White Out: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller (26 page)

"My baby," she said, feeling a rush of energy return to her, and then that rush exited just as quickly. Though they were in danger, she held her
baby tight and drifted into a bizarre, worrisome (yet pleasant, in some way) sleep. When he started to snore, pressing his body up against her as she contorted into a fetal position around him, she felt an infectious serenity wash over her body.

Annie and her baby boy slept.

Chapter Three

The people in Paulie's dream were eating each other. There were chocolate stains all over their faces and clothing. Streaks of brown led from their neighbors' houses, out into the street where the people melted, falling all over each other, chewing each other's heads just like he did with that big chocolate Easter bunny that grandma sent him.

It w
as just like his Daddah's joke: the one about eating people made of chocolate. After Easter, Paulie asked his Daddah nearly single day, "We eat big bunny, yah?" The convincing didn't work and Paulie would get upset. Until one day, his pop gave in and said they could eat the giant bunny.

The bunny was almost as tall as Paulie and his Daddah had hidden it away in the bedroom closet. Paulie wasn't allowed in there, but he snuck in a couple times so he could get a good look at the supe
r-huge gigantic chocolate bunny, if only to fantasize.

As his father broke off the
long brown ears, handing one to Paulie and keeping the other for himself, he had said, "This poor bunny. We're eating him and there's nothing he can do."

So Paulie replied, "Not reah, Daddah!
Not reah
."

"
I see. And are you a regular, Paulie, or are you a chocolate Paulie?" his father asked next, licking his lips like the silly-pants that he was.

What a goober his father was.
"No, I a boy. I a boy n' my name is Pawwwlie."

Daddah shook his head. "No, I think you're a chocolate Paulie, and I'm gonna eat you up." After this, his father went mega-silly, running after Paulie
, chasing him around the living room, tickling him in the armpits as he pretended to chew on his head, making snorty piggie noises while he did it.

Paulie couldn't remember ever laughing so hard
--he almost peed his pants. Almost.

But this
dream about the chocolate people wasn't funny at all.

Paulie knew he was dreaming. Mama once said dreams were kind of like watching a movie. It's not real, but sometimes it looks so real that it gets scary.

The guy from across the street, a round man named Mister Pete, was eating his own dog. His dog was named Jake, and Paulie made sure he waved to Jake every time Mr. Pete took the golden-tan Corgi for a walk.

Jake was made of chocolate, but so was Mr. Pete. They rolled around on the ground, biting into each other. It wasn't play
ing, like when he and his Daddah pretended they were made of chocolate. It was
scary
. Scarier than dinosaurs. Scarier than monsters. Scarier than bugs. So scary that it made Paulie want to wake up and never have any dreams again.

The
chocolate people were all tangled up, just like Daddah's garden hose that he could never get straightened out right. Their chocolate was all over the place, covering the streets. Paulie looked up and down the road and found more and more chocolate people, chocolate animals, and chocolate houses. They were all eating each other. They had forgotten all about the deep, deep snow, cause now, they were worried about something else. They were worried about their tummies.

The chocolate people were hungry. They seemed real sad, like somebody had just died, but their faces got bright again once they started eating each other. Nobody said any words. All that Paulie could hear was the sound of slurping and chewing.

That was when Eggah's hand popped out of the snow. He was holding the pancake-flipper, holding it like he was about to swing it at him. It would hurt, but not as much as being eaten by the chocolate people or the chocolate dogs. Eggah had been hiding beneath the snow all along, waiting for his moment to come out and eat his share of chocolate.

Paulie knew deep inside of him that it wouldn't be as fun as the time his Daddah tried to eat him. Daddah had only been playing. Eggah looked like he was serious.

Eggah looked like he was awful hungry.

Once he was out of the snow bank
, he tossed his pancake-flipper aside, then he grabbed at Paulie's feet, pulling off the cowboy boots that he'd given him. Paulie was mad that he would do that, taking back his gift that way, and so he tried to kick Eggah in the mouth. He missed. Eggah started to scream after that, angrier than the time he’d hurt Paulie.

Eggah bit into Paulie's leg. It didn't hurt
like the pancake-flipper did, but it looked mighty scary to see that happening to his leg. Chocolate was coming out of the spot that Eggah had bit him, oozing and dripping into the snow. Eggah licked at it with his tongue and then he started to laugh. He bit into Paulie's other leg next.

From there
it only got worse. For the first time in his life, Paulie knew what it felt like to no longer be a boy, but to be a chocolate Paulie, just like his father had kidded him about.

Paulie screamed for his mother, and for his father, while the strange man (who he thought was his friend
but was really just a big meanie) ate him up,
bit by bit, lick by lick.

* * *

Paulie woke up, gasping for air, feeling around in the dark, hoping that his legs were still there and not all melted and chocolaty like in his horrible dream.

They were there. Eggah hadn't eaten him
, after all. He had hurt him plenty (in real life, not like in the dreams) but he hadn't eaten him. Not yet.

That was when Paulie realized that his Mama
had just returned to him and that she could protect him now. She could protect him from Eggah if he ever got mean—

that
flippah’s for pancakes, Eggah
!

--
again.

"I not chocolate.
I a boy. I a boy named Pawwwwlie," he whispered.

Paulie cuddled close to his mother and fell back asleep. This time the dreams were happy. The first dream was about a pony and the next one was about a picnic with his parents. He wouldn't remember any others after that, because sometimes dreams stayed hidden deep inside you.

He slept so deep that he didn't hear the watery noises. He didn’t hear the drips.

*  *  *

Annie snapped awake, fully confused
by her location, unsure of how she’d arrived. She smelled Paulie's breathing against her chin, though she could not see him in the basement's darkness. She was home again. It all returned to her and she assured herself that she hadn’t been dreaming. Annie was back with Paulie again. Christian was still missing, though.

A
faint recollection of the nails pounding returned to her, but that sound was absent now. Edgar had finished his deed, sealing her into a prison. She wondered if Edgar was even his real name. The man in their house was a certifiable snake in the grass, though she had only just met him. She could say that much for certain.

Should have fought a little harder.
That might have been your last chance, sweetie.

Annie
stared up at the black ceiling, glad that she hadn't been dreaming after all. If she wasn’t dreaming, then she still had a chance. She wasn’t sure what her chances were, but a single chance was better than no chance at all.

Chapter Four

Drip -- drip.

That was the sound of the new
morning.

Drip
. Drip. Drip.

So began the end of one nightmare and the start of another.

Annie couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity of it. In her wildest nooks of imagination, she'd imagined something like this. It wasn't obvious, but something had nagged at her ever since she started on her journey with Tony. This was natural cause, and then effect; what freezes must one day melt, be it in a day or a century.

Drip.
Drip. Drip. Drip.

The ice outside was letting go, dripping beneath the basement door at first, and then the water started to flow heavier, pulsing almost like a heartbeat.
The soft sound of water filled her aching ears.

In less than ten minutes time, the floor of
the basement was covered with a half an inch of icy water. The brown floor paint bubbled from the moisture seeping through its pores. The steady rhythm of water entering the basement echoed against the soundproofed walls.

It was melting. Annie couldn't quite believe her eyes, but it was melting.

And it was melting fast.

DRIP.
DRIP. DRIP.

It felt like God (there he was again, that silly phantom that kept reminding her of what she once believed
when she was a little girl) had flipped a switch on the whole universe, resetting an electrical breaker that he had forgotten all about in the cellar that was Earth. The frigid world was exiting, gathering up its belongings and running for the exit at top speed.

Since the global warming craze started in the 1970's, there was n
ever a shortage of people commenting on how hot it was or how cold. One side would purport that the entire concept was a myth, plain and simple. And the other side was also split into two camps-- those that believed in global warming and the rest of them who believed in global
dimming
, never agreeing that they were actually talking about the same thing. Still, the observers of the universe would point out thirty degree temperature shifts from one day to the next, speaking as though it was utter madness. Those days were gone. This new shift was more than seventy degrees, or so Annie estimated, feeling a calm warmth returning to her bones that she hadn’t known for a long, long time. The sun had finally come out, allowing the planet to heal from the destruction it wrought in its hiding.

DRIPDRIPDRIPDRIPDRIP.

"Paulie. Paulie, can you hear me?" she asked, shaking her son. He was awake, but still pulling himself from the depths of sleep. They'd cuddled on the futon all through the night.

After he'd pushed his
"family" out of the way, Edgar--or whatever the hell his name was--had secured boards over the basement door. His fury had overtaken every logical path, pounding the nails in, not even taking a moment to think it through; all the food and logs were in the basement. If he locked them down there, it wouldn't be long until he was forced to return, cursing to himself as he pried the nails loose. The image almost made Annie laugh out loud.

Their captor didn’t seem very bright. Sick in the head, and monstrous, but a
simple-minded dolt all the same.

"Mammah," whispered Paulie, parting his sticky lips and looking up to her lethargicall
y. He needed medical assistance and if he didn't receive it soon, she wasn’t sure what long lasting effects it might have. Were there internal injuries to pair with his external ones? His left eye was still swollen and half shut, looking very much like Rocky Balboa at the end of the first movie. She wasn’t sure what Edgar had done to her son. She didn’t dare to speculate for the wrenching feeling it would give her on the inside. She’d been a terrible mother, allowing this to happen to her innocent little man.

"Hey
, baby," she said, trying to bite back the fright that she experienced when she looked at his broken face. The bastard would pay for what he did. Who in their right mind could harm a child like this? She'd been through worse with the men, if one was delusional enough to call them that, from The Purple Cat.

DRIPDRIPDRIPDRIPDRIP.
DRIPDRIPDRIPDRIPDRIP.

Edgar was a bully, a psychopath, but he didn't stand a chance against Annie. Not the New Annie. Not the woman who'd been
ravaged, ripped, and stalked through the snow. This new woman wasn't to be fucked with.

As Annie looked over at the door to the bulkhead, she suddenly recalled the previous spring, when the snow had also melted
, albeit in smaller measures. Last winter was less than two feet of accumulated snow. This was closer to twenty feet in some areas, depending on the wind and drifts. But still, she almost had a chuckle as she pictured Christian, scrambling with buckets and a wet-dry vacuum, cussing beneath every strained breath. Every year he forgot to seal the bulkhead edging with foam insulator, and every year this happened. Poor Christian. He didn't stand a chance as a homeowner. Annie had giggled at the sight of him, tossing old blankets in front of the door, thinking he could stop the water with a centimeter worth of fabric. It was sort of cute, in a way.

With this new storm (
apocalypse, Annie, it’s the damn apocalypse, just say it and be done with it
…
stop pussy-footing
), the bulkhead was surely covered with snow, but would it still be, with all of this rapid melting? She had to give it a try. Edgar wouldn’t have bothered sealing up the outside of the bulkhead, as he couldn’t have predicted this rapid flip-flop of temperatures.

"Wait here a second, baby," she said to Paulie. He attempted a nod, but he was back asleep
--more unconscious than asleep, really--in less than a few seconds.

She grabbed a miniature flashlight that Paulie kept under his pillow,
muscling it out of his clutches. She wasn’t sure where he got it from, but Christian was always hiding survival tools around the place, always ready for just such situations. Christian had always been good like that, expecting the worst.

Annie approached the door that led to the bulkhead, turning the knob. As she pulled the door towards her, a wave of chilly water swept over her boots, splashing up against her ankles.

"Oh, my God," she said, looking down at her boots and then staring at the cement steps for what felt like an hour, though it might have been a minute.

             
Clicking on the flashlight, she scanned the bulkhead’s steps.

             
And there he was.

             
She’d found her husband. His body was lightly jostling as water rushed over him.

Christian looked up at her, his face transfixed in a permanent look of shock. His body had stiffened
so much that his arms and legs reminded her of The Tin Man from
The Wizard of Oz
, frozen in place, desperate for a can of oil to move freely once again. There was no oil that could bring him back though.

"Christian," she said out loud, a rattle inside of her chest trying to escape, something just short of a scream.
She couldn't even manage a scream if she wanted to, though that was for the best. That would alert Paulie to what had happened, if the poor kid didn't already know. Far worse than that, it would alert Edgar to what she had uncovered.

Get hopping, Annie. S
tep over your husband's corpse so you can get that bulkhead door open. It's still gonna be loaded down with some mighty heavy snow, and it'll take everything you got, but it's the only way you're getting out of here. Try not to look at him. Try not to think about the times you fooled around on him.

It seemed like a cruel nightmare, something she could have never fathomed before this moment, but Annie reached down, biting back the bile that tried to eek
its way up her esophagus. She grabbed him by the bloated, icy ankles, looking at his purple face, studying the nasty wound on his neck. Most of his head was detached, but not quite all of it. The son of a bitch had nearly decapitated his head, but had given up before completion. The sight made her go numb. She would never forget this image, no matter how long she lived.

You don’t get moving, then that won’t be very long.

"I'm so sorry," she said to him, though she knew he couldn't hear it. She wasn't sure what she was apologizing for-- for his dying, for her not coming home when she should have, for being a cheater-- but it felt good to say those words to him one last time. "I'm so sorry," she repeated, increasingly conscious of how pathetic she sounded now.

His head clunked against the cement steps and Annie could not recall a more hideous sound in her life.

Annie’s discovery explained the pungent, unnerving smell that she'd awoken to during the night. She cast it away, assuming it was rotting food, never imagining (stupid, stupid girl) that Edgar was lying about what happened to Christian. The look in Edgar's lying eyes should have told the whole story, but she was a goddamned fool. Not to mention the fact that nothing could have pried her away from cuddling with her son throughout the night.

When she had Christian fully removed from the darkened bulkhead, exposed to the tiny bits of morning light that snuck in through the solitary window on the other side of the
basement, he looked even worse than her first glimpse, through the stygian dark. Natural light always made things look worse.

He didn't look like the man she had married. He looked like a
deformed ghoul.

Annie grabbed a sheet from the closet. It was dripping wet because it had dropped off the shelf at some point,
uselessly soaking up water that would not cease. It would still serve its purpose. She covered her husband's body, whispering something that may or may not have been an insane person's prayer, and wished with all her might that Paulie would not discover this terrible sight. It would ruin what remained of his life if he found his father's body like this. Her boy would be screwed up for the rest of his life regardless of what happened (
but wouldn't all the world’s children be in the same boat, if any of them actually survived?
). She wasn’t a fan of adding insult to injury.

She returned to the bulkhead. Since she had crossed the room with Christian's body and covered him up, the torrent of water
increased several times over, exponentially gushing and splashing against the hard steps. It sounded like a waterfall. The rushing sound actually hurt her aching, muddied ears, trapped within the tightly bound confines of the bulkhead.

With a deep breath in
side her chest, Annie stepped up, and then reached up to the slanted bulkhead door, turning the latch that held it sealed. She tried once and then twice, to push using just her arms, but the thing didn't move a centimeter. There was still a ton of snow on the other side of it. She might have to wait.

Wait?
Wait for what? Wait to drown? Wait so that creep can come down here and finish what he started on Paulie? So he can give you a taste of that same pain, that same purposeless violence? That sicko’s got nothing to lose.

She shook the thought away, pushing
once again with all her might, this time throwing her right shoulder and the side of her head into the effort. The rush of water got heavier. Gone were the drip-drips, replaced by a screaming banshee of echoing water, hollow and innocent sounding, but deadly all the same.

Annie looked back down the stairs. Paulie was stirring again.
"Mammah? Too much watah?" he asked.

"Yes, it's way too much water," she said, not at all amused at just how much water it really was. It was more than
four inches deep on the floor now, coming up closer and closer to her knees. If it kept up this pace, they'd be drowned in less than an hour, if she didn't get the blasted bulkhead open.

She screamed out loud, thinking of those stories about women lifting the dead weight of an automobile off their pinned children
. Her brain filled with hopeful thoughts of adrenaline, acting like a mother bear protecting her cubs at any cost.

"Push, Mammah," Paulie’s wavering, miniscule voice rooted her on. The poor kid could barely speak, wincing in pain as he cheered for his mother.

And that was when it overcame her. It was a rush of energy, like nothing she'd ever felt, flooding over her body, warmly euphoric. Her entire body jolted with an incredible strength. This was it. This was that Herculean moment, presenting itself to her. This is what all those old wives' tales had been talking about-- she was certain of it.

With a grunt, she threw everything she had into the door, giving way to a whoosh of frozen air, soon followed by sloppy streams of icy snow and water crashing against her lower body, sending her to topple down the stairs.

Landing in a frigid, but refreshing pool of water, she looked up and saw the sun.

It shined through the remaining clouds. It was going to be a marvelous day.

Annie gathered Paulie into her arms.

With what she thought might be the last of her
strength, Annie took one step at a time, climbing towards the glorious, golden sunlight.