Winter World Read online

  The scene behind me might look like vacationers setting off for a holiday cruise, but nothing could be further from the truth. The cruise ship you’re seeing was known as the Emerald Princess until three weeks ago, when she was purchased by His Majesty’s government and renamed the Summer Sun. It’s one of a fleet of forty such cruise ships that will temporarily evacuate residents of the UK to warmer latitudes.

  The Summer Sun is set to sail to Tunisia, where passengers will be transported to a relocation camp outside Kebili. The camp is part of a long-term lease agreement between the UK and Tunisia. The move follows similar actions in Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, and Japan. The program is reminiscent of the mass evacuation in the UK during the Second World War, when Operation Pied Piper evacuated 3.5 million civilians out of the way of the Nazi threat…

  Real estate near the equator has become a hot commodity. So have several places deemed “winter havens”—places below sea level with unusually high temperatures: Death Valley in California; Al Aziziyah, Libya; Wadi Halfa, Sudan; Dasht-e Lut, Iran; Kebili, Tunisia. Two years ago, if you visited one of these places and left a barrel of gasoline open when the sun came up, it would be empty by noon. Evaporated. These used to be wastelands. Now they’re beacons of hope, oases in the Long Winter. People are pouring in by the millions, selling whatever they have to in order to buy a berth in the camps. I wonder if they’ll be safe there.

  Another buzzer goes off. The same tone, different machine. Still not the alarm I’m waiting for.

  When the third buzzer sounds, I collect the sheets from the three dryers and start folding them.

  My job is laundry. It has been for the last two years, ever since I arrived at Edgefield Federal Correctional Institution. Like the other two thousand inmates imprisoned here, I claim my innocence. Unlike most of my fellow inmates, I am innocent.

  If I’m guilty of any crime, it’s inventing something the world wasn’t ready for. An innovation that terrified them. My mistake—or crime, if you will—was not accounting for human nature. Humans are scared of what they don’t know, and they’re especially scared of new things that might change life as they know it.

  The US attorney assigned to my case found an obscure law and made an example out of me. The message to other inventors was clear: we don’t want this.

  I was sentenced at age thirty-one. I’ll be seventy when I get out of here. (There is no parole for federal crimes. If I behave, I’ll be released after serving eighty-five percent of my sentence.)

  When I arrived at Edgefield, I devised six ways of escape. Further investigation revealed that only three were viable. Two had an extremely high rate of success. The problem became: then what? My assets were seized after the trial. Contacting my friends and family would put them in jeopardy. And the world would hunt me, probably kill me if they caught me.

  So I stayed. And did the laundry. And I’ve tried to make a difference here. It’s in my nature, and I’ve learned the hard way: human nature is perhaps the only thing we can’t escape.

  Every day, fewer guards show up for work.

  That worries me.

  I know why: the staff and guards are moving south, to the habitable zones. I don’t know if the federal government is moving them, or if they’re going on their own initiative.

  A war is coming—a war for the last habitable zones on Earth. People with military and police backgrounds will be in high demand. So will correctional officers. The camps will likely resemble prisons. The government will need men and women trained in keeping order in large, confined populations. The population’s survival depends on it.

  And therein lies my problem. Edgefield, South Carolina, is about halfway between Atlanta and Charleston. It’s snowing here (in August), but the glaciers haven’t reached us. The ice will be here soon, and they’ll evacuate the area. The evacuations won’t include prisoners. The truth is, the government will be hard pressed to save all the children in this country, much less the adults, and they certainly won’t be dragging prisoners with them (and definitely not across the Atlantic to the habitable zones in northern Africa). Their priority will be making sure prisoners don’t escape to follow them south and make even more trouble for an already strained government. They’ll lock us up tight in here. Or worse.

  Accordingly, I’ve revived my escape plans. It seems all of my fellow inmates have too. The feeling here is like sitting down for a July Fourth fireworks show. We’re all waiting for the first explosion to go up. It’ll likely be fast and furious after that, and I doubt any of us will survive.

  I need to hurry.

  The door to the laundry room swings open, and a correctional officer strides in.

  “Morning, Doc.”

  I don’t look up from the sheets. “Morning.”

  Pedro Alvarez is one of the best correctional officers in this place, in my opinion. He’s young, honest, and doesn’t play games.

  In one sense, prison has been good for me. It has been a uniquely valuable place to study human nature—which, again, was my blind spot, and the real reason I wound up in here.

  I have come to believe that most correctional officers go into this line of work for one reason: power. They want to have power over others. I believe the common cause is that someone, at some point, had power over them. Therein lies a seminal truth about human nature: we desire in adulthood what we were deprived in childhood.

  Pedro is an anomaly in the pattern. That drew me to him. I pursued a friendship and have extracted data points that revealed a different motivation. I know the following about him. His family—parents, brothers, and sisters—are still in Mexico. He has a wife, also aged approximately twenty-seven, and two children, both sons, five and three. And finally, I know that his wife is the sole reason he’s working here.

  Pedro grew up in Michoacán, a mountainous, lawless state in Mexico where the drug cartels are judge and jury and murders are more common than traffic accidents. Pedro moved here when his wife was pregnant, because he didn’t want his children to grow up the way he had.

  He began working for a landscaping crew during the day, and at night and on the weekends he studied criminal justice at Spartanburg Community College. On graduation day, he told his wife that he was joining the Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Department—because he didn’t want to see this place become what Michoacán had. There is law and order here, and he wanted to keep it that way, for his children’s sake.

  Another truth: parents desire for their children the things they never had.

  After Pedro’s announcement, his wife got on the internet, looked up the fatality rates for police officers, and issued an ultimatum: find another profession or find another wife.

  They compromised. Pedro became a corrections officer, which carried fatality stats and working hours that were acceptable to Maria Alvarez. Plus better benefits, overtime pay, pay plus twenty-five percent on Sunday, and access to the government’s hazardous duty law enforcement provision that would allow him to retire with full benefits after twenty-five years of service—right before his forty-ninth birthday. It was a good choice. At least, before the Long Winter started.

  I had expected Pedro to be one of the first officers to leave this place. I figured he would head back to Mexico, where his family is, and where the habitable zones are being set up. That’s where the Canadian and American hordes will be going soon.

  But instead, he’s one of the last ones here. The scientist in me wants to know why. The survivor in me needs to know why.

  “You draw the short straw, Pedro?”

  He cocks an eyebrow at me.

  Pedro is about the closest thing I have to a friend in here, and I can’t help but say these next words.

  “You shouldn’t be here. You, and Maria, and the kids should be heading south right now.”

  He studies his boots. “I know, Doc.”

  “So why are you still here?”

  “Not enough seniority. Or maybe not enough friends. Or maybe both.”

  He’
s right: it is both. And probably because his supervisors know that he will actually fight when the riots start. In the world we live in, the best people carry the weight for others—and they get crushed first.

  Pedro shrugs. “It’s above my pay grade.”

  An inmate appears in the doorway and scans the room, his eyes wide, unblinking. Drugged. There’s something in his hand. His name is Marcel, and he’s generally bad news.

  Pedro turns.

  Marcel leaps for him, wraps a meaty arm around the guard’s midsection, traps his arms, and raises a homemade knife to Pedro’s neck.

  Time seems to stand still. I’m vaguely aware of the hum of the washers and dryers, of the news blaring on. A new sensation begins, a rumbling in the distance, like thunder moving closer. Footsteps. A mob flowing through the prison’s corridors. Shouting overpowers the footsteps, but I can’t make out the words.

  Pedro is struggling against Marcel’s hold.

  Another inmate appears in the doorway. He’s barrel-chested, keyed up. I don’t know his name. He shouts to Marcel. “You got ’im, Cel?”

  “I got him.”

  The other inmate darts away, and Marcel looks at me. “They gonna let us freeze to death in here, Doc. You know it.”

  He waits.

  I say nothing.

  Pedro grits his teeth as he tries to pull his right hand free.

  “You with us, Doc?”

  Pedro’s hand breaks from Marcel’s hold and flies to his side, into his pocket. I’ve never seen him use a weapon. I’m not sure he has one.

  Marcel doesn’t wait to find out. He moves the knife closer to Pedro’s neck.

  And I make my choice.

  Chapter 3

  Emma

  Floating in the cupola attached to the Tranquility node, I watch the International Space Station twist and buckle like a Midwestern farmhouse in a tornado.

  The solar array disintegrates, the cells flying away, shingles from a roof. It’s only a matter of time before the station is opened to the vacuum of space.

  In the sea of destruction, I see hope: the Soyuz capsules docked to the station. I’ll never make it there. Neither will Sergei or Stephen. Besides, each Soyuz holds only three people.

  “Pearson, Bergin, Perez—get to the Soyuz docked to Rassvet. Right now. That’s an order.”

  We’ve trained for this. The Soyuz can be separated from the ISS within three minutes, and on the ground in Kazakhstan within four hours.

  My earpiece crackles with a voice I can’t make out. Internal comms are fried. Did they hear me? I hope so.

  I have to tell the ground.

  “Goddard, we are evacuating—”

  The wall crashes into me and bounces me against the opposite wall. Darkness tries to swallow me.

  I push off and glide through Tranquility. Unconsciousness pulls at me, but I push past it, a swimmer in an undertow fighting not to drown.

  I’m trapped on the station, and it’s probably only a matter of seconds before it blows open and everything is sucked out. I have one chance at survival: an EVA suit.

  I grab the closest suit, slip inside, and tether it. That will give me oxygen, electricity, comms—if they even still work.

  “Goddard, do you read?”

  “We read you, Commander Matthews. State your status.”

  Before I can respond, the module around me explodes. Darkness finally drags me under.

  Consciousness comes in waves. Sensations come with it, like an onion peeling, nothing at first, then intensity: pain, nausea, and utter silence.

  I’m still tethered to the station. The module below me is split open. I see the Earth below. A block of ice covers Siberia, bearing down on China, the contrast of white and the green forests beautiful, if not for the destruction and death it represents.

  Segments of the station float free like Legos tossed into space.

  I don’t see either of the Soyuz capsules.

  On the comm, I call out for the rest of my crew.

  No response.

  Then the ground stations.

  No response.

  I try to estimate whether the Earth is getting larger or smaller.

  If larger, I’m in a decaying orbit. I’ll burn up.

  If smaller, I’ve broken free of Earth’s gravity. I’ll float into space. Suffocate when my oxygen runs out. Or, if the station provides oxygen long enough, starve.

  Chapter 4

  James

  I lunge and grab Marcel’s arm. My weight isn’t enough to bring the massive man down, but it’s enough to get the knife away from Pedro’s neck.

  The guard twists out of Marcel’s grip, pulls something out of his pocket, and jabs it into Marcel’s side.

  I feel an electric jolt go through me. Marcel convulses. The knife falls to the linoleum floor, and Marcel and I follow, two sacks of potatoes dropping.

  I’m pretty sure it’s illegal for Pedro to have an electric stun gun in here. But I’m glad he does.

  I roll away from Marcel’s arm, and the electric current ceases. I’m woozy. My limbs feel like dead weight.

  The large man flails like a fish on the dock until the electric tat-tat-tat stops.

  Pedro reaches for the knife. To my surprise, Marcel’s hand reaches up and grips Pedro’s arm, but he’s too weak to hold him back. Marcel lashes out with his other hand instead, punching the smaller man in the ribs. Pedro cries out.

  I crawl over on shaking limbs and smother Marcel’s arm as he’s reaching back for another punch.

  I hear shouting outside the door. A group is coming toward us, calling Marcel’s name.

  Pedro has the knife now, and suddenly there’s a river of blood spurting down Marcel’s body, engulfing his chest and arm and me with it. I swear I can feel him getting colder.

  Marcel gurgles, and his eyes turn to glass.

  Pedro rolls off of him, grabs his radio, and brings it to his mouth.

  I raise a bloody, shaking hand. “Don’t, Pedro.”

  He pauses.

  Between pants, I manage to say, “Outnumbered. Guards. To inmates. Hundred to one.”

  That gives Pedro pause. Finally, he shakes his head.

  “I have to go, Doc. This is my job.”

  “Listen to me. When he came in here, he didn’t instantly slit your throat. Why?”

  Pedro squints, thinking.

  I answer for him.

  “He wanted you as a hostage. A bargaining chip—in case their plan fails. A human shield. If you go out there, they’re going to capture you. Use you against your people. Put you on the web, tied up, maybe beaten, for the world to see, for your kids to see.”

  Pedro glances at the laundry room door. It’s the only way out of this room.

  The shouting is growing louder. We have a minute, maybe less.

  “There’s no way out, Doc. Just stay here.”

  He rises, and I grab his arm with my bloody hand. “There is another way out.”

  “What—”

  “No time to explain, Pedro. Do you trust me?”

  When the prisoners arrive, I’m lying on the floor next to Marcel, twitching.

  There are six of them, carrying improvised clubs and knives. One has a radio.

  “We found Marcel. He’s dead.”

  They surround me. I sit up with effort, still twitching. The charade isn’t hard to pull off. I’m still weak.

  “Who was it?” their leader shouts.

  “Didn’t… see him.”

  A bald guy about my age with tats up and down his arms raises a blade to my Adam’s apple.

  I feign terror—also not a stretch.

  “He came in… behind Marcel. Shocked him and pushed him into me. I blacked out.”

  Gunfire sounds over the radio. The leader turns and barks questions, pacing the laundry room.

  “I can’t… walk,” I whisper. “I need you to carry me out—”

  The blade is withdrawn from my neck, and they push me back to the floor and storm out.

&n
bsp; When I’m sure they’re gone, I strip off my bloody clothes and stuff them in a laundry bag. I crawl to the middle dryer and whisper, “They’re gone.”

  The sheet pulls back and I see Pedro’s eyes. Scared, but grateful.

  “Stay until I come get you.”

  Luckily for him, Pedro isn’t a large man. Still, he’ll be sore when he gets out.

  I’m a little taller than he is, five-ten. It’ll be a tight fit, but I don’t have a choice. I can barely walk. Definitely can’t run or fight. I’m in no shape to escape or battle my way out of here, if it comes to that.

  I turn the volume up on the TV to cover any sounds Pedro and I might make. I hear a noise from his machine and realize he’s turned his radio on to check the situation.

  “Pedro,” I whisper, “you’ve got to keep the radio off. Sound equals death, my friend.”

  With that, I stuff myself into a large commercial dryer, cover the glass door with bunk sheets, and wait.

  It feels as if I’ve been in here for hours.

  I listen to the news, straining my ears for any clues about what’s happening out there.

  Every story on the TV seems to be about the Long Winter and how one family is surviving it.

  I try not to move, but my body is aching—both from being crammed in here in the fetal position and from the electrocution earlier.

  A breaking news story begins. The words “prison riot” and “National Guard” catch my attention. I pull the sheet back just enough to see an image of helicopters landing outside the prison. They can’t be more than two hundred yards from where I am now.

  The reporter’s words echo what I’ve suspected since this began. “With the Long Winter draining federal and local law enforcement resources, the rules of engagement for prison riots has clearly changed.”

  I’m so engrossed I don’t hear the footsteps until the inmate strides through the open doorway, followed by two others. They’re looking for us. For Pedro, to use as a bargaining chip. As for me, when they figure out what I did, they’ll want revenge. Revenge is big in prison. And there may be no one to stop them.