The Darkest Winter Read online

  I was about to stand up when I noticed a box of nine-millimeters and an empty magazine. I glanced at the door into the house. Someone inside might brandish a handgun unless they took it with them when they left. Taking a deep breath, I turned off the flashlight again. I guess I would find out soon enough.

  Holding my breath, I walked to the door and turned the handle as quietly as I could. It was unlocked. They weren’t planning on coming back unless this was an elaborate trap.

  Creaking the door open, I peered into a dark kitchen and connecting living room. There was no sound, other than the refrigerator kicking on and off. In the off chance someone was home, and they woke to see a stranger in the darkness and decided to shoot me, I decided announcing myself might actually be smarter than sweeping through a stranger’s house in the middle of the night.

  “Hello?” I hedged, holding my breath to listen for movement. “I’m Officer Mitchell, I’m a State Trooper. If anyone is in the house, please step out with your hands up now.”

  There were no creaking floorboards or mutterings I could hear. “I am armed and entering the house. Do not shoot.” I cursed myself the moment I uttered the words. A crazy bastard wouldn’t give two shits if I wanted them to shoot me or not. I was the intruder this time, and I might’ve hammering the nails in my coffin by stating who I was outright

  But I had no choice, and I stepped further in, gripping my gun tighter with every step as I swept the living room. Shadows played with my eyes, and the living room was ransacked, which I hadn’t expected—they tore apart the closet, pulled books from their shelves. Everything looked expensive, down to the fake plant in the corner that was probably more expensive than my refrigerator. They were wealthy, whoever they were. Probably skipped town to a bunker somewhere in a remote town off Highway One.

  When I got to the hall, I stopped outside the first door, the only one that appeared to be closed from where I was standing.

  I sidled up against the wall and reached for the knob. “Hello,” I tried again with no answer. I twisted the handle and pushed the door open, stepping inside with my pistol aimed in front of me. A human form covered with a blanket laid in the middle of the room, but no one else, and I turned and headed back for the hall. There were other rooms to sweep, and as I moved through them, they all appeared the same—untouched.

  The house was clear.

  Lowering my weapon, I flicked on the hall light and stopped in the doorway of the first bedroom. Somehow, I knew it was my dad underneath. The footprints led here, I’d found his gun, but I saw no footprints leading back.

  Like tearing off a Band-Aid, I bent over and grabbed the fleece blanket and pulled it off. Then, I straightened, unable to move. Thomas Mitchell lay there, his eyes closed but his mouth partially open, and I inhaled a staggering breath and breathed it out again. “Pop . . .”

  I swallowed the unexpected swell in my throat and crouched down beside him. The light from the hallway was all I needed to see he was dead and had been for a couple days. I’d known the chances of him surviving were low given so few people had, but finding him in the fetal position, abandoned in a stranger’s house was a sucker punch to the gut, and made me feel sick to my stomach.

  Startling tears filled my eyes as I stared at the old man he’d become without my realizing it. Talking on the phone infrequent as it was, was one thing, but I hadn’t seen him in nearly three years. I leaned closer, to see the shadows on his neck. Flicking on my flashlight, I studied the markings. They looked like handprints.

  He hadn’t died of the virus.

  I sat back on my heels. Why had he walked here in the first place? Had the neighbors killed his dogs? Did he think they did? I remembered the man in my living room, his desperation to get my gun from my holster so he could kill himself. Was he killed in self-defense?

  They covered his body with a blanket, a gesture of remorse and fear, not pride or malice.

  The longer I studied his neck, the more curious I became. It looked like fingerprints seared into his neck, which was impossible. I glanced around the room, at the photography on the walls and the books lining the shelves. There were sprays and mists on the dresser and a bra was sticking out from under the bed. It was a girl’s room . . .

  The fingermarks were smaller than a man’s, thinner and I could see the bruised impression of fingernails. A teenager had killed him—had barbecued him to death? None of it made any sense.

  “Pop,” I breathed. “What happened here?”

  DECEMBER 12

  Chapter 17

  Elle

  December 12

  I glanced back at Sophie in the review mirror. She stared out the window into the darkness. She’d probably be home having dinner with her family right now or out with her friends, watching a movie on a normal Saturday night. Instead, she was grieving for her mom, and praying for her dad.

  “He’ll see the note,” I told her. “He’ll come find you.”

  She didn’t respond, but I didn’t expect her to. There was a slim chance he was alive, or that he’d make it back home or find her if he was.

  Alex peered over his shoulder, back at her and the kids who were dozing off to sleep beside her. He was attentive, more than I would’ve expected for knowing her less than a week, but the past few days changed a lot of things. But while he was so concerned about Sophie, I wondered about him. He had an dead uncle and didn’t care. That spoke volumes, so did the fact Alex could hot-wire the Pilot we borrowed to get to the city.

  “I’ve never been to Anchorage,” Sophie whispered. “Not really anyway. We drove straight through from Fairbanks to Whitely.” She was like a porcelain doll in the back with pale skin, blue eyes, and long hair around her shoulders, and she seemed just as fragile.

  I straightened in the front seat and stared out at the white road that stretched front of us. We were almost to the city; we needed a few more minutes without a hitch and we would have answers and safety, and I could finally breathe.

  Sophie unfurled a blanket in the back and covered herself and the kids.

  “Want me to turn the heat up?” I asked. I was so warm I hadn’t thought to turn it up high.

  Alex looked at me.

  “I’m okay.” Sophie snuggled deeper into the corner of the door.

  When Alex didn’t look away, I glanced at him. I’d noticed him watching me before. “Everything okay?”

  He stared at me a few seconds longer. “I think so,” he finally muttered.

  My gloved hands tightened on the steering wheel. He was too observant; I didn’t like it. “Were you able to get any rest with the others?”

  He nodded noncommittally and leaned back in his seat, finally focusing somewhere else. “I’ve been thinking about Hartley’s Bay.”

  “What about it?”

  “They said they were looking for skilled survivors.”

  I chuckled. “That cancels us out.”

  “They wouldn’t turn us away.” Alex seemed convinced, though I wasn’t. People were scared and some of them were desperate. It was hard to tell what anyone would do anymore.

  “Besides, we have skills, if you really think about it.”

  “What do you mean?” Sophie asked, curiosity piqued. It was nice to hear a hint of something more than sadness in her voice.

  “I’m a mechanic, Sophie’s a chef—”

  “I’m not a chef,” Sophie interjected. “My dad’s a chef.”

  “And I’m not a certified mechanic either, but I know my way around a vehicle. I’m sure your dad taught you a few things along the way.”

  “Okay,” I exhaled, glad Alex was seeing the upside of things. “Let’s see what the Coast Guard says first. If they can’t help us, we’ll seriously consider Hartley’s Bay. Deal?” Their silence was agreement enough. The truth of it was, Hartley’s Bay would be our only other choice if the Coast Guard fell through, and I couldn’t think about that with only an hour of sleep and four kids in the car I had to take care of.

  “Maybe there’s an
other broadcast.” Alex leaned forward and turned on the radio to static and pressed SEEK.

  “—conspiracy!” a voice thundered on the other side. “I’ve been saying it for years and I’ll say it again: it was bound to happen. You give the government too much power and they abuse it, just like they’ve done in every war since the dawn of time.”

  “Not this guy again,” I muttered as Alex turned up the volume.

  “They use us to fight their battles because we’re expendable to them. This virus only proves it. Why else wouldn’t they have found a cure? Why else would so many of the very few of us who have survived be out of their goddamn minds? I’ll tell you why,” he continued. “It’s all part of their plan—it’s just another genocide, only this time it’s disguised as a plague.”

  Sophie sat forward, gripping the back of my seat. “Do you think it’s true?”

  Alex shrugged.

  “All the lunatics out there now, if they weren’t crazy before, they surely are now and what better way to get rid of the rest of us than trial by fire—they want to see who will survive because it’s survival of the fittest and that’s who they want. They’re—”

  I clicked off the radio. “We don’t need to hear this,” I told them.

  “Who is that guy?” Alex asked.

  I shook my head as I stared into the darkness. The roads were more difficult to drive through, and if we were going to drive much further, we’d need a different vehicle. “I don’t know,” I breathed. “I never listened to the AM stations until now. Probably just some crazy survivor.”

  My seat trembled as Sophie clung to it tighter. “What if he’s right?”

  “What if he’s not?” I asked, glancing back in the mirror, then at Alex. “He’s just stirring the pot.”

  “The government could do something like that,” Alex said, and it wasn’t a question, but a legitimate concern. “They could do a lot of things—that have done a lot of things—that we don’t know about.”

  “All governments around the world?” I asked. “They wouldn’t be able to agree that the sky is blue, and the earth is round out of spite, let alone plan a mass genocide of the entire world.” I leaned back in my seat and let out a heavy breath. “He’s just trying to scare everyone.”

  “Well, it’s working,” Sophie muttered.

  “Exactly, which is why we don’t need to listen to it. It’s not helping anything, and I’m not worried about the world, I’m worried about the five of us. He’s a conspiracy theorist, he said it himself, and we can’t get distracted with what ifs and maybes when we’re trying to figure out what the hell we will do, here in this moment.”

  Alex wanted to argue with me, but gratefully he didn’t. The kids had been through enough, we all had, and we didn’t need more inane bullshit to add to the heaps we were already hurdling over.

  “We just have to stay focused,” I murmured, mostly to myself.

  Alex sat forward in his seat. “Did you see that?”

  I peered through the falling snow, toward the exit as we drove closer. One light flashed. Then another. It was a roadblock at the Brayton Drive exit and I slowed.

  “It’s the Coast Guard.” Alex pointed to a man in a Humvee at the road block. Cars were stopped along the turnoff, but the engines were off. The Coast Guard was the only person I could see. But he was there, living and breathing, and my heartbeat quickened. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to cry with joy or hold my breath.

  I followed the path worn in the snow toward the coned off area where the man was parked and brought the Pilot to a stop. The man looked worse for wear, unkempt and his uniform tattered. And underdressed given the weather, then again, it had been a long night for all of us. I couldn’t imagine what they’d had to deal with.

  I rolled down my window as he walked over.

  “Evening, Miss.” He tried to smile welcomingly, but he blinked and shivered in the snow. “I’m Petty Officer Donahoe. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a car. You’re a welcomed sight.” His mustache caught a flake of floating snow.

  “So are you. We were just in Whitely . . . It’s not good.”

  Donahoe shook his head. “No, it’s not. None of it is. We’re rounding everyone up at the Trooper detachment. Just take this exit here and head to Tudor Road.” He pointed down the turnoff. “You’ll see the signs.”

  “But what’s happening?” I asked. “Does anyone know?”

  “They’ll fill you in when you get there,” he reassured us. “They’ve got a whole protocol and what have you.”

  I nodded, but was hesitant to move on. I wanted more answers. “Thank you.” I had a feeling they would be tight-lipped about it, they were part of the government, after all. They had orders, and I assumed it wasn’t to yammer on about how fucked up everything was.

  I rolled up my window and turned off the highway.

  “Did you see his hands?” Alex asked.

  I glanced at him. “What do you mean?”

  “They were practically blue. He didn’t have gloves on.”

  “He was sitting in his truck before we pulled up,” Sophie mused. “He probably didn’t think he needed them.”

  We all stewed in silence as I headed into the city. It was huge and sprawling compared to Whitely, and yet it was eerily still. Spray painted signs and cones marked the turns to the Trooper outpost, and I felt a strange sense of excitement the closer we drove. He said there were others, and I couldn’t wait to see them and feel like we weren’t the last five people on the planet.

  Turning at the last sign, we pulled into the parking lot. It was filled with cars just like I’d imagined. The complex was a hub of industrial buildings, with one long one in the center which probably housed a bunch of offices. Maybe even city officials, and it was a relief.

  I pulled into a vacant spot at the edge of the lot and shut off the engine.

  None of us moved.

  “What will happen when we go in?” Sophie asked. “Are they going to separate us?”

  Alex looked back at her, then at me. I turned in my seat to face them both. “No,” I shook my head. “I won’t let them separate us. They have no reason to.” It was a true statement, I had no idea what protocol would be, but I would do everything I could to make sure we remained together, for now at least. I looked Alex in the eyes. “All right?”

  He nodded.

  Then I looked at Sophie and waited.

  “All right,” she finally said.

  “We stick together,” I whispered. “We don’t split up, not until we know what’s going on.” I nodded to the kids. “Let’s wake them up before we freeze to death out here.”

  Sophie unbuckled Thea’s seatbelt as I turned forward again to gather myself. We were here. We’d made it. We would have answers and protection—the kids would have protection.

  Alex got out of the passenger seat and did the same with Beau. “We’re here, bud. Time to wake up.”

  There was no getting around the fact our lives would change again once we knew what was going on and what the Coast Guard had in store for us.

  I got out of the car and pulled the pistol out from under the seat. I rationalized my hesitation being here as I shoved the gun in my waistband and pulled my shirt and coat over it. Someone had already tried to kill me and I had four kids to protect. The Coast Guard didn’t need to know about my gun until they found it for themselves.

  Sophie watched me intently. “Just to be safe,” I said, flashing the most reassuring smile I could, and I grabbed the keys to the Pilot and my wallet and shut the door.

  “I’m still tired,” Thea whined as Sophie zipped up her jacket.

  “I know. We’ll get to sleep more soon.” She took Thea’s little mittened hand in hers and we headed around to Beau and Alex on the other side.

  Together, we walked toward the only light up building in the complex. “Stick together, okay you guys?” I looked specifically to Thea and Beau. They nodded.

  “Is this where the police are?” Beau asked. He had spoke
n little since they’d shown up at Sophie’s, but he seemed for scared than happy they might be there.

  “I don’t know,” I told him. “But there will be people here who can help us.”

  “We’ll keep you safe,” Alex reassured him and grabbed Beau’s hand. “Okay?”

  Beau nodded, reluctant, but said nothing else.

  When we walked through the door, I’d expected to find hundreds of people crammed inside, but there were maybe a dozen. They were sleeping on cots pushed up against the wall, save for a few milling around in different areas of the room. It felt more like we’d walked into a bus depot with a few stragglers waiting for a late-night train. And it didn’t smell right, either. It was stale and musty, but something else lingered in the air I couldn’t put my finger on it. There was no stock of food or water. There were no EMTs or even a buzz of worry.

  “Hold up.” I held up my hand, and we lingered at the entrance. Something didn’t feel right. It was hard to tell it if it was the fire inside me roiling or if it was fear of what I couldn’t see and sense. “Stay here,” I whispered.

  “Elle—” Sophie reached for my arm.

  “I’ll be okay.” I could feel the fire in my fingers, hot and aching, and knew if anyone in here would be okay, it was me, even if I feared finding out either way. “Alex, take these.” I handed him the keys, just in case. “If anything happens, get out of here.”

  His eyes were wide, but he nodded with understanding.

  Turning on my heels, I walked swiftly toward the two men at the other end of the room whose faces lit up when they noticed me. A woman walked around with a baby swaddled in her arms, pacing back and forth. Her clothes were wrinkled, and she looked a little worse for wear, but I felt the same way. At least she was alive, and she had her baby. She cooed and rocked it, slowly making her way closer. Maybe the place was a funneling station and they would tell us where to go from here.

  I walked toward her, curious what she knew. She had a newborn and was still here, so she must have felt safe.