Although the snow was deeper near the buildings, along the main path that lead from the park to what had been the pedestrianised zone, the snow was roughly a foot deep. In some ways this was good. There were no footprints and the top of it still had a frozen untouched crispness to it. No-one was wandering around at the moment. And it was much easier to walk in deeper snow than on ice ground – even if you feel over it wasn’t too bad. On the other hand, Ghost was very much aware that it was going to slow them down a lot and that could lead to all sorts of problems.
He looked at Amber. The tips of elven ears were already beginning to go red from the cold. Still there was a twinkle in her eyes at finally being outside again.
“Why does it always sound quieter after it snows?” Amber asked interrupting his thoughts.
“The snow helps muffle sounds so they seems softer and quieter,” he replied.
Carefully they walked past the Library. Although he deliberately looked straight ahead Ghost noticed curtains flickering in his peripheral vision. He kept walking. Sometimes you just had to trust that things would turn out ok.
This time things did and they reached the main parade of shops safely.
“We really need to come to some kind of arrangement with them,” Amber said.
Ghost nodded. “Yup, but for now, where do you want to go first?”
Amber looked up at him with a look of surprise. She was used to him planning out the best way forward. Ghost tried his best to look innocent and waited patiently for her answer.
“Left,” she decided.
Ghost nodded. There wasn’t really a wrong answer at this point, especially if they just wanted to scout out the local area. Now he started thinking. This part of was fairly straightforward. Shops on either side and a wide pavement running through them. The shops all had two or three floors and he knew that some of them had floors below street level too. Which meant an awful lot of windows that people could shoot at them from.
Metal shutters had been pulled down over the storefronts. Ghost was confident that he could get past them without too much trouble. For now he was interested in seeing if any of them had been disturbed.
People had left fairly suddenly as the local economy crashed, but most had left with the optimism that it was just a temporary thing and so they’d carefully locked up behind them, expecting to come back. But years passed and still no-one returned.
They carried on trudging through the snow. Ghost held out his hand to pause Amber. One of the shutters had been lifted. Looking at the snow by them, Ghost guessed it had been opened earlier in the day.
He nodded at it and looked questioningly at her.
Next
