Slowly, Todd’s eyes unstuck. And his first thought was,
I’m blind.
He couldn’t see a damn thing. He was lying down on something hard and uncomfortable, and although he was without sight, he got the sense that the darkness was expansive. Like waking up in a giant cave.
He groaned and rolled over onto his side. He heard movement in the darkness close by, which sent him into self-preservation mode. He recalled having had a gun at one point; he patted himself down but could not locate the weapon. Also, his head throbbed and he thought he tasted blood at the back of his throat.
“Who’s there?” he asked the darkness.
“Shhhh,” came a voice. Female. “You’ll be all right.”
“Where am I?”
“St. John’s. A church. You’re safe here.”
He swallowed what felt like a chunk of obsidian. “Who are you?”
“My name’s Meg.”
He felt the girl slide closer to him in the darkness. A moment later, he felt the fabric of her clothing brush against his bare hand. She sat beside him and he could smell the staleness of her flesh. Panic raced through him. He imagined the faceless little girl sitting beside him in the blinding dark, taking to him with a mouth she did not have.
A scrape of a match, the stink of sulfur, and a candle was lit. Above the flame, the girl’s face was a quilt of candlelight and shadows. She looked like a teenager, possibly younger.
“Are you okay?” she asked him.
“I think so.” He looked around and realized he was sitting up on one of the church pews. Deep in the shadows, the altar loomed atop the pulpit like a Stonehenge pillar. “Where’s Kate?”
“That lady you were with?”
“Yes. Where is she?”
“She’s getting cleaned up in the back. You can get cleaned up, too, if you like.”
“Who are you?” he asked again.
“I told you. I’m Meg.”
“I meant, where did you come from? How did you get here?”
“Our folks brought us here when it started. They said it would be safe.”
“So you’re from town? From here in Woodson?”
“Yes.” She looked him up and down. Her grimy clothes were in tatters. Her dark hair hung in unkempt coils at either side of her face. “But you’re not,” she said.
“No,” he said. “My friends and I were driving through. Our car broke down back on the highway. We came here for help.”
The girl giggled, covering her mouth with one hand. Then she quickly apologized. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to laugh. It just sounds funny, saying you came
here
for help. Of all places.”
“Yeah, right,” he said, running his hands through his hair. He sniffed and smelled blood in the air. “How many of you are hiding in this church?”
“It’s just me and my brother. His name’s Chris.”
“What happened to your parents?”
The girl looked away. Her profile made her appear more adult than Todd guessed she was.
“I’m sorry,” he said, not waiting for an answer. Anyway, he didn’t think one would come. “Do you have access to a car?”
“I can’t drive.”
“But is there a car here at the church? Something we can drive away in?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. We didn’t come in a car. We ran here.” She blew out the candle, dousing them both in darkness once again. “Chris says not to leave the candles burning for too long.”
“Where is Chris now?”
“In the tower. He can see the whole town from up there.”
“What happened to my gun?”
The girl didn’t answer.
“I had a gun,” he said. “What happened to it?”
“Chris took it.”
“Why?”
“For protection. He said we needed weapons and God provided one for us.”
“God?”
“God sent you to us for protection. That’s what Chris says.”
“Terrific. How old is Chris?”
“Twenty.”
“And how old are you?”
“Fourteen.”
Todd was startled to feel the girl’s hand slide into one of his. He was too shocked to pull away. “I think I should see my friend now,” he said.
“What’s her name? Kate?”
“Yes. Can you take me to her?”
“I can do it in the dark,” the girl said. “I don’t even need to light the candle to take you.”
“I won’t be able to see where I’m going,” he said…although he was beginning to make out the lighter shades of darkness as moonlight struck a series of stained-glass windows. Directly above the chancel, he thought he could make out panels of glass in the ceiling, though the cloud cover on this night was too great to permit the moonlight’s full penetration.
“Just hold on to my hand,” she said, and stood up.
Head back against the headrest and her eyes closed, Shawna took in great whooping breaths. Beside her in the passenger seat, Nan wept almost soundlessly into her hands. As her heartbeat regained its normal rhythm, Shawna opened her eyes to find herself staring at a windshield that was completely covered in snow. She slid the rifle between the two seats, then gripped the steering wheel, if for no other reason than to anchor herself to some tangible form of reality. She could have been in a convertible cruising down a desert highway, the sun glinting off the chrome and the wind in her hair. It was all she could do to fight off the reality of her surroundings…and she surrendered to it before too long.
Also, the fucking car
stank.
She shifted in the seat and heard ice crystals crunching beneath her weight. Leaning forward, she could make out what appeared to be frozen blood on the dashboard and along the console. She reached up and adjusted the rearview mirror until she could get a view of the backseat.
There was something dead back there. A person. She could make out a white, blood-streaked hand.
Oh Jesus oh Christ oh fuck oh Jesus…
“Calm down,” she told Nan. She reached down and cracked the window the slightest bit. The wind that whistled in was ice cold but it helped clear out the smell. “Nan, please calm down.”
Nan swiped at her eyes. Once she got her crying under control, she stared down at her hands. Her breath came out in little clouds of vapor and fogged up the windshield. “He’s dead. He’s really dead. You shot him.”
“He was dead before I shot him,” Shawna promised. “Believe me.”
“I know.”
Shawna reached out and felt the steering column. A sudden spark of hope ignited within her as her hand closed on a set of car keys in the ignition. She turned them but the car made no sound. “Goddamn it.”
“Fred already tried this car,” Nan said, her voice so small it was practically nonexistent. “He tried every one on this side of the street. That’s when that…that man came out of the shadows and started chasing us. The man you shot.” Nan turned to look at her, but Shawna could not face her. “What are we going to do?”
We’re going to sit here and freeze to death in this car,
Shawna thought. Amazingly, the thought nearly sent her into a fit of laughter. Surely that would have calmed Nan. Sitting in a car with a crazy person…
“What if we just walked back out to the main road?” Nan suggested. “We could wait for another car to drive by and flag them down.”
“We’d never make it.”
“Well, we certainly can’t sit here all night, can we? We’ll freeze.”
“I know. I’m thinking.”
“It…it became real for a minute in there, didn’t it? That
thing.
When you set it on fire, you made it whole.”
“I know. I noticed.” She ran a hand through her tangled nest of hair. “Those oil drums outside, the ones with the fires burning in them? That was Jared’s idea. He noticed those things tend to stay away from anything too warm. Heat
makes them tangible, and when they’re tangible they can be hurt, probably even killed. I think that’s why they get inside people to feed—the warmth of the human body makes them whole enough so that they can eat.”
Nan said, “Who’s Jared?”
“My boyfriend. The dead guy back at the Pack-N-Go.” Lowering her voice, Shawna said, “They got to him two days ago. I had to shoot him. This is his rifle. He used it to hunt deer.”
Suddenly, she laughed. And her laughter turned into tears. Nan draped an arm around her neck and drew her closer. Together, they cried.
Through absolute darkness, Todd followed the girl deep into the bowels of the church, her slender hand cold in his. When they reached a narrow corridor, Meg relit the candle, casting tallow light down along the wood-paneled walls.
“Come on,” Meg urged him, continuing down the hallway.
Todd followed. Lithographs of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary glared accusingly down at him from the walls. At the end of the hall, Todd could make out a single closed door, beneath which radiated a soft orange glow. Meg stopped outside this door, resting her hand on the doorknob.
“Don’t be mad,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“Just promise. Don’t be mad.”
Stupidly, he nodded. “Okay. I promise.”
Meg opened the door and led him into the room.
Kate was tied to a chair in the otherwise empty room, a series of candles burning in ceramic plates on the floor. Kate lifted her head, her hair a stringy mess before her eyes, her shoulders and arms bound by rope. Her sweater had been removed—it sat balled up in one corner of the room, dangerously
close to one of the burning candles—leaving her in nothing but a flimsy satin bra.
“Jesus, Todd,” Kate groaned.
Todd rushed to her, dropped to his knees in front of her. “What the hell happened?” He glared at Meg. “What’d you do?”
“You promised not to get mad.”
“There’s another one,” Kate said quickly. “A boy. He tied me up…took my cluh-clothes off…” She was shivering from the cold, her skin bristling with gooseflesh.
“Hang on,” Todd said, moving around back to untie her.
“You shouldn’t do that,” Meg said. “Chris tied her up for a reason.”
“Oh, yeah?” Todd returned. “What reason was that?”
Angry, Meg did not answer. She blew out her candle, which was pointless, since the room was littered with them.
The ropes untied, they dropped to the floor and onto Kate’s lap. Kate squirmed her way out of them and up out of the chair, hugging her bare chest. Her breasts were small and prickled with goose bumps, the nipples straining against the fabric of her bra in the cold. Embarrassed, Todd looked away. He gathered up her sweater from the floor and tossed it to her.
“Did your brother take the bag of ammunition, too?” he asked Meg.
But Meg was insolent. She would not answer.
“I think so,” Kate told him, tugging her sweater down over her head. “I…I don’t really remember what happened.”
“Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“All right.” Todd turned to Meg, who was watching him with a bored expression. “I want you to take me to your brother, Chris. I want to meet him.”
“He saved your life,” Meg said.
“But Chris said God sent me here to protect you, didn’t he? So let me do my job, kid.”
Conflict flickered behind Meg’s small black eyes. After a moment of quiet deliberation, she turned and marched out of the room. Crossing over the threshold, she once again relit her candle. Casting a look over her shoulder, she said, “Well, come on, then.”
Todd and Kate followed.
“What it is? What do you see?” Nan asked, leaning closer to Shawna to peer out of the driver’s side window. Shawna could hear the older woman’s teeth rattling in her head. Sure enough, if they stayed here much longer, they’d both turn into popsicles before morning.
Shawna pressed one finger against the glass. “I keep seeing something out beyond those buildings. A bright light. Flashing.”
“I don’t—” Nan began, but was cut off as the light flashed once again. It was like a camera’s flashbulb going off in a dark alley across the square. “Yes! What
is
that?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s back there?”
“That’s Fairmont Street. My house is back there.”
“What could be flashing like that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think it could be help?” Nan’s voice was sadly optimistic.
“I think,” Shawna said, “it could be absolutely anything.” She pulled the rifle up into her lap and proceeded to load it to capacity. “I should probably check it out.”
“Alone?”
Shawna surveyed the woman. She was in fantastic shape, but was she mentally prepared for another trek across town?
She’d witnessed her husband turn into a monster, then have his head blown off, less than an hour ago…
“I don’t want to sit in this car by myself, Shawna. I’ll go crazy.”
Try locking yourself in a convenience store with your boyfriend’s headless corpse,
she felt like saying, but didn’t.
Shawna nodded. “All right. But we have to be quick and careful.”
“If there’s—
oh!”
Nan had turned and caught sight of the mess in the backseat. She stared at it, her jaw unhinged. “Dear Jesus.”
“Don’t look at it.”
“Oh. Oh. Oh.”
“Are you with me, Nan?”
Nan took a deep breath, then turned away from the backseat. She sat facing forward, her hands planted firmly in her lap. After a few seconds, she said, “I’m with you.”
Meg led them both up a flight of narrow, atticlike stairs that creaked beneath their collective weight. The flame of her candle caused their shadows to jump and bob along the walls. Despite the drop in temperature and the fact that he’d left his coat back at the Pack-N-Go to fit in the ventilation shaft, Todd was sweating profusely. Something was roiling around in his guts—a warning. Something was very wrong here.
There was a hatch directly above their heads at the top of the stairs. Meg knocked on it twice, then pushed it up to open it. Hinges squealed. Before crawling up, the girl castigated them with a disquieting stare that made her seem much older than her fourteen years. Then she climbed up and out of the hatch.
Todd followed, bracing himself for anything.
Topside, he found himself in a square room with windows on every wall—thick, hand-blown glass panes reinforced
with iron piping. The whole town was visible from this vantage. Directly above his head, an ancient copper bell hung from recessed rafters. He caught a whiff of something in the air, something that was not necessarily dangerous but nonetheless did not belong. It took him a moment to place the smell: corn chips.
Meg crept off into the shadows where the silhouette of another person—her brother, Chris?—sat slouched in a folding chair. As Todd helped Kate up out of the hatch, Meg thumped the figure on one shoulder. The silhouette jerked and sat upright, bags of potato chips crunching beneath his shifting feet while he smacked his lips together.
“What?” the boy growled…then saw Todd and Kate standing before him. He sprung up out of the chair and sauntered into the panel of moonlight coming in through the nearest window. He was tall and broad-shouldered but possessed a child’s face, with doughy cheeks, a dimpled chin, and an infant’s squinty eyes. Like a vagabond, he wore several layers of clothing, from beneath which his sizable gut protruded almost comically, and there was a strip of purple satin tied around his forehead like a bandana. Todd was quick to notice his pistol stuffed into the boy’s waistband.
“Are you Chris?” Todd asked.
The boy looked him up and down. Then his piggy little eyes sought out Kate and scrutinized her, as well. Turning to Meg, he said, “Who told you to untie her?”
“I didn’t,” Meg said. She pointed at Todd. “He did.”
Chris’s hand shot out and slapped her across the face.
“Hey!” Kate shouted. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”
“Who are you both?” Chris demanded. “Where’d you come from? You’re not from town.”
Todd held up both hands in an effort to show his intentions were not of the hostile variety. “Just take it easy. You’re
right; we’re not from around here. Our car broke down tonight and we came into town looking for help. We have absolutely nothing to do with anything that’s been going on around here.”
“The girl’s got cuts on her back,” Chris said.
“What?” Todd stammered. For a second he thought Chris was talking about Meg. But then he remembered the lacerations he’d seen on Kate’s bare back as he’d untied her from the chair, and at least some of this madness began to make sense. “No,” Todd said, “you’re wrong.”
“I saw the cuts myself.” The boy was adamant.
“She’s not one of them,” Todd said.
“Me?” Kate said, incredulous.
“Turn around,” Chris demanded of Kate. “Lift up your shirt. I want to see.”
“Fuck off, you perverted little twerp,” Kate barked.
Chris yanked the pistol from his waistband. Todd sidestepped in front of Kate, his hands still up. “Take it easy. She’ll show you. Kate, turn around and lift up your shirt. He thinks you’re one of them.”
“This is insane.”
“So is getting shot by Lord of the Flies over there,” Todd countered. “Just do it.”
Slowly, Kate turned around and pulled her shirt up over her shoulders. The smooth canvas of her back was marred by flecks of broken skin and jagged lacerations—probably from when the gun shop’s window had imploded, sending spears of glass every which way.
“See?” Todd said, tracing a hand along Kate’s back. She shivered at his touch. “They’re just cuts. We’ve been running from those things and got hit with some broken glass. Okay? She’s normal. We both are.”
Chris was chewing on the inside of one cheek. His distrustful, oil-spot eyes darted from Kate to Todd to Kate again.
Finally he returned the pistol to his waistband with an unfavorable grunt. “Okay,” he said, though he sounded miserable at having been wrong.
Kate lowered her sweater, then hugged herself with her arm. She was shivering fiercely. Todd rubbed a hand along one of her arms and asked Chris if they had any extra clothes.
Chris dropped back down into his folding chair. He glared at his sister. “Take her down to the trunk. She can pick out whatever she wants.”
Wordlessly, Meg approached Kate, took her by the hand, and led her back down the hatch. Kate cast one last glance at Todd before disappearing down the darkened stairwell in the floor.
Todd moved to the nearest window. He could see the town square clearly from up here. Beyond that, a community fire hall, a building that may have been a school, and a sheriff’s office—all dark. Cars lay overturned in ditches, and near the outskirts of town Todd could make out an ambulance that had died along the shoulder of the road, its rear doors flung open, the whole thing powdered with snow. Then a sinking feeling overtook him when he noticed that the windows of the Pack-N-Go had been blown out. “Oh, shit…”
“I saw you run across the square,” Chris said from his folding chair. He had a voice like a squeaky trumpet. The stink of corn chips was cloying, reminding Todd of awful foot odor; it was all he could do not to gag. “There’s more of you down there.”
“There were,” Todd said. “I hope they’re okay.”
“Two ladies made it out of the store,” Chris said. “I saw them, too.”
Todd turned to him. “You saw them? Where’d they go?”
Disinterested, the boy shrugged. “Don’t know.” Then, adopting an exasperated tone, he said, “I can’t see
everything,
you know.” The sound of his voice suggested Todd was an imbecile for maybe thinking otherwise.
Beyond the square Todd could make out intermittent flashing white lights. They looked like gunshots reflected off the buildings. “What’s that?” he asked the boy.
“Those lights? Downed power lines.”
“So that’s why the power’s out.”
“
They
did it,” Chris said. “Those
things
.”
“Do you know if there’s anybody left in town?”
“What’s the matter with you? Don’t you know?” Chris said, nearly snorting. “The whole
town
is still here. It’s just that most of ’em are…well, they’re different now.”
“That’s an understatement.”
Chris sat upright in his chair. “What’d you say?” he nearly shouted at Todd.
“Never mind.” “Don’t tell me to never mind. I asked you a question.” Those bags of chips crunched beneath his feet again.
“I said, ‘that’s an understatement.’ It was sarcasm.”
“Don’t make fun of me. I was left in charge. I’m running things around here now.”
“Left in charge by whom?”
“My dad. So go fuck yourself.” He licked his lips and sounded instantly nervous. Todd assumed “fuck” was not typically part of the boy’s vocabulary. “You’re a stranger here, anyway.”
“I’m not trying to do anything. I’m not trying to take over, either. You want to be in change, Chris, that’s just fine with me. I just want to get out of here.”
“You can’t. You can’t get out of here.”
“Why’s that?”
“Those things won’t let you. There’s no way out.” He leaned forward in his chair and tapped the stained-glass windowpane with the handgun. Todd hadn’t even seen him take
it from his pants this time. “They’re in the snow; haven’t you noticed? They
are
the snow.”
“Still,” Todd said, “there’s gotta be a way. If we can get to a car that will start, we can drive out of here—”
“The cars out in the square are dead. My parents tried to start one. That’s when they got taken.”
“Taken?”
“Taken away,” Chris said, irritated. “By the snow.”
This chubby bastard is off his rocker,
Todd thought.
“My dad came back but we stopped that. I don’t know what happened to my mom.”
“What do you mean?”
Chris frowned and faded back into the gloom.
My dad came back but we stopped that…
“Are you religious?” Chris asked suddenly. “What religion are you?”
“I was born Catholic,” Todd confessed, “but this is the first time I’ve been in a church in maybe a decade. Why?”
Chris made a snorting sound but didn’t answer.
Todd turned and looked back out the window. “Holy shit. That’s Nan and Shawna.” He went to pry open the window and call to them but the window was stuck.
“Stop that!” Chris shouted, jumping out of his chair.
“Those are my friends down there!”
“They’re as good as dead. Hey, stop trying to open that window!”
“I’m just try—”
A dull crack to the back of his head sent Todd sailing off into darkness.
Surprisingly, they crossed the town square without difficulty. In fact, it unnerved Shawna just how easy it was. With Nan close behind her, she crept down an alley between two storefronts and climbed through a wedge of pine trees on the other
side. Several times she glanced over her shoulder to make sure Nan was keeping up. Each time, the older woman offered Shawna a tired smile but showed no signs of fatigue.
She’s a tough old broad,
Shawna thought.
“Be quiet,” Shawna said as they reached the cusp of the pine trees. Together they crouched down in the snow and peered across the street. The houses along Fairmont were just as dark and silent as the rest of the town. Shawna could make out her own home, nearly a stone’s throw away, with its dilapidated porch swing and Christmas decorations drooping from the eaves. Was this really Christmas morning? It seemed impossible.
The street itself was utterly quiet. From what she could tell from sitting in the Volkswagen, this was where those flashes of light had been coming from…but now she could see nothing but the infestation of deepening shadows. Snow still fell lazily—a sight that caused Shawna growing discomfort.
I’m never going to look at snow the same way again,
she thought…then on the heels of that:
If I live through tonight.
“There,” Nan said, just as a white spark of light exploded on the front lawn of the Barristers’ house. “A downed power line.”
“Damn,” Shawna muttered. “I was hoping it would be the National Guard.”
“Which house is yours?” Nan asked.
Shawna pointed.
“Can we go there?”
“No. We can’t go in any of those houses.”
“Why not?”
“Because they’re not empty.”
“What do you mean?”
“There’s roughly twelve hundred people in this town. Those who aren’t dead are something else now. There are puppets in those houses. They look like people but they’re not people. Not anymore.”
“Like those people that chased Todd and Kate up to that church? And like what happened…happened to Fred?”
“No. They were something different. Those people were like socks—they serve a quick and hasty purpose. These other people…I think it’s what happens if the creatures take up permanent residence. Not just to feed, but to live among us. They act like people but they’re not really people. Real
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
bullshit.”
“Lord,” Nan said. “I’ve seen one. We picked him up out on the highway. He said his name was Eddie Clement and he was out looking for his daughter. And there
was
a daughter, and they ran off together.”
“It’s like if those creatures stay inside you too long they get stuck there. They become some strange hybrid of monster.”
“And they’re…in those houses?”
“Yes. Some of them, anyway. No way to tell which ones.”
“But if they’re still half people, we can talk to them. They might listen to us. They could—”
“No. They only look like people. They’re different now.”
Across the street the power line sparked and popped, lighting up the front of the Barristers’ house.