The Darkest Winter Read online

  The Darkest Winter

  Savage North Chronicles, book one

  An Ending World Novel

  By Lindsey Pogue

  To all The Ending Series fans, near and far.

  Thank you for making my dreams come true.

  I wrote this for you.

  Prologue

  Elle

  I struggled to open my eyes and discern where I was. Crammed. Head throbbing. I could barely make out the windshield as blinked to focus.

  “If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times. It’s all a conspiracy. Don’t listen to them.” The male voice sounded far away, frenzied yet familiar. “You thought this was a democracy—that we had a say in what happened in this country? Who were you working your fingers to the bone for, before shit hit the fan? You’re delusional if you think it was for yourself.”

  My mind spun and cold air nipped at my skin.

  The voice was laughing . . . An echo I’d heard many times before, grating and almost hysterical.

  The radio crackled. “Here you all thought I was the delusional one.”

  Thud—thud.

  Blood pulsed through my head and ears, gravity pulling on me and I hung upside down.

  Thud—thud.

  “You think everyone going mad was accidental? The joke’s on you, my friend. The joke is on you.”

  The clawing fear dulled as I tried to remember what happened.

  I was driving . . .

  My arms hung, heavy as a biting pain shot up my tendons, sending me back to the cusp of unconsciousness.

  “Wake up, world! Or whatever’s left of us. You are not in control. You never were. It was all a smokescreen, and they played you like my uncle Earl’s fiddle.”

  The radio crackled again, and his voice faded in and out as I blinked, registering the shuffling sound beside me.

  “Sophie?” I breathed.

  One boot. Two boots. Upside down. They were covered in blood.

  It was not Sophie.

  I needed to scream—to get out and find the kids—but all I could think about was endless sleep.

  “If you survived the pandemic, it was for a reason.” The radio voice looped through my head as blackness consumed me. “Welcome to the god damn apocalypse.”

  PART I

  Five months earlier

  DECEMBER 7

  Chapter 1

  Elle

  December 7

  I couldn’t stop my foot from bouncing as Dr. Rothman and I sat in silence. The pipes in the wall tinked as the heat kicked on and off, trying to keep up with the arctic temperatures seeping into the building. The soft gray hue of the setting sun filled the room, washing over the mahogany bookshelves and mauve carpet.

  “Elle,” Dr. Rothman prompted from her chair across from me. “Do you want to say more about your dreams?”

  I leaned back into the couch and picked at the loose thread in the cushion. The thread had been there since my first visit nearly a year ago, and I wanted to cut it for her every visit since, but it didn’t seem appropriate.

  “I’m not sure what else there is to say,” I told her. “It’s like I hear things in my room, see a dark form standing at the end of my bed, and I can’t move or speak.”

  “It’s an ominous presence,” she clarified. “Not like a guardian watching over you, but something dark—monstrous, perhaps?”

  Monstrous was a word for him, but I shrugged. “It’s just a man.”

  “Is it him?”

  I peeled my eyes from the maddening cushion string and looked at my therapist. Her black bob brushed against her shoulders as she lowered her brow, awaiting my reply. She was the most patient, immaculately put together person I knew, I realized. But then, I didn’t know very many people. I told myself I liked it that way.

  “Elle?”

  I stared at her. Was it possible to dislike someone and feel gratitude at the same time? I wondered it every time I was in her office. I hated the expectant expression that always creased her brow, both stern and soft, and the way she made me feel beholden to her. I’d made a point to never feel beholden to anyone ever again.

  “You requested this meeting today,” she reminded me.

  “Yes,” I said, clearing my throat. “It’s him. It’s always him. I can feel his presence even if I can’t always see him in the darkness.”

  “Does he ever move?”

  My hair stood on end, imagining he stood beside me now. I knew how it would be—a cold sweat, frozen in place, and unable to breathe. “Yes. He moves.”

  “But he doesn’t touch you?”

  “Not in my dreams. He . . . watches.” I stared at my fingernails, the nude paint chipped from picking at it the moment I got off the ship. I could remember the last time I let him touch me like it was yesterday. It was as if his skin was still beneath my fingernails and I wanted to scrub it away. “It’s like he’s haunting me.”

  Dr. Rothman shifted in her chair, the leather protesting as she swung her right leg over her left. “You think it’s brought on by his recent death,” she guessed, drumming up an image of my stepfather, good ol’ Dr. John, all over again.

  I was more compelled to explain than to agree. “Sometimes I blink and he’s still there.”

  “Elle, have you ever heard of sleep paralysis? When a person’s caught between sleep and wakefulness?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ve heard of it.”

  “Then you might know it’s common, especially in people with poor sleeping habits or who struggle to get a good rest.”

  “You think that’s why Dr. John keeps visiting me in my sleep?” It didn’t seem likely, but then I didn’t have a doctorate in psychology like she did. 

  “Well, you said yourself you feel awake, and it feels like he’s there—real and inside your room.” She pursed her lips, which meant she was in analysis mode. “In sleep paralysis, the inability to speak and move generates fear, naturally, which feeds panic. It’s common to hallucinate supernatural apparitions, sometimes even hear them.”

  “Well, I definitely don’t see ghosts or aliens,” I said wryly, rubbing the back of my neck. But I have heard him whisper my name in my sleep.

  “No, you see something much worse, don’t you?”

  I cleared my throat. She got me there. I preferred the boogeyman to Dr. John standing over my bed.

  The heater kicked on again, and I stared at the vent in the floor, listening to its soothing hum as my mind drifted. “I panic,” I admitted. “I blink and he’s still there, like he’s really standing in my room.” My heartbeat thumped harder and louder in my ears, remembering.

  “But you’ve had episodes like this before, with other dark figures that were not your stepfather.”

  “Not for a while.”

  Dr. Rothman’s mouth quirked in the corner, pleased. “So, you’re enjoying the shooting range then?” Of course she was pleased, the shooting range had been her idea, to give me a sense of control in my life, my safety in particular.

  I could practically feel the weight of a pistol in my hand, the strain of my forearms as I pulled the trigger. It was power and control. It was sanity when my thoughts were dark and desperate. “Yes, the shooting range has been helping.” Until now.

  “Good. What about relationships? Have you explored any since Ben?”

  I snorted. “No. I don’t think I’m ready for that.” The early stages of a relationship were easy—they were mostly physical, and you could be whoever you wanted in the beginning. It was being real with someone I wasn’t ready for again. The crumpled brow. The pitying gaze. The unspoken judgement. The self-loathing that followed.

  “Self-discipline is hard for you, Elle. Six months ago you might’ve rushed into another relationship, but you haven�
��t. Restraint is a big step.” Dr. Rothman smiled this time, big and wide the way a proud mother might. Maybe she was the closest thing I had to a mother, even if she was probably thirty-five, only ten or so years older than me. To a stranger, we might’ve resembled each other with our slender frames and dark hair, even if she was more of a five-foot-nine to my five-foot-seven. I’d never considered it before, but there was a reason I’d gone to her instead of anyone else.

  “What about your letters to your mother? Are you still writing them?” Dr. Rothman blinked, waiting.

  Though I hated to disappoint her, I shook my head. “I’m not sure I see the point. She’ll never get them. I haven’t heard from her since the day she left, I don’t know if she’s even alive.” She took off when I was six and never looked back, leaving me and Jenny with the worst kind of devil—one that everyone adored. My visit wasn’t about my mother though.

  “I got a call from his estate,” I blurted, remembering the older woman’s voice on the other end of the line. Ms. Sandy Fields calling for a Miss Eleanor St. James. I’d been playing her words over and over for the past four days, uncertain what to do. “Dr. John left me everything.”

  “Did he?” She lifted an eyebrow. It was nice to know my stepfather could still surprise her, too.

  “His executor wants me to go to Eagle River to deal with his affairs.” I met her blue gaze. Anywhere near Anchorage was the last place I wanted to be. “So, it’s not just the dreams that have been bothering me,” I admitted.

  Dr. Rothman was thoughtful a moment, turning her pen over in her hand before she leaned forward, resting her elbows on her lap. “While I didn’t expect, nor would I wish, for your past to show up at the foot of your bed, I think it’s good these things are moving closer to the surface, instead of weighing you down in a past you can’t control, lingering in a childhood you didn’t choose. It’s your adulthood that matters, right? The now. The monsters from your childhood can only haunt you if you let them, and this is the closing of a huge part of your life.”

  “What are you saying?”

  She clasped her hands in her lap. “I think the more you try to understand the monsters you’ve created in your mind, the more you can expel their power over you and move on.”

  “Monsters I’ve created?” I repeated flatly.

  “Your stepfather is in the past, and yet he still follows you around. He is one man—a dead man as of last week—who sets the stage for all others. You’ll never see him again, and yet he’s in your life incessantly, in all that you do. He’s in every man you meet and refuse to trust. He’s in your dreams at night. While it’s natural to internalize the past, it’s not healthy, and it doesn’t have to be that way, not forever. John is just a man, a horrible man, but he’s only a man and only has the power you give him now.”

  While Dr. Rothman’s words made sense, it was far from easy to flip a switch and make him disappear, no matter how badly I wished it.

  “Let me ask you this,” she said and straightened her shoulders. “If you saw him, what do you think you would do?”

  I imagined him standing in front of me on a busy street, wearing a gray trench coat with his clean-shaven face and hollow brown eyes. His salt and pepper hair would be slicked back without a strand out of place. He would smile the same false smirk that always gave his mood away.

  My stomach turned.

  “You’re having a visceral reaction about a dead man,” she stated.

  My eyes narrowed on her of their own accord.

  “Good, then you see my point. Feelings tend to govern us, not the mind. Find a way to move on from feeling the way you do because your brain already knows he can’t hurt you anymore.”

  Feelings were everything, a warped heap inside me—fear every night as a child, knowing he was outside my window in the shadows, or dread when I could hear him breathing beside my bed and the air shifted as he reached for me. I let out an uneven breath, exhaling the tightness in my chest.

  “Are you going to Anchorage?” Dr. Rothman finally asked.

  I definitely didn’t want to, and I wasn’t sure I should I care what happened to his things. “I haven’t decided.”

  “Maybe it’s time to close that chapter of your life for good, Elle.”

  Even if my heartbeat raced and my blood whirred just thinking about it, I knew she was right “You think I should go.”

  She blinked at me.

  “I figured you’d say that.”

  “It’s why you came.”

  Reluctant, I nodded.

  “Who knows, maybe you’ll find your monsters are old and shriveled now.”

  “Ha.” She smiled at me, and I tucked my hair behind my ear and sat forward on the couch. “That’s an amusing image.”

  Dr. Rothman looked at her watch, and though she said nothing, I knew my fifty minutes was up.

  “Well, that was fun.” I stood up with a sigh and grabbed my bag from the cushion beside me. It was old and covered in patches from all the ports the cruise ship I worked on had stopped throughout the past four years. All the places I had gone, searching for a life far away. And yet I always came back. Something kept me in this cold, dark place.

  Dr. Rothman stood. “Go to Eagle River, Elle,” she said. Her blue eyes rested on mine with a subtle command in them. She wasn’t saying it as my therapist, but as my friend.

  I nodded, non-committal, as the phone on her desk buzzed. She picked up the receiver, and I opened the door to leave.

  “Oh, Elle?”

  I glanced behind me.

  “Happy Birthday.” A full, knowing grin engulfed her face, and she winked at me.

  I hated birthdays.

  “Thanks,” I muttered, and with a wave, I shut the door behind me. The hall was long, and I passed a few more offices on my way to the exit, before I stepped outside.

  I folded the collar of my coat up around my neck. The cold, crisp winter air stung my face and the inside my nose. Snow lined the sidewalks and the rooftops of downtown Seward, but the harbor glowed blue and orange with muted lights. Like the bay as the clouds set in, my mind felt foggy. Why did life have to be so exhausting?

  Begrudgingly, I dialed my sister’s number and put the phone to my ear. I pursed my lips as the phone rang and rang before it went to voicemail.

  “It’s Jenny. Leave me a message.” Short and to the point. Typical.

  “It’s me,” I said, uncertain why I’d called her to begin with. Jenny wasn’t the type of sister to console or commiserate with. She ran away the day we turned fifteen and led a life I knew almost nothing about. I didn’t blame her for leaving—I would have gone too, if she would’ve told me she was running away—but I did blame her for never looking back.

  I cleared my throat. “I’m not sure if you’ve heard, but Dr. John’s dead. He left me the house, and—well, I’m thinking about going back for a few days.” I glanced down the sidewalk, knowing deep down she wouldn’t call me back. Regretting my call, I hung up. Leave it to my identical twin to make me feel perpetually alone.

  The screen darkened, and I gripped the phone tighter in my gloved hand. The ginormous cruise ship at port sounded its horn, and I peered at it longingly for the first time. I could leave with the ship tomorrow, calling guests into the studio to take overpriced, choreographed photos that would end up in a drawer a month down the line, or I could be well on my way to Anchorage by then, headed to the one place I swore I would never return.

  Despite the appeal of drifting out to sea, I knew what I had to do.

  Chapter 2

  Jackson

  December 7

  “Come on, babe,” I called down the hallway as I swooped the lasagna off the kitchen counter. I nearly tripped on Hannah’s favorite polka-dot slippers. Luckily, she’d made my favorite dinner, which more than made up for it. It was still warm, and Grandma Ross’s recipe made my mouth water every time just thinking about it, especially coming off twelve hours of patrol with little sleep. The scent had my stomach barking at me.


  “Babe—”

  “I’m coming,” Hannah sang. Since the end of the first trimester, she had a permanent lilt in her voice, a happiness. Pregnancy, I’d come to realize, suited her, and I couldn’t help smiling as I swung the side door open.

  I kicked it back with my foot as the cold air breezed through. The stack of firewood against the garage was low. Great. The neighbors had their Christmas lights up too, and I hadn’t even started yet. I added that to my ever-growing honey-do list, along with finishing up the crib and starting my Christmas shopping. I glanced at the calendar hanging on the fridge. I still had a solid two weeks left, I’d be fine.

  “Coming, coming,” Hannah sang again. Her boots dragged against the carpet as she hurried toward the door. At eight months pregnant it was more of a toddle than a run, but it made me uneasy nonetheless.

  “Babe, be careful,” I told her, nodding to her coat on the rack. “And make sure you’re bundled up. It feels like it’s below zero out here.”

  “Jackson, honey,” she said softly. “I’m pregnant, not nine.”

  With a slight head tilt, I glared at her, eliciting a wink in return. “Warm the truck for me?” she simpered. “I’ll lock up the house.”

  “I’m on it.” Clicking the fob in my pocket, I remotely started the truck. It grumbled to life in the garage as I stepped out onto the breezeway. The front yard was covered in white. It wasn’t surprising given it was dead winter, but the streets looked unplowed, just as neglected as they’d been at dawn when I got home. The last thing I needed to worry about was Hannah driving to work every morning on dangerous, unplowed roads, risking an accident and turning our unexpected bliss into another devastating loss.

  I cleared my throat and stepped into the garage, elbowing the garage opener on the wall. The door groaned and protested open.

  “It smells like a carburetor in here,” Hannah grumbled as I opened the back door and slid the lasagna inside.

  “It’s called grease because this is a garage—my garage,” I warned her.