Йен Райт: The Final Winter

Kath was getting impatient. “Come on now, I’ve got to find a way to call Mr Campbell so we can all go home tonight. Unless you want to spend the night sleeping in the staff room?”

Peter stopped at the far wall and pointed upwards, just above the height of his shoulder. Kath glanced at the area a few inches away from the boy’s outstretched finger. She didn’t understand and felt her patience thin even more. “What exactly am I supposed to be looking at?”

Peter rolled his eyes in the faint glow of his phone display and then moved the light source toward the area he was trying to highlight.

Kath sighed. “The fuse box? Yes, very impressive.”

Peter rolled his eyes again and she was about to scold him for it when she spotted what he wanted her to see. It was the fuse box alright – at least it had been in a former life – but now it was a black, melted decay of wires and bubbling plastic. The green metal box that housed the circuits was untouched, but the area within looked as though it had been subjected to a hellish blaze. The acrid stench of singed rubber lingered in the cold, crisp air, but it wasn’t as strong as one would expect after an electrical fire.

“I don’t understand,” said Kath. “What could cause this?”

Peter shrugged at her. “I no sure. Fire maybe?”

“Obviously not, Peter. There hasn’t been a fire because the alarms would have gone off. Not to mention it would have spread. This place is full of cardboard and paper.”

“Blowtorch?”

Kath considered Peter’s wild suggestion, her thoughts wandering off into the dark, insidious alleyways of her mind. Could someone have really taken a welder’s torch to the fuses? Was someone lurking in the shadows intending to have their way with her in the dark? Had some hairy beast of a man been watching her for months, planning something like this? It was certainly an opportune time with all the snowfall. The police would never make it in time, even if she managed to call them. It seemed ridiculous but, for a moment, so plausible in her anxious state of mind that she actually started to believe that someone was intending to murder her. It was like something straight out of a Richard Laymon novel she’d once read by mistake, thinking it was something else. Horrible, disgusting book. Monsters in the cellar.

It wasn’t until Kath’s next thought that she considered herself ridiculous for letting her overactive imagination run away from her. “Ridiculous,” she said finally, “if it was someone with a blowtorch then how on earth did they manage to do it to the pub’s fuse box at the exact same time? They have no power across the street either. Same with Blue Rays on the corner . ”

Pete shrugged and walked off.

Nothing ever seems to concern that boy; just another lazy foreigner. Someone ought to use a blowtorch on his backside! Maybe then he’d show some enthusiasm.

Suddenly alone, Kath tried to make sense of the situation. Was some deranged madman really stalking the neighbourhood, cutting off everyone’s electricity? Or was her biggest threat merely freezing to death on the coldest night of the year? Neither outcome was appealing. All Kath knew for sure was that the fuse box didn’t destroy itself and that the real cause had yet to make itself known.

She shivered; the chill in the air thickening suddenly, like a crushing, physical thing that squeezed at the gristle on her bones. There was no way she could stay there any longer. Not without power. Not in the dark. She made a decision. “Right, Peter, where are you?”

A scuffling sound from the far corner of the warehouse. “I’m here, by the beer crates.”

“Well, make sure you’re careful. You break anything and you’ll have a record of discussion before the week is out.”

Peter didn’t respond, but Kath was certain she heard the boy sigh. She enjoyed getting under people’s skin and let loose a smile as crude as the oil-slick darkness that surrounded her. Suddenly she felt more in charge, more like her usual self. “Peter,” she shouted. “Place some pallets against the back shutter. We’re going to call it a night, but we need to secure the building as best we can before we leave.”

“Okay, I will do this, but where is Jess? She can help.”

“She’s wandered off somewhere.” Kath snorted. “Least of my worries right now, so go do as I’ve said – and make sure you’re careful.”

Peter scurried away, mumbling something in Polish. At least Kath imagined it was Polish. Could be Russian or Hungarian, or whatever it is they all seemed to speak – ugly, primitive language that hurt her ears to listen to. How had Britain gotten so weak? There was a time when it had invaded third-rate nations, but now the once-great empire seemed more interested in letting them all in and keeping them fed and warm. It made her stomach turn to think her Government cared more about benefit-seeking immigrants than educated citizens like her.

Kath left the warehouse and re-entered the supermarket, happily listening to the loud scraping noises of Peter struggling to shift the pallets in the warehouse. The thought of him blindly bumping around on his own made her chuckle as she walked towards the supermarket’s exit. She leaned against the glass fire door and looked outside. There was little she could do to secure the building – not without being able to bring the electric shutter down from the awning – but she could at least lock up with her keys. She didn’t expect anyone would be desperate enough to brave the cold to steal some groceries anyway; no one walking around in snow this deep, unscrupulous or otherwise. At least she hoped so…

Yet, deep down in Kath’s gut, a dull throbbing, that was not her stomach ulcer, told her that tonight could well turn out to be a very long night.

“B’jaysus, it’s nice to be in the warm again. Cold as a nun’s pussy out there so it is.”

Harry looked in the direction of the stranger’s voice, over by the pub’s entrance, and found himself at a loss. The cheery Irish accent was not what he expected. In fact, when Harry had first realised the presence of the stranger, he had felt something… ominous. But that seemed silly now.

“Hey, who is that?” asked Steph from behind the bar. “Anyone we know?”

A hearty chuckle floated over from the doorway as the stranger spoke once more. “No Lass, I do not believe we’ve had the pleasure. The name’s Lucas Fergus and I am on a vital quest to get some beer down me neck.”

Steph laughed and Harry found himself amused too. It wasn’t often the pub was graced with such colour beyond old men and their tall tales of the past.

“Well,” said Steph, “I can only offer you bottles and shots at the moment. As you can see the power is off, and that means the pumps are dry. Cash only, too, if that’s alright?”

“Cash is the only way an honourable man pays for anything in my mind so there be no worries there, and I don’t care whether the beer comes from bottle or tap either. It all ends up in the same place.”

“No arguments here,” said a voice Harry recognised as Old Graham’s.

Over by the fireplace the flickering silhouette of Damien shifted and stirred at the presence of the stranger. Harry had learned from past occasions that Damien didn’t like people he didn’t know. People he didn’t know were usually unaware of his reputation; he did not like that at all. Once, Harry had witnessed Damien carve his initials into some poor lad’s forehead with a nasty-looking blade, just so people would know he was to be respected. The young man had screamed the entire time. The police never came; no one called them.

And Harry knew that the police wouldn’t come tonight either. No matter what happened.