The kitchen is the warmest place in the house when both the stove and the burner are on. So we’re both there. I’m cooking breakfast, and Theo is just sitting there. He brought another puzzle-ridden paper along, but he’s not even doing the puzzle, he’s just sitting there, chatting. I snap back at him, more because it’s my habit than because he really annoys me, and he seems to know it, because he doesn’t take offence. He just grins and goes on.

 

He grins all the time.

 

It does get on my nerves a little. I mean, it’s great to know that I make such a powerful antidepressant, but still, it’s not natural for a human being to grin all the time, is it? Finally, when I turn to look at him and see that grin again, I reach into a drawer, pull out a vial of pills, catch his hand and press one into his palm.

 

“Here, have that.”

 

“What’s this?” He eyes the pill suspiciously.

 

“It’s a lemon tab. For coffee and tea. Sour. Eat it.”

 

“Wha?..”

 

“Maybe it’ll keep you from grinning for a while.”

 

He looks at me, looks at the tab and then bursts out laughing. I sigh.

 

“That’s so you. Dean, what’s your problem?”

 

“I don’t trust smiling people,” I inform him. “I can never tell whether they’re dangerous maniacs or just plain idiots.”

 

“What if they’re both?” He gives another grin, puts the tab into his mouth and chews on it. Still grinning. I widen my eyes.

 

“Wooooow. I’m impressed.”

 

“Used to eat lemons whole, skin and all,” he explains. “On a bet. With the guys at work, back then.”

 

“What was your work?”

 

“Baywatch,” he says nonchalantly, watching me turn over frying ham. “Not the series, the real one. In San Francisco.”

 

He’s consistent then. Going from one rescuing squad right to another. Come to think of it, snow is water, too, only crystallized, right?

 

“Interesting. So, is it normal for guys from rescue services to fuck each other like rabbits? Or else, where did you get so much experience?”

 

Finally. There’s silence behind me. Yay me.

 

“You know,” he speaks up after a while, “I’ve been meaning to sort it out with you. To explain why I thought it was okay to come to your room then.”

 

“Holy shit. Theo, I thought we were over that.”

 

“I just want you to know. I don’t want you to think I’m some kind of rapist, okay?”

 

Rapists don’t feel so guilty as to go and commit a suicide the way he tried to yesterday. But I don’t tell him that. I take the ham off the pan, put it onto the plates next to sunny-side-ups and put the plates on the table.

 

“Eat. And, if you really need to get it out of your system, tell me. Just this once. Because I don’t want to talk about it any more.”

 

And he does. In between the bites. Somehow making sense. He says, that yes, there’s a lot of gay stuff going on in Snow Patrol. And that in fact, there’s a lot of gay stuff going on everywhere. Because when the snows came for the first time and the panic hit, against any statistics, the first ones to die were women. Because a lot of them were too skeptical to stay at home when the weathermen told them to do so. Because a lot of them were running on mother instincts and didn’t want to acknowledge they had pneumonia or flu or something like this, going on doing all the job around the house instead, until it was too late. Because they were simply physically weaker. Because when it came to panic and chaos and food and money shortages, it was much easier for a thug to corner a woman, rob her and silence her with a knife than to do it to a man. And for many other reasons.

 

Most of the women who survived the first two years of snow either had very protective men behind them or were incredibly tough. The men, gone wild after two years of hell, would kill anyone who as much as looked at their woman. Incredibly tough women weren’t putting out – they could choose. Men felt weak beside them. Humiliated.

 

Besides, most of the women who were alone and stayed the same were very unwilling to couple up. They felt vulnerable. They didn’t want to get pregnant in times like this, consciously or not, and they didn’t want to risk. Cold was a bad aphrodisiac.

 

“At times it’s really easier to go for each other,” Theo says, washing the ham down with a gulp of tea. “I knew a guy once, who was a psychologist and he had a whole explanation for that, but I never could remember it. But the main idea is, we can’t take it easy. You can want a man, because – if you believe that psycho guy – we’re all latently bisexual. But you can’t admit it, because you’ve been raised in a hetero-oriented society. And it’s easier to pretend you were too drunk to realize what you’re doing, or that you were too sleepy to protest, or something like that. As long as you don’t have to admit it, it’s okay. I don’t know. I didn’t want to seem a horny dork… but you acted as if you liked me. You know? Jake had told me you were always harsh with people, not willing to chat, almost antisocial. That if you even talked to me while I lived there, I’d be lucky. And I come here, and all of a sudden you’re not antisocial at all, you know?”

 

“Yeah.” I give him a sarcastic look. “That’s my usual way of flirting with people, I start a talk about Roanoke and the lost colony.”

 

For a second I think he’s going to blush. But he doesn’t.

 

“I thought you liked me. But I also didn’t believe you’d ever say so. I thought I’d try it. So that if you really wanted to keep that buttoned-up image, you could always say you weren’t responsible for what happened when you were sleeping.”

 

“Oh dear god, so that was charity!”

 

He does blush. Yay me, Take Two.

 

“Listen to me, Theo. You know, to clear it up once and forever. I was bi even before the snow came. And when I want something, I always say so. As you might have noticed. And don’t choke on your tea, I won’t make you another cup.”

 

“Thanks a lot,” he grumbles. “I’m able to make tea for myself.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Yeah. And I can cook.”

 

“Fine!” I say with a grin to match any of his. “Then the dinner’s on you!”

 

At times watching his face change is just too much fun.

--------------------

 

The storm goes on. We’ve gone through all the attic boxes by now, so all we can do is fuck and talk, and you can’t really fuck all the time. I can do without talking, too, but Theo can’t. And I’ve grown rather fond of Theo.

 

We talk about all kinds of things. About his work, about my house, about the Town, about Jake, about Holly’s car… everything and anything. But it’s at night that we talk about really serious things. About the past. About how it used to be. About the movies he watched; about the bands I liked; about everything that isn’t here anymore. We’ve found out that neither of us falls asleep after fucking. And we talk each other to sleep. In his bed. Because I need some time before I can look at my window without bad thoughts again. Call me a wuss.

 

And it’s on the fifth night that we get down to the real touchy kind of stuff. Because of me. Because I think it’s high time to ask him that one question.

 

“Why are you really staying here?” I ask, lying on my back, my head on his shoulder. “Just don’t feed me that old ‘big shot whistles, SP’s jump’ shit, okay? Because I’m not buying it.”

 

He doesn’t tense. He just sighs.

 

“You’re a hair-splitter.”

 

“My middle name.”

 

He snorts.

 

“Dean Hair-Splitter… what’s the last one?”

 

“Ahiga.”

 

“Sounds Indian.”

 

“It is. I have some Indian blood, comes from my father’s line.”

 

“That’s where you got that black hair, then.”

 

“You didn’t answer my question.”

 

He sighs again.

 

“Let’s trade it,” he suggests. “I tell you about that whole business. And you tell me who Ritchey is. And why I had to drag you back through the snow when you thought you saw him.”

 

Oh you wanna play tough, Baywatch hunk?

 

“That’s not fair. I’ll tell you about Ritchey if you tell me about your wife.”

 

Now he does tense.

 

“I don’t have a wife.”

 

“But you did have a daughter… what was her name? I think you didn’t tell me.”

 

There’s silence. Then he talks, very calm and not sounding like his usual self one bit.

 

“You think it makes you very mature, don’t you? You think it just makes you really mature that you can hurt people at random and know how to do it. You know what? It doesn’t. All it makes you is a cynical little shit. As cruel as only children can be.”

 

I don’t reply to this for a while and don’t move away. Then I tell him, very deliberately, “I haven’t really looked at it this way. I am what I am. However, you’re probably right. Only… what does it make you, then, if you ask me the same kind of questions? Or you think that I don’t get hurt?”

 

More silence. More sighs.

 

“Point taken. My apologies, Dean. I’m wrong. You really want to know?”

 

“Maybe.”

 

“She wasn’t my wife. Valerie. We were just going out. She was twenty-two when she got pregnant, and I was twenty-four. Neither of us wanted to get married. It was nice, actually, because she wasn’t that bitch type – no, we were quite good friends. All along. We both really loved Laney, too. The kid. Her name was Lana, my idea.” He pauses and adds, “I’m glad Valerie didn’t see her die.”

 

I wait.

 

“She got shot,” he says after a minute or so. “You know, when there was that big fight between the police and crowds in Frisco. In the first year. She wasn’t even part of that. She went out to buy food. Got caught in the crowd. When the police started to shoot, a stray bullet caught her. Right in the head. Such an idiotic accident. But at least it was fast. Unlike Laney.”

 

“Enough.”

 

“It took her two weeks to die. Coughing her lungs out. Wheezing. I’ve already joined Snow Patrol, I couldn’t be there all the time. I wasn’t there when she died. But they said she hadn’t even come to, and the last time she did, I was around. It makes me feel a little better.”

 

“Enough, Theo. Please, stop. I’m sorry.”

 

“Don’t be. It’s your turn.”

 

I swallow. My mouth feels a little too dry. Well, fuck that.

 

“Nothing interesting. I lived in L.A. back then. So it happened really fast.”

 

He gives a little “Oh!” Yeah, L.A. wasn’t the best place to be at when the first winter hit.

 

Because it was the first of them all.

 

“My dad was not very young. Not very healthy. He had a heart attack in the second week of cold. The docs said he probably had difficulty breathing. Just like you said – at least it was fast. My mom lasted a little longer. A couple of months. I already began to think we were going to be okay. And then she just happened to be in one of those little food stores. It crumpled in on them. Literally. Because such stores weren’t designed for holding all that snow on their roofs. My mom… you know, I think it was fast, too. Because her head got practically cut off by a piece of broken glass. An exceptionally large piece.”

 

“Oh god.”

 

“Wait. I haven’t gotten anywhere near Ritchey yet. So, right after it happened, a gang from our street claimed our house. Kicked me out. Broke me a couple of ribs and a cheekbone. I thought it was big deal, but I couldn’t even get to the hospital. All hospitals were full. With really sick people. People with real injuries. Dying people. So I had to get by without medication.”

 

In a few months those tough guys left the house, too. Ran for their life. The cold was getting worse, and it was your average Malibu house. Half of its walls made of glass. I came back there one day, and it was all broken, just a skeleton of a house. I picked a few things – photos, a couple of small things, for memories – and never went there again.

 

“And you did. Amazing… How old were you?”

 

“Fifteen. Yeah, I guess when you really want to live, nothing else matters, huh? I lived through the first winter. Stole clothes. Found shelters. I never knew it was so easy to find a shelter in a big city. But… well… in times like these… a lot of stuff happens. It all got ugly in spring. When it became evident that the snow wasn’t going away.”

 

Because everyone thought it was. Even the weathermen kept saying it was just an unusually bad winter. Everyone was waiting for summer. And then, in May, the real frosts hit. Yes, it was ugly.

 

“That’s when I met Ritchey. They were giving away those tickets. You know, evacuation cards. Because there were only so many buses. Only for registered citizens. And I wasn’t registered. When they went registering citizens, I was living in a heating main pit and getting over a particularly nasty case of intercostal neuralgia.”

 

“So you didn’t get a card?”

 

“So I didn’t get a card. And Ritchey… Ritchey had three.”

 

“How come?”

 

“His lover and younger sister. When he was getting the tickets, they were still alive. When he took the luggage to the departing station and came back for them, they weren’t. There’d been a fire. I never got to know the details, but I think that it was their neighbor downstairs. She was freezing, so she made fire. Right in her apartment. People were getting really desperate that May.”

 

Theo is silent. So I continue.

 

“Ritchey picked me up outside the Departing Station. I don’t know why. I guess he went a little insane after everything that happened. I didn’t know anything about him. Back then I thought he just wanted a piece of ass. I didn’t mind. I was desperate, too. I wanted to get out of the city. It was dying. It was killing us. And they said it was warmer up north.”

 

“It was. At first.”

 

“I know. We got to Crescent City right after the first colds hit. Anyway, he didn’t… wasn’t… I was wrong. He kept taking me with him, using that card – either his sister’s or his boyfriend’s, I didn’t know. I helped him with luggage. With everything I could. It was me who stole the car for him – he added different stuff to it later. And when Jake and company said they were going to start a little village outside Crescent City, we went with them. Together.”

 

“You built this house?”

 

“No. This wasn’t a vacant spot. There used to be a little cluster of houses here, you know, a piece of abandoned suburbia. The Town has grown on that. Me and Ritchey, we only redid this house a little.”

 

We both don’t speak for a while. The wind is knocking at the window, whining, crying, whispering, begging to let it in.

 

“What was then?”

 

“Then? Then we had a life. For a while. Living here, doing stuff. Ritchey was good at all that building stuff, you know, helping people with their houses. And with cars.”

 

“He taught you to fix things?”

 

“I taught myself. He helped. He said I had a gift for it. Something you gotta be born with. Said I was really talented. I loved hearing it. I cared about his opinion a lot. In fact, I thought the world of him. He was… unusual. He was a lot of fun, not very law-obedient, reckless in that pecuiliar way… did I mention he was an explorer? A biologist. And he had spent half his life in expeditions. He was tough and didn’t care for a lot of things… but he had his very firm principles. He didn’t touch me once before I got eighteen. And even then, I had to drag him into bed.”

 

“Eighteen,” Theo echoes. “That gave you guys… how much time?”

 

“A year.” Suddenly I have a lump in my throat. “But it was a very good year.”

 

“You loved him,” Theo states, almost philosophically.

 

“Yes,” I say without even thinking. And then again, “Yes.”

 

He shifts, turns to me, props himself up on an elbow.

 

“You thought you saw him yesterday. Did he go away? Did he leave you?”

 

“No.”

 

“But…”

 

“I didn’t see him. I couldn’t have seen him. He’s dead, Theo. He froze to death. Two years ago. Getting back from the City. Went to buy some stuff – flour, sugar, you know that kind. And gasoline. He went there every two months or so. That time he didn’t make it back.”

 

“But if he went missing…”

 

“He didn’t,” I cut him short. “He didn’t, Theo. The SP guys brought him back the very next day. I saw him. I was at his funeral. I threw earth on his coffin. He was deader than dead.”

 

And smiling.

 

He was smiling.

 

My breath becomes ragged, broken. Theo pulls me into a hug. Maybe he thinks I’m going to cry again. But I’m not.

 

“I don’t understand just one thing,” I whisper into his chest, my fingers digging into his shoulders. “Just one thing… Ritchey… he was no Bertha Ramsey, okay? He knew how to deal with cold. He knew what cold could do. He’d lived in Alaska. And he always had a radio with him. And there wasn’t even a storm that night. It was just snowing. They found the car, it was pumped full of fuel. And he had several canisters of gasoline in the trunk. Why in hell would he want to get out? Why the hell did he die? How could it even happen?”

 

Theo doesn’t answer for a while, hugging me, stroking my hair. And then he says a thing that makes me shiver, makes me inch back from him and stare.

 

“They always smile, don’t they?”

 

I gasp.

 

“You noticed?”

 

“I’m the one who looks for them. Who finds them and brings them in. Of course I noticed.”

 

I feel a thrill shoot through me. I don’t say anything. I wait.

 

“Yours was a long story, Dean. Long… painful. I owe you something for that. I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you what you wanted to know. And something I just wanted to tell someone. I think you’ll do just fine. You’re the right person. Now let me get my words together.”

 

It takes him a few minutes, and I’m almost afraid he’s asleep when he starts talking again.

 

“Do you remember how it all started?”

 

“Of course.”

 

“It started with cooling off. Slightly, maybe ten degrees lower than usual. And than ten more.”

 

“I was there, you know.”

 

“You remember how it was? The cold came to L.A. first. The bays glazed over. And people started fleeing north.”

 

“I know that, Theo.”

 

“I’m just trying to bring a little logic into my story. You remember how everyone was going north, then farther north, and then yet farther? And then they stopped. Why?”

 

I don’t get it.

 

“You know why. Because suddenly the frosts hit right ahead of them.”

 

“Yeah. Didn’t it feel just … just like you’ve been circled?”

 

I snort.

 

“Circled? By snowstorms? Why, yes. Yes, it did seem so. But you know, it sounds pretty idiotic. Circled and attacked by a weather front. Yeah, right.”

 

“I’m going to tell you a few things that aren’t going to sound believable either. But you listen to them first, okay? You read what that guy wrote about Croatoan and believed him. Maybe you can believe this, too.”

 

“Okay,” I say. For some reason, I feel shivers crawling down my spine.

 

“I was still working for the Baywatch in Frisco when I met that guy. He was a ship pilot. He was a heavy drinker and he had that nasty little cough in him that everyone thought was asthma. Or maybe lung cancer, because he was a chain smoker, too. But he was a great pilot. We just went around on scooters, scooping losers out of the water – his ship went to get other ships out of trouble in the ocean. He was real deal, that man. And one evening I ended up in a coast bar, buying him a drink. It was February, one year before the first snow. He was just back from a raid. And he was all gloomy. I didn’t want to go home that night – Laney was staying with Val because it was her week, and I was between girlfriends. Alone. So I just sat there, chatting with this guy and buying him beer. And then we bought a bottle of whiskey and went to his ship to chat some more. Almost all of his crew was ashore, and who was on board were already sleeping when we came there, so no-one was going to interrupt our little boozing session.

 

“And it was well past midnight when he said, ‘I’m not supposed to tell that to anyone, but I just need to. You’re not going to blabber around, are you? I don’t want you to get me fired. I got three years to live, maybe four. I don’t want them to take my baby away.’ He was talking about his ship, of course. And I promised him I won’t tell. I wasn’t even interested in what he was going to say. I just didn’t want to go home.

 

“And then he told me. He said that about a week ago, they had received a message from navy guys in Russia. Their ship had gone missing. It had been following the usual Nakhodka – San Francisco route, made the better part of the way and then, suddenly, it disappeared. Didn’t answer their calls. Didn’t ask for help. It was just gone. So they asked the Navy in Frisco to look for them. They were rather worried, because during the last connection session the captain had said it looked like a storm was coming. First they sent a helicopter. And soon enough the helicopter found them. The ship was drifting. It seemed abandoned. They couldn’t get low enough, so they needed a ship to investigate. They sent that guy – his name was Farleigh, in fact – they sent Farleigh and his crew over there to see into it and to tow the ship to Frisco. It was his job.

 

“They went there, on this very ship. They found the stray one soon enough. It didn’t answer to their signals, so they made fast to it. They were ready to see the crew dead. They’d been to a few raids like that. It could be anything, from a banal drunk fight to common food poisoning.

 

“The crew were dead.  All of them. Dead at their usual places. At the steering wheel. At the back of the ship. On the deck. In the cabins. In the wardroom. As if they were all struck by a lightning simultaneously. There were no wounds on them. There was no sign of poisoning or fighting. They looked as if it had just happened, too, not even stinking, although it was a rather hot February, even for California. And there was yet another strange thing about them. Under each and every one of them, on the floor, there was water. Puddles of water.

 

“They didn’t know what to think of it, but they reported to land that they found the ship, that the crew were dead and that they’d be towing it to the port. And then Farleigh decided to check the hold. The flair had made him do it, he told me that night with a cigarette twitching between his teeth. Because you know, everyone who works in the sea for a long time has the flair. The flair made him go down to the hold. He found food supplies and water supplies there, quite enough. And he also found something else.

 

“‘It was colder there,’ he told me. ‘Not really cold, but colder than on deck. You know, it’s always like that in the hold. Because it’s in the water, and water is colder than air. I thought that something was off, and I couldn’t put my finger on it for a while, but then I saw that one of the boxes was gnawed off quite a bit. That was it. They had rats. It’s normal, it’s okay – those bitches are survivors, you can de-rat the ship every month, but they’ll come back. But I wasn’t hearing them. I didn’t hear any noise at all. And then, deeper into the hold, I found the first dead rat.’”

 

Theo stops for a while. Maybe he needs some breath.

 

“He poked it with his finger. It was tough. Hard and cold. He hesitated for a bit and then took it and brought it where the light was better. And what he saw was rime. The rat was covered in rime. It was melting off into his hands, very fast. Dripping. Turning into a puddle of water on the floor.”

 

“You’re saying…” I have to clear my throat before I continue. “You’re saying they froze to death? In the Pacific? Near the Californian shore?”

 

“That’s what I told him. Because of course I was listening by then, listening very attentively. This guy, he was no bullshit. I couldn’t believe he was trying to feed me some marine tale. But I couldn’t believe what he was saying, either. He didn’t take offense. He said that if he were me, he wouldn’t believe it. He said he even hadn’t put this guess into his official report. But it’s not the whole story. He told me more.

 

“When they were towing the dead ship to the shore, they went off route a little. Made a little mistake. So they went quite a bit of the way to L.A. before they noticed it. And a guy from his crew suddenly cried out. So he went down to see what was wrong. And that’s where he felt scared. Because there was ice overboard. On the very surface of the water, thin, breaking. Melting. But it was there. He freaked out. He checked their location and found out they were going the wrong way, so he corrected the course and sped away from there, as fast as his ship could go while towing that other one. They made it to the port without any accidents. But days after that, sitting on the deck next to me, he was still freaked out. And he said the strangest thing.”

 

“What did he say?”

 

“‘It was going to L.A.’. That’s what. I looked at him like a drunken dork I was, not understanding a thing. But he repeated. I asked him what he meant. He went to his cabin and brought me a map of the Pacific. Showed me where they found the ship. Drew the line of the route they were going. Showed me where they had gone off route and headed to L.A. And then he drew another line. It went straight from the Providenie harbour to L.A. And it crossed both of the spots he marked. ‘It was going to L.A.,’ he repeated. ‘And if we had gone there just a little bit earlier, we’d have been in its way.’”

 

I close my eyes and see circles under my eyelids. They are white.

 

“I think I know what you’re trying to say. But I want you to say it, Theo. Say this madness aloud.” My voice doesn’t sound half as skeptical as I want it to sound.

 

“Okay, let’s sum it up. The cold spots moving on a line in the ocean. The frosts circling us on our way north. To me it sounds like this is a weird kind of cold. Because it seems like it is…” he breaks off and pauses for a few seconds before finishing the phrase, “… migrating.”

 

White circles before my closed eyes, dazzling.

 

“Weather fronts migrate. It’s a known fact.”

 

“Across the ocean? And, seemingly, with a plan? Okay, I have another thing to tell, will you listen? Or are you tired of my tales?”

 

“Tell me.”

 

He doesn’t wait for me to ask him twice.

 

“How cold is it outside?”

 

“What?” I’m totally confused. “Now?”

 

“No. Normally. We all know it’s damn cold, but how much exactly is damn cold?”

 

“Well… Five degrees below zero. Maybe fifteen. Gets to twenty-five when stormy. Must be about thirty below zero right now.”

 

“I’ve been in Snow Patrol for six years. I’ve been on about six hundred raids. You know what it means? It means about six hundred dead people I’ve brought back with me. There’ve been a few raids where we found them alive, I could probably count them, there’d be no more than fifty. But there were quite a few times when we brought in whole dead families… so that makes it even. Six hundred. All of them frozen to death. And just like you noticed – all of them smiling.”

 

I shudder in the tight circle of his arms. I can’t help it.

 

“How long does it take a man to die from cold when it is thirty below zero? I mean, when he’s dressed, wearing a coat, warm boots, everything like that? Do you know, Dean?”

 

“A few hours? I don’t know.”

 

“It could be an hour and a half if it’s really cold. Or if the man is weakened by something. Or drunk. But still, it is a process. It goes on for some time. And then it takes the body some more time to get frozen through and through so much that it becomes fragile. When most of the water in the body gets crystallized. You know, like what happened to Bertha.”

 

“Like when you guys broke off her hand?”

 

“Yes. It takes time.”

 

“Well, she had it. She had two days to get… crystallized.”

 

“And you’d be right. And even in the cases when they’ve only been out for twelve hours, it still can be explained. Exactly. Long exposure to low temperatures. And you guys never questioned it. Because you do have a hospital here, but you don’t have the equipment.”

 

“Equipment?”

 

“Back in San Francisco,” he says, and his voice is a little dreamy, “back in Frisco, when I was just beginning to work, they did have equipment. There still was some common order back there, much more formalities… we had to bring all the bodies to a hospital first. Most of the times it was San Francisco General. And they did have the equipment. It was there that I heard this thing from a certain doc. He bothered to look into that, because he couldn’t understand one thing. When someone is exposed to cold for a long time, a lot of damage happens before he actually dies. Like, frostbites and all that… necrosis, he called it. Most of the people we brought in didn’t have them. And then he used some equipment and found out that what he suspected was true.”

 

“Which was… what?”

 

“Those people,” Theo sounds as confused as I am. “See… they actually didn’t die of exposure. With them, it wasn’t a process at all. The Doc said they all had died… momentarily. At once. Like, one moment their body temperature is your average 98 degrees, and then the next second – BOOM! – all of their bodily fluids turn to ice. Instant freeze.”

 

“Wait. Wait, Theo. It is impossible. We don’t have frosts like this here. Nobody ever has frosts like this!”

 

He gotta be kidding me!

 

“He said,” Theo’s voice is deadly serious, “that temperatures at which this is possible occur only in liquefied gases. Like, nitrogen. He said that if they’d been put into liquid nitrogen, then a death like that would be possible. And their bodies would’ve been preserved without much damage, except they’d get really fragile. And if they got melted later, they’d probably look… well… fresh. I don’t know about you, but when I heard that, I thought back to that Russian ship at once.” He stops and then suddenly adds, “Have you heard that Russia has been having really mild winters recently? Or did they broadcast that already after you stopped turning on your TV?”

 

I think finally get what he means. Even though I still don’t believe it.

 

“You mean… that there are migrating spots of very low temperature. Like that of liquefied nitrogen. And that it was them that brought the snow on us. And that it’s when people get into such spots that they freeze to death.”

“Not quite,” he says, and there’s something in his voice I don’t like. “What I think – and you can call me insane, if you like – is that those are no spots. Those are some kind of… creatures. Alive. Thinking. And hunting. And yes, migrating. Mobile. Very, very mobile.”

 

Any other time, I’d laugh. Because the theory is laughable. Irrational. Otherworldly. I’d laugh, because any other time it’d sound really crazy. But somehow in the dead of the night, accompanied by howls of wind and rattling of glass, it doesn’t sound too wild. In fact, it doesn’t sound wild at all. It sounds plausible. More plausible then my initial quasi-scientific thought of ‘cold spots’. Living and thinking, of course. And hunting. Getting us one by one. Crossing the ocean… in February? Where did they wait till next fall? I think of Ritchey again. Ritchey, who was a biologist. Who once told me that they had been finding dead fish on the surface of the Pacific all through the last summer. He believed there had been a cold water patch a little farther from the shore. Maybe some new cold torrent. He was beginning to think it was the reason for the abrupt change of climate – a cold torrent that drove Gulf Stream away. He just couldn’t understand how it was possible without any tectonic change…

 

“What I can’t understand,” Theo says, breaking my train of thought, “is why they all are smiling. All those instantly frozen poor bastards. What do they see, I wonder?..”

 

And I give the smallest of gasps.

 

I think of the face I saw in my window. The face I don’t believe I saw in my window. Big-eyed, small-mouthed and childish. An impeccably symmetrical, shiny-pale face.

 

If Bertha Ramsey saw such a face, she could have easily believed she was seeing an angel.

 

I don’t want to think of it. I’m not going to think of it. I shift uncomfortably, feeling suddenly cold against Theo’s solid warmth.

 

“You’re not laughing at me. I knew you wouldn’t. Thank you. I wanted to talk to someone about it. Like Farleigh. It’s something you just have to share.”

 

I wish he would stop sharing. Oh how I wish.

 

And maybe my wishes have some power, because he changes the topic – easily, matter-of-factly. As if going from weather to politics in a tea-party conversation.

 

“You wanted to know what we are doing here.”

 

“Yes.” Actually, that’s the only thing I really wanted to know. I didn’t need the bonus that came with it.

 

“We’re taking a halt.”

 

“Explain yourself.”

 

“We’re on the run. We’ve left the City. And we’re not ever coming back. At least not in the nearest future.”

 

Suddenly I feel very stupid. Maybe it’s not a good idea to have talks like this when it’s long past midnight.

 

“I don’t understand.”

 

“In you very own words: it’s gotten ugly there.”

 

“Just how ugly?” I specify. Once again, I don’t like the sound of it.

 

“Really ugly. The City Council guys are fighting among themselves, and the way it’s going they will start their very own little war pretty soon.”

 

“God, Theo, war over what?! Just how many people are left there in the City?”

 

It can’t be too many. There isn’t really too many on the whole coast. The luckiest ones fled to Europe in the very beginning. Slightly less fortunate managed to move to the East Coast while the planes were still flying. Of those who stayed, only one third remained alive. The first wave of deaths was caused by the cold. Then there came accidents. People couldn’t get warm enough with central heating or even caloriferes. And they started making fire. Right in their houses. Right in their apartments on the tops of multi-storied buildings.

 

And then there came chaos.

 

“You know, the United States by now kind of don’t exist,” now Theo sounds almost amused. “Maybe, there in the East, it’s different… but who can know what’s there, in the East? You’d have to go through the middle states to do that, through Texas, Utah, Oklahoma… and you can’t do it. A snow field, half the continent wide, with constant storms… did I tell you that all big storms come from the Great Plains? As if they lived there…  No-one knows what’s there in the East. But here and now, the state is non-existent.”

 

“I understand that.”

 

“I know. You’re a very smart kid.”

 

I swallow the ‘kid’ without a word of protest. I’m listening.

 

“They, in the City… they want to start their own one.”

 

“Their own… state?”

 

“Yes.” And then Theo says the most wild-sounding thing I’ve heard all night. “And they’ve got the weapons for that.”

 

I just blink. I doubt he can see it, but my silence must be pretty emotional.

 

“Crescent City was one of those places in the north where they evacuated specialists and equipment from the Silicon Valley,” he says with a sigh. “Back then they still thought that they could work it out. Before the government ran off. They were working on an army commission seven years ago. Computerized weapons, new generation. They had – whaddayacallit – experimental samples.”

 

Very slowly I open my mouth and say just three words: “Holy. Fucking. Shit.”

 

“Couldn’t have put it better myself. I’ll tell you what they want to do with them. First, they want to include your Town and a few other nearby ones into their self-made state. They’ll need an army and they’ll need to dress and feed it. So they’ll start taking fees from you. Yes, you. For example, each time you need flour or sugar or gasoline… or medicines…  they’re going to make you pay.”

 

“It’s not that we get them for free now.”

 

“You don’t understand. They are going to make you pay twice. You’ll have to pay for entering the City.”

 

“You’re kidding.”

 

“Wish I were. So, they’re going to get themselves an army to use their weapons and a state that army could feed off. Then they plan to march them south.”

 

“To L.A.? What’s the sense of this?”

 

“Not to L.A. To Bakersfield. There are still working petroleum mines there – where do you think they get the gasoline they sell you? They trade with the mine people. But they don’t want to. They want to have the mines, and then they’ll have it all to themselves.”

 

“That’ll be a big thing,” I think aloud.

 

Because in a freezing world where your survival depends on how good your car is, gasoline is gold.

 

“And then they want to subdue Oregon.”

 

“Why? For Chrissake, what does Oregon have that we don’t? Beavers?”

 

“Woods,” Theo says simply. “Game. And firewood.”

 

“There was an interstate agreement,” I stutter. “Agreement of Mutual Help…”

 

“Agreement of Mutual Help gave a nice big fart in our faces when Europe declined to accept our planes,” Theo mutters darkly. “And another one, when they actually bean to shoot at them. By now, the very idea of Mutual Help is dead and buried. I wonder if they’re going to venture into Washington and Canada if they manage Oregon… those fuckers are greedy. If they do, they’ll have to announce general mobilization. Get people to join their army by force. Young men. Like you.”

 

“You said they were fighting,” I remind him breathlessly. “Over what?”

 

“Over methods and costs. And who is going to do the dirtiest jobs.”

 

“Wait. Theo, where are they going to get an army?”

 

“You don’t understand?” He laughs, and the laughter is joyless. “They don’t have to look for it. What they need is strong, trained people who are used to cold, have a bigger-than-average surviving potential and have all-terrain vehicles.”

 

It hits home at once.

 

“Snow Patrol,” I say. “They’re going to make Snow Patrol their army.”

 

“Yes. And that’s why I don’t want to be part of it. It’s bad enough to go on raids for dead people. I don’t want to kill for those idiots. For those self-proclaimed Rulers of the West. The infamous Mister Reeds included. ”

 

“That… or you don’t believe they’re going to win?”

 

And I’m almost not surprised when I hear his calm answer.

 

“In fact, both.”

--------------------------

 

We keep talking about it all through the next day, breaking the ‘Serious Talks Happen At Night’ rule. I’m trying to get the picture. And he, it seems, is just happy to have it out of him.

 

“There’s a lot of things they are fighting about,” he tells me, making dinner. He was delighted to find salt beef in the house. He said he knew quite a few easy finger-licking good recipes. I decided to take him up on his word. “Mainly about who’s going to stay and control the mines. But also over different plans and strategies… and what weapons to use. Reeds is the weapon man because he claims that he knows how to use it.”

 

If I were planning something that serious, Reeds would be the last person I’d leave in charge of my weaponry. Or treasury. Or anything at all.

 

Theo nods when I tell him.

 

“They don’t care what he is, though,” he says. “He is the only one who seems to know that ‘puter stuff. Those aren’t just tanks and bombs, you know. Smart machines, it’s not that easy to use them. To tell you the truth, I’m not so sure Reeds knows what he is doing either. Yet another reason for me to get my boys and run.”

 

“Funny they should let you go.”

 

“They keep accepting radio calls. They don’t want the Towns to know just yet. So when another call came, we knew it was our chance. Your Town is near the Outwards Road. One can go any possible way from here.”

 

“And where are you going to, Theo?” I ask him quietly.

 

He leaves salt beef alone and turns to me. He looks as if he were sorry he’d said so much.

 

“Shit. I don’t know.  I’d love to stay…”

 

“Just because we’ve known each other for astounding eleven days and you have managed to gulp down half my whiskey supply in that very period of time doesn’t mean I’m dying to have you stay here forever.”

 

He smirks.

 

“Well, it’s nice you look at it this way. But I mean it. I’d love to stay. Because I like this place. I like it, and I like people who live here. Somehow, you managed to make it feel… peaceful. I haven’t felt as nice in years, Dean. I’ve been on raid to quite a few places by now, but every one of them was dying. And this Town is alive. I have no idea how you guys do it. It’s amazing.”

 

There’s going to be a ‘but’. I almost sense it coming. So I wait for it in silence.

 

“But it has one big drawback. It’s too close.”

 

Too close to Crescent City. A two-hour ride on a good day in summer. Make it five in the snow.

 

“I won’t ever feel safe here.”

 

“I understand. Really. I wouldn’t like it either – to sit here and wait until the rest of the squads come here to kick your deserter ass.”

 

“I’m not even sure it’s going to happen,” he says thoughtfully, going back to what he was doing with my salt beef. “I know a lot of guys in Snow Patrol don’t like the idea at all. I don’t think I’m the only one who used the chance. But you can never know for sure. And I have my people here. They trust me. I have to think of them, too.”

 

I almost say something witty. Something nasty. Sarcastic. About him being a mother-hen, and how nice it is to pretend you’re not saving your ass but sacrificing your needs for others… But suddenly I feel sad. Because he’s not lying. And there’s nothing funny in that. That must be great – to have someone you care for. I remember. I used to know how it feels, and it wasn’t even that long ago… Suddenly I’m so jealous. I wonder what it is like – to be in a squad, to work in a team… does it feel like having brothers? Maybe not always, but I’m willing to bet, in Theo’s squad it feels just like that.

 

“How long are you going to mess with this beef?”

 

“Well…”

 

“I’ll go work on your pencil box, then. If you don’t mind. I want to finish with it before you leave.”

 

That night we don’t talk at all. We have better things to do. So much better.

 

They leave you too tired to care about anything at all.

--------------------

 

The next day the storm begins to calm down. It’s still there, but there’s less rage in the wind, less bite in the cold. At first I decide it’s yet another fake storm-end. But over the hours it only gets quieter, and I understand that this time it’s real.

 

About six p.m. the radio suddenly goes live, and the tune of “Surf City” breaks through the white noise. About seven the first local broadcast interrupts the music telling everyone not to take chances and stay at home, and everyone with a phone try and report themselves to the Townhall. I try to call Jake, but the line is still dead. But Theo’s pocket radio works better and he manages to check on all of ‘his boys’ – everyone is alive and well, he says. I try the phone an hour later and the line is okay. Some guy picks the phone, some of Jake’s helpers, I can’t remember his name at once. I report myself and Theo, put the phone down and finally feel some relief.

 

It was the worst snow storm California has ever had.

 

And we survived it.

 

When I look up from the phone, Theo smiles at me uncertainly. And I smile back. He stares at me. He hasn’t seen me smile like that yet. Let him look. It can’t harm me. In a little while he’ll go and I’ll stay. And things will be the same again.

 

“You didn’t tell them.”

 

“About what’s going up in the City? Jake wasn’t there.”

 

“Tell them. Okay? I’d like to think I at least warned you guys.”

 

“Do-gooder. I will.”

 

“When I go away. Alright? Just wait ‘til I go.”

 

“I will. I promise. Can you stop talking about it now? I want to give you something.”

 

He looks at me with his green – grey – brown eyes. I imagine him steering a scooter along San Francisco beaches. He belonged there.

 

Do I belong anywhere?

 

I get up, walk over to him and press the pencil box into his hand.

 

“This is for you.”

 

He looks down at the small transparent plastic thingie in his palm. Traces the lines on its lid with a fingertip. Carefully presses a key. And it plays. Small, thin, synthetic sounds. A melody everyone knows since his earliest childhood. ‘Happy Birthday – to – you… Happy birthday – to you… Happy Birthday, dear someone, Happy Birthday to you…’

 

He looks up at me and suddenly pulls me into a huge bear hug.

 

“Easy!” I wheeze. “Easy! Okay, you don’t care for my ribs… but if you break this thing again, I’ll kill you! Do you have any idea of how much time I spent on it?”

 

“Thank you.” He puts the pencil-box on the mantelpiece. “Thank you.”

 

“Thanks is nice,” I tell him, grinning. “But you can’t eat it.”

 

He raises an eyebrow, waiting for me to continue. And I tell him, directly and not beating around the bush, what exactly I can eat.

 

He chokes on his own breath and starts coughing.

 

“You mean it?” he manages finally.

 

“Come on. I’ll show you what I mean.”

----------------------

 

It’s sunny when I wake up in the morning. The sun is bright, waking that weird holiday feeling in me. The snow is white, untouched, lying on the ground like a downy white hide – the hide of the biggest beast in the world. It’s glimmering.

 

There’s clanking coming from the kitchen. Theo’s making coffee.

 

“Damn,” he says when I walk into the kitchen and plop down on a kitchen stool. “And I was going to serve you breakfast in bed.”

 

“Oh wow. Then it’s a good thing I woke up before you committed that deviltry. I have to wash the linen myself, you know.”

 

He laughs, and I smile. It’s a fine day.

 

We hardly finish that breakfast – the bacon is overdone, but I be damned if I say a word about it! – when the phone rings. Theo grimaces but goes to pick it.

 

“It’s for me,” he says when he hangs up. “I knew they’d get to us as soon as the storm was over. Well, job is job. One thing is good: my car can get through that snow, and once it’s done, you’ll have a driveway again.”

 

He goes to get dressed and I look out the window. Yeah, the snow lies high. If I stepped into it, I’d probably fall through up to my waist. Theo underestimated my car – it could get through it. But I’m not going to complain if he helps me a bit.

 

I stay in the kitchen, sipping on my coffee. In a while, I hear the door creak open. Then Theo walks past the window, looking way too tall. It’s because he’s walking on the snow. Short wide skis – SP’s call them ‘snow-shoes’. I have a pair, too. I’d love a pair of skis, but they are too expensive.

 

The growl of his motor is deafening even through the window pane. Soon the car roars by, slowly but surely, trampling the snow, laying down the new road. I’ll still have to do a little shoveling job afterwards, but it’s still nice of him. He stops opposite the door and gives a honk. I go to put on a coat and open the door.

 

Theo hangs out the car window. “Wish me luck, Indian boy!”

 

“Good luck, Theo.”

 

Maybe he was expecting me to mock him again, because he looks a little strange. But he gets over it in a moment, smiling. “You take care, Dean.”

 

And off he goes.

 

It’s suddenly a little lonely without him. A little empty in the house. To get myself distracted, I start working on the cuckoo clock. Lily, Jake’s granddaughter, has her birthday early in September. Jake will buy it. Or maybe I’ll give it to him for free. At times I’m awfully sentimental.

 

One bad thing about being professional at something is you can let your hands do all the work with your mind wandering off somewhere else. Those who say work is the best remedy for unwanted thinking simply don’t know their work well enough. My fingers move, doing what they should with the clock mechanism, and it doesn’t interfere with my mind. I’m contemplating Theo. No, I tell myself. No, I shouldn’t. I’m me. I’m a loner. Once a loner, always a loner. I don’t get attached to people. I don’t get used to people. Because people die on you. You can’t afford to be a wreck each time people die on you. You can’t put your defenses down. I’ve promised myself I won’t do it. I promised it to myself long ago.

 

But by then I’d already forgotten how nice it is to feel warm. Really, really warm. On the inside as well as on the outside.

 

I’m done with the clock, and it’s already evening, and Theo isn’t home. Maybe it’s good, because… I’m not sure what I’m going to do when he gets home. Ask him to stay? I will do no such thing, ever. Make him promise he will come back? Even to more romantic ears than mine, this would sound cheesy. And idiotic. Maybe I shouldn’t tell him anything at all. Maybe it’s just a mistake, a shock, intoxication, like when you don’t drink for a while and then fall off the wagon. Maybe I’ll just let him go and be glad it’s over. If he goes I will be strong again.

 

Or, maybe, I could just tell him that he is always welcome. No matter when he happens to be around.

 

It’s eight p.m., and he isn’t back. Well, maybe they are still on a search. I can just call the Townhall and find out. Yes, I think I’ll do just that. I hesitate a little. Then I pick up the phone and I’m ready to punch in the number…

 

… when I glance across the room and suddenly something catches my eye. Makes me stare. Makes me forget about the steady beeeeeeeeeeeeeeep buzzing into my ear.

 

Ritchey’s shirt and jeans. Lying on a small cabinet. Neatly folded.

 

It’s nothing, really. It must be really stupid of me. But somehow, in the shortest of moments, I understand everything. Suddenly I’m fully aware.

 

I close my eyes. I punch in the number.

 

“Yes?” says Lena’s voice on the other end of the line.

 

“It’s Dean,” I say. “Dean Ahiga. That SP guy left a couple of his things in my house. Not that I’m so deadly honest… but have they left yet?”

 

“Oh, yes. Actually, a few hours ago. They came back from the search raid at about three, and by four, they’d already left.” She giggles. “Oh come on, Dean. What did he leave? Something private? Something expensive? You sure it really was an accident?”

 

“No,” I say and I’m amazed to hear my usual irony in my own voice. “It wasn’t. I stole them. I’ve been dreaming to have a pair of stinking socks and dirty red boxers, like, forever.”

 

She laughs. I’ve always liked Lena, she’s silly but harmless, and I have nothing against her, but now, suddenly, her laughter seems so shrill to me.

 

“Okay,” I say. “Thanks.”

 

“You’re a riot, Dean,” she says, still giggling, and puts the phone down.

 

By four. At four, I was still fixing that little spring that makes the cuckoo jump out of its window. I couldn’t get it synchronized with the pendulum…

 

It’s dark in Ritchey’s room and for some reason I stand in the doorway for some time before I scrape up the courage to turn on the lights.

 

The room blinds my eyes with impeccable, morbid order. The bed is all made, the curtains on the window are insanely symmetrical, the pile of papers on the bedside table is neat and tidy.

 

There’s a note on top of the pile.

 

And a hundred dollar bill.

 

I approach the bedside table with small, cautious steps, as if it’s a beast ready to pounce. I don’t touch the note. I don’t read it. I only read the last two lines, the postscript. Theo’s handwriting is angular and uneven.

 

The money is for the pencil-box. I promised I would pay.

 

I don’t cry. Boys don’t cry. I don’t say a word. I look at the wall. There’s a still-life hanging there. Grapes and apples, and a bunch of field flowers, and apricots, and all other things I haven’t seen in years.

 

Looking at the still-life, thinking of apricots, and apples, and grapes, I take the hundred dollar bill and slowly, methodically shred it to pieces. And then to smaller pieces. And then to yet smaller ones.

 

At times people don’t die on you.

 

At times they just leave you.

 

At times they don’t even feel like they need to say good-bye.

 

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