That Risen Snow: A Scary Tale of Snow White and Zombies (Wattys 2014 Award Winner)

Chapter Twenty-Six

 Snoozy

THE SOLDIER, HAYS, PRATTLES about his dog, but Snoozy ignores him and instead watches Merry scurry away. Why didn’t Merry give the roots to Blushful? What was that fat fool thinking? Snoozy shakes his head.

He clutches the roots—soft and gritty—in his fist. He shouldn’t. Not now. Except that the hole in his belly grows so hard and unyielding, like this very mine. Dark. Empty. He swallows his gum, brings his fist to his mouth, and pulls one of the roots free with his teeth. It tastes like rich, spicy dirt. A cloud swirls in his head.

“I’m sorry,” he says to Hays. “Could you repeat that?”

“A dog. Did you see a dog in the woods?”

Snoozy shakes his head, and rain cascades down his throat and into his belly. It fills the hole. “I didn’t see anything.”

Hays nods. “I sure hope she’s okay out there.”       

“She’ll be fine so long as she stays out of the rain.”

“Rain? It’s dry as a dusty cracker out there.”

Snoozy giggles. The captain pulls Hays down the passage after Merry, and Snoozy chews and laughs, chews and laughs.

Eventually, he follows, leaving the Page behind to watch the cave-in.

They walk a good while in the dark. Shadows throb. Snoozy pops another root, and soon a river pours down his throat and into his heart. The shadows undulate and squirm into a parade of torn flesh, leering eyes, leafless limbs, and skeletal birds. The captain and Hays stumble a few times in the writhing darkness, and Snoozy bites back a laugh.

Finally, Merry opens his lantern. “Sorry. I forget that you need more light.” Now they reach the curve in the passage where the ceiling drops abruptly. Merry pats the ceiling. “Mind your heads.”

Mine your heads. Head your mines.

The humans squat as they walk through the shortened passage. The scent of dust, grease, and burning lantern reminds Snoozy of his earlier vision of the burning tree. Wood patients. Would patience.

“So, what exactly is the Collective?” the captain asks. “And why live here—so far from the Dwarflands?”

“For Bones, it was a statement to the world,” Merry says, taking his lecture tone. “Eventually, he would’ve published an account of our life here. He wanted to take the lowliest dwarfs—youths like us that were outcasts, even by dwarf standards—and make them productive citizens. To prove that dwarfs were more than just the lies printed about us. More and more, he’d been traveling away from the cabin for daytrips. I suspect he was scouting to recruit humans, to show that humans and dwarfs could live together.”

The captain grunts. “What do you mean by outcasts?”

“Each of us faced our own horrors. That’s what Bones called them.”

“Personal demons,” the captain says.

“I’ve had those,” Hays says. “Were yours the little ones that cut your hair in the night and put nut butter in your ears?

“Hays,” the captain says. “Your sister is a Horror herself.”

“Each day, we’d work in the mines from sunrise to sunset,” Merry says. “Each night, Bones worked with one of us on our horrors, our alone time. He’d do that six nights in a row, working with each of us one-on-one.”

“And on the seventh night?”

Now Snoozy speaks up, talking around a wad of root. “On the seventh night, he rested. We all did. We’d build a fire and burn a tree. Down to the root. To the soil. To the stump. Seven merry stumps.”

Merry cuts him off. “And you’d play songs on your flute. Beautiful songs.”

“Doesn’t sound like your man Bones got much rest,” the captain says.

Snoozy laughs. “Not getting much now, either.”

They walk the rest of the way to the vertical shaft in silence. There, Hays kicks a stone into the shaft. It bounces off the walls for a long time before reaching bottom—a distant ellipsis of noise.

Merry attaches the lantern to a hook anchored above one of the shaft’s two lifts Each lift is suspended from a pulley mechanism and operated from a control station at the top of the shaft. That’s where Merry goes. He fiddles with an assortment of weights and counterweights. Ropes slither and squirm like hairy worms.

The soldiers climb onto a lift, and Merry lowers it so that they are eye-level with the top of the shaft. They pull at the highest rung first.

“It’s coming,” says Hays, pulling with his pickaxe. “It’s snug as a tick on a hairless bitch’s belly.”

Snoozy stands at the shaft’s edge. “Careful. Don’t let your pickaxe bite you.”

“Wouldn’t be your first bite, would it?” The captain’s sweat-covered face grins. “Hays here has become our animal handler. He’s a natural with animals—the furry ones, anyway. He’s worthless with a fish.”

“Now that’s—” Hays starts, but the rung pops out of the wall and ricochets down the passage. A clattering symphony echoes through the mine. The noise jolts Snoozy’s thoughts.

He turns to Merry. “I’m going to prep the fuses. Tie up all the loose ends.”

Merry offers him a weak smile, but says nothing.

The soldiers are still struggling with the next rung when he walks further down the northwest passage. Soon, he reaches the top of the spiral.

If all goes according to plan, the explosion he’s prepping will cave-in the ramp once the Horrors have been lured below—effectively trapping them. The only way out after the explosion would be climbing up the vertical shaft, which won’t be an option once the soldiers pry out the rungs anchored into the shaft wall.

That’s the plan, anyway. He pops another root into his mouth, jaws now working furiously on the growing clump. He stares down at the mess of fuses in his hands, watches them squirm with anticipation.