When Winter Comes | Book 6 | Winter Comes Read online

  Winter Comes

  When Winter Comes, Ep. 6

  Daniel Willcocks

  Other titles by Daniel Willcocks

  The Rot Series (with Luke Kondor)

  They Rot (Book 1)

  They Remain (Book 2)

  They Ruin (coming soon)

  Keep My Bones

  The Caitlin Chronicles (with Michael Anderle)

  (1) Dawn of Chaos

  (2) Into the Fire

  (3) Hunting the Broken

  (4) The City Revolts

  (5) Chasing the Cure

  Other Works

  The Other Side: A Horror Anthology

  Twisted: A Collection of Dark Tales

  The Mark of the Damned

  Sins of Smoke

  Keep up-to-date at

  www.danielwillcocks.com

  Copyright © 2020 by Devil’s Rock Publishing Ltd.

  First published in Great Britain in 2020

  All rights reserved.

  https://www.devilsrockpublishing.com/

  All work remains the property of the author and may be used by themselves or with their express permissions in any way that they deem appropriate with no limitations.

  No part of this publication may be produced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, not be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover or print other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A special thanks to my patrons

  To each and every one of my patrons, I truly appreciate your ongoing support.

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  A special thanks to my ARC reader team

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  Your encouragement and kind words not only help make sure that this book is a success, but keeps me going on the nights when the words drip like treacle and the story evades me.

  Contents

  1. Denridge Hills

  2. Cody Trebeck

  3. Alex Goins

  4. Kyle Samson

  5. Tori Asplin

  6. Cody Trebeck

  7. Sophie Pearce

  8. Cody Trebeck

  9. Alex Goins

  10. Tori Asplin

  11. Cody Trebeck

  12. Tori Asplin

  13. Sophie Pearce

  14. Oscar Oslow

  15. Tori Asplin

  16. Oscar Oslow

  17. Sophie Pearce

  18. Alex Goins

  19. Cody Trebeck

  20. Oscar Oslow

  21. Alex Goins

  22. Alice Bowman

  Epilogue

  Author Notes

  Become a darksider

  The Rot

  About the Author

  Devil’s Rock Publishing

  Other titles by Daniel Willcocks

  1

  Denridge Hills

  The world took a slow breath. Raging clouds halted their assault for a precious few moments, slowing to a soft flurry in apprehension of all that was to follow. The tiny town of Denridge Hills counted their dead, wept, and barricaded themselves inside.

  The ravaged town shook, gently at first. Townsfolk who were quick to respond to the sudden threat of the night staggered about in their houses, cleaning up the mess made by the raiders, the air thick with gunpowder and the iron scent of blood. Windows were shattered, sheets were torn, living rooms and kitchens and bedrooms were overturned, the delicate items of luxury and memory laying in pieces on the floors. Trinkets and treasures of loved ones, now nothing more than shards and fragments.

  Few remained in their beds beyond those who had been slaughtered where they lay. Heavy pieces of furniture stood in front of gaping holes, trying to grant the citizens the grace of warmth and protection from the combined efforts of the storm and the wendigos. Dark creatures flitted about excitedly, running through the streets and darting from house to house as squeals and cries of delight rang through the air. Somewhere along Trampton Lane the cries of an abandoned child called for attention, the infant’s mother lying dead at his crib side, his father trapped in a cocoon of destruction as the desperate reports from his shotgun, coupled with the wendigos’ fury, caved in the ceiling and trapped him beneath the thick timber beams.

  A shot rang out.

  Another would follow soon.

  In the Emerson’s family home, a congregation collected, built up of survivors from the onslaught. Windows and doors were boarded, peepholes left between planks of wood for the sentries to peep through into the external world of white. Their collective body warmth was a gift little appreciated as the vulnerable and the terrified shivered in fear. Barney Emerson—the eldest of the three Emerson brothers—stood upon an upturned pail and bellowed his rallying cry, disappointed when it met a tepid response from the others. He wanted scout patrols to set forth into the storm and gather survivors. Paul and Garrett Emerson argued that it was too soon. The only thing waiting beyond their door was death.

  A gunshot took their attention before they could argue further.

  Half a mile away, Daisy Crawley gathered the shattered pieces of her collection of ornamental quartz, her top stained with splatters of blood. Her mother stood by her bedroom door, firing hushed whispers of annoyance as the frenzied teenager sobbed and clattered about. Downstairs dark things moved in the shadows and made themselves known with indelicate passage. Daisy and Francine would be lucky to last the next few minutes, let alone the night.

  Officer Turner Highgarde, the only policeman working in the office that night, fought against the doors of the station, trying to escape. Great drifts of snow closed around the building, and though the wendigo tramped across the roofs and tried to enter, even they found themselves struggling to break inside and snatch their prize. Officer Highgarde shivered in the frozen office, papers scattered about the place, coffee soaking into the pages of his latest case filings from where he had awoken sharply at the animalistic cries of the wendigo. A dark stain on his shirt matched the papers.

  Shots fired. Four, five, six.

  Turner had sprinted through the dark, closer to the sound of their invasion. Reaching the farthest office, he saw them. Dark, famished hands reaching inside, black in colour, clawing at the air, mouths and tongues darting hungrily between the iron poles. Those at the front were pressed forward by their kin until their cheeks scraped the metal and left rough patches of dead, frozen skin behind.

  Seven, eight, nine shots, and three more bodies were added to the death toll. Officer Highgarde shouted as he fired, profanities his wife would have reprimanded him for, if he could believe that she was still alive. But she wasn’t there, and he was here. Alone. A tear trailed down his cheeks as thoughts of her topaz eyes overwrote the chaos before him. Praying that he’d get a chance to see their pools of beauty again before the night was over.

  The ground rumbled, thunder coming in a direction that wasn’t the sky. The vibrations travelled up his legs. The wendigos
turned their head, pausing their attack for a brief moment, giving him a chance to fire another dozen rounds before reaching for a fresh magazine to reload.

  Dorris Hackman, Denridge’s eldest citizen, found herself swaddled in blankets, her misty eyes staring into nowhere as her family surrounded her and tried to keep her safe. Though their own, personal wendigo attack had ended an hour or so ago (the Hackman’s only losing three of their kin), they were reticent to lower their guard given the shrieks, screaming, and gunshots in the distance. Sally, Dorris’ fifty-two-year-old granddaughter, drank from a carton of orange juice, still shivering from the memory of the attack and the cold that followed. Sally’s husband, Felix Littlestowe, worked on keeping the fire going, the whole room lit in the wavering orange glow of their burning books and scraps of stray timber. A leg from an old coffee table stuck out from the flames, the blackening page of a James Patterson novel curling and erupting into ash and smoke.

  There were no firearms in this band of survivors. The firearms went with the hunters, and the hunters were yet to return. Machetes and carving knives were their weapons of choice, and it showed in the litter of body parts that had been brushed to the side of the room. Dark shadows of forgotten limbs that were already beginning to smell and would draw the occasional glance form each of them in turn. ‘Out of sight, out of mind,’ as Dorris would often say. Then again, Dorris was old now, and a lot of what she said didn’t make too much sense.

  When the third rumble came, there was no question that the ground shook with it. Denridge had never known an earthquake of this magnitude and, judging by the briefness of its activity, they would never see another like this. The vibrations shook the walls. Beams and doorways creaked and groaned. Items escaped their shelves and cupboards and shattered on the floor. Drinks spilled. Family and friends hugged each other for stability, whispering silent prayers.

  The dead rolled.

  And then came the monstrous finale of this chaotic symphony. The long, howling note coming from some other world, drowning out what remained of the brief recess in the storm. Windows rattled in their frames. The remaining wendigo turned their heads, frozen where they stood. The note not unlike the rallying cry of a Viking horn put through a festival speaker until distortion broke its purity. A note of pain and wonder and fear and danger and anger and frustration and…

  …and then it was gone.

  For a moment, the world was silent. The world was still. The fighting stopped. Both human and wendigo ceased. For a blissful few moments, there was something alike to peace.

  The wendigo turned to the forest. They reared their heads to the sky and belted their shrill cries. A dozen more shots fired from the survivors, then the wendigos ran, arms pumping, leaving barely an imprint on the snow as they collectively sped off in the same direction.

  Something was calling them back. Something was calling them home.

  2

  Cody Trebeck

  The floor moved beneath Cody. Something wet and cold licked his face. He reached out blindly, attempting to stifle the eager white dog that demanded his attention. Kazu… That was his name. Kazu the husky. The husky that belonged to…

  Cody sat up sharply, memories flooding back in a single, sudden wave. His back was wet. It was painful to move. What little skin remained exposed on his face hurt, and as he glanced at the tip of his nose he could see the blackness where the pinkness should have been, his skin succumbing, at last, to the frostbite he’d tried so hard to fight off.

  And there was the sky, clouds rolling like angry smoke billowing in the heavens above. Snow lazily floated around him, landing on his cheeks, his eyelids, his lips. He was outside.

  Outside…

  Outside? Where was the…

  Cody searched around and saw no sign of the brief house of succour he had inhabited before he had awoken. There was nothing at all, no imprint in the snow, no evidence of the frozen bricks that built up in circles until the dome had formed, no proof that a fire had once blazed and filled the igloo with smoke.

  There was nothing. Only white, again.

  But he had seen it, hadn’t he? He had been there, inside the igloo with… He put a hand to his temple. What the hell was her name?

  He had seen shapes in the fire. She had told him the story of her people, and the dangers that he now faced. She had bestowed upon Cody the information that could unlock the end and help free the town from this chaos…

  From the wendigos.

  He shivered where he sat. It took him a few minutes to realise that the snow had slowed around him, and he could now see beyond the reach of his arm. Not that it helped. The floor was white, the sky was white, the world was white.

  All was white.

  Cody tried to piece things together. He stood, finding that his body had regained some of its strength, and for that he was happy. Though his nose was numb and he was pretty sure his cheeks were turning black, too, there was some lightness in his mind. His arms and legs didn’t hurt so much, and as he started walking, he found that he could likely carry on for some time without having to crumble again.

  Confusion cuddled him like a familiar friend. He walked on, the taste of jerky on his tongue. He could swear there was white fur stuck to his clothing, but whenever he tried to look again the wind whipped and stole the evidence. He had no idea of which direction he was heading, and the more that he walked the more he convinced himself it must have all been a dream. Why else would he be out here alone again? What had happened was clear: he had passed out in the snow, and his exhausted mind had created the illusions of company and story. There was no woman. There was no dog.

  But there had been a dog.

  Black eyes in the snow had found him. The dog had set him free from the rope.

  Cody trudged ahead, silently thanking the stars that the snow had relinquished some of its ferocity. He wondered how long he had been asleep for. If, perhaps, the worst was over, and he would soon find the houses of Denridge Hills again. Maybe he’d soon be back with Alex, and all of this would be behind them. They could hop on a plane back to England and leave this nightmare behind.

  And leave Sophie behind?

  Cody’s lip quivered at the thought of her, his lips retracing the feeling of hers as they kissed, a thousand years ago in a darkened tunnel. He stumbled. Tripped. Fell on the floor. Glanced back. Couldn’t work out what his foot had caught on until he spotted the stump half-buried in the snow.

  He picked himself up and brushed the snow away. He glanced at the blackened tip of his nose and tapped a gloved hand against it, feeling nothing where he should have felt something. When he lowered his hands, he saw it. The first something to have met his vision since departing from the strange house on a piece of cord.

  Trunks stood like earthy jail cell bars, breaking the white. A canopy of green pines filled the horizon. Cody took a few steps closer, waiting for the image to coalesce into greater clarity before allowing himself the chance to believe in what he was seeing.

  The Drumtrie Forest. He was certain that this was it. All of his studying of Denridge had shown that only the forest borded the town. He had heard rumours and myths and stories from the kids and school, and now it was here. The snow ended where the forest began, and inside the trees all was darkness. Another few steps and Cody could smell the heart of it all, the musty scent of the earthen pines. The shadows whispered to him, and something flashed in the dark. An animal? More snow? It was hard to tell.

  Cody looked behind him into the white. There was no alternative. It was as if the world had driven him here, and now all that was left to do was to follow the yellow brick road and see where it went.

  Twin pieces of coal caught his eye. Kazu strode out of the white, appearing as a fluffy mass of snow by his side. Cody couldn’t explain it, but something felt right about the dog’s appearance. It halted beside his leg and stared ahead. Cody looked from the dog to the darkness, from canine to pine, then with a determined mask of resolve, strode on into the darkness.


  The ground rumbled. A monstrous sound belched through the trees.

  3

  Alex Goins

  Alex knocked three times against the thick, wooden door, and waited.

  The children stood some distance back, warned by Alex to run away if danger were to present itself. Although the house appeared untouched by the hordes of the creatures, his mind was filled with visions of wendigo leaping from the balcony and landing on his shoulders, a crazed man or woman with a shotgun hurtling toward him, a dog, a wolf, or a bear lunging from the darkness and sinking their teeth into his flesh.

  He turned to the kids, Alice cuddling up to Sophie, and Damien clutching Sophie’s leg. Sophie had aged, even in the short time Alex had known her. Death and worry would do that to a person. He hated to think how much he had changed over the last few hours.

  He thought back to Tori, and their journey into the snow. How could someone who knew so few people in this city, lose so many so quickly?

  Something moved inside the house. Alex kept a hand on the rifle behind his back. It would be a sharp manoeuvre to snap it out and shoot his way inside, but he’d be damned if he was going to wait out in this storm for another minute. He needed a break, and the kids did, too. If the world had become dog-eat-dog, then he was going to prove himself top of the pack and take what was his.