The way his eyes roam over Nora’s fully covered and padded body is enough to have Theo ready to shoot him on the spot. They’d stand a better chance with the biters than they would with Dalton’s group. “We’ll go our way and you go yours. We’ve got family in town, so we’re still gonna check it out.”
“Well, I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you used to have family in town. You don’t anymore. Good luck to you. You’ll need it.”
Oliver might be dead. Gwen, too. It’s even more real now than ever, but if he thinks about that too long, he won’t be able to function. The moment Dalton gets back on his snowmobile and his outline disappears past the trees, they start moving, making a quick and silent trip half a mile out of the way, hoping to avoid his friends on the other side of the hill before climbing it.
One foot in front of the other. Again and again until the powder breaks on their last steps and the view opens up to a small, desolate town below.
They should be cheering. Rejoicing. Hugging in relief. They do none of that because the space before them looks anything but inviting, even from this far away.
“The lights are on,” he says evenly.
“Yeah, but where are the people? Inside because it’s cold, right?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m sure that’s it.”
They’re just bullshitting each other. The warning they received is looking more accurate by the second. Going down there might be suicide if it’s overrun.
“There could be some left alive…waiting for rescue like us.” She sighs, her voice resigned and her joke bitter. “If I go with you, you’ll have built-in protection. The biters will go right for me, just like he said. The weakest one.”
“You aren’t weak.”
She huffs. “I am. You just don’t know me well enough yet to see it.”
“You keep telling yourself that. That I don’t know you. I think you’re wrong.”
“Like animals. That’s what he said. Those wolves, when they hunt in packs, they do the same thing. They take out the weakest link first when given the choice.”
“You’re smaller than me, that’s all it is, and he’s just an asshole trying to rile you up.”
“Are we gonna talk about what happens if that guy and his friends follow us here?” she says, changing the subject quickly. “I’m not sure they would, considering the…dead people waiting to eat us all, but I don’t put it past them either.”
“We’re armed. We’ll have to worry about that if it happens. Right now, I’m more concerned about what’s waiting for us in Barrow.”
She grows quiet, watching him with a stare that turns from blank to determined. “We’d better get down there. I can’t feel mytoes anymore and I think my thighs are numb. I didn’t know that could happen.”
Frostbite waits for them in the elements while possible bloodshed waits down below. Theo would love to have a third, less horrific option to pick from.
* * *
Barrow is desolate and haunting. At first, he expects a group of the dead to barrel toward them the moment they set foot in the city limits, but that isn’t what happens. Not at all. Instead, they are greeted by the whistle of the wind kicking up snowdrifts through the sparse main street, swirling like little tornadoes before it engulfs them again and again, swallowing their outlines until they’re like ghosts passing through.
There is no welcome wagon, either dead or alive. The street lights flickering on every pole offer a haunting ambiance that shivers up his spine until he grips his knife harder, grateful they decided to rip the blades out of those rotting skulls after all, for extra protection.
Nora stays close at his side without any prompting. The two of them make a slow journey past broken shop windows and sputtering generators. This place wasn’t big to begin with. Hardly a town at all, he realizes. There are only a handful of buildings here and there offering the bare necessities, nestled between what he assumes is housing. It could almost be quaint if there weren’t such an eerie feeling crystallizing on every snowflake. One that he suspects is ever-present even when there isn’t a disaster unfolding.
What catches his eye beyond the small grocery store and post office is the helicopter sitting untouched at the edge of town. Its stillness is unsettling, like it’s been waiting for decades rather than days.
“I don’t suppose you know how to fly that?” Nora deadpans.
“Sorry, I was too busy with law school and med school to take flight classes, too. I knew I was missing something.”
“You had one job.”
The plane might be useless to them, but the power in these buildings isn’t. They need to warm up and find a place to rest before the incoming storm swallows them in a whiteout.
“Let’s try the sheriff’s office?” She tilts her head toward the larger building at the end of the street, looming tall with the promise of heat and, if they’re lucky, weapons.
He nods his agreement. “Then the pharmacy. They might have something for my headaches.”
