You see, three or four inches of snowfall will shut an unprepared city like Seattle down. After the novelty of snowballs and hot cocoa wears off, people get agitated that they can’t drive, or go to work, or get groceries. Society grinds to a halt, and everything is instincts, the selfishness of survival, and Darwinism clutching at the throat of civilization.

Traffic stops, television stops, government stops, everything stops. But the snow keeps falling.

A few days after it started to snow in Seattle, a state of emergency was declared. Then the power went out, and then the telephones. The lakes froze. We were cut off, and the interstate was clogged with vehicles.

One person broke down, and everybody behind him stopped, and then, when they least expected it, they were covered by an avalanche.

Soon, those of us left in the city had to live on the second floors and third floors. Then the attics. As the snow continued to fall, we survivors moved into high-rise apartments and office buildings. Those who shared a building became like families, and finally like warring tribes.

This morning I knew I had to leave, somehow, and so I took the carbine and some blankets and some sterno and three dog steaks and a tin pot, and I climbed out onto the ice with the wreck of the Space Needle behind me.

I walked between the rooftops and looked out from behind chimneys to see that the way was clear. Once I heard voices chanting and I broke a window and dove inside and waited underneath a bed with a frozen corpse on top of it for the Asatru gang to pass by, singing about Gotterdammerung. Some of the teenagers from Ballard have taken to speaking in Old Norsk, and they travel in packs, but not usually this far south.

I walked for another hour. It would not do to get sick, but I could feel a fever coming. I had to stop to rest, and soon, a lone figure came out of a doorway.

“News?” he yelled from across the street.
“No news,” I yelled back.
“Trade?” he yelled. So, I traded him a blanket and two of the steaks for a thermos half-full of coffee. I did not ask him where he got the coffee. It does not do to ask those questions.

We parted, and after a time I heard a woman’s voice, crying. She was kneeling down in the snow over a man’s body, so I circled her for a while to see if it was a trap. It appeared that she was only mourning, so I approached. She was beautiful, but red in the face from tears, and had a long black wool jacket and ear-muffs, and water-proof boots and a scarf. The man was handsome but he had clearly been robbed, stripped naked. Either he died of the cold, or internal injuries, because there was no blood.

“Were you married?” I asked her.
“He was my brother,” she sobbed.

I wrapped her clothing in my remaining blanket and set off down the hill. It was getting dark and there was no shelter. There were wolves, but they were afraid of people now, we who are hungrier even than they, and they only follow at a distance to see who dies first.

Maybe it was pneumonia. My breathing was shallow. I stopped next to the top of a tree and wheezed raggedly, the cold air scorching my lungs. Soon I heard an engine and I crouched behind the tree until I saw that it was a bus coming down the hill.

I stood in the middle of the road, waving, and the bus stopped in front of me. There were chains on all its wheels.

The door opened, and the driver got out. He was wearing a tattered ski jacket and a deerstalker cap. He had a shotgun in the crook of his arm, not threateningly, just an advertisement. Another man got out with him. I could see others in the windows of the bus, staring at me.

“I’d like to barter a ride, if you have room.”
“What do you have there?” the second man asked.
“I’ve got a blanket, a tin pot, some sterno, a woman’s wool jacket that is very warm, some earmuffs, some boots, a scarf, and a thermos in good condition with coffee inside. You can have any three if you’ll take me.”
“Got that carbine there too,” said the second man.
“I’ve got no shells for it, and it’s not for sale anyway.”
“Well, if your rifle is empty, how you expect to get a fair trade?” he said, grinning.
“Because this pistol is loaded,” I said, opening my jacket and putting a hand over the grip, “and it’s not for sale either.”

They decided on the sterno, the jacket and the boots, and I split the coffee with the other passengers to make friends. There were eight of us, including an old man and a woman with two children.

The woman got the jacket, and she asked me suspiciously where I’d found it.
“It doesn’t do to ask those questions,” I said.