White Out: A Post Apocalyptic Thriller Read Free Page A

piggy, dive! See if you can find the bottom. Maybe there’re some chicken wings down there. You’re sinking like a rock, but you always have been, haven’t you?
    "Help me," she repeated, this time in a scratchy, strangulated voice that she barely recognized as her own. Her energy was dwindling with every pained, frozen breath. She looked down at her chest, realizing that she could no longer feel her pendulous breasts. They’d probably frozen. Maybe they had shattered altogether. Her only real physical asset, and she was certain that her nipples had fallen off from frostbite.
    Inhaling deep into her chest, Winnie stared out at the blinding white, grappling for a bit of serenity. She couldn't move her legs or her hips. If somebody didn't come along soon (whoever the hell that might be), then this was where her body might remain for all eternity, unless Jesus himself came and dug her up. But Jesus probably had a lot of other dead people to exhume first.
    When and if the snow melted, it would expose her corpse to the survivors of this madness.
    Stop it. It's not going to end. Tony's an idiot, but he was right. This is the beginning of the end—the next Ice Age. It has begun, this apocalypse. Aren't you sad you're going to miss all the fireworks? Didn’t you always secretly dream about this day? All those lonely nights, and those never-ending weekends where nobody would know if you were dead or alive, except your mangy kittens? You craved this day, and here it is. Sitting in a big pile of snow, looking like a dolt to God above, and wishing you had a cheeseburger more than a helicopter to pull you out of this quicksand.
    Winnie always assumed, even from a young age that her obesity would claim her by the age of forty. The idea that she'd made it all the way to fifty-five years old was a miracle in and of itself. The years had been unreasonably cruel to her, but not as cruel as she'd been to herself. Her mother warned her of the path she was taking, and here it was in full fruition. Death by sinking.
    A drift of white blasted across the surface of her snowy grave, catching her on the chin, stinging like a bee. She could feel her bottom lip starting to crystallize and snap. The snow wasn't even the worst part. The bitter cold was deadly. Before she’d left, stealing away in the middle of the night like a teenage runaway, the thermometer outside her office window had registered at twenty-six degrees below zero. Not exactly an uncommon temperature for New England, but not in March.
    It's going to stop soon , she coached herself, fighting back against the nastier half of her unraveling brain. And when it stops, they'll come find me. And this will end. And I'll get warm. And they'll bring me home. We'll eat soup and watch old black and white movies while we recover.
    The other half giggled.
    Soup? You thick-headed piggy. You'll be dead in an hour. Deader than disco, bitch.
    Winnie clenched her eyelids shut; exhaling, though it pained her to do so. She approached a false serenity, hoping it would release her from this hell. She tried to open her eyes again, to stare at that pristine snow and ponder God, the universe, and everything in between.
    But now she couldn't open her eyes. They’d frozen shut. She tried to lift her arms, to pry them open, but found that they too were unresponsive.
    “ Peepers, Jingles, Bobo, Margie,” she mumbled her cats’ names off one by one, starting to drift into some childish fantasy of walking through her grandfather's garden, where the zucchini was always a foot long and the basil was aromatic, drifting through the late spring breeze. These warm images darted through her head, just like when she went to sleep at night. Her grandfather spoke in soft whispers. He always knew the right things to say, to make her feel not so scared, to make her feel not so unworthy of kindness.
    Her physical being struggled for a moment longer , trying to pry her eyelids open by sheer will power. When she gave up that