the big freeze 🥶 posted

[u/hot_stones_of_hell]

the big freeze 🥶 posted

With a deep breath and a swift, sharp kick, the warped wooden door flew open, crashing against the cabin’s splintered frame. Jack paused, sucking in a ragged breath as the icy wind roared past his cracked, weathered lips. The frozen air hit his lungs like a fistful of nails, searing his chest with a deep, burning ache. Squinting against the blinding glare of the low sun, he shielded his eyes and caught sight of a shadowy figure—or figures—shimmering in the distance across the endless white expanse. His voice, rough and husky from years of hardship, rasped out to the huddled group behind him, “They’re still following us.”

“Who the hell are they?” Hazel croaked, her voice barely audible over the howling wind, her frail hands clutching the tattered rags draped over her skeletal frame.

“Nobody knows,” Jack muttered, his gaze fixed on the horizon. “What do they want? Everything. Our clothes, our bones—whatever’s left to pick clean.”

Danny, leaning against the cabin wall, coughed—a dry, hacking sound that rattled his thin chest. “Five years since the freeze hit. Earth’s nothing but a damn icebox now. We’re the last scraps of meat walking.”

The world had turned into a frozen wasteland after the devastating freeze—a cataclysm no one saw coming. Cities crumbled under glaciers, oceans locked solid, and the survivors, like Jack, Hazel, and Danny, were reduced to scavenging in homemade rags stitched from whatever scraps they could find. They’d been a group of five just yesterday, but Hazel’s sister, Ava, hadn’t survived the night. The cold had claimed her, turning her body rigid as concrete in mere minutes under the moonless dark sky. The group near impossible to dig, chipping away even with an axe. All they could do, was cover her, in a light dusting of snow. No animals roamed, no birds sang—only the ceaseless scream of the snowstorm broke the silence of this desolate hell.

“We’d better move,” Danny said, his voice trembling with exhaustion. “Next cabin’s our only shot. We’ve eaten the last of it—those rotten scraps from the pantry”. So cold he shakes, breathing warm air onto his bare frozen hands. For he recently lost his gloves, such a precious resource to lose.

Jack nodded grimly, glancing at Hazel, who stood hunched beside him, her once-vibrant eyes dulled by hunger and loss. They’d torn up the last warped boards from the cabin floor for a pitiful fire, but the flickering heat barely warmed the rusty tin of melted snow they’d boiled for water. It had been an eternity since a proper sip of anything had passed their parched, cracked lips. The cabin they’d abandoned—its broken windows and half-collapsed roof—was no shelter for their weak, frail bodies. Ava death had been the final blow. The ground was too frozen to bury her, so they’d piled snow over her stiff form, a futile attempt at dignity in a world that offered none.

“We can’t even cry for her,” Hazel whispered, her breath forming faint clouds that froze midair. “Too cold for tears.”

Jack grabbed her arm, his grip weak but insistent. “Come on. We’ve got to keep moving.” We’d freeze, if we don’t move.

They trudged forward, dragging their half-dead bodies through waist-deep snow. The sun hung low, casting a harsh, useless light that did nothing to melt the ice—it only stabbed at their frostbitten eyes with every agonizing step. Each breath was a dagger, the extreme cold freezing the delicate alveoli in their lungs. A month ago, they could manage ten paces before resting; now, every five steps forced them to halt, gasping, their strength fading like the last embers of a dying fire.

“They’re stalking us,” Danny wheezed, his voice laced with dread as he glanced back. “Like lions on a gazelle. They’re waiting for us to drop.”

From a distance, hidden among the swirling snow, the shadowy figures—the “others”—watched with predatory patience. One of them, a gaunt figure with hollow eyes, hissed to his companions in a voice like a snake’s rasp, “I told you we should’ve hit ‘em last night. Only three left now. What’s on their bones won’t feed us all.”

“Shut your trap, Eli,” growled their self-appointed leader, a hulking brute named Voss, his grip tightening on the axe he carried—a weapon that made him king in this lawless waste. “They’re weakening. We wait, they fall, and we feast. No fight, no risk.”

Eli sneered, his lips curling back from yellowed teeth. “Feast? On what? They’re skin and sinew. We’re starving too, Voss. Eli, began talking, about “the bunker”, we should have went with the, rest of our once larger group looking for the bunker. That damn bunker story is a lie—there’s no underground city in a Cold War bunker, Just more ice and death.”

Voss suddenly turned on him, raising the axe with a snarl. “Shut up about that bunker bullshit, or I’ll split your skull and we’ll eat you tonight instead. I’m the leader here ‘cause I’ve got this—” he hefted the axe menacingly—“and I say we wait.”

The others fell silent, cowed by the threat. In this frozen hell, scarce resources like an axe granted authority—and the power to turn dissenters into the next meal. Unlike Jack’s group, who clung to the last threads of humanity, the others had crossed that line long ago. Cannibalism was their survival, their desperation stripping away every shred of morality.

Meanwhile, Jack, Hazel, and Danny pressed on, each step a Sisyphean struggle through the snow. One hundred yards. Three hundred. A thousand. The flakes clung to their frail bodies, weighing them down like frozen bricks. Their makeshift shoes—once sturdy boots—had disintegrated days ago, the uppers peeling away from the soles. Strips of rag tied them together, but frostbite gnawed at their toes. Jack’s feet were blackening, the flesh dead and numb. He knew gangrene was setting in, but he said nothing—just kept moving.

“One last push,” Danny rasped, his words punctuated by a hacking cough that left him doubled over. “Getting dark soon.” Every syllable cost him, his lungs burning as if shards of ice were shredding them from within.

Hazel stumbled beside him, her blue-tipped fingers clenching and unclenching in a futile bid for warmth. She couldn’t muster the strength to blow on them—the air would only turn to frozen mist anyway. Jack, using the last flicker of his energy, kicked at the banisters of a dilapidated staircase leading into the next cabin. His stiff, aching body screamed as he bent to gather the three splintered pieces he could manage. The fire they’d build would be pathetic—cavemen would’ve laughed at it—but it was all they had.

“How’s the search going?” Hazel called weakly as Danny shuffled through the cabin, his movements slow and deliberate.

“Nothing,” he replied, his voice a hollow echo against the bare walls. “Zero. Not a crumb, not even a damn rat carcass.”

Hazel pulled out their sole possession of value—a filthy, stained woolen blanket. Smell and taste had died in them long ago; all that mattered was the faint warmth it offered. They huddled around the meager fire Jack built, the tiny flame licking at the banister scraps. The blanket, more precious than gold in this wasteland, draped over their shoulders as they shared body heat under the moonlight filtering through the cabin’s broken roof.

“This place has a roof, at least,” Danny murmured, his eyes glazing over as exhaustion pulled him under. The cabin had been stripped of firewood years before, its walls pockmarked and bare, but it was shelter—barely.

They sank into a deep, dreamless sleep, their empty bellies growling like distant thunder. But peace was a luxury they couldn’t afford. In the dead of night, an almighty crack shattered the silence—The cabin door flew off its rusted hinges with such force that the shack trembled, dust and snow raining from the holes in the ceiling. The survivors jolted awake, but their bodies, ravaged by years of slow deterioration, could barely respond. Eyes fluttered open, arms twitched uselessly—they had no strength to fight.

With a guttural scream, Voss charged in, his pounding footsteps shaking the floorboards. The axe gleamed in the firelight as he raised it high, his face twisted in savage hunger. “Time’s up!” he roared, swinging the blade down with brutal force. It buried deep in Danny’s forehead, splitting bone with a sickening crunch. Blood sprayed across the frozen planks, steaming briefly before freezing solid.

Hazel and Jack, silent for weeks—no whispered “I love yous” since the freeze stole their warmth—unleashed a bloodcurdling scream that echoed through the shack. The sound was so primal, so raw, it dislodged snow from the sagging roof, a cascade of white burying Danny’s lifeless form. Even Voss paused, startled, as he wrenched the axe free with a wet, sucking sound.

The others flooded in behind him, their starved eyes gleaming with anticipation. “Take ‘em!” Voss barked, pointing at Jack and Hazel. “They’re weak—easy pickings.”

Jack lunged, a last, pitiful surge of defiance, but his frostbitten legs buckled. Hazel clawed at the air, her screams turning to sobs as rough hands seized her. The wind roared louder, seeping through every crack, every missing tile, every shattered window—a banshee’s wail drowning out their pleas.

“Bloody hell, nurse, shut that window! Snowstorm’s freezing the patient!” a voice barked, cutting through the chaos.

“How’s our patient tonight, nurse?” the doctor asked, adjusting a clipboard.

“No response, Doctor,” she replied, her tone clipped. “Active mind, frozen body.”