Reg woke to the sound of the phone ringing.
Which was strange, since all phone service in the western hemisphere had been decimated by Comet fall.
Reg's heart was pounding as he swung his legs out of bed. He glanced back at Amber, still sleeping deeply.
Eyes well-adjusted to the dark in the dim snowbound months since the disaster he had no trouble picking his way to the phone.
It sat on the wall in the kitchen. Ringing. The mellow green lcd screen that would have displayed the number of the caller in the past was dark. That made sense, Reg thought.
Since the battery that controlled the handset was probably 6 months dead.
The ringing ceased.
Reg felt sweat on his forehead, and a cold sensation deeper than the icy winds fingertips slipping under their doors and windows.
Why had the fucking phone with the dead handset been ringing?
For no reason that Reg could understand, he reached out, picked up the handset, and pressed the white button that said talk, for the first time in 8 months.
He placed the phone to his ear.
He heard something.
*brush*
A distinct but low sound. Like a broom pushing snow off a roof.
*brush*
Starting, Reg slammed the phone back in it's cradle. It didn't latch and clattered to the floor.
It rang again.
"Amber?"
Reg shook her gently. The house was warming again-he'd piled the last logs he had stored inside on the main fireplace in the living room and now it was cooking along pretty well.
"Amber, wake up, baby."
She mumbled something incoherent, turned over.
Truth was, he wanted her company. She might be silent, sullen as she had tended to be, she might chat about nothing, but he didn't want to be alone right now.
He kept telling himself the phone was a kind of waking dream. Didn't really happen.
Amber pulled the cover closest to her tight against her chin and turned over.
Reg sighed and went to the radio.
In his oh-so-California life before the fall of Comet Hansel-Edelman and the coming of eternal winter, destroying so many things, Reg would never have known about things like hand-crank radios. They were nifty creations-could run on regular batteries and house current too, but in case you had none of that, a large dynamo was in the sturdy casing that generated power for as long as there was a human around to turn the little crank on the side. Apparently they'd become the rage when everyone thought the turn of the century would bring worldwide chaos and destruction. That hadn't panned out, but the doom and gloom had hung on in some sectors and thus a market remained for these radios.
Reg bartered the one he had now from Don Pendleton, a former news anchor two miles down their road. Pendleton was going pretty crazy since comet-fall. His wife had died in the impact. A journalist herself she'd been reporting on the worst of it right after the destruction of the Canadian-American border. She'd been murdered by a pack of survivalists after her crew broke down somewhere in the wastelands of Ohio. Reg suspected she'd been eaten as well, if the hideous rumors he heard about life anywhere east of the new American capital city of Denver, Colorado were true.
Reg had given Pendleton two large ski jackets he'd let creep to the back of his closet in the last few years, never having the time to ski. Ironic now, as skiing was a preferred method of getting around for many when the wind wasn't too harsh and the light was good. It wasn't like Pendleton lost anything-he had three different types of hand-crank radio anyway.
The radio was up and running like normal, and almost immediately a strong male voice filled the room.
"-Hart Bocknell, and this is your shortwave truth cast."
Reg sat back, nodding to himself. It would be Hart Bocknell. Before Hansel-Edelman Hart Bocknell was a king of the paranormal fringe. He'd broadcast 24 hours a day on some stations in the week right before the Comet fell, taking calls from every madman who could use a phone.
Ironically Hart Bocknell was one of the only consistently broadcast voices on the shortwave right now. From his mysterious redoubt in what he now referred to as the "icebound high desert" of Southern Nevada Bocknell and three others broadcast as much and often as conditions permitted. Apparently the city of Las Vegas, not far from Bocknell's home, had ponied up some real money, or great barter, who knew anymore-to keep generators running at Bocknell's broadcast facility. In return Bocknell and his crew not only aired his usual weird, Charles Fort inspired fare-and much more of it than ever in an icy snowbound world only just recovering from a hideous disaster-but also real news, as best it could be verified.
Reg, as a "real" journalist in his own mind, had first balked at the idea of listening to anything Bocknell said, but along with Amber he was now grateful for the consistency with which the eclectic broadcaster was able to get his voice over the airwaves.
"...tonight we return to a subject I am, I confess, surprised to discuss again...Shadow People."
Reg sat up, staring at the radio.
"Let's face it folks. In the world before Hansel-Edelman, talk of Shadow People was interesting, a diversion. I, myself was intrigued, but I could also from time to time tell myself that it was some manifestation of incipient mental illness, as much paranormal phenomenae could be said to be."
Reg was surprised to hear this. Bocknell was outing himself as having been more of a skeptic than he ever admitted.
"However, the reports we have been receiving over the last three weeks in particular are...well, disturbing. And in their consistency, alarming."
Reg picked up the bulky radio and carried it into the living room, settled into the sofa, pulled a flannel throw over his knees and picked up the book he'd been reading.
"From Aspen, Colorado-reports indicate an entire neighborhood under 'siege' from shadow people. Police reports indicate the entire Perkins family may have died from shadow-people madness. Alvah Perkins reported to local authorities at least 10 different 'shadow' encounters in the week before he took his shotgun and killed his wife, three small children, and himself."
Reg put the book down and stared at the radio, as if it were a person on the sofa beside him, telling him a terrible and riveting story.
"Here's another one..."Bocknell didn't care about dead air anymore, and Reg could hear him rummaging through paper over the mike. "Ah, here it is. Yes-dateline Amarillo-riots reported in an Amarillo suburb when reports about shadows stalking individuals went unanswered."
Reg pulled the flannel up higher, feeling a cold finger of air creeping in, in spite of a good fire.
"It is as if, ladies and gentlemen, it is as if the shadows have come out of hiding with the advent of a nearly worldwide 'nuclear' winter. I myself, along with some of my fellow workers here at Bocknell Broadcast Central, have experience with this.
My experience occurred two nights ago. I had my Snowcat out and was preparing for a run to the main road into Las Vegas to meet one of our esteemed sponsors. The snow had died down quite a bit and the previous pathways we'd dug between transmitter housing, garage and studio were all fairly well preserved. Of course, drifts are everywhere here in our new arctic home. The are sometimes so high they curl over and the moisture that has briefly thawed has frozen mid-drip down, creating a beautiful but menacing kind of overhang. The impression is one of a widely-stretched mouth with irregular and razor sharp teeth."
Reg knew exactly the formation Bocknell spoke of. The highest drifts around his house and in the hills around trees and against walls on the roadways looked like this.
"So as I started the Snowcat and prepared to drive out I saw, from the corner of my eye, distinct movement."
Reg wondered why the house was getting colder. It certainly seemed to be.
"I turned in that direction to see something I promise you I've only heard of before, my dear friends-a vivid shadow, a walking blackness, a dark shape that by rights should have been hosted by a real body or object moving in front of the light, flitting over the snow. It seemed to disappear behind the drifts."
Reg wanted to turn off the radio now. He didn't quite know why. But this was chilling him, bothering him deeply.
Bocknell paused for effect, Reg was sure.
"So, what are we talking about, dear listeners? Well...if this were the world before Comet Hansel-Edelman, I'd take calls. But instead I'll have to go to the ham radio tonight while someone else is on here, and give you further reports tomorrow. I can tell you this much, there is something definitely going on here. And my hunch is, it has something to do with our most recent deadly visitor from the heavens..."
Reg listened as Bocknell moved on to other news items, some strange, some not.
He didn't realize it, but he'd nodded off.
Amber's voice woke him.
"Reg?"
He looked up. She stood in the bedroom doorway. Something was wrong. Her face looked...stricken.
"What, baby?" he rubbed his eyes.
"Something is outside the front door."
He froze. Looked at her. "What?"
"Something is outside the front door. I can hear it."
Then he heard it too.
*brush*
*brush*
They curled out of the darkest places, the crevices and overhangs of snow, ribbons and random collections of darkness. They had a kind of language as they coalesced here and there, short bursts of sound that carried packets of information.
They rippled onto surfaces where electric wires lay, phone wires, cables, enveloped them, invaded them briefly.
They drifted out of stands of trees and rode on the current of the wind until they encountered others of their kind.
Slowly, by degrees, they were becoming aware.
There were others here, in this white, desolate world.
They would have to go.
