Until Dawn, Page 3

and covered her mouth with the sleeve of her jumper, pulling it out of the sleeve of the jacket.

  Neither of them said a word.

  The fire had died. They sat huddled together, shivering.

  ‘We should go and look for help,’ Jim said.

  ‘I think there should be a small village or a farm nearby,’ he took his phone out and opened Google maps. Without the Internet connection it took him a while to find the approximate location on the highway. His fingers were stiff and refused to obey.

  ‘Here,’ he turned the screen towards Sarah. There was a village of Dunecht about two miles away to the South-East.

  ‘We can make it,’ he said and turned on the torch of his phone.

  ‘Isn’t it best we stayed here, waiting for the rescue to arrive?’ she didn’t manage to keep her lower jaw from trembling as she spoke.

  ‘Come on,’ he tried to open the door but a snow bank was blocking it from the outside. It took a couple of strong pushed with the shoulder to get the driver’s door finally open. He helped her out through the same door.

  Sarah immediately felt as freezing wind scolded her face. It threw snow dust into her eyes and nostrils, which immediately froze on her eyelashes and burned her nose, forcing her to breathe through the mouth. She pulled the hood of her jacket up and held it with one hand, with the other one squeezing tightly Jim’s hand.

  He said something but she could not make out what it was because of the loud hissing of wind.

  ‘What?’ she screamed as he pulled her after himself, away from the car and into the ice-cold darkness. Her feet sunk inside the knee-deep snow, making every step a struggle.

  ‘Don’t let go!’ Jim turned and put his face next to hers, as he tried to outyell the snowstorm. She could barely see the features of his face through the blizzard even though he was barely a couple of inches away.

  They walked for so long that it seemed to last forever. She could barely feel his hand in hers anymore, almost unable to move the fingers, keeping her eyes closed, covering her face from the wind and snow with the other arm. Never in her life had she felt so cold. It was as if the chill was coming from deep within her bones, spreading from there through every part of her body, concentrating in her feet, needles piercing her soles with each step, and hands.

  The only source of light was the torch on Jim’s phone but she could barely see it in the snowstorm. Suddenly, panic took over as she felt him let go. She took another step forward with arms outstretched, like a blind man about to hit a wall, didn’t manage to hold her balance and fell to her knees onto the snow.

  ‘Jim!’ she screamed, her lips cracked and hurting.

  ‘JIM!’ Sarah hectically touched the snow not able to see or hear anything even at a distance of an outstretched arm’s length except for the never-ending snow dust, which stung her eyes and clumped on her eyelashes, creating tiny sharp icicles.

  ‘JIM! JIM!’ she screamed again and again, getting up and fell back to her knees. Unseeing, she stumbled ahead, turning to her left and then to her right, desperately searching for him, arms reaching out with one and only hope, to finally find him.

  She knew she was crying but there were no tears. They did not make it down her cheeks, freezing on the eyelashes, making it even harder to keep the eyes open. And the ever-present horrible howling of the wind, it was driving her mad.

  ‘JIM!’

  She tried to rub the ice away from her eyes. It felt as if a cat had clawed her across the face. She squinted, trying to see anything in the white whirlwind, and her heart leapt from joy. Light! There was light in the distance.

  At first she thought it was Jim’s flashlight. She moved towards it, covering from the wind with her arms in front of her face, still calling his name. When she got closer she saw that there were two sources of light, headlights of a car. She tried to run towards it, only ending up sprawled on the snow. It took her immense strength to get back up and she got to the driver’s door crawling on all fours, not able to make another step, her heart beating inside her chest.

  She knocked on the driver’s window and pulled on the door. The first time she failed to succeed and fell backwards. Despair had its tangles all over her, strangling her, holding her down. Sarah just lay there in the snow. All she wanted at that moment was to close her eyes and not to feel any more cold or pain, for all of this to finally end. But then she thought about Jim, about their little girl. She could not give up. Not now. She had to get up.

  Sarah forced herself back up and gave another tug on the door. This time she succeeded. A strong gust of wind swung the door open all the way. She heard the music coming from the radio. The beeping signal notified about the open door.

  ‘Oh, thank God,’ she whispered, breathless, holding on to the door of the car.

  ‘Help,’ she spoke but the quiet sound of her voice was carried away by the incessant wind.

  ‘Please, help me… My husband, he’s…’

  The man sitting in the driver’s seat seemed asleep.

  ‘My husband…’ she was babbling while swallowing the ice-cold air like a fish out of water.

  But the man did not open his eyes. She put her hand on his shoulder and he slumped out of the driver’s seat, falling heavily onto the snow. It took her a second to realise that he wasn’t breathing. She just stood there, looking at him, unable to comprehend what was going on.

  ‘Please, help…’ she crouched near the man and tried to turn him over.

  There was nothing she could do for the man, so she reached into the car and pressed the horn on the wheel a couple of times, hoping that Jim would hear it. Then she climbed over the dead body into the car and shut the door, shivering from cold and shock.

  As she continued to press the horn signal, she started feeling dizziness coming on. There was something wrong. Suddenly, something that Jim had said earlier sparked in her mind like a flash. The exhaust pipe! It wasn’t the cold that had killed the driver.

  Desperate, she gathered all the strength she had left and opened the door. Everything seemed surreal, everything except for the pain. She climbed outside, trying not to step on the body.

  Holding on to the car, she moved around it and saw that the back was covered with snow up until the tail lights. Sarah fell to her knees and started digging. She did not feel her hands anymore, all that was left was the aching sensation in every part of her body, making her every movement a torture. But she had to go on. She dug and dug until she freed the tail-pipe.

  Now she had to get back inside.

  When she did, she closed the door, hoping that the gas had vented out while the door was open. Shivering, Sarah looked at the gas meter, there was more than half a tank left. She turned the heater on to the maximum and put her hands close to it. She knew that the warm air was coming out but could not feel it, her fingers so numb she could not bend them. Having pulled one of the gloves off, holding its fingertips with her teeth, a searing pain burned the hand as if somebody had stripped her skin off. For a moment she simply stared at her shaking limbs which were covered with swollen yellowish blisters.

  Tears ran down her face, melting the ice off of her eyelashes. She pressed the horn on the driving wheel with her elbows, again and again, over and over, the loud yelp of the hoot shouting out into the blizzard.

  - Dawn –

  As the senses came back to her, every part of her body screamed in agony. It was a struggle even to open the eyes. As soon as she did try to open them, she had to shut them tight. Everything around her was white, blinding. She did not have any strength left to move, not even to lift her head.

  A sharp scraping noise as if someone was shovelling gravel off a driveway came from somewhere above her. Then she heard it again.

  Sarah forced herself to finally open the eyes and raised her head off of the steering wheel. Right in front of herself she saw a white screen. She felt a sharp pain pierce her temples. And then there was the same noise again. Something scraped across the windshield, breaking a small peephol
e, and a face appeared in it.

  It was a man’s face, an unfamiliar face. She saw his lips move and heard him say something but the sound was too muffled. The man brushed more snow away with his gloved hand and knocked on the window.

  The recollection of what had happened the previous night struck her like lightning.

  Jim…

  The unprecedented weather situation, brought upon by the snowstorm and extremely low temperatures, caused the death of two people during the night of the twenty-third of December. The tragic accident happened on the A944 between Alford and Aberdeen. Another person was found alive in the car. From the reports of paramedics it is known that the woman is in no immediate danger, having suffered from frostbite and at the moment is being treated at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary.

  The rescue teams managed to reach the place of the accident only in the early morning hours. The local authorities are claiming that they were not prepared for such adverse weather conditions and are doing their best to avoid anything like this in the future.

  You were listening to the news on the Northsound radio…