They passed old rows of waiting room chairs perfectly frozen in the ice. They passed a dead security guard. The guard was sitting in a chair, completely encased in a block of clear ice. His dead, frozen eyes stared at them as they slid past."It is like a museum of death," Kevin whispered, holding his broken shoulder tight to his chest to keep it from bouncing.They reached the heavy metal doors leading to the stairwell.Jonah gently pushed the door open. CREEEAAAK.The stairs led down into the pitch-black basement. The stairs were not covered in ice, but they were covered in thick white frost."Let's go down," Jonah ordered softly.They walked carefully down the dark steps. The air in the basement was even colder than the lobby. It felt like walking into a meat freezer.Gage led them through a maze of dark, empty hallways. They passed rooms filled with rusted hospital beds and broken machines.Finally, they found a massive, heavy iron door. The sign above it said: [BACKUP POWER - AU

The whiteout blizzard was a screaming wall of ice. WHOOOOOOSH!The wind howled like a million angry ghosts. The snow was incredibly deep. It reached up to Jonah’s waist. It pulled at his heavy boots like wet, freezing concrete.Jonah held the heavy, fifty-pound metal alternator tightly against his chest with his left arm. In his right hand, he held his massive sledgehammer.Behind him, Kevin, Elena, and Gage struggled to move. They pushed through the deep trench Jonah was making in the snow."They are coming!" Elena screamed. Her voice was barely louder than the roaring wind.Jonah looked over his broad shoulder.Through the blinding white storm, he saw the pale, glowing blue eyes. The Cryo-Ghouls were pouring out of the hospital lobby. There were hundreds of them.Because the monsters were made of solid, magical ice, they did not sink into the deep powder. They were light. They ran directly on top of the snow. They moved with that terrifying, jerky, glitching speed.Screeeech-crk-crk

Through the blizzard, they saw a thick, heavy black cable. It was an old, heavy-duty power line or elevator cable. It was attached to a large metal box on the hospital roof, and it stretched across the wide street, connecting to the lower roof of a parking garage on the other side.The parking garage was only five stories tall. The cable angled downward."It is a zipline!" Elena yelled happily."But how do we slide down?!" Kevin asked. "We don't have clips! We don't have ropes!"Jonah looked at the heavy steel alternator in his left arm. He looked at his right hand. "Use your belts!" Jonah roared. "Use your weapons!"Elena did not hesitate. She took off her thick leather belt. She looped it over the heavy black cable and gripped the two ends tightly with her freezing hands."Go!" Jonah ordered.Elena jumped off the edge of the hospital roof.Zzzzzzzip!The leather belt slid quickly down the frozen black cable. She screamed as she flew through the empty air over the street. In five sec

Jonah placed his massive, warm hand on the side of Leo’s face. He forced the boy to look directly into his dark brown eyes. "Tell me what happened, Leo," Jonah commanded firmly. His calm, heavy presence helped to slow the boy’s panic. "Speak slowly. Where is the rest of your team? Where is Sarah and John?" Leo swallowed hard. He squeezed his eyes shut. The memory was too terrible. "We were at the old gas station," Leo whispered, his voice trembling. "We were draining the underground fuel tanks. The wind was so loud. We could not hear anything." Leo took a ragged breath. Elena kept pressing on his wound to stop the bleeding. "Then, shadows came out of the whiteout," Leo continued. "But they were not the ice zombies. They were men. Huge men. They wore thick, heavy animal furs. Wolf skins. Bear skins. Their faces were painted with black ash." "Marauders," Marcus said. The old man had walked over to listen. He held his rifle tightly. "Desperate men. The extreme winter is freezing ev

The cold was like a sharp knife. It cut through clothes. It cut through skin. It cut right down to the bone. Kevin stood on the frozen river. The whiteout blizzard screamed around him. WHOOOOOOSH! The wind pushed hard against his back, trying to knock him over. Kevin’s right arm was wrapped tightly to his chest in a white sling. The broken bones in his shoulder ached with a deep, hot pain. But he did not stop working. He held a sharp, heavy iron pipe in his good left hand. He lifted it up and stabbed it down into the thick river ice. CRACK! Small pieces of clear ice flew into the air. Kevin hit the ice again and again. CRACK! SMASH! He needed to break off large chunks of clean ice. The camp back at the Sanctuary needed the ice. They would melt it over the fire to make drinking water. "Hurry up, Kevin," Gage complained loudly. Gage, the camp armorer, stood a few feet away. Gage’s hands were stuffed deep into his pockets. He was shaking violently. "It is too cold out here. The wi