Йен Райт: The Final Winter

There was still no dial tone.

Kath slammed the handset back down.

“Is okay?” Peter asked in his horrible broken English.

“Everything is fine. I just dropped the phone. Do you know where Jessica is yet? I need to close up, but not before I’ve done a staff search. Its night’s like tonight when things go missing.”

There was silence for a moment and Kath’s heart-rate rose as the emptiness poked at her anxiety. A few seconds later Peter made himself known again. “I do not know where she is. Do you?”

Kath sighed. “Would I have asked you, if I did? Last I knew she was out front checking if anyone knew why the power was off. I don’t think she’s come back.”

Peter started heading off towards the exit. “Should I go look for her?”

The thought of being alone made Kath shout out. “No! Stay here. The last thing I, uh, need is you both getting lost.”

Pete began walking back toward the counter. “You think she is lost?”

Kath sniggered. “That girl would lose her head if it wasn’t sewn on. I’m sure whatever she’s doing out there, she’s managed to find her way into trouble. Just lea-”

Her body was suddenly wracked with shivers, cutting her words off mid-sentence. It was getting colder. It hadn’t seemed anywhere near as chilly just an hour ago when the power had first gone off. Perhaps the temperature had dropped so rapidly because the heating was out? It made sense, but for some reason didn’t seem right. It had gotten too cold too fast; unnaturally so.

She looked out through the glass doors again. If the doors didn’t open inwards as well as out, Kath was certain they would have been jammed inside. She watched as the top layer of snow began to jitter, swirl, and flow; lightly at first, but then more intently. The wind was picking up and starting to howl .

Kath wrapped her arms around herself. “For God sake, Peter, will you hurry up? We need to leave.”

We need to leave right now.

Jess could barely see an inch in front of the freckles on her nose. The snow hit her face relentlessly, filling her nostrils and blurring her eyes. It felt like she was going to suffocate, yet she had no choice but to persevere and find her way back to the supermarket. It was embarrassing that she’d managed to get herself so disorientated – it could have been only been ten feet before she’d found herself turned around and lost - but every direction led to a white, blossom background that seemed to creep on endlessly. She shivered, partly from anxiety but mostly from the fact she was freezing.

Really smart, Jessica. A+ for common sense.

She cried out for help and was unsurprised when she was met with near silence – the only other sound being the shrill whistle of the increasing wind. Despite the lack of reply, Jess called out again, lacking other ideas. When she was once again met with silence, Jess paused to gather her thoughts. The biting cold was worse when standing still.

What did they teach us at school about being stranded in the snow? That’s right – Nothing! People in England aren’t supposed to get stranded in the snow. That’s for places like Russia, or the North-freakin-Pole. In this country all we’re meant to face is a bad case of drizzle and maybe a hosepipe ban in the summer.

The brightest thought Jess could come up with prompted her to reach into her trouser pocket. Fumbling amongst her loose change and clock-in swipe card, she pulled out her mobile phone. It was slender and metallic, painted pink with silver sequins, and her intention was to use it to call Peter at the supermarket; get him to shout out of the doorway so that she could track his voice. She’d be back in moments, no doubt feeling like a fool, but as long as it was only Peter she wouldn’t mind too much. He would keep things to himself and not tell the super-bitch, Kathleen . Peter was trustworthy.

The phone lit up at once when she pressed its keypad, but it became immediately apparent to Jess that something was wrong with it.

This isn’t supposed to happen, she thought, shaking her head. Not in England.

But she didn’t get upset about it; it was too weird to register in her brain and form that emotion. Her phone still had power, but its display was garbled – distorted by vertical lines and random squiggles. She tried making some calls but was unsuccessful. The phone lacked even a dial tone.

She put the phone away and resumed her aimless wandering. The snow had been trampled down where she was heading and she assumed that it was the main path, so she followed it.

As a child, Jess had loved the winter and wished for snow every Christmas – her favourite time of year – but this worldwide inclement weather made her nervous. There was a sense of foreboding to the howling wind that made Jess wonder if it would ever stop snowing at all. She’d heard on the radio that people had already begun to perish from the crushing cold, and it had only gotten worse since then. Now that her mobile phone wasn’t working – something she’d never known to happen, except for one New Year when too many text messages were sent simultaneously – it left Jess feeling even more uncertain. Of course her phone may just have been faulty.

“Yeah, that’s it,” she said to herself, hoping it would calm her nerves to hear a voice, even if it was just her own. “It’s just faulty.”

Somehow, she didn’t believe it.

When she spotted something in the snow up ahead, she knew for certain that she was wrong.

It was almost thirty minutes before Peter was done. Kath heard the boy’s footsteps coming from the BOOZE & SPIRITS aisle. “Is everything secure?” she asked him.

“Yes, Ms Hollister.”

“Let’s get going then.”

“But we still not know where Jess is.”

Kath grunted. “She’s responsible for her own well-being. I can’t afford to wait around for that silly girl any longer. If you’re so concerned, go wondering around in the snow for her yourself.”

“Thank you, Ms Hollister. I will go now.”

Kath listened to the boy’s footsteps retreating towards the supermarket’s exit. He was about to leave her alone; in the darkness .

“Peter, wait!” she shouted. “You’re right. We shouldn’t just leave Jess to her own devices. We should go find her then all get home together.”

Peter’s footsteps halted. “Okay, Ms Hollister. Hurry!”

The fact that she was being given orders by a staff member made Kath furious, but the increasing howls of the snowstorm made her feel uncharacteristically subdued. “Coming,” she said.

Harry shivered as he started his next beer. It was getting colder and the scar on the back of his hand started to ache in response, reminding him of things he’d rather forget. Things he drank to forget. He swigged deeply from his beer bottle.

The Irishman, Lucas, turned his attention to Old Graham at the end of the bar. “So, Father Time, you must have been around a fair few turns of the world? You ever see snow like this before?”

“Well,” Old Graham began, visibly delighted at being the centre of attention. “There was a time in the fifties where things got a little chilly as I recall; and of course me old man told tales of winter in the Ardennes that sounded far more hellish than this.”

Nigel piped up from the opposite end of the bar. “Yeah, well that’s the Ardennes. It’s normal to have snow there. The amount we’ve had here the past couple days isn’t natural. Not to mention that it’s snowing everywhere. All over the world. In every country. Maybe it’s because of the ozone layer or something?”