Winterland

(5850 words) After Bryce's eight-year-old daughter tells him she can't remember last summer, or any summer for that matter, he starts to notice discrepancies in the world of his cozy little town. How long has this winter lasted? And why does he feel so cold all the time? A slightly different version of this story appeared in Wild Violet, Feb. 2013.Vivia Brisk knows about the dead. She should. She’s died enough times. Vivia is a hag – or death witch – one of the last of her race, and can die, visit the underworld and return at will. As a consultant with charity The Lipscombe Trust, she has a job she loves – helping London’s most vulnerable supernaturals, even if her colleague Malcolm drives her round the bend on a daily basis. Vivia thinks she’s got Malcolm’s measure – sexist, not too bright and generally a pain in the ass, but then Malcolm zombifies and, along with his fourteen year old son Ben, flees the police. With a zombie on the loose, London goes into lock down and Vivia is roped in into find them. After all, Malcolm can only keep control so long without fresh flesh, and the risk of the zompocalypse increases the longer he’s on the lam. At first what happened seems simple, but then the police find decades-old corpses hidden near Malcolm’s house, and Vivia begins to realise Malcolm’s missing son is in a lot more danger than from just a single zombie on the loose…