Hunt the Winterlands

By Josh Brown, K. N. Porter, Kurt Wilcken and 6 more

Long ago in distant lands, a great explosion struck the heart of the Daggar Mountain range, causing every race and city, as well as nearly all animal and plant life, to collapse.

Seven-hundred years later there are very few who dare venture to the Winterlands. The elves massed a great evacuation going eastward across the ocean, and the Dwarves tunneled their way underground in a ten-year mass effort called the great migration. The humans by and large tried to adapt but couldn't. Some left, others starved, a scant few continue to persevere.

The main population of the Winterlands is now large clans of Orcs and Goblins who eat flesh of any they find, including other such races as themselves.

The Winterlands are a cold and desolate place, but those creatures and races with a keen mind and strong will are able to find a way to survive.

Hunt the Winterlands is a dark fantasy anthology featuring bone-chilling tales from K. N. Porter, Kurt Wilcken, Nate Barlow, Josh Brown, Gina Wood, Michael May, Alex Ness, Joe Monks, and Marc N. Kleinhenz. Cover by Scott P. Vaughn.

Ice Blind by K. N.Porter
Spitting at the Sun by Kurt Wilcken
Skonjac Woke Up by Nate Barlow
Frozen Flame by Josh Brown
The Other End by Gina Wood
Ice Monster by Michael May
Dogh-Arr’s Honor Restored by Alex Ness
The Lost City by Joe Monks
Elision by Marc N. Kleinhenz

• Language: English
• Publisher: Uffda Press
• Release date: Feb 7, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311093790

Josh Brown

Josh Brown is a writer of fiction, non-fiction, comics, and poetry. His work can be found in numerous anthologies, as well as in Strange Horizons, Star*Line, Mithila Review, and more. His essay, “Poems and Songs of The Hobbit” was featured in Critical Insights: The Hobbit from Salem Press (2016). He served as editor for issue 20 of Eye to the Telescope, the official online journal of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Poetry Association (SFPA).

Book preview

Hunt the Winterlands

by K. N. Porter, Kurt Wilcken, Nate Barlow, Josh Brown, Gina Wood, Michael May, Alex Ness, Joe Monks, and Marc N. Kleinhenz. Cover by Scott P. Vaughn.

Copyright 2015 K. N. Porter, Kurt Wilcken, Nate Barlow, Josh Brown, Gina Wood, Michael May, Alex Ness, Joe Monks, and Marc N. Kleinhenz. Cover by Scott P. Vaughn.

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material or artwork herein is prohibited.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.  This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people.  If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient.  If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy.  Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

All characters and events appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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Contents

Preface

Ice Blind by K. N.Porter

Spitting at the Sun by Kurt Wilcken

Skonjac Woke Up by Nate Barlow

Frozen Flame by Josh Brown

The Other End by Gina Wood

Ice Monster by Michael May

Dogh-Arr’s Honor Restored by Alex Ness

The Lost City by Joe Monks

Elision by Marc N. Kleinhenz

About the Authors

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Preface

Long ago in distant lands, a great explosion struck the heart of the Daggar Mountain range, causing every race and city, as well as nearly all above-ground animal and plant life to collapse. The cause of the explosion was said to be an evil deity imprisoned upon a meteor crashing to the planet. The resultant winter came from the waves of his evil, and ecological catastrophe followed the explosion.

Seven-hundred years later there are very few who dare venture to the Winterlands. The wee folk (faerie kind) were completely wiped out, the elves massed a great evacuation going eastward across the ocean, the dwarves tunneled their way underground in a ten-year mass effort called the great migration. The humans by and large tried to adapt but couldn’t. Some left, others starved, a scant few continue to persevere.

The Winterlands are covered in snow and ice, with very few plant life. The predevastation Winterlands was a semi-tropical continent, so despite the cold it is nonetheless not impossible to survive there, simply very hard to sustain yourself without native plants and animals.

The main population of the Winterlands is now large clans of orcs and goblins who eat flesh of any they find, including other such races as themselves.

Some human hunters live upon the fringe of the Winterlands, harvesting whale and various ivory-tusked creatures. There are a small number of human scavenging gangs who live to search for and salvage valuables from ancient now-frozen cities and castles.

Some dwarves carry out surreptitious mining of veins that in predevastation Winterlands were owned or claimed by humans or others. They also use their underground mines as bases to attack various orc tribes that scrounge the Winterlands, but overall the dwarves would prefer to be hidden from view.

Lastly, the elves use the great glaciers to set up warrior survival rituals as a test for future leaders.

The Winterlands are a cold and desolate place, but those creatures and races with a keen mind and strong will are able to find a way to survive.

Ice Blind

by K. N. Porter

I remember the snow and the quiet. I remember pulling up to the truck on the side of the road. I remember beauty and death coming out of the air. There was another person, human like me, a man. I remember the screams and the heat of metal sliding into me, spilling me on the ground.

I can’t open my eyes because they are frozen shut. Are the dead blind? I know I died bleeding into the snow, surrounded by my own guts, but I can’t remember my name. It’s so very cold . . . death is supposed to be cold. I watched the ice form on my eyes, felt the warmth leave my broken body.

Hands like steel, colder than even my death, grab my head. My eyes are pried open and liquid fire coats my frozen lenses. I hear the clicking of bone against bone before I wander back into to the darkness.

I wake up doused in a fear so painful and large I think I might burst like a balloon. I know now, I can see it. Moving like some slow motion trainwreck, flinging body parts all over. I can’t look away; I can’t stop my brain from trying to process the impossible. I’m going to break soon and lose whatever sanity I’ve left.

The air is alien here, the sounds around me inherently different. The textures and sensations are too sharp, to clean. I need to say it, think it in order to make it true. How I got here, why it’s like this.

****

I get the call to respond to assist a stranded motorist off of Highway 83 around 1800 hours, that’s 6 PM, just before I’m supposed to head home. That’s how things always go; shit hits the fan right at shift change. My name is Kara Springfield; I live in Garrison, North Dakota. I work for a little podunk police department. It’s the middle of winter and colder than hell.

Calls are slow; dispatch says they have a semi off the road stuck in a drift. The temperature is dropping below zero so there’s no way the driver can sit it out.

I pull up and activate my lights, just like always. This sandy-brown-haired kid jumps out of the cab carrying a copy of Moby Dick and grinning wildly. We meet halfway between his truck and my cruiser.

The kid, still grinning ear to ear, introduces himself as Bobby Dupree. Right now Bobby is chained to the wall across from me and I think he may be dead. Alright, now how the hell did I get here?

I know I’m not what you think should be getting out of a police cruiser. First, I’m five-foot-eleven with long brown hair and a lean build. I don’t look butch or dangerous, but sometimes that’s an advantage. I’ve been told I’m beautiful but I don’t put any stock in it.

Bobby introduces himself and the sky and earth split open. That’s how it starts. Then I’m knocked to the ground with some weird blue lightening. I lay there on the side of that road trying to shove my insides back on the inside. One minute I’m home in Garrison and the next I’m freezing and chained to a wall. I know I died on the side of that road, parts of me freezing into the snow.

Somebody took me after they killed me. This entire monologue should be pointless, since I know I’m dead. I never thought I was crazy. Not until this minute. I’m telling you, I’ve checked a million times and I don’t even have a scar. No marks at all. You don’t forget what it’s like to lie on the ground holding your own intestines, the smell, and the pain you know is real.

What the hell is my next step? I guess I need to figure out if I’m really alive or in some form of purgatory. Limbo, that sounds about my luck. I keep hearing this clicking, I’m still a little out of it, I think the clicking are my teeth slamming together, because it is unbelievably cold.

The room is dark. I’m still having problems seeing things clearly. I can’t help looking down at my stomach, I keep checking to make sure I’m not split open. Someone has taken my uniform; I’m wearing some white thing that stops at the knee. It’s soft and iridescent, but I’m freezing my ass off and it’s starting to make me loopy and melodramatic.

I hear the sound of a door opening. Out of reflex, I turn toward the sound. I come face to face with something out of a fairy tale. It’s male, by the way it stands and how it carries itself. Somewhere in the room a high-pitch keening sound begins. I realize with shame I am whimpering. I can’t get myself to stop; I remember who this creature is. This is the thing that broke me like a rag doll. This is the thing that killed me.

The thing is tall, over six feet, maybe closer to seven. He, it, has hair black as pitch . . . no, even blacker. The eyes are a solid blue. No white at all, a true indigo with rings of lighter and darker blues in the middle. What strikes me the most alien is the swirling vortex of color inside those rings. The hues change so fast I can’t name them. The face looks human in shape, but that’s where it ends. Soft angles and sharp lines bleed into a smooth canvas, so beautiful like a statue. Its skin is pale, no white, like milk, with an underlying tinge of blue. He is the most beautiful corpse I have ever seen.

Its mouth is full above a sharp chin; high cheekbones seem to draw you right back to its eyes. This face is attached to a body built for strength. The shoulders are broad corded, lean; its legs, long and powerful. The thing is covered in some thin-plated material. Looks like black armor made out of cloth. It moves with the thing like a second skin. As it walks into the room I watch the material shimmer.

Its body stands upright like I do, appears to walk like I do. There is no way this thing can be human. The movements are too graceful, to alien. Pictures flash through my head and then I know exactly what is walking toward me.

I remember him, I remember him stalking me. Pulling out a knife, no it must have been a sword. Who the hell uses a sword nowadays? It was glowing blue and it slid into me like I was made of mist. He threw something blue that looked like lightening. It came out his hands and burned like fire. I looked into his eyes as I died. Watched his face as my eyes began to freeze solid.

The room is vibrating around me, now I can’t stop remembering. Seeing this thing again leaves me pinned, immobile, like a butterfly on a collection board. I’m shaking so hard I can’t catch my breath. The annoying puppy whine is still crawling up my throat and panting out in pitiful short bursts.

He moves closer and I stop breathing. He has something in his hand, it looks like a syringe. Only this syringe has mutated into something from a horror movie. The needle is as long as my hand and wickedly curved. I try to become very small, pressing into the stone wall behind me.

I think tiny thoughts, close in on myself. Maybe if I am very still it will go away. All of this insanity has returned me to my childhood. I’m trying to hide under the blanket from the monster. If I stay under the blanket it can’t get me.

There are more like him; I saw them come out of a rip in the sky, at least ten of them, some sort of fairy-tale raiding party. That’s what they must be, that’s what they look like. Not the cleaned up versions, oh no . . . these things come from the book where Little Red got ate up. They marched out of that split and hacked me to pieces. I see it now; I feel the dying all over again. Each one had these white sharp teeth, like a shark, like a lion. I can see them, each tooth so delicate. These things smiled and laughed, they enjoy the hunting. They were so happy I got to see each grin. Every smile filled with perfectly straight, razor sharp pearls. Predators’ teeth, animals’ teeth, used to tear flesh and crack bones. They were laughing when they took us, singing and laughing as I bled to death in the snow.

I hear a rabbit screaming, a rabbit being torn apart and screaming, and I realize it’s me. I am screaming shamelessly in pitiful sucking bursts. My beautiful killer is watching, he lifts the hand not holding the syringe. I watch the blue current spill out his fingertips and slam into me. I feel myself coming apart as pain shreds reason.

He stands over me testing the syringe, small drops of liquid fall from the needle and land on my face. This thing that has already killed me once is preparing to deliver more pain. Dropping to one knee beside me it uses the electric pain to push my head to the side and hold it against the floor. I can’t see its face anymore, only feet. A cold touch against my cheek, It appears to be caressing the side of my face. Slinking to both knees this mutant thing leans forward hovering, inhaling my scent. Placing its face above the side of my neck, my killer inhales deeply. Tiny black specks are swimming in my vision.

Something cold and wet touches my neck. This thing is licking me. The spot begins tingling; a stinging starts to radiate from this spot down to my shoulder. Judas on a crutch, this thing is a big fucking spider. I focus on every action, every movement, anything to keep control and not go completely crazy. Little voices are jibbering away in my head, screaming about giant arachnids.

The side of my neck is numb. I have got to think of this thing as something other than a big spider. Maybe when I died I went to Hell that would explain all of this.

Spidey seems to really enjoy how I smell. He is watching my face, I know that much, he watches my eyes as he slides the needle into my neck. Through a deafening haze of terror, I see he likes it. He likes watching me afraid. He may have numbed my neck but he is enjoying the fear.

I can’t see him push the plunger but I feel it. In milliseconds I am being embalmed with liquid nitrogen. My body clenches inward dumping adrenaline in response. Sub