Bonechiller (26 page)

“Man, you stink!” Ash said when we stopped for a breather halfway to the factory. “And I’m not just talking about your driving. That’s some serious stink coming off you.”

I’m wearing a filthy T-shirt and sweats I pulled from the dirty laundry. My workout stuff.

“Part of the plan,” I said. “You know, to lure it out after me. Gotta give it the scent.”

“I guess.” She wrinkled her nose. “Maybe we won’t need the TNT. It’ll just choke on the smell.”

“Right. I’m laughing on the inside.”

She was trying to get my mind off all the stuff that could go wrong tonight. Trying to distract herself too. She’s been jumpy all day, since we set everything in motion. Scared more for me than herself.

I guess I really have turned into Stinkboy. Mom’s doodle on the bathroom mirror. My evil twin.

And I remember what always happened to Stinkboy—getting shot, stabbed, burned and bombed. No happy endings for him.

“You want me to go with you?” she asked, squeezing me tight from behind, resting her chin on my shoulder. “I could do the driving. Pike can watch his own back.”

“Then we’d both be dead meat.”

She shook her head. “Ain’t that easy to kill an Indian.”

I met her eyes, so dark and sure. I wished I felt like her—invincible. I looked down at the thin line on her lower lip where it got split. Scarred but unbeaten.

Every day I fall deeper for her. Wish I had more time.

“No way,” I said. “I gotta do this myself.”

I leaned in close and gave her my icy kiss.

With that decided, I fired up the engine and steered us across the ice to the factory.

Right now, Pike’s tinkering with the “twins” in the trunk of his car. That’s what he named the two mines he’s rigged up. Orange sticks of dynamite bundled together with duct tape, a mess of copper wires and some flat metal disks he calls pressure triggers.

Pike steps back from the trunk.

“Everything good?” I ask, hushed, like anything above a whisper might set the twins off.

He nods. “Relax. They’re not activated yet. I’ll do that when I lay them in the tunnel. Should only take me a minute to set them up.”

“Just try not to blast your nuts off while you’re down there,” Ash says. “I don’t want to have to explain all this to the Captain.”

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll take care of my end. How about you, Danny?” He inspects the snowmobile. “How does it handle?”

“Real slippery.”

“You got the fun job,” he says. “The chase scene.”

The wind off the lake picks up. Ash and Pike turn their backs to the chill. The dimming light paints us all in blue.

“How long now?” I ask.

Pike looks up at the sky, where the first stars are starting to show. “Soon.”

Here’s how it’s supposed to go.
If
we can pull it off.
If!

I’m the bait. We know the beast can sense us—me and
Howie—the ones it’s bitten and infected. We’re bonded with it. So, I’m supposed to lure it out. Like waving a hot dog at a rabid pit bull. When the beast shows, I’ll hop on the snowmobile and speed my butt out of there, with the beast in hot pursuit. Then I lead it away from the clearing, heading in a straight line across the cove, over the lake, back to the marina. Home sweet home. Once I get back there I’m safe. I mean, the beast wouldn’t even be able to fit through the door. And Dad’s there. This will work. It has to. But the doubts are crowding in on me now.

While this is happening, Pike’s down in the tunnel setting the mines. Ash is watching his back by the surface entrance, armed with a single-barreled shotgun and one of her Dad’s handguns.

Simple plan, right? But what sounded so solid this afternoon, safe in the light of day, is starting to look like one of the top ten worst ideas of all time.

Still, we’re here. Out of time and out of options.

I was going to leave Dad a note. You know, for if things go bad and I don’t make it back. Didn’t want to just disappear, like the others. I tried, but I couldn’t figure how to explain it all. He lives in the real world. All I came up with was:
Dad, I’m sorry
. So I scrapped it.

This better work. I don’t want to hurt him more.

I wish I was with Howie right now, safe in a nice quiet room in the hospital, watching sappy Christmas shows on TV, waiting for all the craziness to be over.

“Weapons check,” Pike says, getting up from the snowmobile. “How are you for ammo?” he asks Ash.

“Two magazines for the semiautomatic. And a pocketful of shells for the shotgun. Can’t see needing any more than that. If things get that bad, we’re screwed anyway. What do you got?”

Pike ejects a fully loaded magazine from the stock of his own pistol and blows on it, like there might be a speck of dust that would ruin his aim.

He pats the chest pockets of his thick jacket. “Four mags of twelve. And shells for my double-barreled. How about you, Danny?”

“Huh?” I’m blinking stupidly at the sight of all that firepower. “Oh, I brought a rifle from the marina.”

I’ve got it strapped onto the side of the Yamaha’s seat. I brought it more for moral support than anything. All a .20-caliber is really good for is squirrel hunting.

“I loaded four shells,” I say. “That’s all it holds. Besides, I’m not the Terminator. I can’t be driving and shooting at the same time.”

Pike nods. “Okay. Get ready to move out. Be full dark soon.”

He goes back to the trunk and loads the mines delicately into his backpack, wrapping them in towels he’s brought to cushion them.

“So what happens if this plan doesn’t, you know, work?” I ask. “What if that thing doesn’t take the bait?”

Pike gives me a wink. “Then we go to the backup plan.”

“There’s a backup?”

“Don’t worry. I got it covered.”

He lights up with his deranged grin, like a magician
guarding the secrets behind his tricks. He grabs his night-vision goggles from the backseat.

“Ash. Here you go. There’s no moon tonight, so you’re gonna need these.”

He hands them over and runs through the settings with her.

“Thermal is useless with this freak,” Pike says. “No body heat. So just keep it set for ambient light.”

Ash straps them on and looks around at us. “You guys are all green. Like radioactive.”

“Try magnifying,” Pike says. “Focus on the factory.”

Ash reaches up and adjusts something, looking off into the ruins of the ice factory.

“Wow, yeah,” she says. “I could see a mouse fart at fifty feet with these.”

Ash makes a slow turn, scanning the landscape. “Very cool. Very—” Then she freezes up. “There’s something out there.”

“What? Where?” Pike asks.

“It’s moving!”

He whips out his pistol. “You better not be screwing with—”

“Shut up! It’s coming this way!”

“I can’t see nothing.” Pike sweeps his aim at the surrounding darkness. “From where?”

She points. We strain to see.

With my hypersensitive eyes I pick out the figure moving toward us.

“Hold on!” I say. “Don’t shoot. It’s too small. It—it’s …”

I can’t believe my eyes. He’s running down the dirt road, so small he’s in danger of being swallowed up in the blackness.

“Howie?” I call.

He’s barefoot, wearing his hospital pajamas.

“Bro, what are you doing?” Pike goes to meet him, shoving his gun in his pocket. “You’re supposed to be in the hospital. How did you get out here?”

Howie just stands there looking dazed, panting white clouds into the frosty air. Pike puts a hand on his shoulder, making Howie blink and focus on him.

“It’s calling me,” he gasps.

His voice is breathless but calm beneath. He’s pretty far gone. Under the beast’s spell, as deep as Ray Dyson was when he ran off.

“You’re not going nowhere,” Pike says. “You’re gonna wait right here.”

“Can’t—can’t help it,” Howie wheezes. “It’s calling.”

Pike’s got his flashlight out and sweeps the beam down to Howie’s bare feet in the snow. They’re chewed up and bleeding from the long run. All the way from Barrie. That’s an insane marathon he’s just done. But he’s not feeling the bloody mess of his feet.

He’s only feeling the
need
.

“Bro, look at you,” Pike says. “Get in the car and wait here. Don’t worry. I’m gonna end this. It’ll all be over real soon.”

Pike steers him into the backseat. Howie’s so dazed he doesn’t fight it. Pike shuts the door gently and leans on it a second, looking in at Howie staring off into space and hearing whispers.

“Guys!” Ash says. “Heads up. Something’s coming this way.”

What now?

“There’s more than one.” She’s got her goggles aimed in the direction Howie came from.

Pike grabs his shotgun and cradles it in one arm while he scans the darkness of the dirt road with his flashlight.

“Hold your fire,” a voice calls out. “I won’t bite. But they might.”

Pike’s light finds a thin bearded figure surrounded by half a dozen wolflike ghosts, near invisible in the snow.

“What the hell is this?” Pike says.

“Mason?” I step forward. “What are you doing here?”

He stops ten feet away, his huskies huffing steam.

“My dogs caught a scent up on Cove Road. They started tracking. I came along for the ride.” He looks past us at the car, and Howie in back. “Oh yeah. That’s what they caught wind of. He’s pretty ripe.”

“We don’t got time for this crap,” Pike snaps. “Listen, old man. Go be crazy somewhere else.”

Mason ignores him, his focus locked on me. “Guess you didn’t run.”

“Guess not,” I say.

“Dumb move.”

In the glare of the flashlight Mason looks skinny and pale, like a walking corpse. He ran away a lifetime ago and survived—as this wrecked ghost. He stares into me with those haunted eyes.

Before I know what I’m saying, it comes out. “You want to help?”

“Help what?”

“We’re gonna end this thing tonight. We’re gonna kill it.”

Mason barks out a laugh. “And
I’m
the crazy one here?”

“What do you say?” I ask him. “You in or out?”

He digs his long nails into the fur of his huskies, shaking his head. Then he shrugs. “Why not. It doesn’t want me. It’s your funeral. So what’s the plan, General?”

Pike’s pissed at the delay but says the dogs might be useful. I sketch out our plan real quick. Mason’s doubtful but gives an impressed grunt when he gets a peek at the mines in the backpack.

“Tell you what,” he says. “I can be your eye in the sky. I’ll get up high and look out. Let you know if the demon doesn’t take the bait. I can climb up top of the bluff there. See for a long ways.”

“See in the dark?” Pike says.

“I see better in the dark than you see in the light.”

“What about the dogs?” Ash asks.

“They stay with me. They’re shy when it comes to demons.”

Mason searches his pockets, emptying out all kinds of crap on the roof of the car—dog biscuits, sunglasses, a can opener, a switchblade.

“Here we go,” he says, finally.

Before I can see what he’s found, a noise rips through the night, making us all jump. It cuts off after a second. Mason grins at us, holding up a small air horn.

My heart’s ramming against my ribs. “A little warning before you do that?”

“Then where’s the fun? So, I’ll use this to sound the alarm, something goes wrong.”

Pike grabs his pack from the trunk. “Let’s get moving! Danny, you might want to take the snowmobile down to the shore and come into the clearing from the lakeside. I saw you drive in here. I don’t think you can make these hills.”

“Right. I’ll go around.”

He settles the pack gently against his back, not wanting to wake the twins inside. Then he knocks on the car window to get Howie’s attention. It takes a moment before Howie turns a blank stare on Pike.

“Stay here,” Pike tells him. “Stay!”

Howie just blinks back, lost in the whispers.

Pike turns to us, shaken by Howie’s state. But he chokes it back. “It’s time. Let’s send this freak back to hell.”

He leads the way into the low hills that border the bluffs. Mason and his pack trail along after.

Ash puts a hand on my shoulder and gives me a little shake. “You can do this. Straight line across the ice. Hit the gas and don’t let up. Hear me?”

I nod, totally numb.

Ash leans in quick to kiss me and gives me a little punch in the chest good-bye. I watch her go. Then just as I’m turning toward the snowmobile, she calls back.

“
Netaga waab minodoo
. Kill the white devil.” What her dad shouts to get her pumped up during a fight.

I give her a grim smile and nod before walking over to my ride. Passing the car, I glance in at Howie. He’s staring
straight ahead, eyes empty, locked in a trance. His time’s up. Inside his head, he’s already gone.

If this doesn’t work, I’m next.

I straddle the Yamaha’s seat and turn the ignition. The headlight comes on, the motor roaring to life.

Kill the white devil.

As I squeeze the accelerator on the handlebar, the snowmobile jerks forward. There are no seat belts on these things, so it’s just hold on for your life. I lock my legs in place and pull out slow. It’s a gradual slope down to the ice. I coast along, carefully making the transition from solid ground to solid ice. Then I rev the engine, testing myself with a burst of speed. Okay so far, but so far nothing’s chasing me.

To my right the shore humps up into the looming bluffs. To my left there’s nothing but the expanse of the lake, stretching off to the far shore. Nothing out here but me and my racing heart.

I skid along till I come to the gap that leads into the clearing. I let the engine idle for a moment before I pass through, remembering a line from a poem Howie told me. About how written on the gates of Hell it says:
Abandon hope, all who enter here
.

Twisting on the seat, I glance back, searching the darkness for the faint lights on the marina docks. There they are, so tiny in the distance, like the wind might blow them out, leaving me lost in the blackness. Those frail lights mean safety. Get to them before the beast gets to me.

I let out a shaky breath and rev the Yamaha up the steep, snowy incline and into the clearing, my eyes wide as they’ll go, ready to run.