Stephen Jones - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 19

The snowmen stood back, leaving a path to the back door. Cleaver beckoned, impatient.

"Do come on," he said. "It's fweezing out."

Richard looked at Leech and shrugged. The gesture was matched. They walked towards the back door.

The last snowman was Bee-Alice. As they passed, it reared up like a kid pretending to be a monster, and stuck out yard-long pseudo-pods of gleaming ice, barbed with jagged claws. Then it retracted its arms and silently chortled at the shivering humans.

"That one's a comedian," said Cleaver. "You have to watch out."

Leech squeezed past the Professor, into the building. Richard looked at the five snowmen, now immobile and innocent-seeming.

"Come on, whoever you are," urged Cleaver. "What are you waiting for? Chwistmas?"

Richard slipped off his sun-visor, then followed Leech.

"You in the van, wakey wakey," shouted someone, who was also hammering on the rear doors. "The world needs saving…"

"Again?" mumbled Jamie Chambers, waking up with another heat-headache and no idea of the time. Blackout shields on the windows kept out the daylight. Living in gloom was part of the Shade Legacy. He didn't even need Dad's night-vision goggles — which were around here somewhere — to see well enough in the dark.

He sorted through stiff black T-shirts for the freshest, then lay on his back and stuck his legs in the air to wriggle into skinny jeans. Getting dressed in the back of the van without doing himself an injury was a challenge. Sharp metal flanges underlay the carpet of sleeping bags, and any number of dangerous items were haphazardly hung on hooks or stuffed into cardboard boxes. When Bongo Foxe, the drummer in Transhumance, miraculously gained a girlfriend, he'd tactfully kicked Jamie out of the squat in Portobello Road. The keys and codes to Dad's old lair inside Big Ben were around somewhere, but Jamie could never get used to the constant ticking. Mum hated that too. Between addresses, the Black Van was his best option.

"Ground Control to Major Shade," called the hammerer, insistent and bored at the same time. Must be a copper.

"Hang on a mo," said Jamie, "I'm not decent."

"Hear that, Ness?" said the hammerer to a (female?) colleague. "Shall I pop the lock and give you a cheap thrill?"

One of the few pluses of van living, supposedly, was that gits like this couldn't find you. Jamie guessed he was being rousted by gits who could find anybody. For the second time this week. He'd already listened to Leech's twist, Heather Wilding. This'd be the other shower, the Diogenes Club. One of the things Jamie agreed with his father about was that it made sense to stay out of either camp and make your own way in the night.

Even parked in eternal shadow under railway arches, the van was like a bread oven with central heating. The punishing summer continued. After seconds, his T-shirt was damp. Within minutes, it'd be soaked and dried. This last six weeks, he'd sweated off pounds. Vron was freaked by how much his skeleton was showing.

He ran fingers through his crispy shock of raven hair (natural), checked a shaving mirror for blackheads (absent), undid special locks the hammerer oughtn't have been able to pop, and threw open the doors.

A warrant card was held in his face. Frederick Regent, New Scotland Yard (Detached). He was in plainclothes — blue jeans, red Fred Perry (with crimson sweat patches), short hair, surly look. He couldn't have been more like a pig if he'd been oinking and had a curly tail. The girlfriend was a surprise — a red-haired bird with a Vogue face and a Men Only figure. She wore tennis gear — white plimsolls, knee-socks, shorts cut to look like a skirt, bikini top, Cardin cardigan — with matching floppy hat, milk-blank sunglasses (could she see through those?) and white lipstick.

"I'm Fred, this is Vanessa," said the Detached man. "You are James Christopher Chambers?"

"Jamie," he said.

Vanessa nodded, taking in his preference. She was the sympathetic one. Fred went for brusque. It was an approach, if tired.

"Jamie," said Fred, "we understand you've come into a doctorate?"

"Don't use it," he said, shaking his head. "It was my old man's game."

"But you have the gear," said Vanessa. She reached into the van and took Dad's slouch hat off a hook. "This is a vintage 'Dr Shade' item."

"Give that back," said Jamie, annoyed.

Vanessa handed it over meekly. He stroked the hat as if it were a kitten, and hung it up again. There was family history in the old titfer.

"At his age, he can't really be a doctor," said Fred. "Has there ever been an Intern Shade?"

"I'm not a student," he protested.

"No, you're one of those dropouts. Had a place at Manchester University, but left after a term. Couldn't hack the accents oop North?"

"The band was taking off. All our gigs are in London."

"Don't have to justify your life choices to us, mate. Except one."

Fred wasn't being quite so jokey.

"I think you should listen," said Vanessa, close to his ear. "The world really does need saving."

Jamie knew as much from Heather Wilding. She'd been more businesslike, drenched in Charlie, her cream suit almost-invisibly damp under the arms, two blouse buttons deliberately left unfastened to show an armoured white lace foundation garment.

"The other lot offered a retainer," he said. "Enough for a new amp."

"We heard you'd been approached," said Vanessa. "And were reluctant. Very wise."

Wilding hinted Transhumance might be signed to a Derek Leech label. They didn't only put out moaning hippie box sets and collected bubblegum hits.

"You won't need an amp in the ice age," said Fred. "They'll be burning pop groups to keep going for a few more days."

"Yeah, I'm already shivering," said Jamie, unpicking wet cotton from his breastbone. "Chills up my spine."

"All this heat is a sign of the cold, they say."

"You what?"

Fred cracked a laugh. "Trust us, there could be a cold spell coming."

"Roll on winter, mate."

"Careful what you wish for, Jamie," said Vanessa.

She found his Dad's goggles in a box of eight-track tapes, and slipped them over his head. He saw clearly through the old, tinted glass.

"Saddle up and ride, cowboy," she said. "We're putting together a posse. Just for this round-up. No long-term contract involved."

"Why do you need me?" he asked.

"We need everybody," said Fred, laying a palm on the van and wincing — it was like touching a griddle. "Especially you, shadow-boy. You've got a licence to drive and your own transport. Besides standing on the front lines for democracy and decent grub, you can give some of your new comrades a lift to the front. And I don't mean Brighton."

Jamie didn't like the sound of this. "What?" he protested.

"Congratulations, Junior Shade. You've got a new backing group. Are you ready to rock and — indeed — roll?"

Jamie felt that a trap had snapped around him. He was going into the family business after all.

He was going to be a doctor.

Inside the research station, crystals crunched underfoot and granulated on every surface. White stalactites hung from doorframes and the ceiling. Windows were iced over and stunted pot-plants frostbitten solid. Even light bulbs had petals of ice.

Powdery banks of frost (indoor rime? snow, even?) drifted against cabinets of computers. Trudged pathways of clear, deep footprints ran close to the walls, and they kept to them — leaving most of the soft, white, glistening carpet untouched. Richard saw little trails had been blazed into the rooms, keeping mainly to the edges and corners with rare, nimbler tracks to desks or workbenches. The prints had been used over again, as if their maker (Professor Cleaver?) were leery of trampling virgin white and trod carefully on the paths he had made when the cold first set in.