Northern Ontario, 2043. The Collapse came not
with war but withdrawal—the federal grid failed,
supply chains snapped, and remote communities
were left to rot under a new rule: no movement
across firebreak lines. The world now runs on
cold logic—heat is rationed, breath is counted,
and the wilderness reclaims everything. Travel
is forbidden, but Eli Cade walks anyway.
He leaves the bunkertown of Kapuskasing on foot,
carrying only a rusted hockey skate wrapped in
cloth—a keepsake from his daughter Maren, who
died in isolated Cochrane during the last
quarantine sweep. Officially, her body was
incinerated. Unofficially, a nurse slipped him a
note: They didn’t burn her. They can’t. The
ground won’t take her.
The land has changed. Permafrost creeps
southward unnaturally, sealing corpses in ice
that never thaws. Trees grow inward, limbs
twisted like frozen screams. Animals avoid human
eyes. This is not climate change—it is
reclamation. The earth resists burial. The dead
do not decay. To die is to become permanent.
Eli crosses the railway trestle at Moonbeam,
where rails have warped into spirals. A patrol
drone hums overhead, scans him, then powers down—
its database outdated, its orders expired.
Authority has collapsed into silence. Only local
bylaws remain: Kapuskasing’s rule—No one leaves.
No one returns. He broke it stepping out the
door.
At Iroquois Falls, he finds a child’s mitten
nailed to a post—warning or memorial, he cannot
tell. He presses on. Frostbite claims two toes
by Foleyet. He amputates with a pocket knife,
binds the stump with rubber from an old Zamboni
belt. Pain is routine. Grief is fuel.
Cochrane is a glassdusted ruin. Windows frosted
from within. Homes sealed with government tape,
now brittle and torn. He locates the clinic.
Inside, rows of bodies lie on gurneys, encased
in clear ice. Maren is among them—frozen
midcough, eyes open, face calm. Not decayed. Not
released.
He smashes the ice with the hockey skate. The
moment the blade strikes, the building groans.
Frost spreads up the walls. A sound like
cracking vertebrae fills the air. The rule bites
now: Disturb the dead, and the land remembers.
He wraps Maren’s body in a Métis blanket, straps
her to his back. The trek home is slower.
Weather turns sharp. Snow falls upward in gusts
near Matheson. His breath forms shapes that
linger. At night, shadows stand just beyond
torchlight—motionless, facing him.
He reaches Kapuskasing’s gate on the seventh day.
Guards raise rifles, then lower them—recognizing
the man, sensing something wrong with the bundle.
He does not speak. He walks through.
That night, he digs a grave behind his home.
Shovel hits stone at three feet. He digs deeper.
At five feet, the soil is warm. It pulses. He
drops Maren in. The earth closes over her like
muscle. No mound forms. No trace remains.
By morning, the hockey skate sits outside his
door—wet, as if dipped in blood and rinsed.
Neighbours report hearing two voices arguing in
the woods—Eli’s, and a younger one, female.
Eli does not leave his home. Does not eat. On
the third day, frost blooms from beneath his
skin, creeping up his arms. He writes nothing.
Says nothing.
On the fourth, snow begins to fall inside the
house.
The town council seals the home at dusk. No fire.
No announcement. Just boarded windows and a new
bylaw posted: No graves dug deeper than two feet.
Outside, near the old rink, children swear they
see two figures skating at midnight—one tall,
one small—leaving no tracks.
