They Came With The Snow (Book 3): The List Read online

  The List (They Came with the Snow Book Three)

  Christopher Coleman

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Find a Rifle | 1.

  2.

  3.

  Kill a Crab | 1.

  2.

  Kill a Soldier | 1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  Escape the Cordon | 1.

  2.

  3.

  4.

  5.

  6.

  7.

  Find Dominic

  Kill Stella

  2.

  3.

  4.

  Epilogue: Kill the Bastard

  Find a Rifle

  1.

  The alley was only a block away now and Danielle kept her pace steady, worried that a change of speed in either direction might trigger an alert. She couldn’t afford that here, not this close to home.

  Home.

  It was an alley bar about the size of boxing ring. Raise the Flagon. The kind of place even the college kids avoided, the theme of the place residing somewhere between biker bar and punk rock club. The stench from the bathroom on that first day was something Danielle would never forget, and the hours she spent cleaning it felt like prison-camp work.

  But she called the place hers now, home, and though it wasn’t exactly the Palace of Versailles, it had everything she needed to get through each passing night.

  And most importantly, it was secluded.

  The basement setting of the dive bar gave it something of a bunker feel, which, at first, made Danielle feel trapped, buried. Now, however, the underground location instilled security, advantage. As long as the white monsters never saw her enter the alley, she felt safe in this underground dwelling, like a gopher in its burrow.

  Danielle stopped midway between Huntington and Poplar and turned on her heels, scanning the upper windows of the two-story brick buildings that surrounded her, shifting her eyes steadily along the openings, pausing for a second or two on each.

  Empty as usual.

  The desolation of the streets, even after all the time that had passed, still unsettled Danielle, making her feel as if she’d been kidnapped and dropped off in the middle of an abandoned movie set. Or that she had wandered onto an old nuclear test site, one that had left the ground poisoned with radiation while leaving the structures on top of it undamaged.

  But the eeriness of her isolation lasted only a moment. She needed to stay focused on survival. It was the only thing that drove her these days.

  Survival and her goals.

  Danielle did a three-sixty and then another half-turn until she was facing forward again; and then, without another glance, she turned quickly to the right and strode briskly into the alley. She walked less than a quarter of the way down the side street until she reached an area between two dumpsters where a large, thin sheet of particleboard leaned against the brick wall of the alley. Danielle hesitated in front of the board and took one last peek behind her, and, seeing nothing, she swung the board outward, exposing a crusty iron railing and a narrow stairway that led down below the surface of the street.

  She descended the first four steps toward the underground bar and then grabbed the thin board and replaced it against the railing, cloaking the entrance once again.

  Danielle turned the wobbly knob and pushed open the unlocked door and then stepped into the tiny foyer. There, she instantly grabbed the candle positioned on a shelf to her left, lighting it quickly with the Bic that lay beside it. She replaced the lighter, closed the door behind her, and then walked past the stage to the u-shaped end of the bar. There, she set the candle on the bar top and then exhaled a gaping sigh.

  The candle was largely unnecessary at this time of day, as sunlight was still shining in through the small recess window over the stage; but Danielle knew it would be dark soon, and at night, Raise the Flagon was a dungeon.

  Candles, however, were a resource of which she had plenty. Candy’s Candles sat directly across the street from Raise the Flagon, so Danielle had stockpiled dozens of the wax torches, and, if she ran low, a virtual limitless supply was only steps away from her front door.

  So, she kept a candle lit almost constantly when she was home, and not just for the light it provided. Danielle’s head ached almost constantly now—it was the tension, she assumed—and the fragrance of the wax and bounce of the flame offered at least a sliver of relief.

  And, right now, she needed that relief as much as ever. Day two in the achievement of her next goal had resulted in failure.

  No rifle found.

  She wasn’t discouraged though. Not yet. This current objective was ambitious, and she had given herself a week to cross it off. Finding a rifle—or a gun of any type—wouldn’t be easy. Not in this town. Not this long after they had come with the snow.

  It had been four months since the world exploded in a detonation of white death. That was Danielle’s estimate anyway. Four months. It was a laughably short period, really. It felt much closer to four years. Tom’s Diner seemed like a lifetime ago. The days when rescue seemed like just a matter of time, when she still clung to hope that her life of routine and monotony would resume as normal.

  Danielle estimated it had been about six weeks since she’d been on her own, maybe miscalculating by a week in either direction. But not more. A month and a half seemed about right.

  The weather was still relatively mild, and the leaves were holding steady. She figured it was mid-September, the cooler mornings suggesting fall was on the doorstep. The crippling snows of May had long since melted and it appeared the world had recovered to its normal seasonal patterns. But another month or so and warmth would again be an issue. A month after that and Danielle would be in real trouble.

  Gotta hit your numbers.

  Danielle snickered as the corporate idiom flashed in her mind, but it turned her attention to the list of goals hanging over the bar behind her. She never got much sales experience as a waitress—and before that as a receptionist at a veterinary clinic—aside from asking who wanted dessert as she cleared away empty dinner plates. So ‘hitting her numbers’ wasn’t something Danielle could relate to from any real personal experience.

  Still, though, she liked the urgency of the maxim, the implied consequences for failure, and she tried to apply it daily now to her current scenario.

  She turned toward the bar and studied the list again, the light from the window shining on it as if it were a holy relic on an altar. She focused on the current goal—Goal 2: Find a Rifle—and as she continued further down the list, her heart rate increased with every number she read. When she reached the last one—Goal 8—her jaws were clenched so tightly it felt as if her teeth would shatter.

  They were all there—she felt sure of it—the goals that would free her from this nightmare and avenge the misery that was her life for the past four months.

  All she had to do now was capture them.

  Hit the numbers.

  She had begun this preliminary process of setting goals immediately after staking her claim to Raise the Flagon, almost two weeks after the helicopter had flown off without her, leaving her stranded inside the cordon alone.

  At first, the goals she set were pedestrian things, easy stuff. Eat. Secure water. Stay alive. Things of that nature. But it wasn’t long until Danielle quickly recognized these objectives as inadequate, even counterproductive. They were too vague, too existential. She needed specifics. Things that were measurable.

  So ‘Eat’ became ‘Find food.’ Then ‘Find vegetables’ or ‘Catch a fish’ (the last of which turned out to be a joke of an effort, and fish was
quickly eliminated as a diet possibility).

  Still, though, even with the specifics, Danielle’s daily aims were almost all food-related, and though eating was an obvious necessity, the goals weren’t stretching her. Finding food, though angst-ridden, was not as difficult as she had expected; other than the menace of the crabs, it seemed she was alone inside the cordon, which meant competition for food was virtually non-existent. The non-perishable items that sat on shelves in supermarkets and convenient stores—not to mention in the homes of the now-dead or changed citizens—were hers for the taking. Cans of ravioli and tuna and olives and beans were plentiful.

  So, too, were some of the more luxurious items like meat and bread and fruit, but those lasted only a few weeks, when the world—and the freezers—were still cold. And it was this failure of refrigeration that began Danielle’s shift towards greater goals, understanding on a conscious level that the food wouldn’t last forever. Besides, even if it did, the search for sustenance only kept her spinning in place, surviving the landscape like an animal in the jungle. If she ever wanted to reclaim her humanity, if she one day wanted to live a life outside again, she would need to expand her efforts beyond the basics, to strive toward things that would keep her not just alive, but moving forward, toward escape from the forsaken world in which she now existed.

  So, her daily goals of food soon became broader objectives, most of which required either a broadening of her skill set or an expansion of her comfort zone. The first of these goals, which Danielle had accomplished and crossed off her list only days ago, was a mapping of the cordon.

  Goal 1: Map the Cordon.

  It wasn’t an especially difficult task, as most of the boundaries Danielle knew already. The Maripo River Bridge and the natural southern boundaries in Warren County were obvious, but the areas that were still in question Danielle now had on paper, having made daily visits to the borders for two weeks, casing them with binoculars from afar until the map was complete. It was no Rand McNally in terms of specifics, but it was good enough. She now knew the lines of demarcation, the vulnerabilities that offered escape.

  Escape.

  The word popped into Danielle’s mind several times a day now.

  She had made four attempts to this point, two of which were earnest, but none of them had really come close to putting her outside the border. And that wouldn’t get easier. She had been spotted at the edge of the cordon a few mornings earlier by a pair of soldiers, so now the military that was keeping the area on lockdown from crabs knew she was alive. The soldiers were a threat once again, and she assumed that soon other men, who had lately kept out of the interior, would be coming for her soon.

  In any case, escape would have to wait. She wasn’t ready for that goal yet. She had a few more things to accomplish first. Stones to step across. Preparations to make. Her past attempts had been failures, but they hadn’t discouraged her. On the contrary. They had taught her about restraint and reflection, that her list should be arranged logically so that each goal could build upon the next.

  Goal 2: Find a Rifle.

  There would be no escape without a weapon.

  She had had to leave her shotgun behind during the escape from Stella and her soldiers, but she had found a replacement almost immediately, another shotgun, resting by the steering wheel of a Buick, the previous owner beside it, tilted like a mannequin in the direction of the passenger seat, his head blown off from the mouth up.

  That fortuitous find had not been a sign of things to come, however. It was the only gun Danielle had found since her getaway, and she was now down to her last few shells. She continued to keep her eyes peeled for more ammo, but bullets were only part of the problem. The truth was, she needed something with a little more range, something that could take the head off a crab or a soldier from a place high and hidden. She was no marksman for sure (though her shotgun acumen had been proven apt on the river cruiser), but she figured with a quality rifle and a decent sight she could do some damage.

  But Maripo County was famous for its lack of gun retailers, so that left Danielle two options to reach her goal: attempt to cross the bridge back to Warren (no thank you!) or find a rifle in one of Maripo’s private residences. The second option—investigating basements and scouring garages—was a process that offered the possibilities of cream-colored monsters around some corners and mercenaries around others. But it was her only real choice, maddening though it was.

  And, indeed, the search on that day had been slow and fruitless. Pathetic really. Not a day’s work about which Danielle felt proud. She had felt a bit more spooked than usual, her intuition a bit more heightened, particularly now that she was on the radar of the soldiers.

  She had to strengthen her nerves, to keep them from fraying into uselessness. She had come a long way over the past few weeks; now was not the time to come apart at the seams.

  In those first two or three days following her escape from the colonel and Stella, Danielle had wandered the landscape like a vagabond, distraught, barely feeling the need to shelter from the cold, almost welcoming the crabs to come and devour her. How much of a chance did she really have on her own, with hordes of crabs and an army of soldiers against her? She had watched helplessly as the helicopter flew off above the old D&W building, heading north out of Maripo, a sight that was nothing short of distressing at the time, debilitating. She had missed her opportunity for escape, and it was one unlikely to present itself again.

  But then the snows began to melt—rapidly—and the roaming white devils quickly turned to rotting white corpses, dying as a result of either the atmosphere around them or the gnarled fingers and teeth of their brothers and sisters in battle. Danielle had watched in horror as the white savages ran tormentedly about the streets, fighting amongst themselves and yawning in desperation toward the sky. They had looked to be in unimaginable pain, as if they were burning from the inside. She still sometimes woke to the sounds of their muted screams of dying.

  By day four, every crab Danielle saw was a dead one, and by the end of the week, her spirits began to lift incrementally. Was it possible that all the monsters were dead? She didn’t know for sure, but the idea had wedged itself in Danielle’s mind, giving her faith, growing her optimism. Her quest to survive would still be difficult, of course, but with no crabs hunting her, it was no longer impossible. She had been lucky. That was all there was to it. She was alone and stranded in the cordon (so not exactly a lottery winner!), but the melting had killed off her predators. She had a chance now, hope, and, considering the situation, hope was about all she could have asked for.

  And then, over breakfast on the eighth day, her hope shattered like a Faberge egg.

  She had been sitting at a window booth in the Riverside Diner, a nice spot really, a Father’s Day kind of place with a view of the bridge and a clear sightline over to Warren County. The location made Tom’s strip mall spot look like Baghdad, and even under the circumstances, Danielle hadn’t been able to help but do a little math, calculating how many more tips she would have gotten working in this part of town.

  Still though, on the inside, diners were mostly the same, with red puffy booths and chrome swivel stools, and a menu of omelettes and burgers and chicken nuggets for the kiddos.

  And frozen lasagna.

  Perhaps the Italian delicacy wasn’t a staple of American diners, but Danielle had found a pre-made frozen version in the Riverside’s freezer, a modern number with a tight seal and several more days of sustainability.

  The lasagna had been fully cooked but would take several hours to thaw, and in the meantime, Danielle had grabbed a handful of crackers and cozied up in the booth, taking a breather, basking in the updated familiarity of the joint. She was relaxing, if only for a moment, gazing out at the river. Maybe the place could even be her base for the next few days, she had thought. Food and high ground, two of the more important qualities in any fort.

  And perhaps escape—or even rescue—was imminent, she had thought. With the crabs
all dead, it was simply a matter of biding her time. There had been no way of knowing what was happening on the outside, of course, but if the crabs were dead, extinguished for good, there would be no need for the cordon any longer.

  And then she saw movement near the bridge.

  She had been staring out across the river, waiting for the lasagna to thaw, reflecting on the first days of the crisis, and then later when Dominic arrived at Tom’s. She had placed a cracker in her mouth, resting it upon her tongue, lost in a stray memory of her parents, wondering what had become of them.

  The movement was just a flash at first, a shuttering of what appeared to be light off the fender of a Dodge Charger. It was morning and a light fog was settling, and the cloud cover triggered a warning in Danielle that the flash she had seen wasn’t the sun.

  Danielle had propped herself to her knees first, and then to her feet, standing atop the booth and pressing her face to the glass like a toddler in the ape house at the zoo, her eyes as wide as the brim of the coffee cup on the table below her.

  She saw nothing at first, so she moved off the booth and walked to the door, not taking her eyes off the place where the light had originated. When she reached the glass entrance, she had stood there staring, waiting for the movement again, keeping a small space in her mind for hope, optimistic that the flash of light had originated from an ambulance or fire truck, or perhaps a county cop or state trooper, armed and uncorrupted, poised for rescue.

  But that hope had dissolved like a cube of sugar in hot tea.

  From her new perspective, Danielle could see them, a pair of crabs, standing at the base of the bridge in such a way that their bodies had blended seamlessly with the gray of the concrete, making them invisible. But she could see them with perfect clarity now, hunched like monkeys, their backs facing Danielle so that they looked like two melting snowmen. Except their whiteness had changed, no longer the chalk white that had been characteristic of the crabs from the early days. Their color was a dirty white now, as if they had been damaged by smoke, the hue of snow found on the curb of a hardware store two days after a storm.