to meet Mina in a dark alleyway; her face was
blackened by grime and smoke, white teeth showing where they gripped an
unlit cheroot. Her sealskin jacket was hanging open, revealing the Metallica
T-shirt beneath. In her left hand she carried a shotgun; still smoking. She
saw Jackie looking and struck a pose, gun held diagonally across her chest.
“Join the National Rifle Association. You know it makes sense,” she
said, in a remarkable impersonation of Charlton Heston.
Mina put the gun down on her desk and sighed loudly. Suddenly she
didn’t look so tough.
“The Moose? Did he make it?”
“Clear and gone,” Jackie said.
Mina nodded and lit up the cheroot.
“Then all we have to do is sit tight.”
“Sit tight?” Cole Barter said, his voice high, almost shouting. “Those
things are in the building forfuckssake.”
“Calm down,” Mina replied through a mouth of smoke. “You saw as
well as I did. They’re frozen in ice.”
“Well, duh,” Cole said in an exaggerated voice and slapping his
forehead. “I don’t think that’ll stop them for long. What do you think
they’re made of?”
He left the lab, muttering to himself.
Mina filled the other two in on the situation in the delivery bay.
“Maybe he’s right,” Jackie said. “Maybe they will get out. We should
prepare for the eventuality at least.”
“Oh, I’m prepared, honey,” Mina said, putting her hand on the
shotgun. “But Mike will be back with the cavalry before anything gets out
of the bay.”
“And what if he doesn’t make it?”
Mina jerked as if she’d been slapped. She chewed and puffed on the
cheroot at the same time.
“Oh, he’ll make it. He’s a stubborn SOB. Like me.”
She chewed on the cheroot a bit longer.
“But you’re right. We need to be ready. If the generator gives out
before the Moose gets back we’ll be in serious trouble. We can barricade
ourselves in. But we need more firepower.”
“This is a laboratory isn’t it?” Jackie said. “I always wanted a big
chemistry set.”

***

Mike stopped at the first junction he reached, looking both ways down
the road. He ran on trust; trust that Mina was okay, trust that the
maintenance depot was where he remembered it to be, trust that there would
be a vehicle there he could use.
But most of all, trust that he could find his way in this landscape that
had changed so far from his memory of it.
He looked both ways down the junction again. Nothing moved.
Then he heard it. At first he thought it was his own heartbeat,
amplified in his ears inside the hood.
If my heart is beating like that then I’m in serious trouble.
It was the far off beat of drums.
As if in answer, a solitary wolf howled, distant, like a violin soloist on
a mountain. It too, was answered; closer this time, much closer.
Mike’s heart and breathing rate suddenly went up. He had to fight for
control.
 The sound was like nothing he’d heard before; an unearthly wail that
rose in intensity, and rose again. When Mike was very young, Grandpa
Kaminski used to play tunes on an old saw, while his collie, Jack, sang
along. The wolf’s howl held some of the same quality; but hearing it
standing in a desolate, empty city was a bit different from being in
Grandma’s front parlor.
Mike hadn’t believed it could get much colder, but even inside the
survival suit he shivered.
Best get moving, Mikey.
He had one last look down the arms of the junction. Moonlight
glistened off the frosted top layers of snow. About a hundred yards away,
two dim, yellow lights showed where a car had been. Mike considered
checking it out, but the idea of a snowplough was just too big in his mind; if
they were to have any chance of surviving this night they had to be able to
move fast.
He turned away from the junction, and headed for the depot.
He was close, but the hairs at the nape of his neck rose. His spider-
sense woke up at the sound of the wolves. It was now working overtime. He
tightened his grip on the shotgun.
The snow was thicker here. He worked up a sweat pushing his way
through it. He could see the depot ahead of him now. He started to
congratulate himself.
Too soon.
The wolf came out of nowhere and hit him on the left shoulder,
knocking him tumbling in a flurry of teeth and snarling jaws.
He rolled over twice, fighting to keep teeth from his throat.
The creature’s jaws came down on the barrel of the shotgun and the
wolf snapped its head to one side, tugging the weapon out of Mike’s hand.
He didn’t have time to think as the beast lunged forward. He rolled
away just in time, hearing cold teeth clack together on air just in front of his
face. He managed to push up onto his feet. He risked a quick look around.
Apart from the wolf that had attacked him, two others flanked him, standing
alert in the snow less than five yards on either side.
“I don’t suppose ‘Nice doggie’ is going to cut any ice?” he said.
The first wolf stepped forward towards him as Mike scrambled inside
his suit for a weapon.
 ***

Jackie noticed there was a Molotov cocktail sitting on one of the

workbenches.
“These worked before,” she said. “We can make more.”
“No,” Jon said. “The only fuel we’ve got is in the generator already; I
checked just before you all got here.”
“But as I said before; this is a lab? And you’ve got a morgue. I’m
guessing you’ve got a supply of formaldehyde?”
Jon’s face lit up in a grin.
“I should have thought of that. We’ve got gallons of it. And plenty of
bottles and vials. They’re all down in the storeroom.”
“Well, let’s have at it,” Jackie said. She stood, put her weight on her
leg. She had to grit her teeth against the pain.
“More drugs?” Mina asked.
“Yes, please,” Jackie replied, managing a tight grin before waving
Mina away. “No. I’ll be fine for a bit longer. Can I borrow Jon as a helper?”
The technician looked to Mina. Mina nodded
“Just don’t eat him all at once,” she said.
Mina hefted the shotgun into the crook of her arm.
“I’ll round up Barter and meet you in the morgue,” she said. “We
shouldn’t split up after this.”
She gave Jackie a mock salute and left, trailing a small cloud of smoke
from the cheroot.
“Lead me to it,” Jackie said to the lab technician.
The first step was agony; a lancing pain ran the length of her body and
forced her to lock the leg at the knee to save herself from falling to the
floor.
The young lab technician looked like he might burst into tears.
“I can fetch the jars,” he said. “You should rest.”
Jackie shook her head.
“That would take too long. Lend me your shoulder for a second.”
She leaned on the youth and they shuffled out of the lab like a pair of
geriatrics in a three-legged-race.
At one point Jackie stumbled, almost fell, but Jon caught her. She was
swung round by the momentum. She turned till she faced him face-to-face,
his right arm round her waist.
 “Do you come here often?” she asked.
The youth blushed as Jackie turned back to lean on his shoulder.
“How far is it?” she asked as they entered a long corridor with rows of
doors down both sides.
“Down the far end I’m afraid,” Jon said. “Past the morgue.”
Jackie gritted her teeth again.
“The next time you offer to go and fetch something, remind me to say
‘Yes’,” she said.
“We could turn back?”
“No. This is important. We’ll keep moving. And if I wake up to find
you loosening my clothes I’ll assume I passed out again.”
Jon blushed, all the way from forehead to neck. Despite the pain from
her leg, Jackie managed to laugh.
“Hey,” she said, leaning against the youth. “I could get used to this.
How much do you charge an hour?”
This time she got a laugh in return.
“I can see why you and Mina get on so well,” he said.
“Buy me a beer and I’ll tell you the story.”
“I’ll hold you to that.”
“I think you’re holding me quite enough already.”
The light flirting had served its purpose. The technician brought them
both to a halt outside the last door in the corridor.
“If this is the morgue, just drop me off here,” Jackie said. “I feel ready
for it.”
“You’ve cheated the Reaper then,” Jon said. “We just walked past it.
This is the storeroom.”
Jackie almost fell into the room, collapsing into a small plastic chair,
its legs squealing on the floor under her weight.
“We need to make a homemade bomb?” Jon said.
“Oh yes. And we need plenty of bang for our buck.”
She showed Jon what would be needed. Just doing that tired her out.
“I’ll tell you what,” she said. “If you’re happy, I’ll leave you to get on
with it for a while.”
She closed her eyes while Jon worked. She could hear the clunk of
glass against glass, the gurgle of liquids, but was unable to pay attention.
Pain had caught her in its grip; a throbbing hurt like a knife being thrust into
her calf in time with her heartbeat.
 “More drugs please, vicar,” she murmured.
Behind her eyelids the red haze eased to black. The drumbeat of pain
lessened a notch now that the weight was off the leg.
I might just live…for a bit longer at least.
The heat the pain had brought dissipated. She realized she felt cold.
She pulled the sealskin suit around her until it was snug.
Finally she could open her eyes.
She looked up into the corner of the room. Fine tendrils of frost crept,
from the corner, across the ceiling. The last time she’d seen anything like it
had been when she turned on the washers on the car after a cold dry night—
the ice forming a lacy sheet faster than you could blink.
“How are we doing Jon?” she asked, trying to keep her voice light.
The technician already had a small trolley filled with makeshift
formaldehyde bombs.
“Nearly there,” he said. “I wasn’t too sure of the quantities to mix
though. I may have used too much soap. We’re either going to kill them, or
give them a good wash.”
“It’ll have to do,” Jackie replied, motioning with her head towards the
corner of the room. “I think it’s time we were leaving.”
Jon followed her gaze, and nodded grimly.
“This is an exterior wall. Best if we get back to the centre of the
building. Are you okay to walk?”
Jackie sighed.
“A woman’s work is never done.”
She struggled to her feet, leaning heavily on Jon as the beat of pain
started back up.
“Lean on the trolley,” he said. “It’ll take your weight.”
“When I woke up this morning I didn’t anticipate spending the night
pushing a load of bombs through a morgue.”
“Happens to me all the time,” Jon said deadpan.
Suddenly they were both laughing. If there was a hint of hysteria in it,
they both pretended not to notice.
The mock euphoria carried them out of the storeroom and back into
the corridor, but Jackie soon had to stop; she was in danger of blacking out.
She stood on her good leg until the red pain subsided.
She looked into a long room, with large stainless steel compartments
down one side.
 Dave Jeffers is in there somewhere.
She let go of the trolley and hopped to the morgue door, having to grab
onto the jamb for balance.
“Hey,” Jon said. “I thought we were headed back to the lab.”
“There’s somebody I have to see first.”
She left the doorway and lurched unsteadily into the morgue.

***

Mina caught up with Cole in the corridor leading to the delivery bay.
He stood, a couple of yards from the door, staring at it fixedly.
“We’re secure,” Mina said. “That ice must be feet thick by now.”
“That’s the problem,” Cole said. “Look closer.”
As Mina got nearer she saw what the man meant. The ice wasn’t
confined to the other side of the door any more. It was creeping inside the
corridor, tendrils reaching away from the door.
“It’s happened before,” Cole whispered. Mina noticed he had the old
journal in his hands. “Listen,” he said. He read.
The wood, and young Isaac, were by now covered in a good half-inch
of silver-grey ice, glistening red in the reflected firelight. The extent of it
spread as we watched, crawling along the walls as if laid down by some
invisible painter, creeping across the floor towards our feet, tendrils
reaching out, looking for prey.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Cole whimpered. “Either that or get the
temperature up somehow. If we don’t, we’re going to end up just like
them.”
He pointed to the window in the delivery bay door. Grey shapes were
just visible, locked frozen in place.
“Hold fast, man,” Mina said. “Mike will be back soon.”
Cole laughed, but there was little humor in it.
“Good for you if you can carry on believing that,” the man said. “But
forgive me if I don’t share your certainty. I’d rather take my chances outside
than wait here for the ice to get me.”
“That can be arranged,” Mina muttered through the last remains of the
cheroot.
Cole fell sullenly quiet, but in truth Mina knew how he felt.
 We’re stuck, like rats in a trap. Wherever you are Moose, you’d better
hurry up.

***

Mike’s hand fell on the signal flare, just as the lead wolf sat back on its
haunches and leapt straight at him. He only had time to pop the safety catch
and stab forward, using the flare like a knife.
It exploded in the wolf’s left eye.
Mike let go fast. He turned away, momentarily blinded by the sudden
flash. He threw himself backwards. Snow fell in his eyes and stung on his
cheeks. Adrenaline kicked in. He pushed himself to his feet, ready for any
attack.
The injured wolf writhed in the snow, silently thrashing in its death
throes, the flare still a brilliant, sparking orb in its eye. The flanking
members of the pack stared at it with white eyes gleaming orange-yellow,
moving in closer as the flare finally sputtered and died. As Mike took his
chance and turned away he heard the crunch of canines on icy flesh.
The depot was straight ahead of him, the entrance to the underground
car-park showing like a black hole, a cave that would shelter him from the
storm.
He pushed through the snow as fast as he could.
Reaching into his jacket he took out his service pistol. It felt puny in
his hand. It was no match for even one wolf if they decided to come for
him, but it felt reassuring anyway, reminding him of warmer days and
situations that could be dealt with using soft words and mild threats.
I’ll never complain about donkey work again.
He had almost reached the garage entrance. There were no lights on
down there. The driveway sloped away into blackness. He took his
flashlight in his left hand and headed down.
The snow was even thinner here, but the ground underfoot was icy and
treacherous. Progress was slow; especially as he took time to look back
every few seconds to make sure the wolves were still occupied.
Within a couple of yards he’d descended below the level of the lip of
the drive. He could no longer see the wolves. All he could see was the
silvery sky, shimmering, a sea of stars.
 A small avalanche of snow fell softly down from the entrance. He
followed its progress with the flashlight as it tumbled silently towards him,
not quite reaching his feet.
When Mike looked back up to the entrance two wolves stood there,
silhouetted against the stars. They raised their snouts in the air and howled,
the unearthly wail echoing and reverberating like a feedback howl in the
enclosed concrete tunnel.
Mike turned and broke into a shuffling run; barely more than a walk,
but even that was too fast in the slippery conditions. He fell over onto his
back. A second later he slid, ever faster.
He tobogganed down the slope, aware that, at any second, he could
hurtle full on into a wall. His left hand smacked hard on stone.
The flashlight flew out of his grip.
Mike slid on down the slope, down into darkness.

***

There was a body lying on a gurney under a yellow sheet in the centre
of the morgue.
Jackie hopped over to the body, overbalancing just as she reached the
table. She almost fell on top of it. The gurney shook, two wheels off the
ground, but thankfully didn’t topple. The sheet slid, several inches, but the
body stayed covered.
“Is this…”
She had to have a second attempt to say it. Tears welled in her eyes.
“Is this one of the bodies from the dig?”
Jon walked over to her side. He nodded.
“But you shouldn’t do this to yourself.”
“I need to see,” Jackie whispered.
“No. You don’t. Trust me. I see it every day. Remember them as they
were. Your friends are not here. Besides, it’s getting colder. Can’t you feel
it?”
She started to say “No,” but realized that her breath showed as steam.
“Help me,” she said. “I need to see Dave Jeffers.”
Jon sighed theatrically.
“Lord, save me from bossy women.”
 He walked over to one of the compartments and rapped his knuckles
on it. The sound was loud in the deep quiet of the room. “He’s in here. And
he’s not pretty. You’ll need to hold your breath.”
“You’re just trying to scare me off,” Jackie said, limping over to him.
“Yep. Is it working yet?”
She shook her head.
“Please?” she said. “It’s something I need to do.”
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
The technician opened the compartment door and slid the drawer out.
The body was covered by a sheet…white this time. It didn’t disguise the
smell.
Jackie’s first reaction was to step back as the odor stung in her nostrils.
She tried breathing through her mouth, but that wasn’t any better.
The last time I smelled something like that was when George Davros
burnt Mrs. Louie’s cat in third grade.
She steeled herself and stepped closer as Jon lifted the sheet.
It was only the pain in her leg that kept her from fainting.
Jon had been right. Wherever Dave Jeffers was now, it was nowhere
near this putrid, frostbitten shell.
“Seen enough?” Jon asked.
Jackie nodded, too stunned to speak. She couldn’t take her eyes from
the blackened ruin of a face. Thankfully someone had closed the eyes, but
she doubted they were still brown.
Jon let go of the sheet…but it never had time to fall back on the body.
A thin film of frost ran across the length of the gurney.
A black arm rose up, faster than a blink. It grabbed Jon by the back of
the neck.
The noise of the technician’s spine snapping was the loudest thing that
Jackie had ever heard, but her eyes never left the ravaged face.
The eyelids rippled, as if a small animal moved just under the surface.
When the eyes finally popped open they were unnaturally white against the
dead black skin.
Frostbitten lips rose in a smile as the creature dropped Jon’s dead body
and stepped down off the gurney.

***
 Back in the lab, Cole Barter was seated at the laptop trying to access
the video-cam in the delivery bay area.
“Nothing,” he said. “There’s no signal coming back from the camera.
It’s just too damned cold.”
“Any of the rest of them working?” Mina asked.
Doug shook his head.
“We’re running blind. And the comm links to the outside world are
dead as well.”
“Not quite all of them,” Mina said. She showed him the cell phone.
“But this one’s for emergencies only…in case the Moose calls in.”
“Don’t hold your breath,” she heard the man mutter.
She left him at the computer while she went into her office. She had a
spare pack of cheroots in the desk drawer.
She lit up under the large No Smoking sign. She sucked hot smoke for
several minutes.
Normally she would have relished the quiet, but tonight there was a
tension in the air that refused to dissipate; the threat of violence yet to
come. She wasn’t at all surprised when Jackie’s high screams echoed
through the building. Doug Barter was only just getting out of his chair as
Mina ran past him, heading for the morgue.

***

Mike Kaminski finally came to a halt when the slope leveled out to
join the level concrete of the floor of the parking lot.
He got gingerly to his feet, checking for broken bones. He seemed to
be fine except for some bruising to his left wrist.
Looking back up to the entrance he could only see a faint gleam of the
starlit sky. There was no sign of his flashlight. It had been lost somewhere
on the way down.
“And it can stay lost,” he muttered. “I’m certainly not going back to
look for it.”
It wasn’t quite dark down here on the parking level. An emergency
generator had kicked in somewhere. Red spots overhead lit the whole area
in dim, pink hues.
Maybe there are other people down here? Hiding out?
 The only way he’d find out was to do some exploring; he knew better
than to call out. Somewhere, not far above, the wolves were still around. He
couldn’t count on them staying outdoors for long.
Once more the picture of the snowplough was big in his head.
If the works department had been caught as unawares as the rest of the
city, there was a good chance that the vehicles hadn’t left the depot.
He walked into the parking area, and almost shouted in glee; he was
right.
A long line of vehicles stretched off into the distance. The ones closest
to him were large 4x4s with bull-bars and tow chains, but in the shadows he
could already see some larger, bulkier trucks. He broke into a run.
“Hold on, Mina,” he whispered. “I’ll be with you soon.”

***

Jackie’s scream had come without her thinking about it, but as soon as
it came, it had gone again.
She was rooted to the spot for several seconds, horrified by the
shambling thing that reached for her as it got off the gurney.
Black, re-frozen flesh cracked and split as it moved, sloughing off to
be crushed into grey slush underfoot.
Jackie hopped awkwardly backwards towards the door.
“Dave?” she whispered. “It’s me…Jackie?”
She may as well have been talking to a wall. The thing stared blindly
at her, mouth hanging open, grey tongue just visible between the black lips.
It moved as if stiff and sore after a long bout of exercise, but it was already
starting to look more fluid, more like a predator after its prey.
And I’m the mouse.
Jackie realized she couldn’t move fast enough. She put all her weight
on her bad leg and forced herself into a backwards shuffle, but even then
she couldn’t manage more than a slow walking pace.
I’m going to die.
“Duck,” a voice called out behind her.
She didn’t need to be asked twice. She let her legs give way under her
and fell to the floor.
A flaming bottle arced over her head and hit the frozen creature full in
the chest.
 It went up in a roaring sheet of flame…but didn’t stop coming for her.
“Die, you bastard,” Jackie heard Mina shout.
The shotgun went off close to Jackie’s left ear. The flaming head of the
creature disappeared in a spray of grey slush and sparking fire. It fell
forward, firstly to its knees, then straight over onto its chest, still burning
even as Jackie dragged herself away and out of the door.
She didn’t stop until she was outside in the corridor backed up against
the wall opposite the doorway. Even then she couldn’t take her eyes off the
flames, not until Mina shook her gently by the shoulder.
“It’s over,” the oriental woman said.
“Jon?”
Mina shook her head. There were tears in her eyes.
“He didn’t make it.”
Jackie’s ear still rang from the blast of the explosion. Mina’s voice
sounded muffled. But she didn’t need to hear…she only had to look.
The technician’s body lay just beyond the still burning creature. Dead
eyes stared straight at Jackie.
It was your fault. All your fault.
She closed her eyes and slumped against the wall. She heard Mina
speak to Barter, but couldn’t get her brain to make sense of what was being
said.
“I doubt if any of the headless ones will be coming back,” Mina said.
“After what we’ve seen tonight, I wouldn’t be sure of anything,”
Barter replied.
“You’re right,” Mina said. “Stay with Jackie. I’ll torch them.”
“Best do your friend while you’re at it,” Barter said. “Just to be safe.”
“Just to be safe,” Mina whispered. There was a hitch in her voice.
Somewhere deep down Jackie knew that the other woman was hurting,
but she couldn’t do anything about that.
Not yet.
She kept her eyes closed. She squeezed them even tighter shut when
she heard compartment doors being opened.
“Best move her back,” Mina said. “I’m going to do the whole lot at
once.”
Jackie didn’t look, not when Barter dragged her along the corridor, nor
when Mina called Fire in the hole.
 There was a flash, yellow against the back of her eyelids, then the
terrible smell of burnt meat.

***

Mike prayed silently to himself as he walked down the line of vehicles,

hoping for a snowplough, with keys inside, that wasn’t locked. He based his
hopes on the belief that the depot workers here were anything like cops in
his own squad; keys were regularly left dangling if you thought you’d be
going out soon.
Although there’s been no need for a plough in the past few months.
He shoved that thought away. The wolves gave him more than enough
worries for the moment. He kept checking behind him, but it was dim back
there, the small red lights overhead almost useless.
He almost cried with relief when he spotted the metal blade of the
plough poking out just ahead of the line of vehicles.
Come to Daddy.
And there was more luck to come. The keys weren’t in the ignition…
but they were stuck behind the overhead sun-guard. The fuel tank was full.
The engine purred like a contented cat when he switched it on.
He inched the truck out of the parking space and turned it onto the
main alleyway.
“I’m on my way, from misery to happiness again,” he sang in a very
loud, very bad Scottish accent.
His elation was short lived. When he flicked on the headlights they
illuminated four pairs of white eyes.
The wolves sat on their haunches in the middle of the alleyway,
directly between Mike and the exit.

***

Mina had one last look into the morgue. A small pile of bodies still
burned in the centre of the room, but it didn’t look like the fire would
spread.
She’d put Jon at the bottom of the pile, so that she didn’t have to see
him burn, but her mind kept giving her the picture anyway, even after she
closed the door behind her.
 Jackie still lay slumped against the wall, eyes closed. The
archaeologist looked twenty years older than she had earlier that night.
I know how you feel, sister.
“Get the trolley back to the lab,” she said to Cole Barter. “I’ll get
Jackie.”
The man didn’t move. His attention was focused in the corner of the
room, where ice crept steadily across the ceiling.
“We need to get somewhere warm,” he whispered. At the same time
the lights flickered, almost failed. They came back, but the corridor wasn’t
as brightly lit as before.
Mina put the shotgun down on the trolley beside the rows of vials and
bottles neatly arranged there.
Jon did that. Tidy and efficient to the end.
She almost sobbed. She fought it back.
There will be time for that later.
“We’ll regroup in the lab. It’s time to tell the Moose to hurry,” she said
to Barter. She gave the man a push to get him moving before turning her
attention to Jackie.
“Break’s over, kid,” she said gently. “Time to shag it.”
Jackie’s eyes opened. Mina had seen the expression before; shock, and
more than a touch of fear.
“It’s all my fault,” the archaeologist said.
Mina nodded her head.
“Okay. It’s all your fault. I agree with you. Now will you get off your
butt and move?”
Some life came back into Jackie’s eyes.
“You won’t make me smoke a cheroot again will you?”
Mina put out an arm and Jackie climbed up it.
“Only if you’re very good,” Mina said. “Now will you come on? I
think I’ve got an alternative career as an arsonist going on.”
Even as she spoke the glass panel on the morgue door shattered and
flames licked out into the corridor.
“Are we on fire?” Jackie said.
“Just warming the place up a bit,” Mina said.
Barter pushed the trolley along the corridor and Mina took most of the
archaeologist’s weight.
“To the lab?” Barter called back.
 “No. If the fire takes hold we’ll be trapped there. Head for the main
lobby.”
The corridor took on an orange glow as the fire took hold behind them.

***

Mike locked the truck doors and checked the cab for a weapon. It
wasn’t a cop vehicle, but Mike knew that some of the workers liked to have
something with them, especially working the night-time streets. He was out
of luck.
The wolves hadn’t moved. They sat on their haunches, staring blindly
at him.
“Look out boys,” Mike said. “I’m coming through.” He floored the
accelerator and headed straight for them.
The lead wolf, a male with a shaggy, lion-like mane, leapt in the air,
rear legs clearing the blade of the plough.
Mike’s view filled with snarling teeth as it hit the windscreen head on.
“Reinforced glass, dickhead,” Mike shouted as the creature bounced
off, leaving behind only a smear of grey slush.
He hit the brakes.
The wolf slid off the bonnet, down beneath the blade of the plough.
Mike slammed his foot on the accelerator and the truck jumped forward.
There was a crunch and a bump as the front left wheel ran over something
unyielding.
In the wing mirror he saw the large grey, now little more than a
squashed and deformed block of ice on the concrete. The other wolves
scattered, fading like ghosts into the shadows.
Mike let out a whoop of joy. He pumped the truck’s horn as he drove
up the ramp and out of the garage.

***

Mina felt like she’d been carrying a sack of potatoes on a five mile
run. Jackie lay against her, a dead weight. She had no idea if the
archaeologist was still conscious, and she didn’t have time to stop and
check. Judging by the noise behind her, the fire had wasted no time in
taking a firm hold.
 They reached the far end of the corridor just as the fire found the
storeroom.
Explosions rocked the whole building, the noise deafening.
A warm blast hit Mina in the back, propelling her forward, almost
colliding with Cole Barter. She dived through the safety door just behind
the man, half dragging Jackie with her. She dropped the archaeologist to the
floor, none too gently, and closed the door behind them. The corridor they’d
just left was already a raging inferno.
“The door will hold,” Mina said to Barter as she bent to check on
Jackie. “But not for long.”
Barter nodded, his face grim.
“I hope your detective friend is on his way.”
“I’ll check on him when we reach the lobby.”
“And if you can’t reach him? Then what?”
Mina didn’t answer. In truth, she had no idea beyond the next minute.
Jackie’s eyes fluttered. She was no more than half-conscious, but Mina
managed to manhandle her to her feet and the three of them set off along
the corridors.
Above them the light flickered constantly. The generator held on. But
only just.
“Which way?” Barter shouted.
“Back towards the lab, but take a left instead of right in the main
corridor,” Mina said.
Two minutes later they arrived in the main lobby. The large glass
frontage was totally covered by a steel safety door. Thin glass panels, no
more than six inches high, let some light in from outside, but there was no
obvious way out.
“Okay. What now?” Barter said.
The lights gave one final flicker and went out. Enough light came in
from above the safety door to let Mina see Barter’s wide, frightened eyes.
In the distance a door slammed. There was the sound of breaking
glass. It sounded to Mina like it had come from the direction of the delivery
bay.
“Now we hope that the cavalry are on their way,” Mina said.
She leaned Jackie against a pillar. The archaeologist’s eyes opened.
“Are we there yet?” she said.
Mina managed a small grin.
 “Stay with me, kid. We’ll be getting out of here soon. I’m just about to
call a cab.”
She took out her cell phone and dialed Mike. He answered on the first
ring.
“Great minds think alike,” he said. “I was just about to call. I’ll be
there in five minutes.”
Another door slammed somewhere in the building.
Thick black smoke rolled into the lobby from the right-hand corridor,
along with a sudden breath of warm air that quickly turned cold…ice cold.
“Best make it four,” Mina said. “We’ll be waiting in the lobby…and
we’ll be in a hurry.”
“I’ll use the secret code,” Mike said. She hung up.
Mina put the phone away and lifted the shotgun from the trolley.
“Best get that lighter ready again,” she said to Barter. “I think we’ll be
having company.”
Barter looked nearly as white as Jackie did. He looked around him.
“Is there another exit?”
“Nope,” Mina said. “This is it. Last stand time.”
She saw Barter looking at the three dark corridors that led off the
hallway.
“Maybe we should go somewhere with only one door?”
“And get ourselves trapped inside? Nice thinking. No. We say here.
Mike’s on his way.”
“Yeah, right,” Barter replied. “And when he gets here he’s going to be
on the other side of a steel door. Now who’s not thinking straight?”
Mina smiled grimly.
“We can argue about it later. It’s show time.”
The first zombie walked out from the left corridor.
It was burnt all down the right side, but hadn’t been slowed down.
Once it had been an old man. The tattered remnants of a dressing gown
hung in frozen tresses from its shoulders, and a pajama jacket gaped open
under that showing a chest that looked like a frozen rack of ribs. White,
toothless gums smacked together as the head turned and stared blindly
towards the pillar where Jackie Donnelly stood, eyes closed and breathing
heavily.
Mina raised the shotgun and took aim.
 The blast took the creature between the eyes, sending it tumbling
backwards into the corridor. A second, and a third, stepped forward to take
its place.
“If you’ve got that lighter ready…” Mina said.
Barter had obviously learned from earlier…He already had a lit bottle
in his hand.
“Fire in the hole,” he shouted. He lobbed the bomb at the feet of the
two approaching figures.
Mina turned her head away, but the blast still almost knocked her
sideways.
Barter shouted. “Yes. Burn, you bastards!” He pumped his fists in the
air.
“No time for celebration,” Mina said. “We’ve got more incoming. To
your right.”
The corridor on the right was farther from them, but it was wider; wide
enough to let three through abreast.
And there were many more than three. The lights flickered one last
time and went out; but not before Mina got a glimpse down the corridor.
White eyes glimmered in the gloom, as far back as Mina could see.
From the corner of her eye she saw Jackie leave the pillar and move to
the trolley behind Barter. She took charge of the lighter while the man
lobbed Molotovs down the corridor.
The cramped lobby filled with explosions, fire, smoke, and the terrible
smell of burning, while Mina pumped shot after shot into the approaching
bodies.
We’re not going to make it.
Her phone rang, twice. Everything suddenly went quiet.

***

“Get away from the doors,” Mina shouted.

Jackie saw Mina dive to one side. Barter also moved quickly, scuttling
away behind the trolley.
But Jackie wasn’t so fast. She tried to push off on her bad leg and it
crumpled beneath her, sending her down to one knee.
A roaring noise filled the air, just beyond the steel safety door.
 “Shit,” Jackie heard Mina shout, then the squat figure of the oriental
woman barreled into Jackie in a low dive, knocking her sideways.
Mina’s momentum kept her going. She went head first into the trolley,
glass splintering and crashing as she rolled amongst the Molotovs.
The steel doors buckled and caved in as the plough crashed into the
lobby, horns blazing.

***

Mike took in the scene with one glance. Ahead of him frozen creatures
walked through flame, still coming forward out of the corridor.
Cole Barter was already at the passenger door, dragging his body
inside.
“Help the women,” Mike shouted.
He leaned out of the driver’s side window, service pistol in his left
hand, and fired shot after shot down the corridor. There was too much
smoke and flame to see if he hit anything.
When he looked back, Barter still stood in the doorway.
“Help the women,” Mike said, pointing the gun in Barter’s face. “Or
I’ll drop you right here.”
Behind Barter both Mina and the archaeologist got slowly to their feet.
“Hurry!” Mike shouted.
Barter finally took the hint. He turned and moved towards the
archaeologist.
More figures lurched from the corridor, small fires burning around
their feet and ankles.
Barter took the archaeologist’s hand and led her to the open door of the
plough.
Too slow.
“Mina! Hurry!” he shouted.
Mina looked up at him, then over at the approaching figures. She
touched her clothing.
Mike could see that her fingers came away damp.
In one awful glance he took in a picture that etched itself in his mind.
He saw the spreading pool and the shattered glass under the trolley; he
saw the damp patches that seeped through Mina’s clothing, and he saw just
how close the encroaching figures were to reaching the injured
archaeologist.
He knew exactly what Mina planned to do.
She looked straight at Mike.
“I love you,” she mouthed.
She turned away, tears in her eyes.
“Mina. No!”
She walked slowly towards the approaching creatures, shotgun in
hand. She pumped two shots into the closest one, then stepped forward and
slammed the butt of the gun into the head of the next.
Flames lapped around her ankles. The sealskin suit burned fiercely as
she grabbed the nearest creature in a bear hug. They staggered together, like
marathon dancers near the end of their endurance. The flames grew higher.
Mike’s screams were echoed by Mina.
With one last heave she wrestled the creature to the ground. They both
disappeared in a wall of flame that filled the mouth of the corridor.
“No!” Mike shouted.
He wrenched at the door handle, but it was jammed closed. He crawled
over to the passenger side. Barter was helping the archaeologist into the
seat. Mike crawled over her.
“No,” Barter shouted, pushing him back. “It’s too late. She’s gone.
She’s bought us some time. Get out of here.”
Mike screamed. He pushed harder.
Barter punched him, straight on the nose. It wasn’t a hard shot, but it
was enough to get Mike’s attention.
“If you don’t get us out of here, we’ll all die. She’ll have gone for
nothing. Is that what you want?”
Mike wanted to hit something, to rage and kill.
“Look,” Barter shouted. “It’s too late for her.”
The flame was already dying down. The ranks of zombies pressed
close to the entrance to the lobby, pushing forward once more.
“We’ve got to go,” Barter screamed, pulling himself into the cab to
squeeze beside the archaeologist.
Tears almost blinded Mike as he put the plough in reverse and pulled it
slowly out of the ruin of the doorway. He looked over at the corridor mouth.
Fused, blackened bodies lay strewn on the ground, but it was
impossible to make out one body from another.
 CHAPTER 7

From CBC News

The crisis in New York is still deepening. The inexplicable snowstorm

has started to creep down the Jersey shoreline, and our government is
powerless in the face of this seemingly unstoppable force. News has reached
us that the armed forces have suffered heavy casualties by just trying to
pierce the boundary of the storm, but we are unable to bring you anything
beyond that. No news has come out of Manhattan for several hours now,
and all we can do is pray for the safety of our loved ones who may be
trapped there. We’ll bring you more as soon as we have it, but in the
meantime, over to Bill, who has been catching up with a Border Collie in
Wisconsin that can sing like Julie Andrews…

From alt.uk.channelling

I did the lucid dreaming thing last night. I spent several hours before
sleep, visualizing a high castle above a rocky shore. At first it nearly
worked. I floated high above a field of rural workers, and I believe I nearly
made contact in Monroe’s locale 2. Then I blew it. Just thinking about how
close I was sent me farther away than ever. I was being sucked back to bed
down the black tunnel when I got interrupted. Things went cold, and I heard
a voice. All of this is mine once more, it said. Did I really almost get past
the dweller on the threshold?

***

The creatures followed the plough out of the ruined frontage of the
Forensic Department.
They moved too slowly to cause any problems. Which was just as
well, as no one in the plough cab was in any state to deal with them.
 Mike Kaminski stared straight ahead, tears pouring down his cheeks. It
was lucky that he had ploughed a furrow on his way in; it meant he could
stay in a straight line without having to think too hard.
Thinking was something he tried not to do; especially thinking about
charred, smoking bodies on lobby floors.
Although he didn’t realize it, white showed at his knuckles where he
gripped the wheel. He muttered under his breath.
I’ll get you. I’ll get you, you bastard.
He barely saw the road pass. He had a cold place in his heart, as cold
as the air outside the cab.
It was a long time before anybody spoke.
“Excuse me for asking,” Barter said. “But where are we going?”
As soon as the question was asked, Mike realized he knew the answer.
“Back to where it started,” he said softly. “Back to Hunter’s Dock.
We’re going to finish it.”
“But…” Barter began. He stopped as soon as Mike turned to face him.
He reared back, as if suddenly afraid.
Mike turned back to the road.
“Hunter’s Dock,” he whispered. “I’m coming for you. And you’d
better be there.”

***

Afterwards, Cole Barter would remember little about the journey in the
snowplough. The whole trip felt unreal, almost surreal.
The three of them barely spoke. The detective stared straight ahead at
the road; which was fine by Cole. One look in the man’s eyes was enough;
someone would die under that gaze in the near future.
And it’s not going to be me.
Beside Cole, Jackie Donnelly lay, slumped against his left shoulder.
Her breathing was light, erratic. She didn’t wake when Cole had to shift
position to stop the satchel he still carried over his shoulder from digging
into his side.
He almost wished that he too could drift off into sleep. But he feared
what dreams might come…his subconscious had been given more than
enough fuel to run a month of nightmares.
 He stared out of the passenger window. There was little to see but
snow, silvery white in the moonlight. All recognizable landmarks in the city
were softened and rendered almost invisible.
And there was something else in the night, a wavering of reality itself,
as if a curtain were about to be drawn back to reveal a new vista.
Once, when the detective had stalled the engine trying to get round an
obstacle, Cole heard drums beating in the distance. On another long stretch,
the city disappeared completely and they drove through a tall forest of pines
encrusted with snow. A small herd of grey deer with milk-white eyes stood
and stared straight at Cole as the plough drove past.
Cole watched them for long seconds before his brain registered what it
saw.
“Hey!” he said, sitting upright in his seat. Jackie Donnelly’s head hit
his shoulder. She mumbled but didn’t wake.
“Detective? Did you see that?”
Kaminski didn’t reply, didn’t even seem to have heard.
When Cole looked back, they were driving past a run-down row of
shops. The mannequin in the lingerie store window showed off her wares.
She looked more alive than most of the things Cole had seen that night.
He clutched the satchel tight against his chest. He tried to think about
better days, of a time when he wasn’t cold. But warmth was just too far
away.

***

Some time later Mike drove them onto the dock. He had no idea how
long the journey had taken, but his shoulders felt stiff with tension. A
headache, almost blinding, pounded behind his left eye.
Some whisky might help, he thought. He smiled grimly as he parked
alongside the edge of the city of containers and switched off the engine.
“Everybody out,” he said. “This service terminates here.”
“Here?” Barter said. “There’s nothing here. We should stay in the cab,
where we’re safe.”
“Like you were safe back in the Forensics building?” Mike answered.
“I don’t think so.”
He dragged Jackie out of the cab and lifted her over his shoulder. She
moaned, but her eyes didn’t open.
 “Stay, or come,” Mike said to Barter. “It makes no never-mind to me.”
He turned away from the plough and walked off into the crates, hoping
he’d remembered the old man’s directions properly. Behind him he heard
Barter scramble out of the plough cab and scurry to follow.
Even though he carried the archaeologist, the going was much easier
than the last time he passed this way. The sky was crystal clear overhead,
and the snow underfoot was crisp and firm.
A grinning, gibbous moon hung overhead, but Mike didn’t look up;
he’d given it one glance and that was enough. It looked like it was taunting
them.
He reached Tom’s container block in less than two minutes. He gave a
shave-and-a-haircut knock.
The old man answered almost immediately. He had a palm-sized
freeze-burn across his right cheek, but his eyes were alive and sparkling.
“Glad to see you back, son,” the old man said. “And I see you found
the girl…I’m…”
The old man stopped abruptly when Mike looked him in the eye.
“Ah shit, Mikey,” he said softly. “I’m sorry. Come through. The
whisky might not cure what ails you, but it’ll ease it, for a while at least.”
Tom waited until Barter came in before locking the door behind them.
It shut with a reassuring clang.
Mike allowed himself a small degree of relaxation.
“I had a bit of trouble in your absence,” Old Tom said, pointing at his
burn. He kept talking as he led them through the alley in the container.
“And I had to blow the head off another one. It was wearing a cop
uniform…but I didn’t tell you that, right?”
Mike hadn’t been paying attention.
“Right, Mikey?” Tom said, louder this time.
Mike grunted, but that was enough for the old man.
“The world’s going to hell in a hand-basket anyway,” he said.
“Nothing for it but to break out more Scotch.”
“The old man’s drunk,” Barter whispered in Mike’s ear.
“Yep,” Tom said. “And you’re gullible. But in the morning, I’ll be
sober.”
His cackle echoed through the containers as he led them to the living
area.
 Mike was grateful to be able to put the archaeologist down on the sofa.
She whispered one word. Dave? But she didn’t wake up.
Old Tom looked down at her, then round at the other men.
“Now this is strange. Of all the people to end up here tonight, I’ve got
three that I know, three that have listened to the old stories.”
He went to the far side of the room and came back with a bottle of
whisky.
“How about it, Cole…Do you want to hear about the great freeze of
1902? Or you, Mikey? Want to hear more about Sad Sam and Itchy Nose?
Maybe we can wake Jackie here so I can tell her what the Dutch found
when they landed?”
“We already know that one,” Barter said softly. He clutched tighter at
his satchel.
Mike sat down heavily on the sofa.
“No more stories,” he said. “No more stories ever again. I’m going to
bring the tale of Hunter’s Dock to an end.”
Tom swayed alarmingly as he negotiated his way round the sofa.
“And tell me, Mikey? How do you plan to do that?”
Mike told him.
The old man sobered up fast.

***

Five minutes later Mike stood at the container door, checking he had
everything that he’d asked for from the old man’s armory. He could feel the
bulk of most of it where it hung from the webbing belt at his waist. The
replacement shotgun felt heavy and reassuring in his hands.
“Are you sure you don’t have another flame thrower?” he asked.
The old man cackled again.
“I never figured on needing more than one. I’ll remember the next time
I’m stocking up for a plague of frozen zombies.”
The old man suddenly looked serious.
“Look, I should come with you…”
“No,” Mike replied, putting a hand on Tom’s shoulder. “Barter’s no
fighter. I need you to look after Jackie. I lost one woman already tonight…
two would be carelessness.”
He looked the old man in the eye.
 “And stay off the booze, okay?”
Tom nodded.
“I won’t open the bottle until you come back.”
Mike turned away so the old man wouldn’t see his face.
“Say a prayer for me,” he said. “Just in case.”
He opened the door and walked out into the night.

***

Jackie woke from a dream of a long soak in a hot bath.

She had no idea where she was. The last thing she remembered was
Mina knocking into her and throwing her out of the path of the snowplough
as it came through the door.
Wherever she was now, it didn’t sound like the forensics department.
Ice cubes knocked together in a glass tumbler. There was the well-known
sound of liquid being poured from a bottle. Then she smelled it.
Whisky. What a great idea.
She opened her eyes, slowly. A neon strip sizzled overhead. Suddenly
her view was filled with the round face of Old Tom the security guard.
Maybe it was all a dream? Maybe I just got too drunk listening to the
old man’s tales?
The pain in her leg kicked in, just to remind her that the real world
didn’t work that way.
“Mina?” she said, almost shouting.
The old man did the disgusting thing with his teeth.
“She didn’t make it,” he said softly.
Jackie sat up straight. The movement sent pain shooting up her body,
but she tried to ignore it.
“What do you mean?”
That was when she spotted Cole Barter on the far side of the small
room. He had a large tumbler full to the top with whisky in his hand. When
he saw Jackie looking he raised it to his lips and did his best to empty it.
“What happened?” she shouted. “Tell me what happened.”
Barter shook his head. He went back to the glass.
“I only know what Mikey told me,” Old Tom said. “He said…”
Jackie grabbed the old man’s arm.
“Mike? The Moose? Where is he?”
 “He left. He said he would finish it.”
“Finish it? How?”
Tom told Jackie what Mike had taken from the armory.
She turned on Barter.
“And you let him go? You knew what he’d do, and you just let him
go?”
Barter refused to look her in the eye.
Jackie stood, too fast. A wave of pain and nausea passed through her.
She would have fallen if Old Tom hadn’t put out a steadying hand.
“You’re in no state to be on your feet,” the old man said.
“No,” she said. “But neither is Mike.”
She rose into a stiff walk, lumbering from side to side.
“Please. Sit down,” the old man said.
She pushed him away.
“Don’t try to stop me. I’m not letting him face it alone. And I could
help, if there’s any vestige of Dick North left.”
“Who?” the old man said.
“Long story,” Barter replied. “One best kept for another day.”
He put down the whisky.
“Dorothy wants to walk the yellow brick road. It looks like I’m going
too.” He took the archaeologist by the arm. “If she’ll let me.”
The old man sighed and did the thing with his teeth.
“Okay, Toto. This munchkin’s in. Let’s go and find out if this poobah
is as grand as he thinks he is. But we better hurry. Mikey’s got a start on us,
and he looked like a man on a mission.”

***

Mike walked past the timber yard onto the dock, thinking of other
nights he’d trod the same path. As a beat cop he’d almost always got a flush
of excitement as he reached Hunter’s Dock; anticipation grown from the
knowledge that bad things had happened here…and could happen again at
any time.
Tonight, that feeling was gone, frozen out of him, leaving behind only
cold fury and murderous intent. All of his life he’d been looking for
someone who saw the world the same way he did, who saw the absurdity,
and could live through it with a joke and a smile. It was only recently that
he’d found it in Mina.
Now she’s gone. And somebody’s going to pay.
He turned onto Hunter’s Dock.
During the course of the long night he’d come to accept the
unbelievable, but even after what he’d seen, his mind had difficulty
comprehending.
The entrance to the dock was guarded by a tall wall of ice that
stretched from side to side.
The only gap was delineated by two tall pillars, frozen blue-white and
glistening in the moonlight, guarding a gap two yards wide. Each had as its
base a grizzly, reared up on hind legs, mouth open, frozen in mid-roar. A
wolf sat on top of each bear’s head, head down, looking down the snout as
if ready to pounce. And, the crowning glory, atop each sculpture, sat a great
white owl, wings outspread, beak open in a defiant screech.
Mike stepped up and rapped the butt of the shotgun against an arm of
one of the grizzlies. Small flakes of ice scattered pattering to the snow.
There was no other movement.
Mike walked through the gap, half expecting the frozen heads to turn
and watch. The guardians of the gate stayed frozen.
But there were plenty of other eyes to see him.
An alleyway led down to the dig site; an alley of large grey wolves,
sitting back on their haunches. At first Mike thought that these too were
frozen, but as he passed them, each flanking pair fell into a loping walk
behind him, cutting off his retreat and herding him down towards the dig
site.
“No need to crowd me, boys,” Mike said. “I was heading that way
anyway.”
A figure waited for him at the end of the alley, a bone-white man,
chest bare, wearing a pair of tracksuit pants and a high, feathered headdress.
“Howdy,” Mike said. He raised the gun and fired straight at North’s
heart.
It had no effect apart from sending a few tiny slivers of ice flying.
“No. I didn’t think it would be that easy,” Mike muttered.
The white figure slapped his chest. It made an expansive gesture with
his arms. He did it again, so that Mike would get the message.
All of this is mine.
 “Maybe once,” Mike said. “But not now. This is my dock now. And
you’re not welcome.”
Mike raised the gun again, just as the figure raised its left arm. It
pointed straight at Mike.
The gun fell to the ground, forgotten, as Mike’s feet carried him,
unbidden, towards the smiling beast. The cold bit, even through the survival
suit.
Behind him the wolfpack howled in triumph.
A voice echoed across the dock.
“This dock is ours!”
Mike couldn’t turn to look, but he didn’t have to. Jackie Donnelly had
followed him.
“This dock is ours,” she shouted out again. “I saved the Havenhome
from the muddy depths.”
“And I kept its story alive,” Old Tom shouted.
“As did you,” Barter called. “Your journal tells the tale. This dock is
ours. Your time has gone.”
North snarled. He waved a hand. The wolfpack turned, as one, towards
the intruders.
But he’d taken his attention away from Mike for a split second. That
was all Mike needed. He unzipped the suit and stepped forward towards
North. His hand found what it was looking for.
“This is for Mina,” he said.
He set off the flare inside his jacket.

***

Jackie saw Mike step forward, but had to take her eye off him. The
wolfpack loped across the dock towards them. They didn’t look to be in any
particular hurry.
Then again, we’re not going anywhere.
“What now?” she said. She leaned on the upturned broom that Old
Tom had provided as a makeshift crutch.
Barter and Tom both carried automatic rifles, but Jackie was
weaponless…she had enough trouble standing upright as it was.
Barter stepped in front of her, weapon raised.
Tom moved to join her.
 “Now we buy Mikey some time,” the old man said.
“These won’t hold them for long,” Barter said.
“We won’t have to,” Tom replied.
Out over the dock Mike grabbed North in a bear hug.

***

“Got you now, fucker,” Mike whispered.

Cold ate into him. His sight dimmed as the fluid in his eyeballs froze.
The last thing he saw was North’s frostbitten, lipless mouth turn up in a
smile.
Mike felt ice crack on his own lips as he smiled and locked his arms
together behind North’s back.
The first of the magnesium flares he had strapped to his waist went up
like a brilliant white rocket.

***

Old Tom and Barter strafed the approaching pack. The chattering of
the guns was almost deafening.
Jackie tasted cordite.
A flash, like an unexpected camera going off in a dark room, lit the
dock. For a second the pack’s black shadows leapt across the distance
between them. The wolves howled as one, and sprang.
The men kept firing. Shards of ice flew where the bullets hit, but the
attack didn’t falter. Barter was hit first, a big-maned male, landing paws-
first on his chest. Only his satchel saved him. The wolf’s teeth ripped
through the old leather, and scraps of paper from the journal inside flew into
the air.
“No!” Barter shouted. He stuck the muzzle of his gun into the
creature’s mouth. He pulled the trigger and the head blew apart like a badly
packed snowball thrown against a wall.
A second wolf took advantage of the gap and launched itself at Jackie.
She heard Old Tom shout, heard the automatic rifle chatter, but only
had time to hold the handle of the broom in front of her like a sword. The
wolf hit her hard on the bad leg and she went down underneath it.
 She struck the broom handle in its mouth but she could do little else
but wait for the jaws to snap shut.

***

Mike had never felt such pain. Blind, screaming silently as flesh
melted, he lifted North off the ground, feeling ice slip beneath the heat.
He had no idea of direction, little sense of what he did, as he walked,
stumbling across the pier.
The rest of the magnesium went up as they fell, locked in embrace,
down into the dig site.
He had time for one last thought.
Mina!
All went black.

***

The wolf opened its jaws. White eyes stared straight at Jackie.
This is it.
She poked the broomstick forward with what little strength she had
left. It went through the wolf’s mouth and burst out the back of its head.
The creature fell apart in a heap of thawing slush.
Jackie pulled herself to her feet and looked around.
The wolfpack was gone, only piles of thawing ice left to mark where
they’d been. The two grotesque totems that guarded the entrance tumbled
and fell with a crash, scattering ice, already melting.
“Mike?” she whispered.
Old Tom dropped the smoking rifle he carried.
“Over there.”
Smoke and flame rose from the dig site.
She hobbled over. When she nearly fell Tom gave her a shoulder to
lean on and together they looked down into the dig.
The wooden decking still burned, draped with melted remains of thick
polythene. In the deepest part of the trench lay a smoldering charred mass,
unidentifiable as anything that might once have been human.
Tears stung in Jackie’s eyes. She turned away.
 A warm breeze ran across the dock, sending the scattered pages of the
journal flying. Barter scampered after them, but the wind stepped up as the
sun came up. The papers flew high in the air.
By reflex Jackie caught one as it blew past her nose.
She recognized the handwriting immediately.

***

I have made enquiries. There is no record of Captain John Fraser

after the last date in his journal. The Scottish Register of Shipping
records show only the fact that the Havenhome, a cargo vessel of some
thirty souls, was lost at sea while voyaging to the New World in 1605.
There is a single record for an Elisabeth Fraser in the Stonehaven
Parish Records, recorded as a “Widow of this Parish”, died June 23rd,
1634, aged sixty and four.
There is one other record of note. A one-legged man, aged and
wizened, was arrested in London on charges of public drunkenness
and lewd and libidinous conduct in June 1615. It is said he told a tall
tale of encounters with supernatural savages in his defense, but was
sentenced to five days imprisonment, where, it is noted, “He kept the
prison guards amused with a wide repertoire of sea shanties played on
a battered squeeze box near as old as he was.”
No other records exist to relate the fate of the Havenhome, save
the Captain’s Journal.
No matter how remarkable we may find it in this day and age,
something truly wondrous occurred on Hunter’s Dock back in 1605. In
order to share the experience, and to echo the proud Captain’s words, I
am decided.
The Algonquin believed that a brave became a Wendigo if he ate
the heart of either another Wendigo, or consumed the frozen heart of a
recently born child. This is obviously from a myth used as a cautionary
tale where winters were long and bitter and where they were often left
with no recourse but to consume members of their own tribes.
Whatever the reason, the shaman native on Hunter’s Dock all those
years ago clearly believed. And if I too am to share that belief, to know
what he knew, then I too must, in spirit at least, become Wendigo.
 Tonight I will eat the heart of the dead native, as he ate the heart
of the one before him. I hope for enlightenment.
What harm can I do?

Dick North, 19th March

 ABOUT THE AUTHOR
William Meikle is a Scottish writer now living in Canada with a dozen
novels published in the genre press and over 200 short story credits in
thirteen countries. He is the author of the ongoing Midnight Eye series
among others, and his work appears in a number of professional
anthologies. His ebook The Invasion has been as high as #2 in the Kindle
SF and Kindle Horror charts.
He lives in a remote corner of Newfoundland with icebergs, whales
and bald eagles for company. In the winters he gets warm vicariously
through the lives of others in cyberspace, so please check him out
at: www.williammeikle.com.
 OTHER DARKFUSE TITLES
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 Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
About the Author
Other DarkFuse Titles