Shining her phone light, she noticed his collarbones jutting unnaturally against his t-shirt. His formerly flat stomach bulged in spots, as if tiny fists were trying to punch through. His pants couldn’t hide the swollen thigh muscles and misshapen knees. Everywhere she looked, something was wrong. Impossibly wrong.
Then she noticed his left hand. It dangled toward the passenger seat, and when her light fell on it, a chill of recognition snaked down her spine.
The ruptured fingers.
The busted knuckles.
The swollen flesh.
His hand was broken exactly as hers had been.
“No…” The air in her lungs turned to dust. She shook her head, unable to take her eyes off his ruined hand. “Cheeto… Why you? Why’d this have to happen to you?”
Cheeto didn’t answer. Of course he didn’t. He was gone. Gone because of Snare. Somehow the bitch had cursed him with brutal injuries—not just Ash’s broken hand but countless others. No part of his body had escaped disfigurement. He was completely, totally ruined.
Ash opened her mouth to scream, but it came out a muffled sob. Tears swamped her eyes while her nose clogged to the point of suffocation. She coughed harshly, her body recoiling until she dropped to her side. For a moment she lay there atop the van, wishing for death, until the stench pierced her blocked nostrils. She twisted sideways and dumped her guts onto the highway.
When she finished vomiting, she felt no better.
Cheeto was still dead, and it was her fault.
Snare’s doing, but her fault.
Ash pushed herself up and checked on him, hoping his condition might’ve miraculously improved since her last glimpse. Nothing changed, unfortunately, but she shined her light over him anyway, seeking answers—seeking any reason to be optimistic. His gruesome, busted chin caught her attention. She recognized the damage; it matched what she had inflicted on Mick earlier at the creek. It’s like I shot them both. She shivered at the thought, her gun weighing heavy inside her jacket pocket. Her eyes trailed to Cheeto’s swollen, misshapen knees. She thought of her father and how he’d been kneecapped three decades ago. Was it possible that Mick and Dad’s injuries had somehow been transferred to Cheeto? Bizarre as the idea sounded, it made sense.
Not that it made her feel any better.
Still nauseous, she climbed down from the van. About fifty feet away were the scattered car wrecks, their headlights and taillights glowing behind the blizzard. Alarms whined and horns moaned within the disaster. She raced toward the noise.
“Help! Somebody help!”
The closest vehicle was a spun-out SUV. As Ash rushed toward it, her feet lost traction on the slippery blacktop. Arms windmilling, she bashed into the rear door and fell hard on her hip. Slowly, she rose to her feet, found better footing on a clear patch of pavement, and gingerly moved to the driver’s window.
The dashboard display lit the face of a woman, clearly dead. Her sliced forehead dripped blood; her nose was horribly twisted. The wounds looked exactly like Cheeto’s. Ash recognized the same busted chin. The same wrecked hand. In the next car she discovered another identically disfigured mess. Horrified, she checked the other vehicles. Every driver and passenger had the same injuries, the same bad parts. Whatever had killed Cheeto had impacted everyone on the highway.
What if the fog did this?
What if it spread beyond the highway?
What if it keeps killing people?
Gazing past the still-flashing car wrecks, Ash saw nothing but blue-tinged darkness. She slid to her knees, realizing with despair that she might be the only survivor. A soul-sucking loneliness engulfed her, numbing the agony in her ribs and hand. Numbing her mind. Numbing her spirit.
After a deep breath, she returned to the Subaru. When she popped the trunk, she realized Lauren was in the same hideous condition as the others.
Ash shut the trunk, her heart ramming a thousand miles a minute. This can’t be real.
Her only hope was that this ruined world was a temporary hell. Maybe once the fog clears, everyone will somehow return to normal. Though it didn’t seem likely, it was something to cling to. After all, Lauren had been alive and moaning when the fog first appeared. At the time, the Subaru’s trunk had been outside the border of the zone, outside the fog. It wasn’t until Ash drove back into the zone that Lauren had fallen silent.
Maybe I can still save Cheeto. Driving him outside the zone might fix him.
Doing so, however, could eliminate her ribs and new hand.
This isn’t fair. This isn’t what I signed up for.
But there has to be a way to reverse this. Snare would know. Snare could undo it. The bitch had to.
Her heart heavy as lead, she climbed into the Subaru, put it in drive, and nudged the gas pedal. As she passed the van, her headlights pierced the blue haze, illuminating something she hadn’t noticed earlier.
Tire tracks. They trailed off the highway and down a nearby slope. Someone had veered off-road.
Could it be…?
Ash parked along the shoulder, got out, and peered down the snowy hill at a pair of glowing taillights. A vehicle lay on its roof at the bottom. A red BMW. The one Werner drove.
Hope flooded her chest, filled her throat.
She dashed downhill, yelling her father’s name.
67
Karl woke up buzzing. He couldn’t see, couldn’t move, couldn’t think straight. It was anyone’s guess where he was. Dry, hot air blew against his hip, but still he shivered. His toes were blocks of ice. He wiggled them but quickly discovered he couldn’t move anything else, not his arms, legs—nothing. His hands remained cuffed and he was lying on top of them, which strained his forearms. Worse, his knees crackled like Fourth of July sparklers. His skin, too. That meant…what? That Ashlee and Trent didn’t make the trades in time?
He heard a nearby hum. A motor.
Now he remembered. He’d been shoved into the backseat of Werner’s car. Which explained the blowing hot air, probably from the rear heater. But then why didn’t he feel any seat cushions underneath him? And why couldn’t he move? His buzzing body shouldn’t keep him from moving. Maybe he was stuck. Pinned against something. Or under something.
“Bill?” he croaked. “You there?”
If Werner was, he didn’t answer.
Karl still couldn’t see anything. He focused his awareness and realized something was covering his face. He poked his tongue out and encountered damp, shaggy fabric. A towel. His towel. The one he’d been wearing after Werner took him hostage.
Karl twisted his head sharply, attempting to loosen the towel. Bad idea. Hot resistance shot through his neck as something lumpy and solid pushed against his windpipe. He again rotated his neck, trying to relieve the pressure on his throat, but instead squished his nostrils against the towel. Now he couldn’t breathe.
A voice called out, muffled, as if underwater.
He struggled to yell, expending precious air. “Help!”
“Dad?” Something tapped against glass. “Dad!”
“Ashlee?” Relief flashed across his chest like sunshine.
“Holy shit, you’re alive!”
“Ashlee!” Feeling lighter now, Karl twitched his head enough to relieve pressure on his windpipe. Blood flow returned, thick and uncomfortable. “Where are we? I can’t see nothing.”
“I-81. Near Dickson City. You’re in Werner’s car. It rolled down a slope.” Her voice was distressed. “Dad, everything’s fucked. People are—” She paused. “Listen, you’re upside down, but I’ll get you out.”
“Call 911.” His head suddenly throbbed. He needed to get free and breathe. “Hurry, Ashlee.”
“Listen, Dad, something’s wrong. I can’t call 911. The phones are dead.”
“What do you mean?”
“Forget it. Let’s get you out.”
“Okay.” He tried to control his breathing. Keep it together, big man. “Can you open the door?”
A hollow pop sounded, follow
ed by scraping. Ashlee groaned. Then came more scraping, along with a dull thud. Ashlee swore.
“Something wrong?”
“Door’s stuck,” she said. “The car landed funny, and the roof got crushed. I’ll try the other side.” He heard her footsteps crunch outside, and soon the door near his foot scraped open. Snowflakes tickled his naked heel. “Gonna pull you out now. Wait, where’s your other foot? I see this one,” she said, squeezing his right heel, “but not the other.”
Panic danced through his bones. He could only feel one foot, the right one. His left leg buzzed, but not below the knee.
“My foot! Is it gone?”
“Calm down, Dad. I found it. It was hiding because you’re sandwiched in there pretty tight.” Her hand seized his ankle. “I’ll get you out now. Ready?”
The moment she pulled, fire shot up his left leg. He roared into the towel.
She stopped pulling. “Dad?”
Gritting his teeth, he said, “Keep going!”
Her efforts dragged him sideways then backward. Each sharp, jerky movement made him howl, which cost his lungs more air. Before long his head was pounding in a hundred places. He prayed for it all to stop, even if stopping meant death. The pain in his leg worsened, the roof pinching in harder below the knee, keeping his agony fresh, hot, and unbearable. He thought of the tortilla presser at Werner’s shop. He pictured his leg being flattened between hot irons, his muscles melting while his bones were crushed to dust.
Then his leg popped free, bestowing a sensation of cool, thrilling looseness.
The comfort lasted mere seconds before renewed heat exploded, the nerves along the kneecap screaming.
“Almost, Dad!”
Ashlee yanked his legs, first hard to the right, then backward. His stomach slid along bits of glass until he finally flopped onto powdery snow. It chilled his chest and wasted no time reminding him how naked he was. Shivering, he sat up and squinted through the darkness at his left leg.
“Dad!” Ashlee panted, hunched over her bent knees, grinning with relief. “You’re okay!”
“I’m bleeding.” He spotted a leaking gash along his kneecap. He slapped both hands over it, applying pressure. “Quick, throw snow on it. Cold’ll slow the bleeding.”
Ashlee scooped a thick clump of snow and pressed it down. The cut stung like the devil’s tail. He snatched his towel from the backseat and knotted it above the gash.
“Keep that snow coming!”
Using both arms, she swept snow together into a generous mound and patted a handful over the gash. He flinched from the shocking cold, pressing his eyelids shut. When he opened his eyes again, his mouth fell open.
“A-Ashlee!”
She pressed more snow onto his wound. “What, Dad?”
“Your hand!” He nodded toward it, laughing. “You got it back—that means we’re free to go!”
“Actually, Dad,” she replied, her expression grim, “we can’t.”
68
By the time Ash had spilled every detail, she hated herself. What a stupid trade. She had her hand back, but at a cost she couldn’t fathom. There was no telling how far that murderous fog had spread. People sat dead up and down the highway, and she shuddered to think there might be hundreds, thousands, or even millions more. Hell, even one corpse was too many; she learned that the moment she saw Cheeto hanging lifelessly in the van. Now her guilt-smothered mind wandered to him every chance it got. With him gone, her goals no longer mattered. Playing a big-time concert in Florida seemed so silly, so meaningless. There would always be more shows, but there would never be another Cheeto.
The thought ravaged her. Consumed her.
Standing in the snow beside Werner’s flipped car, she couldn’t clear her head. She tried to distract herself by focusing on the howling winds or the scratchy taste of car exhaust in the air, but her mind kept veering back to Cheeto. There was no escape.
Groaning, she drooped forward, ready to collapse face first into the snow.
Dad caught her by the arm. “Hey, now. Don’t go fainting on me.”
“Does it matter?” She staggered in place. “Everyone’s dead.”
“Not everyone,” he said, zipping his oversized jacket. While she’d been recounting events, he had removed the clothes from Werner’s dead body and dressed himself. “We’re alive, Ashlee. There’s gotta be others. Just need to find them.”
“Dad, I drove five miles from the edge and didn’t see a breathing soul until you.”
“Well, think about that. You and me, we’re alive. That’s gotta mean something.”
“Only that we’re damned.”
“Now, hang on,” he said, double-checking the safety on a gun he found in Werner’s pocket. “We both traded, right? And we’re both still breathing. Maybe we survived because we’re Traders.”
“Lauren was a Trader, though.”
Dad paused. “Yeah, until you drove her out.”
Ash winced. “Okay, right, but what about Werner? He’s dead.”
“Naturally dead,” he said, nodding toward the body. “Fella bled out.”
Earlier, Ash had avoided looking at Werner’s corpse, but now her curiosity nudged her in his direction. The body lay on its back, naked but for smears of blood along the neck and face. His head looked shriveled like a rubber Halloween mask after losing his traded skull. Her phone’s flashlight caught a shard of broken glass protruding from his throat. He had indeed bled out; Dad was right. What was even more encouraging was the fact that Werner’s face bore none of the damage that had afflicted Cheeto and the others.
Hope sprang within her. She took a step back, solidifying her balance. Since she, Dad, and Werner hadn’t caught this…this fog disease…it was possible that Traders were immune. While that was potentially great news, it didn’t offer any sunny outlooks for the rest of humanity. If Snare’s fog wiped out everyone else, Ash and the sixty-odd survivors might as well join them.
“L-let’s say the Traders survived.” Her voice trembled. “Wh-what can we even do? March up to the creek and ask Snare to restore everyone to normal? Hell, she’ll probably kill us.”
“Not if we make her listen.”
She scoffed. “How?”
He rubbed his mustache. “Remember yesterday when Snare stole your hand?”
“Hard to forget.”
“Remember what you said to Snare right after?”
Ash blinked. Her thoughts swirled like water flushing a toilet bowl. So much had happened in the past two days that she couldn’t recall the finer details. “I just remember yelling, demanding my hand back.”
“I remember exactly what you said.” He held her at arm’s length. His eyes glinted. “You threatened to dam the creek if you didn’t get your hand back. Soon as you said it, those waters shook like I’ve never seen.”
“That was just me shooting my mouth off.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Wincing, he clutched his knee. “Snare was scared when you mentioned damming the creek.”
“Damming the creek…” Even as she spoke the words, a chill twitched through her hand. “You really think that’ll be enough to threaten her?”
“It’s worth a try. Remember, Snare clings to that bend. Cutting off her water supply might upset her.”
“Hope you’re right.” Ash spun around, facing the direction of Hollow Hills. Fog and darkness hung thick, but beyond them was an opportunity. A slim chance they had to take. “If it works, we can call the shots. We can tell her to clear out this fucking fog. Then we can see about bringing back Cheeto and everyone else.”
“Let’s head home.” Dad lifted his pant leg and tightened the towel knotted over his knee. “We’ll check on the Traders. If they’re alive, they can help us construct a dam in no time. We’ll dig a trench for a spillway—that’ll divert the flow—and then build from there.”
“Right.” Ash looked at her left hand and made a fist. “Whatever it takes.”
He nodded. “Do something great with that hand.”
<
br /> 69
When Trent left the woods, all the surrounding lights abruptly went out. Nighttime smothered the banquet hall as well as the town and highway beyond. His paranoid mind insisted it was Snare’s doing—that the strange fog had caused it—but more likely, the power outage was a result of the blizzard’s thrashing winds. Even now the angry gusts threatened to fling him off his feet.
Gripping one of Snare’s water jugs, he hugged the other to his side and shined his phone light, revealing the lumpy carpet of snow atop the banquet hall parking lot. The uneven terrain forced him to trudge at first, but once his ankles loosened, he ran, his stride unhindered for the first time in a decade.
Running with two good legs felt unnatural, like a dream he knew he’d soon wake up from. Each press of his foot, each bend of his ankle, each pump of his calf muscles confused his upper body. But he stayed upright as he raced toward town. Though his lungs weren’t properly conditioned, the thought of Jake trapped beneath ghost-infected waters kept him moving.
Panting for breath, he reached Candace’s front lawn. A dozen cars were parked along the snowy sidewalk, many still running, their lights on. Some doors were open, as if the drivers had exited in an emergency. He rang the front doorbell and noticed candles flickering inside. Black shapes shifted through the dimness. He heard wailing. Sobbing.
The door squealed open.
Mick appeared in the doorway, his hat and beard soaking wet. He hunched sideways, rubbing at his knee and grimacing.
“Mick!” Trent said, hefting both water jugs into the bigger man’s grasp. “Snare has Jake. She said to give these to you and…” Mick was nodding. “You already know?”
“Yeah.” Mick shook the containers, swishing the contents. “Let’s grab my mom and talk in private.”
“Wait,” Trent said, “will Jake be okay?”
Bad Parts Page 24
