Day 2

The chuckle on the other end of the line meant he was awake enough to get the joke at least. “You know I’m on the night shift this month. You also know I'm sleeping until four in the afternoon daily.” Though the security jobs he usually got were decent hours there were a few that tried to mess with his sleep schedule. “What was so important that you had to call me in the middle of the night huh?”

It was my turn to chuckle at his joke. “I just had a visitor.” I told him, not really expecting him to get the hint. Instead I just wanted to get his interest up a bit and give him a chance to wake up a little.

“Oh really? Was it a Martian or a Venusian this time?”

“Hardy har har.” It one point in my life, before the storm happened and met Mrs. Snowburn, I had joined a group that believed in alien life. At first I thought it would be fun and sit around discussing the various sightings and stories. I hadn’t had an ‘experience’ before so it was fun to hear others’. That is, until they suggested that I try and have my own. Listening to other people’s stories and going out and looking for my own were two very separate matters. At least, with the former, I could pretend to believe or not believe as the mood suited me, I had quickly learned after joining that placing ‘alien enthusiast’ on my resume wasn’t exactly the best idea. But doing something about it was on a whole different level. Sure, I believed there was life off the planet, statistically speaking it was almost impossible for there not to be. Calling them to my doorstep, however, was one step I just wouldn’t take. Especially since half the ones I heard about either involved no memory or some kind of probing. “No, I meant in real life. I just had a student walk in who had been your mom’s student.”

“Yeah? Who was it? Maybe I’ll recognize the name.” He sounded interested, but that’s the trouble with phones: sounding interested and actually being interested were different. I told him ‘Matt’ since that was all I knew, and the closest age range I could figure. “Oh yeah! That was prolly Matthew Rawls. He was a couple grades behind me, but I remember mom talking about him all the time!”

I smiled. If Samuel knew Matt in school, or at least knew of him, then the news that Matt had come mostly to speak with his old teacher would be even better. “He came to talk with your mom.” Instead there was silence. “Sam? You there?” I got worried when he didn’t respond to my questions. “Isn’t that good news? I mean, even though she passed away before he came by he still came by. He got a good in the inner city, he didn’t tell me what, but that didn’t seem to matter as much.” The line went dead and a dial tone replaced the silence.

It wasn’t what I was expecting and I didn’t really know what to do as I set the phone back into its cradle. He was supposed to be happy. At least, that’s what I expected, but instead he...froze.

***

I guess this is where I should talk about Mrs. Snowburn and my introduction to her. Like I said, I met her during one of the worst blizzards anyone alive had ever seen. I was a commuter in sense. Jobs were scarce, especially for a wannabe teacher with no actual real world experience to put on his resume. I’d done my thing at school, but spent my weekends partying instead of working. My first loan payments were due and had no way to pay them off besides hit up my parents for some cash. The temp agency gave me jobs all over the city; sometimes the only thing available took an hour and half to get to when there was no traffic. When there was I could be stuck on the road for up to five hours at a time. When I didn’t have job lined up through the agency I then had interviews. I was desperate enough that some of my potential employers were even farther away then my temp jobs.

It was on my way back from one of the interviews that I got caught. Visibility was almost zero; I couldn’t even see the front of my car without squinting. Needless to say I pulled over, stopped driving, and prayed. There wasn’t much else to do, the combination of downed power lines and interference from the storm prevented me from listening to the radio. Though my car did have a working heater, even with it on the temperature was near, if not below freezing, and I hadn’t filled up the gas tank before heading home. Besides the cold I knew there were crazies still driving, it seemed like every few minutes I heard a car pass by. Eventually one of them was going to hit an icy patch and spin into me, it was going to happen. So, huddled in a blanket I kept in the back of the car for quick naps, I shivered out any prayer I knew. Eventually I was just stringing words together that seemed to be coherent, but probably weren’t.

After a while the shivering and fear had gotten to me and body started shutting down. Not really dying so much as hibernating, though that would have just meant dying while asleep rather than awake. I fought the sleep, of course, if I stayed awake I hade more control over my surroundings. I would be able to react better if something changed, maybe even get out of the car if the snow let up enough. Half and hour had passed by the time I decided to give up the fight and readjusted to be more comfortable horizontal. All the while I cursed myself for being so weak. A half hour! It felt more like days than minutes, but the engine was still trying its best to keep me warm so that meant the clock was still as accurate as it was before I pulled off the road.

I guess it was about this time that the officer showed up and began knocking on my window. I don’t know if I actually went to sleep or not, and was too tired and cold to really care to look at the clock. When he saw me move he yelled through the closed window. I didn’t really catch what he said, through fatigue and a howling wind his words seemed only able to register their existence in my ears and nothing more. He was there, but I didn’t know why. “I’m sorry, could you repeat that?” Is what I meant to say, though I could only manage a mumble or two.

Instead of repeating himself he opened my door, which was thankfully unlocked, and pulled me out. “Come on buddy,” he said into my ear. “My name is Officer Kyle and I’m gonna take you somewhere warm so you can wake up a bit.” I remember closing my eyes to try and go back to sleep but being patted awake. “Come on buddy, you need to wake up. If we’re going to get you someplace warm I’ll need you help on this.” With that he wrapped one of his arms under my arm pit and shoulder and pulled me out of the car with a small grunt. “Yeah, that’s it. Now, there’s a school not far from here and that where I’m going to take you. It’s called Summerfield. Have you heard of it?” I tried to say ‘no’ but I could only groan. I tried to help, but everything was too stiff and I was too tired to exert much effort. I leaned against Officer Kyle for support, and moved my legs through the inches of snow, but it was the best I could do. “Well, I’m sure we can find you something warm there.”

Thinking about it now, I have no idea why he took me to the school. Sure, it made sense and all, but how did he know there would be people there? All seven or so people that were in the building were there when the snow began. They were students whose parents never showed up, teachers who wouldn’t leave their students in the building alone, and parents who got to the school to late to leave safely. None of them were people the officer would have known about or helped prior to finding me, future inquiries suggested none of the people at the school knew him either. So how did he know I that was the place to take me? Mrs. Snowburn, on the hospital bed, suggested that it might have been an angle sent for heaven to answer my prayers. I never quite believed her; I might have even been a bit rude to her when she suggested it. Though I had to admit it was quite a coincidence just the same.

When we reached the out edges of the school’s property, as told to me by Kyle, everything was a blur, snow and ice had begun to cake up on my face and blurred my vision. Every few minutes I flinched, thinking I was about to run into a poll or a tree, only to discover it was a gust of wind changing the direction of the snow or a shadow we were passing through. And, by the time we reached the front entrance, I was basically being dragged along behind the Officer.

I could tell that someone was trying to keep a path open for anybody who might stop by, except for a large depression; the entire front of the building was covered in snow drifts. “There we go, we’re almost there. Just a little bit further. You can do it.” Officer Kyle’s words of encouragement helped me mentally stay as focused as I could be, though I couldn’t say it helped my motor functions any. “Anyone in there?!” He yelled, turning his face away from my ears, though the amount of snow and melting slush lining their edges prevented most sound from reaching my eardrums outside of the shrill whistle of wind. “We need some help out here!” Propping me up against something that blocked the wind, I assume it was one of the front pillars though I never did figure it out completely, Kyle started digging through the depression in the snow calling out to anyone that could hear that we, no that I, was in need of help.