Hellifax (8 page)

For being trapped in a house in the middle of a killer blizzard, that was.

Every now and again, he’d sip on the Jack Daniels, appreciating the warmth and the fact that no more of the stuff would ever be made. He supposed that increased the value of every bottle Gus had given him.

During one shift at the window, a figure had staggered along the road outside. Black limbs could be seen through the milky veil, and Scott tracked it only as long as it stayed in sight. It was a dead fucker, he had no doubt of that. No human would simply walk along the road in such piss-poor weather, not while there were so many houses along the way in which to take shelter. It disappeared into the blowing snow after a few minutes, but Scott remained vigilant until nightfall.

The next morning, the sun appeared as a yellow ball burning through a sky of cotton. The storm had broken, yet fat snowflakes sashayed to the ground like feathers. Scott finished eating a can of cold tomato soup while guessing at which way the weather would go. He estimated the time to be around eight thirty in the morning. Then came the more difficult question. Should he venture out into the world? The only other option he had was staying at the house for the rest of the winter.

“No thanks,” he said to the bear. “It’d be too dangerous for you.”

Feeling the cold through the house, he suited up. He found a blue backpack in the garage and lengthened the shoulder straps to accommodate the bulk of the Nomex. He didn’t put it on just yet, however, as he wanted to see what it was like outside. He had the strap for the shotgun and could sling the weapon over his shoulder, but he wished he had something for the bat like Gus did. He’d have to keep an eye out for sporting goods shops that specialized in golf clubs. He elected to stuff the bat into the already full backpack, moving things around until it stuck straight up like some fat antennae. Then he closed the zippers as far as they could go, right to the bat’s grip.

That worked. He put on the backpack, then decided to take out the bat, figuring it better to have one weapon in hand. Once he put his helmet in place, he walked over to the garage door, bent over, and lifted with a grunt, opening it to knee-height.

A snow-packed wall stood in front the length of the door. Scott stepped back in awe. He should have expected it. Muttering about Nova Scotian winters, he stepped forward and pulled the door up to his waist, exerting a great deal of strength.

More snow. For a moment, Scott believed an avalanche had parked right over him. There was a wide-bladed snow shovel in the garage, but he didn’t want to have to dig his way out onto the front street. He lowered the garage door and went to the kitchen, where the door led into the backyard. The door opened with a blast of frigid air, and a waist-high drift stopped him in his tracks.

Shit.
He reached out and pushed the snow away. Whorls of white whipped past his head, blown into the kitchen by a stiff wind. The snow wasn’t heavy, but it still took effort to clean enough of it away so that he could step out, his legs sinking in up to the knee.

Closing the door behind him with one hand, bat in the other, Scott stood on the deck and surveyed the buried backyard, which was tinted dark by his visor. A shed stood in the back, half buried, no doubt full of gardening supplies for a spring that seemed a long way off. He stepped awkwardly to the railing and poked his bat into the snow, testing for depth. The snow was deep, but he took a cautious step off the deck anyway.

Whomf
. He sunk through the top layer and ended up submerged to his crotch. He stood there for a moment, flabbergasted at the memory of actually
enjoying
this shit when he was a kid. There were no fences in any of the nearby backyards that he could see, and any digging might attract attention, but there was no other way to get loose from the snow. Placing the bat to one side, Scott started digging like a dog to free his legs. Once that was done, he took the bat and retreated back into the house. A few minutes later, he re-emerged with the wide shovel, telling himself that if he was having trouble in the conditions, so were the undead.

He got to slinging snow.

An hour into it and he felt as if he were melting underneath the Nomex. He got clear of the one drift leaning against the back of the house, but the snow filling the backyard still remained almost knee-high. When he finally reached the door of the shed, he felt exhausted enough to crawl back into the house and sleep for a week.

Scott dug out the green door to the shed only to find it padlocked. He smashed the lock with the bat and swiped the ruined metal away. The door opened and, as expected, shovels, gardening tools, a lawnmower, and other landscaping equipment filled the small area. Fishing rods lined the ceiling, up and away in the low hanging rafters, and hand nets of various sizes hung like saggy spider webs.

“Couldn’t you’ve had… a goddamn snow blower?” Scott asked the shed.

He looked to the sky. He hated to think he had wasted most of the morning on getting to a shed with nothing useful in it. He returned his attention to the light and spotted garages in some of the other backyards, but huge, pearly dunes barred the way. Thoughts of what the road looked like after the snowstorm entered his head.

Shovel in hand, he struggled toward the next backyard.

By afternoon, he’d dug his way to three sheds and garages and found a pair of snow shoes. Unsure if the things actually worked, he spent the next ten minutes strapping them to his boots. Tentatively, he rose up on the tennis-racket-shaped footwear and took the first careful step in the backyard of a yellow bungalow. He walked in circles, stumbling several times and even falling over face first once, until he got the hang of walking in the shoes. One hour later, he returned to the house he’d made base in, left the snow shoes sticking upright in a snow drift near the door, and got something to eat from the truck. While he feasted on cold beans and wieners from a can, he wondered if there might be a snow machine in one of the garages or sheds. If he was fortunate, he might be able to find one. If he was really lucky, the thing would start. Scott didn’t want to think about heading deeper into the city with such a thick mess on the ground. It almost made sense to wait until spring.

When the rest of the dead would be up and walking around as well.

Sighing over the no-win situation, Scott finished his meal.

“What are you doing?” Kelly smiled at him, twisting around on the bed where she sat cross-legged. The television blared out a story on congested traffic on the highway, but he wasn’t paying any attention. He was more interested in tracing a finger along the waistband of Kelly’s plaid pajama bottoms, and the little wedge of white flesh between the parting fabrics as she leaned forward.

“Leave it alone!”

Scott lay stretched out on the bed next to her and didn’t say anything. He smiled instead and kept on reading his Kindle. Instead of stopping, his fingertips brushed her bare skin above the waistline of her pajamas. She had the sexiest back dimples. It was difficult to read at times like these, and just watching her toss her hair, a lovely shade of dirty beach blond, was a delight he still hadn’t revealed to her, not even after three years of marriage. She probably knew it anyway.

“If you don’t stop, we’re gonna fight.” She warned him with a cross look that was somewhat thrown off by her efforts to conceal a giggle.

“Can’t help it. You’re flashing me here.”

Kelly reached around and felt her exposed skin. “There isn’t even any butt crack showing,” she grated.

“Still flashing me.”

“It doesn’t count.”

“Does so count.”

“Jesus, it’s only my lower back! Get a hold of yourself.” She pushed his hand away.

Scott sing-song grunted affirmation, indicating it was an idea. Not a great one, however. Kelly returned to watching television, leaning forward once again, her faded T-shirt rising up her back like the rising curtain of a peepshow Scott wouldn’t mind seeing more of. A
lot
more. His fingers dabbled at her back again, daring, right on the line, eliciting a dramatic growl of exasperation from Kelly. She reached around and grabbed his fingers, lifted one butt cheek, and plopped it down on his entire hand, trapping it under warm, firm, cotton-covered flesh.

Scott considered the predicament for all of three seconds, before he started wiggling his fingers.

Kelly’s head slumped between her shoulders. “I’m warning you, man…”

It was adorable when she warned him.

But then from the hallway, Suzy bawled out, long and startling. The cry ended on the swell of another nerve-grating howl, barely separated by an intake of breath. Kelly immediately got up off his hand and the bed in a flash, her pale profile wrinkling with concern, and went for the door.

“Wait,” Scott heard himself saying, while another part of him wanted to grab her by the arms and stop her from leaving the room.
Needed
to stop her from leaving, because he knew what lay beyond their warm bedroom. He knew what their only child was becoming. Right then his consciousness floated above the scene, as if secretly jettisoned from the figure still on the bed.

Suzy cried out again, but her little baby voice was morphing into the moan of something else. Something hungry.

“Don’t go,” he called in a pleading voice, reaching for his wife, who was well out of range.

Kelly wasn’t even listening to him. The doorway became a dark portal then, where once there was light.

“Kelly––”

Again in that laid back voice while his inner thoughts wanted to shout
stop!

“Don’t. Come out,” Scott heard himself saying, feeling the scene teeter and slip away, feeling the dream coming to an end, its reality being pinched away from him at the very centre, like someone picking up a tissue. Kelly didn’t even pause, and he watched her with that sinking feeling of dread permeating his very heart, aware that he was leaving the bedroom in cinematic slow motion. Leaving, leaving…

“Don’t––”

The scream from beyond was right in his ears.

Scott opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. The wind outside didn’t moan or claw at the window, but the room felt a little colder than it had. A little more empty. He lay in bed and simply missed the feel of his long dead wife, missed the scent of her, cherishing those last few moments when the world was just fine and all he worried about was making enough to pay their rent. The dreams were so
real
, and while one could usually tell if a dream was going well or poorly, his always seemed to change from bliss to total terror in a capsizing wink.

He rolled his head to one side and met the gaze of the teddy bear. With the same hand he had touched his wife with––still feeling her skin on his fingertips––he reached out and, hesitantly, caressed the animal’s soft head.

“This doesn’t make me gay,” he whispered, staring into the crystal brown eyes of the bear.

An hour later he was outside, decked out in full gear. He trudged forward through the snow, appreciating the snowshoes with each step and using another shovel he had found in a storage shed for balance. The sun hung low in the sky, brilliant and blinding, transforming the mounds of snow into fine, sparkling sculptures. Visor down, Scott travelled from backyard to backyard, stepping over fences the snow had blown up against. He broke into eight more sheds and garages without finding anything he needed.

He used snowdrifts as ramps over some of the fences, but that came to an abrupt end in one backyard, as the final, stained fence was much higher than the others, preventing him from seeing over it. That left the driveway, gorged with snow that resembled the long spine of some unknown frozen creature. He shuffled alongside the house in those long sweeping steps he’d learned to take while in snowshoes. Red siding covered the house, awash in a spray of frozen moisture that made him think of ships at sea. He walked into the road and saw, for the first time since taking refuge from the storm, that it was just off the main highway. Standing there, he turned in every direction searching for zombies, seeing none and hearing nothing. Shrugging, he made his way across the drifts in front of the next house, then made a beeline for the large shed out back.

Another padlock barred his way, and he snapped the silvery lock off with two cracks of the bat. The sound echoed eerily into nothing, and he waited for deadheads to appear.

None did.

Warily, he considered the structure before him. The windows appeared black, and he didn’t bother lifting his visor to look inside.

He dug out the door enough to open it, a little awkward to do with the snowshoes on, and turned the lever after mentally preparing himself for the worst.

The door opened to reveal a dark interior full of band saws and worktables. Mallets and sanders hung off the walls, and a low row of fragrant birch wood was stacked next to a wood-burning stove. Scott stood on the threshold of the shed, obviously a craftsman’s domain, and saw a worn-looking rocking chair perched high on one of the worktables, awaiting a final coat of paint or varnish that would never come.

Then he saw the rifle on the workbench, laid out underneath a window that allowed a slant of light into the room. He went to the bench and inspected the chestnut stock, not familiar with any weaponry other than his twelve gauge. The owner had mounted a large scope on the rifle, which reminded Scott of a telescope. A quick check of the nearby cabinets revealed three boxes of brass shells. He left it all, not wanting the extra weight and having more than enough shells for the shotgun.

He left the shed and closed the door. Once back on School Avenue, he started hiking, going past houses that didn’t have any storage sheds or garages. Most had only driveways, glutted with snow. The tops of cars peeked out from under huge drifts, which would take a good two hours to uncover. Scott blinked. The blizzard had dumped a frozen sky upon the city.

But no undead.

That was heartening, but he knew they were nearby. Either underneath the snow he walked upon or inside the houses. It wasn’t the first winter he’d lived through with corpses walking around, but there was every chance it could be his last.