Tynstar17
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Posts: 7
(4/26/04 10:14 am)
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The North Wind
Have you ever been cold? I mean really cold... the numb, bone shivering kind where jolts of pain streak out to your fingers and toes and you feel like the very marrow in your bones will explode? Growing up in the northern woods of Minnesota, I thought I knew cold. I mean when its down to 20 below zero with another thirty degrees colder from the wind chill is cold right? That sort of cold slices right through your parka and mittens and creeps right into your gut. That's what real cold is, isn't it? That's what I thought too but it turns out I was wrong, very wrong.
It started one late evening driving home. It was mid March and the weather was warming up. The daytime temperatures were up to thirty-eight in the day time and the ice was beginning to thaw. I was tired and the two lane road of highway 2 wound through the trees as I made the 25 mile drive back to the cabin.
It was late and I was tired after a long shift at the Grand Rapids community hospital. A long night of arrogant interns and caring for the latest victims of yet another Rikti induced wave of influenza. It seems like every year brought yet another wave of alien born viruses that attacked the human immune system much like the aliens attacked our urban cities. I grew to hate the Rikti. Hate them more every time a sick child came into the emergency room with a high fever and bronchitis symptoms. There was little we could do except to treat the symptoms and hope the body would overcome. Mostly it did but sometimes it did not. As I said, I hate the Rikti. Only I had no idea how much more I would grow to hate them.
It was bright that night. The sort of night where the moon shown so brightly, you could almost read a paper in the darkness. I had turned up the radio loud to keep awake. Although it probably wasn't necessary as the heater in my old Lumina could hardly keep up with the cold of the great white north. My breath had frosted the windshield and I kept trying to breath down into my parka to keep it from getting any worse. It might have been 38 today but it was back in the teens tonight and I had already had to scrape the inside of the windshield twice just to see.
I was scratching the frost off the windshield as I came around the corner and saw him in my headlights. A tall lanky thing with too slender thighs and arms for the over sized forearms and boots. Metal gloves reflected my headlights as I looked up and saw it. I saw the long tube swing towards the car and instinctively ducked down as the thing turned and fired a blast of green light at me. I must have startled it as well because it missed. But the Lumina started to fish-tail as I fought to keep the swerve under control.
I swore as the Lumina did a circle and began to swerve into the ditch. Trees flashed by as I fought to keep from hitting anything. At some point, control was no longer going to happen and my head crashed forward into the steering wheel as the car suddenly stopped against a thick Ash. It felt like flash bulbs were going off in my head and I could feel the trickle of blood as I reached up and touched my throbbing forehead.
The motor had stopped and the radio was blaring loudly. It was obscene how loud the radio had become. "Its funny how that works.", I had thought. At night the radio doesn't seem all that loud but the next morning when you turn the ignition, it sounds like a tornado siren because its so loud. Thats how loud it was just then. I reached over and turned it off and grabbed some napkins from the back of the car. My head hurt but I didn't think the cut was too bad. I sat there for a moment, pressing the napkins to my head. And then I remembered It.
My heart jumped as I remembered the tall lanky thing that I had nearly run down. I stabbed at the keys turning them and praying for the car to start. The sound of click...click...click as I repeatedly turned the key and nothing happened. I reached over, grabbing my purse as I reached over to open the door. The napkins fell forgotten from my hands as I opened the door and stumbled out into the cold.
As I looked back up the slope, I could see It standing a hundred feet back on the road side. It was looking for an easy way down. I muffled a scream as my head whipped around looking for a way out. I spotted a small path between the trees in the moonlight and began to run. My footsteps loud as the snow crunched beneath my feet.
My heart was pounding in my ears, beating like a drum as I panted running through the night. I didn't know how far back it was but I could feel it was close. I knew it was close because the shivers at the base of my neck screamed it to me. I broke out of the trees and slid forward onto my face as I fell down a small bank onto a frozen lake. Somewhere down the embankment, I lost my purse as I scrambled to gain purchase on the slick embankment.
The lake seemed vast but I could see the trees perhaps a hundred yards away. Pulling my self up, I started to run across its surface. I got halfway across the lake and I stole a look behind me to see it emerge from the trees. Fear flashed slapping me hard in the chest as I ran even faster. I hit a clear patch of ice and slipped, falling to my knees and sliding to a halt. I could feel the rough surface of the ice tearing holes in the knees of my jeans. I could imagine the scrapped knees and could only curse at ripping up a pair of $50.00 jeans. Silly how one's life is hanging in the balance and you focus on the cost of apparel.
As I put my hand out to get up, I heard that sound. Its a sickening sound. The sound of a tree branch snapping or too much pressure against a plate glass window. I looked down to see large cracks form as the ice began to crack! A sob escaped my lips before the thunderous crash came as the ice broke and I was tossed into the icy cold.
I clamped my lips down as the cold punched into my chest. Holding my breath as I fell into the depths of the lake. The shock was fantastic and I could taste copper as adrenaline filled my veins and panic started. The cold was a physical thing, a knife in the back, a slap across the cheek on a cold night. Ice is cold but I knew from college chemistry that the water below it is actually colder as ice becomes less dense and forms from the top down. This was the true cold. A physical merciless thing that becomes your universe of pain. I now knew what true cold was and it would be a sensation that I never would feel again.
In front of me was darkness as bubbles floated all around. As I looked up, I could see brightness. It was the moon shining from the surface. I kicked hard and again felt light bulbs flashing across my vision as my head smacked into an invisible barrier. I lost half the air in my lungs as I gasped in pain. I reached up with gloved hands feeling the ice overhead. Panic again set in as I struggled to feel about for the opening in the ice. I scrambled about searching for the opening as my lungs began to burn screaming for a breath.
And then through the clear ice ceiling of my cold world, I saw the shape. It was standing above and looking at me in an inhuman fashion through the ice. The Rikti showed no emotion as it lifted the tube to its shoulder and took aim. Helpless, I felt despair and numbing cold as I looked up from the depths and through the ice to Death who had come to take me. The tube glowed green as the light flashed forth from the tube slashing into the ice. Blackness hit as the last sensation I had was of being thrown up wards in an eruption of green, water and cold.
I groaned as sun light hammered through my eye lids. I rolled over onto my back and two thoughts were apparent. My head hurt was my first thought. But that was good right? If my head hurt then I wasn't dead. The second thought was I didn't feel cold and that was very strange. I rolled over and opened my eyes and it was daylight. I had no idea how long I was laying on the ice. I sat there looking down at my torn jeans that were frozen in the places that did not touch my body. As I brought up my hands to feel my scalp and search for damage, I was stunned. My coat sleeves and gloves were completely gone. The remnants of the coat looked as if acid had been poured over them and they had dissolved from the rest of the coat.
My brain took all this in but it wasn't that the coat was shredded which drew my thoughts. It wasn't that from my hands to my elbows was bare skin or that I didn't even feel any of the sub-freezing cold that I should have. No, what I registered was that my skin was blue! Honest to goodness, three shades darker than robin egg blue, my coloring looked like Grover from Sesame St!
I plopped back down onto the backs of my calves sitting there in shocked silence. What did that damn "Thing" do to me? Looking up, I noticed the long tube it had carried. Careful of not repeating my foray into the ice, I inched over to the weapon. The ice near it was thin and it had refrozen sometime in the night. But as often is the case in the north, the ice was clear and I could see through it to the water beneath.
I barked out a laugh of spite, for their under the ice was the Rikti. Frozen under the ice, it had suffered the fate that was almost mine.
"Serves you right, you bastard!" I thought.
I picked up the tube and carefully retraced my steps to the shore. My mind worked furiously as I walked trying to explain what had occurred. Somehow the crystals of the ice must have diffused the beam from the Rikti tube, much the way a prism fractures sunlight as it passes through a chandelier on a summer's day. Fear again gripped me as I wondered what new nightmare would await me after being exposed to the deadly radiation. Reaching the bank, I scooped up my purse and put it over my shoulder.
As I got to the car, the final shock set in. As I looked in the door mirror I could see that the blue went right on up to encompass my whole body. Being of Scandinavian descent, I had the blond hair of just about every good Minnesota girl.
"Oh Kate Jorgenson, what did you get yourself into this time?"
My hair had turned from blond to pure silvery platinum. But what was worse was my eyes. I used to have clear blue eyes. They were pale but clear looking like aquamarines. I used to have blue eyes. Now, now they were completely white. Bleached in some fashion by the diffused beam of the Rikti gun.
A single tear shed, trailed down my left cheek as I took in my freakish appearance in the mirror. The tears journey was not long, however. It traveled a short journey before it flash froze on my skin and fell off to the ground. Blue fingers picked up the crystalline tear and I held it up in wonder.
Fishing out the keys from the ignition, I went and opened the trunk. Throwing the Rikti tube into the trunk, I covered it with and old blanket. Any good Northerner carries an emergency kit of blankets, clothes and food in the trunk. I reached into a cardboard box and took out a spare coat, gloves and hat. I sat down in the front seat, taking out my cell. After dialing the AAA for a tow truck, I shrug on a coat and put on a cap and scarf to cover my head and face. Finally I took a pair of very dark sunglasses and put them on to hide my glowing white eyes. With luck, the driver wouldn't notice the blue smurf that I had become.
The next few weeks I spent hiding in my cabin under the guise of the flu. I searched frantically on the Internet, looking for some clue as to a condition and cure that mimicked my own. New abilities began to appear as I could manipulate the atmosphere around me. I could lower the temperature of the air to far below that of liquid nitrogen.
Being a blue skinned, white haired woman would stand out in a rather large way in the wilds of the north. I decided that Paragon would be the best place to find something or someone who might help me. The auto shop repaired my Lumina and delivered it three weeks after that fateful night. I packed up some clothes and began the long drive to the place I hoped would hold some cure.
My rage towards the alien grew large but bitterly cold as my body had done. The Rikti would pay in some fashion for the wreckage they had made of my life. "Revenge," it is said, "Is a dish best served cold." Nothing in nature blows more bitterly cold than the North Wind.
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