Ice Cold

By Remson Tau

Peter and Mike are a couple of career criminals freshly sprung from jail and in need of jobs. When a local drug dealer offers them a quick way to make some money, they jump on the offer. All they have to do is kill a rival dealer. Simple, right?

The job goes off as planned, but there is a hitch - the man they kill is a voodoo priest, who with his dying breath curses the two men. Mike is told he will die, and Peter is given eternal life.

The two of them continue on in their criminal lifestyle. During an epic blizzard that pounds the American Northeast with snowfall, both men are 'killed' in a shootout with the police following a botched robbery. Mike does indeed die as foretold. And Peter? He discovers that the voodoo priest's curse was real. As his body dies his essence is transferred to a nearby snowman that had gotten splattered with his blood.

What follows is a non-stop slaughter-fest as Peter uses his new body to enact a frigid vengeance on his enemies and the people who shot him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Remson Tau
• Release date: Feb 14, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224101993

Remson Tau

Remson S. Tau lives on an island just off America's east coast. A graduate of the prestigious School of Hard Knocks and The University of Trial by Fire, he is somewhat bruised and a little scorched but manages to get by. The father of one daughter, when he isn't writing he paints big houses for folks with lots more money than him.It's a life.

Book preview

Ice Cold

Part 1- Pre-op Snowman

1

It was 3 a.m. and Martin Ames was working Rex’s all night gas station/ convenience store. It was a slow night and he was bored, so he took his favorite seat behind the glass display of scratch-off lottery tickets where he could watch some Internet porn on his phone unobserved. He was twenty and always horny. If things stayed this way he might even lock up the store for a bit and rub one out in the bathroom.

He found his favorite midget porn site and started watching an X-rated version of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, where a Snow White with double-D implants was gang banged by a bunch of vertically challenged men painted blue. Martin felt himself stiffen and thought that being a porn star had to be the best damn job in the world. Getting paid to get laid. Beat sitting in this dead end hellhole.

The chime at the entrance door went off, signaling a customer. He put down the phone and walked out from behind the bank of lottery tickets and had a gun stuck into his face. It was a sawed off shotgun, the cut barrel rough and unfiled so that the burrs pricked his flesh. The man holding it on the other side of the counter was dressed in loose dark clothing, his whole head concealed under a woolen ski mask. Only the eyes and lips were exposed. There was another man with him, coming around the counter with a pistol.

Then the man with the sawed off uttered the classic introductory line of all robbers, the thief’s pick-up line: Gimme the money.

Martin stared up the barrel of the shotgun with wide eyes, frozen in place like a deer in the headlights. The other man came up to his side and pressed the pistol against his ribs.

"Did you fucking hear me?" asked the wielder of the shotgun, a man named Peter Stigs, who stood on the other side of the counter, pressing the sawed off barrel against Martin’s nose. The conversion of the weapon from a banal hunting rifle to this illegal nub had been done with a hacksaw back at the apartment during a drug fueled burst of creativity. The cut was not neat, filled with burrs that poked Martin’s flesh and produced tiny ribbons of dribbling blood that contrasted sharply with his pale flesh. Like he’s made out of marble, Peter thought. Hey kid, you need to get some sun or something, or eat some meat, you’re anemic.

I just did my drop, Martin stammered. There’s only fifty dol-

Peter cut him off with a sharp thrust of the shotgun. It pushed the burrs deeper into Martin’s skin and made him flinch and gasp. His eyes never left Peter’s.

Then give it up, hissed the guy with the pistol. This was Mike Teller, Peter’s partner in crime.

Martin did as he was told. He pressed the button to open the drawer, and when it slid out, Mike leaned over the counter and reached for the money, scooping out the bills and stuffing them into a pocket, not bothering with the change. He did it fast, and he was no math whiz, but he knew there was more than fifty dollars in there. Looks like our buddy here is lying to us, Mike said to Peter.

No,no,no, Martin said, I just threw out a number, I didn’t know what was in there.

There’s gotta be more somewhere, Peter said.

Honestly, I did a drop at midnight, Martin told him. I can’t get into the safe, it’s sealed up.

Damn it, Peter thought. He knew the kid was being honest about the safe being sealed. It was for exactly this situation that cashiers did such drops.

Dude, we gotta get out of here, Mike warned. They were on camera. Their identities were concealed under the ski masks, but if the store was under active surveillance, help would be arriving shortly. This had to be a grab and go, and they needed to go, like pronto. A fit of anger washed over Peter; at the doubtlessly pitiful haul they were going to get from this, at the kid’s lie about fifty bucks, at the arc of Peter’s whole fucking life.

Peter beamed his thoughts at the frightened cashier. Don’t you know we have bills to pay? Habits to support? Things that require supplementary forms of income, not that it’s easy to acquire an income when you’re a fuckin’ FELON!

His status as a felon and other shortcomings had nothing to do with this quivering kid on the other side of the counter. But the kid was here, and like so many times in the past when Peter experienced such episodes, whoever was present would serve as his whipping post. Peter jabbed him in the face with the rough end of the shotgun once again, hoping it hurt the kid and would leave a mark.

I wanna leave a scar on his forehead, something he will always be able to see and feel to remind him of this moment, a Braille signature. Peter was proud of that last bit. Braille signature. All that reading in jail had paid off.

As he gloated about his cleverness, the shotgun barrel emitted a flash of orange that erased most of Martin’s head. The headless body was thrown backwards into a counter and tumbled to the floor, the gushing blood sounding like water from a burst pipe.

Mike was splattered with bits of flesh and brain matter. What the fuck! he screeched. His eyes were wide and his voice quavered like a frightened child. He was a felon too, had done jail time for armed robbery, but this was his first robbery gone so wrong. He turned to run out from behind the counter. Before he did, he plucked a carton of cigarettes from a slot in one wall.

Necessities, you understand.

2

A midwinter storm had dumped a foot of snow on the town of Ryerton, New York. The weather was both blessing and curse for our two robbers. It was the reason they could wear their concealing gear without arousing suspicion; now it was hindering their escape. The car was parked a few blocks away on a residential street, and they had to get there fast. What had not been apparent on their leisurely walk over was now slapping them in the face: that you can’t run in a foot of snow. Not for long, anyway. Neither of them were physical specimens, and even with the adrenaline rush fueling them, their legs burned in a short time and they had to go back to a frantic walk.

They had gotten a decent distance from the scene of the crime, though, and the night air was not full of sirens; an encouraging sign. Not even any traffic to speak of. Ryerton’s working class section was not exactly known for its nightlife. You had to go over the railroad tracks to the river side, where they lived, for that.

Peter and Mike kept to the side of the road, deep in the shadows, panting with the effort of navigating through the snow. Peter’s heart was a raging drum, and he was sweating underneath the thick layers of clothing. This was not good. Soon that sweat would cool down and chill him. Another reason to hurry the fuck up, even though they couldn’t do so.

They’ll be able to trace our footsteps, Mike said worriedly. Behind them was a trail of disturbed snow, like breadcrumbs for the cops to follow.

We’ll be gone by then, Peter told him. How much did we get?

Mike took the money out of his pocket. It was a confused jumble of bills, their denominations barely visible in the shadows of the roadside. He counted as best he could. Six hundred, he said with a bit of surprise. Not as bad as I thought except for what happened.

I didn’t plan that, Peter told him.

Yeah but now you’re a fucking murderer.

Peter’s hand tensed on the stock of the shotgun tucked under his coat. Easy boy, he warned himself. You shut the fuck up or I’ll make it two. And it’s not just me who’s the murderer. You’re an accessory to it. You know how these detectives work. Don’t kid yourself.

No, Mike didn’t kid himself. He was swimming in the shit river the same as his buddy over there. They were now both in over their heads, hostages to each other’s fortunes.

Don’t be a wise ass. Remember who’s giving you a place to crash, Peter warned. Technically it was Peter’s girlfriend’s apartment, but that was neither here nor there to Mike.

The car was parked a few blocks away, just another anonymous vehicle among those on the streetside. At this time of night, the neighborhood was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Which made starting the Honda Civic a troubling proposition. The car had ignition issues; the starter motor made a sound like two metal plates slapping together when Peter turned the key. His attempt to do this slowly did not lessen the noise, which echoed through the neighborhood. Peter imagined it waking everyone up within a two mile radius. Why the fuck hadn’t he considered this before? He saw a light come on in a house up the road. It was in the direction they were headed, so he turned the car around and went the opposite way. Just a minor detour.

Still no sirens, no rushing police cruisers. From the looks of it they were home free.

3

Home for the two of them was an apartment in Ryerton’s seedy River District, just over the railroad tracks. The tracks served as the dividing line between the working class folk of Ryerton and the have-nots who, just as Peter and Mike had done tonight, often fed on them.

It had not always been this way. The decaying bit of urban sprawl hugging the Ryerton River had once been a thriving and prosperous community. It had been constructed by the Mills Textile Works during the 1930’s textile boom, to house its workers and provide them a stable community. When that market crashed the company folded and left the miniature city behind, along with a river poisoned by decades of pollution.

Later on, the area gradually refilled with society’s undesirables, who were drawn by the lure of low income housing… or forced to go there for lack of any other opportunity.

There was a Darwinian aspect to the interactions between those east of the tracks (the have-nots) and those west of it (the haves), a very natural survival of the fittest, strong preying on the weak vibe, but in reverse. You had to think about it for just a moment to have the mirror image aspect sink in. In a societal sense, the working class were the strong, as they had taken up productive roles and found a way to provide for themselves. The have-nots, had not. And while not all the have-nots fell into crime, many did, seeking to supplement their meager existences with bounty from those who worked for it. So there was a predator/prey interaction, but the predators were those who were weak feasting on those who were strong.

Then too, locale was reversed. In nature, the prey animals often congregated down by riversides and other sources of water, and the predators stalked them there. But here, the weak predators came from the river to hunt the societally strong prey. Rarely with such disastrous results as we witnessed tonight; the murder rate was exceedingly low in these parts. It was more petty theft and the like. In the societal version of survival of the fittest, the motivating factor was material goods rather than bloody meat.

Nobody wanted to kill that kid, Mike kept thinking whenever guilt crept in, and having an excuse seemed to make it better. Because he had wanted to kill Martin at that moment, in that way you want to kill someone when you’re mad and then later realize it was in the heat of the moment. Usually you breathe a sigh of relief that the moment passed without incident, because you didn’t have an altercation with that person while a sawed off shotgun with a hairpin trigger was pressed against their head. In this case, there was just such a weapon involved, and so you wound up with what happened here. But in the interests of truth, in case he ever had to answer in a court of law, if anyone asked him, no, he had not set out to kill Martin Ames, but at that microsecond before the kid lost his head, he, Peter, had indeed wanted to kill him.

4

There was an important thing to take care of before going home. An Errand to run, so to speak. This involved stopping at Bif’s place to score. Bif lived on the ground floor of a crumbling, three story building in the heart of the River District. He was one of the bigger dealers in the area, and owned the whole building he lived in. There was usually a steady flow of out of towners visiting here to score, nervous looking people in shiny cars stopping out front to place orders with Bif’s runners. This would have made for prime hunting territory, except Bif and the other dealers had a hands-off order on anyone in their respective areas. Robbing customers was bad for business.

Not many tonight, with the recent foul weather.

Peter rolled down the driver’s window as a familiar runner named James approached. James was halfway through the transformation to Jenna. It was not so obvious now, under layers of winter clothing, because James was still a big dude. In warmer weather he looked like a linebacker with nice tits, the kind of girl who would grab you up and make you fuck her.

Slow night? Peter asked him.

Comes and goes, James said in a voice that was slowly modulating towards femininity as his courses of hormones did their work. Those wide shoulders were going to be a hard sell, though.

Peter ordered 300 dollars’ worth of the highest grade dope. Bif was a connoisseur and had several varieties to choose from. After the night he’d had, Peter wanted to party in style.

5

Peter and Mike returned to the