Snowblind

Neither man has moved for hours; they are completely still in the bright and cold day.

These men are used to the icy silence. It is etched into their bodies and minds. As still as death, they don’t even shiver in the face of the freezing temperatures. The only indication there are living beings in the high-rise are the small puffs of white breath that rise from under the helmets that cover their heads. Noise and sound are dangerous on the cold planet Grave, so they prefer to remain silent, even this high in the sky above the city. These men don’t need to communicate with one another; they are as used to each other as they are their own clothing.

The ice-coated skeletal remains of the skyscrapers rise above the broken city, sparkling with the glare of the single star that rises high above the horizon. It is nearly the middle of the day, with the star almost directly overhead, the resulting shade shallow but dark. Other than the two men, there are no other signs of life within the shadows of the hollow high-rises. The neon lights of the city have long since gone dim and only obsidian shadows creep in its ruins, the cold piercing sunlight unable to penetrate the inky darkness. The dazzle of the frost and ice also makes it difficult to see into the shadows.  Even though the men appear alone, they know that there might be others hiding in those darkened places.

A layer of snow blankets the desolate city below them, but the metropolis is not as quiet as the two motionless men. The wind howls through the empty bones of the buildings, finding its keening voice in the vacant windows and bare steel rafters. And far below the men in their perch, the groans of the undead and their shuffling steps in the snow can be heard through the wailing wind.

The two men are crouching on an upper floor of the high rise; however, it is not the highest floor. More of the building’s naked framework rises higher; rusted metal and broken concrete form a jagged lattice above their heads. Ascending the structure becomes increasingly perilous above this height, with missing floor sections and precariously balanced beams that appear ready to collapse at the lightest pressure. The angular geometry casts eerie shadows around them that shift and lengthen as the star moves slowly across the sky. They sit in a corner where not only has the glass fallen out of the windows, but the cladding at this height on the facade has also begun to shred like ripped skin.

One of the men sits hunched over a pile of rubble; a long, slender sniper rifle held in his hands. The rifle balances on a bi-pod attached to the stock of the barrel. He only uses the bi-pod if he intends to sit still for long periods of time, such as this. He looks through the scope attached to the rifle at the city spread below them. The sights are tilted downward, to avoid the omnipresent glare of the sun off the snow and ice. The second man is close to his back, looking through a rangefinder balanced on the rifleman’s shoulder. The rifleman does not seem bothered or encumbered by this. The second man is also scanning the dead city, but at a slightly different angle. Both men are dressed in dull, matte black. They may as well be shadows amongst the shadows already present in the debris.

The gurgling scream of a zombie rises above the wind, and even reaches their ears this high above the street. Slowly, as to not attract any unwanted attention with movement, the two men swing their scopes around and down, trying to find the source of the noise. They have not seen nor heard anyone alive in several days, maybe even a week. It can be difficult to track time in the southern badlands, and they are coming north from the very deep south. Time doesn’t matter in the south anyway. It has been a while since they killed anyone at least.

The rifleman spots the source first.

“Northwest, on the street. Man on container, five hundred metres,” he notes in a low, deep voice with the thick tinge of a Dutch accent. He is not originally from Grave, but instead hails from New Belgium. Not many of the live humans on the planet are originally from Grave. Only the undead are.

The second man swings his rangefinder to look at the target. The undead zombies, even this far away from the spaceport of Arkhangelsk, are not actually an issue; only the live humans are truly dangerous, and the true targets of their shots.

The lone figure has climbed on top of an old shipping container that was left behind during the evacuation of the city. It had been used as a barrier at the end of the street, to try to hold back the zombie hordes as the living retreated from the city to the mining complex of Arkhangelsk, before most of the planet was overtaken by the plague.  The red paint is peeling off the sides of the container, victim to the extreme cold weather on Grave. Grotesque zombies, arms stretched above them, are beginning to swarm around the container, their cold rotting bodies unable to climb up the sides. The cold keeps the zombies from falling apart completely, but the slushy, icy fluid in their bodies means they can not move with much agility.

The solitary man on top of the container shoots at the zombies with his small projectile pistol. Some of the undead fall in awkward heaps around it. The man’s aim is good, going for the head as the instructors teach the tourists in the training rooms of Arkhangelsk, the last remaining city on the planet. The rifleman nods his head in slight, subconscious approval. He zooms his scope in close and watches with cool interest as the man fights for his life.

The rifleman tries to figure out what kind of person is trapped below them; is it another corpse hunter or a tourist group? Are there more? One of the rules of this planet is that there is always another person, even when someone appears to be alone. There is also always someone watching, as they do from the high rise. They will not make a move until they have completely ascertained the situation.

Through his scope, the rifleman can see that the man is dressed in the smooth black military attire favoured by the trendier tourists of Arkhangelsk. The tourists felt such clothing made them look like proper soldiers, and they believe that the guides of Grave are proper soldiers. The rifleman’s mouth curled into a small sneer at this idea. The fashion, however, was widely copied by the droves of tourists that vacationed on the zombie planet. This man, strangely enough, appears to be alone, with no guide or companions. Tourists always travel in groups. Also, there are no drones circling him; he is not live streaming his adventure as many of the guides and tourists do. Men like the rifleman and his partner do not live stream.

The rifleman notes that the man has an ancient break-action Winchester rifle slung over his shoulder.  He can see the red wood of the stock sparkling in the sun even at this distance. This surprises him; it is not standard for tourists to have guns like this one. It is ancient and must be worth a fortune. It’s strange that someone would take it into the southern badlands where they could easily die and lose it forever. These sorts of guns usually only appeared in museums. No tourist rich enough to have a gun like this would be wandering alone this far south. Either there are more people, or he is the sole survivor of his group.

The rifleman swings his scope away from the man to inspect the zombies closely. He can see the rotten corpses, their skin coated with sparkling grey frost. Despite the range, he can see the strange, eerie shimmer that the skin of most of the zombies on the planet gives off. And he knows from experience that the blank eyes of the zombie are spiked with silver in radiating dendritic patterns that coat their eyeballs. The sight of the eyes of zombies always unnerves him, despite the many years he has spent on the planet.

There are about a dozen zombies surrounding the container now. It has become a small horde, attracted by the sounds of the living man. The man must aware that there could be snipers nearby and he is in the open, an easy shot for a sniper. People do not often leave themselves trapped in the open like this. This is also taught in Arkhangelsk to the tourists by the instructors and guides. His situation, however, looks helpless from their angle. The rifleman does not believe he will miss if he shoots, even as the man crawls around on the top of the container.

“Kill?” gruffly asks the man without the sniper rifle. This one has swung his scope back to checking the rest of the city and no longer even looks at man on the container.

The other man is bigger than the rifleman, tall and well-muscled. He wears heavier armour than the rifleman, a black clamshell plate armour. His face is hidden behind a smooth black visor that reaches down to his chin. The visor can retract backwards away from his face if he wants, or it can seal off entirely, with its own oxygen supply. The big man generally prefers to leave it down to his chin, protecting his eyes and most of his face, but letting him breathe unrecycled air. He doesn’t like to close the visor all the way because it makes it difficult to speak, even though the man is not known for speaking much. A thick black scarf is wrapped around his neck, over his armour, to protect his mouth from the biting cold. His two guns, heavier assault rifles than what the rifleman carries, are still hooked over his shoulder and to his chest, attached to his armour with breakaway clasps. His main gun is a Tavor assault rifle. The gun is short, a bullpup design, with the magazine behind the trigger grip. He has many more weapons and items stashed about his armour, like a walking armory.

“Wait,” says the rifleman after a moment of thought.

Through his scope, the rifleman watches the desperate man on the container. The strange fact that the man is alone in the city keeps him from killing him outright; not even experienced men come to this city alone often. Even him and his partner never ventured here without each other, or their third teammate. The presence of the Winchester also fascinates the rifleman. He continues to observe.

The rifleman is dressed in lighter armour than his partner, with a dull black plate carrier and a black tactical helmet. His face is covered in a thick fabric, also black, wrapped around his head against the cold. Only his light grey eyes show above the folded cloth. He has a visor similar to his partner’s, but it has been retracted into his helmet. His visor doesn’t seal completely like the visor of the clamshell armor his partner wears. He’s not a fan of the visor and almost never uses it, unless the wind is very strong and biting at his eyes. He feels it blocks his view through the scope of his snipe rifle or the sights of his much shorter assault rifle.

The man below them appears to have run out of ammo for his handgun. He is leaning over the edge of the container now, stabbing individual zombies in their heads with his knife. The zombies stretch their arms up, trying to grasp the desperate man. The rifleman is certain he is alone, without teammates or a guide, despite his appearance of being a tourist. The more experienced zombie hunter groups occasionally come this far south to this city, in search of big game, but they usually move in large groups of at least five or six. The guides willing to bring groups here charge exorbitant rates for the experience.  The rifleman still has not spotted any other people. This man appears to have lost his group. This happens occasionally, one single survivor from a tour group that got overrun by a zombie horde or a group of corpse hunters. They usually do not survive on their own for long.

The rifleman in the high rise continues to study the scene unemotionally, considering the plight of the man without attachment. He wonders if the man will start using the Winchester on the zombies. He would like to see it in action, but he assumes the gun is so loud it would bring an extremely large horde onto the man. He doesn’t think the man will start using it, unfortunately.

The rifleman’s partner appears to have completely lost interest in the lost tourist. He checks the rest of the city for threats, leaving his partner to observe the man below. He assumes that they will soon kill the man and collect their prize from him.

Finally, the rifleman jiggles his gun slightly, checking the mechanism. He looks in his scope again and holds his breath for a split second. He aims at the man and takes a shot. The gun has an incredibly long, slim barrel, with a suppressor attached at the end. The shot is near silent, wrapped by the suppressor like gauze. He misses the shot. The bullet hits the top of the container with a plink that they can hear even from this distance and ricochets away. The man on top of the container rolls away from where it hit.

“Really?” the big, armoured man asks incredulously, looking back at the rifleman.

The rifleman doesn’t respond. He doesn’t miss often, especially a completely still target. He watches the man again, lost in deep thought. After a few moments, he reaches a decision.

“Alright, I feel like talking to him, Sceps,” the rifleman says suddenly.

The big, armoured man sighs heavily. Sceps has seen this before, but he knows the result is always the same regardless, so he complies.

The rifleman opens fire with the quiet sniper rifle once more. The remaining zombies fall like a pack of cards around the container as he rapidly puts neat head shots in each one. Each shot makes a soft popping noise, like a spring, in rapid succession. He destroys all the zombies before hooking the rifle onto his back. He glances down at the container once more. He has good eyesight and, even at this distance, he can see that the lost man is immobile with fear at the sight of the zombies suddenly collapsing around him. He no longer lurches back and forth on the top of the container. He appears to be waiting for the next shot to go through his own head.

The exposed man finally gets to his knees and stares at the pile of destroyed zombies around the container for a moment before hopping down to the street level. He dashes into a nearby building, an abandoned restaurant that squats between the high rises. The movement, the dash to safety, surprises the rifleman. He had expected the man to remain there like a trapped rabbit.

“Clear,” says Sceps. He stands up, and moves backwards away from the rifleman, keeping his eyes on the city below them. There are still zombies in the streets below, but it is a thin herd now. The zombies wander aimlessly through the snow, some of them trapped in snowbanks.

The two men make their way down the building quickly and quietly. The stairs are gloomy in the centre of the building, away from the cold sun. Even the emergency lights no longer glow, and the dark attempts to swallow the two men dressed in black. The rifleman remembers when the city still had some electricity, many years before. Sometimes the gunship patrols from Arkhangelsk would venture this far south and set up the hunting stands that had been built for the zombie hunter safaris, and a spark of electricity would flow into the city grid again. It would never last long though, leaving the city in empty darkness once again after a few weeks. The zombie hunter groups usually travel with enough supplies that it does not matter, and the truly large and chaotic ones that relied on the glamour of electricity rarely came even this far south. The large, inexperienced groups of vacationers were easily overwhelmed by zombies or bandits or others. The two men in the high rise do not need things such as electricity to survive.

The men don’t speak to each other on their way down the stairs. There is no need. The rifleman doesn’t want to discuss this plan with Sceps anyway. It takes only a few minutes for them to reach the bottom. They have used this building as overwatch before and are familiar with the idiosyncrasies of the stairs and its cracked and broken steps.

The ruined lobby is full of the scattered rubble and debris of business offices. The building had been hastily evacuated when the plague began, leaving overturned and broken furniture behind. The lobby is dim, even though every window has been smashed and stands open to the elements. Snowbanks spill into the lobby through the openings. There are signs of more recent visitors, dropped garbage from supplies purchased in Arkhangelsk. Everything loose in the lobby has been blown against the back wall, creating drifts of trash to rival the snow.

The men pick their way carefully over the detritus, so they don’t make any unnecessary sounds. The rifleman has learnt to move silently through the ruins of the buildings with his long sniper rifle over his head. The rifle has become an extension of his own body over the years.

They head out of the lobby, walking casually through several rotting zombies that were milling about the entry. They are unhurried and not concerned with the undead. Both men have injected a very expensive enzyme that stops the zombies from noticing them. They have no idea what is in the enzyme, and nor do they care. It does its job so they can do their own, violent work.

Near the building most of the zombies appear to be former office workers, but most of their clothing has long since rotted off their frosted corpses. Only tattered pieces of fabric remain, and many of the zombies have been impaled with sharp objects like branches and bits of metal that they are cursed to drag around with them for eternity, or until someone destroys them. The two men, however, have no intention of putting the zombies down. They continue past the moaning undead without interference.

A few of the zombies they see near the street look like they have melded into other zombies, creating oozing abominations with extra limbs and heads. The eyes of these creatures are particularly foreboding, the silver in their frozen eyeballs like fractured metamorphic rock. Neither of the men like these and unconsciously shift away from them. Even the experienced men on Grave can find the planet disturbing sometimes.

The men pass through the zombies unmolested. These zombies do not form a ravenous horde, bent on killing the living people walking amongst them. A few of the zombies do turn their heads, as if they sense something is off, but they don’t start screaming and hurtling at them. The two pad softly in their black leather boots on the snow-free concrete around the entrance of the building, grey silhouettes in the shadows of street level. They stick closely to the side of the building at first, along edge of the canopy that covers the entrance and protects the ancient sidewalk.

The snowpack begins several meters away from the protected entrance. Snow is a way of life on Grave; it hardens into a crunchy crust or drifts high against the side of buildings. These men are familiar with the snow. They have learnt its story. The snow in the alley beside the building is deep and impassable, but the wind tunnel created by the buildings in the front and along the main street has pushed the snow away to the edges and into the alleys. The road is mostly clear pavement in the center, or crispy snow along the edges. This is where they walk, away from the crunching noise of the snowpack.

The two men venture further out into the street, keeping their eyes trained on the rooftops above them and the dark crevices in the broken buildings. Seventy years of ruin has created a lot of hiding places in this city. They are always aware, always looking or listening for movement. They know to always expect the shadows to start shooting at them. The zombies, however, ignore them as they continue to shuffle about and even as their feet crunch on the snow. The enzyme does its job well.

“This way,” Sceps says, indicating to the rifleman the squat three-storey building into which the target had scurried.