I wrote this in 2008, I believe, when I was a high school freshman. I churned it out hastily over a weekend so I could print it and bring it in to show people (mostly seniors) and impress them. I think I ended up feeling embarrassed and only showing it to a couple people.
It's Really Cold Out There
By C. Randall Nicholson
In response to a small bell, Johnny "Rolling Thunder" Arkenstone rushed to the front desk of the small store. And by small store, that meant very small store. It was smaller than an average person’s bedroom. There was the other room in the back of course, but customers were never allowed there. He often joked that there was enough room to swing a cat, but only if it was a mellow sort and didn’t mind a few concussions.
Still, it was the main tourist point around here. They could get anything they possibly needed for a vacation at any time of year, and the wall posters preached nature and history lessons that most people still believed, even if science had proven them wrong years ago. Of course this was still a remote area, and the only people here right now were a group of high school seniors on their Christmas vacation.
Johnny’s skilled hunter’s eyes took them all in quickly. There were four boys, three tall and muscular and one short and skinny, and three girls, two brunette and one blonde, who clung to the former like bubble gum to hair. Obviously they were from the States. He picked up more details than that but frankly didn’t care, and automatically filed them away in case of possible future necessitation.
The blonde, upon seeing him, exclaimed, "Awesome! A real Indian!"
One of the brunettes kicked her. "You're gonna make him mad, Sheila," she hissed.
Johnny laughed. "It’s perfectly all right," he insisted. "I'm very proud of my heritage. Although we do prefer being called Native Americans."
One of the boys tentatively asked, "So what was it like?"
Johnny rolled his eyes and twiddled with his long black ponytail, as he always did when pulling out old memories. "Oh, I was a squaw magnet, and a great hunter," he said, "one of the best in Canada. Folks used to swear I was raised by wolves or something ridiculous like that." He lowered his voice. "All it really takes is practice."
"Sweet," one of the boys said. "Think you could give me some tips sometime?"
"I’d love to," Johnny replied. "Come by some time when I'm ready and let’s see if we can't bag ourselves a few moose."
"Don't you have some kind of tree-spirits or something to help you?" Sheila wondered.
The brunette nudged her. "Shut up," she hissed.
Johnny laughed again. "Yeah, I guess you could say that. But really, they don't want as much to do with mortal affairs as people seem to think. It usually comes down to your own skill."
"How'd you get stuck here?" one of the boys wondered.
Johnny shrugged. "It was a gradual change, I guess," he admitted. "The village needed a go-between, to deal with all the recent increase in tourism. They said I was getting too old to hunt, and I knew all kinds of things I could teach the visitors, so they asked me to run the store for them.
"Anyway," he continued, "I doubt you came here to listen to my abridged life story, fascinating as it is. What can I do for you folks? Local nature? Native American lore? I can’t imagine you need help finding the merchandise, it's all right here… although we do have more leather snow boots coming in tomorrow, if you’d care to wait."
"No thanks," one of the boys said. "We've got everything we need already. We were just wondering if we could maybe rent a couple of lean-tos near the lake, up in the mountains."
Johnny's smile faded. He shook his head. "I wouldn’t do that if I were you," he warned. "It's really cold out there."
Everyone laughed. "We're not scared of a little cold," one of them said. "We're freaking seniors!"
Johnny sighed. "It's worse than you think," he insisted. "It gets really bad around here this time. There's weather blowing in from the Arctic Circle, and when they get global warming here's where they dump that extra. Besides," he couldn’t resist adding, "being seniors doesn’t make you gods or anything."
Sheila frowned. "It doesn't?"
"Shut up," the brunette hissed again.
"We're going," the boy concluded.
"All right," sighed Johnny, "but it’s really cold out there."
***
The teenagers laughed and joked around as they drove to their destination. In the driver's seat was Jack, next to him was Phil. Behind them Rachel and Marie sat with Doug and the short skinny one, Roger. And of course we already know Sheila.
"Come on, seriously," Jack was saying to Phil, "tell me these aren't the sweetest snow tires you've ever seen. Come on. Say it with a straight face."
"They're only working because the ice layer over the snow is so thick," Phil retorted.
"Dude, it would melt in seconds under this freaking sweet engine."
After a few hours of this, and other discussions unsuitable for printing, the lean-tos came into view. They were nearly covered with snow but barely enough of the roofs showed through for them to be recognized. Jack parked nearby, in the shadow of the mountain. Everyone got out and began stretching their legs. None of them were quite prepared for the blast of cold air that immediately hit them.
"Well, get out the shovels," Jack said, as everyone groaned. "Come on, we can handle this. It'll only take a minute."
***
Three hours later the job was complete, and the sky was nearly pitch black. The group all but collapsed in exhaustion.
"I do not want to get firewood," Phil moaned.
"Or find the fire pit under this snow," Doug added.
"Relax," Jack assured them as he whipped out a can of gasoline.
Within seconds they sat around a blazing fire. It hissed and steamed angrily as the ice and snow melted into it, spitting dangerous gasoline sparks at its masters. A few minutes later, however, it calmed down enough for them to sit and relax in their folding chairs. After the usual roasted s’mores and hot dogs, they decided to tell stories.
Marie began a long epic she had worked out in her head. It was a terrifying ghost story, beginning with the usual "girl living in the Civil War who has been deserted by the men in her family going to fight on opposite sides while her mother fights against cancer and gives her a special locket".
Marie told the beginning in such vivid detail, and it was so genuinely sad, that everyone began to feel tears springing to their eyes. Jack, too proud to let people see him cry, turned away from the fire and instantly let out a scream of agony.
"What the–"
"My eyes! My precious eyes!"
"They’ve frozen," Roger commented after a quick look with his flashlight.
"What do you mean, frozen?" Rachel shouted.
"Well okay, water's frozen onto them. He must have been crying and when he turned away from the fire–"
"Oh come on, it's not that cold is it?"
"Would you guys shut up and help him?" Marie huffed.
Jack moaned and whined as his friends carefully and painstakingly held him over the fire to thaw out his eyes. When they had finished, he decided he would be going to bed right away.
"That’s a good idea for all of us," Roger said. "The most beneficial hours of sleep come before midnight."
The others rolled their eyes but agreed to do so, because they could see Jack was in pain. They opened the van to get their things and began jostling around like maggots crammed into a dead deer’s nostril.
"Hey Roger, where's your teddy bear?" Doug asked.
"And your Pull-Ups?" Phil added.
"And your night-light?" Doug wondered.
Roger humored them with the air of one who suffers fools gladly. "I'm sorry," he said. “I keep forgetting you want them back. Remind me next time."
Phil was the last one. Holding his sleeping bag, he slammed the van door.
A low rumble began. Phil glanced around in confusion. It grew louder and louder. Phil turned around and opened his mouth to scream as several tons of snow and ice fell on top of him.
Sheila saw what had happened, and she wasted no time screaming.
The others came running out. "What’s going on?" Rachel demanded.
"Boogeymen," Doug whispered to Roger and Jack.
"The – the mountain – it fell – on – on Phil –"
"Well come on!" Doug yelled. "Let’s get him out!"
They grabbed the few shovels that hadn't been buried and did the rest with their hands. They worked desperately, even Jack who was still half-blind and in great pain. It soon became apparent however, that their efforts were futile. Even if more snow did not fall to fill in every spot they cleared, they never would have reached Phil through all of it. Fifteen minutes later they decided to give up.
"He’ll be dead by now," Roger said sadly.
They erected a small boulder from the wreckage. Marie tried to carve words into it but suddenly realized how numb her fingers were. They would barely bend. Nonetheless they stood in a solemn silence for over an hour. At one point Doug tried to hum "Taps", but the noise proved rather unpleasant, and Rachel encouraged him to stop with a judo chop.
Eventually they turned as one, and retreated into their lean-tos.
***
The next morning Jack was understandably still having quite a bit of trouble seeing. He regretted this when he got up and it caused him to crash into an icicle extending from the lean-to's roof.
Jack's yelling awoke everyone else. Everyone else except for Marie, who was buried in her sleeping bag.
"Come on!" Rachel yelled as she shook the bag. "Wake up, you lazy worthless sack of bones, or I'll show you why I have a black belt!"
"Gee Rachel," Sheila wondered, "shouldn't she be doing something?"
"Like what, smarty?"
"Like – oh I don't know… wait… breathing!?"
"Holy –" Rachel’s breath escaped her as she realized that the lump in front of her was indeed not breathing. Sheila screamed and brought Roger running.
"Is this more urgent than Jack?" he demanded.
"You bet your butt it is," Rachel snapped. "Ours isn't breathing!"
Roger hurriedly examined the scene and concluded, "She’s dead."
"Funny," Sheila said, "didn't someone just die?"
Roger ignored her. "It looks like she got really cold and scrunched herself up into her sleeping bag," he explained, "so tight no air could get in. But then the water vapor in her breath froze over the entrance before her body heat could fill it up."
Rachel stared at him for a few moments. Finally she said, "That… is the lamest thing I have ever heard."
Sheila shrugged. "Maybe she drooled on it instead."
Roger sighed. "Tragic anyway," he said. "Her final moments must have sucked like –"
"And if this happened inside a sleeping bag," she added, raising her voice, "then why aren’t we dead, too?"
"Well, the cold air is all around us, and not being forced on us by an enclosed space, and besides it is entirely possible that she was careless enough to take off her winter gear," Roger explained. "However, I'm certain we are suffering ill effects which will prove fatal if we do not get out of here as soon as possible. You have been too busy lately to notice, but surely your extremities are very numb. And now I must get back to attending Jack.” With that he left.
"Well he didn't strain himself with sympathy," Rachel muttered. She sighed. "This isn't supposed to be happening. This is just a stupid little camping trip, that's all, and we haven't even left base yet. People aren't supposed to be dying! And certainly not in these ridiculous circumstances! Hey, are you even listening to me!?"
Sheila was puzzled. "What's 'extremities?'" she wondered.
"They're like, hands and feet and stuff. Anyway, I – what are you doing?"
She referred to Sheila's having taken off one of her boots to examine her foot, which was a lovely shade of blue. "It's numb," she said. She fervently tried to massage some feeling back into it with her equally numb fingers and was very surprised when her big toe snapped clean off.
Sheila's eye twitched involuntarily.
After a moment she asked, "Shouldn't I be feeling something?"
Rachel tried to take her eyes off of the thing. "Like what?"
"Like – oh I don't know… wait… pain!?"
"I'm no expert, but I'd say it's well and truly dead. For that matter I bet your whole foot is too. It's nothing but a burden now. Here, I’ll break it off for you." Rachel readied her hand for a judo chop.
"No wait!"
Sheila was saved by the arrival of Doug, Roger and Jack whose face was a frozen bloody mess. They looked at the sleeping bag and bowed in reverence.
"Too bad she isn't a Bloody Marie. Then we could warm up a little," Doug said, very rudely. Rachel kicked him very hard where it counted.
"My toe just snapped off," Sheila said.
Doug whistled. "Sweet, just like that movie, Pirates 3!"
Rachel scowled. "You're ruining the moment."
"We can use this as bait to catch fish down at the lake," Roger suggested, "since the worms and all our other food are buried."
Rachel frowned. "We're not going back?"
Jack spoke up. "We talked it over, and decided it would be wrong to go after the van after we gave up on Phil like that. He was our friend, and nothing should ever be a higher priority than our friends."
"So we're just going to stay here until we freeze, or starve to death?"
"Well, we might decide to walk back if we get enough food."
"But your face – you need medical attention!"
"With this ice it’s either all healed or beyond help. Now let’s get to work."
Rachel reluctantly went with Doug and Roger down to the lake, while Jack stayed behind to rest and Sheila to take care of him.
"Can you see okay now?” she asked Jack.
"Yes, the bump helped, but oh," Jack started moaning, “I feel so dizzy…"
Sheila put her arms around him. "Lie down, sweetie," she suggested. "Just lie down and rest."
"I feel so restless."
"What exactly is it like?"
"It's like… like nothing I've ever felt before. It's as if the song of nature is playing in my head, but every time I join in, I hit the wrong key and mess it up, and everything vanishes into a whirlwind of chaos and destruction, and I feel as though I'm going to black out…"
"Nice imagery."
"If Roger were here, he’d say it's the severe cold, and the blow to the head, and the trauma of our friends
dying." Jack sighed and lay down.
"It really is a shame about Marie," he said after a few minutes of awkward silence.
"Please, don't make me cry," Sheila begged, "we don’t want all that again."
***
Roger returned about an hour later. "They've got about a centimeter deep so far," he reported, "and there's no telling how much further to go. Doug was getting really hungry and he tried to eat your toe but he cracked his teeth on it."
"Wait – he what?"
"Never mind. I came to switch places with you. I'm exhausted."
Sheila did a sexy little shrug. "Oh… wouldn't you rather wait here together?"
He did a double take. "Huh?"
"Just for a while, I mean."
Roger hesitated. "They really need someone else down there –"
"But I need you up here."
He was speechless. She directed him over to a snowbank and they sat down together. They looked into each other's eyes, and each imagined they saw a window into the other's soul.
"I'm scared, Roger," Sheila admitted.
He sighed. "I don't blame you," he said. "None of this was supposed to happen. But I'm not really much for consolation."
Sheila smiled. "You'll do."
"I'll do – what the heck is that supposed to mean?"
"You're smart. And you're cute. You may not be the most muscular person in the world, but when I'm with you, I feel – warm." She leaned in close to his ear. "And out here, that's saying a lot."
Roger's lips curled into a smile. They were still smiling when he hit the ground.
Jack stood up from behind the snowbank. "Sorry about that, pal."
Sheila frowned. "I still think it was a dirty trick."
"Come on," Jack said as he walked out, "Vulcan death grips are completely painless. Besides, he was happier in his final moments than he's ever been in his life. You made sure of that."
"But we haven't even been here for twenty-four hours yet!" she protested. "I don't see why you're already getting so desperate."
"I'm doing this so I won't get so desperate," he replied. He lowered his voice. "Those fools are digging their own graves. Do you really think they'll break through to the water in time? It's everyone for themselves, and the sooner we start the better."
"Well if this is the way it's going to be handled," Sheila decided, "then I guess you don't care about me either."
"Of course I do, sweetie. Until this guy runs out."
"Well… well…" She took a deep breath. "You'll have to fight me for him then," she declared.
Jack smirked. "You dumb broad," he snarled. "In nature we would be mating, not competing."
"Oh, that does it!" Sheila screamed as she lunged at him. Jack calmly sidestepped her, grabbed her wrist and snapped it as he spun her around while elbowing her in the throat and kneeing her in the groin, all with one smooth move worthy of the great ninja Martin Fregoe. As she gasped for breath he administered another Vulcan death grip.
With this accomplished, he turned back to the original corpse and discovered it had frozen harder than a rock.
***
Doug calmly spit on his hand and froze it back on to his wrist again.
"Doesn't that creep you out?" Rachel asked with a shudder.
He shrugged. "Not really. After what's happened lately, I've found it easier to pretend this is all just a dream." He went back to scraping at the ice.
"And where the heck is Sheila? She should have been down here ten minutes ago."
"You know her," he laughed. "She'd need a map to fall off a cliff."
"Natural selection didn't go her way," Jack said.
The two turned to see him standing behind them, looking very sad but not remorseful.
"Jack, buddy, get back in bed," Doug said. "You need to rest."
"I'm fine," Jack insisted. "At least I will be as soon as I'm done eating."
"What? You found food?"
He shrugged. "You could say that. I had to make another fire and thaw it out, and it's kind of yucky now, but you could say that."
"Well great, let's –"
"Wait just a cotton-picking minute," Rachel snapped. "Jack, what were you saying just now? About Sheila?"
"Oh, I was just mentioning that natural selection didn't go easy on her. She didn't want to do things this way, and that was her mistake. But something about it touched me, which is why I've decided to share my surplus with you."
"You mean –"
"She's really tasty."
"You mean –"
"Even after being frozen."
"You mean –"
"I haven't tasted Roger yet."
"You mean –"
"YES! I killed them both and am in the process of eating them! Geez!"
Doug stared in disbelief while Rachel charged Jack, uttering a string of unrepeatable nouns. Jack sidestepped her also but didn't bother killing her yet.
Doug snapped back into reality. "Jack, buddy," he said, "you've gone nuts! For real this time! Calm down!"
"No! Leave me alone! All of you just leave me alone!"
He lunged at Rachel to bring her down. This time, however, she was prepared. She repeated the same moves he had used on Sheila and dropped his body onto the ice.
***
She stared for a while, just like when Phil had died. Then she cried freely, not worrying about the freezing tears. "Why!?" she wondered. "So it's a little cold outside! Why!? Why does everything have to be so implausible and devastating?"
Then she ran blindly for all she was worth, back to the lean-tos. Doug called out, but she did not heed him. He did not bother to follow. He somehow knew he would find her lying dead with an icicle intentionally thrust through her heart.
Doug stood out on the lake for hours, never flinching, as the snowflakes slowly began to fall. He stood there for the rest of his life, until he was swallowed by the storm.
***
Johnny "Rolling Thunder” Arkenstone stared out the window at the encroaching weather coming down from the mountains. The store would be buried and he might have to stay for several nights. He shuddered just imagining what it was like at the lake. And then his lips curled into a satisfied smile.
Those filthy Europeans had come, taken over, and treated his people like dirt and taken their land. And now they were sending their tourists to gawk like idiots and throw trash around and get him stuck in this lousy place.
But it would take more than a bunch of palefaced losers to keep Johnny Arkenstone from being a hunter. It was in his blood, and that of his forefathers, and it would always keep going. The only difference was that he didn't get to display his trophies. But that was okay.
In response to a small bell, Johnny rushed once again to the front desk of the small store. Waiting there was a beaming, blushing newlywed couple.
"Good afternoon," he greeted them. "What can I do for you?"
"Well," said the groom, "we were just wondering if maybe we could rent a lean-to up near the lake for a nice quiet peaceful honeymoon."
Johnny’s smile faded. He shook his head. "I wouldn't do that if I were you," he warned. "It's really cold out there."
Rate the story (keeping in mind that it is a rough draft):
1 = I'd rather have my spleen removed without anesthetic than read this garbage!
2 = It sucked, really. I could have spent this time twiddling my thumbs or something!
3 = It was okay, I guess. Better than staring at the wall for ten minutes.
4 = Not bad. Keep it up. We'll see if the final draft is better.
5 = I loved it! Hey wait, where did you guys come from? What are you doing with that strait-jacket? Help!
Comments? Concerns? Self-esteem issues you need to get off your chest? Leave them here or next to relevant passages in the story.
The author would like to point out that Johnny "Rolling Thunder" Arkenstone has mental issues and his character is by no means meant to imply that Native Americans are evil or cannot be trusted. Also no research went into this story so many crucial details are probably wrong. Sue me.
Main Page: Short Stories by C. Randall Nicholson
Still, it was the main tourist point around here. They could get anything they possibly needed for a vacation at any time of year, and the wall posters preached nature and history lessons that most people still believed, even if science had proven them wrong years ago. Of course this was still a remote area, and the only people here right now were a group of high school seniors on their Christmas vacation.
Johnny’s skilled hunter’s eyes took them all in quickly. There were four boys, three tall and muscular and one short and skinny, and three girls, two brunette and one blonde, who clung to the former like bubble gum to hair. Obviously they were from the States. He picked up more details than that but frankly didn’t care, and automatically filed them away in case of possible future necessitation.
The blonde, upon seeing him, exclaimed, "Awesome! A real Indian!"
One of the brunettes kicked her. "You're gonna make him mad, Sheila," she hissed.
Johnny laughed. "It’s perfectly all right," he insisted. "I'm very proud of my heritage. Although we do prefer being called Native Americans."
One of the boys tentatively asked, "So what was it like?"
Johnny rolled his eyes and twiddled with his long black ponytail, as he always did when pulling out old memories. "Oh, I was a squaw magnet, and a great hunter," he said, "one of the best in Canada. Folks used to swear I was raised by wolves or something ridiculous like that." He lowered his voice. "All it really takes is practice."
"Sweet," one of the boys said. "Think you could give me some tips sometime?"
"I’d love to," Johnny replied. "Come by some time when I'm ready and let’s see if we can't bag ourselves a few moose."
"Don't you have some kind of tree-spirits or something to help you?" Sheila wondered.
The brunette nudged her. "Shut up," she hissed.
Johnny laughed again. "Yeah, I guess you could say that. But really, they don't want as much to do with mortal affairs as people seem to think. It usually comes down to your own skill."
"How'd you get stuck here?" one of the boys wondered.
Johnny shrugged. "It was a gradual change, I guess," he admitted. "The village needed a go-between, to deal with all the recent increase in tourism. They said I was getting too old to hunt, and I knew all kinds of things I could teach the visitors, so they asked me to run the store for them.
"Anyway," he continued, "I doubt you came here to listen to my abridged life story, fascinating as it is. What can I do for you folks? Local nature? Native American lore? I can’t imagine you need help finding the merchandise, it's all right here… although we do have more leather snow boots coming in tomorrow, if you’d care to wait."
"No thanks," one of the boys said. "We've got everything we need already. We were just wondering if we could maybe rent a couple of lean-tos near the lake, up in the mountains."
Johnny's smile faded. He shook his head. "I wouldn’t do that if I were you," he warned. "It's really cold out there."
Everyone laughed. "We're not scared of a little cold," one of them said. "We're freaking seniors!"
Johnny sighed. "It's worse than you think," he insisted. "It gets really bad around here this time. There's weather blowing in from the Arctic Circle, and when they get global warming here's where they dump that extra. Besides," he couldn’t resist adding, "being seniors doesn’t make you gods or anything."
Sheila frowned. "It doesn't?"
"Shut up," the brunette hissed again.
"We're going," the boy concluded.
"All right," sighed Johnny, "but it’s really cold out there."
***
The teenagers laughed and joked around as they drove to their destination. In the driver's seat was Jack, next to him was Phil. Behind them Rachel and Marie sat with Doug and the short skinny one, Roger. And of course we already know Sheila.
"Come on, seriously," Jack was saying to Phil, "tell me these aren't the sweetest snow tires you've ever seen. Come on. Say it with a straight face."
"They're only working because the ice layer over the snow is so thick," Phil retorted.
"Dude, it would melt in seconds under this freaking sweet engine."
After a few hours of this, and other discussions unsuitable for printing, the lean-tos came into view. They were nearly covered with snow but barely enough of the roofs showed through for them to be recognized. Jack parked nearby, in the shadow of the mountain. Everyone got out and began stretching their legs. None of them were quite prepared for the blast of cold air that immediately hit them.
"Well, get out the shovels," Jack said, as everyone groaned. "Come on, we can handle this. It'll only take a minute."
***
Three hours later the job was complete, and the sky was nearly pitch black. The group all but collapsed in exhaustion.
"I do not want to get firewood," Phil moaned.
"Or find the fire pit under this snow," Doug added.
"Relax," Jack assured them as he whipped out a can of gasoline.
Within seconds they sat around a blazing fire. It hissed and steamed angrily as the ice and snow melted into it, spitting dangerous gasoline sparks at its masters. A few minutes later, however, it calmed down enough for them to sit and relax in their folding chairs. After the usual roasted s’mores and hot dogs, they decided to tell stories.
Marie began a long epic she had worked out in her head. It was a terrifying ghost story, beginning with the usual "girl living in the Civil War who has been deserted by the men in her family going to fight on opposite sides while her mother fights against cancer and gives her a special locket".
Marie told the beginning in such vivid detail, and it was so genuinely sad, that everyone began to feel tears springing to their eyes. Jack, too proud to let people see him cry, turned away from the fire and instantly let out a scream of agony.
"What the–"
"My eyes! My precious eyes!"
"They’ve frozen," Roger commented after a quick look with his flashlight.
"What do you mean, frozen?" Rachel shouted.
"Well okay, water's frozen onto them. He must have been crying and when he turned away from the fire–"
"Oh come on, it's not that cold is it?"
"Would you guys shut up and help him?" Marie huffed.
Jack moaned and whined as his friends carefully and painstakingly held him over the fire to thaw out his eyes. When they had finished, he decided he would be going to bed right away.
"That’s a good idea for all of us," Roger said. "The most beneficial hours of sleep come before midnight."
The others rolled their eyes but agreed to do so, because they could see Jack was in pain. They opened the van to get their things and began jostling around like maggots crammed into a dead deer’s nostril.
"Hey Roger, where's your teddy bear?" Doug asked.
"And your Pull-Ups?" Phil added.
"And your night-light?" Doug wondered.
Roger humored them with the air of one who suffers fools gladly. "I'm sorry," he said. “I keep forgetting you want them back. Remind me next time."
Phil was the last one. Holding his sleeping bag, he slammed the van door.
A low rumble began. Phil glanced around in confusion. It grew louder and louder. Phil turned around and opened his mouth to scream as several tons of snow and ice fell on top of him.
Sheila saw what had happened, and she wasted no time screaming.
The others came running out. "What’s going on?" Rachel demanded.
"Boogeymen," Doug whispered to Roger and Jack.
"The – the mountain – it fell – on – on Phil –"
"Well come on!" Doug yelled. "Let’s get him out!"
They grabbed the few shovels that hadn't been buried and did the rest with their hands. They worked desperately, even Jack who was still half-blind and in great pain. It soon became apparent however, that their efforts were futile. Even if more snow did not fall to fill in every spot they cleared, they never would have reached Phil through all of it. Fifteen minutes later they decided to give up.
"He’ll be dead by now," Roger said sadly.
They erected a small boulder from the wreckage. Marie tried to carve words into it but suddenly realized how numb her fingers were. They would barely bend. Nonetheless they stood in a solemn silence for over an hour. At one point Doug tried to hum "Taps", but the noise proved rather unpleasant, and Rachel encouraged him to stop with a judo chop.
Eventually they turned as one, and retreated into their lean-tos.
***
The next morning Jack was understandably still having quite a bit of trouble seeing. He regretted this when he got up and it caused him to crash into an icicle extending from the lean-to's roof.
Jack's yelling awoke everyone else. Everyone else except for Marie, who was buried in her sleeping bag.
"Come on!" Rachel yelled as she shook the bag. "Wake up, you lazy worthless sack of bones, or I'll show you why I have a black belt!"
"Gee Rachel," Sheila wondered, "shouldn't she be doing something?"
"Like what, smarty?"
"Like – oh I don't know… wait… breathing!?"
"Holy –" Rachel’s breath escaped her as she realized that the lump in front of her was indeed not breathing. Sheila screamed and brought Roger running.
"Is this more urgent than Jack?" he demanded.
"You bet your butt it is," Rachel snapped. "Ours isn't breathing!"
Roger hurriedly examined the scene and concluded, "She’s dead."
"Funny," Sheila said, "didn't someone just die?"
Roger ignored her. "It looks like she got really cold and scrunched herself up into her sleeping bag," he explained, "so tight no air could get in. But then the water vapor in her breath froze over the entrance before her body heat could fill it up."
Rachel stared at him for a few moments. Finally she said, "That… is the lamest thing I have ever heard."
Sheila shrugged. "Maybe she drooled on it instead."
Roger sighed. "Tragic anyway," he said. "Her final moments must have sucked like –"
"And if this happened inside a sleeping bag," she added, raising her voice, "then why aren’t we dead, too?"
"Well, the cold air is all around us, and not being forced on us by an enclosed space, and besides it is entirely possible that she was careless enough to take off her winter gear," Roger explained. "However, I'm certain we are suffering ill effects which will prove fatal if we do not get out of here as soon as possible. You have been too busy lately to notice, but surely your extremities are very numb. And now I must get back to attending Jack.” With that he left.
"Well he didn't strain himself with sympathy," Rachel muttered. She sighed. "This isn't supposed to be happening. This is just a stupid little camping trip, that's all, and we haven't even left base yet. People aren't supposed to be dying! And certainly not in these ridiculous circumstances! Hey, are you even listening to me!?"
Sheila was puzzled. "What's 'extremities?'" she wondered.
"They're like, hands and feet and stuff. Anyway, I – what are you doing?"
She referred to Sheila's having taken off one of her boots to examine her foot, which was a lovely shade of blue. "It's numb," she said. She fervently tried to massage some feeling back into it with her equally numb fingers and was very surprised when her big toe snapped clean off.
Sheila's eye twitched involuntarily.
After a moment she asked, "Shouldn't I be feeling something?"
Rachel tried to take her eyes off of the thing. "Like what?"
"Like – oh I don't know… wait… pain!?"
"I'm no expert, but I'd say it's well and truly dead. For that matter I bet your whole foot is too. It's nothing but a burden now. Here, I’ll break it off for you." Rachel readied her hand for a judo chop.
"No wait!"
Sheila was saved by the arrival of Doug, Roger and Jack whose face was a frozen bloody mess. They looked at the sleeping bag and bowed in reverence.
"Too bad she isn't a Bloody Marie. Then we could warm up a little," Doug said, very rudely. Rachel kicked him very hard where it counted.
"My toe just snapped off," Sheila said.
Doug whistled. "Sweet, just like that movie, Pirates 3!"
Rachel scowled. "You're ruining the moment."
"We can use this as bait to catch fish down at the lake," Roger suggested, "since the worms and all our other food are buried."
Rachel frowned. "We're not going back?"
Jack spoke up. "We talked it over, and decided it would be wrong to go after the van after we gave up on Phil like that. He was our friend, and nothing should ever be a higher priority than our friends."
"So we're just going to stay here until we freeze, or starve to death?"
"Well, we might decide to walk back if we get enough food."
"But your face – you need medical attention!"
"With this ice it’s either all healed or beyond help. Now let’s get to work."
Rachel reluctantly went with Doug and Roger down to the lake, while Jack stayed behind to rest and Sheila to take care of him.
"Can you see okay now?” she asked Jack.
"Yes, the bump helped, but oh," Jack started moaning, “I feel so dizzy…"
Sheila put her arms around him. "Lie down, sweetie," she suggested. "Just lie down and rest."
"I feel so restless."
"What exactly is it like?"
"It's like… like nothing I've ever felt before. It's as if the song of nature is playing in my head, but every time I join in, I hit the wrong key and mess it up, and everything vanishes into a whirlwind of chaos and destruction, and I feel as though I'm going to black out…"
"Nice imagery."
"If Roger were here, he’d say it's the severe cold, and the blow to the head, and the trauma of our friends
dying." Jack sighed and lay down.
"It really is a shame about Marie," he said after a few minutes of awkward silence.
"Please, don't make me cry," Sheila begged, "we don’t want all that again."
***
Roger returned about an hour later. "They've got about a centimeter deep so far," he reported, "and there's no telling how much further to go. Doug was getting really hungry and he tried to eat your toe but he cracked his teeth on it."
"Wait – he what?"
"Never mind. I came to switch places with you. I'm exhausted."
Sheila did a sexy little shrug. "Oh… wouldn't you rather wait here together?"
He did a double take. "Huh?"
"Just for a while, I mean."
Roger hesitated. "They really need someone else down there –"
"But I need you up here."
He was speechless. She directed him over to a snowbank and they sat down together. They looked into each other's eyes, and each imagined they saw a window into the other's soul.
"I'm scared, Roger," Sheila admitted.
He sighed. "I don't blame you," he said. "None of this was supposed to happen. But I'm not really much for consolation."
Sheila smiled. "You'll do."
"I'll do – what the heck is that supposed to mean?"
"You're smart. And you're cute. You may not be the most muscular person in the world, but when I'm with you, I feel – warm." She leaned in close to his ear. "And out here, that's saying a lot."
Roger's lips curled into a smile. They were still smiling when he hit the ground.
Jack stood up from behind the snowbank. "Sorry about that, pal."
Sheila frowned. "I still think it was a dirty trick."
"Come on," Jack said as he walked out, "Vulcan death grips are completely painless. Besides, he was happier in his final moments than he's ever been in his life. You made sure of that."
"But we haven't even been here for twenty-four hours yet!" she protested. "I don't see why you're already getting so desperate."
"I'm doing this so I won't get so desperate," he replied. He lowered his voice. "Those fools are digging their own graves. Do you really think they'll break through to the water in time? It's everyone for themselves, and the sooner we start the better."
"Well if this is the way it's going to be handled," Sheila decided, "then I guess you don't care about me either."
"Of course I do, sweetie. Until this guy runs out."
"Well… well…" She took a deep breath. "You'll have to fight me for him then," she declared.
Jack smirked. "You dumb broad," he snarled. "In nature we would be mating, not competing."
"Oh, that does it!" Sheila screamed as she lunged at him. Jack calmly sidestepped her, grabbed her wrist and snapped it as he spun her around while elbowing her in the throat and kneeing her in the groin, all with one smooth move worthy of the great ninja Martin Fregoe. As she gasped for breath he administered another Vulcan death grip.
With this accomplished, he turned back to the original corpse and discovered it had frozen harder than a rock.
***
Doug calmly spit on his hand and froze it back on to his wrist again.
"Doesn't that creep you out?" Rachel asked with a shudder.
He shrugged. "Not really. After what's happened lately, I've found it easier to pretend this is all just a dream." He went back to scraping at the ice.
"And where the heck is Sheila? She should have been down here ten minutes ago."
"You know her," he laughed. "She'd need a map to fall off a cliff."
"Natural selection didn't go her way," Jack said.
The two turned to see him standing behind them, looking very sad but not remorseful.
"Jack, buddy, get back in bed," Doug said. "You need to rest."
"I'm fine," Jack insisted. "At least I will be as soon as I'm done eating."
"What? You found food?"
He shrugged. "You could say that. I had to make another fire and thaw it out, and it's kind of yucky now, but you could say that."
"Well great, let's –"
"Wait just a cotton-picking minute," Rachel snapped. "Jack, what were you saying just now? About Sheila?"
"Oh, I was just mentioning that natural selection didn't go easy on her. She didn't want to do things this way, and that was her mistake. But something about it touched me, which is why I've decided to share my surplus with you."
"You mean –"
"She's really tasty."
"You mean –"
"Even after being frozen."
"You mean –"
"I haven't tasted Roger yet."
"You mean –"
"YES! I killed them both and am in the process of eating them! Geez!"
Doug stared in disbelief while Rachel charged Jack, uttering a string of unrepeatable nouns. Jack sidestepped her also but didn't bother killing her yet.
Doug snapped back into reality. "Jack, buddy," he said, "you've gone nuts! For real this time! Calm down!"
"No! Leave me alone! All of you just leave me alone!"
He lunged at Rachel to bring her down. This time, however, she was prepared. She repeated the same moves he had used on Sheila and dropped his body onto the ice.
***
She stared for a while, just like when Phil had died. Then she cried freely, not worrying about the freezing tears. "Why!?" she wondered. "So it's a little cold outside! Why!? Why does everything have to be so implausible and devastating?"
Then she ran blindly for all she was worth, back to the lean-tos. Doug called out, but she did not heed him. He did not bother to follow. He somehow knew he would find her lying dead with an icicle intentionally thrust through her heart.
Doug stood out on the lake for hours, never flinching, as the snowflakes slowly began to fall. He stood there for the rest of his life, until he was swallowed by the storm.
***
Johnny "Rolling Thunder” Arkenstone stared out the window at the encroaching weather coming down from the mountains. The store would be buried and he might have to stay for several nights. He shuddered just imagining what it was like at the lake. And then his lips curled into a satisfied smile.
Those filthy Europeans had come, taken over, and treated his people like dirt and taken their land. And now they were sending their tourists to gawk like idiots and throw trash around and get him stuck in this lousy place.
But it would take more than a bunch of palefaced losers to keep Johnny Arkenstone from being a hunter. It was in his blood, and that of his forefathers, and it would always keep going. The only difference was that he didn't get to display his trophies. But that was okay.
In response to a small bell, Johnny rushed once again to the front desk of the small store. Waiting there was a beaming, blushing newlywed couple.
"Good afternoon," he greeted them. "What can I do for you?"
"Well," said the groom, "we were just wondering if maybe we could rent a lean-to up near the lake for a nice quiet peaceful honeymoon."
Johnny’s smile faded. He shook his head. "I wouldn't do that if I were you," he warned. "It's really cold out there."
Rate the story (keeping in mind that it is a rough draft):
1 = I'd rather have my spleen removed without anesthetic than read this garbage!
2 = It sucked, really. I could have spent this time twiddling my thumbs or something!
3 = It was okay, I guess. Better than staring at the wall for ten minutes.
4 = Not bad. Keep it up. We'll see if the final draft is better.
5 = I loved it! Hey wait, where did you guys come from? What are you doing with that strait-jacket? Help!
Comments? Concerns? Self-esteem issues you need to get off your chest? Leave them here or next to relevant passages in the story.
The author would like to point out that Johnny "Rolling Thunder" Arkenstone has mental issues and his character is by no means meant to imply that Native Americans are evil or cannot be trusted. Also no research went into this story so many crucial details are probably wrong. Sue me.
Main Page: Short Stories by C. Randall Nicholson
