The Frozen South

Alexis never knew it could be so cold. It felt like tiny, microscopic ice crystals had formed over every square inch of her bones. Then the cold decided one layer of ice wasn’t enough and formed more and more layers until you could easily confuse her actual bones for fancy ice sculptures in the shape of bones.

Alexis hated the cold with every fiber of her body.

Alexis hated the cold with every fiber of her body.

She had been less than thrilled last year when her parents announced that they would be moving from Maui to North Carolina. Her mom had accepted a new position as department head in the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina.

They never even had a family discussion about it.

They just told her it was happening and expected her to deal with it.

Who in their right mind makes their 14 year old daughter move halfway across the world to a brand new state and new school before starting 8th grade?! Alexis had always lived in Hawaii. All of her friends were in Hawaii. All of her favorite things were in Hawaii. The food, the culture, the amazing sunsets… everything in Hawaii was perfect and they wanted her to leave it all behind.

Did anyone even go surfing in North Carolina?

The short answer was no. They were hours from the beach. And the surf was horrendous. North Carolina was awful.

And that was before it turned into a frozen tundra three weeks ago.

Alexis was bundled in every piece of warm clothing she could find in the aftermath of the blizzard that destroyed her current living arrangement (it was NOT her home, to be clear). They had only been in Chapel Hill for two months so far. They hadn’t even celebrated Halloween yet, let alone go clothes shopping for winter wear. They never had snow in Maui. The only jacket she had was a lightweight one for rain. She was wrapped in two blankets and wore at least three long sleeve shirts, four pairs of socks, and multiple sweatpants. It wasn’t enough. She was cold. SO. FREAKING. COLD.

They were lucky, or so her parents claimed. The massive blizzard that kick started the snowy mayhem struck around 2 a.m. Her Dad was awake and on FaceTime with her Grandpa back in Hawaii. Her Grandpa hadn’t adjusted to the time zone difference yet and would call at random hours of the night. When the storm hit, it knocked out their power. Her Dad realized something abnormal was happening pretty fast. He woke Alexis and her two younger sisters up and gathered the whole family into the basement. They all slept in a big group, covered with every spare blanket and sleeping bag her mom could find in the moving boxes that were only half unpacked. By the time they awoke the next morning, their entire world had changed. Feet of snow had dropped overnight and an unbelievable chill froze the entire landscape. Large spikes of ice protruded out of the ground every dozen feet, ranging in size from a few inches in diameter to massive spikes the size of oak tree trunks.

Three different spikes of the tree trunk variety had blasted through the walls of their house, obliterating most of the first floor and all of the second. When her Dad opened the door to the basement, he was staring out into a large snowbank that had once been their kitchen. Violent winds blew through the skeletal remains of the house her parents had bought just a few weeks earlier. Between the layers of thick ice, piles of debris that were formerly a roof, and the wild wind, there was very little left in terms of personal possessions that could be dug out of their home.

Alexis hadn’t experienced snow before. She knew right away that it was the worst thing ever created and wanted nothing to do with it. Snow sucked.

Her Dad had managed to make a fire for their family on the first night after the transformation. They all stayed huddled in their basement for the first day, grouped together to try to stay warm. Her parents had hoped that the blizzard and gale force winds would stop soon, and then they’d be able to venture out for help. Until then, they were without food, without electricity or cell signal, and without many options.

There wasn’t a lot of fuel for the fire, and it burned out for good the next morning. Lacking any other options, Alexis’s family bundled themselves in what they could and set out from their basement bunker in search of help. The wind was a lot less fierce on the second day after the transformation, but the bitter cold was there to stay. The family of five trudged through the snow and searched their neighborhood for other survivors.

Alexis really didn’t expect to find much, given the absolutely destroyed state of all the houses. It was hard to navigate through the odd forest of icicle spikes that peppered the landscape. They also had to be careful where they stepped, making sure the snow had frozen over and wasn’t going to swallow them like quick sand. By the end of the day, they had managed to find two other families in their neighborhood that had survived out of the hundred or so houses. As the sun began to set, their group of survivors walked a few miles up the road to a nearby elementary school to spend the night. The cinderblock building had withstood most of the icicle spikes and provided a decent haven for them to rest.

Alexis was put in charge of babysitting the other kids while the six adults discussed what to do next. She hated babysitting her own little sisters, six year old twins Leilani and Kai. Adding three more brats to the group did not make things any better. The kids were all tired, hungry, and cold.

Just like Alexis.

She led the kids through the school in an attempt to find something to eat. They were able to break a door window and get into the cafeteria kitchen, which included a decently stocked pantry of canned foods and a freezer with all sorts of stuff. Most things were too cold to eat, but the ravenous little beasts didn’t seem to mind. They tore through multiple bags of premade PB&J sandwiches and a feast of bagged chips. Alexis filled a cardboard box with more snacks and took the kids back to one of the classrooms that the parents had designated as their sleeping space.

By the time they returned with the snacks, two of the new adults, Nicole and Dave, had gathered a variety of wooden furniture into the sleeping space and were starting a fire. It was nice to be warm again, though it only lasted a few minutes. No one had thought about how to ventilate the smoke and the room was soon filled with black smoke. Luckily, the cold had frozen the water pipes for the sprinkler system and they weren’t drenched in water as well.

Alexis fumed as she went to bed that night in another classroom. They had at least found some food and a safer place to stay, but the whole thing was traumatizing. If only she had stayed in Hawaii, she’d be nice and warm right now. North Carolina was the worst.

Over the next week, their situation only marginally improved. Four more families arrived at the school seeking shelter. Unfortunately, one of those families was the most annoying boy in her grade, Eric. He was one of the more athletic kids who had an early growth spurt. He clearly thought he was better than everyone else, and regularly was found teasing and bullying other kids at school. Alexis at least found some justice in the fact that he was in rough shape when he showed up at the school, clearly having taken a few lumps on his journey to the school.

Alexis avoided Eric as much as she could. Besides, she was much more intrigued by one of the other kids that had shown up with the new families. They had a family of four, with an older daughter that Alexis recognized from the grade below her named Natalie. The parents were super standoffish and had insisted that their family sleep altogether in a secluded classroom. They kept both of their kids locked up in the classroom for the first three days upon arrival, which Alexis thought was super weird.

One night, about two weeks since their town turned into a tundra, they all found out why the new family - the Johnsons - were being so weird. The adults were having their new “nightly meeting” to discuss what had happened that day and make plans for tomorrow. The main topic for the evening was how to deal with packs of large arctic wolves that had begun roaming through the area. They were in a heated debate on weapons options if they were to form hunting parties when a loud shout came from the secluded classroom where the Johnson kids were staying. Mr. and Mrs. Johnson immediately ran out of the room, with pretty much everyone else following right behind.

Alexis arrived at the scene of the shouting before any of the adults. The door to the Johnson’s classroom had been blown off its hinges. Their younger son, Dylan, was huddled in a ball outside in the hallway crying and clutching his head. The floor of the hallway in front of the doorway was covered in a layer of frost.

As Alexis turned to look inside, she was shocked to see everything inside was frozen with a build-up of ice like the inside of a chest freezer. White frost covered every desk, chair, and table. In the middle of the room was a ghostly pale Natalie, kneeling on the floor looking exhausted. With every breath out of Natalie’s mouth came a mist of snow and frost.

She looked up from the ground and met Alexis’s gaze. Her face looked terrified while her eyes held a stormy mix of emotions. She only looked at Alexis for a second before closing her eyelids and crumpling into a ball on the floor. Natalie’s parents barged into the room a moment later and rushed to the side of their daughter.

Alexis was ushered outside by her mom while the rest of the adults peppered the Johnson’s with a million questions. Alexis had a million of her own questions as she laid in her sleeping bag bed down the hallway with her sisters. What in the world had happened to Natalie? Was she possessed? Or infected by something? The entire scene had reminded Alexis of the movie Frozen and when Elsa erupted in ice powers. But that seemed completely implausible. Then again, so did a freak blizzard with giant Icicle Spikes splitting out of the ground in the middle of October in North Carolina.

She wasn’t sure how long she had been lying in her bed when she heard someone whisper her name from the door. Alexis crept quietly to the doorway. The school was eerily dark at night.

Eric stood just outside the door frame to the kindergarten class her family had taken up residency in. He was wearing a blue winter ski jacket and a warm hat. Alexis immediately felt her hatred of him boiling up again as she was reminded just how cold she was.

“Hey. I, um, saw what happened to Natalie. I… I don’t know who else to talk to. Can we walk for a second?” said Eric in an uncharacteristically sheepish voice. Alexis had only ever seen him as the big, brash boy on the baseball team who towered over anyone who got in his way.

“Fine,” said Alexis in an exasperated tone. If she was honest with herself, she wanted to talk to someone else about what had happened in Natalie’s room too. Eric was absolutely not her first choice, but then again he was the only one around.

The two teens walked down the hallway towards the teacher’s lounge. It had a couple comfy couches and was usually empty. Alexis sat down on one end of a black leather couch that was furthest away from the windows in the room. So much snow had accumulated outside that you couldn’t even see out the windows anyways. She wasn’t too happy when Eric sat down right next to her. There were plenty of chairs and a whole other couch he could choose from. She let out a sigh as she rolled her eyes.

“What do you want to talk about? I’m cold and want to go to bed,” said Alexis.

“I… I don’t know where to start. Did you see what happened with Natalie? Did she say anything to you when you were in there with her?” asked Eric. His voice was tainted with both panic and curiosity. He was hesitant to speak but also seemed eager to get the words out of his mouth.

“She was on the floor when I got there. The door had been blown off the hinges and her brother was crying on the floor outside. I don’t know if he got hurt or something, but she was kneeling in a pile of snow and frost when I walked in,” said Alexis. She paused and stared intently at Eric before continuing any further, weighing whether or not to share the next part of the fantastical story. After waiting what seemed like forever, she decided to continue. “There was a lot of snow. And frost. And… it was coming from her. Not outside, but like from her. I… I think she has magic powers like that girl from Frozen.”

Alexis spat the last words out quickly as she waited for any kind of reaction from Eric. She still wasn’t fully convinced herself at what she had seen, let alone the outrageous conclusion she had come to. Eric, on the other hand, looked almost relieved.

“Magic powers?” he asked in a soft voice, his tone changing from panicked to more calm. “Like this?”

Eric held out one of his hands. Alexis sat in shock as what looked like pieces of snow began to swirl together to form a round shape in his hand. In a matter of seconds, Eric held a white rose with a thorny green stem in his hand that seemingly came out of nowhere. He looked up at Alexis and gently placed the rose in her lap.

“I haven’t told anyone else. Definitely not my parents. It started a few days ago. I don’t know what caused it but it's like I can pull flowers and stuff out of thin air. Like a magician,” he said, searching Alexis’s eyes for a response.

She didn’t know what to say and just stared down at the rose.

“I wanted to tell you right away. I don’t know why, but I knew you would understand. And…” he began to stammer. “I thought… I thought maybe you’d like these flowers and maybe talk to me? I thought maybe they’d remind you of Hawaii.”

Alexis looked back up at Eric and saw that he was holding a small bundle of white and pink tropical lilies. They were just like the ones she used to make into traditional lays with her friends back in Maui.

Alexis felt a wave of emotions bubbling up inside. Eric felt the hard knuckles of her fist as Alexis punched him square in the jaw. Without saying anything, she stood up and stormed out of the room, leaving the very confused Eric laying on the couch and clutching his face in pain.

It was all just too much. That Natalie girl had almost died in front of her this evening, and apparently had ice super powers. Now Eric admitted that he too had super powers, even if they were just super lame ones to create flowers. And he had the audacity to hit on her? With everything going on? Alexis couldn’t take it anymore.

She headed towards the back door of the building and left without another thought.

That was days ago, and now she was somewhere she didn’t recognize in the frozen tundra that used to be the town of Chapel Hill. She didn’t know how far she had walked that first night, or the next day, but she had managed to get thoroughly lost in the snow. Everything looked similar, covered in white snow and ice as far as the eye could see. She found an old brick house that was still half erect to take shelter in, entering in through a hole on the roof as the building was submerged 2/3 of the way up in snow.

She had eaten all of the food in the small kitchen and was starting to get hungry. She was also angry. That hadn’t changed since leaving the school. All she could think about was how awful everything was and how her parents were all to blame. Maybe not for the snow storm and frozen wasteland around her, but it was their fault that she was here in the first place.

And how was it fair that other kids her age had magical powers and she was just normal Alexis? Granted she didn’t want to be passed out on the ground like Natalie, but Eric seemed to be doing just fine with his powers. Nothing was going her way in any way, shape, or form.

She couldn’t sit still any longer. Her anger was boiling over and she felt restless. Everything was just the worst in Chapel Hill and it was getting more terrible by the minute. She stood up and marched out of the kitchen, through the roof, and back outside. Alexis was going to go back to Hawaii, even if she had to march across the country and swim through the ocean to get there.

She only made it a few minutes away from the old brick house before things took another bad turn. Six large, furry beasts emerged from behind another building in front of her. The arctic wolves that had begun hunting around the town had caught her scent and were eager to make her their next meal.

That was honestly just fine with Alexis. Her anger was rapidly evolving into a blood thirsty rage, desperate to be unleashed on someone. As she looked out at the pack of wolves that had started to encircle her, she realized for the first time in weeks that she didn’t feel cold. Her hands were looking less pale, and she could feel her cheeks becoming flush. Her entire body was beginning to radiate an immense amount of heat— so much that she dropped the sleeping bag she was using as an overcoat and rolled up the sleeves of her shirt.

Alexis let out a primal scream of fury. All of her pent up anger at her parents, her sisters, the blizzard, the survivors at the school… everything that she had bottled up over the past days and weeks was coursing through her veins like a fiery inferno. She felt two smooth, solid objects form in the palm of her hands. She found herself holding jet black sticks made of glass-like stone. She recognized it as volcanic obsidian that surrounded some of the volcanoes they visited back in Hawaii.

A stream of red, hot lava began to pour out of the handles like a molten whip in each hand. The wolves let out a howl into the cold wintery air as they prepared to launch their attack. Alexis cracked the lava whip in her right hand as a smile crept across her face.

Nothing was going to stop her now.