Along this stretch of road, trees lined the highway. Brad couldn’t see the trees for all the snow piled on top of them, but they made the highway seem like it was carved into the snowscape. He rode along with the sound of his snowmobile reverberating off the walls of snow on either side. Brad tried to get on top of the snow wall on his left, but the snow was unstable underneath the ice. He punched through little air pockets so often, jolting the sled’s ride, that he was forced to return once more to the snow-covered highway. When he saw a break in the wall to the left, he decided to leave the highway and try to find the high school.
He took the can of spray paint from his jacket and marked an arrow on two of the snow-covered tree mounds before he left the road. The orange paint stood out well amidst all the white. Brad kept the can at the ready and laid down a mark on the ice every time he was forced to make a turn around an obstacle.
The map didn’t give him any clue. What finally pointed him in the right direction was the shape of the baseball diamond. Its geometrically perfect fences ended at the looming backstop and snow-mounded bleachers. Brad had to drive over to the dugout and orient himself down the third-base line before he could point to the series of lumps belonging to the high school.
Brad drove around to the front of the gym to hunt for any signs of life.
He found nothing.
Around the side of the gym, Brad made his way to the front of the building. He stood on what should have been the front lawn of the stately high school, looking up at was surely the front facade. He didn’t expect anyone to still be there—he figured anyone would have evacuated south weeks before—but he thought he would at least see signs that people had sought refuge from the snow there. He found nothing.
Brad took a side street away from the high school and found the big municipal parking lots which serviced the multitudes of summer shoppers who came to visit Freeport’s outlet stores. In town, the wind swept big snow banks against the sides of buildings and down the streets, making everything a jumble of unfamiliar shapes. Brad steered his snowmobile to the top of the highest snow hill to try to get his bearings.
He found an interesting shape which reminded him of his own house. Just downslope from his perch, Brad found a bowl of ice surrounding a cluster of chimneys. The exhaust from the chimneys had melted the falling snow enough to keep this area clear. As he rounded the bowl, he made another discovery—part of the melted snow had kept part of the building exposed. Brad found a dormer with a set of windows looking in on a business office.
Brad’s curiosity turned into excitement when he realized he’d found entry into L.L. Bean—a huge retailer of outdoor gear. He shut off his snowmobile, smashed through the window, and found himself in the penthouse office of the hiking and hunting mothership. Brad considered himself pretty well decked out, but knew he could easily upgrade all his gear in this one store.
Walled offices lined the perimeter of the floor. The center was divided up into cubicle space. Brad guessed it served as a call center at one time, but not too recently. Most of the desks had no personal items, just a dead computer, stapler, and roll of tape. Brad left his backpack at the window and led with one of his flashlights as he explored the empty floor.
In the very center, he found elevators and a door to the stairs. Brad propped open the door with a fire extinguisher and took the stairs down into the retail space. The next door was three flights down. Big windows in the staircase showed layer after layer of packed snow against the glass. Halfway down the bottom flight, he saw a layer of gray in the pristine snow, like soot had fallen from the sky along with the white flakes.
Brad pushed through the heavy door and found himself standing behind an information desk in a section dedicated to fishing and archery. He dragged a display rack of fishing line over to prop open the door and then swept his flashlight around the cavernous store. The inside of the store featured tons of exposed beams and hanging canoes and other merchandise. As Brad’s flashlight beam swung through the space, the shadows danced and spun two stories up on the tall ceiling.
Next to a stand of fishing poles, a split rail fence divided the shopping area from a nature scene with a standing black bear. It looked like pretty good taxidermy to Brad, but the dusty fur detracted from its realism.
Brad shined his light in the bear’s glass eyes and leaned on the fence—“Can you do me a favor, Baloo? Can you keep this door open for me?”
The sound of his voice in the emptiness of the place gave him a chill. These aisles expected dozens if not hundreds of milling shoppers to animate the space. Without them, it seemed haunted. Brad busied himself making a mental list of survival gear he could use and set about finding the items. The store had multiple floors and twisted and turned over a city block, but Brad only needed to hit a couple of sections to find what he needed. He passed by the giant aquarium. A few fish darted to the corner, away from his light. They fed on their dead cousins.
“Why aren’t you frozen?” Brad asked the fish behind the glass. The fish didn’t answer. They only stared back with bulging eyes and flared mouths. The fish didn’t answer him, but he found his answer as he looked for a parka in his size.
In the men’s outwear section, Brad set his flashlight on top of one of the display cases and pointed it at a stuffed bobcat which sat on a cubby case filled with jeans. Its shiny eyes weren’t looking at Brad. Worse—the eyes seemed to have just turned away every time he looked up at it, like it had been studying Brad and then looked away nonchalantly just before he caught it in the act.
He removed his gloves, goggles, and jacket, bracing himself for the cold of the icy tomb, but found the temperature moderate. It wasn’t just the lack of wind—Brad gauged that the inside of the store was at least in the forties, if not higher. He removed his cap and listened. He couldn’t hear any machinery. Brad grabbed what he needed and dressed quickly. He added a headlamp just above his goggles. He glanced back at the bobcat several times as he left its section.
Back at the stairwell, the door stood propped open by the fishing line rack.
“Thanks, bear,” he said. “One more favor? If you see a bobcat, try to slow him down until I get out of here?”
Brad glanced back in that direction as he spoke. His headlamp reflected on some shiny object at the far end of the store and Brad imagined the bobcat crouched there, waiting for the right moment to sprint after him. Brad moved the display and let the door swing shut behind him. It clicked as it closed, but not before Brad heard some sliding noise, like claws on a tile floor. His new clothes were too well insulated for the store. Sweat stood out on his brow and he unzipped several layers while he pounded up the stairs.
At the top of the stairs he burst through the door and kicked aside the fire extinguisher. He had a moment of panic when he couldn’t remember where he’d come in. He’d gotten turned around during his exploration and expected the window in the wrong direction. He found it again by covering his headlamp and shutting off his flashlight. Brad jogged for the faint glow of sunlight through snow which marked the exit.
The door to the stairwell clicked shut.
Brad turned and braced himself for a bobcat attack. There was nothing there. He climbed out through the window and felt more comfortable when he mounted his snowmobile and started the engine. Brad drove back up to the top of the building to scan for the best direction to get back to the highway. He initially intended to head back to the high school so he could backtrack to where he’d left the highway. With his new stolen binoculars, he picked out one of the dashes of orange paint he’d left to mark his trail.