As the ice ran freezing tracks down his collar and into his shirt, Taylor lifted the blowtorch again, this time pressing it against those gnashing teeth, right where they erupted from that snowy maw. They began to fall, one by one, sliding down, crashing, shattering on both sides of the window, some of the shards slicing lines in Taylor’s jacket.
Not enough of them fell though. Not enough of them broke into pieces. That maw so wide, so huge, that all Taylor seemed to do was pluck at it, irritate it. He needed to do something bigger, something that would truly hurt it.
That awful mouth pulled away from the car, taking its gnashing and its frosty breath. Mandy paused in her screaming, her sobs coming in gulps.
“Okay,” said Taylor. “Okay, listen, I’m going to get it in the eyes nex—”
The driver’s side of the car abruptly fell, crashing into the base of the giant snowman with a thump and a rattling of metal. Taylor was flung into the door, smacking his head against the half-open window. Mandy and Greg both poured over the center console, the frosted blanket enveloping Taylor. He sucked in a sharp breath at the sudden cold and lifted the blowtorch belatedly so it wouldn’t hit either of the others.
Then something horribly large hit the roof with a creaking smash, forming a sudden dent over the passenger side. That side drooped, as if the giant snowman were trying to level it out, yet the snowwoman shoved it back. And just like that, they found themselves caught between the two snowy creations as they shoved and smashed the car back and forth, rocking it against the giant’s base so that Taylor’s head smeared into the snow, breathing in remnants of nutmeg and clove from sticky snow shaper fingers.
The windshield cracked. Spider webs exploded across the glass. The roof of the car began to cave inward, pressing closer to Greg’s head as he ducked down.
There was no more chance of escaping through any of the doors or their windows. Taylor’s side lay smashed up against the wide, snowy ball that made up the base of the giant snowman. The passenger side would take them right into the path of those swinging tree-trunk-thick arms and probably kill them faster than staying here until his car became nothing but a pile of scrap metal.
The only way out was either the front or rear windows. And the rear window felt a mile away.
Under the squealing and crinkling of the snowmen’s abuse, Taylor gripped Greg around the back of his head and leaned close, Mandy and half that Santa-damned blanket pressed between them.
“I’m going to kick the windshield out,” he said, putting as much force and authority behind the words as he could muster so Greg wouldn’t argue. “You’ll push Mandy out after me, grab my bag and follow.”
“You’ll—”
Greg’s response was swallowed by another crash above their heads, the both of them instinctively ducking.
“Take this,” demanded Taylor, pressing the blowtorch into Greg’s arm until he felt its weight removed. “Get me your bat.”
Bat in hand, Taylor smacked it against the windshield in a jabbing forward motion, timing his hits to land when the snowman lifted its branchy arms. The windshield broke apart in huge sections, crinkling as the roof caved-in. Then the last of the it spit outward, scratched across the hood, and disappeared into the darkness.
The next hit from the snowman rained down bark within the car.
“I’m going first,” said Taylor. “Toss my bag, then get you and Mandy out.”
Greg’s expression was hidden within the darkness, his face turned toward the window. “This is suicide.”
Taylor grabbed the back of Greg’s neck in a tight squeeze. “I’ve got you, babe. I’ve got both of you.”
Then, as the snowman lifted its gnarled arms, he dove out the windshield and onto the rocking hood of the car. The wind howled, catching his hair and whipping it about, snow flurries battering against his leather jacket as he scrambled over the dented hood. He gained his feet in a spin, using the bat as a weight balance, and then continued the swing, catching the snowwoman’s arm as she came down. The bat reverberated, the crrraacck echoing out into the storm.
The arm splintered into two, the sheer force of the connecting blow ripping her arm from her shoulder and sending half of it into a snowdrift. The other half bounced off the roof of the car.
With a nimble move, Taylor pulled free his gun with his offhand as he turned to face the monster of a snowman just as those trunk-like arms came sailing downward. He shot into the closest arm repeatedly, then dodged aside, nearly falling off the hood as the whole car jerked and shuddered with the smashing blow.
The snowman roared, its teeth cracking and singing. It lifted its arms again, fingers stiffly flexing.
“Greg, now!”
Mandy’s head appeared out of the open space where the windshield had been and the duffel went sliding across the hood and into the snow. Taylor grabbed her by the arm and yanked her behind him where she went scrambling and shrieking across the hood, following the bag into the piled snow at the front of the Camry. Then Taylor ducked aside as the giant snowman’s arm came sweeping sideways. It whooshed over his head, sending his hair flying counter to the wind.
As Greg squeezed out of the ever-shrinking hole between roof and dash, Taylor stood and put two shots in the snowwoman’s good eye, sending chunks of coal flying, giving her more streaking eyelashes that went curling off the bottom half of her face.
Then he was shouting at Greg, meaningless words, blurred and stumbling out of his mouth, curses telling him to hurry, to move, to get out of the way because the giant was bringing those monster arms back down to pummel the car, to crush Greg between metal roof and metal hood.
Taylor emptied his magazine into the arm. He swung the bat in a haphazard motion.
With a resounding crackle and thunk, the car’s roof sunk into the seats, the mutilated metal at odd, dangerous angles. Taylor staggered backward, wheeling his arms to regain his balance. The snowman raised its thickened trunk-thick arm, half of it dangling, splintered where the bullets had riddled it and that last, jarring thump into the car had put too much pressure to the weakened area.
Behind him came Greg’s voice, “Mandy, sweetheart!”
A welcoming sound, relief flooding his senses.
Taylor spared a glance, straining to see if Greg and Mandy had gotten away, but saw nothing past the blotchy, swirling snow. For a split second, he considered whether they might run afoul of an angel hidden out there in the darkness, under the white expanse. Told himself he needed to hurry after them, make sure they remained safe. Protect them.
Then, as he lifted the bat while turning back toward the snowman, that dangling trunk of an arm came swinging out of the blizzard. It slammed hard into his midriff, picking him up from the car’s hood and flinging him away like so much trash.
The bat tore from his hand. His neck snapped forward. The wind whistled past his ears as he flew through the air.
He landed hard into a puffy cloud of snow. His neck jerked again, his body stiff and still as a cold snap closed over him.
He lay gasping, panting for breath, the snow falling in icy tracks down his neck. His midriff lay partially exposed, a band free to the air, the wind rippling his shirt where the damp had not yet spread its frosty fingers. His chest ached. His stomach ached. His neck felt as if he’d broken something, but he hoped desperately that wasn’t the case.
The world grew fuzzy, and for a moment, he confused the swirling snow for stars. Stars within a galaxy, spinning and spinning, these ones crashing together in an explosion of epic proportions. Those ones spinning apart, stretching around a black hole where nothing escaped, everything drown in the pressures of the gravitational flux of a being more powerful than any one, insignificant human.
A flash of light sparkled within the sudden dark hole within the storm. Rainbow lights, blending together in a blur. Faintly, there came a frail snap.
Was that his neck snapping, belatedly? Him only just catching up to reality?
The snap came again, like an echo of
pain. He sucked in a agonized breath and felt his ribs with fingers too shaky to count.
Then a form appeared over his head, a shadow of a shape blocking out the frail trail of Christmas lights disappearing into the fog that was the storm.
“Are you hurt?” Greg demanded. “Taylor, are you hurt?”
“I…don’t think so.” Taylor blinked rapidly, trying to get his bearings. He let Greg pull him from the snow. “Just winded. Freezing.”
“The garage is right here. Come on.”
For a brief, sweet moment, Greg squeezed Taylor into a quick hug, making all the cold, all the suffering disappear for just a fraction of a second. Then his hands slipped away. Greg scooped Mandy up from where she was perched on top of the trash can, yanked the garage door open one-handedly and ducked inside.
Taylor staggered after, stumbling and falling to his hands and knees in the snow. A whisper shuddered over his shoulder and he strained to look up, back into the sky, squinting his eyes against the snowflakes dancing against his eyelashes.
Up there, somewhere, the elves gloated. He could practically hear their high, nasally voices singing carols in celebration of their victory. See the hint of rainbows sparkling as Christmas light whips snapped out, commanding their creations, commanding the very snow to shape and form the way they wished.
That wasn’t how it worked, Taylor knew. They didn’t use Christmas light whips to shape blizzards. The snow shapers used their hands, their long fingers, their painted green and red nails that likely housed bits of gingerbread looking like crud.
They couldn’t fly though. Not without…
He cocked his head, neck twinging, and closed his eyes. Held his breath so that his shudders would not add to the howling in the wind. There it was, the ringing of bells on reindeer harnesses. Faint, but there.
The elves were flying.
Sudden light flooded the snow-encrusted driveway, weakly illuminating Taylor’s Camry with its battered sides and crumpled roof. Illuminated the giant of a snowman, its coal eyes glinting red as they burned tracks into its face. It turned toward Taylor, arms clawing at the ground, pulling itself along. On the other side of the car, the snowwoman slouched against the ground, mouthing at the snow as if nosing for its splintered limbs.
And beyond, in the snowstorm, shadows moved. More snowmen swirling into being, pieced together one snowflake at a time. Bigger, bigger. Being fitted with their own carrot noses, with their own branch-like arms.
“Taylor! Come on!”
Taylor broke and ran for it. He ducked under the garage door and turned to help Greg shove it closed. They kicked at the snow that had fallen inward and lodged under the door. They shoved and pressed until the door finally hit concrete.
Inside, a rumbling purred at low registers of Taylor’s hearing, the smell of gas beginning to permeate the air. A movable light had been plugged into Greg’s generator, casting both bays into a gleaming, welcoming expanse that chased the shadows to under Greg’s beige SUV and into the corners behind the benches and tool cases and cardboard boxes. Mandy had tucked herself into a spare tire at the back of the workshop and now came creeping out, her socks comical as they floundered against the ground and Greg’s coat swamping her like an empty-sleeve cloak.
She was mostly dry though. The cold limited to where the snowflakes had clung to her dark hair.
Taylor tapped the garage door, having to push from his diaphragm to be heard over the rumbling. “This is not going to keep that thing out. It might only have half its teeth, but it still has those arms and the snow shapers can easily put it back together when they discover the damage.”
“Better than being out there,” called Greg as he winded up the excess cord that led to the glaring light he’d clipped against the metal bars of a shelf.
The generator purred, exhaling carbon monoxide into the enclosed space. The noise of it reverberatingly loud, achingly so. Mandy rubbed her hands against her ears and squinted up her reddened face. She wasn’t crying anymore though; a level of trust settling over her features despite the air they now breathed.
They would suffocate. They would all suffocate.
“This isn’t sustainable…”
Taylor trailed away as Greg broke out a large, rusted section of metal exhaust tubing and began rigging it from the generator. Taylor moved to help him, and together they pulled the generator closer to the single window in the bay furthest from the house proper.
If it didn’t reach they could move it toward the garage door maybe, prop the entire door open. Only, that would give the snowmen better leverage to get those twiggy fingers under to raise it up. Better not to give the snowmen any advantages.
The creations would already be approaching, hearing the loud rumbling of the generator, flocking toward it. And once they congregated around the garage, blocking them in, trapping them, there would be nowhere left to run.
They would be squeezed tighter and tighter into a corner. Until there were no more corners in which to hide. Taylor sank against the wall, holding the metal piping and not caring that it almost burned his hand, liking the way it warmed his freezing fingers.
Greg waved him away as he finished taping the last pieces together, angling the highest one out the tiny window. “There’s a space heater over in the corner. Would you get it, plug it in?”
Taylor swallowed against a thickened lump in his throat, then moved to obey, the chill in his body worsening as he stepped away from the rumbling warmth emanating from the exhaust. His very presence had brought them into this no-win situation. He should have left. A long time ago. Should never have stayed in the first place. Never put Greg and Mandy in this sort of danger.
He hefted the space heater and carried it back to the generator and mechanically plugged it in. Once he had it blowing, he spun it to face Mandy. Then he winced inwardly when Greg paused to strip off two layers of socks, frozen chunks lining them and his exposed feet a pale red from toe to ankle. Puddles grew across the cement as the strewn spots of snow melted down in the relative warmth.
Those puddles would freeze again, like the snow near the garage door that had spilled inside and now sat in hills and mounds, retaining their chill. The puddles would freeze. The generator would eventually sputter to an end as the last of the gas burnt through. Even if they siphoned more out of Greg’s car, that would not save them.
The elves were playing for keeps. That blizzard wouldn’t fade, wouldn’t disperse, not until the elves decided they were done.
Or until Taylor decided for them.
He hardened his jaw and then softened somewhat as Mandy laid her head against his shoulder. Her hands stretched toward the front of the heater.
“I lost my jump rope,” she said dejectedly.
He patted her head. “I’ll get you another. What color do you want it? Purple with unicorn farts?”
She giggled. “Red. The color of blood.”
“And peppermint.”
“And Christmas lights!”
“Well, I think all the colors are Christmas lights.”
“But red the most,” she insisted.
Taylor nodded. “Red the most.”
Red the most. Red would be the color the elves searched for. Expecting to see Taylor’s form, sprawled out and broken from a snow angel’s embrace. Or bitten or torn from a snowman. The snow would be stained with it. Dark red, a maroon that indicated loss and failure. The elves would celebrate in their frosted gingerbread houses, send the word north so that Santa would hear tell of a thorn in his side finally succumbing.
And how that man would laugh. Ho, Ho, HO. Belly deep, echoing through the grand hall, all the children sitting there not knowing what had brought on the mirth, yet dreading the banquet that would be prepared in Taylor’s honor.
He pressed a hand against his face.
He should have left. He should never have let Greg and Mandy get involved.
“Are you okay?” asked Mandy, her head shifting on his jacket.
“No, Mands,”
he whispered. “I’m not okay.”
Her brown eyes fell and her voice matched, the two of them speaking so close, so quietly, Greg couldn’t possibly have heard over the generator’s sputtering. “I’m not okay too. I’m scared. Really, really scared. Daddy’s mad.”
Pulling her into his chest, Taylor hugged her tight. The blowing heat dried out his face, making his eyes prickle. Locks of her drying, frizzy hair shivered against his cheek.
“Your Daddy’s not mad at you. I bet he has more weapons in here. Something you can wield against the snowwomen and angels and elves.”
“Daddy won’t let me. He never lets me. Only you do.”
Taylor looked up in time to see Greg begin to tear into his workbench and standing tool box. He pulled out wrenches made for airplane mechanics, the tools practically as long as an arm. A nail gun and a compressor went on the bench. Paint cans were shoved aside so he could reach a metal pole, one that had an adjustable attachment at one end, but he just snapped the cleaning attachment off and began zip-tying a flat-head screwdriver to the end of the pole.
The man looked for all the world like he was preparing for war.
In his own way. Using garage tools and a mechanic’s jerry-rigging skills. His jeans were splotchy and wet-through from the knees down. His sweatshirt sleeves were rolled up to his elbows. The scratch on his cheek had ceased beading, but now looked like a line of drying paint that had dripped.
“Do you have any aerosol cans?” called Taylor. Mandy squirmed, but Greg didn’t seem to have heard him.
Taylor disengaged from Mandy and wound his way through the garage to the work bench. Greg barely glanced up as he tightened another zip-tie down.
“Do you have any aerosol cans?” he asked again.
“Sure.” He jerked his chin toward the shelves at the back.
“You can use it with the torch, create a much larger flame.”
Greg nodded stiffly.
“I’m sorry.”
After an agonizingly long moment where Greg didn’t look away from his makeshift weaponry, he responded, “It’s not your fault.”
Rise of the Snowmen Page 9
