That was easier said than done.
Stone laughed. “What, we draw straws for who goes out there? Flip a coin?”
I shook my head. “No, I’ll go. I broke the flashlight. It’s my fault.”
Stone sighed. “Damn it, Grady.”
“What?”
“You and your damn honorableness. It’s really annoying. You know that, right?”
I cocked an eyebrow at him.
“That means I’m not gonna let you go out there by yourself,” he clarified. “I’ll be right beside you.”
“Me, too,” Eleanor said, parting from me and standing a tad straighter.
“Ell—” I began.
“No, Grady. If we never face our fears, then those things out there win.”
“There’s an argument for them already having won…” Stone mumbled.
“I’ve got to face my fears,” Eleanor said. “I’ve got to conquer everything they can use against me.” Though she spoke with confidence, her eyes betrayed her. They were wet with tears, and very wide.
“We ride together,” Stone said, “and we die together. Simple as that.”
“I like it,” I said. “But let’s maybe not get to the ‘die together’ part.”
“Not up to us. Now, let’s do this.”
I nodded and began pulling down boxes from the shelves. The plan was to build a movable wall, put something between us and the rats. Whether it would work or not, we were about to find out.
Once the wall was built, standing three boxes high and two boxes wide, I nodded at the others.
Stone was half-sitting on one of the empty shelves. He shook his arms out and bent his head first to the left, and then to the right. A series of sickening cracks from his neck filled the room. This was his way of getting ready for the fight. He used to do the same before basketball games. Meeting my eyes, he nodded. I looked to Eleanor; she hesitated before exhaling an uneven breath, but she nodded, too.
I nodded back. “Here goes nothing.”
With the others behind me, I nudge the makeshift wall forward.
Eleanor let out a battle cry and plunged into the heavy boxes. That wasn’t exactly according to plan. I stumbled, quickly regained my balance, and followed suit. The swinging door burst open. I felt it hitch against the combined weight of the rats. They squealed as some flew backwards, thudding into the far wall and shelves, bursting into puffs of cold smoke.
We were screaming, our eyes darting all over for the approaching rodents. Stone smashed half a dozen before he even passed through the door. You could hear them disintegrate. They made an odd popping sound that reminded me of frying bacon. This was unfortunate, because I loved bacon. Now the very thought of it flips my stomach.
“Go, Grady!” Stone yelled. “We’ll fend them off!”
I broke away from the box, through the path Eleanor had cleared. A few long strides later, I bounded over the front counter. Not gracefully, I’ll add. I hit the cash register on my way down. It clipped my hip pretty hard. The pain was immediate and immense, but I bit my tongue and continued on. No time for pain, not when it was life and death.
The rats continued their squeaking and screeching, mixing in with the pops of their fallen brethren.
Eleanor was screaming. I looked over and saw the rats climbing the wall of boxes, moving unnaturally fast. Eleanor pushed one of the top boxes over. It fell with the rats swarming over it, and when it landed, whatever was inside—glass, by the shattering sound of it—proved heavy enough to crush most of the rodents. They erupted in a puff of grayish smoke.
“Grady!” Stone sounded out of breath. “Hurry up!”
Shit. I focused back on the task at hand. The flashlight, where the hell was the flashlight I’d seen earlier? It was hard to see in the storefront, but even harder to see in the spots below the register. I reached out and patted the shelves frantically, knocking over boxes of paper clips, a cup full of pens, and a stapler. I bent down lower, my eyes scanning the area for any rats. I was pretty bundled up, wearing about three layers, heavy boots, and gloves, so I thought it would take a while before any got through to my flesh. On the other hand, it would also take me a while before I noticed if one of them was currently gnawing on me.
The flashlight was on the floor. I must’ve knocked it over when I climbed over the counter. I picked it up and pressed the button. No light came on. I gave it a shake, slapped the bottom with the heel of my hand, and that did the trick. A faint beam illuminated the shadows.
“Get over here!” I shouted to the others as I swept the light through the crowd of rodents and created another pathway to the counter. The rats burst into more grayish smoke, their red eyes hanging around like afterimages.
Eleanor reached for Stone’s hand as his crutch struck the floor, which we could see again. She grabbed it and pulled him to the counter. Back here, we only had to worry about the rats coming from three different directions.
Stone flopped over and hit the register. He let us know how it felt with a resounding “FUCK!”, and Eleanor dove right behind him.
I burned the rats with the flashlight, shining it in the direction of anything that moved. Despite this, they kept coming, relentlessly skittering toward us and then launching in the air. This went on for a few long minutes. The closest any got was the countertop, and Stone crushed them before I could move the light.
Once they were gone, I set the flashlight down and squeezed my eyes shut. My heart was beating rapidly, and I was tired. So damn tired.
“It’s over,” Eleanor said. “They’re gone.”
“Are they?” Stone whispered. Ell and I were both looking at him. The beam illuminated his haunted face. The color of his dark skin had blanched. His eyes were as big as his gaping mouth.
Then he pointed.
I turned to see what he was pointing at, but I didn’t have to. I already knew what it was. I heard it. I heard its bulk sliding across the floor, the dull thud-thud of its steps. I heard the saliva dribbling from its mouth and slapping the tile. I heard the growls coming from deep within its belly.
“Holy shit,” Eleanor whispered. I thought she was going to pass out.
My eyes settled on the thing. It was so much worse than my imagination could conjure. And I thought I was gonna pass out, too.
I called it the queen rat in my head. It was huge, as big as a full-grown German shepherd but much wider.
Its body swayed with every movement. From its underbelly, a score of baby rats dangled from its matted, jet-black fur. Its wormlike tail was easily as long as one of Stone’s crutches. If the giant rat decided to whip it in our direction, I couldn’t say for sure whether my many layers would stand up to it or not. My bones probably wouldn’t, either. Testing that theory wasn’t one of my greatest desires at that moment.
“Kill it, Grady! What the hell are you waiting for?” Stone shouted.
I was frozen. That seemed a common reaction to the things I saw throughout the apocalypse. Stone elbowed me hard, which knocked me out of the unresponsive state I was in. Can you blame me? Like the giant spider that had chased us when we crossed the lake, the giant rat was near the top of the list of the worst things I’d ever seen.
I pointed the flashlight at it, but hardly anything happened. The queen rat was stronger, much stronger. It was as if it had absorbed the strength of all the fallen rats before her, coalescing into…this. Or maybe it was the effort of multiple wraiths instead of one. I don’t know. All I do know is when I shined the light its way, a few patches of fur singed, showing irritated pink flesh. There was no pop, no explosion of gray smoke, and it smelled utterly horrendous.
The rat reared on its hind legs and screeched. Spit sprayed from its mouth. Its tail whipped around and took out most of the nearest aisle.
“We have to run!” Stone said. He grabbed Eleanor and limped toward the back room.
Back on all fours, the queen rat’s beady red eyes focused on me. It seemed to stare through my soul. Then it bent into a crouch, ready to
spring.
I shoved Eleanor and Stone out of the way and ducked. The sickening cold emanating from the rat passed right over my head. The stench of the thing—I can’t even describe it, but if I hadn’t have been so focused on staying alive, I would’ve vomited.
The rat crashed into the counter, shattered the wood into shards. Splinters flew everywhere, stabbing me through my coat, sweater, and shirt. It felt like being stung by dozens of bees at once. I ignored the pain as best as I could and located the rat. It was currently climbing out of the debris.
Rising to my feet, using the nearby fallen shelves for help, I noticed something on the floor. It was a Bic lighter. I grabbed it, mind whirling for a solution.
When the snow fell and the world ended, it was the middle of summer. Lake Prism was the town’s biggest attraction, so it was guaranteed that the biggest store in the heart of the town would be stocked up on overpriced bug spray. Of course, you could drive the ten or so miles to the nearest Walmart and save a few bucks, but it was summer vacation, a time where you wanted to capitalize on the nice weather as much as possible. So you’d buy your overpriced bug spray and be on your way to the lake. Your wallet might weigh a bit less, but you saved gas and had more time to enjoy the sun and the lake, and you’d have no mosquito bites to worry about.
Sure enough, not far from the front door stood a display of Off! bug spray. Miraculously, the display had remained standing throughout all the chaos. I grabbed the nearest can, switched off the safeguard, flicked the lighter on, the heat and the brightness immense in the cold dark of the store, and sprayed it.
Essentially what I’d created was a flamethrower. A stream of fire jetted out almost six feet from where I was. I advanced, however, for the first time in a long time, unafraid.
The rat recoiled back into the debris, its snarling mouth twisted in rage and pain. The inferno engulfed it, roasted it on the spot, and then, with a sickening, bubbling pop!, the rat vanished in not just a puff of smoke, but an entire cloud. For good measure, I burned the place the rat had been for a solid thirty to forty-five seconds. Eleanor actually came over and grabbed my arm, which brought me back to reality.
“It’s gone, Grady,” she said. “It’s gone.”
I must’ve been screaming, because it hurt when I tried to talk, and my voice was barely above a whisper. “Are you guys all right?”
Eleanor nodded.
Exhausted, I let the bug spray fall from my grip. It hit the ground, the sound echoing loudly in the quiet.
Stone crutched over to me. He put a hand on the back of my neck and squeezed. “That was quick thinking, brother. Thank you.”
I nodded. I didn’t feel like talking, mostly because I was dead tired. Being scared shitless takes its toll on you.
The outside world was still dark, and now I heard the wraiths calling out to me. “Grady! Graaaddddy!”
We couldn’t leave; not yet. Stone went to the display of bug spray.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Any more lighters?” he said.
Eleanor went over to where I had fallen, kicking suntan lotion, Band-Aids, wet wipes, and a bunch of other first aid items out of the way. She bent and picked up a couple of packages. They were four-packs of cheap plastic lighters, like the one at my feet. “Yeah. About a dozen over here.”
“Good,” Stone said, “bring them in the back. That, plus the bug spray, is basically gold. You’re a genius, Grady!”
“It only took a giant killer rat to get me to use my brain,” I said. “I don’t know if I should be ashamed or proud.”
“Ashamed, for sure,” Eleanor said with a wink. “But hey, on the bright side, rats don’t scare me as much now. Creep me out? Yeah, but as long as I have a flamethrower on me, I think I’ll be okay.”
Stone and me laughed. In those dark days, since laughter was so rare, I remember almost every time we did.
I don’t think any of us slept the rest of our time in the grocery store. We were too worried about the rats. After blocking the entrances with nearly everything—Eleanor and I managed to detach two of the coolers and slide them in front of the door—I was pretty sure we didn’t have to worry about them coming inside.
But then again, there was so much we didn’t know about the wraiths.
That night’s events left me with more questions than answers. Were the smaller rats each an individual entity, or were they all part of a single wraith? And why didn’t the flashlight, as weak as it was, do more than give the queen rat apparition more than a sunburn? How did they know Eleanor feared rats? Had she been thinking about them at the time, consciously or subconsciously? Did they hear her mention it before?
Right then, these were questions without answers.
The worst thing of all was what came to my mind while I lay on the cold hard floor, waiting for sleep to come. The wraith or wraiths got into the store without much of a problem, even after we’d barricaded the door the first time. They seemed to be getting bolder, brazen even. If they were able to turn into something solid, what was stopping them from breaking windows and kicking down doors? What was stopping them from turning into rats and climbing through the frozen pipes and out of the toilets?
They left us alone at Helga’s, remaining outside in the darkness and calling our names, because we had electricity. They had left us alone when we were holed up in the rented lake house because we had a blazing fire going almost constantly. And thinking back even further, the wraiths had not only left Jonas and I alone when we went back to the Harks’ place, but they had sent Ed in to do their dirty work.
After the gun smoke had cleared and I sat there by my best friend’s corpse, I remembered looking up and out of the broken sliding glass door, and I remembered seeing a dozen vaguely human-shaped shadows, their wispy outlines stark against the backdrop of all the white snow. It was like they were feeding off all the death and despair.
It was like they were growing stronger…
We left the following morning. The sun rose in its usual halfhearted way. Weak light and warmth shone down on the frozen world. Another storm had fallen earlier. I heard it settling on the roof while I struggled with sleep. The building groaned beneath the weight of the piled ice and snow. It was only a matter of time before it collapsed in on itself. I’d noticed that had happened to more than a few houses on my trek to Penny Wiser’s. Luckily, it hadn’t happened to Helga’s. Or to the store. Not yet, at least.
We gathered as many goods as we could comfortably handle and prepared to leave. I led the way out of the store, past the bloodstains from the dead man and the soot stains from the flames that had saved us from the shadow rats. Eleanor helped me move the cooler enough for us to slip through the crack, and then we stepped out into the cold.
The wind blew the fallen snow in a flurry, making visibility next to zero. I wasn’t sure if it was still snowing or not. My gut told me yes; it almost always was. Once the flurries settled, I stopped on the covered sidewalk beneath the awning, which, I noticed, was sagging thanks to the fresh snow. What caused me to stop was the opposite of what caused me to stop the day before, when I’d first reached the store.
The bodies.
They were gone.
At first I thought the blizzard had covered them, but I stepped forward and prodded the spot they’d been with my ski pole, and felt nothing but snow.
“Are you okay?” Eleanor said from behind me.
“What happened to the bodies?” I said.
“They’re gone?” Stone asked. He eased his way out from under the awning and began prodding the same area I had. After nearly a minute of this, he backed up and said, “What the hell?”
The wind howled again. Part of me thought that was an answer. Maybe the wraiths spoke to us with the wind. I decided it was best not to mention that thought to the others. The bit of Eleanor’s face that was visible looked considerably paler than usual, and though Stone wouldn’t admit it, I could tell he was beyond unsettled.
So was I.
“Something took them,” I said, trying to speak in a steady voice but failing. “That’s all. Probably animals of some sort. Wolves or bears, maybe.”
“Does Ohio have either of those?” Eleanor asked.
I shrugged. “Think so. Black bears, at least. Wolves, I’m not sure about.”
“We do,” Stone assured us, but his voice sounded as unsure as mine. “Not purebred wolves or anything like that. Most are the bastardized offspring of wild coyotes and dogs. But you’ll see purebreds passing through on their way to Michigan. That godforsaken place is a natural home to wolves and, I’m pretty sure, black bears.”
“Why do you know so much about animals?” Eleanor said. “First the”—she gulped—“rats, and now wolves and bears.”
“And lions and tigers, oh my!” Stone added with a grin. “I don’t know, actually. Whenever I had trouble sleeping, I’d flip on Animal Planet or the History Channel for background noise. I guess my brain absorbed some of the information whether I wanted it to or not.” He gave another shrug. “Bears, wolves, hybrids—does it really matter? For all we know, it could’ve been fuckin’ sharks that took the bodies.”
“Sharks?” I laughed. When Stone didn’t, I realized he wasn’t joking.
“What’s funny about that?” he asked. “Look around you, Grady. There’s blizzards in summer and ghosts roaming the darkness. Up is down and down is up. Everything is ass-backwards.”
He had a point, but I didn’t particularly want to delve into that subject at the moment. The world was wrong. We just had to accept it and move on.
“Let’s get going.” I reached down and pulled Stone’s sled out of the snow. “I’ll drag him,” I told Eleanor.
“Thank you.”
That was how they’d gotten here through the snow yesterday. Eleanor wore Helga’s snowshoes. Stone sat in a sled. She tied a rope around her waist, attached the other end to the front of the sled, and together they went on. Luckily, the journey was mostly downhill.
I grabbed the rope, which was covered in ice, and I shook it out the best I could. Tied it around the sled’s front crossbar and then my waist.
Whiteout (Book 2): The Dark Winter Page 5
