She heard a muffled sound from above and behind her. She turned to look up at Tony, up his stomach and at his bemused mouth. This time, the wind seceded enough so she could decipher exactly what he was saying about Winnie: “What a fucking twit. I guess there’s something to be said for survival of the fittest.”
Annie suddenly felt a degree or two colder.
Part II- STRANGERS IN THE COLD
Chapter One
Paulie wasn’t sure what to think of the unconscious man on their couch. All through the morning, Paulie kept circling him, looking at the man’s serene face, where he scrutinized every pore. The stranger had lurched back to life enough to open his eyes, to peer into their house, but he hadn’t shown a sign of life since. Christian wondered if that was what they called the “death lurch,” like when the villain pops back to life at the end of a horror movie, just to deliver the audience one more scare before the credits roll.
Soon after they dragged him through the window, Christian commanded Paulie to go into the living room and play with his toys. The last thing he needed was for his son to see a dead man.
Thankfully, the stranger had a pulse, but just barely. Christian hadn’t taken a proper pulse in a decade or more, but he still had the general gist of it. Beyond the pulse, there was a slow, laborious breathing that slipped free of the man’s chest. He was alive, but he might not last much longer. The chill of the man’s bones could be felt all the way through his layers of iced over garments. Christian went right to work pulling off the outer layer, worried that he might thaw out a bit and then catch pneumonia from the dampness. He almost laughed at this idea—pneumonia was the least of this poor bastard’s problems.
The man’s shoulder appeared to be bleeding. A red, crystallized patch on his undershirt indicated something had stabbed him. He cleaned up the wound the best he could, his hands shivering the whole time as he examined it. Christian put a thick gauze pad over the wound. It looked awful, but it certainly wasn’t fatal, as long as it didn’t get infected. Once he had the wound temporarily addressed, he bundled the man in a heavy sweatshirt from his closet, as well as a pair of gray sweatpants.
After he found some more auxiliary blankets in the closet, he wrapped the man up tight. He looked like an Arctic mummy. There was little more Christian could do than thaw the fellow out, which was a difficult enough task in a heatless house. The morning had warmed up just a bit, to about ten degrees outside, but that was considered a warm spell these days.
He had dragged the man down the stairs, one step at a time, hoping not to bump his head hard enough to give a concussion on top of his other ailments. With a bit of muscle that Christian didn’t even realize he possessed, he leveraged the man up on to the longer of their two couches.
Christian now observed the shallow breathing, tightened up the blanket, and took a step back, studying their unexpected houseguest. The man had thinning black hair, swirling about the top of his head like a raging tornado, frozen in place by the deep freeze. He wasn’t wearing a hat or gloves, which seemed odd enough considering all the layers of clothing he had. How did one go about bundling up so much, but forgetting to find a hat or gloves? There was something off about that, but Christian displaced it from his mind.
His nose looked like it had been broken once or twice in his life. Maybe a former boxer or an angry drunk. It was a bit crooked, but rugged, with a bit of that ruddy Irish tone. Christian would have put his age somewhere around his mid-fifties. The man was certainly quite a bit older than he, but not a senior citizen by any means. There were streaks of gray in his dark swirls of hair, but not enough to warrant an AARP card.
And the boots. The man was wearing brown leather cowboy boots, emblazoned with a bucking bronco and a western sunset on the sides. Even with all the icy frost that covered them, Christian could smell the pungent aroma of the boots; they were well oiled and taken care of, probably a point of pride with this man. They looked authentic enough that Christian was surprised they didn’t have spurs on them.
The couch rustled as the man turned over a bit, seemingly of his own free will. Not dead yet, are you? Thought Christian.
“He cold,” said Paulie.
Christian nodded. “He is. But it’s warmer in here than out there, right?”
Paulie looked up to his father. The boy was shivering, clutching his arms close to his body. He nodded in response, though the child’s telling eyes completely disagreed with the sentiment.
“Like S.A.?” asked Paulie, a twang of distress creeping into his voice.
S.A. stood for Spirited Apparition, and he was a chinchilla that Annie had acquired in her college years. The strange little buggers tended to live upwards of twenty years. Part squirrel, part rabbit, part guinea pig. Christian didn’t know what to think of the animal when they had first started dating, especially when Annie would dump a mineral dust inside of S.A.’s cage; the critter would spin in circles, coating his soft fur in it. One of the oddest things Christian could ever remember seeing, even odder than air-conditioned doghouses.
In October, S.A. had died after fifteen years of life. Christian came home to find that Annie had moved the cage out into the garage, so that Paulie wouldn’t see it. She wasn’t sure what to tell their son, being that it was the first time she ever had to tell her child that something he loved was D-E-A-D. So she let Christian ease into it with the old he-was-sick, he’s-in-a-better-place, he’s-gone-but-he-loved-you routine. Confused by the conversation, Paulie had sprinted for the basement steps, where they kept S.A. in his perpetually rattling cage. Finding that the cage was gone, he turned to look at his mother, and then his father, and then back at his mother. “He died, honey,” Annie had said.
Paulie had lost it.
Christian could still remember the feeling of seeing his boy in pain for the first time, of knowing that none of this world is permanent. That truth is a terrible one, no matter what the age. It was as if somebody had ripped Christian’s heart out and fed it to him.
And after the initial shock that he would never see his furry pet again, Paulie started asking questions like, “S.A. at grandma’s house?” or “S.A. in space?” The responses became more and more difficult to formulate. Christian wanted to give his son an ounce of hope, but also a sense of reality.
Before bed that evening, Christian had explained that even though S.A. was gone, he’d always be able to think about him, that Paulie’s furry comrade would always be in his heart.
At this, Paulie furrowed his brow, looking down at himself. “S.A.’s in my chest?”
“No,” said Christian. He couldn’t help but laugh at this recollection in this strange moment, even with the half-dead, half frozen guy sprawled out on his couch.
The man stirred again, coughing a raspy mist into the air. He sounded like his lungs were crystallizing, which in all likelihood, they were. “Gonna die, Daddah? Like S.A.?” Paulie asked, tears welling up in his eyes. Christian was just grateful that it wasn’t cold enough to freeze those tears.
“Not if I can help it,” said Christian, knowing that if the weather didn’t break soon, Paulie would be witnessing a lot more dead bodies before he eventually lost his own life. Christian’s stomach wrenched at the thought, throwing out a silent prayer that this insanity would end soon. “Let’s leave him be,” he said, patting his son on the shoulder.
He wondered where Annie was, and if she was making any progress like she’d hoped. She could be dead by now, he thought, picturing himself dragging her body in through the upstairs window as his next trick. Stretching her out on the carpet while he begged her corpse to awaken, all while Paulie screamed bloody hell in the background, watching his father pump on her chest in an attempt at resuscitation, cursing this cock-sucking Ice Age and all the hell that it brought to their doorstep.