This place had once been a mighty ocean. That was before. This is now. The ice age had swept over the planet, completely covering the globe in a blanket of white. Survivors had scattered like leaves in the wind, doing anything it took to stay alive.
A solitary figure stood at the foot of the cliff staring up at the the ship. It was his last chance for salvation…
He began the final part of his treacherous journey towards the ship with nought but the clothes on his shoulders and the pack on his back. As he trod through the deep drift, snow petrels screeched overhead, antarctic wisps adrift in the cold air. The man wondered where they were headed. Migration patterns of birds had been destroyed along with almost every other scrap of information when the Ice age came. “Maybe they are just coming for me”, he thought aloud. Waiting for his walking corpse to finally give in and drop dead; like the reapers of cold death, long lost to the tides of snow.
Above his head loomed an enormous white cliff, seemingly millions of meters tall. Cracks and crevasses snaked up the surface, wounds in the flesh of the freeze mother. The man dug his first climbing axe into the cliff and the ice pack creaked in dismay. He glanced up towards the top of the cliff, and the harsh antarctic sun above glared upon his face. He muttered, “bloody spring” and tugged his ragged shemagh up to cover his tattered and burned visage and continued to climb.
The snow petrels swarmed above, shrieking and cackling. Was there more than there was before, or was the man just imagining it? It seemed like the birds were amassing in the thousands, but it must have just been his hunger or his tiredness. Or perhaps the avians were gathering for a more sinister motive, to consume and feast.
Below, spires of ice reached to the desolate skies, skeletal fingers of deepest cold. The man saw these and immediately made a mental note to not look down again – fear, after all, had been the downfall of the others. finally he dragged his harrowed body over the top of the cliff and lay, resting for a good while. He realized that the petrels had disappeared, before he ate the last of his meager rations. He sat up, put his hefty pack back upon his shoulders and looked to the west, towards the wreck.
The ship was a vast one, shaded in grey, white and rust. He imagined that before the big freeze, it may have carried oil or other precious cargoes to the great cities. But now it lay, half buried in the ice; wilting, desolate and unforgiving. It sat squat a mere 200 meters away, across a flat expanse of drift. The man tightened his pack straps, and began the final short leg of his journey. “almost there” he said to no one.
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