The Weather Outside

It was a typical cold night on Christmas Eve in Blueswell, Montana as the small town of five thousand laid cozy in their beds, fast asleep and blissfully unaware of the frigid winds battering their houses outside. Alex and Rachel Renton, a young married couple of only five years were snuggled up in their room on the top floor of their home, quietly discussing at what time they should head downstairs to place their daughter's presents from "Santa" under the tree. A blue-eyed wonder and gifted with beautiful curly brunette locks, their daughter, Julia, had been given the best features of both her parents. At the moment, she was down the hall and wide awake in her princess-themed room, afflicted with the common insomnia found in all young children the night before Christmas. She wondered if Santa had gotten her letter about the dollhouse she wanted and whether he had had time to buy it on Amazon. Julia was clearly a child of the 21st century, and while some things about Christmas had changed since her parents were young, she still had the same excitement about the holiday that they had. Finally, she became too tired and slowly drifted off into a peaceful slumber.

Two thousand miles away, a button was pushed.

At a quarter past seven the next morning, Julia's eyes winced. A crack of light had broken through her curtain, a sunny signal to let her know it was time to wake up. It took her a minute at first to comprehend what was so special about the day she was waking up to, but once she did, her whole body shot out of her bed in one great leap. She opened the door to the hallway and ran to her parents' room as fast as a four-year old girl can possibly go on Christmas morning. Young Julia bounced through the doorway and over to her mother's side of the bed, standing just inches from her face. At this noise, Rachel had awoken and was now looking at her little girl through bleary eyes. Even with such blurry vision, she could see the sheer happiness and anticipation of Julia's face, causing her to smile in motherly delight.

"Shall I wake up daddy?" Rachel asked her daughter.

Julia naturally nodded her head with exuberance.

Rachel rolled the top half of her body over and gave her husband a light shake, but with enough force to get his attention. Alex made a noise of recognition but remained motionless. He let out a low moan before finding his voice.

"Do I have to get up?"

Rachel's smile became wider. She and Alex had planned this little routine the night before. Rachel turned to her daughter again and told her, "Julia, remind daddy why we have to get up so early."

"Daddy, we have to get up because it's Christmas!" Julia said in a voice dying from anxiousness.

Alex suddenly shot out of bed as quickly as Julia had and turned to his daughter, "It's Christmas?! Well why didn't you say so? Let's go!"

Julia, having been granted permission to run downstairs to the living room where the Christmas tree stood, shot out of the room with the utmost haste. Alex, with a mile-wide grin to match Rachel's, put his hands on his hips and looked at his wife.

"That went just as planned," He noted in accomplishment. "You ready?"

They threw on their respective robes and headed downstairs to meet their daughter, who was sitting at the base of the tree, fascinated beyond words at all the presents. The heap of gifts that surrounded the evergreen resembled a fortress' wall and it would surely take an eager person to plow through. Luckily, Julia was more than prepared to assume the task. With her parents settled on the couch behind her, she turned her head to them one final time to make sure it was okay to start.

"Merry Christmas, honey," Rachel said, beaming with pride.

"Merry Christmas, mommy," returned Julia.

Over the course of about forty-five minutes, the room was met with high-pitched squeals, screams, yells, and at least one shriek. Joy filled the place to capacity and Julia performed at least seven victory laps around the room upon seeing her dollhouse for the first time. By the end, a total of fourteen gifts had been torn open, leaving behind a wrapping paper massacre that layered half the carpet. Every toy that Julia had asked for had been delivered on, thanks to her parents and a little help from Ol' Saint Nick. While Julia occupied herself with her new teddy bear, Alex and Rachel took their turn and exchanged gifts with each other. Alex pointed out a small box for Rachel to retrieve, amid the still impressive pile of presents.

"Now, just a forewarning, that thing you have in your hand is very, very, very awesome."

"I'll be the decider of that," Rachel says playfully.

She opens her gift in a far more refined manner than her daughter, revealing what looks to be a case containing jewelry. She looks at Alex with an expression of astonishment, not able to believe that he purchased her dream present.

"It's not..."

"Oh, it so is."

Rachel opens the box to see a glimmering piece of gold jewelry before her. It's a necklace with a sapphire encrusted pendent; very similar to the one Rachel's grandmother wore before she passed away. Rachel slips it over her head, lifting her chestnut hair over the necklace so it can properly lay in place around her is neck. She is left speechless by this and can only hug her husband in response. After letting go, Rachel comes back to her senses and points to Alex's gifts under the tree.

Knowing Alex, rather than splurge all her resources into one big gift, she has showered him with a grand assortment of presents: stacks of DVDs, books galore, and numerous electronic gadgets of seemingly pointless invention. All of these added up to a very pleased Alex. Brimming with happiness, he turns to where his daughter was playing to ask if she had a good Christmas this year, but does not find her there to answer back.

"Julia?"

Alex and Rachel both begin calling their daughter's name, wondering how she so swiftly snuck away. Julia calls back from the dining room.

"Mommy, daddy, come look!"

Her parents look at one another in puzzlement before going to investigate. When they enter the room, they see their daughter staring out their large bay window to the view outside, or at least, what is partially blocking the view outside.

Snow. Over a foot of it.

The sight of it has caught Alex and Rachel off-guard, and for a moment they just looked at and admired the snow with the same whimsy as their little girl. Rachel was first to comment on this unexpected event.

"I didn't know we were supposed to have snow."

"We weren't. The weatherman said clear skies through Sunday," Alex mentioned.

"Well, at least that means we'll be having a white Christmas."

"Just like the ones I use to know," Alex begins to sing in his best Bing Crosby impression.

The two parents hug each other and laugh, instantly forgetting about the unanticipated snowfall. Julia continues looking out the window in complete awe. Although still very young, she knows this is a lot of snow, even for a Montana Christmas. Something about it has her transfixed. Eventually, Rachel calls her to the kitchen for some breakfast before Alex's parents come over, and the little girl races off to fill her belly.

A lever was pulled.

At the kitchen table, the Renton family enjoys a nice, simple meal of oatmeal with brown sugar and some fresh toast. Rachel and Julia talk about Julia's presents and what the plans for the day are. Alex, meanwhile, has kept quiet, eating his oatmeal and thinking to himself. His mind has gone back to the snow. While dismissing it just a few minutes ago, he has begun to reconsider this freak occurrence. He cannot remember the last time the weather had been predicted so incorrectly, recalling that even the website he checked last night informed him that the forecast for the day would be sunny but windy. Instead of a sun shining down upon the town, snowflakes were falling in great amount. When he fell asleep last night, Alex had seen not a trace of snow on the ground nor was a cloud in the sky to indicate some was on its way. Nine hours later, he was greeted to the sight of what appeared to be fourteen inches of snow on the ground and growing. The more he thought about it, the less this situation sat well with him, but he was unsure of whether to express this concern explicitly with his wife. Alex decided to bring the topic up again carefully.

"You know, I hope my parents can make it here alright with all this snow on the ground.”

Rachel, unworried, offered a calming reminder, "I'm sure the snowplows are out there clearing the roads as we speak. Plus, your brother Jeff is driving them, so they'll be coming in that mammoth truck of his. Plus they only live half an hour away. That reminds me though, what time are they supposed to come over?"

"Hm, they said they would be leaving at nine, so they should be here around nine-thirty, nine forty-five."

"I should start cleaning this place up then."

With that, Rachel left the table to begin over-excessive preparations for her in-laws, leaving Alex and Julia at the kitchen table.

"So honey, do you have a name for your bear yet?"

Rather than answering the question straight away, Julia took her time, choosing this to be the moment where she christened her dear new friend with a proper title. A light bulb went off in her mind, and in a ‘stroke of brilliance’ tone, believing to be the first to be so clever to name a teddy bear this, she exclaims, "Barry!" Alex smiles at his daughter with the pride Rachel felt earlier.

"Daddy, can we go outside before grandma and grandpa come over?" Julia begs more than asks.

"You want to play in all that snow, don't you?" Alex asks his daughter in light-hearted inquisitiveness.

Julia grins and nods her head excitedly. This liveliness breaks down the worries about the snow that Alex is harboring, at least temporarily. He tells Julia to go to her room to get dressed and she scampers off with same untamed giddiness she has had since she woke up. He grabs all the bowls and utensils off the table and takes them to the sink before looking out a nearby window. He swears that it has begun to snow harder.

A dial was turned.

Outside, Julia has donned herself, with the help of her father, in the finest clothing accessories for snow playing weather, in all pink of course. She is sporting gloves, boots, a hat, scarf, coat, three layers of shirts, snow pants, and a nice warm pair of wool socks with princesses on them. As Julia hops around the snow, sinking to the bottom every now and then, Alex shovels what he can off of the back deck. He takes a break for a moment and looks up above, squinting and covering his eyes from the relentless heavy snowflakes. Alex sees a normal gray sky above him, the type accustomed to delivering such a snowstorm, but as he looks further in the distance, he sees a wall of menacing blackness approaching. These appear to be clouds more familiar with violent thunderstorms than with a pleasant wintery dumping of snow. Despite the fear this creates in him, he does not call Julia in. They have only been outside for ten minutes and he does not want to spoil her fun so soon, especially on Christmas. Alex goes back to shoveling and tries to put the dark clouds out of his mind, but he can't help but think to himself that those clouds will be on them very soon.

In the meantime, Julia has dressed herself in a nice sweater and jeans and frantically works to straighten everything she sees and gives a quick dusting to all the tables in the house. She is the embodiment of controlled chaos and her determined path of obsessive perfection is disturbed only by a phone call. Checking to see the caller I.D., Rachel recognizes the number as coming from Alex's mother's cell phone.

Rachel answers in an attempt at casual jolliness."Hey, Martha! On your way?"

"Rachel? Rachel, we’re sorry, but we may not make it to your guys' house today," Martha replies with an air of confusion.

"Not make it? Wha-why not? Was the snow that bad over there?" Her jolliness has quickly faded into panic.

"What? No, Claremont only got a couple inches," Martha says, in reference to the town 25 miles away where her and Alex's father live. "Why? How much have you gotten?"

"Well we must have at least seventeen inches on the ground by now. It's practically up to Julia's stomach. You're in Jeff's truck, aren't you? Shouldn't you be able to get through this?"

"Oh sure, Jeffy's truck can fly through this snow better than the cities' snowplows, but that's not the point."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, the road into Blueswell is blocked off."

"By snow?"

"No, no, no, by men."

"What?"

"There's some roadblock set up here with some soldiers patrolling around, they're not letting anybody through. Are you sure there hasn't been some sort of accident in town?"

"I've had the television running in the background all morning and they haven't said a word about any accident. No breaking news or anything."

"Oh, well, it must be bad whatever it is. Rachel dear, could you put Alex on the phone, please?"

"Sure, one minute. He's outside with Julia."

Rachel, after talking to Alex's mother, has been thrown into a state of worry. Her mind is racing, thinking of the possibilities for why there would be soldiers blocking the road into the town. Before she knows it, she stops at the sliding glass door to the deck and takes a breath to calm herself before opening it. Gaining enough nerve, she slides the door open and gets Alex's attention.

"What's up?" Alex asks as he walks over to her.

Rachel covers the mouthpiece of the phone, "It's your mother. She says she won't be able to make it today."

"What? Why?"

"She says there are soldiers patrolling a roadblock into town and they're not letting any cars in," she informs him, beginning to lose her nerve.

"Soldiers? The nearest base isn't for hundreds of miles. Why would there be-"

"I don't know," Rachel says, cutting him off, "just talk to her."

Alex sees the alarm in his wife's eyes and takes off a glove to grab the phone. He has a paranoid inkling of an idea of why the soldiers might be blocking the road, but it would only open a host of unanswerable questions. He hopes his mother can clear things up.

"Hey, mom."

"Hello, sweetie."

"So what's going on over there? There's a roadblock with some soldiers?"

"Mhm. We're about four cars from it. Looks to me that they have some makeshift wooden fence set up with barbed wire wrapped around it. Why in the dickens would they be doing such a thing, and on Christmas no less?"

"I don't know, mom. Do you think you can try calling one of the guards over? Maybe they can explain what's going on."

"Are you sure there hasn't been a gas leak or something over there?"

"Yeah, we would've been alerted and there would probably be people telling us to leave. Just call someone over and ask what's going on."

"Ok, just a minute."

Alex stays on, listening to his mother's voice on the other line as she talks away from the phone.

"Excuse me! Excuse me! Sir, could you come here, please?" Alex listens to silence for a moment as his mother waits for an approaching soldier. He hears her voice again, "Merry Christmas, sir. Um, could you tell us what's going on here?"

Faintly, Alex can hear the voice of the soldier, "No, ma'am, I'm not authorized to do so."

"Please, we're on our way into Blueswell to see our son and daughter-in-law and our little grandchild. I'm on the phone with my son right now trying to explain why we can’t get in."

"You're on the phone with him right now?"

"Yes, sir."

"Ma'am, I'm sorry, but I'm going to need to confiscate that phone."

"Pardon me?"

"Could you please hand over your cell phone and any others you have in the car?"

"But I need it to-"

"Ma'am, I'm going to need that right now."

A rustling noise is heard on the other line. Alex could only assume that a struggle for the phone is taking place. His mother's voice is heard again, far fainter than before.

"Alex, tell Julia 'Merry Chri-'"

The line dies immediately afterward.

Alex's heart pounds away inside his chest. He doesn't put the phone down right away, not believing what he has just heard. As the sound of a dial tone fills his one ear, Rachel's voice comes into the other. She has been standing in the doorway, watching Alex on the phone and trying to gauge his reactions for an idea of what could be going on. She sees his jaw clenched and eyes unblinking and knows something bad has just happened. All this while, young Julia continues to play in the snow, completely enjoying her Christmas, unaware of the circumstances.

"Alex...Alex...what's wrong? What did she say?"

He still doesn't answer at first, he just stares straightforward, thinking of what could explain all of this. Finally, he hangs up the phone and readjusts his gaze onto his wife.

"A soldier took her phone. He took it right from her. I don't-...something's wrong. Something bad is happening here."

"Like what?"

"I think we should stay inside."

An order is given.

Instantly after Alex comes to this logical conclusion, a flash of light from the sky catches their attention. While distracted by the phone call, the gray sky that had once been overhead has since been replaced by the threatening dark clouds. They swirl about, looking like a devious life-form plotting a plan of havoc from high above. The flash even stops the festive Julia in her tracks. The whole family looks around at the clouds, waiting.

Then, a loud, earth-shaking explosion of thunder roars to life, the sound ripping through the atmosphere. Julia quickly comes running to her father, who picks her up and holds her in a firm grip. The wind begins to intensify and the snow starts falling in sheets rather than flakes. All visibility is lost.

"We need to go inside now," He yells to Rachel over the howl of the wind.

The family rushes through the doorway and into the dining room. Rachel slams the door shut, locks it, and pulls the curtains over it, not wanting to even see outside. Alex looks at his daughter and sees pure terror. Julia’s bottom lip is quivering and she continues looking at where the door is covered by the curtain. He knows he needs to talk to Rachel and figure out what to do, but he also realizes he can't do so with Julia in the room. Alex doesn’t want her scared anymore than she is. He puts her down and goes onto one knee so he’s eye-to-eye with her.

"Honey, could you go upstairs for awhile so I can talk to mommy?"

Julia doesn't respond, the lightning strike has frightened her into stunned silence.

"Honey? Honey, I need you to go play in your room for just a few minutes. You can take Barry with you and talk with him while mommy and I talk. How does that sound?"

Julia looks at her father on and off, not able to keep eye contact. Despite this, she obliges and leaves the room. Alex and Rachel listen to her footsteps as she goes up the stairs and into her room. Once they cease, they begin talking in fast paced whispering voices.

"Alex, what the hell is happening out there? Lightning in winter? While it's snowing? None of this makes sense. It doesn't take a meteorologist to know that."

"I have no clue. You're right, this doesn't make sense. But Rachel, soldiers? Roadblocks?" Alex then asks himself in complete bafflement, "What is going on?"

"What do you think we should do?"

Alex begins pacing around the room, trying with all his mental might to apply reason and logic to this development. Unfortunately, he draws a blank. He looks at his wife, not having any idea what do except shrug his shoulders and stand there in defeat.

An hour or so had passed and the thunderstorm was roaring with the same fury as when the family ran inside. By this point, the family had split up into their rooms upstairs, Julia remaining in hers, as asked, and Alex and Rachel feverishly debating in their room behind a closed door. Alex was still unable to come up with a viable plan. He desperately wanted to leave the house, but knew this was a complete impossibility. His backup idea was simply to hope that the storm soon stopped, but Rachel continued to tell him how unacceptable both of his ideas were. She was primarily focused on the other aspects of the situation, particularly the lightning and the soldiers’ presence at the edge of town. Lightning during winter was a complete phenomenon, she knew that, and as her husband mentioned, the nearest military base was so far away and their appearance during this event was disturbingly mysterious. She could not put the pieces together, they just did not fit in her mind and Alex could not provide her any answers.

Before long, they found themselves sitting on their bed, leaning against each other and sadly resorting to Alex’s backup plan. They held their hands together and hoped that this weather, so isolated and vicious, would just go away. Rachel rubbed the piece of sapphire on her necklace, in some belief that it would provide the answers they wished for or that it would bring them some luck. As they sat upon their bed, contemplating their future and trying to understand the situation they were in, a new noise caught their attention. It was a lengthy, droning sound coming from above their heads that Alex identified as a major problem.

“The roof is giving way.”

“Are you sure?”

Alex nods, “You hear that creaking? That’s the sound of the roof bending under the weight of the snow. This is very bad, Rachel.”

Alex’s mind hit overdrive as this new threat presented itself to them. He stood up and stared at the wall in front of him. Rachel looked to him to figure out what to do.

"All I can think to do is prepare for it to get worse. This snow out there is coming down harder than I've ever seen before.” Alex walks over to their window and points outside to accentuate his point, “That is an inch-a-minute snowfall out there. I think we just need to take Julia, grab some blankets and that inflatable bed and go to the basement."

"The basement? You think we’ll be safe there?”

"Rach, if this snow keeps piling on at this rate, the roof will not be able to hold up much longer. Listen, I can't explain the lightning or the soldiers, and I don’t even want to know about that. What I know is that if it continues snowing like this, the weight of it will break this roof down and the basement is are best shot at surviving when that happens."

More flashes of lightning pierce through the windows and into the house, accompanied by growls of thunder that get louder each time. Within hours, a white Christmas has turned into a dire emergency. Another ominous creak comes from the ceiling and sends adrenaline into Alex and Rachel. They know there isn’t much time. Alex gives his orders once more; emphasizing the seriousness and the immediacy of the danger they’re in.

"Get the blanket and bed out of the closet and head downstairs as fast as you can. Try to find some things to start a fire because we might be down there a while. Grab some books, papers, whatever, and just toss them into the trash can down there. I'll get Julia.”

Rachel rushes toward the closet near the front door downstairs and Alex runs down to the end of the hall to get his daughter. As he reaches her bedroom door, he stops and listens. Over his head, the ceiling is giving off another foreboding creaking, warning Alex that he needs to hurry. He enters, seeing Julia sitting on her bed and hugging her bear in complete fear while staring out her window. Alex doesn't bother to look in that direction, rather keeping his focus on his daughter as he slowly approaches her. He wants to keep calm so she stays calm. He walks over to her side and sits next to her on her bed. All the while knowing that the roof is threatening to cave in, Alex takes a moment to just silently sit with Julia. He tries to downplay the severity of the situation.

"It's snowing pretty hard out there, huh?"

She doesn't say anything. It’s almost as if she can see through his patronization.

"So mommy and I were thinking of sitting around a fire for awhile until grandma and grandpa show up. We'll be down in the basement where there are no windows." The ceiling creaks again, louder. "You can just look at the fire instead and watch it hop all around. I think Barry would want to see how nice our basement is, huh? Oh, we'll be so warm too after being outside all that time. What do you think, honey? Want to go downstairs with mommy and daddy?"

Julia doesn't say a word, but does look up at her father. Then she looks back toward the window and asks, "When will it stop, daddy?"

Alex hesitates. Instead of repeating his condescending “daddy voice,” he tells her honestly, "I don't know."

Julia looks up at him again and smiles, saying coolly, "Ok. Let's go.”

Accomplished but still not wanting to show distress, he grabs his daughter's hand and they walk out of the room together as another creak bids them farewell. Before leaving the room, Alex takes one peak out the window and sees the snow falling at such great speed outside that the window looks entirely white. They walk down the hall and back down the stairs, hand in hand, taking their time. As they reach the bottom, the creaking turns to cracking, but this doesn't cause Alex to walk faster or tell his daughter to hurry up. As the two reach the door to the basement, Alex hears pieces of the ceiling starting to fall to the floor. He taps Julia on the back with his hand to tell her to head on down as he starts to shut the door behind them. He thinks to himself that this may be the last time he uses it. The sound of a roof beginning to fully collapse under the weight of tons of snow is heard just as the door clicks shut.

Two thousand miles away, handshakes are given and smiles are found all around on men in well-tailored suits and military attire. The system is turned off for now. The soldiers are recalled. The test was a success.

Hours later, on an inflatable bed, not too far from a trashcan fire on its last legs, lay three warm bodies. The fire nearby is all that illuminates the room, with darkness taking the prominent role throughout the rest of it. As the mother sleeps with her child, the father cannot find rest, instead watching his family sleep with his piercing blue eyes. His daughter is clutching her new stuffed bear, her tiny chest steadily moving up and down, giving the father a sense of relief. His wife keeps her close, not wanting her baby to be anywhere but in her arms. He wonders if they will all survive the night to see the day after Christmas. He hopes to God that the snow has stopped and that all will be well in short time. He has placed a radio close to the bed, but it has been emitting nothing but static for the past hour, unable to receive a transmission from its location. He lies on the bed and prays hard, hoping for that radio to talk to him.

Soon, a voice is heard. An announcer comes to life on the device, readying his audience for the next song. An old tune begins playing, known by generations and heard by millions. In this town, however, only the man in the basement is left to hear it. He moves slowly over to the radio to hear it better. He hopes the song will bring him comfort.

"Oh the weather outside is frightful,
But the fire is so delightful,
And since we've no place to go,
Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!"

The man turns the radio off, holding back tears. He moves closer to his family and holds them tight. Their natural warmth is all that remains as the fire quietly dies.

Search crews are on their way.