Come In From The Cold
It'd been four weeks now. Maybe. Jaime wasn't sure anymore. He'd been working the graveyard shift at the gas station down the road when the flash-freeze happened. Flash would be a welcome sight right about now, he thought. The cold had killed or stranded too many to count, at least the whole of North America. The radio, which had been his only voice in the silence, had stopped working last week. The Scarab kept him warm enough inside, but traveling was a death sentence. The thermometer had bottomed out and shattered almost immediately. He kept the store locked up, barricading the windows for when the cold inevitably shattered them, save for a space by the door where he left his solar lights to charge during the day. Once the world around him literally froze in place, for the first time in a while, Jaime was alone. Well, almost. Only one communication had come in from the League, but it was riddled with static, and Jaime hadn't the foresight to record it, and have the Scarab try and un-garble it. He sighed, and got up to make his rounds, ensuring the store was clear, and keep some kind of routine, for his sanity if nothing else. He finished up, then headed to his makeshift fort behind the front counter. All the soft stuff he could scavenge, even a nice, fuzzy blanket he'd managed to snag from the trunk of one of many iced statues that littered the landscape. He had it fairly well, considering. His whole world rocked when there was a pounding on the door outside, pace bordering on frantic. Jaime leapt from his nest in surprise, not even composing himself before unlocking and opening the door for the frigid traveler.
"Come in from the cold!" Jaime exclaimed. The person stumbled wordlessly inside, all but collapsing past him. "You ok? What're you doing out there, have you not noticed how cold it is?" No response. Jaime figured that they were exhausted from their venture, and dragged them into the liquor room, the second warmest place in the store. Just after, a shiver that wasn't from the cold ran down his spine. He quickly fumbled for his keys, then locked the liquor room from the outside, then headed back into his nest.
Hours passed, and there was no movement, hardly even a noise. Just a little, indistinct thing. He was comfy though, so he opted to stay warm. The Scarab was going nuts, but that had been happening almost constantly since the place had frozen, so he didn't pay it any mind. The sun was sinking under the frozen horizon, so he set his lamps up, then went over and settled in for the night. The wind howled, the trees swaying in protest. Night had fallen. Before he could get settled again, though, some kind of horrific noise assaulted his senses- from inside the store. Metal screeched against metal, followed by a loud crash and glass shattering. He caught a flash of motion, just out of the light. He went over, blasters ready. The liquor room door had been torn off from the inside. The door itself was destroyed, and the stranger was gone.
- TO BE CONTINUED-