The high-rise monoliths of a bygone age shaded the empty city square in perpetual shadow. Electrical lines criss-crossed overhead through the open spaces, all lined in ice; all held frozen and taut in time.  Dilapidated cars and the jutted balconies of skyscrapers wore blankets of hard-packed snow and rime made from constant snowdrifts, unceasing since the Collapse.  The vroom of a snowmobile reverberated in the ice-filled spaces. 

Seated atop the mobile’s shaking chassis sat a man, wrapped in dirty but warm clothes, his eyes’ focus switching between the lit path HUD mini-map on the side of his goggles’ visor and the ramshackle road itself. He stopped at a crossroads, and wiped his goggles while gazing upward.  

Before him about five leagues away stood the Wall, an icecap so large and so wide it covered the horizon. It covered every space between the skyscrapers, as the sixty and eighty foot tall buildings were nothing more than decoration to the ice’s ever burgeoning expanse. As if its very presence forces time to stand still. The Clan always warned about leaving it be, lest it trap you as well. The young man, Gerik, felt agitated the longer he stared at it. At its inevitability. 

“The Wall will near engulf us all…” he whispered inside his helmet.

“What’s that?” a voice crackled over the comm in his ear.

Gerik looked forward and saw another man fifty yards away on a similar bike and in similar warm clothing wave back at him.  

“Nothing, nothing.” Gerik responded to Huey, his guide and the reason they were both out in this frozen waste.  

“How much farther, Hue? Nothing out naught the Scavs haven’t already picked clean years ago.”

Gerik heard a hurramph in disapproval over the mic. “Now, now not much farther. Wild Earl said he saw the infrared over his scanner two nights ago. Said he saw it as clear as this blue eyed sky above us. He ain’t ever steered me wrong ‘afore. And I ain’t ever steered you wrong, neither. Speaking of clear sky best we move on fore we lose the rest of ours.”

Gerik heard the end transmission crackle, and a rising wind howled in between the streets and empty buildings. He flexed his gloved hands, bracing against the wintry maw, turned the ignition of his bike and rode on.  

Hue was known to take youngers of the Clan on small fetch quests. He was old, and having a second pair of eyes made it safer for him on the bike and in the wild, and it doubled as being a method of instruction for the youngers. As far as Gerik could remember, everyone who came back from one of Hue’s trips always seemed to come back harder, more cold, cold-hearted even, ready to take on the challenges of the world. And as Gerik recalled the old wounds and scars on his body, they were challenging. 

Lost in reverie, and the contant, unchanging hum-drum of his snow-mobile, Gerik hadn’t noticed where their path was heading until he felt it; a deep ache echoed in his bones, and he felt a rattling in his stomach. The entire landscape was an endless shadow underneath a foreboding icy maw of endless man-sized icicle teeth: the Wall. The winds were picking up speed, and echoing creaks shattered amidst the wails, gargantuan ice monoliths and pillars nearly blocking out the sun at every corner. As the two men got closer and closer, a pebble of fear in Gerik’s stomach began to tumble louder and louder. The sunlight dimmed the closer the two men got, and eventually the young man could only make out the soft red glow of Hue’s tail lights. 

“What’s your NVG?” Hue said over the comm. 

“Got enough for two hours.”

After a long silence Gerik heard, “It'll do.”   

He heard the whirring of his partner’s mobile grow louder and watched Hue’s bike increase speed into the seeping dark against the all-encompassing Wall. The pebble was a boulder now. Gerik followed.

It was silent in the dark. Not even the wind reached this far into the ice, into the polar corridors created by the Wall. Gerik looked around through his NVG goggles. The snow didn’t fall here. The buildings, roofless, empty, stood unweathered, as if time itself had stopped moving.

“We’re here.” 

Gerik saw his partner finally stop in front of an empty building, gaping dark holes where window glass used to be. Eyelets scooped out leaving only darkness in their place. 

Pulling up beside him, both men got off their bikes, and with a dry swallow Gerik looked around through the green-colored visor his goggles provided, and readied his crossbow.

“Won’t be necessary.” Gerik turned around and saw Hue staring at him, his face, also covered with helmet and goggles, half-held in the shadows of the area, half-caught in Gerik's visor display.  Gerik’s hand shook.

“I think I should take it, just in case.”

Hue walked over to him, and Gerik watched wide-eyed as each footstep left a print that disappeared just as quickly as it was placed. The older man placed a hand on Gerik’s shoulder. 

“You won’t need it. ”

Gerik’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking, even as he tried to hide it. As Hue touched him he felt woozy, unsteady, as if the adrenaline in him suddenly stopped. He wanted to be cold-hearted, too.

“Fine,” Gerik said.

Hue nodded, and lifted his hand. Gerik felt he was going to topple over as a rush of feeling came back to him. He looked down at his shaking hand. He thought he tasted blood from his nose.

 “Thi-this better be a big ass haul.” Gerik snided over the comm, trying to appear unfazed  as he replaced the crossbow back into the snowmobile.

Hue didn’t respond.

The building’s roof had collapsed, leaving concrete debris strewn about in haphazard piles, all covered by snow. Any sign of civilized tech had long since eroded, all turned to black ice, snow, or snow-covered dust. Gerik made his way towards the dilapidated stairwell.

“Where you going?” Hue asked, looking at him. The old man kneeled over a latch in the floor, and lifted it up revealing an entrance that led down. 

“But you said Earl saw the infrared- has to be up top.” 

Hue didn’t respond again, and began walking down a stairwell into the building. 

Gerik cursed.

Hue was the only one who knew the way back. His mind started as he saw something crawl on the wall. He ran to the hole where Hue was, looked back up, and then went in.

With each step, echoed his descent. With each step, he felt his fingers twitch, a sickening sweat peeled down his back, followed by a dark well forming in his stomach. He wanted to run. He needed to. Run. Run. RUN! He tripped.

His body banged and bounced over the last steps, the darkness not providing any help to grip onto something with his flailing fingers, the conciseness of the NVGs blocking any peripheral vision. He slid with a groan.

Moaning he felt the pangs of his right side, a bruise already forming from the fall. Blinking, he cursed. His right lens had cracked, leaving him only the left side to see out of.

He stood, holding his side, as a high-pitched scream, like taking a laugh and raking it against an icicle, reverberated through the basement.

Before him stood Hue, his helmet off, and his eyes wild-eyed, mouth agape. And Gerik heard the scream again, but it didn’t come from Hue. He turned his head. Before him stood a being, naked, a body as cobalt and clear as ice,  hands were in the shape of claws, as were its feet. In Geriks NVG lens it glowed as if  he was made of icy fire.  

This time Gerik screamed. The sound of his voice was cut shut as the ice cold hand of the ice-thing slammed against his helmet, with enough force to break through it and press against his mouth, holding him fast against the wall behind him.  The icicle hand wasn’t cold, Gerik thought. It was what cold was when even that was gone: it was death. 

As Gerik felt the impossible strength of the ice-thing hold him still against the slab of the back wall, he felt heat leave his surroundings. As if the presence of the creature forced heat to flee, forced even time to hold still. Gerik couldn’t feel his hands or feet anymore. Muffled behind the creature’s frozen grip, he couldn't feel his mouth to scream, and the one lens that worked began to fuzz, the electronics losing signal as the energy of the battery slowly froze to a halt. Gerik looked at the top right of his NVG hud and saw the battery icon change to half-full, and then to empty in a matter of seconds. The Wall will near engulf us all...he thought, before he couldn't feel his thoughts move, before he felt his heart turn cold.