The Final Winter

Chapter Two

“Bugger it!” Kath cursed aloud and slapped her palms down on the supermarket’s checkout desk. She’d been two minutes away from finishing the 9pm cash-up and the building’s power had blinked out like someone had flipped a switch.

Bah! Working at this dump ten hours a day is miserable enough without having to do it in the dark. I must have the words, SHIT HAPPENS, stamped across my forehead.

“Peter!” She hollered into the darkness. “Check the fuse box, will you!”

A muffled voice from the nearby stockroom led Kath to believe her order had been received. She sighed and waited as her sight adjusted to the dark, wondering where she could find a torch or some candles (Doesn’t Aisle 6 have some?). The Fire Exit sign above the supermarket’s entrance gave off a small degree of illumination, but not enough to see her acrylic fingernails in front of her face. Kath had other senses, however, and her ears picked up the sound of footsteps echoing down the Bread & Pastries aisle.

“Who’s there?” she called out.

The person was standing close enough that the unexpected volume of their voice made Kath flinch. “It’s me,” said the voice. “Jess.”

“Jessica? You stupid girl! You gave me a fright.”

“Sorry, Kathleen. Didn’t mean to, I promise. You know why the lights are out?”

“No, but I’ve told Peter to check the fuse box.”

“Good idea. You reckon it’s just us, or the whole area?”

Kath shrugged in the dark. “How should I know? Walk out the front and see for yourself.”

“Okay,” said Jess cheerily, before wandering off in one of the gleeful dazes that Kath hated so much. Sometimes Kath was sure the girl was just out to annoy her.

Like the way she always calls me Kathleen. If it wasn’t so ridiculously hard to fire people these days, that girl would have gotten her marching orders long ago.

Jess reached the store’s main entrance with a skipping hop and her complexion became ghostly as she entered the pulsing green hue of the glowing Fire Exit sign.

Kath cleared her throat. “Well? What are you waiting for, girl?”

Jess pushed open the door and exposed the stark white night outside. Immediately a chill entered the building, rushing quickly to all corners like a horde of fleeing rats. Kath waited impatiently as Jess popped her head out of the door and looked left and right, then left and right again, before finally stepping back and pulling closed door. When the girl turned back around to face Kath, her company-supplied fleece was peppered with snow.

“The weather out there is craaaaaazeee!” said Jess. “With a capitol zee”

Kath sighed at the girl’s childish tone. “What about the lights? Are anybody else’s on? What about The Trumpet across the road?”

“No,” Jess replied. “I can’t even see the pub it’s so dark. I can’t make out Blue Rays Video Rentals or any of the other shops either.”

“Wonderful!” Kath shook her head and felt a migraine coming on. If the whole area was out then she would be forced to sit and wait for the electricity company to get off their overpaid be-hinds and do something about it.

…and God only knows how long that will take. Two minutes? Two hours?

Either way, until she could cash up Kath couldn’t set the alarms and go home. Not that she had plans, besides catching up on the episodes of Eastenders she’d recorded, but staying at a dingy council-estate mini-mart on the coldest night of the year wasn’t her idea of fun.

How did my life turn out so wrong? To think I spent four years at university… I make one little mistake and I’m condemned to a life of pointless mediocrity. Kath breathed in deeply then let the cold air out through her nostrils. What a wretched waste of intellect!

“It’ll be back on in a jiffy,” said Jess, still standing by the fire exit. “It never takes long, Kathleen. Tell you what, I’ll take a little walk over to the pub and see if anyone knows anything, okay?”

Without pausing for an answer, Jess slid out through the exit and was immediately swallowed by the shifting snow and darkness. A second later it was as if the girl had never even been there.

Kath sighed, leaned back into the torn-padding of the cashier-desk stool, and rubbed at her aching forehead. Shivers ran up and down her spine and made her think about the store’s heating. With the power off, so too would be the store’s electric fan heaters. It was Britain’s worst winter in history and she was stuck in a building with no warmth.

Just gets better! Probably why the power went off in the first place. All those lazy slobs, cosy at home in front of their fan-heater, over-taxing the grid while people like me, who have shown some commitment to work, suffer.

Well screw this, Kath decided. She’d give her manager, Mr Campbell, a call and see if there was any chance he’d allow her to cash up in the morning. She slid her fingertips along the icy surface of the shop’s counter and searched for the phone, but at first found only a stapler and some biros. Eventually the side of her hand found what it was looking for; knocking the receiver from its cradle and off of the desk. It swung on its coiled cord, jerking up and down like a bungee. After a couple of swipes at knee-level, Kath caught the handset and pulled it up to her ear. She tapped at the buttons on the phone’s cradle, waited a beat, and then tapped them some more. No dial tone. Perturbed, she placed the handset back down onto its cradle, before picking it up and trying to ring out once more.

Nothing.

“Please, for the love of God!” Kath patted down the pockets of her work shirt and located her mobile phone. She plucked it out and slid up the illuminated screen to expose the keypad. Then, from memory, she entered Mr Campbell’s number and pressed the green CALL button. She put the phone to her ear and waited.

Ten seconds passed and Kath pulled the phone away from her head to look at the display. She could barely contain her frustration when she saw NO NETWORK COVERAGE scrolled across the top of the screen.

For crying out loud. What the hell is going on tonight?

Before she could put her next thoughts in order, Kath was interrupted by a voice in the darkness. It was male. “Ms Hollister?”

The voice had a Polish twang and there was only one person at the supermarket that ever called her by surname. “Peter,” she said, more calmly than she felt. “Have you checked the fuses?”

“Yes, Ms Hollister. I need show something to you. Come.”

Speak properly, for God’s sake. If you’re going to come here then at least learn the language. And show me what exactly? Bah, I’m never going to get home at this rate!

Reluctant, Kath followed the boy down to the back of the store, ducking through the strips of clear plastic that separated the cramped warehouse from the shop floor.

“So, what is it that’s so important, Peter?”

“One moment, Ms Hollister. I will show to you.”

Peter turned a corner in the cramped warehouse and Kath stayed close behind him, lighting the way with her mobile phone. It didn’t work particularly well, but at least it illuminated the piles of over-stacked boxes she would’ve otherwise bumped into.

Kath was getting impatient. “Come on now, I’ve got to find a way to call Mr Campbell so we can all go home tonight. Unless you want to spend the night sleeping in the staff room?”

Peter stopped at the far wall and pointed upwards, just above the height of his shoulder. Kath glanced at the area a few inches away from the boy’s outstretched finger. She didn’t understand and felt her patience thin even more. “What exactly am I supposed to be looking at?”

Peter rolled his eyes in the faint glow of his phone display and then moved the light source toward the area he was trying to highlight.

Kath sighed. “The fuse box? Yes, very impressive.”

Peter rolled his eyes again and she was about to scold him for it when she spotted what he wanted her to see. It was the fuse box alright – at least it had been in a former life – but now it was a black, melted decay of wires and bubbling plastic. The green metal box that housed the circuits was untouched, but the area within looked as though it had been subjected to a hellish blaze. The acrid stench of singed rubber lingered in the cold, crisp air, but it wasn’t as strong as one would expect after an electrical fire.

“I don’t understand,” said Kath. “What could cause this?”

Peter shrugged at her. “I no sure. Fire maybe?”

“Obviously not, Peter. There hasn’t been a fire because the alarms would have gone off. Not to mention it would have spread. This place is full of cardboard and paper.”

“Blowtorch?”

Kath considered Peter’s wild suggestion, her thoughts wandering off into the dark, insidious alleyways of her mind. Could someone have really taken a welder’s torch to the fuses? Was someone lurking in the shadows intending to have their way with her in the dark? Had some hairy beast of a man been watching her for months, planning something like this? It was certainly an opportune time with all the snowfall. The police would never make it in time, even if she managed to call them. It seemed ridiculous but, for a moment, so plausible in her anxious state of mind that she actually started to believe that someone was intending to murder her. It was like something straight out of a Richard Laymon novel she’d once read by mistake, thinking it was something else. Horrible, disgusting book. Monsters in the cellar.

It wasn’t until Kath’s next thought that she considered herself ridiculous for letting her overactive imagination run away from her. “Ridiculous,” she said finally, “if it was someone with a blowtorch then how on earth did they manage to do it to the pub’s fuse box at the exact same time? They have no power across the street either. Same with Blue Rays on the corner.”

Pete shrugged and walked off.

Nothing ever seems to concern that boy; just another lazy foreigner. Someone ought to use a blowtorch on his backside! Maybe then he’d show some enthusiasm.

Suddenly alone, Kath tried to make sense of the situation. Was some deranged madman really stalking the neighbourhood, cutting off everyone’s electricity? Or was her biggest threat merely freezing to death on the coldest night of the year? Neither outcome was appealing. All Kath knew for sure was that the fuse box didn’t destroy itself and that the real cause had yet to make itself known.

She shivered; the chill in the air thickening suddenly, like a crushing, physical thing that squeezed at the gristle on her bones. There was no way she could stay there any longer. Not without power. Not in the dark. She made a decision. “Right, Peter, where are you?”

A scuffling sound from the far corner of the warehouse. “I’m here, by the beer crates.”

“Well, make sure you’re careful. You break anything and you’ll have a record of discussion before the week is out.”

Peter didn’t respond, but Kath was certain she heard the boy sigh. She enjoyed getting under people’s skin and let loose a smile as crude as the oil-slick darkness that surrounded her. Suddenly she felt more in charge, more like her usual self. “Peter,” she shouted. “Place some pallets against the back shutter. We’re going to call it a night, but we need to secure the building as best we can before we leave.”

“Okay, I will do this, but where is Jess? She can help.”

“She’s wandered off somewhere.” Kath snorted. “Least of my worries right now, so go do as I’ve said – and make sure you’re careful.”

Peter scurried away, mumbling something in Polish. At least Kath imagined it was Polish. Could be Russian or Hungarian, or whatever it is they all seemed to speak – ugly, primitive language that hurt her ears to listen to. How had Britain gotten so weak? There was a time when it had invaded third-rate nations, but now the once-great empire seemed more interested in letting them all in and keeping them fed and warm. It made her stomach turn to think her Government cared more about benefit-seeking immigrants than educated citizens like her.

Kath left the warehouse and re-entered the supermarket, happily listening to the loud scraping noises of Peter struggling to shift the pallets in the warehouse. The thought of him blindly bumping around on his own made her chuckle as she walked towards the supermarket’s exit. She leaned against the glass fire door and looked outside. There was little she could do to secure the building – not without being able to bring the electric shutter down from the awning – but she could at least lock up with her keys. She didn’t expect anyone would be desperate enough to brave the cold to steal some groceries anyway; no one walking around in snow this deep, unscrupulous or otherwise. At least she hoped so…

Yet, deep down in Kath’s gut, a dull throbbing, that was not her stomach ulcer, told her that tonight could well turn out to be a very long night.