"Would you get the hell away from the fucking window?"
Her voice was almost hysterical, and not without reason. I was breaking one of the rules of survival we'd intuited over the past month. A dark stain on the wall testified that this one wasn't just superstition. Outer walls were bad, especially below the fourth floor. Nancy didn't even want to come close enough to drag me away.
I was willing to take the risk, though, because I was growing more convinced of an amendment to those rules. "I'm telling you, they're not moving." I adjusted the makeshift binoculars, actually an old, broken camera with the viewing lenses still intact. It only magnified things a little, but every little bit helped. You'd think in an apartment building there'd be at least one person with real binoculars, but we hadn't found any yet. "At least, not much."
She scoffed. "Not much. Maybe they'll only rip not much of your head off."
"I think they're still alive, but they're not flailing about like they always do. It's the cold. They've got to be… I don't know, hibernating." It was something like 20 below outside, not counting the wind chill. We could watch our breath when we exhaled, and we were inside and bundled up in whatever clothing we could find.
"Or maybe it's just a new way to trap some food."
Nancy always ascribed some sort of malevolent intelligence to them. I had preferred to think of them as a vicious animal from some other world.
"I'm not as worried about it eating as I am about us." Food had been growing scarce lately. It was scarce since this thing started, but these last few days we'd just been searching again and again through already looted apartments, hoping to find something we'd passed up before that hadn't gone bad. Before too long, we'd have had to risk going outside even with the horrors hunting us. If I believed in any benevolent higher power anymore, I might have called this blast of arctic air a godsend.
Nancy had no reply. I could tell she was scared, I could see it in her eyes. Her face was exhausted, defeated like all of us looked and felt, but when I mentioned going outside, I knew she'd rather almost anything else. I'd have to find help from the others. "Let's go. There's nothing else here."
We climbed the stairs in complete darkness, not wanting to waste light, which had somehow become a precious commodity lately. Not as much as food and water, but above gold and silver nonetheless. By then we knew every step by heart anyway, and there was a kind of safety in the dark, in the middle of the building, where they couldn't reach us.
Our community lived on the fifth floor, though Paul and I were the only ones who lived there originally. The rest had come up from other parts of the building, seeking food or a safer place to sleep, and Eddie who was visiting a friend when hell broke loose, and the fifth floor gradually became out base. There were a dozen adults and four children in all.
It was a strange kind of half-life. We lived in the dim hallway, at least while there was enough light to see by coming through the windows. The foyer and kitchen areas of different apartments became our private rooms, because nobody wanted to sleep too far from the building's center.
Everybody was there when we came up, except Paul who was looking for food elsewhere in the building. We waited for him, then I told him what I'd noticed, and my theory about it.
"This may be the only time we have to go out and stock up. They're not moving."
"Much," Nancy added.
"Much," I agreed. "But you know what they look like." Wriggling, awful things, they crawled through streets and sometimes up walls. "I don't know if they're asleep for the winter, or just until the next warm day, but we need to take the chance while we can."
It didn't take much persuading, at least to get people to go. We'd been hiding so long, it felt good to have a plan to actually do something. A few of us had to convince others to let us go. Nancy was against the whole thing, but didn't fight very hard. I was hoping bringing back food would lift her spirits a little.
Seven of us went out that morning. That first breath of air was painful, but exhilarating at the same time. We'd been living so long with unpleasant scents we'd gotten used to it, but fresh air, even air as cold as it was, smelled good.
There were no thermometers with us that day, but living in Canada I had a decent sense of cold. My guess of -20 was probably about right. More with the wind chill, maybe down to -30, but the wind was only intermittently coming from the south. Braving the cold used to be a point of pride for me… now it was points for survival. There were worse things than a Canadian winter. I knew I could be out for a couple hours so long as wind kept down, and depending on my level of activity.
We each had different assignments, but food was a priority, and we didn't know how much had already been looted by survivors braver than us, if there were any, so we split up into small groups and headed for different targets. I walked south, surprised at how different everything looked with no lights, and no life. We passed the thrift store, where there was an old microwave outside the donation chute. Were it not for the snow piled gently on top, it might have been left there this morning. In the shattered display window, there lied an old teddy bear. If we had a chance, I thought optimistically, maybe I'd try to bring it back for the kids.
We stopped beside the old greasy spoon diner, where I used to get Greek food for lunches. The patio was wrecked by an overturned car, and the spit of greening gyro meat inside continued to spin idly, though now from wind. "Eddie," I said to my partner, though I had to turn my head away from him so I wasn't speaking into that wind. "You might want to go on without me."
"What?"
"I've got another mission." I waved my hand in the direction of the nearest one of the creatures. My hands were balled up within the glove, so I couldn't point, but he got my gist.
"Christ, you're crazy."
I started walking. Surprisingly, Eddie followed me. I don't know why. I didn't want to waste heat asking him. I was walking into the wind, head down, toque pulled almost completely over my eyes.
Before now I'd only seen them from a distance, or in those first few hours during the frantic TV reports. Anyone who saw them closer probably died. They had no identifiable body parts. No head, no eyes, just a mass of body, where any bit of it could be called a leg or a tentacle or a neck. It was like a knot of giant worms that moved as one, when it moved, but right now it was quivering with a quiet menace. Not completely quiet, actually, as I was growing more aware of a sound above the wind, a buzzing like a distant swarm of bees, coming from the body. As usual, it had a throng of what we assumed were young, maggoty things the size of a small dog, which weren't moving either. Back in those early days, Nancy called them slithey toves.
I say things like worms, and maggots, but neither word really gives an accurate picture except as a general indication of its shape. It was like nothing I've seen, a tube of meat, with rolls of what might look like fat, but upon closer inspection has a musculature to it. The whole body glistened like an open wound that was seeping but not bleeding.
Nothing on it looked obviously lethal, even though I knew it was. I've seen people torn apart with a glancing blow, but to all appearances the only worry would be about constriction or pure blunt force. Here and there a horny projection could be seen.
I got to a position where the beast itself formed a wind-break, then dropped my pack in the snow, and fumbled with the zipper.
"What are you going to do?" I heard from behind me.
I pulled out an old hacksaw as I replied, "I'm going to kill the things." Paul was looking for better weapons, but none of us had any guns when we set out, but this was something I wanted to do the old fashioned way.
I was going to start with the babies, the slithey toves. There was a time when I wanted to get my hands on a live one, to experiment with but eventually dissect, learn about what these things were. Maybe see if I could figure out how they appeared or disappeared or reached through walls. We always assumed they came from another dimension and had some innate dimension travelling ability, and I had hopes that if we could isolate one maybe we could train it to take us away from here, to a dimension its kind hadn't invaded en masse yet. I'd given up hopes of escape now, but it still had a use to me.
Eddie was still around, watching, so I asked if he'd give me a hand lifting one. I wanted to be out of range of mama's tendrils when I started cutting in, just in case it came too close. Eddie was willing. We each grabbed one end, lifted it, and started pulling.
It was heavy, much heavier than I expected, but that wasn't really the hard part. Once it was lifted, it was almost impossible to move. We tried pulling it away, and it was like it was locked in space. It also began to twitch slightly.
Eddie cursed and dropped his end in the snow and stepped back like a scared rabbit. I couldn't hold my end alone so I let it go too. He was staring up at the mama, so I turned my neck to look. It didn't seem to be moving any more than before. "What?"
"It moved."
I thought it was probably his imagination, and was going to tell him so, when I noticed something different on him. "Eddie, your jacket," I said.
He looked down. His jacket had been shredded. His skin wasn't visible, but his shirt underneath was. I checked my own jacket, and saw tears along my arms, white insulation spilling out, but my chest was okay.
"Let's just go," Eddie suggested. "Forget this, and go back to the plan."
"You go if you want," I said. I grabbed my handsaw again and probed the tove's outer surface with it, and realized what had caused the damage. White jagged points popped up from underneath the fatlike folds. The mouth was over the thing's whole body, and it instinctively munched softly on anything that got near. "Mystery solved," I said to Eddie, who still hadn't run, but had backed off a little. "Enough playing around, I'm fucking cold."
I placed the saw's teeth down on the flesh, and worked it back and forth. It went in easily, and in reaction the tove twitched and bared its teeth, but apparently couldn't bite through metal. The middle was tougher, but there was no bone, and, though my fingers were numbed even through gloves from such prolonged contact to the metal, I finally reached the end. It was cut almost in half. Not dead, but near to it, I hoped.
"Jim, look," Eddie said.
The mama was moving, but only a little. One of its stalks along the ground was rolling and seemed to be elongating as it did so. It wasn't elongating towards us as we might have expected, but drawing itself back.
At my feet, one half of the tove had shrunk. It was now about a quarter of the size it was when it was cut. "We better go, Jim," Eddie said. "It's mad you killed the baby…"
"I don't think I did," I said, with growing realization. "I think I cut off its finger."
"Huh?"
"We figured they came from another dimension, I don't think they're all the way in. I think this is all one thing." Maybe they're all one thing, I guessed in horror, one giant beast responsible for the near-extermination of mankind the world over. Like the world serpent of Norse legend, big enough to encircle the Earth, and a hunger to match its size.
"So what now?" Eddie asked.
"I don't know about you, but I'm bringing this back." I kicked the piece that hadn't shrunk away, and it moved much more easily. "It's still fresh meat. I want to see if we can eat it." It could eat us, so there had to be some compatibility, and poison's a better defense mechanism if you're small and tasty, as opposed to big and violent.
I leaned down to pick it up and felt a rush of wind flowing over me from behind, knocking me right into a pile of snow. I barely felt that, since my face was already a little numb to the cold, but my back was suddenly freezing as my coat was torn apart in the back. I called out to Eddie to give me a hand as I tried to push myself up, when I realized he was nowhere to be found. He was missing. Well, most of him was.
I rolled over on my side and now I could see an arm. Eddie's. The rest of him was just gone. We cut off a finger, it cut off everything but an arm. Maybe there was some intelligence after all.
Something warm dripped on the side of my face, and I looked up, and saw… it. I don't know if it was actually an eye, but it felt like one, even if it didn't look like it. Suspended in the air without any visible means of support, it looked like a throbbing hollowed-out teardrop of flesh, the interior dripping with viscous slime, and a hard core like yellow-tinted, but highly polished glass down projecting down the center through a ragged circle cut in the bottom.
I tried to push myself up, but as I did, I found myself staring into the core. I can't describe its shape… I tried to draw it once, but nearly threw up. I couldn't even tell you if it was convex or concave, it seemed to be both at once, a vortex and a bulge threatening to reach out and grab me. I felt I was staring into infinity, and that infinity was staring back. Every other sensation, even the cold burning against my skin, faded into nothingness by comparison.
Though it was shiny, I couldn't see my reflection in it… but I could see the reflection of other things. Too many other things to take in at once. Things in motion, things at rest. The only shape I could recognize, because it had a human shape, was Eddie. He was writhing in some dark colored mass, clutching for breath, and parts of his body seemed to fold in on itself like I was seeing him through a funhouse mirror, and I swear I could see both his inside and his outside at the same time. He was still alive, but not for long. He was dying in front of my eyes and I could watch his heart beat ever slower as there was less blood to pump, but I couldn't do a thing to help him. I was very probably next.
I stopped pushing and laid back in the snow, closing my eyes and waiting for the second blow I knew was coming. I was wrong. There was no follow up. I think, in that moment. I was disappointed. It was so cold, and I hurt so much, and I craved an end, any end.
It's one thing to die quickly, but another to slowly freeze to death, so when I realized no further retribution was coming, I opened my eyes again. The awful teardrop was gone. I staggered to my feet, and looked at the visible part of the thing for what felt like forever, daring it to come after me again.
It was still hibernating. What had happened may have been no more than a reaction, like a sleeper rousing just long enough to swat at an insect that bit him. I should have been the one swatted, but I moved just out of the way, and it got Eddie instead. It had looked me over, but it didn't care.
Any of the joy out of my victory was long gone, but I didn't want to leave with nothing, so I grabbed my chunk of meat and staggered home. I was bleeding from a gash along my back, and the wind picked up, so I dimly remember guessing at the odds that I'd die of blood loss before I got hypothermia. Towards the end, my feet felt like blocks of wood, and I think if I slipped on any ice, I couldn't have gotten up again, but somehow I made it back, and the others bandaged me.
Later that night, I told my story, though I left out the part about the eye, or about my suspicions about the extent of the thing itself. I couldn't talk about it. I just wanted to forget it.
I was the only one to eat tovesteak, that night, both because they were suspicious of it and I think they blamed me for getting Eddie killed. Sensibly so, on both counts. I think I only ate it because I felt I owed it to Eddie. The meat had an aftertaste, but to someone who was deprived as I was, it was still delicious, and when I didn't die the next day, the others, in turn, had some too. Nancy was the last holdout.
They went back for more, eventually, ignoring my warnings. The winter's been a cold one all the way through, and the thing has continued its hibernation without waking. With organization and better tools, they learned could take one down quickly before it could strike back. They're proud at how many they've killed, and so I don't have the heart to tell them I don't think they've even killed one yet. Maybe even if we haven't killed any, we've taught it not to stick its fingers in our part of the world. No one else has seen an eye like I did, or at least no one else has talked about it. They've lost a few men along the way to a tentacle coming to life on reflex, but it's the exception, and the expeditions have allowed us to make contact with other survivors now that it's safe to walk the streets. They're working together to get rid of as many as they can while they can.
They've all done this without me. I haven't gone out again, haven't set one foot in the snow. I've become like Nancy was… worse. I don't go near the windows anymore. I can't bear to look outside, wondering if it's looking back at me from outside of our space. People make sure I'm okay, but I'm not good company anymore. I can't be the guy that keeps people's spirits up and encourages them to keep hope alive. There's no room for hope.
Tomorrow is the first day of spring. The question on everybody's mind, spoken or not, is "will they be back?" It's still cold, but that can't last forever, the warm temperatures have to come back some time. Nobody's looking forward to it. Nobody wants to go back to that half-life we had before, with the only thing to show for the last few months is a new survival rule, that you can go out in the winter.
Except that's a lie. If it returns here, that's the end of us. These last few months will have just been a short pause in the apocalypse. We weren't meant to hibernate for nine months, and only come out in the winter. We can't survive like that. Sooner or later the food will run out. Chances are we wouldn't last till next winter, and if by some miracle we did, we certainly couldn't make it to the next. The last Canadian winter will be the autumn of mankind.
I've thought a lot about the merits of a quick death versus a slow one, since that day Eddie died. So I've made a decision. I'm going out again, while it's still cold, while there's still time to look for what I want. If this isn't the end, if it starts hunting here again, I'm going out one last time, loaded with every type of poison I can find.
I hope it chokes on me.
Author's notes: This was written as part of a online writer's workshop I've been participating in a forum I frequent. The prompt for this assignment was "A Winter's Tale of Horror", with a limit of 5 pages if in prose, and it had to be complete, rather than just the first five pages of a longer story.
My first idea was to write something called "Numb" about a parasite infecting people that turned off their ethics and moral reasoning when exposed to cold, thus making them willing to kill someone just for their food if they were hungry. I still like the idea, and might well use it, but I haven't come up with a good way to approach it yet, so I had to abandon it for another idea.
Next, I considered a story with the same title of Hibernation Cycle and the same general plot, except the monsters would be a zombie apocalypse, frozen in the depths of winter and allowing the living to come out and move about freely. In this case, I thought zombies, though I love them, were a little overplayed lately, so I tried instead to come up with something different, and wound up doing some sort of lovecraftian 'horror out of space and time', except one that's already destroyed much of the world. As I thought about it, elements of the story began falling into place.
Unlike most of the things I write (except for other things from the workshop), this was written on a deadline, which means I haven't been able to edit and revise as much as I might otherwise like. I leave it up to the reader to decide whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. It should also be noted that the first person perspective comes from this - although I write some stories deliberately from that perspective, I'm occasionally prone to using it as a crutch when I have a deadline, as it allows me to avoid explaining certain things that I can decide the 'writer' didn't feel was important. Plus, Lovecraft stories often seemed to avoid third person omniscient - it let you pass off certain horrors as 'undescribable'. ;)