I don't own any of this Loud House belongs to Nickelodeon.
The vast snowy plains of Michigan that leads straight into Indiana is as white and slippery as the rest of the continent. The snow reached three feet, making it very hard to walk on, the air wasn't much better either as a heavy blizzard makes it very hard to see.
From a bird's perspective; you could just make out a large amount of figures all walking in one direction. The figures had their heads down from the fierce winds, as they slowly traveled through the snowy desert, this is what Lucy finally came to realize on what that vision had showed her a month ago.
The group had traveled far after leaving Royal Woods and have made several changes to themselves during the travel. Going past towns; they picked up whatever they can find, including warmer clothes which is very much needed in this cold winter, so at least they weren't traveling without protection.
Another change that only extended to the Loud family is replacing Lynn Sr's wheelchair with a sled for with this thick snow, the wheelchair just couldn't go anywhere without getting stuck. So now the father of the Louds is laying comfortably in his sled as his wife and fifth oldest daughter pushed him through the snow. Speaking of staying on top of the snow, everyone is wearing snowshoes which also definitely helps.
The group is also not alone on their travels, other groups from different towns travel in the same direction in a big migration. It wasn't exactly easy as some have gotten sick, couldn't keep up, or collapse from the cold or exhaustion. Lincoln could see the body of someone just ahead of him as he walked with Leni, getting closer to the body, he could just make out the face of Mrs. Johnson.
Lincoln wanted to stop to fully process this, but he couldn't stop as that would risk being separated from the group and in this blizzard you can easily get lost. There's also another reason why it's not a good idea to get sperated from the group, you see they were fallowed. In an ironic twist, although they don't have to worry about the Wolf Gang anymore, real wolves have started tracking the group in the aspects of new prey. They go after anyone who gets left far behind from the group or pick off on the dead, which unfortunately has fallen upon two of Lincoln's friends: Rusty and Liam.
How awful this was. He lost two of his sisters and friends, they were away from home, and they are traveling in the cold, where if one of them gets sperated from the group they either get swarmed and eaten by wolves or get lost in the blizzard. Really his whole family has changed, they were no longer loud, instead they are completely silent, no one joked, no one fought, and no one smiled. It was funny how he once thought that this was going to be a nice spring, how foolish he had been.
All he could do now is to shake his head sadly as he walked passed Mrs. Johnson. When the last members of the group passed her body , the wolves come to surround the teacher, they make sure that none are turning back to protect the corpse, seeing that no one is coming they all began to dig into the corpse.
As the family along with the rest of their group go down south, another Loud member is doing her best to survive in the bone chilling cold.
Lori is prepared however and is happily comfortable with her fur coat that she has wrapped around her body. The bite on her leg has scabbed over, leaving behind a mark which didn't hurt that much anymore, only just a few stings every now and again. Although Lori does have to admit, she does feel a tad strange, but she deduced that it probably had to do with the cold, so she'll probably have to bear with it for now, as for right now she's out hunting again.
The moose had been picked cleaned, with it serving it's purpoy Lori placed the remains a good distance away from the cave. Currently the hunting is not going so well, Lori has been trekking for what she thinks is hours and hasn't come across anything yet. She guessed that most prey items have gone off into hibernation, never the less she'll find something that will substain her.
Lori checked inside of tree stumps in hopes of finding squirrels resting inside, there were none yet, which made her to keep on moving towards some hills as perhaps there is some burrows. Lori suddenly stops just short of a hill for she has spotted something more promising; fresh footprints.
Kneeling down for a closer look, Lori saw that the footprints were large with what looked to be claws at the end. Lori guessed that the tracks belonged to a bear. This made Lori consider something, she could go after less dangerous animals, but a bear would provide more food for her. The voice in Lori's head told her not to do something so stupid and just stick to what she is doing, another, much more louder voice however told her to do it and told the rational voice put a sock in it.
The voices argued against each other, eventually the louder voice won in the argument and Lori now finds herself fallowing the bear tracks. Lori fallows the tracks in the snow very far from her usual hunting range, the tracks eventually leads her to the river where a stream of water flows by ice that stayed frozen on both sides.
Standing at the riverbank, Lori scans around for the bear. She doesn't see it, but she does see more tracks going up the river. "Must be looking for fish or something." Lori deduced before continuing on with caution for all she knew the bear could be hunting her.
The group had stopped for a rest inside of a library, the outside blizzard is just too much for the groups, so until the weather gets better and their bodies have been recharged, they are not going anywhere.
Lana stood in front of a blown open window, watching the snow fall in furry in the wind as they danced around in circles. Lana sadly thinks on how Lola would've loved watching the snow with her, or at the very least say something about how her tushy was frozen. A single tear escapes the tomboy, it slowly goes all the way down to her chin where after hanging a bit, drops down to the snow covered floor.
She couldn't believe that her twin is gone. Lola, oh how she could still see her face just before going into that fire with Scoots. Lana could also see all the times they spent together: like at their last birthday, the time they pulled the old switcheroo on their family, the time they joined the Bluebells, and when Lola even lended her princess car, so that Lana could search for Stella's bunny.
Now Lana is alone, she can no longer have that twin connection that her other siblings don't have. Her feelings began to build up over this thought, in frustration Lana grabbed some snow, formed it into a snowball and threw it out, where it disappeared into the blizzard.
It just wasn't fair! She is losing everything thanks to this stupid disaster! She lost her home, her pets, and most importantly two of her sisters! Lana hoped that she wasn't going to loose anymore of her family, for if she does, than she'll go as mad as Lola when someone disrupts her beauty sleep.
As Lana thought about her looses, near the kids area; Luan glumly sat down on a small bench. Luan looked down at her feet thinking all things negative, her chipper and clowney attitude is all but lost to her. All she wanted to do is to be alone at the moment, but when you're in a big family it's not easy to get some alone time, as Luan just found out as a shadow loomed over her.
"Hi Luan." Leni gently called to her younger sibling with a small smile. Luan looked up to her with glumly eyes that would make Lucy proud.
"I notice that you seemed upset."
"Oh really? I don't know what would've possibly caused that?" Luan sarcastically remarked.
"Because of the two sisters we loss Luan." Leni innocently said, Luan could roll her eyes from her older sister not picking up sarcasm, if she had the energy to do so.
"So in order to cheer both of us up." Leni pulls out a book that she had been hiding behind her back. "Why don't we tell some jokes." Holding out the yellow book, it turned out to be a joke book with a cartoon clown who's laughing his butt off. Luan looked at the book with no emotion for about ten seconds, then looked up at Leni. "No thanks Leni."
Leni raised an eyebrow on that, it wasn't like her sister to hold back on something funny or anything gag related. "You sure? It looks pretty funny."
"Yes, I'm sure." Luan replied with a bit of a attitude.
"But Luan-"
Luan is suddenly up on her feet and is practically nose to nose with Leni with anger plastered on her face. "For crying out loud Leni! Now or is it ever going to be a time for jokes!"
Taken by complete surprise by the fury in Luan's voice, Leni takes a couple of steps back as her sister continued on. "Just look around you Leni! We're miles away from home in a snowy wasteland with still no sun in the sky! Every plant is dead! society has fallen! We, I repeat, we lost everything! We lost two of our sisters and we don't even know what has happen to Lori! What's worse? Is that we don't even know what's going to happen to us? Even if we do make down south, what's there to say that the cold hasn't traveled all the way down there!" Luan huffs and puffs in anger after giving out such a long rant, she can only say one last thing. "The time for jokes is over."
With a big huff, Luan plops herself back down on the bench completely ignoring the sad look Leni gave.
Putting her head down, Leni slowly walks away from Luan who felt a little guilty on upsetting her, but got over it quickly as Leni needed to hear the dark truth. This wasn't some fairy tail where everything will go back to normal in the snap of a finger. No, this was a harsh reality and Leni needs to know of this, she might not like it, but it's the cold, harsh truth.
"Is it wrong for Boris to say that Boris is completely done with the darkness?" Boris question the Morticians Club as they all stood together in a corner.
"No Boris, I'm getting tired of it to." Haiku answered, the others nodded in agreement which was something that they thought they would never do, they suppose the old saying of be careful of what you wish for, turned out to be true.
"My friends." Lucy chimes in with her arms spread out over her head. "We have encountered terrible times as of lately."
"Yes, especially you Lucy." Morpheus piped up. Lucy sharply turned to him silently, but the temperature seemed to have gone more colder than outside, in response Morpheus shrunk his head down a bit with a guilty look. "Sorry"
"Anyway" Lucy continued on, "We are currently going down south in hopes of it being warmer, but I sense that our journey is going to be all for nothing."
The Morticians Club are silent and their expressions are the same, but it's clear that they were worried. "So what are we going to do?" Haiku asked.
"I have no idea my friends, but perhaps if we do make it down south. We could perhaps have our group go to the coast." Lucy continued.
"Why the cost?" Boris asked.
"I think the temperature may be bearable there, due to how close it is to the ocean." Lucy answered.
"I suppose that makes sense." Haiku said.
"Then it's decided, we'll try to get the group to head for the coast." Lucy and the others nod in agreement, then went off in separate detections in order to wait out until the group got moving again. Really going to the coast shouldn't be that big of a problem as if they kept going south, they'll eventually reach a coastline, if they get to the southern states like Texas, Louisiana, or Florida that is.
"I can't believe we lost Rusty and Liam." Zach exclaimed as he and his remaining friends stood in front of the front desk.
"Now there's only three of us." Stella sadly added. This is just horrible! The friend group is so little now, the thought of that second comic is far out of mind. Really their first comic is all but forgotten as they were either burning ashes when the Sanctuary blew or buried underneath a couple feet of snow.
Lincoln meanwhile thought about the one friend who's status is very unknown, he's just as sad for the loss of his two friends, but he's extremely worried for the status of his best friend Clyde. Lincoln could practically feel his anxiety grow even larger, for is Clyde and his Dads still alive somewhere out there?
It hurts him to not know, the worst scenario Lincoln thought up of is the McBride's skeletons buried underneath a snow pile or have completely become frozen solid. That second thought scares him more than the skeletons as Lincoln could just see them with blue or purple skin from the cold, with ice formed on their faces and body, and the worst thing would be their frozen faces that could stare out into space without any sign of life.
Lincoln hated to think of that being the McBride's fate, so he ignores it and instead has the thought of them being alive and well as they have found a warm spot that's conveniently where an antique shop stood. Lincoln ignored that this was very unlikely, he instead chooses to believe that this was the truth on what has happened to them.
"You know guys. I'm hoping that sometime in the future an alien spacecraft will appear in the sky as we're walking, beam us all up, and transport us to another habitable planet." Zach told his friends.
"You know Zach, that wouldn't be half bad." Stella admitted, she can just imagine a planet full of grassy hills, surrounded by waterfalls that filled a crystal clear lake, rainbows in a purple sky where you can see rings as Stella imagines the planet they are staying on has Saturn-like rings orbiting it. That would be a great planet to be living on, instead of earth right now.
Lynn stood by the entrance, watching the blowing snow with a cross of her arms and a deadpanned expression. Out there somewhere, the wolves that have been fallowing them are resting, waiting for one of the groups to come out and go after the ones who couldn't travel that far.
Lynn wouldn't let those fleabags make a meal out of her family, she'll fight them till the every end or until her family gets away. Honestly though, at least they were just being tracked by wolves and not other humans, for the truth was after dealing with the likes of the Wolf Gang, Lynn came to fear more on what humans can possibly do to each other, than any predator on earth.
Lynn also thinks about their journey down south, so far they had a good amount of food and water which is great, but she knew that it wouldn't last for long and that they would have to refill some time soon. But one thing Lynn feared is that they were going to become turn around in a storm as they traveled in the middle of nowhere, they could be walking around in circles until half of them collapses from exhaustion or the cold.
Until that happens however, Lynn might as well try to relax at the moment. So closing her eyes to relax, Lynn walked over to a tall bookshelf where she leans herself against it, after awhile Lynn falls into an uneasy nap.
As the family and the rest of their group rested, Lori had finally tracked down the bear.
It is a brown bear who is very skinny from the lack of food it was unable to find. The bear is currently drinking from the cold water with a few grunts from the stomach pains it is enduring.
Lori crouched down so it wouldn't see her, now that she had found her prey, it was time to plan on how to kill it. Lori thought that it shouldn't be too hard as due to it being skinny, the bear probably didn't have a lot of fight in in it, but she should still be cautious as the bear might pull a surprise on her.
Slowly, she raised up her spear, she holds it up steadily as she calculates her spear trajectory. With a puff of her breath, Lori threw the spear which lands a direct hit on the bear's shoulder. The bear let's out a cry of pain, he raised himself up a bit before crashing back down. It then turns it's head and tore the spear out of its shoulder which squirted out blood, it then throws the spear away.
Quickly Lori runs on over to where the spear is thrown and picked it up. Now alerted to her, the bear turns to face her, roaring loudly while bearing it's sharp teeth. This didn't scare Lori, instead she bared her own teeth and growled. The bear and Lori charged at each other, Lori rolls out of the way, slashing her spear at it which makes direct contact with its nose making the bear cry out in pain.
Lori rolled into a crouching position, she lunged her spear at the bear's side who dodges it, the bear and her circle each other, waiting for one another to make a move. Lori is the one that makes a move, she stepped forward intending to stab him in the head, the bear rears back to avoid the attack that hits the air, with a loud roar the bears raises itself up on its hind legs, swinging its arms forward. Lori charged at it, only to get smacked away by a powerful paw.
Lori rolled over to the river's edge, the bear slams down on all fours, roaring in rage. Feeling winded from the blow, Lori laid on the ground, she rolled to her side and saw the bear rushing at her with its mouth open. Very quickly, Lori rolled herself away just seconds before the bear's jaws snapped shut on the ground she's been laying on.
Rolling on to the ice, Lori just sat up before instantly getting pinned down by the bear, it goes down and bites on the wooden part of the spear that Lori used to block it from biting down on her face. The bear shakes as Lori held on tightly to the spear, she gets dragged forward towards the flowing water, the ice couldn't support both of them and gives in from the weight, plunging them both into the cold water.
After five seconds Lori popped up a few meters down, she quickly swims herself to the icy shore. Lori shivered from the cold, her moose coat couldn't protect her from that cold, but at least she was out of the cold water now, though she did loose her spear. Looks like she'll have to make a new one and find something else to eat, seeing how she lost the bear.
Suddenly with a splash the bear bursted out from the water, yelping in surprise Lori jumped out of the way as the bear slammed its paw on the ice. Landing a few feet away, Lori gets to her feet and turned around to see the bear climb itself out of the water.
She needed to do something quickly as its clear that the bear is extremely angry, looking back briefly, Lori decides to make a run for it just as the bear fully gets itself out of the water, it roars in anger then goes running after her. The bear is much faster than Lori, in just a few short bursts the bear is practically up to her rear with a wide open mouth.
Lori jumped to the ground, picked up a stick with a sharp end, quickly rolled on to her back as she pointed the stick out at the descending bear.
A loud roar echos through the air seconds later.
Back at the cave; the sound of something being dragged and heavy footsteps grew louder as something approaches the cave.
Lori drags the bear into her cave, it had been very hard work on dragging the corpse all the way back here as the snow has made it more harder to drag the dead weight, especially at hills that were slippery. Now she's back at her cave with a body that'll provide her with food for a couple days, not to mention on giving her a upgrade for her fur coat.
She had a couple of things to do as well such as: making that new spear to replace the one she had lost at the river, and possibly making a door for her cave as she had several unwanted critters come into her cave in the past. But first she needed a drink, as all that dragging as made her tired and thirsty.
Going up to her water supply, Lori prepares to drink, but stopped midway as for a unknown reason the water in her cupped hands made her nervous, she didn't know why as it was the same water she drank a hundred times before and she didn't have a problem with it before, yet now she does.
The nervousness overcomes her, Lori dumps the water back in the pool. She looks to the water some more and then finally left back towards the bear's body, as she walked back, Lori felt that her head began to hurt a bit. She has no idea why she felt this way or felt nervous with the water, but Lori is sure that it'll pass sometime soon.
The blizzard hasn't let up yet, which means that the group is still sheltering inside the library.
All of them have already eaten some of the food they have collected and now most of them were asleep, I say most as some are standing guard just in case those wolves decided to come in to attack. The Louds slept in the middle of the library, they are all huddled together for warmth, snoring gently as their faces looked to be at peace despite the negative feelings their emotions held.
The dreams they had however are all but peaceful, in these dreams they were either in the burning Sanctuary with demonized versions of the Wolf Gang surrounding them with guns and pitchforks. Or they are at their hideout where they have lost the fight with the gang, they are all on the ground, badly beaten as Lana helplessly watched Scoots strangles Lola until she went limp.
With all the trauma they had faced, it's no wonder why they were having these horrible nightmares, and these weren't the first ones, they've been having them ever since leaving Royal Woods. They are all the same with all them at those two locations, being beaten to death very slowly and painfully. The dreams were horrible enough to make them afraid to fall asleep, even Lucy has developed a fear for these dreams, the fear is so bad that whenever one of them awakens from the nightmares, they refused to go back to sleep.
So as the family began to toss and turn in their sleep, outside; the blizzard continues to go down in great intensity.