They Came With The Snow Box Set {Books 1-2]

by Coleman, Christopher

  I plot my tracks back to the truck, mapping out the snowprints we both left on the ascension, and start down the ramp, hopping comically in and out of the deep white holes.

  “I have the data, Colonel,” I hear from behind me. It’s Terry, his voice is at once raving and fearful. “Everything. They are prone to violence. Not at first, not when they first noticed us, but as time went on they became aggressive. Murderous.”

  Unable to resist the temptation, I turn back toward the tank to see that a man has now appeared on the landscape, his body tall and rigid, head directly below the barrel. From my perspective, he looks as if he’s just arrived from Central Casting. Salt-and-pepper hair, chiseled chin, full military regalia. He’s flanked on either side by equally imposing soldiers, M16s gripped and ready.

  “You’re three weeks early, doctor,” he booms. “Ten weeks. That was the experiment.” I’ve no doubt he’s chosen his volume so that I can hear him loud and clear.

  “But I have what you asked for,” Terry replies, pleading. “I’ve studied them. At great risk. I’ve carried out my role in the mission. It’s as we believed. They can be weaponized.” There’s a pause of deafening silence, and then “I’m coming with you!”

  “You were to arrive back here at ten weeks.” The colonel’s voice is calm but stern. “And alone. By my count, that’s 0 for two, doctor.”

  Terry turns back and looks at me, and then pivots back to the colonel. “I had no choice. They insisted we leave. But...but I led them here. And I’ve brought the reports. We’ll leave them. Keep them contained inside the perimeter. They’ll never know what happened.”

  “No one’s coming back. Not now. Not ever.”

  It’s all I need to hear, and I again begin in earnest to make my way down the ramp, trying to build up momentum on my hopeless journey back to the truck.

  “No!”

  The doctor’s scream triggers another burst of adrenaline, and I push with all my strength through the snow, using gravity to help propel me back down the exit. I wait for the soldiers’ bullets to scream past me, but none come. “Start the truck!”

  I can see that the group has almost managed to free the wheel from the bank, and as I get closer, I can hear the truck running. Another fifty feet and I’ll have made it.

  “Where have you been?” Stella calls. “Where is Ter—?”

  I turn back to see what Stella’s eyes have fixed on, but before it comes into view I hear it. The tank, in all its massiveness, rolling unstoppably down the exit ramp toward the truck. No need to say anything. It’s time to go.

  “Terry!” Stella yells, near tears.

  “It was him.” Is all I can manage, my exhaustion nearly complete as I reach the truck. I realize the words don’t come close to explaining the dialogue I heard only moments before, but I pray there will be time for explanations later.

  Tom, positioned in the driver’s seat and seeming to understand on some basic level what is happening, pulls the gearshift to drive, foot on the brake. “Let’s go, kids.”

  Stella and I squeeze into the passenger door and make our way back to the cargo. Tom and James are on the front bench.

  Tom releases the brake and pushes the accelerator, but the back wheels spin impotently, whizzing in their nests of snow. It was too much gas, I think to myself. Gotta lay off a bit, Tom.

  But the delay has just saved us. The stall has prevented us from driving head first into a crater left by the mortar that has just flown above us, landing thirty yards ahead with enormous destruction. Had the truck broken free, we would have caught the full force of the rocket with our lives.

  The blast is deafening, stunning in its collateral power, but Tom stays calm, and I realize at that moment he’s former military. Has to be.

  “That’s an old model,” he says. “Gonna take a few seconds to reload. But I need this damn truck to get going.”

  Tom gives the accelerator pedal another punch, and on cue, the truck surges from the last of the embankment. From the rear of the bed we hear the cry of “Go!”

  “Oh my god,” Danielle whispers, staring into the side view mirror.

  “Who was that?” Tom asks.

  “It was Terry. I just saw him. He was behind us. He gave us the push we needed to clear the bank.”

  “We have to stop for him,” Stella pleads, her voice is calm, but her eyes reveal the hysteria bubbling just beneath her surface.

  I meet Tom’s gaze in the rearview, and simply shake my head slowly. There’s no redemption for Terry, other than the act he’s just performed to save us. If we stop for him, we die.

  Tom maneuvers the truck deftly past the crater and gets the truck up to speed on the interstate. “I’m sorry Stella.” And then, “Hang on!” Tom turns the wheel slowly to the left without slowing, keeping the delicate balance between evasion on a slick road and flipping the truck on its side.

  Blind to the actions behind us, Stella and I brace ourselves for impact, and feel the ground shake again as the mortar misses somewhere to the right of us.

  Tom straightens the truck out again and resumes the path down the interstate. “We’ll be well out of range before they can fire again. We should be safe now.”

  ***

  I live twenty-eight miles from Warren, and when we arrive at my house, it looks like an abandoned shell among many in the blast zone. I had little reason to expect otherwise, to believe my street was spared—after all, the group had told me of their explorations of at least fifty miles—but I had held out hope.

  No more.

  My street looks deserted at first glance, an abandoned ice planet, but as my eyes adjust to the landscape, I can see them peering from behind cars and hedges. Their black eyes now appearing malevolent in the context of what I know about them, of what I saw with Naia.

  Tom pulls the truck into the driveway and parks it with the engine running. “I wouldn’t carry any hope with you to that door, Dominic,” he offers. “Can’t be anything good inside.”

  “No, Tom, I don’t expect there is.”

  “So what are we doing here?” Danielle asks. “Let’s keep driving until we reach somewhere civilized, until we find the edge of this insanity.”

  I step out of the passenger door and stand on the snow-covered pavement, staring back into the faces of my new friends. From the corner of my eye, just at the edge of my periphery, I see a movement inside my house, a white flash in the dining room and then it’s gone. Nobody in the truck sees it.

  “We’ll wait here for you, son,” Tom says. His tone is matter-of-fact, as if his statement goes without saying.

  “Tom. And the rest of you,” I reply. My face is somber, my look piercing, serious. “You’re leaving. You’re going to find out what happened here, in this county, in this state, however far it goes.” I look at Stella. “I’ve told you everything I know, everything I heard on that ramp. What Terry and the colonel said. Use it. Blackmail people if you have to. Find some media that still exists and broadcast the story everywhere.”

  “We’re not leaving you, Dominic.” It’s Danielle, and she is clearly not open to discussion. “So do what you have to, but we’ll be right here.”

  I look at James and then back to Tom, both of whom hold the same posture as Danielle. Stella is more stoical. I lock on Tom. “I want you to go when...if things go badly.” I want to say more, leave them with profound words of parting, but all I can say is, “Thank you all for getting me here.”

  I follow the L-shaped sidewalk that leads from my driveway and climb the three small steps to my front door. I see the figure again at the dining room window, this time crouched and watching, peering at me over the sill. My wife. She probably danced in the snow when it started to fall, admiring the beauty, just as she tried to do with everything.

  I fish the key from beneath the planter and unlock the door. I hear a shuffle inside; from behind me, I hear the scream of ‘No!’ They saw it this time, probably when it stood tall at the window, preparing to greet me the second I walk
through the door, just as the three Thai restaurant owners greeted Naia.

  But this is how it will be. This decision—to see my wife again—was made on that first day.

  The knob catches a bit, just as it always did in my previous life, but I adjust the turn of my wrist and push in the door. She’s standing in the foyer, a white shadow of the woman I used to love. I smile and feel a tear fall down my cheek as I close the door softly behind me, muffling the approaching screams of my fellow survivors.

  The story does not end here. Continue reading and follow the survivors of They Came with the Snow in The Melting (part two) as they face new and frightening obstacles that will challenge friendships and humankind’s determination to live.

  The Melting (They Came with the Snow Book Two)

  Chapter 1

  “Hi Sharon. It’s me. It’s Dominic.”

  The thing that used to be Sharon shows no glint of recognition, and I wonder if it can hear me at all. Her external ears are gone, and as she approaches, bringing me as close to the crabs as I’ve been since the event happened a couple of months ago, I can see only the tiniest of orifices on the sides of her head. They appear almost reptilian, like those of an ashen crocodile, a comparison made more a propos by the cold blackness of her eyes.

  But the thing seems to hear my words, giving a cock of its head, like a beagle who’s just been asked a question.

  “I should have been here with you when it happened. And I’m sorry for that. I’m so sorry for everything.” I pause, thinking of Naia. “Some of them things you never even knew about.”

  It is guilt that has brought me here, to my home of fourteen years, by way of the refrigerated box truck that sits parked outside in my driveway, the engine running, my new companions—who are now only four in number—still screaming my name, warning me to leave. But I’ve made the decision to follow through on my plan, a plan I finalized on my way here and which sounded in my head something like this: if my wife was still here at our home, alive somehow, I would tell her everything, all about Naia and the affair, as well as the weeks I’d spent at the student union and later the diner. And then, once the plates stopped flying, I would try to convince her to come with us. She would hate me for a while, forever maybe, but she would be with me, under my protection. And alive.

  On the other hand, if she was dead, or not here at all, I would turn back to the truck immediately and go with the group. I would be broken and distraught, and my heart would no doubt be overflowing with culpability, but there would be nothing to do at that point other than go on, so that’s what I would do.

  But there was a third possibility to prepare for. If Sharon had turned into one of them, had become one of the victims of the snow, I would stay. It was a conditional suicide mission, of course, since I now know of their strength and had witnessed the violent things they did to Naia and Alvaro. And it was also a mission I had not revealed to my traveling party.

  Sharon is only six feet from me now, maybe less, and there is a familiar smell that I realize is the same one that came from the Thai restaurant where Alvaro was killed. I hadn’t placed the crab as the source of the odor at the time—not with all the spoiled food left over in the kitchen—but I have no doubt about it now. It’s a chemical smell, something close to ammonia.

  She’s now only a couple of feet away, but I stand my ground. Her skin is so white and her eyes so black she looks like a human-sized version of a classic cartoon ghost.

  Until she opens her mouth.

  Inside, past the thing’s white lips, instead of the black abyss found in the eyes of the crab, there is the color of flesh and gum. Teeth and tongue. All the pink and viscous characteristics of her pre-crab self.

  Sharon closes her eyes and the black pools disappear beneath eyelids as white as the snow that created them. She opens them again, this time only halfway, and then, without even the slightest twitch of a warning, she thrusts her body towards me, raising her naked white arms above her as she comes, looking like some kind of crazed albino chimpanzee.

  I close my eyes to accept her attack, awaiting the crash of this not-quite-human body against mine, preparing to fulfill my morbid plan. Just before it reaches me, before its bleached skin connects with the layers of clothing covering my body, I have an absent thought of the afterlife, about what the universe has in store for my soul once the next thirty seconds or so ends.

  And then comes the explosion.

  The sound of the blast deafens me for a moment, and my first thought is that I’ve already begun my entry into that afterlife that I’ve just conjured. The blast was the sound of God’s voice, perhaps, as He prepared to explain to me that I have no right to His kingdom.

  It takes me only seconds, however, to realize I’m still a part of this earth, awakened by the contents of the crabs’ innards collapsing on and all around me. As I had known from the incident inside the Thai restaurant, when the crab was crushed by the freezer door, the insides of the things appeared just like those of any normal human—red and purple and sticky—and I’m coated in a shower of blood and bone and brain, as well as the unique additive of vanilla skin.

  Sharon’s torso propels forward and lands on top of me, and, instinctively, I catch it in my arms before releasing it almost instantly, hurling it to the side with a gasp, watching in horror as the lump of flesh thumps to the floor. The headless corpse of my wife now spouts a geyser of blood from between the shoulders across the foyer and into the carpet of the living room. Absurdly, I think of how badly Sharon had wanted hardwood in that room, and how distraught she would be at this mess.

  I’ve lost the ability to breathe, to blink, and as I stare at the dead creature below me, I’m suddenly baffled by its demise. Did I somehow destroy it through some telepathic feeling of love or blame or fear? Was what remained of the crab’s intellect incapable of co-existing with the deluge of emotions occurring inside of me, causing it to explode?

  And then I look up and see her. It’s Danielle, standing tall, her eyes wide and her face nearly as white as the one she’s just destroyed. Beside her, butt down and barrel in her left fist, is the shotgun that she’s brought with her from the diner. It’s the same one she had pointed at me from the street on the day Naia and I left the student union of Warren College and ended up in the parking lot of Balmore Plaza. Naia had gone to scope out the Thai restaurant, and I had taken to investigating a box truck that sat out in front of the diner where Danielle worked. Within seconds the shotgun was on me, Danielle protecting the contents of the truck with attitude and buck shot.

  My feelings about what has just occurred a foot or two inside my home, about what Danielle has just done to my wife, are beyond my analysis, and I can only remain frozen in place, a statue of fear and sickness and uncertainty.

  “What the hell are you doing, Dominic?” Danielle asks, her words slow and wary as she stays focused on the corpse at my feet. She takes a deep breath and then looks up at me finally. “Why did you do this? Why did you come inside here? You heard us. You must have seen her...it. Look at it, Dominic. There was nothing you could do.”

  “I told Tom not to wait for me,” I answer, my voice low and robotic, and I force myself to avoid Danielle’s eyes. “I was clear about that.”

  “If you thought that’s what Tom would do—what I would do—just leave you to die, then you don’t know us at all. But I guess that’s the truth isn’t it? You don’t know us.”

  Danielle pauses, waiting for some rebuttal.

  “I was out of the truck the second I saw that thing in the window. Before you even stepped foot inside. No suicides, Dom. Not at this point in the story.”

  In spite of myself, I turn my head away in shame. Hearing the word ‘suicide’ as applied to me is unsettling in a way I wouldn’t have imagined.

  “People have been murdered, Dominic. Friends of mine. Tom’s son. People who didn’t deserve to die but did anyway. And now you want to just throw yourself on the pyre? I don’t think so.”

  “I shou
ld be the one lying here, not her. I was the one who cheated. I was the one who was off with my...It should have been me. I should have protected her.”

  Danielle sighs, and I can imagine the glaze of sympathy that comes over her face. “Protecting her from what, Dom? The snow? What would you have done differently? You wouldn’t have known. We still don’t really know what happened, except that the snow fell, and, if you happened to be outside in it at the time, you...well, you know the rest. But tell me honestly, Dominic, would you have kept your wife from going outside?”

  I know Danielle is right. I couldn’t have kept Sharon from enjoying the snow even if I had wanted to. And why would I have wanted to? “We could have gone together,” I say, answering another question altogether.

  “I know Dom, and death would have meant an end to the pain your feeling. But that pain will lessen—it will—and in the meantime, with the life you still have, you can use it to keep her in your memories.”

  I smirk and give a gentle scoff, finally meeting Danielle’s eyes. “Pretty smart for a waitress,” I say, continuing a running joke.

  Danielle smiles. “And besides, the main reason you can’t die is because we need you. Who knows what we’re going to run into out there? You menfolk had gone out of style there for a while, but you’re suddenly back in fashion.”

  I give a full laugh now, and then a single tear falls down my cheek, followed by a full on weeping session. I sit on the floor with my back against the door, crying into my hands, the smell of my dead wife’s altered body heavy in the air. Danielle doesn’t say a word. When the tears finally end, I take a deep breath and say, “So where do we go from here?”

  “We know things we didn’t before,” Danielle answers, not missing a beat. “About the event that caused this. And we have a pretty good idea it was our government that was behind it. Or at least some kind of shadow government working in secret. I guess I’d like to believe that. I mean, who else has tanks?”