Bending to one knee, Kate brought the halogen lamp to the spot on the floor where the snowflakes had fallen. Sour breath escaped her. Instead of melting to water, there were now ink-colored droplets of a bloodlike substance on the concrete floor where the snowflakes had fallen. There was almost a functional formation to the spatter…and the longer Kate stared at it, the more it reminded her of celestial bodies sparkling brightly in a country sky.
“We need to get back with your sister and Molly,” Kate said, jumping back up to her feet.
Out in the hallway, Molly screamed.
The Oldsmobile came careening down the street toward the town square, chunks of ice snapping under its tires. There was no driver behind the wheel and, of course, the car wasn’t actually
running
—it had been pushed from the top of the hill and was now beginning to swerve out of control.
Any doubt as to the consciousness of the townspeople
scattered about the square was instantly eradicated as, in unison, they all swung their heads in the direction of the speeding automobile. Todd’s grip tightened on the handgun. He watched as the vehicle entered the square, moving at a quick clip, jouncing over the rutted snow packed hard as cement atop the street. With no one behind the car’s steering wheel to control it, the vehicle struck a sizeable chunk of snow and hopped a curb. The undercarriage shuddered. Sparks flew from beneath it and one of its hubcaps took off in a different direction. The passenger door flung open, struck a parking meter, and instantly slammed shut again.
With sharklike eyes, the townspeople followed the course of the runaway Oldsmobile, their heads turning on their necks like wooden puppets.
Todd saw it coming before it actually happened: the Oldsmobile smashed into the front of the hardware store, sending a shock wave across the square and a display of shimmering fragments of glass into the air. An exhalation of debris wrapped in black dust showered the sidewalk.
A deep-octave moan rose up among the townspeople. Like robots programmed to do so, they pivoted in unison and faced the destroyed facade of the hardware store. The front windows were still smoking, the tail end of the Olds cocked at an angle in the center of the store like a sneer.
Then, as if someone had fired a starter’s pistol, the townspeople took off toward the hardware store. They didn’t shamble or stagger like the puppeted skin-suits they were—rather, they loped like gazelles, the width of their strides astounding. Their fierce agility and speed shocked Todd into temporary immobility; even his mind seemed to shut down. He could only watch as they attacked the hardware store, spilling into the busted front windows and swarming over the Oldsmobile like ants.
Great bursts of snow exploded from the ground as vaporous
tornados of shimmering snow dust corkscrewed up into the air. Todd counted four…five of them. They rippled through the air as they soared toward the hardware store.
Taking a deep breath, Todd dashed out onto the sidewalk and ran toward the Pack-N-Go.
From the top of the hill, Brendan cheered as he watched the Oldsmobile smash through the front of the hardware store. Without someone inside the car to steer it, he’d had his doubts as to how far the car would actually get before it ran off the road, expecting it to most likely collide with a tree. As it turned out, he couldn’t have planned a better outcome.
“I was fired from that hardware store when I was in high school,” Brendan said, grinning. “Fuck ’em, I say.”
They watched as the skin-suits turned their heads and emitted a resounding wail. It sounded like an orchestra warming up. When the skin-suits began loping toward the hardware store, Brendan clapped his hands, then clapped Bruce on the back.
“Come on,” Brendan said, beaming. “We’re not done yet, compadre.”
Charlie in tow, Kate skidded to a halt halfway down the hallway. Molly stood facing Kate, the pregnant woman’s face a testament to some indescribable horror.
“They’re outside,” Molly cried. “There’s so many of them! They know we’re here!”
Kate ran past her and into the secretarial office. Peering through the blinds on the windows, she could see the shapes had crept closer to the building. There were at least a dozen of them now, all staring at the police station. Skin-suits, as Tully had termed them. Their clothing matted with blood, their eyes as vacuous as muddy pools, they were like creatures that had shuffled right out of a nightmare.
Trembling, Molly appeared in the office doorway. “They know we’re here, don’t they?”
Kate examined the empty faces of the townspeople. “I can’t tell.”
“Of course they do!” Molly shouted. “You brought them here! And now we’re going to die!”
“Shut up,” Kate barked. She doused the halogen lamp, bathing them in darkness. “No one’s going to die. Get back downstairs with Cody.”
“She’s asleep.”
“I said go!”
Startled, beginning to cry again, Molly retreated down the hallway. Charlie now occupied the doorway in her place, a terrified expression on his pale face. He was visibly quaking.
Kate turned back to the window. Something beneath the snow moved and caught her attention—a mound rose and then sank, rose, then sank, as if the snow itself were breathing. The surface of the snow began to ripple, as if something were vibrating underground. Then, like one of those old Bugs Bunny cartoons where Bugs tunnels under the ground on his way to Pismo Beach, something beneath the snow—or perhaps the snow itself—began tunneling across the front lawn of the police station, leaving in its wake disturbed mounds of upturned powdery snow.
Whatever it was, it was snaking closer to the building, heading for the front doors.
Whatever it was, it was
big.
They’re surrounding us, like the fucking cavalry,
Kate thought, terrified.
One of the skin-suits—a middle-aged balding man with a beer gut, wearing sweatpants and a Chicago Bears sweatshirt—began walking up to the front doors of the station. He had that same off-kilter look in his eyes that strange Eddie
Clement had had when they’d stopped to pick him up last night on the side of the road.
“What do we do?” Charlie said from the doorway.
Kate racked the shotgun and discharged a shell. She held it up to the boy so that he could see what it looked like. “I need you to go to the room with all the guns, Charlie, and bring me more of these. They’re in boxes on the shelves. Do you know what I’m talking about?”
Without expression, Charlie nodded.
“Good,” she said. “Now go. Hurry.”
The interior of the Pack-N-Go smelled like death. Todd hurried inside, crunching shattered glass and bits of cereal. The damage was unfathomable, the sights atrocious. The plastic trash bags he had used to cover the two dead bodies had blown away, revealing purpled, crystallized mummies in the aisles of the convenience store. The parts of them that still looked human—a twisted and frozen hand or the teepee bend of a leg—were somehow the hardest things to look at.
Also, there was now a third body, fresher than the other two but more horribly disfigured in death, draped over a section of fallen shelving. The head was opened up like a piñata, trailing ropy crimson goop over cereal boxes, rendering the person unidentifiable. Yet Todd recognized the clothing and knew without doubt that this was what remained of Fred Wilkinson.
As the townspeople tore into the hardware store across the square, Todd ran over to the refrigerated section of the convenience store, where the ventilation grate lay on the floor beside the stepladder he and Kate had used to climb through the ductwork and into the gun shop next door. Blood had been sprayed along one of the glass freezer doors, now frozen to gelatinous syrup. Spilled cola had made the floor tacky.
Todd spied his duffel bag on the floor and dove for it. Unzipping it, he rifled through the items inside until he located the laptop’s nylon carrying case. Relief coursed through him. With trembling hands, he fumbled the walkie-talkie off his belt.
“It’s Todd,” he shouted into the radio. “I’ve got the laptop and now I’m getting the fuck outta here.”
Brendan and Bruce ran down Fairmont, parallel to the town square. They planted themselves against the side of a pickup truck parked askew along the shoulder, both of them breathing heavily. On the next street over, they could hear the commotion of the skin-suits tearing the Oldsmobile apart.
Bruce’s walkie-talkie squawked to life: “It’s Todd. I’ve got the laptop and now I’m getting the fuck outta here.”
“He’s got it,” Bruce said, turning to Brendan.
But Brendan hadn’t heard him. He was busy removing the gas cap from the side of the pickup truck.
Kate peeled the blind away from the windowpane and reached up, unlocking the window. She slid the window open just enough so that she could address it with the business end of the shotgun. Cold, blustery air filtered in, freezing the sweat on her brow. The man in the Chicago Bears sweatshirt was standing directly beneath the station’s awning now, looking at the front doors. Kate charged the shotgun, the sound of which caused the man in the Bears sweatshirt to whirl his head around in her direction. His head sat cocked at an unnatural angle. Fresh perspiration burst from Kate’s pores.
She aimed in.
Pulled the trigger.
The sound was deafening.
The man in the Bears sweatshirt slammed against the double doors as his right leg vanished into a spray of buckshot and misted black blood. He howled—as inhuman a sound as the distant, haunting moan of a sperm whale—and propped himself up against the door with one hand. Around him, the snow rippled in half a dozen places, as if alive. Overhead, the sky was briefly blotted out by a swiftly passing shadow.
Kate charged the shotgun again and pulled the trigger.
A large swipe of the Bears sweatshirt was eradicated. Blood spattered the double doors. The man shrieked and shuddered as something large and the color of smoke withdrew from his body; the smoke-colored thing spiraled up, where it got caught in the net of the awning. The man’s body dropped lifelessly to the ground. Trapped beneath the awning, the swirling mass of vapor and snow briefly glowed at its center with a brilliant silver light.
Again, Kate racked the shotgun and aimed this time for the awning. She fired, the butt of the gun slamming against her shoulder, and blew a hole in the top of the awning. The vaporous phantom swirled toward the hole and escaped.
She turned, startled by Charlie, who stood at her side. He was holding several boxes of shotgun shells.
Just as Todd was about to slip out of the Pack-N-Go and back out onto the street, the laptop case over one shoulder, a brilliant flash of light mushroomed up over the storefronts at the opposite end of the square. Shocked into immobility, Todd stared at the rising inferno that blossomed up into the clouds.
Something had exploded.
The townspeople poured back out of the hardware store as fiery debris rained down around them. Some caught fire
and began shrieking and flailing their arms. When the entities inside them vacated their bodies, the skin-suits slumped lifelessly to the sidewalk, where they burned like funeral pyres.
Clutching the laptop case to his chest, Todd ran.
The explosion shook the sheriff’s station. Kate dropped a shotgun shell as she sat reloading the weapon in her lap. She twisted around toward the window in time to see a fireball rise up over the distant trees.
“Jesus,” she breathed.
“What was that?” Charlie said, sitting down beside her.
“I don’t know, honey.” The things beneath the snow cut sharply to the right and began tunneling toward the street down below. Likewise, the remaining townspeople turned and looked at the flower of flame rising up above the treetops. They began moving in the direction of the fire, slowly at first…then graduating to a deerlike run, their feet cleaving the snow like knife blades.
“They’re leaving,” Charlie said, peering out the window over Kate’s shoulder.
“For the moment,” Kate said.
After Brendan had unscrewed the pickup’s gas cap, they’d emptied some of the extra fuel canisters down the side of the truck and, backing up through the snow, left a trail of fuel from the pickup to the opposite side of the street. Bruce had launched a blast of flame from the flamethrower to the fuel that was soaking into the snow. The fuel had ignited and traced across the street where it climbed up the side of the pickup truck and vanished into the throat of the gas tank.
The truck had exploded.
Now, the two men ran like bandits up Fairmont Street. White faces appeared in the windows of the surrounding
houses. Behind them, the flames from the explosion burned like a holocaust at their backs.
On the front porches of the houses along Fairmont, the skin-suits emptied out of the houses and watched them run. On the lawns, the snow rippled and appeared to breathe. Whirlwinds of snow funneled up from the ground and speared into the sky. Around them, a whole invisible world was awaking from its slumber.
“Run!” Bruce shouted, slightly ahead of Brendan. “Don’t look back!”
But Brendan did just that—he staggered and glanced over one shoulder in time to see the skin-suits come streaming off the porches, giving chase. Brendan lost his footing and crashed to the snow. His tongue exploded with a sharp and sudden pain as his mouth filled with the taste of copper.
Ahead of him, Bruce skidded to a stop and began running back toward Brendan, who was already struggling to his feet. The ground vibrated with the pounding of countless feet closing the distance. Brendan propelled himself forward, managing to just barely duck out of the way as Bruce’s flamethrower belched out a stream of dazzling white fire toward the oncoming mob.
Blood seeping from his mouth, Brendan continued to run until the earth rolled and undulated beneath him. It shook him to the ground. Rolling over, he managed to swing the shotgun’s strap over one shoulder and rack the weapon. Behind him, the skin-suits cried out in agony as Bruce hosed them with fire…but they were still closing in, hungry to get at them both.
Directly in front of Brendan, the ground seemed to rise up—a white, formless monolith as tall as a school bus standing on end…
Screaming, Brendan fired the shotgun at the rising crest of snow. The blast was ineffectual: it rendered a hole in the
center of the mass that quickly refilled with fresh snow. Brendan attempted to chamber another round but the shotgun jammed. He threw it to the ground and, on his hands and knees, crawled away from the looming snow-beast just as it began to take definite shape.
To Todd’s ears, it sounded as though World War III had erupted on the other side of the town square. Smoke blackened the sky and some of the trees behind the rows of shops at the opposite end of the square were on fire. An acrid stench simmered in the air.
The laptop secured against his chest with both hands, Todd raced back up the incline behind the storefronts, crashing through needling pine boughs. When he emptied out into the street on the other side of the trees, he could see the insanity and confusion working its way up Fairmont toward the intersection: townspeople on fire were dropping like uprooted fence posts in the middle of the street. There was what looked like a burning automobile on the shoulder of the road. And Todd caught the glimpse of a rising pillar of snow driving straight up from the ground, maybe three stories tall…
He didn’t allow himself more than that initial, cursory glance before his pumping legs carried him through the intersection and across the snow-laden lawns of apocalypse-dark houses.
Beneath him, the ground erupted. He was thrown into the air, his fingers digging into the fabric of the laptop’s carrying case. When he struck the ground, the force squeezed the air from his lungs and his head snapped back on his neck, striking the frozen pavement of the street. He felt the wound at his leg reopen.
Something big was crawling up out of the ground. Todd blinked, clearing the blurriness from his eyes while scooting backward on his hands and feet like a crab. The thing rose
and blotted out the sky, a shaggy white behemoth with the body of a worm capped by a multitooth maw that reminded Todd of lawn-mower blades. Its sturdiness was questionable, as its body was comprised solely of snow, and, as it towered over him, its shadow like the shadow of a skyscraper, bits of itself avalanched down its cylindrical hide.
Paralyzed with fear, Todd could only stare up at it. He went instantly deaf, unable to hear any sound other than his own blood rushing through his veins—a sound like an old washing machine.
Above him, the thing swayed, unsteady. Todd could see the sheath of its snakelike belly threaded with thin silvery filaments of light.
It’s a legion,
he had time to think.
It’s a bunch of those snow phantoms smashed together to make this monstrous beast.
The thing roared and Todd’s hearing returned, his eardrums nearly bursting.
Something clambered at Todd’s side and Todd cried out. It was Brendan, his face an O of terror as his eyes locked on the monster.
Todd managed to jump up. He faded in one direction, then took off in another, carving a swath of zigzagging footprints in the snow. There was a narrow pass between two houses; he shoved his head down and charged for it, hoping that the creature would prove too big to follow him through.
If I could just—
Something snagged his ankles, tackling him to the ground. Yowling, he rolled over on his side to see something black and snakelike, perhaps the thickness of a boa constrictor, come untangled at his ankles and bow up into the air. His first thought was,
Tentacles! They have tentacles!
But then he saw it for what it really was: the fallen power line.
The line swung and spat blue-white fire from its frayed end. Todd covered his face with his arms and rolled farther
down the lawn, feeling every bump and crenellation in the snow through the threadbare fabric of his sweater. When he came to rest, he sat up on his knees, the entire world spinning on its axis.
The power line whipped against the ground until it swung around and connected with the base of the giant snow creature. Despite the creature’s appearance, its hide was made of something other than snow: the moment the electrical teeth of the power line bit into it, the snow turned black like burning paper, and Todd could then see the segmented plates that made up its belly. It caught fire and mewled with thunderous aplomb. It only managed to put the fire out by collapsing in on itself, showering the blaze in an avalanche of snow.
A second later, and it was as though the thing had never existed.
Across the yard, Brendan jabbed a finger at him. There was a wild, feral look in his eyes. “You!” he screamed, rupturing his throat by the sheer force of his excitement. “Get the hell out of here!”
That was the only invitation Todd needed. Again, he was on his feet and running to beat the devil. He did not dare look behind him to see what became of Bruce and Brendan, who were still fighting off the encroaching horde of townspeople; nor did he want to know if that giant snow-beast had rematerialized out of nothingness.
Up ahead he could see the woods they’d crossed earlier, and he knew he was halfway back to the station.