An Arcane Engineer in Another World: Book I, Exile, chapter 5

The sun started to go down and I was still on the road. It turned out that a casual walk in a snowy field on vacation was a lot easier—and slower—than trying to push yourself on a highway littered with the snow covered dead.

Little flurries of wind were picking up, some of the trees cracking as ice-laden branches broke and fell.

I needed to get to the city, or find shelter again. A storm like last night…

I don’t think any shelter I could make would work… I kept moving, pulling the sled behind me.

The sun got dimmer, the clouds thicker and I felt snowflakes landing on me. Getting denser.

Great. Freeze to death or be stuck here for whatever I heard last night.  I kept moving. Just keep going, Marcus.

Thirty minutes later, the snow was hitting  me in the face, a strong wind blowing. I was back to reading my compass to keep going in a straight line and I hoped like the Hells that the road didn’t unexpectedly turn. The map said it didn’t, but for all I knew the map was a fifty year old family heirloom, and they’d modified the road since.

“Cheerful thought, Marcus.” I muttered as I kept moving. The visibility got worse, and I cast a light ahead of me, the growing mass of snowflakes haloing it.

Dammit! I kept marching and then, out of the snow something loomed up on the side of the road.

A sign.

I walked up to it and partially obscured through the snow on it, there was a painting of a sunny day, and a family riding the same kind of vehicle I’d seen full of the dead, waving at me. Under it…

      STANLEY’S FUEL AND GARAGE!

Underneath it were smaller words: “fuel blocks, liquid fuel, boiler refills and general repair services. Free snacks with a checkup. Two miles to Stanley’s!”

Right, two miles.  The weather was getting worse, but…

It was better than just staying out here. I started moving faster. Or as fast as I could because the wind was hitting me in the and I could barely see a thing, my clothes doing nothing to keep the cold out.

I reached into my mind for the ritual I’d cast and finished it. Seconds later, I didn’t feel nearly so cold, as the air warmed and the wind was blocked an inch before it got to my skin.

Now I started moving as fast as I could, because the weather was getting worse and the ritual would only last for twenty minutes, max, but that was for a normal storm. In this one I expected ten minutes. I kept moving.

And behind me I heard… Maybe a howl from the wind.

Maybe. I realized I could move a little faster.

Whatever it out there doesn’t care about bodies. The bodies in the vehicle were untouched. But… If there was something out there that only hunted living things, that meant I was probably the only thing to hunt.

Crap.

Crap, crap, crap.

I kept moving, and before long, the protection was starting to flicker. And then something loomed up before me.

Stanley’s Fuel and Garage. It was a big, blocky building, built out of red bricks, with what looked like the remains of an awning in front of it, collapsed by the snow. A door was open, and I managed to get up to it, pulling my sword in case something big and hungry was inside…

No. There was an undisturbed snow drift in the doorway.

So I walked in, summoning the brightest light I could… The building seemed to divided into two parts. A smaller front part with what looked like racks and torn wrappers on the ground and… I poked my head into the rear. It was tall, concrete floors with the same stains on them as the structure behind the house, and racks of tools.  The doors were closed and increasingly heavy wind rattling them.

There was some kind of divide sitting on the counter, shaddered by repeated blows. ARound it I saw a few gleaming coins.

Money. Someone opened it up with a hammer and grabbed what they could.  

Okay, secure first, search later. I managed to close the door against the wind, locking it, and then dragging a rack up to it. The windows were intact, but they had shades and I drew them. Anything hunting me would see me long before I saw it through the windows, but if they were closed it might ignore me.

If I was being hunted.

Some of the racks were full of items…but no food. There were structures behind the counter glass-fronted, but the glass had been shattered and the racks there emptied. Cold boxes. I nodded. Normally, you’d worry about frozen food going bad, but well…

Not now.

There was a hastily scrawled sign written on the wall behind the wrecked cash-counter machine.

NO FOOD, NO FUEL. DON’T STOP.

Above it was a more professionally done EVACUATION TRAIN SCHEDULE.  Beneath it were other words.

“Do not take  more than a single change of clothes. Do not bring pets, family property or any other bulky items. Preference in seating given to women and children. Be certain any young children have identification and contact information for relatives.”  Beneath it were notes of schedules and destinations.

I pulled out my atlas, and nodded. Trains heading to Los Angeles, and transferring to the Republic of Mexico, and the… Federal Republic of Central America? Right, objective note—heading to the coast and to the south. 

But it meant that whatever had happened was fast—but not so fast the government, or whatever they had for the government, couldn’t respond to it.

So were the dead those people who refused to leave until it was too late? Why?  I rooted around the back of the counter, and found not much. No food. Someone had cleaned this place out good.

I wondered… maybe because they were aware that they’d need food?  Like the house’s owner,  Stanley had evidently stripped his place bare and left, leaving a note so nobody else would waste time.

A rumble shook the building, the windows rattling. It was getting nasty out there.

Still i— I felt some papers, and looked down. A thick sheet of…

My, my, my.

“Daysheets,” I said. It looked like not everything was different from back home. I started to read them…

No. If something was chasing me, those windows wouldn’t do a thing to stop it if it decided to come in. I moved to the big repair area, closed the door and moved a heavy box full of some kind of metal bits to block it, doing the same with the door to the outside. There wasn’t even the dim light of the outside here, and I didn’t see any snow falling…which meant that nothing outside would see my light.

Good.

I looked around, and settled down. The place was cold as hell, but that’s what my rune stones were for. I pulled one out, whispered the trigger and soon it was glowing a soft orange, the heat keeping me warm, even if it was more or less lost in the big room.

A simple working and a ball of light was floating over me. And now…

The pictures were impressive, how had they gotten those? Most day sheets back home used artists, but…

SHROUD CONTINUES TO COOL EARTH! The Headline was bold, under “The Connerton Chronicle.” The story was…

A mass of dust and asteroids,  knocking out the light of the sun, or reducing it. In addition, meteor impacts…

The story had a note that they had an interview with some professor—I guess that was their word for savant, about whether the shroud had been responsible for the spray of meteors in 7,000 BC.

It sounded… very academic, very boring, and I flipped through the papers. There were suggestions for gardens, and even greenhouses, where the ladies of the community could come together and make it a…

I put it aside. That must have been early…in fact, looking at the papers and their date, it was arranged chronologically.

Wonder what the “AD” means? 

The first couple of papers were in the same mood. Talking about issues with markets, maybe a loss of luxuries…

And then there was a note that the shroud was getting worse. A snow storm in summer in the Carolinas, devastating storms in the Atlantic and Pacific.  A news story about the Russian Empire collapsing in food riots… Now it wasn’t about green houses, at least not as a community thing. It was talking about canning food now and holding off on consumption, with short government announcements about “community storage centers.”

I flipped through some other papers, and there were a few stories of mass movements, first privately, then government organized. Evacuations and clashes, movements from nations I’d never heard of.

The last paper was a single page, no pictures. THIS WILL BE THE FINAL EDITION!  Several meteors had struck the world, causing further devastation. But the main point was below.

Due to the current situation, a mandatory evacuation order has been issued to move the population of our great Union to the coasts and the south where measures are being put in place to help civilians. Since the meteor impacts, we have had no communication with Government House , but expect the President or Prime Minister will resume contact soon. Until then, martial law is declared and any attempt at hoarding food or interfering with vital movements will be punished severely.

God Save the Nation and the Queen.

Field Marshal Eisenhower.

I stared at the words.

“Well, hell,” I muttered. If they had been successful… was I heading to an empty town?  Did I have a choice? I couldn’t exactly go back to the empty house…

I took out the pot I’d taken from the home, scooping some snow into it and sitting it on top of a little frame above my stone. I had more than one, but best to preserve them.

Waiting for the water to heat, I looked around at the room. Full of stuff… that evidently wasn’t important enough to take. I knew people back home who would die before they’d leave their businesses. What must—

And then I heard it over the snow. Something pushed against the big doors to the room I was in.

Something that was very big.