White Wake

The Long Freeze is in its seventy-first year. Late afternoon, tenth month, day 3. The blizzard has thinned to a bright, killing wind, and exposed skin still dies in minutes.

A crawler has already gone through. Giant tracks cut the white, deep as ditches, breathing a last oil-heat that is already failing. A town that stops on this ice becomes a corpse pit. This one did not stop.

You are not aboard it. You are on the open waste. Your boots have come down onto those marks. Arrival. Nothing else has been decided.

Off the berm, a woman on a stripped bike is watching you. She does not raise a weapon. She does not come down with a welcome. Curiosity only — the measuring kind, spent like ration.

"Heat's leaving," she says. Not loud. "Follow the tracks while they still know a town, stay and freeze, or spend a name. I don't buy the rest."

STATUS
Identity: unknown
Time: Freeze-Year 71, tenth month, day 3, late afternoon
Place: the white track in a crawler's wake
Trust: 0%
Bond: unset