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Re: Since people are writing stories

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FIRECAKE is not online. FIRECAKE
Joined: 28 Feb 2009
Total Posts: 25167
13 Apr 2012 02:54 PM
I'm going to post one some people have already seen because I've posted before, but I can't find it. I realize there's no chap 4. I never got around to writing it.

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INTROUDCTION
I couldn’t stop watching the television screen, replaying that horrible newscast that shocked the world, as well as shattered it. A team of newsmen and women ventured out into the middle of Russia to make a report on the asteroid YU55, a piece of rock hurtling at hundred miles an hour big enough to wipe out a planet like ours if it hit the right spot, crossing into the moon’s path around the Earth for a few minutes and then possibly slinging itself into the sun. Screams from the television, then a bang, then nothing. Stop. Rewind. Playback. I heard the screams again, of the helpless people in the far off villages, towns, cities. YU55 wasn’t a beautiful site to see, it was an Armageddon starter. The asteroid broke the atmosphere around the time that most of the newscasts started, with people around the world watching intently on whatever television they could find. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity to see an asteroid come so close to our thin and frail atmosphere. But chaos was the only thing that the captivated viewers found. Wrong calculations had led to a false belief that the asteroid was going to fly by the Earth. It struck in Russia, merely a few miles from where the news teams had set up camp to report on it. Entire cities were flattened by the massive space rock; people were vaporized where they stood. Dust flew up so quickly, so heavily, it was like blizzard coming from the ground. Those who weren’t running were petrified with fear. Dust clouds rolled in over the globe within hours of the impact, shards of the asteroid rained down on the people who were unfortunate enough to be engulfed by the monstrous, unearthly dust storms.
    The days after Impact were what led to the state the world is in now. Many of Russia’s main nuclear power plants flew off the handle and melted down, the radiation spilled across Europe and Asia, eventually reaching central Africa. But radiation wasn’t the only worry of the people being affected by the Impact. Aftershocks – even though most people called them Earthquakes – from the impact broke scales set before, with magnitudes upwards of 11 according to some scales. With crumbling buildings and a faltering government, most countries could not support their citizens and riots soon broke out over the globe. In Africa, nearly fifty ambassadors from around the world were taken hostage and then killed. These mass riots resulted in complete civil unrest, and militaries soon began to take action. With no governments stopping them, the police forces and militaries of the world did whatever they wanted to do that would supposedly stop rioting. Tanks, missiles, you name it, were thrown at these rioters, trying to slow them down and destroy any thought of unrest. But that did not stop rioting. People wanted to know what was happening, and the governments could not hold out the truth much longer.
It was December of 2012 when people started to notice things were terribly wrong in the world. The first notice of rising water levels was in Alaska, where an oil rig was consumed by a massive wave, killing nearly thirty of the crew working onboard. Without any way of stopping floods, governments turned once again to their militaries for help. Aircraft carriers were suited up to become something like refugee camps for people whose houses were sinking into the waters of the ocean. The temperatures of the atmosphere were falling, as well. The countries lying on the equator underwent an ice age; things froze for the first time ever. Temperatures there dipped below 30 degrees. For anyone living north or south of the equator it was as if the sun didn’t exist. I remember it so clearly, my small town, people being wheeled out in wagons because car engines had frozen up and their wheels were stuck to the street. I was walking to the baker’s one day to get a loaf of bread when I saw a whole fleet of wagons come rolling in. They were loaded with bodies, frozen, every single one of them. I scoffed as much as I could through my wool coat, shaking my head, even though no one could tell because I was shivering like mad, along with the rest of the world. It was terrifying to see the wagons come in, black like the night, sparkling in the low sun. When snow came, they would shimmer so brightly it was as if their paint acted as car headlights. Most of the young ones don’t even know what cars are, they see wrecks of old trucks abandoned on the road, but any working car is gone and being used on the equator to transport things to starving people. The cold came fast there, their crops died quickly and their people were looking straight in the face of a famine. Planes started shipping in food to the starving countries, but soon after their ice age started, the rest of the world was hit with an even greater one. Most days it won’t get above freezing anywhere outside of the tropics. And when it does, everything melts and the streets are turned into sewers. Along with the cold, snow came to our small towns. At first it was not anything new, snow in Massachusetts is usual in the winter, as it is anywhere outside of the tropics. But when the snow never stopped falling is when we started to have problems. With no way for the snow to melt, it piled up and piled up until we had made literal mountains from it. Sure, in skiing towns this would be a good thing, but not here or anywhere that hated the sight of mile-high mounds of the white fluffy demons.
The snow still hasn’t stopped up north, but everyone there now is insane, hiding, or dead. Most chose option three. Everyone that is still alive and sane has moved to the equator, where at least some days reach above freezing temperatures and there is time for the snow to melt. All air traffic has been stopped, there’s no point of trying to fly in a constant blizzard. Besides, the only places worth going to are Ecuador and Gabon, the only two places that still have major populations. But still, decades after an Impact whose aftermath shook the Earth to its bones and changed every single person on the planet’s life forever, humanity lives on and continues to learn, adapting to our changing world. Even in the world’s darkest hour, humanity can laugh at the face of danger for a while, but not much longer.
 
CHAPTER 1 Walking in a Winter Wonderland
    The screen filled with speckles of white and black, as it did every time I watch this video. Rewind. Playback. I can see the intense fear in the female newscaster’s eyes. It’s genuine, an everlasting reminder of how real this was. How real it still is. Snow at the equator, who would have guessed? Every once in a while it stops and the natives have a festival thanking the gods. I used to go to those festivals; they had bountiful amounts of food, luscious turkey which you could only get in remote places. But those animals have all but become extinct, and now all that is served at the festivals is scraps of greens and hybrid animals that are terribly inbred. The festival has been knocked out of them, as well. No longer do the natives celebrate like this is the final day we will endure the terror of what has consumed the world. Now it is solemn prayer sessions thanking the gods for letting us live for another day and asking them to return the world as it was many years ago. None of these prayers are ever answered, though, and each of the festivals gets drearier as more and more of us die in the everlasting frost.
    I turn off the television having had my fill of remembrance for the day and march into the snow-covered street. It’s still snowing outside, no festival today. My small loft-type flat is close to caving in, but I don’t bother calling someone to come and clear the snow, I can do it later. Hiking to my job, I smell the sweet smells of early morning coffee – or something like it – coming from the town’s bakery. I wanted to swoop in and take off my heavy coat, grab a cup of whatever the shop was brewing and maybe have a small cake, then continue. But I knew that I couldn’t, so I didn’t stop and continued walking. I was already late to work, and at this rate I’d be there in just enough time that I could clock in before my boss arrived. The snow clumped itself further down into the world under my feet, heavy spiked boot tracks trailed me, filling quickly in the ongoing blizzard. My pants are covered in the white powder from the ankle down, wet, cold. My socks are soaked through, but everyone wears heat suits under their clothing now. There was no need for the suits before in daily life; the only people who used them were astronauts and artic explorers. But nowadays, your life is in the hands of your heat suit. If you heat suit breaks and tears, you’d best get to a hospital quick or you suffer a slow and lonely death, buried like the rest who couldn’t adapt in a mound of snow. I think about what will happen once – if – our climate is restored to its former state. We’ll either find a massive flood or thousands of corpses, probably both.
    I picked up my feet slowly and carefully, as if there were mounds of people under me that I didn’t want to step on. Deep down I knew that this was true, but I didn’t want to think about that now. I could see my office, the Department of Global Restoration, a few miles away. The giant black tower monitors every aspect of the climate. Large signs reading “DGR – 20 minutes by foot – 30 if snowing,” just barely stick up above the layers of eggshell dust. They should paint over them, take out “if snowing,” it’s always snowing and it always will be until we figure out exactly what triggered this Ice Age and how we’re going to stop it. But until a genius comes along and emerges from the mounds of snow that covers the globe, gives us the solution, we’re stuck here on the equator hoping temperatures stabilize soon.
    It’s always troublesome to find something like a finger or a shoe sticking out from the snow because you know that whoever it belongs to was once alive. Everyone succumbs to the cold sooner or later; there is no real way around it. I once was in the measly hospital for 3 days and nearly had to get my left foot cut off because I’d gotten a bad case of hypothermia and frostbite spreading up my leg. The doctors said I would never walk again, but hey, here I am walking to work. I laughed in the face of death, spun him around, then came back down to Earth and rejoined the rest of the mindless slaves of the glossy white demons that run the world. A couple of kids are patting up a wall of snow a few feet ahead of me. Not for a snow fort, but for their actual house. Because there was so much chaos, lots of parents sent their children to the equator on boats, hoping they’d get there safe. Of course, anyone who did that was on death’s door and wasn’t lucky enough to be found in time to be saved.
    The children patted down the snow a bit more, thickening the already firm wall further. Their faces – more or less their scarves – came into view as I passed them. One was a girl, short with what looked to be jet black hair; the other an even shorter boy, pudgy. They both looked to be younger than ten, and I felt a sinking feeling as they stared back at me with dreary eyes and broken spirits. This is what I see in most people’s faces nowadays. The only happy people I ever see are the people in the bakery, the only place in town that is always warm and full of life. The bakery is this town, and without it we would fold up and most people would try to get a ticket to Gabon. I know I couldn’t afford even a quarter of a ticket across the giant ocean – frozen ocean in some areas. They could cost upwards of a million dollars if it were the winter. No one was willing to ship off in those icy waters when they threatened to freeze over entirely. I took another footstep. The snow compacted under my heavy shoes, much as it did when it was struck by the children’s insolated gloves. Another step and I drew ever closer to my destination, wherever it may be in the “winter wonderland” we all live in.
    I’m only a few hundred feet away now; I can see the towering black building illuminated by the white that surrounds it. There are a few traces of yellow tints in areas of the snow, but that is not surprising since the only working bathroom is a mile away at the bakery. Then my eyes draw upon a blurred green and brown object inside of a thick glass casing. I walked up to hit and put my hand to the glass, rubbing back and forth to get rid of the frost. A long brown tower rose from even darker brown specks below it, encasing the brown tower in a circle. Towards the top of the tower, smaller support beams burst out and hold up a balcony of green, semicircular objects no thicker than a piece of paper. A few of these objects have turned brown and fallen to the specks, eventually transforming into a spec themselves. It’s the only tree for hundreds of miles, preserved by a giant glass dome which surrounds and protects it. One of the only benefits to living in an apocalyptic world is that barely anyone commits a terrible crime anymore. People aren’t killed; they die on their own. Things aren’t stolen; there’s nothing worth stealing. Most criminals were living in slums and either couldn’t afford to take the journey to the equator or we’re strong enough to make the journey by foot.
    I brush past the tree, affectionately named “La Vida Del Árbol,” by the locals – however few of them there may be – loosely translated to “Life Tree” in English. It is a symbol of what we lost in the snow, something no one has seen in years. Because of this, the tree is dug out and kept out of the snow. A large mound of the powder lies around the outside edge of the hole. Many children have left marks in it using large sticks lying around, much as people used to do to old trees from earlier times, or so I have heard. We didn’t have many large trees in Massachusetts. I now directly face the giant jet black building that towers above everything else in the town. Tinted windows rise up the sides of the building, reflecting light off the sides and back into the snow, ever further adding to everyone’s eye pain. I paddle my feet through the snow, focusing on the solid black doors. I pull tightly, kicking snow out of the doorway and ducking under the drooped overhanging fixture that is supposed to keep snow away from the doors. Instant warmth waits inside, and I welcome it thankfully, unwrapping my scarf and taking off my muddled grey hood.
    I felt a last blast of cold from behind as the door pulled shut behind me with a swish and thud. Now stripping off my jacket, I could breathe through my mouth again and I felt warmth flooding into my body and warming me throughout. A less warm smile greeted me at the representative desk as I walked over to the library-lady-looking woman hunched over behind it. She acted like any of the representatives at my old architectural office would have, doing whatever they could to look as happy as can be. Only with an everlasting blizzard filling the world outside, there is nothing much to smile about. My heavy boots clinked against the linoleum floor and I realized I had forgotten to take off the spikes. Quickly I turned to face an old and lumpy green couch which served as a luxury item these days and fell onto it, bending over immediately and twisting the spikes from their respective holes in my steel-toed boots. I placed them heavily into my coat pocket and hung it gently on a hanger to the side of the couch. The woman behind the desk smiled back up at me, her bright red lipstick was overdone, making her wrinkles and beehive grey hair pop out more than usual. “Hello Rose,” I said with a faint grin, “I’m here to check in. Has Mister Allan arrived yet?” Rose smiled back at me, looking down at her computer, clicking quickly, then glancing back to a different computer and scanning for something. “No,” She replied with a slight rasp in her voice, “It appears he has not yet arrived yet, shall I send him a page to make sure that he knows you have arrived?” I scratched my head anxiously, sighing and then quickly blurting, “No, it’s fine I am sure he will be here any minute.” Rose nodded her head understandingly and looked back to her computers. As I was walking to the elevator I glanced back at her two monitors, expecting to see emails, files, numbers, etc. pulled up. Instead, solitaire. Go figure.
 
CHAPTER 2 Face Unafraid
    When I arrived in the office it was around quarter to eight, meaning I’d left at about seven fifteen, I didn’t check the time when I left. Mr. Allan finally came stumbling into the building around one in the afternoon; my workday was half over already. He marched himself up to my office and stood in front of my desk, his giant plump nose bright red like his round and always happy cheeks. He was more of a human relations officer than he was an executive officer. His large hands thumped down on my desks and I could see each of the many hairs on his thick, fat fingers attached to his bulky arms and torso. “And what can I do for you today, Allan?” I asked innocently, as if I had forgotten he had told me we were going to have a meeting at twelve thirty today. “Oh, nothing, Amstean,” He replied slyly, pacing around my small office space and looking around at the files and books on my shelves, “Nothing at all.”
    His frank face soon formed into a chuckle and he turned to face me, laughing as if I’d just told the most brilliant joke in the world. “Come on boy, let’s stop this fooling around and get down to business. In my office in five minutes, bring those files I asked for,” He told me, gripping his side as he left my office. I watched the door close behind him and just as it slammed to a stop, I heard one last chuckle from him and then a wheeze. The old man isn’t strong enough to laugh as much as he does.
    Mr. Allan sat across from me, his oversized wooden desk lie between us, separating the worker from the superior. He had the files I brought him laid out on his desk and was surveying them. Mainly they were just reports on the newest climate lows in areas being monitored by what satellites the people of Earth had left, a few went over these facts in greater detail. Of course there was the occasional loon’s report about how everything was about to change for better or worse, none of whose predictions ever became true. But for whatever reason Allan may have had, he wanted every one of the insane reports he could get his hands on. Still chuckling as he read through them, I studied his face carefully. They weren’t his natural “hearty-good-time” chuckles, these were forced and softer, as if he were trying to hide something while reading. I didn’t mention it. More muffled bursts of fake laughter broke my train of thought. His shirt was also soaked and he looked as if he had no heat suit on. I started to become more and more suspicious of the old rosy cheeked man. As he folded up my files back into their folder, he motioned towards a tissue box, “Boy could you get me a tissue? My nose seems to be running a bit.” Allan sniffled, wheezed a bit, then turned and spat behind him. He seemed to unnaturally pause for a moment, disturbed my something, but soon recovered from his momentary shock and was able to sit straight up and face me again as I handed him a tissue. “Thank you,” He sniffled to me, taking the tissue and blowing into it out of his big red nose. “So, not to intrude on any of your personal matters, but what exactly was your reason for asking me to bring you those files? Some top secret agent mission you’re planning to go to the moon, Allan?” Mr. Allan boomed with hysterical laughter. “Boy you’re a chip off the old block, yes you are! Hah, secret agent…” His words faded into a long and sharp laughing wheeze; then just more laughter flowing from his mouth to his cheeks until his entire face seemed to pull back farther than humanly possible. I watched intently, almost starting to snicker a bit myself, not at my joke, but at the way you could get Allan going. He had dropped the tissue on the table and that is the first time that I realized that something was wrong with the man. The tissue was soaked in goo, nothing unusual. But the color of the goo, a dark red, was what worried me. “Sir,” I said sharply and seriously, “Sir are you sick?” Allan stopped laughing almost on cue when I uttered the word “sick.” He looked intently back into my eyes, I could see the seriousness in his black pupils and the sharp spearmint green color that surrounded them, feel the color piercing into me just as the dark red liquid in the goo had. Allan sighed heavily, then answered in all calmness, “Yes, Amstean,” He murmured, “I, Ian Allan am as good as dead.” My heart stopped, paused, and restarted. I was waiting for him to break out in a hearty laugh and pull a big joke on me, but the moment never came no matter how long I waited. Silence filled the room for seconds. Those seconds turned into minutes and those minutes turned into half hours. We both stared at each other for a good forty-five minutes before I broke the silence. “What is it?” I asked, trying to sound as dreadfully sorry as possible. “Excuse me?” Allan shot back, obviously forgetting our earlier conversation. “The disease, what is it?” Allan looked down at the floor and then back up to his computer, then back to me. “Oh yes… That,” He swallowed hard, “It’s called tuberculosis.” I gasped, stuttering the word. “T-tubercu…” My mind couldn’t wrap around the fact that my superior who I had worked under for years was going to turn to a mound of snow like the rest of the town. “How long have you had it?”
“A month – maybe two. The doctor can’t tell, really.”
“How much longer do you have?”
“Well, if I let nature take its course, maybe a year. But who would want to sit through the pain of constant retching up your own blood?”
“So you are just going to…” I tried to skirt around the difficult matters very carefully. “No, Amstean, I’m not going to resort to that. Not yet, at least,” I started listening intently, “The reason I had you bring me these insane reports is because they are from the only person I still have a blood connection with, my brother Charles. He lives in Chicago – or what he calls Chicago. I hear that people there live underground in some sort of thermal tunnel. I wanted to visit him and meet him for the first time since we were separated. You see, our mother shipped me off to the equator because she thought I was smarter, I could have a better life here than Charles could. She died a few decades ago of lung cancer. After that I had no form of communicating with my brother, but I could still tell if he was alive by reading his reports on the future of the world. Every month, I’d have someone like you bring me the reports so I could read them and assure myself I had a family out there. And now that it is my time to go, I thought I would go in my hometown rather than dying alone out here where I have no family.”
    I was stunned, trying to form a sentence that could describe what I had just heard come from Allan’s old, foolish, but wise lips. “You know that you might not even make it there, that you might just die alone somewhere in a mound of snow,” I manage to spit out, not looking at Allan’s eyes, but as soon as I do I regret saying it, “I mean, it is a possibility.” Allan looks back at me. “Yes, I’ve considered that and I am fine with it. I think it’s better to die fighting than to die cowering in my home watching static for all hours until I go insane.” Silence grew dominant again. “Are you going to take a boat for part of the journey at least? I can’t imagine how you would know how to get there without one,” I said to him, “You would have to go northwest for hundreds of miles before you even got into the United States area.” Allan looked back and me and gave a grin, “Have you ever heard the name Blake Foster Baron?” He asked. I looked back, curious, “No. Who is he?”
“Well he’s no more than a billionaire – at least he used to be. He still owns much of the land we live on; he was one of the main relief supporters when the famine started.” The name started to ring a bell.
“Where does he live?” I thought it was a stupid question, any sane man would be living right here on the equator with us, but Allan’s devious smile sent a different message. “San Diego,” He said, fully smiling now, “San Diego, California!” Another shock, my mind asked so many questions I couldn’t keep up with it.
“How does he stay alive? Why didn’t he move? Do you even know he is still alive? How do you? Is there-“ Allan cut me off. “He owns an underground shelter, lives alone there. However, he does get visitors every so often, wandering out in the cold, lost from their refugee camps. He’s told me none of them ever last long, they all have frozen to death outside already and are just waiting for their bodies to catch up.” More questions popped into my head, but this time I only asked one:
“How do you talk with him?” I sat back for a moment while Allan looked at me curiously. He then bent over a bit, digging his large hand into his pocket and shuffled around for a bit. After about a minute of searching, he shouted, “Aha!” and pulled his massive hairy hand from the pocket. In his grasp I could see an object, it looked rectangular with rounded edges, black like the wagons that used to carry bodies away. He laid it down on the table, then sat back, satisfied and grinning. I looked up at him and then the black rectangle on the table. I could see it more clearly, it looked as if there were some sort of lining over the middle of it, and as I tried to pick it up, the lining glowed. “A cell phone,” Allan said, “One of the last ones ever made.” I gaped in awe as I watched the screen, glow with a small white moving orb, then bright blue, across the top read the time, and at the bottom “Fingerprint to unlock” in a neat, typed hand. Allan took the cellphone back from me, I wasn’t willing to give it up at first but then let go. “Blake has the same one, only it’s his and it’s in San Diego.” More silence.
“So what exactly are you planning?” I asked, still a bit shocked from this whole ordeal. Allan sat back in his chair, patting his brown hair back – even though he had little to none. “Well. I gave him a call a few days ago; he said he had some sort of experimental sleigh he was working on that would run like a car, only it would run smooth over these snowy hills. There a real problem up North, y’know.” I nodded, completely understanding what he was saying. Since I used to live in Massachusetts for a long time before I was able to get here, I experienced the snow first hand. I studied his face again, half wanting this to be a prank, but knowing that it was not. Rose knocked on the door; Allan sat up and bolted the cell phone down into his coat, which he had not taken off. “Mister Amstean, do you have the files on the experimental generator design? The engineering department would like to see them.” I looked at her, then back at Allan, almost as to say, ‘If I go will you be alright?’ He nodded understandingly, and then nudged me out the door. I took one last glance at the man, now obviously submerged in a deep thought.
I handed Rose the files from over my desk, she had been waiting patiently holding an agenda book tightly. “Thank you, Mister Amstean,” She said, with that same fake, forced happiness in her voice as before. Maybe that is why they hired her, she’s the only peppy person in town besides Allan, but he’s lost his spark. Rose shut the door quietly and I heard her heeled footsteps clanking down the hallway for a bit, fading the farther away she got. I sat back in my chair, slowly hitting a pen against my cheek without knowing it. I thought more about how Allan wasn’t wearing a heat suit, he must have known that he could have died without one, and I’m willing to bet he almost did succumb to the cold, a man like that wasn’t built for adventure. Maybe that is why he wasn’t wearing one; he wanted to die sooner rather than later, with as little suffering as possible. But if he wanted to do that why didn’t he just jump into an icy pool of water? Perhaps he wanted no body to be found, I can’t be sure, but it sickens me that he tried to take his own life so soon, something that many people do all the time, and most succeed. I would rather him take the treacherous journey to Chicago than just up and kill himself. It sounded as if that Blake Foster Baron fellow were going with him, too. Maybe they had both caught the same disease and now were both going to die in their homeland or die trying. No way to be sure unless I ask, and I don’t want to do that.
 
CHAPTER 3 Dream By the Fire
    I opened the door to my flat. Another blast of cold air, much like the one at my office greets me inside. I don’t take off my coat, there is no heater here. Bending over, I hear the crunch of spikes in my pocket tearing against the wool inside. I just realized that I had completely forgotten to put them in while I was walking home, and I feel the bottom of my shoes. Soaked. I mumble some sort of disgruntled curse under my breath and then carefully, I reach inside my pocket and take out the spikes and place them on the front bar counter towards the front door. My wood floors are soaked like my shoes, but without any kind of dry rag I don’t have a choice but to use my scarf to wipe up the melted snow. I surveyed my flat, covered in soot from the fire I had lit this morning, my fireplace needed a cleaning. Allan’s news to me had made me realize that there was something more I needed to do with myself than wait for this terrible event to be over or die in the meantime. I stepped into the snow, gripping my scarf tightly in my hand. For the first time in weeks I felt the cold blast against my face, it stung terribly. I dipped down into the white, never ending ocean and dug my scarf into it. Pulling up, the snow crumpled apart, breaking into small chunks. I carefully tied up the scarf so that the snow wouldn’t fall out and shuffled through the still falling snow back to my flat, pushing open the creaking old metal door, being very careful so as not to spill the snow as I walked.
    The door snapped shut as I stepped inside, slipping a bit on a puddle of freezing water but then regaining my balance. I took the snow from my scarf and threw it at the smoldering fireplace – not in it, though, trying to keep the pity heated area still burning. I immediately got to work rubbing the soot from the fireplace and into the snow, turning it a deep black color that resembled oil. The snow started to melt, what with the heat it was receiving from the ashes of the once burning fire. With no real way of stopping this from happening, I shrugged and headed outside as I heard the snow sizzle as it hit the smoldering pile of ash below. The cold came again, this time more fierce. It whipped along with the wind, booming and nearly blowing the door shut behind me. I shivered violently right as the cold splashed all over my body, seeping through my clothing and chilling me to the bone.
 
CHAPTER 4
 
CHAPTER 5 Sleigh Bells Ringing
    We set off at around midnight, judging by Blake’s calculations this would get us to San Diego in a few days at sunrise. I tugged at my newly grown beard; Blake explained it would help fight the cold if I ever lost my scarf momentarily. He had a lengthy beard, himself, and seemed to be doing just fine. It was funny how Allan and he were complete opposites, but apparently best friends for many years. Allan explained to me a few hours earlier how he and Blake had only met a handful of times face to face, but they got to know each other extremely well over those two cell phones.
Blake tightened something on the bottom of the sleigh and I felt a slight bump in the carriage. “Problem down there?” I inquired, still wary to the whole idea of using this sleigh to transport us a few hundred miles. Blake looked up, wrench in hand covered in oil, “No, just trying to make sure that everything is running high efficiency, want to get there as quick as possible so we can head straight to Chicago. I heard that they still grow plants in that underground chasm I wrote about a few months ago.” The man had a tendency to get sidetracked during conversation, talk about things no one really asked about. But he certainly knew what he was talking about when he said something. It puzzled me how he knew all of these tidbits even though he rarely came to the outside world. “So you live in San Diego… What’s that like?” I tried to jumpstart the conversation again, tugging at my coat so that it covered any partially exposed part of my body. I knew that it would only get colder and snow more and more as we went farther north, even if there was a roof above Allan and my head. I hadn’t checked on Allan in a while, he was sound asleep ever since we set off. I gave him a slight nudge; he murmured something and rolled to another side. ‘Still alive, that’s good,’ I thought to myself.
“Well we get a lot more snow than down here, that is for sure,” Blake responded, climbing back into the carriage-area of the sleigh and sitting on the bench across from me. I’d completely forgotten about my small-talk question while I was consumed by pondering about Allan’s situation. “I was amazed when you told me sometimes you don’t even get a flake of snow. Stupendous, I do wish that that happened up north, we could use a day off of the snow.” I nodded understandingly, but not focusing at all what he was talking about. Allan’s nose was bleeding again, so I took his scarf and wiped it for him. “You know, before you got here I thought you and Allan might have both had tuberculosis and were going on an outing to finish some sort of bucket list you both had together before Impact. But obviously,” I stopped to chuckle a bit, “You’re in perfect health, not even a bruise on you.” Blake smiled lightly, “Well, living alone in a laboratory under a mile of snow doesn’t give much opportunity to take in any injuries. But it’s a lonely life, I sometimes see a visitor enter my shack where the lift is, hoping to find some sort of warmth. I try to get up to them as soon as I can, but usually they’re gone before I can reach the top.” He looked away, out the window and to the frozen tundra that is Mexico. In the silence I can make out the sound of the snow being sloshed away from its natural position under the sleigh’s boosters. Allan murmured again, coughing a bit. A spec of blood fell onto the ground beside him. Blake turns back around and frowns, “Poor fellow. If I’d known any sooner I would have come earlier.” I looked down at Allan as well, trying to think of a way to help him, but Blake told us before he had forgotten the medicine back in his laboratory. “You couldn’t have known any earlier, he just went to the doctor a bit over a week ago, at least that is what he told me,” I told Blake, in all honesty trying to reassure him he did nothing wrong, but I could tell he did not accept it, “You did the best you could and with any luck, Allan will be reunited with his brother in a week or less. He should last that long…” I drifted off. “Hopefully.” Blake coughed, staring back out the window.
Obviously I am not an inspirational speaker and shouldn’t try to be one. I thought a bit more about Allan, how happy his brother would be when they were reunited. That is, if his brother is still alive and still resides in Chicago. He may have tried to get a ticket to Ecuador to visit his brother, and on his way to the port caught hypothermia and was eaten by wolves. I shrugged off the thought of it, preposterous. Wolves in this cold? No, they would have died. Or would they have? I suppose with plenty of people dying at once, they could have found a source of food. But what about shelter? Live inside the snow like some humans tried to? As I continued to think, I grew more and more weary. Slowly, I drifted off to a deep slumber much as Allan had done when we first set off.
A sharp jolt woke me, it looked around the time of sunrise. I saw Allan curled up in a ball on the floor, but Blake was nowhere to be found. I grunted a bit, trying to stretch I hit my hand on the ceiling and yelped. Allan was undisturbed. Looking around, I rubbed my eyes and peered out the window; nothing but snow for a hundred miles any way… amazing. A large pool of blood lies beside Allan, and I sighed for a moment before regretfully taking an old tissue I had in my pocket and trying to wipe it up. Surprisingly, the tissue actually did work, and Allan’s blood pool was reduced to a blood drop. ‘We might need to stop so that he can wipe his bloodied face off with some snow, which may be dangerous when we get farther north…’ I thought. But here, and I assumed it was fine to just take a pile of snow and wipe your face in it. The water would dry quickly, the sun was about to come out, anyway. I was still very curious as to where the location of our guide was, he’d disappeared and I couldn’t seem to see him anywhere, even when I looked out the windows expecting to see his face on the side smiling as he worked on his vessel, trying to keep it “high efficiency.” I started to murmur, “Hey Blake where are y’a?” or just shout, “Blake!” over and over. I never got a response, so I assumed he must be working on the bottom of the vehicle and couldn’t hear me. I laced up my shoes and took the spikes out of my jacket, tossing them under one of the benches, trying not to hit Allan with them. He sniffled up something, and I couldn’t help but think that it was blood he was snorting back into his system. I didn’t think much of it, though, trying not to unease myself and simply stepped through the curtain that separated us from the outside world of harsh falling snow. Immediately I covered my eyes and took a step back. There wasn’t even a building in sight, so the snow just reflected the sun for miles and made the whole area look like a giant light bulb placed under our sleigh. When my eyes finally finished adjusting, I could tell that Blake was out here, his toolbox and some oil canisters were propped up against the wall that separated the rest of the world from the cabin. “Blake!” I tried to shout over the pounding wind, but it was no use. The word was sucked back behind me and gone as soon as I spoke it. Obviously shouting was useless, so I tried to locate the man rather than trying to contact him. I checked on the sides of the sleigh, not a soul, just wind and caked on snowflakes. That only left two options: Under the sleigh or in front of the hood. I gulped, deciding to check the hood first. Carefully and slowly, I put one foot in front of the other and eventually made it to the front, where I laid down and peered over the top, but all I found there was snow getting dug up and compacted under the weight of the sleigh. The last option, the last place I wanted to check: below the safety zone. I gulped once more, knowing that if I slipped I’d either be thrown under the sleigh and torn to shreds or topple off the side and be left behind to die alone in the frost. I nudged my foot down onto a foothold and felt the brass it was made of bend slightly under my weight. It’s not that I had bulked up so much I became obese, I had so many articles of clothing on I must have weighed twenty more pounds than usual. I slowly inched my way over the edge, sitting down and scooting along as if I were a child on a ledge.
Swinging my legs onto the safety rail, I laid down and took a look under. “Oh thank god,” I said quickly, seeing that Blake was under the machine with me. He immediately jumped at the sound of my voice. I’d startled him out of his wits, he left us asleep and I supposed that he thought I was still sleeping with Allan. I saw the fear in his eyes, much like the woman’s on the recording, genuine and knowing he did nothing wrong. His foot toppled under the sleigh, flapping wildly as the machine sped on undisturbed. He screamed and tried to pull his leg back on using his hands. What happened next is still a bit of a blur. In one amazing flash, Blake’s leg emitted a violent crack and he yelped out in pain, pulling it back onto the safety railing of the sleigh. He lay there for a while, snow being kicked up into his face, but he was motionless and nothing seemed to disturb him, almost as if the snow had taken any energy he had in him and spat it into the icy underworld. Slowly and cautiously, I climbed back to the top of the sleigh and over to the side Blake lay upon. “Blake…” I whispered, “Blake are you there?”
He offered a grunt as response, I immediately felt terrible. Just as I was about to say something along the lines of an apology, he spat, “Stay in the cabin for the rest of the trip or so help me I will slit your throat so quickly you won’t have time to scream.” I felt all of the color drain from my face, down to my toes and then out of my toenails. I shivered, partly from the cold and partly from his lifeless words. Stammering from fear and teeth chattering from the snow, I mutter quickly and almost incomprehensibly, “Alright, sorry… I’ll… I’ll make sure I stay inside of the cabin – I won’t go anywhere I won’t say anything I’ll just stay in the cabin and-” Blake cut me off with a devious smile. “You’re one gullible fool, Amstean.” I let my mouth hang open for a while longer before closing it and scowling at Blake. I soon realized the whole thing was a prank, or at least most of it. I still wasn’t sure what to think of the violent snapping sound his leg gave off when it hit the ground and flapped up and down on the spitting snow. “Now help me up,” He said, offering up his hand to me. I frowned for a moment longer, reluctant to do his bidding, but soon gave in and gripped his vulnerable hand as tight as I could, trying to pay him back for the prank. He didn’t wince as I wanted, but he did squeeze back harder. I tried to let go as he pulled himself up – not because I wanted to throw him off the sleigh, but because he was squeezing the blood from my hand. He was obviously the superior in this game of trickery. I let out a burst of pain in a scream as he finished the climb back onto the sleigh and tried to shake the pain out of my hand as soon as he let go, socking him in the shoulder slightly. As soon as I retracted my fist I winced and covered my face, knowing he would hit back harder. But, instead of punching me straight off of the sleigh like he would have given the opportunity, Blake laughed heartily, almost like Allan does, gripping his side. “You should’ve seen your face!” We stepped through the red velvet and into the cabin; Allan was up and stared up at Blake as he continued his fit of laughter. “Yeah, yeah, whatever,” I spat, slumping down on my spot on the bench and rubbing my hand, still in pain from Blake’s python-like grip.
Allan watched us shoot back and forth at each other for a while, unnoticed by either of us until he heaved a hefty cough and spat up more blood specs over the floor. I was in the middle of a sentence, but that shut me up quick, it had the same effect on Blake. “How you hanging in there Allan?” Blake questioned before I could construct a sympathetic sentence. Allan pouted slightly, shrugging. “I’m alive, aren’t I? That’s what matters, just staying alive,” He said. The words hit heavy and no one spoke for a few moments, Blake broke the silence again. “I’m thinking we stop in a few hours, get some rest without fear of this thing going berserk and blowing us all to pieces.” He gave a sick chuckle, I managed a smile, contrary to Allan who made a sickening face and then forced a grin. “Yes, we wouldn’t want that…” He was obviously more worried about the disease now than he was when I had talked to him about it in his office, it was starting to sink in to him that he was on death’s door and it was fully possible he would die on this sleigh. I didn’t want that, I wasn’t about to let the old man die here without ever fulfilling the dream he told me about a little over half a week ago. “No,” I said sharply, interrupting Blake’s thinking session. “Excuse me?” the ex-billionaire asked, obviously disturbed by my outburst. “We’re not stopping. We have to keep going – for Allan’s sake,” I replied quickly, “He’s not getting any better, if we stop now we could risk getting snowed in, we’d be trapped.”
Blake frowned. “I don’t understand, Amstean,” He said slowly and cautiously, “Are you asking me to run this thing 24/7 and stay up the entire time? We’re still a day’s journey from the bunker!” I kept a stern tone, “We’ll take shifts, 12 hours for you and 12 for me.” Blake kept his frown, lessening its intensity to more of a glare. “Alright, but don’t you try and fix anything if this machine goes kablooey. If something goes wrong, you come and tell me right away.” I nodded thoroughly jokingly saying, “Yes Cap’n Foster Baron.” Blake smiled lightly, wiping the frown from his face. “Good then first mate Amstean.”
 


⊂=-҉Ξ҉-=⊃ Top 30 Ways Not to be Eaten by Bears: #27. Don't smell like rotten fish ⊂=-҉Ξ҉-=⊃
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EpicBoyMike is not online. EpicBoyMike
Joined: 25 Dec 2011
Total Posts: 5037
13 Apr 2012 03:04 PM
Sorry,I'm allergic to walls of text.
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shadowi83 is not online. shadowi83
Top 100 Poster
Joined: 26 May 2008
Total Posts: 17947
13 Apr 2012 03:14 PM
[ Content Deleted ]
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EpicBoyMike is not online. EpicBoyMike
Joined: 25 Dec 2011
Total Posts: 5037
13 Apr 2012 03:18 PM
I'm 10,not 3.
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roman117 is not online. roman117
Top 100 Poster
Joined: 28 May 2008
Total Posts: 37991
13 Apr 2012 03:19 PM
lrn2enterkey
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shadowi83 is not online. shadowi83
Top 100 Poster
Joined: 26 May 2008
Total Posts: 17947
13 Apr 2012 03:19 PM
[ Content Deleted ]
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Misterio587 is not online. Misterio587
Joined: 11 Apr 2010
Total Posts: 5832
13 Apr 2012 03:28 PM
Nice wordwall man. I like the story.
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EpicBoyMike is not online. EpicBoyMike
Joined: 25 Dec 2011
Total Posts: 5037
13 Apr 2012 03:30 PM
Who is Derek Bentley and what is mental age? ._.
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Misterio587 is not online. Misterio587
Joined: 11 Apr 2010
Total Posts: 5832
13 Apr 2012 03:34 PM
Mental age is how mature you are.
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CommanderOfGames is not online. CommanderOfGames
Joined: 02 Mar 2012
Total Posts: 6236
13 Apr 2012 03:40 PM
Can you break it up into paragraphs so it is a bit easier to read?
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phoneguy is not online. phoneguy
Joined: 19 Jun 2008
Total Posts: 13563
13 Apr 2012 03:42 PM
You know, it would be nice if people would give feedback to the story, instead of bickering futility to one another.

In my opinion, you describe things pretty well. Great job.
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Misterio587 is not online. Misterio587
Joined: 11 Apr 2010
Total Posts: 5832
13 Apr 2012 03:51 PM
@Commander

That's my idea.
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FIRECAKE is not online. FIRECAKE
Joined: 28 Feb 2009
Total Posts: 25167
13 Apr 2012 05:28 PM
Meh. I wrote this last year. It seems so childish.

⊂=-҉Ξ҉-=⊃ Top 30 Ways Not to be Eaten by Bears: #27. Don't smell like rotten fish ⊂=-҉Ξ҉-=⊃
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WickedFrenchFry is not online. WickedFrenchFry
Joined: 28 Aug 2010
Total Posts: 8385
13 Apr 2012 05:30 PM
Oh goodness, I feel like such an illiterate fool when I look back on my writing.

I'll get around to challenging this wall of text... Eventually.
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FIRECAKE is not online. FIRECAKE
Joined: 28 Feb 2009
Total Posts: 25167
13 Apr 2012 05:31 PM
Yeah, I would have set things up a lot differently in this now. Like a lot of things I was like "AW YEA DATS COO INCLUDE IT!" I'm looking back and going "Wtf is this piece of garbage?"

⊂=-҉Ξ҉-=⊃ Top 30 Ways Not to be Eaten by Bears: #27. Don't smell like rotten fish ⊂=-҉Ξ҉-=⊃
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gerder1236 is not online. gerder1236
Joined: 04 Sep 2010
Total Posts: 908
13 Apr 2012 05:33 PM
OW! ITS CRUSHING MY HAND!!

~>Insert witty coment here<~
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Rovknir is not online. Rovknir
Joined: 23 Nov 2012
Total Posts: 390
08 Jun 2013 04:11 PM
Since Ppl Are Writing Storys il Write A Song

I Love Waffles
I Love Waffles
I Love Waffles
Every Day I Sit On My Table And Eat
Waffles,
The Next Door Neighbors Here Going,
YUM YUM YUM YUM YUM YUM YUM YUM
They Close The Curtains.
I LOVE WAFFLES
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FlawlessDrMario is not online. FlawlessDrMario
Joined: 29 Mar 2012
Total Posts: 1495
08 Jun 2013 04:12 PM
reported for necro-bumping
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