“There!” Kate shouted, pointing to a narrow avenue that wended through more deserted-looking houses. At the end of the street, the dark fingerlike structure of the church rose up against the black sky.
“Go!” Todd shouted, not daring to catch a glance over his shoulder. “Run!”
Kate took off toward the church, the bag of ammunition swinging like a pendulum. Todd stumbled but got back on his feet quickly, chasing after her. He felt the gun in his waistband beginning to come loose, so he grabbed it and held it in one hand as he ran.
The church was at the crest of a snow-covered hill and surrounded by burly lodgepole pines. Through the curtain of snow, the building seemed to tremble in the night. Kate rushed up the steps to the massive doors. She tugged on the wrought-iron handles but the doors wouldn’t open.
Todd hurried up the steps beside her. It was only then that he paused to look down at the road. “Shit.” A few of the townspeople were running after them up the street.
“It’s locked,” Kate said, nearly in disbelief. “It’s a church and it’s fucking locked…” She began banging on the doors and shouting.
“Better give me some of that ammo,” Todd barked. He’d already popped the magazine out of the pistol.
Kate dropped to her knees and sifted through the bag.
Down below, the townspeople were closing in. Worse still, it appeared that sections of the sky were shifting, coming together to form partially solid masses that oozed across the treetops.
“Oh, fuck,” he groaned.
“Here! Here!” Kate shoved a box of nine-millimeter rounds at him. Then she spun around and screamed, her back against the locked doors of the church.
Todd fumbled with the box of ammo. His hands numb from the cold, he dropped it, sending the rounds in every possible direction. “Shit!” Dropping to his knees, he began to scoop them up and load them one at a time into the clip.
“Hurry, Todd!”
“I’m trying!”
A man in ripped jeans and a blood-soaked sweatshirt was already scrambling up the stone steps of the church.
“Todd!”
Todd slammed the magazine home and charged the pistol. He didn’t need to aim; their attacker was a mere three feet from them when Todd pulled the trigger and took the man’s face apart. Again, Kate screamed. She had both hands clamped to her ears. Todd’s hand trembled as he kept the gun aimed in. The man’s body folded backward down the steps like a Slinky, his limbs rubbery and lifeless. Then, just as they’d seen happen when Shawna had killed that man in the street outside the Pack-N-Go, the newly dead man’s body began to tremble and buck. Something vaguely vaporous began to withdraw itself from the corpse. Except for a milky opaqueness, it was practically invisible…although looking through it was like looking through heat waves rising off a desert highway. Behind it, the world was distorted.
Kate shrieked and pointed toward the road. Two more townspeople were running toward them, their strides impracticably long. They galloped like horses.
Todd fired two shots but both missed.
“Shoot better!” Kate screamed. “Shoot better!”
“I’m trying!”
The thing that had extricated itself from the dead man’s body now hovered before them like a phantom. It was comprised of snow, though the snow itself shimmered like crystal, and again Todd could make out that slender filament of silver at its core.
That’s its soul. I don’t know how I know this, but I do. It’s alive and it has a soul.
Todd fired the pistol at it but the bullet passed right through it. In his head, he heard Shawna saying,
They’re like smoke.
That silvery filament grew brighter just as the semblance of an arm began to form. Once again, Todd could make out the curling blade of its arm…and he could see it grow into solidity right before his eyes.
This is where we die,
he thought.
We die now.
Then suddenly Kate was gone. He turned in time to see her legs being pulled inside the open door of the church.
Rolling onto his side, Todd thrust himself forward and through the doorway of the church. He struck the marble floor with enough force to knock the wind out of his lungs. Directly behind him he heard the massive door slam shut. And a moment after that, there came the sound of the creature’s bladed arm striking the wood. The sound was like a gunshot.
Todd Curry passed out.
“Can you see them? Where’d they go?” This was Shawna, leaning against a magazine rack for support. Both Fred and Nan were peering out the windows, trying to locate exactly where Todd and Kate had gone.
“They went up that road,” Nan said, pointing. “Where does it go?”
“To St. John’s,” said Shawna.
“I don’t see them anymore,” said Nan. “It’s too dark.” She turned away from the window, a weakened expression on her face. “There were people chasing them.”
“Those weren’t people,” Shawna said.
Clutching the rifle, Fred turned away from the window and strode across the store toward the checkout counter. “They had guns,” he said, digging around in the ammo box again. “I could see them. They’ll be okay.”
“Will they?” Nan protested. “Will they really? You don’t know that.”
“They’re both quick and they’re both smart. With guns, they’ve got a good shot.”
Nan seemed to tremble. Shawna braced herself against the magazine rack and worried that the woman might actually explode.
“Stop it!” Nan shouted at Fred. “Stop lying to me! Stop telling me things will be all right when they’re not!” Tears
burst from her eyes and spilled down her pale face. Her whole body trembled. “Just stop it!”
The outburst caught her husband off guard. “Nan…”
“I’m tired of it! I can’t pretend to believe you anymore!”
Without saying a word, Fred rushed to her and gathered her up in his big arms. Nan struck him once with a small fist, but there was no power behind it. He held her tighter and the sight of their embrace caused something vital to weaken inside Shawna. Then she looked up at the opening in the wall above the freezers that led to the ventilation shaft. Cold dread overcame her.
“Fred…Nan…”
They both turned to look at her.
“Look,” Shawna said, and pointed.
Like sparkling confetti, a light snow fell from the ventilation shaft and drifted down in front of the freezer doors. The snowflakes did not collect on the floor, however; they seemed to remain buoyant, as if by some invisible force, and they hovered in midair.
Fred slowly released Nan. He took a few silent steps backward, toward the checkout counter where he’d set down the rifle.
The cloud of snow coiled and twisted. Almost imperceptibly at first, a billow of snow bulged from the mass like a bud blossoming on a vine. Then, as quick as a lightning strike, the tendril of snow shot out and struck the rifle, knocking it down behind the counter.
Nan shrieked and staggered backward behind an aisle of canned goods. Fred froze, uncertain what to do next. The mass of snow began to clot, to become solid, while simultaneously encircling Fred as if in an embrace.
“Don’t let it touch you,” Shawna warned. She, too, had backed up behind an aisle of goods…only she already had her eye on a can of bug spray at the edge of the shelf. She
reached for it, never taking her eyes from the swirling cloud of snow.
Fred seemed to be in a trance. He stared up at the swirling mass before him, eyes wide like those of a child. Almost hesitantly, he brought one hand up and actually grazed the snow; his fingers passed through the trembling snowcloud, leaving grooves in their wake. A look of absolute awe fall across Fred’s face.
“Don’t be fooled by it, Fred,” Shawna said. She had made her way closer to Fred, the canister of bug spray down at her side, hidden.
The distinct shape of a head peeled from the snowcloud and swung around to face Shawna. It was the face of a ghost, with dark, sightless pits for eyes. The longer she stared at it, the less tangible it became.
Fred slowly withdrew his hand from it, bringing it back down at his side…which was when the snowcloud became dense and sprouted overlong arms tipped in curling blades. A sound like a train squealing to a stop emanated from the creature. Nan screamed and knocked over an aisle of canned goods. The creature flickered briefly into nonexistence, then appeared again, this time facing Nan Wilkinson, its bladed arms raised like swords to strike.
“Fuck you!” Shawna screamed, and aimed the bug spray at the thing. As she depressed the trigger on the can, she brought up a Bic lighter and thumbed a flame into existence. The result was a makeshift blowtorch. A dazzling yellow pyre closed the distance between herself and the creature. The thing screamed in pain—a sound like a million windows shattering at once—as the heat from the flame forced the creature into solid form. In the firelight, Shawna could make out its humped, pale-skinned back and the vague nubs of its spinal column pressing the flesh taut. The flame ignited half its face, too, and it glared at her like a skull on fire. Its single eye burned like a fiery ember.
The creature swung one of its massive arms, knocking the can of bug spray from Shawna’s hand. Its back and the side of its face still on fire, it whirled around and shrieked at Shawna, bearing down on her like a looming thunderhead. The smell of the thing was like burning rubber, like human waste set ablaze.
Shawna rolled into the next aisle just as soda cans exploded from the heat. She felt something sharp and unforgiving strike her right hip, then ricochet off into the darkness. Jumping to her feet, she ran to the other end of the store and didn’t look back until she’d struck the far wall.
The creature was directly above Fred, who was staggering down one of the aisles toward his wife. Those bladed arms materialized again, poised like the arms of a praying mantis. Before Shawna could react, she saw the thing plunge the twin knives of its arms into Fred’s shoulder blades. Speared, Fred jerked and floundered, his feet swinging loosely beneath him. Blood frothed at his lips and his eyes bugged out like headlights.
The fire had burned itself out along the creature’s back, leaving behind the merest hint of a charred and rubbery-looking carapace. It raised itself up on Fred’s shoulders, working its twin blades deeper and deeper into the man’s flesh. Blood soaked the back of Fred’s shirt. Petrified, Nan could only watch while cowering in a corner.
Shawna dove behind the checkout counter and fumbled around in the darkness for the rifle. Something leaked into her eyes—blood?—and for a moment she couldn’t see anything. Then one hand closed around the butt of the gun and she yanked it up off the floor. Gun at the ready, Shawna popped up from behind the checkout counter.
The creature was halfway inside Fred Wilkinson. It dematerialized into a shadow, an apparition, and melded with Fred’s body like a soul reclaiming its corpse. Fred’s eyes
blinked and some bastardization of life resurfaced in his face. Like a marionette, his head swung woodenly toward Nan. The grin on his face was that of a Halloween pumpkin.
Nan cried out and tried to make herself smaller in the corner of the store.
Shawna leveled the gun at Fred and fired a single round. The bullet missed, striking one of the plate-glass windows instead, where it webbed the glass with fissures.
The Fred-thing pivoted in Shawna’s direction. For a millisecond, Shawna could see the creature riding Fred’s back, working him like a puppet, engineering the man’s movements and expressions.
“Don’t shoot him!” Nan screamed from the other end of the store. “Please!”
Shawna focused her concentration and fired a second shot. This one struck Fred in the lower abdomen, sending a fountain of blackish goop spouting out from his back. The grin never faltered from Fred’s face. He took a step toward her, his leg a bit unsteady, his body wobbly.
It’s a new body,
Shawna had time to think.
It’s still getting used to working it.
She attempted to fire a third shot but the rifle just offered a hollow click.
Empty.
Motherfucker!
She drove one fist into the carton of ammunition and hastily loaded one round into the rifle. Fred was closing the distance more steadily now. Black strips of foam slavered from his mouth and each footstep left behind bloody prints on the linoleum.
Shawna charged the weapon, swung it against one shoulder, and pulled the trigger one last time.
Fred Wilkinson’s head was replaced by a cloud of red mist.
Shawna wasted no time—she grabbed another fistful of
rounds, then hopped over the checkout counter, the rifle slung over one shoulder. As Fred’s body began to buck and tremble on the floor, Shawna slammed against Nan and shoved her toward the front door.
“Fred! Fred!” Nan wouldn’t stop screaming.
Shawna shoved her aside and flipped the deadbolt on the door. As she kicked the door open, freezing air washed into the Pack-N-Go like a tidal wave. It whipped her hair into her face, temporarily blinding her. She groped for Nan, caught a fistful of the woman’s coat, and yanked her through the doorway.
The town square was deserted. Still dragging Nan behind her, Shawna hurried across the square toward the opposite end of the street. She knew all the shops were locked up and, in some cases, barricaded. They would get no reprieve there. Instead, she dragged Nan toward the nearest vehicle—a Volkswagen Beetle with its driver’s side door standing open.
Nan collapsed to the snow, sobbing. Shawna staggered, considered leaving the old woman right there on the ground…then thought better of it.
“Come on!” she shouted at Nan. “We have to go!”
“Oh, Fred,” Nan sobbed. “Oh…”
Shawna dropped down beside her. “Please, Nan. We have to go. Please, okay? I don’t want to die out here. Please.”
Nan nodded. She swiped at her eyes with the heels of her hands, then stood up without any assistance.
Across the square, the windows of the Pack-N-Go exploded.
“Get in!” Shawna screamed, shoving Nan forward into the open door of the Volkswagen. The older woman lost her balance and went sprawling over the seat, her frail legs kicking. Shawna didn’t wait for Nan to climb into the passenger seat; she jumped in on top of her and slammed the driver’s side door shut.