White and Other Tales of Ruin Read Online Free PDF Page B

along with an occasional clump of trees hardy enough to survive Atlantic storms. Nothing moved. The shower was turning quickly into a storm and I felt suddenly afraid. The manor was at least three miles behind us; the village seven miles ahead. We were in the middle, three weak humans slowly freezing as nature freaked out and threw weeks of snow and ice at us. And here we were, convinced we could defeat it, certain in our own puny minds that we were the rulers here, we called the shots. However much we polluted and contaminated, I knew, we would never call the shots. Nature may let us live within it, but in the end it would purge and clean itself. And whether there would be room for us in the new world …
    Perhaps this was the first stage of that cleansing. While civilisation slaughtered itself, disease and extremes of weather took advantage of our distraction to pick off the weak.
    “ We should get back,” I said.
    “ But the village —”
    “ Charley, it’s almost two. It’ll start getting dark in two hours, maximum. We can’t travel in the dark; we might walk right by the village, or stumble onto one of those ice overhangs at the cliff edge. Brand here may get so doped he thinks we’re ghosts and shoot us with his pop-gun.”
    “ Hey!”
    “ But Boris …” Charley said. “He’s … we need help. To bury him. We need to tell someone.”
    I climbed carefully down from the car roof and landed in the snow beside her. “We’ll take a look in the car. Then we should get back. It’ll help no one if we freeze to death out here.”
    “ I’m not cold,” she said defiantly.
    “ That’s because you’re moving, you’re working. When you walk you sweat and you’ll stay warm. When we have to stop — and eventually we will — you’ll stop moving. Your sweat will freeze, and so will you. We’ll all freeze. They’ll find us in the thaw, you and me huddled up for warmth, Brand with a frozen reefer still in his gob.”
    Charley smiled, Brand scowled. Both expressions pleased me.
    “ The door’s frozen shut,” she said.
    “ I’ll use my key.” I punched at the glass with the butt of the shotgun. After three attempts the glass shattered and I used my gloved hands to clear it all away. I caught a waft of something foul and stale. Charley stepped back with a slight groan. Brand was oblivious.
    We peered inside the car, leaning forward so that the weak light could filter in around us.
    There was a dead man in the driver’s seat. He was frozen solid, hunched up under several blankets, only his eyes and nose visible. Icicles hung from both. His eyelids were still open. On the dashboard a candle had burnt down to nothing more than a puddle of wax, imitating the ice as it dripped forever toward the floor. The scene was so still it was eerie, like a painting so life-like that textures and shapes could be felt. I noticed the driver’s door handle was jammed open, though the door had not budged against the snowdrift burying that side of the car. At the end he had obviously attempted to get out. I shuddered as I tried to imagine this man’s lonely death. It was the second body I’d seen in two days.
    “ Well?” Brand called from behind us.
    “ Your drug supplier,” Charley said. “Car’s full of snow.”
    I snorted, pleased to hear the humour, but when I looked at her she seemed as sad and forlorn as ever. “Maybe we should see if he brought us anything useful,” she said, and I nodded.
    Charley was smaller than me so she said she’d go. I went to protest but she was already wriggling through the shattered window, and a minute later she’d thrown out everything loose she could find. She came back out without looking at me.
    There was a rucksack half full of canned foods; a petrol can with a swill of fuel in the bottom; a novel frozen at page ninety; some plastic bottles filled with piss and split by the ice; a rifle, but no ammunition; a smaller rucksack with wallet, some papers, an electronic credit