The Darkest Winter Read online

  Chapter 10

  Jackson

  December 10

  There was movement in the darkness, a rustling. A jolting.

  My mind stirred as my body shook. No, I was being shaken.

  I smelled the stench of decay before I registered the fingers at my waist, and my eyes flew open.

  A hulking form crouched beside me, tugging at my belt and holster.

  “What the fuck—” I jerked away, my body stiff and sore as I reached for my holstered gun, but it was too late. It was already in the man’s hand.

  “I can’t,” he muttered, peering down at the gun. His chapped lips trembled.

  “What? Put the gun down,” I told him. “Put it down.” Even in a liquor-induced coma, I could find my voice. “Sir—put it down,” I said more calmly, but my insides were screaming—my muscles were weak and my head was throbbing. “You can have anything you want in here—you want more guns? I’ll get you more guns.”

  The man shook his head, tears streaming down his ruddy cheeks. His blonde hair was matted with grease, and he looked no older than thirty.

  “I can’t,” he said again, strained as he continued to shake his head. He aimed the barrel at me. I’d had a gun pulled on me by never my own and never close enough to see the (something) of the barrel nose. [LP11]“I just can’t.” His eyes met mine with finality. “I can’t stop it. I can’t stop any of it!” He gripped the gun more firmly, decided.

  I swallowed the bile rising in my throat. He would kill me. I didn’t need the virus to kill me or to drink myself to death, the lunatic sitting on my living room floor would do it for me. I’d wanted to die and now I was getting my wish.

  Even so, my instinct was to flee, to talk him down and save my skin. Automatically my hands flew up. “You don’t want to do this, man.”

  He looked at me—through me—his blue eyes red-rimmed and swollen. “I have to,” he said, staring down at my Glock shaking in his hand. “I’m sorry, I have to.”

  “Put the gun down, man. I’m a State Trooper, bad things will happen if you shoot me.”

  The man laughed, the sound reverberating through the house, vaguely reminding me how empty the place was, how cold. “There’s nothing you can do,” he said.

  Before I could process anything else, he pressed the pistol beneath his chin and pulled the trigger.

  Doubling over, I covered my ears against the ear-splitting ring. “Jesus Christ,” I breathed, blinking as the room spun. The intruder was dead, his blood splattered on my living room floor and across the wall behind him.

  I grabbed the gun from his slack hold and slid it across the room, backing away as fast as I could until my back slammed into the wall. I blinked. Took a breath. What the fuck just happened? Letting out a ragged breath, I ran my hand over my face and through my hair. There were brains splattered across the wall. Blood dripping onto the floor. I’d seen gunshot wounds and fatal motorcycle accidents—I’d heard children screaming in a house blazing—but all of that felt like a lifetime ago, to another Jackson who had a decent night’s sleep and didn’t feel like his insides were eroding all that was left. Bile rose up my throat faster than I could scramble to the door, and I was barely on the porch when I doubled over and heaved everything out. The tequila burned my nose and throat, and my eyes watered as I straightened. It had sounded like such a good idea going down.

  I wiped the tears from my eyes and spit the remnants of vomit from my throat. The neighbor’s front door creaked open and shut with the breeze. The streets were barren, save for the piles of snow covering the asphalt, and it was eerily quiet. There was no residual noise from the overpass ten blocks down, no engines roaring in the distance. If there hadn’t been a body on my floor, I might’ve wondered if I was the last person left.

  Chills trickled down my spine and gray daylight filtered through the clouds. The snow had stopped, but not before the roads were piled higher and abandoned. I glanced at my truck in the driveway, then looked again.

  It was beaten to hell; the windows were smashed and the side paneling dented, like someone had come at it with a sledge hammer. Gritting my teeth, I retreated back into the house, prepared to shoot the man on the floor again, just for good measure, but stumbled and stopped beside Hannah’s body.

  I needed to remove the blanket to prove she was still there, but I hesitated. Hours of oblivion had come at a price—I had no idea how much time had passed. What would she look like? Different? Worse? I feared more than anything that she’d look dead, and that wasn’t how I wanted to remember her.

  As I inched the blanket back, her foliate [LP12]skin sent my pulse racing and my heartbeat thrashing in my ears. Dropping the blanket down again, I fell to my knees. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t look at her, but I couldn’t move her body either. Where would I take it? What would I do?

  Chin trembling, I rose to my feet and began to pace. Two break-ins. Too many deaths. The news was right. It was the end. It was the fucking end, and I needed protection. I needed answers, too. Where was Ross? Where were Kelsey and my dad? I couldn’t be the only one left, even if the world seemed to stand still. Even if the madness was following me everywhere I turned.

  I stared and the dead body on the living room floor, then at the body in the kitchen. Soon it would be impossible to stay if I didn’t do something.

  Forcing my mind to forget the ache of my body—the hangover or sickness, whichever it was—I went to the closet and pulled out a set of sheets. Not the Egyptian cotton ones that were Hannah’s favorite, but the old ones I used to have in my old apartment that she let me keep though we never used them.

  I covered the man in the living room first, unable to stomach the hole in his head. Then covered the rotting man in the kitchen. This was what life had come to. I wasn’t sure I felt one way or the other about it, just that it was and I had to figure out wat to do.

  I stopped at the sliding glass door and peered out at the yard that would’ve kept a thousand cherished memories. In a matter of hours, our home had become a graveyard, a lonely, condemned house. I couldn’t stay here anymore, yet this is where Hannah would want to be, even if it gutted me.

  Determined, I turned, grabbed what remained of the tequila, took a long pull, and set it down again. Uncertain where I’d left my cell phone, I headed to the bedroom for Hannah’s charger on the side table. Seven missed called from Ross. The coil in my neck eased, and I let out a breath.

  I clicked his number and called him back, only it went straight to voicemail. I hung up and called again. Then again before I finally left a message. “Ross, what the fuck? I’m been trying to get ahold of you.” My throat swelled with regret. “I need to talk to you. Call me back as soon as you can.” I exhaled and cleared my throat. “I hope you’re okay, brother.” Then I hung up.

  Hastily wiping the tears from my eyes with the back of my hand, I called in the body on my living room floor, but 9-1-1 only rang. I tried the police department next, the menu giving me too many options, none of which worked, before I ended the call and hurried back out to the living room.

  I would do what I had to, then.

  I would find a place to take the bodies, clean up the house, and then I would bury my wife and child in the backyard. After that, I would drink myself into oblivion again and find Ross if I hadn’t heard back from him, in no particular order.

  DECEMBER 11

  Chapter 11

  Elle

  December 11

  “Elle, I know you’re going to look for me, but don’t. I’m . . . not well—just, don’t come to Whitely, Elle. Please, listen to me, for once.”

  I stared at my closed bedroom door chewing on the broken skin on my lip. I’d woke up, shaking and half naked on my bedroom floor after crying myself to sleep, Thomas’s lifeless body crumpled beside me. How had any of it happened? His neck was still burned. I peered down at my hands; they were still normal. It was like it hadn’t happened, and yet there he was. None of it made any sense, not Thomas or whatever still stirred i
nside me.

  Squeezing my eyes shut, I exhaled and thought of Jenny. She was my focus. Not what partial memories lingered from my sickened haze.

  Don’t come to Whitely.

  Jenny’s throaty plea replayed over and over in my head. She’d called me somewhere between the bar and waking up on the floor. Her message was eerily calm despite her being sick. It made me think she might actually be okay. I had to go to her, didn’t I? My sister was alive. I might never see her again otherwise.

  The sound of an explosion emanated from the living room, catching my attention, and I abandoned my useless pacing outside my bedroom door to watch the news footage.

  “—video came in last night,” the male voiceover explained. “Chief Gonzalez, of the Alaska State Troopers, says the lack of a police force in such a remote, expansive state has always been an obstacle for Troopers, making the average response time outside of the city between fifteen and thirty minutes. But this . . .” The camera swept up and down Main Street, eerily empty of traffic. Two vandals in black clothes and Halloween masks ran in and out of the frame, between buildings and around abandoned vehicles.

  “We have viewer footage of somewhere in the Government Hill neighborhood.” The screen cut to suburbs where an abandoned car in the middle of the road covered in an inch of snow with the shape of a body still inside. “Please be advised this is unedited and possibility disturbing footage. Again,” the news anchor said, his voice grim. The images changed from one neighborhood to the next. “Viewer discretion is advised.”

  It was a video of a house across the street from the person recording.

  “There’ve been gunshots fired inside for the last twenty minutes. I don’t know if it’s Jim or Barbara—they’ve always been nice people.” The woman’s voice cracked, and the house was cast in dying light and unextraordinary until a gunshot and flush of light lit the screen.

  I jump where I stood and covered my mouth.

  “Oh my god,” she moaned. “What do they keep shooting?” The footage shook as she broke into a coughing fit. “I called the Troopers, but no one’s come yet. I keep thinking it’s too late—I mean, what do they keep shooting at?” She cleared her throat, her breaths asthmatic and shallow. “All my lights are off. My husband took our car to work this morning and I haven’t heard from him since.” She sniffled and her voice strained. “The Troopers have to come—they have to, right?” A baby cried in the background, and the woman cursed, shrieking for the baby to be quiet before the video went black.

  “Footage has been sent into KTUU from around the city. And while some Alaskan citizens are trying to flee, others are preparing to hunker down and wait it out.”

  A man in a hockey mask flashed on the screen. “This is what we’ve been preparing for, man. It’s the end of the twenty-first century as we know it.” The man’s eyes looked almost excited. “Survival of the fittest!” After a hoorah and a fist pump, he disappeared again.

  A cellphone recording scanned a large room in what looked like a hospital inundated with sick. “The number of dead world-wide is unknown, but unofficial reports claim more than half of the United States is diseased. Since the Governor’s ESA on Tuesday—”

  I clicked the television off. There was nothing left inside of me to throw up, and it was all the same. Every clip made the dread knot tighter. Each new face and harrowing story a blaring taunt that if the fever didn’t get me, someone else likely would. I got it, we were fucked, and I had to figure out what I would do before I let it all implode and prevent me from getting to Jenny. She was in Whitely and she needed me, the man in the bedroom was dead, and if I continued to wait for 9-1-1 or someone to arrive, it could be too late for her.

  I walked to the large windows and stared out and the world shrouded in gray and white. A blizzard was coming in, I could feel it in my bones. If I stayed here much longer, I might not be able to leave. I glanced toward my bedroom.

  There was nothing I could do about Thomas, not anymore. The man on the news was right. It was everyone for themselves, and even if that scared the shit out of me, I would not abandon the only person I had left.

  I wrapped my arms around myself, no longer concerned with the unnatural fire that had burned inside me, or the new face that haunted me whenever I closed my eyes. None of it was explainable, so I didn’t even try. Had Thomas not been on my floor, I would’ve thought it all a nightmare.

  I don’t think an apocalypse was what Dr. Rothman had in mind when she sent me here to start a new chapter in my life. I had never in all my life felt more alone. I had to go to Jenny, no matter what. Whitely was only a few hours away; I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t.

  Decision made, I plopped down on the couch and pulled on my boots. Being in such a small town had to have some advantages. Maybe it meant the outbreak would pass quickly and by tomorrow night Jenny and I would be passed out on the couch, bored out of our minds watching black and white movies, like we used to. My heart ached with hope.

  I took only minutes to pack my things strewn around the living room, knowing I’d need what little I had, and I flung open the door. The instant I saw Olive covered in snow, I knew it would be impossible if I didn’t have a better vehicle. Knowing Dr. John used to have a Bronco in the garage, I crossed my fingers and walked to the garage door. Although I hated to consider it, Thomas had a truck, if it came down to it.

  Relief eased the tension in my shoulders and my racing heart when I saw the old Bronco inside. I snatched the only keys on the hook by the garage door and hurried inside. As I tugged the cover off the truck, I debated trying the police again, but realized they really weren’t coming, not soon. Not after what I’d seen on the news.

  I opened the driver side door, a scent of mold hitting my nose, and paused. Dr. John’s gun safe stood against the farthest wall. Like most Alaskans, Dr. John enjoyed his seasonal hunting trips and how stupid would I be to go out there without something to protect myself. I could use a gun even if I hoped I wouldn’t need it.

  My feet were moving as I contemplated what I would find; his old shotgun and some bullets, maybe. I spun the combination lock, assuming his preferences hadn’t changed, and I was right. One perk of having twin daughters, Dr. John didn’t have to choose which birthday combo he’d use.

  When the door creaked open, I almost smiled. His twenty-gauge stood tall, nice and pretty, but it was the smaller box that grabbed my attention. I set it on the worktable and flipped it open. A Glock-17 and a case of ammo. I closed the case. My day was getting better already.

  Chapter 12

  Jackson

  December 11

  “I regret to tell you that as of midnight on the 10th of December, over eighty percent of the world’s population has reported or is assumed dead. It is estimated that the death toll will continue to climb. This news is devastating, I know, but all is not lost.”

  I broke the rest of my Ford’s busted window as the President yammered on, her voice more white noise against the bone-chilling wind that turned what few parts of me weren’t marinated in tequila to ice. Maybe another drink would remedy that. I glanced at the bottle belted in the seat next to me. Cleaning the blood from the house was a blur. Good.

  “Some of us are surviving. This is how we will fight our enemy—by not giving up, by being resilient and resourceful, by surviving. We are not a species that will go out quietly, so I task those of you who are still alive with one essential purpose: live.”

  I swerved around a Nissan stopped in the middle of the road, muttering to myself. I’d seen two other cars in motion, but after the first one didn’t bother to stop, I ignored the other. Cars were scattered, some abandoned, others were mausoleums. The road was a tad blurred, which might’ve been the tequila or the waterworks, or maybe both, but with no traffic, at least none that was moving, I didn’t care.

  I blasted through a red light and turned onto Elmore Road, the American and Alaskan flags flapping half-staff in the oncoming storm as I drew closer to the police department
.

  I might’ve been drunk, but I wasn’t stupid. I’d made sure to lay Hannah and the baby to rest in their stone tomb in the backyard before I left, knowing the moment I stepped out of my police vehicle I was probably screwed. If anyone was inside the department, I’d either look crazy to them in my uniform covered in blood, or look like a threat and get shot by whatever thugs were holed up inside with all the ammo and guns they could need to survive the end of the world. If they were smart, they’d shoot me on sight. It’s what I would do.

  I pulled the truck to a stop out front and hesitated. Not because I cared what would happen once I stepped out, but because I feared what I would find inside. A barren, empty place with no sign of Ross or any other familiar, friendly face, at least not alive.

  I stared at the light that emanated from within. On any other Friday I might’ve stopped by to harass Ross stuck in his office, filing reports and making follow-up calls to witnesses and families. Today, I prayed he was there, and that he was still my best friend and brother-in-law.

  Unbuckling the tequila, I lifted what remained of the contents and swallowed it down. I wasn’t quite drunk enough for what I feared awaited me inside. I took one pull, then another, eyeing the darkened windows for signs of life.

  Finally, pushing the driver side door open, I stepped out, my jacket pulling open in the wind. The longer I stood there, the quicker my buzz diminished, so I pulled my pistol from my belt and slowly made my way inside. My head was killing me, my muscles ached, and it felt like I’d swallowed a ball of needles, adhered to my throat and stomach.

  Nestled away, beneath the self-pity and loathing, I could hear Hannah telling me I needed food and rest if I was going to survive this. But Hannah was gone. And if Ross was gone too, I wasn’t sure anything would matter. His apartment had been empty, not even signs of a struggle or a note. The APD was my last hope, and I tried not to fixate on the fact he hadn’t tried to reach me at all, that it meant nothing.