Frozen

Downward & Onward

The streams of freezing cold wind drilled slowly through his chest cavity as Alex drew the knife silently and approached a small wooden shack on the edge of the small fishing town. His stomach felt like it was being churned with a broadsword as he pressed his back to the dilapidated shack and peeked around the corner to scan the fishing village for any signs of movement. Anna and Danny made their way across the crunchy snow to regroup with Alex as the three of them sat crouched in the snow with the sickening feeling reaching all of them individually. Danny's body shook as the color flushed from his skin and beads of sweat froze instantly to his face as Anna furrowed her brow concernedly in his direction. His sweaty, black hair frosted over quickly as he lurched forward and threw up the contents of his stomach in a light-tan puddle of bile as Alex turned to him to lend a hand.

"Hey, hey, hey," Alex said softly as he rubbed Danny's back and tried his best to help his friend, "what's wrong, man?"

"I don't," Danny began as he held down another round of vomit in his stomach, "I don't know what's happening to me. I just need to get some air."

"There's air all around us, buddy, why don't we go into the town and see if we can find someone to help us out, yeah?" Danny nodded slowly as his face twisted in sickness and Alex lifted him to his feet by his armpits as Anna stood up behind them with her arms tucked tight to her stomach. The sickness faded as they made their way deeper into town, away from the shack, and Alex called out to every building for someone to help them. By the time they had reached the second house, black smoke billowing steadily out of the chimney, Anna was ready to do anything to get indoors, and the trio marched up the stairs to plead with the homeowner. Anna knocked on the chipping, white-painted, wooden door with her second knuckle and waited for a response from the other side. Her stomach sank deep into the soles of her shoes as she felt a presence on the other side of the door, and Danny stepped forward and turned the bronze doorknob slowly.

Time slowed to a crawl for Alex as the door's lock cracked the doorframe and Danny's hand and wrist crunched brutally as he staggered backwards to the porch steps. The villager's visible skin was ash-coated and his clothes were burned and covered in holes as Alex watched him tackle Danny down the steps by his waist and slam his back on the frozen snow. Alex rushed forward and used the edge of the porch as a springboard to launch himself forward and tucked his left arm underneath the villager's stomach as his right shoulder caught him in the ribs. Alex and the villager skidded across the ice as Anna ran down off the porch to help Danny to his feet and her eyes locked on six more villagers exiting the front doors of their bungalows. Alex cracked the ice beneath the back of the villager's head with a solid punch to the center of his face as he stood up and scanned his hostile surroundings.

The villager at Alex's feet dragged himself upwards and stood menacingly before the trio as his group of six congregated behind him with the same, dead expressions on their color-flushed faces.

"All we want is some gas, and a shovel to dig out our car," Alex began to mediate with his hand out in front of him defensively as he used his other arm to lead Anna behind him for safety. The villagers stood in silence, save for their incessant, ragged breathing, as Alex gestured for Danny and Anna to move backwards as slowly as possible. "If you don't have anything, we'll be on our way."

"We can't let you do that," the villagers spoke simultaneously as Alex swallowed a lump in his throat and clenched his fists tightly in preparation for a fight. "Give yourself to the Diadem."

"No, thanks, I think I'd rather not," Alex said as he watched one of the female villagers twirl a large, rusted machete around her fingers and his fingertips brushed against the handle of the Bowie knife. Alex saw the stock of an AK-47 shift from somewhere in the cluster of villagers and the synapses in his brain fired like a rocket as he reached forward and ripped the weapon from the villager's hands. Anna hopped backwards on the ice and stomped through the powder snow beneath it as she grabbed Danny's hand, turned around, and ran straight for the shack at the edge of town. Alex fired three warning shots above the villagers' heads as he moved backwards through Anna's footpath and the villagers walked slowly after the trio. Anna yanked the door to the shack open and Danny sprinted inside as she let the door swing closed and ran to join Alex on his backwards expedition.

The villager that Alex had seen carrying the machete seemed to vanish behind the crowd as the hyper-focused eighteen year old frantically searched for her outline within the cluster. The two closed three quarters of the distance between them and the shack as Alex's eyes sifted through the rhythmic, patterned movement for anything out of the ordinary. As his foot skidded across the permafrost, hidden beneath the icy snow, Alex saw a figure slip out from the crowd with a sinister expression glued to its face and a large metal object gripped tightly in its hand. Alex made sure Anna got into the shack as the AK slipped out of his grasp just beyond the doorframe and the madwoman tackled him inside with her machete raised above her head. Anna slammed the door shut with a heavy boom and Danny ran from the other side of the shack to help her push a heavy, wooden chest in front of the entrance.

Alex struggled against the madwoman's violent thrashing as he gripped her arm tightly just below the elbow and squeezed as her grasp on the machete handle tightened. The madwoman somehow flipped her machete blade to face downwards like a soldier and plunged the blade deep into the floorboard next to Alex's face. Anna and Danny grabbed the madwoman by her armpits and ripped her off of Alex as the teenager rolled backwards into a cobblestone well sitting just to the right of the shack's center and ignored it as he rushed in to rejoin the fight. Alex reached down and pulled the machete from the floor, disregarding the dim, green light coming from the slit in the floorboard as he spun the large weapon around his fingers.

"Why did you attack us?" Alex asked as he approached the madwoman and put the tip of the machete to her throat. The woman's crooked, jagged smile remained plastered to her lips as she adopted a new philosophy of total silence with a dead-eyed beam on Alex and a faint green tint growing across the whites of her eyes. "You have one second to answer me! Why did you attack us?"

"You have no idea what you have gotten yourself into." Anna's head whipped around in terror as the unanimous voices of the villagers came from every direction and the madwoman's jagged smile grew slowly wider.

"What the fuck does that mean?" Alex shouted at her as the madwoman's rescue party became visible through the pulsating cracks between the walls and the sound of cracking wood became prominent in Anna's ears. Anna's shaking right hand grabbed Alex's shoulder and she turned him to look into her worried eyes so that she could draw his attention towards the goal of survival.

"We need to get out of here," Anna said as she glanced at the well and watched Danny stare down into the aperture with a dull, focused light behind his emerald green eyes. Alex whipped around and finally acknowledged the well for himself as he handed Anna the machete silently. "I don't know what to do with this."

"It's simple, if you see someone trying to hurt you, swing at their neck and follow through. Keep moving, even if you have to kill somebody." Alex explained calmly as he gently caressed Anna's cheek and ran his thumb across her smooth skin before turning around and facing the madwoman with a tightly furrowed brow. Anna's fingers tightened concernedly on Alex's shoulder as he clasped his lips together and kept his enraged gaze on the madwoman. "Go. I'll be right behind you." Anna turned around and watched as Danny slipped his legs over the side of the well and sprawled out across the mouth to scale down the cobblestones to the bottom. Anna crawled over the lip and stared down into the blackness as Danny's visage dissolved into the well's depths and Anna saw the back wall snap in half and the roof collapse on top of Alex's head as her hands slipped from the stones and Anna descended rapidly into the inky miasma.