The Winter Tyrant-Chapter 21: A World So Cold

Katherine sat beneath a ruined overpass. What remained of its structure blocked the snowfall, offering brief reprieve from the blizzard that had frozen the world over.

She had walked for days since leaving the hospital behind; abandoning it to its fate. Subsisting only on what supplies she had managed to carry with her.

If she hadn’t found shelter each night, she would have perished long ago, even beneath her heavy layers.

A small fire burned before her, and she held her hands over its weak flames. It was pitiful, and fragile. Yet it was enough to keep the cold from settling too deeply into her bones.

She wasn’t a wilderness survival expert. But magazines burned when touched to a lighter’s flame, and she had been fortunate enough to scavenge kindling from a nearby gas station.

If the building hadn’t already been raided, its windows shattered, snow would have sealed it shut entirely instead of drifting through its hollow interior.

Sitting beneath the overpass, she thought back to all she had witnessed in her slow march to nowhere in particular.

Collapsed bridges and highways brought down by the combined weight of snow and abandoned vehicles, entombed where they had stalled.

Raided stores stripped bare, a pharmacy with its glass blown out and shelves overturned.

And bodies... Not scattered in chaos, just still; frozen where they had fallen.

She had known, during those first two weeks, that the hospital had been overwhelmed. Patients flooding in faster than they could be triaged.

But she had never wanted to believe they were only seeing a fraction of what was happening beyond its walls.

Whatever happened to the urban center of the city she called home, it had been swift, and violent.

Rioting was inevitable, under such dire circumstance; but where were the police cruisers? Where were the barricades? Where was the National Guard convoy that should have come roaring down the highway?

It had been over two weeks since the first snow fell. Days since she abandoned her post. And in all that time, she had not seen another living soul.

The power grid was gone. And the infrastructure it supported was either left to decay... or collapsing under its own weight.

Her breath formed a thick white plume as she pulled down her scarf and exhaled into her hands above the fire.

Her voice felt foreign in the silence.

"I can’t be the only one left... can I?"

It was just after she said this that Katherine heard an unnatural sound in the distance.

At first it was faint, muffled beneath the wind. Then it grew. The roar of engines, not one, not two, but dozens.

She knew well enough that she could not hesitate. She swiftly donned her gloves on, pulled her scarf tight, and buried the fire beneath packed snow before slipping behind a mound of shattered concrete, pressing herself into shadow.

The engines did not pass like she had hoped, instead they drew closer. Headlights swept across the ruined overpass, beams cutting through drifting snow.

Then, almost at once, the engines fell silent. The stillness that followed felt heavier than the roar. And then she heard it. The first human voice since she left the hospital.

"Where the hell are they? They should’ve been here by now."

The voice was deep, and impatient.

Another answered, calmer.

"They’ll be here."

As if summoned, more engines approached from the distance, fewer this time. They rolled to a stop above the overpass.

Katherine dared to lift her head slightly. Men dismounted in clusters, they weren’t uniform.

Some wore snow-dusted hunting camouflage, the kind meant for the tail end of deer season, when frost clung to bare branches. Others wore insulated work jackets and standard winter gear.

A few had tactical vests thrown over their mismatched layers, ill-fitted and clearly scavenged.

None of it looked coordinated, but all of it looked used.

"Sorry for the wait," one of the late arrivals said. "We were slightly off schedule after hearing gunshots two days ago on the outskirts. A suburban development called Paradise Falls."

The impatient man shot him a sharp look.

"So? Why would that slow you down? It’s not like they were shooting at you."

The air seemed to tighten as the late arrival clarified with two simple words.

"Automatic fire."

Automatic... The word echoed in Katherine’s mind. The National Guard? Had they finally deployed? But why the outskirts? Why a suburban development?

Her thoughts fractured as the impatient man reached into the sled his snowmobile was towing and withdrew what looked unmistakably like a military-pattern rifle.

"Automatic fire, huh?" he muttered. "Good thing we won’t be the only ones."

The late arrival’s eyes lingered on the weapon, his brow tightening at the selector’s position.

"Where did you get that?"

The main host broke into low laughter.

"We hit a National Guard armory three days ago without a shot being fired. It was a Ghost town. Wherever they went, they took the bulk of their gear with them. All that was left were loose parts."

He gave the rifle a small shake.

"Turns out that was enough."

The National Guard was gone. Then who was at Paradise Falls? But before Katherine could piece it all together another voice cut in.

"Still... we shouldn’t rush this. If they’re that well-armed, it would be wise to scout first. We should probe their defenses, and plan an assault properly. We can’t just roll in and pillage this community it like we did the others."

The group quieted as another man stepped forward, no one interrupted him.

"Agreed. Charging blind only works when you know they can’t hit back. If they’ve got automatic fire, they’ve got capability. We will set up a base camp beyond Paradise Falls. Scouts will move first, and we will only attack once we fully understand what we’re up against."

He glanced toward the treelined.

"We’ll move out after we have refueled and rearmed."

Katherine remained perfectly still long after the engines restarted.

Survivors weren’t just surviving, they were organizing. And some of them had turned to predation.

The old world was gone, and the government had vanished with it.

And one truth settled in her mind with the same finality as the snow around her: She would not survive this new world alone.