• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

'I expect they'll let us off, just this once,' I told him. 'It's not as if we're going to catch a train.'

'I don't think there are any trains, pardner,' said Zack.

'What about ghost trains?' asked John.

The steps up to the platform were inside the station. We passed an

unmanned ticket barrier and looked around, relieved to be momentarily out of the windblast. Somebody had smashed the ticket window. The emptied cash register was up-ended on the floor.

'Blooming liberties,' said Dolly. 'Some people just make you give up hope. I hope the threepenny bits froze to their hands.'

An I-Speak-Your-Weight Machine coughed to life as I brushed past. The cold had got into its mechanism, I suppose. It repeated 'ten stone, five pounds, two ounces' over and over.

The harsh metallic voice gave me the horrors.

'Let's get a move-on, Forehead,' said John. 'That thing can't hurt you.'

I had to agree with him. But something in the mechanical voice talked to the part of me lost in my mindfogs. I shut it out.

The steps were icy, but not much snow had blown into the stairwell.

Zack led the way. I held Malcolm's hand and helped him.

We came out onto the platform. The sky was a uniform grey-white, with no sign of the sun.

Looking across to the other platform, you wouldn't know there was a five-foot trench for the railway lines. Smooth, unmarked snow was packed down. The waiting rooms were blown in, snowdrifts filling them to the ceiling. I saw a black bowler hat lodged in the snow.

'A snowman's lost his titfer,' said Malcolm.

'Yes,' I agreed. 'That must be it.'

'Do snowmen get cold?'

'No, pardner,' said Zack, holding up his Molotov cocktail. 'They worry about getting hot.'

John tentatively stepped to where the edge of the platform must be and put his foot out, bringing his weight slowly down. He was held up.

'We can just walk over,' he said. 'No need to go to the crossing.'

The foot-crossing at the end of the platform was under five feet of snow too.

Zack and Gillian weren't happy with the prospect. Zack picked up a heavy bucket of frozen sand and tossed it out onto the rails. It thumped into the snow, but didn't disappear.

'Okay,' he said. 'Let's move out.'

It was like walking on a frozen lake, not knowing whether the ice was

safely feet thick or a flimsy crust. In ones and twos, we crossed the buried tracks.

John, venturing on his own, stepped into a quicksand-like patch. With a squelch, he lost his leg up to the knee. My hearts clutched. John gingerly extracted his leg from the hole.

'I've got snow in my sock,' he complained.

'It could be worse, Mars-man,' said Zack.

'A fellow without snow in his sock might find that easy to say,' said John.

'Come on, children,' said Gillian, sharply. 'No squabbling.'

John shook his foot and limped across to the platform. He sat on a bench, and examined his frozen foot.

Zack picked up Malcolm and carried him over.

We all made it across the railway lines.

'Thank the Lord for that,' said Dolly.

A cadre of Cold Knights loomed out of the drift-filled waiting room and took her. They were fast now, like ghosts with white enveloping sheets. Dolly was pulled off her feet, icy ropes winding about her, constricting and cutting. She was more surprised than scared.

I hugged Malcolm's face to my chest so he wouldn't see. John threw himself off his bench and scrambled away, avoiding white scything tentacles.

The Knights, more massive and less ungainly than last night's crop, barely paused to crush Dolly – embedding her in ice and squeezing her like an orange, so she leaked red – and moved towards us, dropping the leftover in their wake.

We had no time to react, to scream, to help.

The Cold Knights were between us and the steps down to the High Street. They let Dolly go, abandoning her body like a broken toy, and spread out along the platform, soldiers again.

Behind us, from the rail-bed, drifts shivered into life, rising in shaggy, snow-feathered lumps, extending ice-barbs.

We were caught between