Chapter Two

Alphonse was waiting for them there, smoking a cigarette with the guard, the mustached man had a grin splitting his lips, and a bundle under one arm.

"Ahh." Alphonse shot a look to Tim and Roman walking up the stairs and took one last long drag of his cigarette before stomping it out "There you two are, ready to get going?"

He fished his own gas mask from a pouch on his belt and pulled it on over his shaved skull.

"As ready as we'll ever be, did you bring a tool kit?" Roman rubbed his hands together then pulled on a pair of leather gloves.

"Just like you asked for baby," the old Army veteran grinned, handing Roman a leather sheath with the tools he needed buckled tightly inside it, "my own personal one. You've been warned."

Tim used the break during the exchange to study Alphonse a little more closely, through his gas mask he could make out the faint lines of scars covering his face, the largest running left of his right eye and straight down his face to his chin. He wore camouflage fatigues, faded US Army woodland, and a pair of cracking combat boots. Instead of the web gear afforded the guards at the Stations expense, he had invested in a tactical vest, seemingly hand-made somewhere in the subway, it was dark green and thickly padded, with dozens of pouches loaded with equipment similar to Roman's, or Tim's.

Alphonse held a finger up, asking the pair for another moment, and the unwrapped the bundle under his arm in one swift motion, a sleek and compact machine pistol lay beneath. It looked factory fresh, except for the obviously modified barrel, which was about as long as a Kalashnikov's, it had a plastic fore grip mounted as far forward as possible, and the slender horn magazines seemed to slip into its pistol grip. A powerful flashlight was also attached to the underside of the barrel, it seemed like it had been braise welded into place, in a position where Alphonse could still unscrew the cap and change the batteries.

Alphonse flicked the light on and off a couple of times, satisfied that the batteries did not need changing, he turned to Tim and frowned. "Your awfully quiet." "I'm awfully cold." Tim replied, stomping his feet and watching his breath mist through his gas mask's filter. Alphonse nodded enthusiastically. "Très bon. Laisse arrivent là-bas et abattent les bâtards."

Roman smiled but Tim messed up his face over the strange words. He knew it was French... But the language was nearly dead, there couldn't be more than a hundred people in the subway who still spoke it, and this strange, witty man was one? Just a drop in the sea of peculiar.

"I uh... I didn't know you were from Quebec..." Tim said, shrugging his AK from his shoulder and following Alphonse, who gave the guard he had been talking to a friendly bump on the fist, to the heavy welded door he had stood watch over the night before.

"Good guess." Alphonse said, crouching at the heavy steel rod they used to lock the door into place, and grabbing the handle at its base, pulling on it with a grunt."I just paid attention in high school."

Tim gave Alphonse a hand and pushed up on the second handle at the top, the rod started to budge, and then it gave, sliding easily up, then to the left, the rod rotating pulled three thinner steel bars from across the door, unlocking it.

Alphonse gave Tim a nod and then placed a hand on the heavy rail which, in a moment, he would use to open the door to the surface.

Tim, Roman and the guard, who Tim just couldn't quite remember the name of, backed up a few paces and trained their weapons at the door.

Tim held his breath on instinct.

Alphonse threw his weight backward, and the door swung open.

Snow blew in through the door as they hurried out, the guard shouted one last goodbye as Alphonse pulled the door closed from the outside, and as Tim heard the bars go into place into their lugs, a feeling of uneasiness enveloped him.

"Lets book... Cmon!"

Alphonse pulled his machine pistol to his chest and took off to the left, covering the forty or fifty feet in a couple of seconds with Roman and Tim close behind, puffs of white powder being thrown in their wake. The trio leapt the low, shattered wall of what used to be a pharmacy, and held up for a moment. Peeking from behind a pock-marked column, he could just make out the faint glow of the Christmas lights they had strung up on the top floor of the apartment building, now about a hundred yards away.

Alphonse took his helmet off for a moment, pulled his hood up, and returned his helmet to its resting place on his head. The wind was strong and cut through clothes like a dagger, Tim's own ears were like ice blocks hanging off his head, and they had only been outside for a matter of moments. He cursed silently to himself and rubbed his ears uselessly through his own hood.

Alphonse motioned for Roman and Tim to wait, and he ran to where the pharmacies checkout would have been, Tim pulled his head from around the column, and waited for Alphonse to return.

The wind was nearly loud enough to drown out a man shouting at the top of his lungs, so there was no chatter, Roman watched the front of the store and Tim peered the way they came, back toward Royal York, half hidden by the eddies of snow that came with the wind.

They both froze solid when they heard the first howl, which was quickly followed by a second.

Alphonse appeared a second later, he motioned for the two to follow him, and they made their way to the front of the store. The building, the apartment, was only fifty feet away now, the lights on the top floor shone a little more brightly through the snow, which had now picked up, and Tim couldn't help but want to be inside the building, and off of these streets, if you could still call them that.

The asphalt was cracked, the huge fissures going down for dozens of meters, and the junked remnants of cars, trucks, vans and a few military vehicles had collected in them, half buried themselves by twenty years on snowfall.

All the roads, every single one, was like that now, a few were reasonably usable provided the weather wasn't so bad, and you could pick your way through the mounds of rubble, pieces of destroyed buildings and cars that had been fortunate enough for not spill down into the fissures.

But the weather was always bad, so few tried.

Alphonse crouched behind the checkout and waved Tim over to him, then pointed at the door of the apartment across the street, telling him to move for it.

Tim did not argue, orders weren't his to argue with, and so he pulled the magazine out of his rifle, checked it one last time, and vaulted the low wall and stepped onto the shattered remnants of Bloor Street.

More howls, farther away, to the left. Tim looked over his shoulder to Alphonse, who was to busy craning his neck to get his eyes on what was making the noise. Howls on the surface were nothing to worry about normally, the wind, wild dogs, any number of things howled.

But these were deep, guttural howls, something big, and close.

Tim hugged his rifle to his chest and zig-zagged across the road, his eyes watching the windows of the building as he ran at the fissure dividing the street and leapt across, landing heavily.

Puffs of snow flew from beneath his boots as he found purchase and kept running. His breathing got heavier and he cursed the sweat dripping into his eyes that he couldn't, for the life of him, wipe away. He ran around the corner and waited beside the doorway to the apartment for Roman and Alphonse. They joined him a couple of seconds later and Alphonse lead the trio into the lobby. They didn't pause to survey the lobby, passing through and directly to the stairwell. They climbed the six stories in as many minutes, and stopped at the top for a few seconds to catch their breath. The staircase was covered in a layer of ice two inches thick and sections of it were ready to crumble. It was a perilous, tiring climb.

"You okay?" Tim yelled into Romans ear, he himself was exhausted and dreaded the climb down.

"I'm peachy. Peachy!" The man yelled back, his voice just barely reaching him through the gasmask.

Tim stood and took a few more deep breaths before he switched on his flashlight and took a few long steps into the hallway. He stalked slowly forward, breathing heavily and swinging his rifle left and right made him feel much better, so he did that as much as he could walking the fifty feet to the room they needed to be in.

They got there quickly despite Tim's dramatics, Alphonse pushed open the door as quietly as he could and stuck the muzzle of his machine pistol through the crack, stepping through slowly and checking the room as he did. He waved Roman in, then Tim.

There was a huge portion of the wall torn out here, the roof above had collapsed as well and it was the perfect place for the antenna. The only downside was that is was across the street from the station and there was no way the room, having been reinforced with sandbags in the windows and a barrel dragged up the stairs for lighting fires in, could be manned round the clock.

So they had to send groups up to repair it, to keep is broadcasting, and to tidy up the place once in a while.

Alphonse closed the door slowly and walked over to the gash in the wall, peering at the eddies of snow swirling outside, turning left and checking the kitchen and bedrooms. Roman motioned for Tim to check the other rooms of the apartment, and pointed his shotgun at the front door, waiting to know the place was secure. Tim nudged open the door of what used to be a bedroom. A mattress leaned against each window, propped up by some timber beams that drooped and bent as if the two swollen mattresses weighed a metric tonne.

Tim left the door ajar and checked the only other room in the hallway, opening the door to the tiny bathroom. A bucket had replaced the toilet, which had disappeared inexplicably a decade before.
Tim lowered his rifle, turned slowly and walked back to the living room. Alphonse was already there with Roman, looking over his shoulder at the transmitter, the door was closed, and a chair – which by the look of it, was on its last legs – was wedged between the door nob and the floor.

He trudged passed the two huddled men and pulled a tarp covered in a half-foot of snow from over a pile of fire wood and tinder. He pulled an armload from the floor and threw it into the bottom of the barrel in the center of the room, striking a match after pouring in a little gas. The room warmed up a bit, and Tim couldn't help but admire the snow squall that was picking up.

That's when they all heard the shots.
And then the howls.

Alphonse was on his feet in an instant.
The three of them craned their necks from the window, peering through the snow to try to find where the fighting was.
He half-saw two figures though the eddies; both swaddled in greatcoats, bowl helmets chipped and slashed, one dragging the other through the snow. A trail of bright red blood in his wake.

And then he saw the polewolves.

There were only six, but that was more than enough. They slowly followed the pair, edging closer until the standing traveller levelled his rifle at them and a long, booming series of shots sent another yelping back into the pack.

Tim's eyes widened. A tough mother was down there fighting for his life. One of the wolves had tried to surprise him, leaping at him from behind and slashing at him with his dew-claws. The great-coated figure dropped his compatriots writhing form and fell flat to the ground, narrowly missing being beheaded by the twelve-inch talons. The polewolf landed heavily and snapped its jaws, bile pouring from its maw in anticipation of its next meal. The man simply aimed at the beast and filled it with lead as he stood. Yelping and howling as it shuddered with each impact, he fired from the hip and charged it, the serrated bayonet on his rifle slammed downward and into the skull of the creature.
It wailed, and was dead.
Tim had thought he had seen a serrated bayonet, and without a second thought had torn the chair from the door and sprinted towards the stairwell. That was Allison.
So the man who was bleeding must have been his Father.

Alphonse was the second to follow him, then Roman, the trio made it down the stairs in a record time. The sounds of a battle they were powerless to assist in driving them forward like an avenging spirit.
Tim's blood boiled as he practically threw himself through the door of the apartment building that only a few minutes ago he had clambered up. His father was lying there, bleeding. A pack of monstrosities waited to pick him apart.

He bit down on his teeth so hard he could have sworn he felt one crack.

All he had in the world was lying on that street, his lifeblood pumping from him and staining the snow, threatening to be entombed forever out here and forgotten amidst an endless snowfall.

He rounded the corner of what used to be a Rogers video store and raised his rifle, the closest of the things was a few dozen meters away, and he smiled for what felt like the first time as he felt the Kalash buck wildly in his arms, puffs of snow being carried away by the wind where he missed, and being stained with the abominations almost black blood to mark where his aim was true.

Alphonse was close behind him and he heard Romans shotgun crack, decapitating another of the things before the other three could react.

The remaining polewolves went on their hind, stilt-like legs and bellowed out a challenge to the sky, baying and panting and by the look in their bulbous, black eyes, hungry.
The largest had black, course skin the texture of a badly burnt steak, who shrugged off the rounds Allison poured into its flank as she dragged Tim's father around the corner and towards Royal York.
Get him home girly. Tim thought to himself with a grin, the bloodlust taking him now. He reloaded his rifle and pulled his own spike bayonet from its sheath on his leg. "Tim!" Alphonse bellowed, looking down the street and to their left. There, two hundred or so meters away, was the rest of the pack, at least thirty of them, bigger, and more grizzled than even the Alpha of this group.

Tim's mind was shockingly clear. All boys grow up in the shadow of his father, and Allen Lars had a shadow like no other man. He had instilled in him a sense of duty and pride in his work, a ethos of no retreat, no surrender, give the enemy no ground.

To get off of this street was to kill his father, to leave was to let a pack of polewolves right onto the doorstep of his home. Allison would get there, rally the guard, and come back all guns blazing.

The three of them would have to survive, simple as that.

Alphonse wore a look of calm under his mask that unnerved even Tim. It was like all this was nothing to the older veteran, staring death in the face may as well have been an every day occurence.
Roman loaded another shell into the barrel he had fired and took a bead at the trio a few yards away. Tim could hear him pray in Czech, his voice shaking. Alphonse nudged his arm and drew a smiley face in the air. They were closer now, they tramping of their feet shook the ground beneath them and the three sitting across the street took their turn to pounce. Romans shotgun boomed, there was a sound like cloth ripping as Alphonse opened up. The leering, roaring mass of beasts were upon them, and Tim's mind went blank.