The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 19

Richard stepped into the room and knelt by an angel, touching the negative impression of Cleaver's face. He felt nothing. If this had been the connection, it was dead now. The Cold had moved on.

He would have to try outside.

'Leech,' he said, 'get on your back-pack blower and ring Catriona again. We have to tell her what we're doing, in case it doesn't work. No sense in the next lot making the same mistakes…'

A chill rolled down the corridor.

The doorway was empty. Richard saw a white tangle on the floor. Leech's parka. And another further away. His leggings.

Richard's stomach turned over. He was feeling things now.

'Leech!' he shouted.

Only the Professor responded, rattling his chair and yelling around his gag.

Richard jogged down the corridor, past more of Leech's discarded arctic gear. He turned a corner. The main doors were open. One flapped in the blizzard.

He made it to the doors and took the full force of the wind in his face.

Leech — in a lightweight salmon suit — had walked a few yards away from the building. He stood in the middle of whirling snow, casually undoing his wide orange knit tie.

One of the snowmen was back. It was Bee-Alice, swollen to mammoth size, twelve or fourteen feet tall, body-bulbs bulging as if pregnant with a litter of snow-babies. Queen Bee-Alice stood over Leech like a Hollywood pagan idol, greedy for human sacrifice.

It should be a summer evening. Daylight lasting past ten o'clock. Plagues of midges and supper in the garden. A welcome cool after another punishingly blazing drought day. Any sunlight was blocked by the Cold, and premature gloom — not even honest night — had fallen.

Leech popped his cat's-eye cufflinks and began unbuttoning his chocolate-brown ruffle shirt. He exposed his almost-hairless chest, clenching his jaws firmly to keep from chattering. He wasn't quite human, but Richard had known that.

This was not going to happen on Richard's watch. Bad enough that the Cold's wake-up call had come from an embittered lunatic whose emotional age was arrested at eleven. If her next suitor were Derek Leech, the death by freezing of all life on Earth might seem a happier outcome.

Richard tried to stride towards Leech, but wind held him back. He forced himself, inch by inch, out into the open, struggling against pellets of ice to take the few crucial steps.

Queen Bee-Alice creaked, head turning like the world before the BBC-TV news. The novelty bumblebees bounced over her, a crown or a halo. She had giant, wrecking-ball fists. Sharon Kellett, junior meteorologist. Two years out of a polytechnic, with a boyfriend in the Navy and a plan to be national weather girl on the television station Derek Leech wanted to start up. She was among the first casualties of the Winter War. Dead, but not yet fallen. Richard ached at the life lost.

Leech shucked his snug-at-the-crotch, flappy-at-the-ankles trousers. He wore mint-green Y-fronts with electric blue piping.

Richard got to the Great Enchanter and crooked an arm around his neck.

'I won't let you do this,' he shouted in his ear.

'You don't understand, Jeperson,' he shouted back. At this volume, attempted sincerity sounded just like whining. '7 have to. For the greater good. I'm willing to sacrifice my — or anyone's — life to end this.'

Richard was taken aback, then laughed.

'Nice try, Derek,' he said. 'But it won't wash.'

'It won't, will it?' replied Leech, laughing too.

'Not on your nellie.'

'I still have to go through with this, though. You understand, Jeperson? I can't pass up the opportunity!'

Leech twisted as if greased in Richard's grip, and shot a tight, knuckled fist into his stomach. Even through layers of protective gear, Richard felt the pile-driver blow. He lost his hold on Leech and the Great Enchanter followed the sucker-punch with a solid right to the jaw, a kick to the knee, and another to the goolies. Richard went down, and took an extra kick — for luck — in his side.

' 'You ream now, Grasshopper,'' said Leech, fingers pulling the corners of his eyes, ' 'not to charrenge master of ancient and noble art of dirty fighting!''

Leech couldn't help gloating. Stripped to his underpants, whipped by sleet, skin scaled by gooseflesh, his expression was a mask of ugly victory. His exultant, grin showed at least 168 teeth. Was this the Great Enchanter's true face?

'Really think you can make a deal with the Cold?'

Leech wagged his finger. 'You're not getting me like that, Grasshopper. I'm no Clever Dick. I'm not going to explain my wicked plan and give you a chance to get in the way. I'm just going to do what I'm going to do.'

Richard had a lump in his fist, an ice-chunk embedded with frozen gravel. His eyes held Leech's gaze, but his hand was busy with the chunk, which he rolled in the snow.

'You didn't go to public school, did you, Derek?'

'No, why?'

'You might have missed a trick.'

Richard sat up and, with practised accuracy, threw the heavy-cored snowball at Leech's forehead. The collision made a satisfying sound. Richard's heart surged with immature glee and he recalled earlier victories: as an untried Third Form bowler, smashing the centre-stump and putting out the astonished Captain of the First Eleven; on an autumn playground, wielding a horse chestnut fresh from the branch to split the vinegar-hardened champion conker of the odious Weems-Deverell II.

A third eye of blood opened above Leech's raised brows. His regular eyes showed white and he collapsed, stunned. He lay, twitching, on the snow.

Queen Bee-Alice made no move. Richard hoped she was impartial.

Unable to leave even Derek Leech to freeze, Richard picked him up in a fireman's lift and tossed him inside the building — slamming the doors after him. He didn't know how much time he had before Leech's wits crept back.

He took off his furs. Cold bit, deeper with each layer removed. He went further than Leech, and eventually stood naked in the blizzard. Everything that could shrivel, turn blue or catch frost did so. When the shivering stopped, when sub-zero (if not sub-absolute zero) windblast seemed slightly warm, he recognized the beginnings of hypothermia. There was no more pain, just a faint pricking all over his body. Snow packed his ears and deafened him. He was calm, light-headed. Flashes popped in his vision, as the cold did something to his optic nerves he didn't want to think about. He shut his eyes, not needing the distraction. There were still flashes, but easier to ignore.

He knelt before Queen Bee-Alice. Some feeling came from his shins as they sank into the snow — like mild acid, burning gently to the bone. His extremities were far distant countries, sending only the occasional report, always bad news. Cleaver had lain face down, but indoors — with no snowfall. Richard lay back, face up, flakes landing on his cheeks and forehead, knowing his whole body was gradually being covered by layer after layer. His hands were swollen and useless. With his arms he shovelled snow over himself. Snow didn't melt on his skin — anybody warmth was gone. He fought the urge to sit up and struggle free, and he fought the disorienting effects that came with a lowering of the temperature of his brain. He was buried quickly, as the Cold made a special effort to clump around him, form a drift, smooth over the bump, swallow him.

As his body temperature lowered, he had to avoid surrendering to the sleep that presaged clinical death. His blood slowed, and his heartbeats became less and less frequent. He was using a meagre repertoire of yogic techniques, but couldn't be distracted by the business of keeping the meat machine running.

He opened up, physically, mentally, spiritually.

In the darkness, he was not alone.

Richard felt the Cold. It was hugely alive, and more alien than the few extra-terrestrials he'd come across.