THE LAST DAYS OF RINGETTE
Amelia stood in her pink snowsuit at the perimeter of the frozen pond watching the boys play hockey. A few flakes wafted down from the grey sky and melted on her glowering face. She'd brought her own stick, but they wouldn't let her play. “You're just a girl!” they jeered. Barry glided by and pushed her in the snow. “Go play ringette!” he said, and they all laughed. She called him a dirty name and departed.
No one enjoyed winter as much as Amelia. She built snowmen, rode a toboggan down every hill, made angels in the snow, and was enchanted by the ice flowers on her bedroom window. But what she desired most was to play hockey, a sport denied her by the prevailing attitude of her backwards town. With this in mind, the little girl grumbled as she meandered through the woods behind the graveyard, smashing twigs off trees with her stick.
A storm was brewing, to Amelia's dismay. She was hoping that the sky would be clear that night so she could be dazzled by the northern lights, which lately had been far more spectacular than usual. And if the power went out again as it had the night before, she might once more experience that eerie thrill of black chimneys and trees etched against the ghostly glow.
The snow fell heavily now, and it seemed as if the forest was rising up. Amelia lifted her head and caught clusters of flakes on her tongue, rejoicing in her hyperborean world, the taunts of the boys forgotten.
A twig snapped in the distance before her, and Amelia lowered her gaze, her tongue slowly drawing back into her mouth. There amongst the naked birch and poplar stood a living corpse, tattered rags hanging like ribbons from rotted limbs. The macabre figure gazed at the girl like a deer caught in headlights, only for a moment; then he stumbled towards her, arms held out, as if imploring her indulgence. “Amelia!” he croaked.
She stood still as he approached, more confused than frightened by the ghastly apparition.
“Amelia!” he repeated.
“Amelia!”
She snapped out of her reverie. It was Mr. St. Germain, her Grade 11 English teacher, once again intruding upon her thoughts. “Are we boring you?” he asked.
“No,” said Amelia. “Just you.”
“Oh, you want to get smart. Well, here's a pearl of wisdom you can write for me 500 times: The ways of the transgressor are exceedingly difficult. Have it on my desk first thing tomorrow.”
Barry, Amelia's eternal nemesis, chuckled: “Have fun, Bunny.”
“Frig off, Barry,” she murmured. “You shouldn't even be in this class, dummy!” It's true. He was a year older than the others, an academic failure.
She hated that name. Shortly after the day Barry pushed her into the snow Amelia's mother signed her up for ringette. She'd started in the Novice Division, and, even though she was 8 years old, Barry and his cronies nicknamed her “Bunny”, a division for younger players.
She couldn't remember how many times she'd challenged Barry to a game of hockey: his team, the Sabre Tooths, against hers, the Valkyries, an invitation he always declined. And anyway, his team were “pros”, and the Ontario Ringette Association didn't know that the Kitchin Valkyries even existed! Barry's most common taunt was directed at their sub-standard equipment, especially the “sawed-off hockey sticks”.
Specious reasoning. It would be a grudge match played on a frozen pond in the middle of nowhere, not a nationally televised spectacle.
When Amelia got home from school she changed into her gym pants and tank top and went to the basement to pummel the punching bag. She had no gloves, but wrapped strips of cloth around her knuckles and wrists. Every blow, every kick, was swift and furious, and landed with thunderous impact. She struck at the boys who tormented her; at all the teachers who thought they owned her brain for 6 hours a day, to do with as they pleased; at everyone who tried to discourage her dreams with their provincial cynicism. The town was a purgatory.
On Saturday, the Farmdale Furies came to Kitchin to play the Valkyries. The team noticed that Amelia was becoming more brutal with every game, and spending far too much time in the penalty box for elbowing and checking. She was their centre and they looked up to her, but suspension was looming.
“This isn't roller derby,” the coach lectured. “You're here to have fun, not cripple your opponents.”
She found an alternate outlet for her aggression. Above the fireplace at home hung a 19th-century sword that had belonged to her great-great-great-grandfather, who was a trooper in the British cavalry. Neither sword nor scabbard were in particularly good condition, but it was displayed with pride, even though her father knew little of the man who once wielded the weapon. Amelia eased it down from the bricks, felt a surge of excitement as she held the metal in her hands, then smiled.
She rushed to a nearby wooded area, the blade concealed beneath her coat, and when sure of her seclusion began swinging the sword, hacking and stabbing at trees and shearing off branches until she fell in the snow, exhausted. This practice would become a frequent ritual after school, when her parents weren't yet home from work.
Tragic news came to Kitchin that weekend: the chartered school bus carrying a dozen members of the hockey team skidded and collided with a dump truck on the way home from a losing game. All were killed, except for one player and the driver. Barry was no more, dead at 17.
On Monday there were no grief counsellors at school, but lessons were postponed in every classroom so that students could discuss the tragedy with their teachers or amongst themselves. Crocodile tears flowed, and the usual platitudes were offered, straining credulity, Amelia thought. She was apathetic. She slouched in the seat of her desk, doodling, while the insipid vibrations issuing from the mouths of the other kids lulled her into a daydream.
A mass funeral was held at St. Anne's church. Amelia showed up, amidst the chaos. She sat at the back without removing her toque, played briefly with her long, flaxen hair, then left.
She strolled down to the pond. It was roughly the shape of a rink, though smaller, and surrounded by shrubs. She slid around on the frozen surface, a bit dour. She hadn't wished Barry death, but she had been looking forward to the day when she'd defeat him in a game of hockey, and prove that she was more than anyone in town told her she could be. But the vagaries of life robbed her of the chance.
A year passed, without further event. But early in March a warning came: great solar flares and coronal mass ejections were expected to cause an intense geomagnetic storm within days, with possible power and communications disruptions.
The projected impact was grossly underestimated. The shock wave arrived in less than a day. The aurora borealis shone with an incredible brilliance that fascinated some people and unnerved others. You could read a book at night by the strange illumination.
There was a complete blackout in Northern Ontario. All communications were down, and even cars, snowmobiles and snow blowers were inoperable. People were stranded, some in the middle of the highway.
It got worse. A blizzard arrived, and a tremendous deluge of snow made certain that every community was isolated, helpless. The storm lasted two days.
Amelia was alone in the house. She was worried. She hadn't seen her parents in three days, as they both had been working outside of town when everything shut down. Her situation wasn't unique: it seemed as if half the town was missing. Some people left Kitchin on skis, hoping to find answers.
Furnaces weren't working. Amelia kept the fireplace blazing, where she was forced to cook her meals and melt snow in pots for water. She slept before the hearth in a sleeping bag, as it was the only warm room in the house. A candle was needed at night for the darkest corners; otherwise, the aurora was far brighter than a full moon, and provided a dull, shimmering glow.
Mr. Daresbury from across the road dropped by to see if everything was all right. “I'm sure your parents are fine,” the old man said. “Things will be back to normal in no time.” Then he left, stumbling through the snow to check on other neighbours.
There was nothing to do besides split wood. Or read; but the cold and lack of comforts was distracting, and made it difficult to delve into a good book. Bored, Amelia cajoled a few of her friends into helping her clear snow from the pond so they could play ringette. They brought their snow shovels and spent most of the day toiling away, yet had fun doing it. By the time they were finished the sky had cleared up, but the colour was all wrong.
That night Amelia took the ladder out of the shed and climbed onto the roof to get a better view of the sky. She sat at the peak, leaning against the chimney, and marvelled at the prismatic hues which spread across the whole firmament.
“Amelia!”
Her friend Penelope was in the yard, calling to her. She'd brought a container of homemade soup, courtesy of her mother. Amelia came down.
“She says you can stay with us if you like, until your parents come back.”
Amelia inhaled the crisp air deeply, as if she found their predicament exhilarating.
“I'm okay. But tell her I said thanks.”
“Are we still on for the game tomorrow?”
“Totally,” said Amelia. She thanked Penelope for the soup and went inside.
In the morning she split some wood and loaded it on a toboggan, then pulled it down to the pond and got a fire going. Ten Valkyries showed up. Only one brought protective gear, and the other girls teased her. They waited until 11 o'clock, and when it became obvious that no one else was coming they split into two teams and played short-handed.
They played all day beneath a grey sky, taking breaks by the fire and drinking soup or hot chocolate from their thermoses. One girl tried her cellphone again, but it was hopeless. The circuits were fried. It wouldn't even turn on. They may as well have been pioneers in the backwoods of Upper Canada.
Away from the others Amelia stood gazing into the woods. She thought she saw something, a strange, shambling figure in the distance that disappeared behind a cluster of pines. She felt her soul shudder, just a little. She felt alone. Penelope saw her standing there leaning on her stick, like a sentry keeping vigil. She skated over to her.
“Amelia? What are you staring at?”
Amelia kept her eyes on the trees, then finally said, “Nothing. I thought I saw...something. It was nothing.”
The game continued. At one point someone thought they heard the echo of a gunshot. The girls joked that it was probably a starving resident shooting rabbit. By late afternoon they were tired and famished, and decided to head back home.
When they reached town one of the girls winced and said, “What is that?”
Up ahead there was a body lying in the snow, and as the group approached they saw another, then another, and, in the distance, some more. They stopped in their tracks and looked at each other fearfully. “What is going on?”
An eerie silence permeated the atmosphere. Puzzled at first, the girls felt a rising tide of terror as they made their way through town, clutching sticks in trembling hands. Doors were broken open, windows smashed. There were bodies everywhere in the blood-stained snow, ripped open as if ravaged by wolves. The entire town had been slaughtered!
The girls were crying, panicking. They were desperate to rush home, concerned about their families. Amelia was stoic. She stood staring into the distance.
“We have to stay together,” she insisted.
But the others couldn't bear not knowing the fate of their parents, their brothers and sisters. They argued, and finally Amelia acquiesced: “All right. But we meet at my place. My dad has a rifle.”
The girls dashed off in various directions, horrified at each step by the flecks of blood in the trampled snow. When Amelia reached her house she saw that the front door had been smashed in, hanging on at an angle by its lower hinge. She crept in cautiously, stick poised, and made a thorough search. A few things were broken or toppled over, but the intruder was gone.
She grabbed her father's hunting rifle, but was able to locate only five rounds of ammunition. She knew nothing about firearms, but quickly figured out the bolt action lever and loaded the cartridges.
She also found her father's binoculars, and with the rifle slung across her shoulder she climbed onto the snow-laden roof and crouched by the chimney, her only source of concealment. There she surveyed the town as well as she could through the binoculars. What she saw was disturbing:
To the south east a horde of gruesome figures, human in cast only, could be seen heading into the forest, in the direction of Farmdale, seven miles hence. Here and there Amelia spotted someone desperately fleeing into the woods, pursued by ghouls. A woman with two children in tow managed to escape the thing that hobbled behind them, but without any winter clothing their chances of survival were slim.
Amelia readied her rifle. One of the girls showed up. She was instructed to go inside the house and wait for the others. Penelope showed up next, and eventually all but Cynthia. Amelia searched for her through the binoculars. She came down from the roof. There was chaos inside the house. What they had seen was driving them mad with terror. The torn bodies of parents and siblings were found inside their houses or outside in the yard. Some couldn't be found at all, which was just as upsetting. And Cynthia's absence only increased their sense of dread.
The sky began to clear as the sun went down, and the aurora borealis became more distinct. The girls occupied the living room, shivering with fear as much as with cold. They wanted to close the door, but Amelia said, “Not yet.” She was sitting beneath the picture window, peering through the sheer fabric of the curtain.
Then Amelia shushed them. They heard something in the distance, perhaps a yell. Amelia lifted the curtain a bit, to get a clearer view. It was Cynthia, running as fast as she could through the snow, with at least a dozen of the ghouls in pursuit. She might have outdistanced them and made it to Amelia's house, but for two more that emerged from other yards and blocked her path. She screamed as they fell upon her.
One of the girls, observing from the doorway, suddenly collapsed with her face in her hands. “They're tearing her apart!”
“We have to do something!” they cried.
Amelia ran to the doorway and took careful aim at the head of one of the ghouls. She managed only to hit him in the back, but he seemed barely fazed, and as he began to slowly turn around her next shot went through the skull of another, who dropped down immediately. The creatures raised their curious heads, and began to move en masse in the direction of the gunshot.
“Shit!” Amelia hissed through her teeth. “They're coming this way! Stay down and keep quiet.”
Someone suggested that they try to close the door, but Amelia said no. “Let them see it the way it is,” she whispered. “That way they'll know they've already been here.”
The ghouls stopped in the road in front of Amelia's house, looking around. “Oh my God,” said Amelia, almost imperceptibly. “It's Barry!”
Those who dared to take a peek through the curtain were horrified to learn the awful truth. Indeed it was Barry, the one she'd shot in the back, and the ten other boys from his hockey team. They were in terrible shape, their suits shredded, probably from the ordeal of having to dig their way out of the frozen ground. They were flanked by an equal number of much older corpses, whose mummified flesh dangled from withered bones. A few were little more than skeletons.
Barry glared at Amelia's house. Did a fragment of his memory recognize it, she wondered, or was his brain too decomposed to recollect anything? At last he looked up at the blazing sky and grimaced, and the others reacted the same way, as if the aurora borealis was anathema to them. The lights discoloured their already hideous faces. Amelia thought she heard Barry grunt as he pointed a bony finger and sent his undead hockey team off in every direction, presumably to guard the outskirts of town. Then Barry and the more decrepit corpses marched west, towards the cemetery.
She grabbed her rifle and ran to check on Cynthia. She was dead, as expected, and a couple of tears rolled down Amelia's cheeks as she looked down at the mutilated body. She wiped away the tears with the sleeve of her coat and returned to the others.
They holed up for the night and kept a small fire burning for warmth. No one could sleep. Amelia broke the bad news to them:
“We're surrounded. There must be a hundred of them spread out in the woods, and the hockey team are commanding them in sections. If we try to break through their rank they'll just converge on us.”
“Are we the only ones left?” asked one of the girls.
“I saw a lot of people running into the woods. Some might have been caught. Others are going to die out there, in this weather. I'll bet you there's some people hiding in their houses. But I shot two of them things, so they know we're here, they just don't know where.”
Penelope burst into tears. “They're zombies, aren't they? They ate Cynthia!”
Amelia tried to calm her down. “We don't have to worry about them till morning. For some reason they're afraid of the northern lights, so we'll only see them during the day.”
Amelia theorized why Barry was their leader, with the rest of his Sabre Tooths acting as lieutenants: they'd only been dead a year, their brains fresher than the petrified grey matter rattling around in the skulls of the town's ancestors. It was hard to say what degree of intelligence remained to them, but it was enough to dominate the older corpses.
Dawn arrived, and Amelia told the girls they'd have to leave. She picked out a house on the other side of the block, one that had at least a partial view of her home. They made the short journey by cutting through Mr. Daresbury's yard. His body was lying at the side of the garage. It wasn't a pretty sight, but the girls were getting used to it.
They secured the premises of the other house, barricaded the doors with furniture, and took turns sleeping in groups, buried beneath mounds of blankets. It was only a while later that those on watch heard a commotion. Amelia went to the kitchen window with her binoculars, where the back yard afforded a sufficient view of her house. She saw an undead mob, led by Barry, storming the place.
“He knows,” Amelia said calmly. “He knows it's my house. He knows I shot him. If he recognized Cynthia, he might even know that the Valkyries are still alive. I underestimated that moron!”
The abominations emerged from the house, unable to comprehend its vacancy. They looked around, bumping into each other in the process, then went off in the opposite direction, plowing through the snow in search of their elusive prey.
The girls slept all day, fitfully. And when Amelia was sure that the dead things had returned to the woods encircling the town, they made a fire and warmed up canned soup and beans, and cooked hot dogs. A full belly made Amelia drowsy. She'd had the least amount of sleep. She closed her eyes as she sat leaning against the wall, while in hushed tones the girls questioned her about their next move, but she was too weary to answer.
“Amelia?”
“Amelia?”
“Amelia...it's me...Grampa!”
He did sort of look like Grampa, except that his face was all rotten, mostly just a skull. He kept stumbling towards her.
“Come give Grampa a hug!”
Without warning a heavy shovel came crashing down on the back of his head, and he fell to the ground. The blade kept smashing that grotesque skull into the snow until it was a crumbled ruin.
“Are you all right, miss?”
It was Mr. Longley, the sexton. The old codger threw his spade at the ground and cursed, panting. Amelia stared in bewilderment.
“Sorry you had to see that, but smashing their heads is the only thing that kills 'em. That wasn't your Grampa, do you understand? That was a monster! The fourth one I killed this week. I think it's that geomagnetic storm they keep talking about. It's bringing these corpses to life. They seem to like it out here in the woods, outside, where they can get more energy. But at night those northern lights seem to spook 'em, like it's interfering with something.”
He got down on one knee before her.
“How old are you, young lady?”
“Eight,” said Amelia.
“Well, maybe one day you'll understand what went on here. But for now you gotta keep this just between you and me, 'cause otherwise people will think we're nuts! They'll never believe we saw what we saw. Do you understand?”
Amelia nodded, and the sexton sent her on her way.
She returned from her reverie and heard one of the girls saying, “We're doomed!”
Amelia responded: “We have to kill Barry and his gang. It's our best chance. Without them the rest will be disorganized, then we can try making a run for it.”
“But how do we kill them?” they all wondered.
“Shoot them in the head, smash them in the head – anything that'll scramble their brains. The Sabre Tooths and those other corpses outnumber us 2 to 1, so we'll have to use tactics. We'll need to get their attention, to draw them to us.”
The girls listened closely as Amelia laid out her plan, then got to work. They went to Amelia's house and packed food and other provisions into her school bag and a knapsack. Amelia took her sword and scabbard and strapped it around her waist, and went looking for a toboggan.
She found one, a wooden antique, two doors over, and just as she was about to drag it away she noticed some movement at the far side of the yard next door: the ragged shirt of one of the dead things was caught on the pickets of a fence, and he was trying to free himself. Amelia walked over to him, casually, her bold demeanor making him tear at his fetters more desperately. She observed him a minute as he struggled in vain, then drew her sword. The mummified wretch stopped and cast his gaze downwards, as if resigned to his fate. Amelia struck off his head, and it sank deep into pristine snow. She knelt in the snow, staring at the scintillating crystals, trying to collect her sanity.
She returned with the toboggan, and the girls loaded it with the bags and all of Amelia's ringette equipment. The way well lit by a shimmering sky, they went to each of the girls' houses and picked up her gear, as well as any weapons they could find: baseball bats, a sledge hammer, crowbars, axes and hatchets, even a pipe wrench. They loaded three toboggans in all, and sallied forth to the pond.
When the girls arrived they made a large fire and got into their gear: elbow, knee and shoulder pads; neck and wrist guards; helmet and face mask. They laced up their skates, donned their blue-and-white jerseys, and warmed up with a game of ringette.
With Cynthia gone, there were only four players to each team, while one girl, Laurie, kept the fire burning and scanned the horizon with binoculars. By 9 o'clock there was still no sign of the enemy.
“They'll be here,” said Amelia. “Just keep the fire burning so they can see the smoke.”
An hour later, just after it started snowing, Laurie cried out, “They're here! They're coming!”
They became frantic, and scrambled to drag the two toboggans laden with weapons onto centre ice. Amelia gave them a quick pregame speech. “Remember: we have the advantage. We have skates, and they can't move on the ice like we can.” She went over to her coat and took out a bottle of whisky, and each girl took a swig to bolster her nerves. Then came the team cheer:
“The Valkyries!” cried Amelia.
“Valhalla!” the others roared.
They chose their weapons and waited. Finally, Barry and his Sabre Tooths appeared, along with the dozen other corpses. The fiends stood there, looking down from their slightly higher elevation, silently observing, as if their decayed brains had some capacity for evaluation.
Then the girls noticed something that made their blood curdle: all of the zombies that had been surrounding the town were approaching from every direction!
“You bastard! You cheater!” Amelia shouted. She raised her rifle and shot two of the Sabre Tooths in the head, and one in the throat.
“What are you doing?” Penelope shouted. “Shoot Barry!”
“He's mine!” Amelia growled, throwing down the empty rifle.
The ghouls charged, moving faster than anticipated, but when they reached the ice they slid and fell and tripped over each other. Amelia tore off her helmet and threw it at Barry to draw his attention. The face mask wasn't CSA approved, anyways.
The girls attacked, crushing skulls with aluminum bats, shattering cheekbones with crowbars, splitting foreheads with axes, and caving in faces with their skates. Protected by the armour beneath their shirts, the girls proved a formidable force.
In the melee, a frozen fist slammed into Amelia's face and she went down. She shook the stars from her eyes and saw Barry standing over her, as if to gloat. She spat out some blood that had trickled down from her nose and kicked him in the shin, splintering the bone. He felt nothing, but, unable to animate the limb, fell down to his knees. Amelia clambered to her feet, looked Barry in the eye, saw the defeat in his soul, and split that hideous skull in two. She wrenched her sword free and held it up to the sky, roaring in triumph, then waded into the oncoming horde, a barbarian on skates.
The snow came down heavily, now. Bodies littered the ice and the girls could no longer skate. The enemy fought tooth and nail, and each of the girls bled from a score of wounds, but battled fiercely. The pond was a shambles, yet the corpses kept advancing, taking their punishment one by one, until they overwhelmed the girls by sheer numbers. But one thing was certain: the Valkyries gave a good account of themselves that glorious day!