Christopher Fowler - Personal Demons

'Hey, Kallie.' He looked along the aisle to see an old friend of his mother's, Mrs Quintero, waving her bad hand at him. She had lost three fingers to frostbite last winter, and had not had the wounds properly dressed. The black stumps of her distended knuckles suppurated through filthy bandages. He was not surprised to see her; she lived here in the store. Besides, there were only a few people who visited the outside world with any regularity these days, and one tended to see the same faces.

'The heating came back on, Kallie, can you believe it? Seventy-two degrees! Everything's gone off. The one place it needed to be cold.'

'Hasn't the professor been able to fix it?'

'Are you kidding? He hasn't a practical bone in his body. I wish you would take a look.'

'Have there been any shipments lately?' he called back, ignoring her request. If he moved any closer she would come over and hug him, and he wanted to avoid that at all costs. He hated anyone touching him.

'I don't know. I've been staying in. My husband's been really sick.' She shoved a wedge of peroxided hair from her dark-rimmed eyes. He wondered why on earth she still bothered to wear make-up. 'You heard anything?'

It was the most common question of all. Everyone expected some kind of government-authorised announcement to be made. Crisis over, it's safe to come out, that kind of thing. But it had not happened in his lifetime, and he doubted it could ever happen, or that there was still a government that could make any sort of announcement. Things had moved too far away from the norm now. How could their former lives ever be restored?

'We've had a few people call in, but nobody with any news. Been ages since we had news. A crowd of rough kids came by this week, stole the coffee vending machine, really noisy types. Of course, you don't remember when the whole world was noisy.' She looked around, too sharp, too anxious. 'It's so quiet now. The snow deadens everything, but oh! it never used to be like this.'

'Things change,' Kallie shrugged, keen to move on.

'I used to work in an office,' she continued, desperate to be understood, 'I was good at my job, and always busy, no time to stop. And the noise! Telephones, typewriters, and buses out in the street, people calling to each other. Televisions just left on. Singing at Christmas as we left the pub. Sometimes you had to shout to be heard. Now you can almost hear yourself think. Noise was life.' She blinked and shook her head, too frightened to speak.

'I have to go, Mrs Quintero.'

'The professor's in the stockroom giving a class.' She had turned away, unwilling to share her distress. 'My two are in there with him.'

'I'll look in and say hi,' he assured her, even though he did not want to.

'There's tinned peaches in syrup on Aisle 6, and powdered eggs,' she added listlessly. 'Make sure you take some. You need to keep your strength up.'

Why? he thought. What the hell for? 'Thanks, Mrs Quintero. Take care.' He set his metal basket aside and decided to look in on the professor first. He wasn't really a professor; he just looked and sounded like everybody's idea of one. He must have been a schoolteacher at one time, because he behaved officiously and was always holding classes in the rear of the store.

The stockroom had long been cleared of produce, and folding metal chairs had been set in rows. The metal was cold to sit on, but everything wooden had long been burned. Anyone could attend the professor's lectures. Kallie was sure he would continue to make them even if no-one showed up at all. Today he was lecturing Mrs Quintero's children, and another boy he had not seen before. He stood at the back and raised his hand in silent gesture. The professor did not take kindly to being interrupted.

'Ice cores drilled from the centre of the Greenland ice-sheet should have warned us.' His dull monotone blunted the most interesting facts. The kids looked bored, and exhibited the distracted mannerisms of the unwell. 'They proved that the climate of the earth fluctuates far more than was ever previously realised. The last ice age took very little time to occur, perhaps just a decade or two, and lasted for over a hundred thousand years. Chance plays a large part in the survival temperature of our planet. In the seas of the world there are five natural pumps that drive the great currents of the oceans. The European Sub-Polar Ocean Programme found that one of these, the Odden Feature, powers a deep cold current that helps to control the circulation of the North Atlantic Ocean. It is caused by a vast tongue of ice in the Greenland Sea.'

Kallie quietly helped himself to a tray of sausage rolls Mrs Quintero had defrosted. They tasted like putty.

'Back in February 1993, Greenland's winter ice receded due to global warming, and the tongue of ice failed to form, dissolving into pancake ice.' He paused here to write the word PANCAKE on the wall with a blue crayon. One of Mrs Quintero's boys started repeating the word aloud.

'Without a pump to drive it, the Gulf Stream, one of the sea's warmest currents, stopped almost overnight. The Gulf Stream kept Britain and northern Europe warm, and now it's gone. Then, in less than a decade, the other great pumps died, transforming the weather patterns of the world in the wink of an eye. We are in uncharted territory now. The Royal Commission of Environmental Pollution's report into the flooding of Egypt and southern china -'

But the children were all saying 'Pancake, pancake,' and the professor's lesson, always the same lesson, was wasted. They were too young to understand, anyway. They would learn soon enough.

'You were listening, weren't you, Kallie?' he asked wearily, throwing his crayon away.

'Heard it all before, prof. Nothing we can do, right?'

'Right. A friend of yours was in the other day. Tuesday.'

Kallie could not imagine why he still bothered to work out the names of individual days. Nobody else did. 'What was his name?' he asked.

'Bennett. Sat in the beverage department all day. He was very drunk when he left. I warned him not to go outside, but he wouldn't be stopped. Wouldn't even take his jacket. Became very belligerent when challenged.' He clicked his tongue disapprovingly.

That was it, then. No chance of getting his wallet back now. It was hard enough staying alive when you were sober, let alone drunk.

'Someone else was looking for you,' said the professor, an almost playful tone in his voice. Without asking, Kallie knew who.

'How is she?' he said finally. The professor grinned. 'Missing you, naturally. She always asks after you. She still talks about the time -'

'I know.' He cut the conversation short, uninterested in hearing an embroidered account of how, a year ago, he had saved Shari's life. 'I have to go.'

'I understand,' the professor answered with mock solemnity. 'You're a busy man. You know, I think it's time you considered moving in here with us while the generator still holds out. You get used to the smell, and it's worth it to be warm.'

'Thanks for the offer,' he mumbled, rebuttoning his coat. 'I'll keep it in mind.' Moving in meant being a part of the professor's ever-changing extended family, which meant looking after sick kids and hysterical, gangrenous parents.

'Shari will be sorry she missed you.'

I'll bet, he thought. He was suspicious of Shari since the accident; she was too nice to him now. 'Say hi to her for me.' He waved to Mrs Quintero as he pushed against the exit door.

Outside, the rising wind drove the temperature still lower. He reached the bottom of the slope below the supermarket and saw what he initially took to be a pile of brown rags, but closer inspection revealed a rigid hand, its fingers clutching the gelid air as if trying to take hold on life itself. Crystals of ice had formed over the corpse's eyes like luxuriant cataracts. Kallie cracked open its jacket and felt around for his wallet, but found nothing. Bennett had either dropped it in his drunken stupor, or had been robbed.