Abattoir

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It was the kind of snow skiers call champagne powder—light, crystalline. In other circumstances, in someone else’s life, it might have been beautiful.

To Rollie, it was stinging, blinding agony, lashing his face, forming little clumps of ice in his untended beard. With each step, the cold hammered him, the wind taking his breath away.

He’d fallen asleep on the number 6 bus. On an ordinary night, it would’ve barely been an inconvenience. Tonight, in this God-forsaken wasteland, an old district called Derbytown, it might mean his life.

At first, he thought he’d be able to find shelter after only a modest walk, perhaps in the residential area he’d noticed before falling asleep. Now he was lost.

The area was industrial—warehouses, factories, unidentifiable buildings—unfamiliar. They all looked forlorn, forbidding.

Rollie didn’t pay much heed to weather reports, instead taking each day in stride, trusting his instincts and numerous contacts on the street. He didn’t know that tonight’s weather had been labeled a winter storm alert. Temperatures were expected to drop well below zero. With the wind chill factor, it was a night that could kill.

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