In the gloom of the hallway outside the computer room, Todd sat on the floor with his back against the wall, loading fresh rounds into magazines. He could hear the others talking in hushed tones farther down the hall in one of the offices.
Setting the gun down, he managed to wrangle his wallet from his pants without having to stand up. He opened it. The folded racing form was still inside—the racing form that was stained with his blood.
It was a winning ticket, the one that had ended his unfathomable losing streak. That one race had been his last chance, knowing that it would be all or nothing, and that he had no other choice. He’d bet to win, the name of the horse—Justin Case—almost prophetic in its allusion to his son. And it had seemed God was smiling down on him that sunny afternoon, because the motherfucker had
won,
had come in
first.
Todd had not only won enough money to pay back Andre Kantos, but would also have some left over for the next few months’ rent. Needless to say, Todd had been flying high when he left the Atlantic City Race Course.
Kantos and his men had picked him up in the parking lot of the track. They were leaning against his car, four or five of them, each only uglier and angrier than the next. He’d already had a few run-ins with Kantos’s men, the most recent one outside a Manhattan bistro where two of them smacked
him around a little bit—a run-in that had hurt his pride and his conscience more than his face and ribs. But he knew Andre Kantos meant business; he wasn’t going to be able to put him off for too much longer.
Todd had paused in the parking lot when he saw Kantos and his men leaning against his car. The sun was already setting, the sky the color of ripening fruit on the horizon, and his shadow was stretched out long and skinny on the gravel before him.
“This is where I find you,” Kantos said, peeling himself off Todd’s car. He was stocky with large meat-hook hands and a face like a patchwork quilt. His thinning hair was the color of steel wool, greased back off his Neanderthal brow. A diamond stud earring winked at Todd, catching what remained of the sunlight. “You owe me a shitload of money, Curry, and this is where I find you?”
“I was gonna call you tonight, Andre,” he said.
“Well, shit.” Kantos smiled—a grim Halloween pumpkin smile. “I must be a fuckin’ psychic, huh?”
“I’ve got your money.” He’d produced the cashier’s check with the racetrack logo in the corner. One of Kantos’s men came over to him, plucked the check from his fingers, and nearly pressed his beaky nose to it as he examined it. Todd also showed him the racing form. “See? I’ve got it.”
Kantos came over to look at the check and the racing form. His beady little eyes glittered. When he turned back to Todd, there was a dispassionate sneer tugging at the corner of his pocked face. “You know, Curry,” Kantos said. “I take it back what I said to you last time we met, about how you’re one unlucky son of a bitch. Maybe I had you pegged wrong. Maybe you
are
lucky. What are the odds, right?”
Some of Kantos’s men grumbled with laughter.
Andre Kantos took the cashier’s check and folded it nicely into the front pocket of Todd’s shirt. He did the same with
the racing form. His face so close to Todd’s, every nick and pore and crosshatched pockmark was clearly visible. The man’s ruinous little eyes glittered like polished jewels.
“So I guess I’ll see you first thing tomorrow morning with my money, huh?”
“Yes.”
“All right.” Kantos turned and lit a cigarette. “I hate motherfuckers like you who get lucky when the cards are down. Luck is for slouches and losers, Curry. People too afraid to cut their own way rely on luck. I ain’t had a day of good luck in my life, you know that?” He turned to one of his men—a beastlike guy with a mug like an old catcher’s mitt. “Show Mr. Curry how much I hate slouches and losers.”
They showed him.
He’d slept off the worst of the pain in the backseat of his car, too defeated to attempt to drive. Later, he’d had to pull over on the Black Horse Pike where he vomited blood into the bushes at the shoulder of the road. The next morning his face had looked like a Halloween mask and he was certain his nose was broken, along with a couple of ribs and the knuckles of his right hand. (He’d been right on all accounts—it seemed his luck
had
turned around, after all.)
But the worst was not the pain. It was not the doctor visits or the bandages or the harness he’d worn to bed for weeks until his ribs managed to mend themselves. The worst was that he could not let his son see him like this, that he could not tell Brianna that he had sunk so low. He’d canceled the boy’s visit. And wept like a child himself that night.
Those thoughts washed through him now, a tidal wave of emotion. He felt something heavy in his chest.
“Hey.” It was Kate. In his recollection, he hadn’t heard her approach.
Stuffing the racing form back into his wallet, he looked up
at her and tried to summon his best smile. He wondered if she could see through it to the misery and torment boiling just beneath the surface. “Didn’t hear you sneak up.”
“Am I interrupting anything? Did you want to be alone?”
“Not at all. Have a seat.”
She sank down beside him, her back against the wall. “You feeling okay? You look a little…disconsolate.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Disconsolate?”
“It means sad, pensive, melancholy.”
Grinning, he shook his head and put his wallet back in his pocket. “I know what the word means. I just never heard anyone actually say it in a sentence before.”
“But am I totally off the mark?”
“I guess I’m just thinking about things. Giving myself time to let my life flash before my eyes. Just in case there isn’t time for it later.”
“Don’t say that. Todd, you’re gonna find that computer, bring it back here, and help us call the police.” She leaned closer to him. “
All
of us. You’re all coming back to save the day.”
He just kept grinning like an idiot. He couldn’t help himself. “What’s this big change in you, anyway?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you’re certainly not the same woman I met last night at the airport bar.”
“Jesus,” she said. “Last night? It seems like a year ago.” She looked at him. “What do you mean by that?”
“You’re not the hard-edged, the-world-can-kiss-my-ass firecracker you were last night.”
Kate laughed. “Oh, brother, believe me—after all this, the world can certainly still kiss my ass.”
“I guess I’m just wondering if this is the real you.”
“I don’t open up to a lot of people, Todd.”
“What about me? You think if we were in a different place
and under different circumstances, you would have let me in?”
“No.” There was no humor to her voice. “My parents fucked me up pretty good and now I’m fucking myself up every chance I get. I doubt I would have sat still long enough to see who you really were, had the situation been different.”
“What if I would have asked you out right there in the bar? Forgetting for the moment, of course, that you’re engaged.”
She put her hand on the side of his face. Kissed him. Softly.
“This is a map of the whole town,” Bruce said, pointing to the printout on the desk in the computer room. It was just Todd, Bruce, and Brendan in the glow of the halogen lamp, their weapons already secured on their belts. Each one was armed with a handgun and extra magazines, a shotgun and extra shells, and several rounds of loose ammunition packed into his pockets. Bruce had strapped Tully’s extra flamethrower to his back, the fuel canisters at his waist, while he’d given both Todd and Brendan portable butane torches. Only for use in extreme emergencies, Bruce had warned them, wary about drawing unwanted attention to themselves while out in the open. “This is the sheriff’s station here,” he said, pointing with one steady finger, “and this is the town square here. The whole bird’s-eye view. We’re talking just over a mile to the square then, of course, just over a mile back. You both look to be in pretty good shape, but it can get pretty treacherous moving through the snowdrifts.”
“It’s not the snowdrifts I’m afraid of,” Todd said.
“My plan is to cut straight through the trees here, bypassing the road. It’s a straighter shot but it’ll get a bit dicey going through the woods. It slopes down to a small stream that we’ll have to cross, then climb up the embankment on the other
side. From there we’ll have no choice other than to cut straight through Vermont Street and over onto Fairmont. That’s when we’ll be the most visible.”
Bruce traced his finger up the map toward the center of town.
“Crossing Fairmont will bring us up to the back end of the shops in the square. Most of them are connected but there are narrow alleyways between some of them. That’s our ticket into the square itself—take one of those alleys down to the street on the other side. We’ll come out roughly about here”—Bruce pointed—“and the Pack-N-Go is three or four shops down this way to the left.”
“Three,” said Brendan. “Three shops down.”
“What’s this thing look like, in case we wind up having to search for it?”
“It’s in a black nylon carrying case,” Todd said. “Pretty standard. It’s got a tag with my name and address on it.”
“All right,” Bruce said. “We’ll establish rendezvous points as we go. In the event any of us get separated, we backtrack to the last rendezvous point and wait for the others. And if all hell breaks loose and we’ve got the computer…well, let’s just remember what our goal is here. Priority one is to get that laptop back here to the station. That means it’s a priority over your life”—he pointed to Todd—“and your life”—he pointed to Brendan—“and my life. We’ve got two kids downstairs who need to grow up.”
“And an unborn baby,” seconded Brendan.
Bruce nodded. “Right.” He rolled up the map and handed it to Todd. “You take it in case you get lost and turned around. Brendan and I grew up here; we can find our way back blindfolded.”
Todd folded the map and tucked it into the pocket of the police coat Bruce had given him. “Good idea.”
“And these,” Bruce added, sliding two walkie-talkies
across the desk. “We’ve only got two batteries that still have any juice, and they’re both about half full, so we can’t waste ’em. And whatever is blocking your cell phone signal, Todd, it’s also interfering with the handhelds, although not as strongly, since we’re down here on the ground. The frequencies stay pretty low, geographically speaking.”
Todd picked one up. It was about the size and weight of a brick.
“You take one,” Bruce said to Todd, “since you’ll be the one who’ll probably get hands-on with the laptop. If we’re not in earshot when you grab the computer, give us a chirp on the handheld and let us know we need to beat a retreat.”
“Sounds good,” Todd said, clipping the handheld to his belt.
“All right,” Bruce said. He was piling a few extra articles of clothing into a backpack. “Are we ready?”
Both Todd and Brendan said, “Yes.”
Outside, the world was silent. The sky radiated with a sickly green hue and the low-hanging clouds looked like brownish chunks of clay. There was no breeze; the bare branches of the nearby trees remained motionless, climbing up into the false-looking atmosphere like countless medieval spires. Kate, Molly, and the two kids stood by the double doors as the men waded out into the snow. Before leaving, Bruce handed Kate one of two keys that unlocked the front doors. “The minute we start walking, Kate, you lock this door behind us,” he told her. “And when we get back here, you demand we show you our shoulders.”
“Roger,” Kate said, nodding. Bruce had also shown her where the shotguns and shotgun shells were kept in case of an emergency. He’d shown her how to load and charge the weapon.
Brendan and Molly hugged. Bruce tousled the kids’ hair.
From the doorway, Kate smiled at Todd. He winked at her and said, “Don’t look so disconsolate,” and Kate laughed and covered her mouth with one hand as tears welled up in her eyes.
They left.
By the time they reached the entrance of the woods, a light snow had begun to fall. The three men cast wary glances toward the heavens and held their breath, each one wondering if they were about to be attacked. But the snow just fell, covering their tracks and powdering their clothes.
Their gear weighed them down. Walking along the culvert from the sheriff’s station down to the main road hadn’t been too difficult, but by the time they reached the edge of the woods, they were sweating and breathing heavily. Todd’s muscles ached and the wound on his injured leg throbbed with a dullness that was almost nauseating. They paused only once, leaning against trees while Bruce distributed cigarettes to each of them. They smoked and kept their eyes peeled for movement in the road above. They saw nothing, saw no one.
The climb down into the woods was steeper than Todd would have imagined. Bruce untangled a length of rope from his belt and tied one end around the bole of a sturdy tree. “We’ll go down like mountain climbers rappelling down the face of a cliff,” Bruce said.
Brendan went first, inching his way backward down the steep and icy decline, a flag of vapor smoldering from his lips. As cautious as he was, it took him a good seven or eight minutes to reach level ground. Exhausted, he collapsed against a tree to catch his breath.
Todd went next, descending in a similar fashion. Hand over hand, he fed the rope up and out while his booted feet were careful not to trip over each other. Halfway down, his heel struck a partially buried tree stump and he lost his grip on the rope. He fell backward but managed to spin halfway around in the air, so that he struck the sloping ground on his right side. The wind was knocked out of him as he started sliding toward the valley floor. Below, Brendan scrambled to his feet and stood like the goalie of an ice hockey team, his legs far apart and bent at the hips, as if to catch Todd on his way down. Luckily, though, Todd managed to snag a tree root and arrest his descent. His breath whistling from his throat and his nose running into his mouth, he glanced up at Bruce, who stood peering over the precipice seemingly a million miles above him, and smiled weakly.
Bruce must have seen the smile, because he raised a hand in return.
At the bottom of the incline, Todd approached Brendan while making sure all his gear was still secured to himself. Brendan clapped him on the back, his cheeks aflame from the cold. As Todd watched Bruce begin his descent, tears streamed from the corners of his eyes and froze midway down his cheeks.
When Bruce finally joined them on level ground, the sheriff’s deputy was panting like a bloodhound. The top of his head had gone a bright crimson.
They continued into the heart of the woods, crunching through previously undisturbed snow. “Have you noticed?” Brendan said at one point. “Not a single squirrel or bird, not even a deer. Listen.” They all stopped to listen. “Everything is totally quiet. I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything this quiet before.”
“Maybe they got to the animals first,” Todd suggested. The thought troubled him in ways he couldn’t quite understand—herds
of zombielike deer galloping along a snowy countryside, attacking their brethren in fitful rages, impaling other animals and possibly people with their antlers.
“Haven’t seen any animals,” Bruce said as they continued through the woods. “Maybe they sensed this all coming and they skedaddled before the shit hit the fan. Like how farm animals always know when a tornado’s approaching.”
For some reason, that thought didn’t make Todd feel any better.
Ahead of them, Brendan stopped suddenly. Todd nearly walked into him, catching himself at the last minute. He began to say something but Brendan quickly shushed him. Then Brendan pointed off into the distance, where the trees crowded together like soldiers trying to keep warm on a cold winter’s night.
“What is it?” Todd said, whispering now. “What are you pointing at?”
“There.”
It took a few seconds for Todd’s eyes to adapt and relate to his brain what he was seeing: two children dressed in tattered, soiled clothing, the hair on their heads beaded with frozen clumps of ice.
They had no faces.
“Jesus,” Bruce said from behind Todd. “Jesus, will you look at that?”
Todd’s hands clenched. “What do we do?”
“Just stand tight for a minute,” Bruce told him. “I don’t think they see us.”
“I don’t think they
can
see us,” Brendan said. “My God, how in the world do you think—”
Behind the two children the trees seemed to disassemble themselves, until Todd realized that much of what he’d
thought
were trees were really just more faceless children, their skin the color and texture of bark, their clothes muddy
and earthen in hue. They seemed to float right out of the trees like battlefield ghosts, each one’s face a blank bulb of flesh-colored putty. Todd counted twelve, thirteen of them…
What if they attack?
Todd thought.
What if they all charge us at once? Could we possibly defend ourselves against so many of them? And how many more are out there that we haven’t spotted yet?
“They’re rejects,” Bruce said, pushing between Todd and Brendan. “Freaks. When the creatures get inside little children—like preadolescents—they corrupt them and break them and turn them into those things.”
Brendan was trembling. Kate had told Todd that Brendan was the father of Molly’s baby; now, Todd wondered if Brendan was thinking of his unborn child while staring across the forest floor at these sad misfits.
“Pay them no mind,” Bruce told them, walking ahead of them. “Just keep moving.”
They continued deeper into the woods. At one point, Todd looked over his shoulder to where the children had been standing, and was surprised and a bit unnerved to find that they had vanished. He imagined packs of feral children, disfigured in their featurelessness, roaming the forested hillsides of the state for years and years to come.
In the basement of the sheriff’s station, Kate attempted to keep Charlie and Cody occupied by playing board games with them. They’d gotten through one full game of Monopoly and were halfway through Life when Cody began to whimper. The little girl climbed up onto one of the empty cots and curled into a fetal position. Worried, Kate got up and sat down on the edge of the girl’s cot.
“What’s wrong, honey?”
Cody just rubbed her eyes with her fist.
Kate pressed the back of her hand to the girl’s forehead. “She’s warm.”
Seated cross-legged on her own cot across the room, Molly grunted and began stacking pillows around her. “Are you a nurse or something?”
Kate ignored her. She stood and searched randomly around the desktop for anything that was not a bottle of liquor. In one of the desk drawers she located some bottled water. She opened one of the bottles and gave it to Cody. The girl took a few hesitant sips, then lay back down on the cot.
“I think your sister’s got a fever,” she said to Charlie.
“She gets headaches,” Charlie informed her.
“Does she? What kind?”
Charlie shrugged. He was picking at the rubber sole of one of his sneakers. “I don’t know. She used to take medicine.”
Oh please, you’re fucking with me, kid,
Kate thought. “What kind of medicine, Charlie?”
“I don’t know.”
“Was it special medicine or just aspirin?”
“What’s a ass-prin?” he said. “I don’t know what that means.”
Molly snickered.
“Something funny?” Kate said, looking at Molly from the corner of her eye while she unfolded a blanket and placed it over Cody. The little girl was shivering now.
“You’re trying to be that little girl’s mother,” Molly said.
“No,” Kate corrected, “I’m trying to take care of her because no one else is here to do that.”
“Do you have any kids of your own?”
“No.” She hated answering Molly’s questions, humoring the bitch like that, but she couldn’t help herself.
“Are you unable?”
“Excuse me?” She felt some of the old Kate Jansen return to her—the Kate Jansen who would have gotten up, swaggered
over to snide little potbellied Molly, and cracked her across the jaw. Lord knew she’d done similar things to nicer people in the past.
“I’m just saying,” Molly crooned, continuing to fluff her pillows. “It’s just, you’ve been fawning all over those two ever since you got here. It’s like you’re trying to make up for something.”
“Are we seriously having this conversation?”
“It’s just talk,” Molly said, as if her comments thus far had been completely innocent. “I’m just passing the time.”
“Well, you can pass it by telling me where I could find some aspirin.”
Molly shrugged and looked bored. She picked up one of the paperback novels stacked beside her cot and absently thumbed through the pages. “This is a police station,” she intoned, no longer looking up at Kate. “I’m sure there’s Tylenol or something around here somewhere.”
Kate tucked the blanket up under Cody’s arms and legs, then stood, running her fingers through her hair. Part of her was holding on to Gerald, and how worried he must be by now that he hadn’t heard from her…but a larger part was out there with Todd. Standing in the doorway of the sheriff’s station as they headed down to the road, she’d had the sinking feeling that she would never see him again.
“I’m going to find some aspirin,” Kate announced, and left.
They reached the river and found it frozen. It was about twenty feet wide and couldn’t possibly be very deep; nonetheless, Todd did not like the idea of plowing through the ice even up to his shins. It was cold enough out here that his feet would freeze instantly. And there would be no turning back until after they’d completed their task. He would just have to be careful.
“You can use these overhangs for handholds,” Brendan said, inching his way out onto the ice while he gripped overhanging tree limbs like monkey bars. “They don’t go all the way across but it’s better than nothing.”
“We should probably go one at a time,” Todd said, bending down to survey the thickness of the ice. He thumped a gloved knuckle against it and it seemed sturdy enough.
When his handholds ran out, Brendan stretched his arms out like airplane wings. He took minuscule steps and looked like a tightrope walker overcautious of his balance. On the other side of the streambed, the scraggly twists of overhanging limbs dropped back down; Brendan’s long arms rose and he gripped the limbs. A number of branches snapped away and shattered like glass on the surface of the frozen stream.
With two ungraceful bounds, Brendan made it to the other side of the stream. He executed an awkward bow that nearly sent him tumbling back onto the ice, before seating himself in the Y of a nearby tree. He lit a cigarette, looking like someone waiting for a bus.
Bruce eased himself out onto the ice next. As Brendan had done before him, he utilized the overhanging limbs to facilitate his way out to the center of the frozen stream. Releasing the last of the limbs, the deputy sheriff crossed the center of the stream much quicker than Brendan, his balance more aligned and steady. He didn’t even bother grabbing for the overhanging branches on the far end of the streambed; he simply continued across at a steady pace, half sliding, half galloping.
When Bruce made it to the other side, Brendan handed him his cigarette and Bruce sucked the life out of it.
Todd slid out onto the ice, one hand groping for the branches above his head. He grabbed a sturdy one and inched out farther onto the ice. Beneath him, the ice felt solid.
Thankfully, blessedly solid. As Brendan and Bruce had done, he used the overhead branches as support until he got to the center of the stream. But then he took an overzealous step and heard something that sounded like a bone breaking.
He looked down and saw a hairline fracture in the ice. It ran perpendicular underneath his right foot. Holding his breath, he lifted his boot and took one easy step backward. His heart was suddenly racing.
Something clutched at his hair.
Todd uttered a cry and jerked down, feeling something clawlike scrape his scalp. His knees gave out, sending him backward toward the ice. The world spun.
“Shit—”
He struck the ice with the center of his back—a solid punch that knocked the wind from his lungs. Instantly, he became aware of a bizarre sense of
give,
of
surrender,
and freezing water was suddenly infiltrating his clothes. He struggled to sit up but couldn’t; the small of his back had crashed through the ice, trapping him like a turtle that has been turned on its back.
Bruce and Brendan snapped to their feet on the far side of the stream. “Rope!” Bruce yelled. “Todd! Hey, Todd!”
Todd’s legs pumped at the air. The heavy police coat was becoming saturated and heavy. The back of his head was against a shelf of ice…but he soon heard that beginning to crack and break, too.
If that goes,
he thought,
I’m going under. For all I know, this little stream could be twenty feet deep…
Something flitted in front of his eyes. He felt something sting the side of his face: Bruce’s rope whipping across his cheek. Blindly, Todd groped for it. He found it and wrapped the rope around both his hands just as the shelf of ice at the back of his head broke apart. He felt his head snap back on his neck, followed by the heart-stopping sting of the freezing
waters that engulfed him. His whole face went under, his arms pinwheeling, his legs bicycling in the air.
The rope tightened around his hands. He felt his arms nearly pop out of their sockets at the force of the pull. He was still holding his breath, his eyes clenched shut, when he realized he had been pulled clear of the water. He gasped, the force of which hurt his lungs, and he lunged forward until he was flat on his stomach atop the ice. On the other side of the stream, Bruce and Brendan were tugging the rope, dragging Todd toward them.
They managed to drag him up into the snowy embankment. Gasping, his skin stinging from the cold waters, Todd lay on his back, shaking violently.