by Ronald Malfi
They all hurried over to Nan, who was trembling on the other side of the bronze statue, staring with horrified eyes at something in the snow.
“What is it?” Fred said quickly, dropping Todd’s duffel bag and coming up behind her. He grabbed Nan firmly by the shoulders. In her fright, the woman had dropped the teddy bear; it lay now in the snow.
“Jesus,” Todd said, coming up beside them.
Here, the snow was black with what looked enough like blood to cause a tremor of fear to rise up in the back of Todd’s throat. The firelight reflected in it, giving it a muddy copper hue, and there were bits of twisted, fibrous ropes trailing through the snow in every immediate direction away from the blood.
“Is that blood?” Kate said, suddenly right at Todd’s back. “Jesus Christ, it is, isn’t it?”
Fred pulled Nan against his chest. Todd heard the woman’s muffled sob.
Kate pointed to the strands of ropy material strewn about the snow. “What are those things?”
“From an animal,” Fred said. One of his giant hands was cradling his wife’s head. “Something happened to an animal here.”
“So those are guts?” Kate said. “Those are fucking innards?”
“Shhh,” Todd told her, and jerked his head in Nan’s direction. “Calm down, okay?”
“Todd, what the fuck happened here?”
“I don’t know.”
“Something bad happened here.”
“We’ll call the police, tell them—”
“No,” Kate said. “We need to get out of here.”
“We’ve got no car. We need to call the cops—”
“The cell phones don’t work!”
“—and wait for the cops,” he finished calmly. Yet his heart was strumming like a fiddle in his chest.
“We need to leave,” Kate insisted. She gripped him at the shoulders and stared at him hard. Todd expected to see tears welling up in her eyes, but her gaze was surprisingly sober. “Fair enough. I lied before. I’m scared now, all right?”
“We’ll be okay.” Todd exchanged a look with Fred, who walked back around to the other side of the statue, with his wife still clinging to his chest. Todd bent down and scooped the stuffed bear up off the ground. Then he took Kate’s hand and tugged her over to where Fred stood with Nan.
“There’s no one here,” Fred said over Nan’s silvery hair. His eyes looked hard as steel and yellow in the firelight.
“Someone set these fires,” Todd suggested.
Fred lifted one shoulder. He looked astoundingly calm. “If they’re the same folks who left those entrails out on the snow, we probably don’t want to go looking for them.”
“Entrails,” Kate repeated, as if saying it aloud would prove just how ridiculous this all was. “Fantastic.”
Nan lifted her head off her husband’s chest. Her eyes were glassy, but she looked more composed than Todd would have suspected. “Kate’s right. We can’t stay here. This place feels…it feels—”
“Wrong,” Kate finished. “The whole place feels wrong. Like there’s a giant electric cable running under the earth, and we’re all just vibrating up here on the surface.”
Todd looked around. He didn’t like the empty shop windows any more than he liked the dark houses along the outer street. The cars were worse—parked at crazy angles indiscriminately around the square, they conveyed a sense of panic and hasty evacuation. He remembered reading a book about Chernobyl a few years ago, and how thousands of people had abandoned their cars and their homes and had taken to the highway just to get the hell out of town. Yet if these people hadn’t taken their cars, how had they evacuated? Surely not by foot—not in this weather.
“Okay,” Todd said finally, scooping up his duffel bag and slinging it back over one shoulder, “I’ve got an idea. I’m going to try to find a telephone. In the meantime, you guys check these cars, see if anyone left the keys inside.”
“Forget the phone,” Kate said. “Let’s just take a car and go.”
“If none of these cars start, you’ll be happy I found a phone.”
Fred nodded. “All right. Just be careful, Todd.”
Todd nodded. He bent down and tucked his pant legs into his boots. He was bleeding through his jeans and his leg was throbbing but they didn’t have the time to spare. He’d worry about his leg later.
“I’m coming with you,” Kate said, putting a hand on Todd’s shoulder.
“No. Help Fred and Nan look for cars.”
“They don’t need my help. And none of us should be running off alone.” Then she offered him a crooked smile. Suddenly she was more than just pretty—she was beautiful. Vaguely, Todd wondered if good old Gerald was worried about her. “Besides,” she added, “I’ve got the flashlight, remember?”
Returning her smile, Todd nodded. “All right. Let’s go.”
They started by peering in the window of an old hardware store. The door was locked and Todd felt uncomfortable smashing the glass. “Let’s go around until we find a shop that’s unlocked.”
“What if none of them are unlocked?”
“Then we break in. But I’m not too keen on making any unnecessary noise around here.”
“In other words, you don’t want to bring attention to us,” Kate said, the underlying message being that Todd believed there were still people around someplace. Hiding.
They crunched along the icy sidewalk, stopping at each door—a bookstore, a Laundromat, a flower shop—and tugging on the door handles. Each one was locked up tight against the dark and the cold. If the townspeople had evacuated in such a hurry, it seemed odd they’d take the time to lock up all the doors.
“You were going to tell me something about that little girl,” Kate said behind him as he peered into the smoked glass of the flower shop. Just hearing Kate mention the little girl caused the hairs to stand at attention along the nape of his neck. “Something about her face. What was it?”
“Forget it.” He turned away from the window and walked over to a convenience store. “I was just seeing things. My mind playing tricks on me.”
“You can’t even convince yourself that, let alone me. Tell me.”
He sighed. “It was…”
“What?”
But he’d caught movement inside the convenience store. “Quick, give me the flashlight.”
“Anything?” Nan called from the curb.
Fred felt around the steering column of an old Buick. There were no keys in the ignition. “Nothing,” he called back. Then, under his breath, he uttered, “Damn it to hell.” He checked the visor, under the floor mats, in the glove compartment: nothing.
He climbed out of the car and ambled over to an old Volkswagen Beetle. The driver’s side door stood open but the interior lights were off. A dusting of snow had fallen across the windshield. On his way, he summoned a warm smile for Nan. Over the years, Fred Wilkinson had become quite adept at masking his fears for Nan’s benefit. It was ingrained in him, just as it had been ingrained in Fred’s old man. Those first eighteen months when they’d moved to Atlanta and the veterinary practice seemed on the brink of failure, he’d kept a smile on his face despite the hardship. Similarly, when he’d come down with cancer five years ago, Nan would have beat him to the grave with her worrying, had he not been the poster child for optimism. He’d beaten the cancer and proved to Nan that positive energy could be just as effective as traditional medicine; even though he’d been scared shitless, Nan had never known. It was just how he was built, with those easy grins and strong embracing arms coming as naturally to him as breathing.
He leaned down and peered into the Volkswagen and immediately fought off a wave of nausea.
“Fred?” Nan called from the curb as he staggered a few steps back from the car, a hand over his mouth and nose. “What is it? What’s the matter?”
He waved a hand at her. “Stay there, hon.”
Taking a deep breath, he approached the car once again, bending down and peering inside. The driver’s s
eat was saturated with blood, the surface of which sparkled with ice crystals. A single sneaker was wedged beneath the accelerator, and it appeared to be filled with ink. The cold kept much of the smell at bay, although it was impossible not to catch a whiff of the underlying decay that hummed like a cloud of flies inside the car.
The keys were dangling from the ignition.
“Figures,” Fred muttered, leaning over the messy seat and cranking the ignition. The engine groaned but would not turn over. Which was just as well; could they have really all piled in here and driven away? All that blood…
Someone would have to pry that sneaker out from under the accelerator first, he thought, then immediately vomited in the driver’s side foot well. Thankfully, the snow across the windshield blocked him from Nan’s view.
After a few seconds catching his breath, Fred wiped his mouth with his sleeve, then extricated himself from the Volkswagen. As he stood, tendons popped in his back. Nan had been on him about not doing his exercises lately. He was paying the price for his lethargy now.
“No good?” Nan said.
He shook his head. “Wouldn’t start. I think it might—”
A man was standing directly behind Nan, no more than five feet away. His clothes hung off him in tattered ribbons and were splattered with blood. The man’s eyes were dead in their sockets, his face as expressionless as an Egyptian mummy.
“Hon,” Fred said quickly, holding both arms out toward his wife. “Come here. Quick.”
“Fred, what in the—”
“Come here,” he repeated. “Now.”
Todd pressed the flashlight against the window of the convenience store to eliminate the glare. Inside, the flashlight illuminated overturned aisles, bags of potato chips and popcorn on the floor. Soda had congealed to the tiled floor and busted soda cans were scattered about like spent shotgun shells.
“What do you see?” Kate said in a low voice by his ear.
“Place is a mess.”
“Is there someone in there?”
“I thought I saw movement…”
“But now you’re not so sure?”
“I’m not—”
The flashlight’s beam fell on what at first appeared to be a strange tropical plant caught in the process of blossoming. It took several seconds for Todd’s brain to register what he was actually seeing, and he jerked backward away from the glass. The flashlight clattered to the snow, causing the beam to cut out.
“What?” Kate said. “What’d you see?”
“Someone’s dead in there,” he managed. “Head was split open…”
“Oh my God…”
Again, movement from within the store caught Todd’s attention. He jerked his head up and squinted through the darkness just as a whitish shape flitted across the aisles. Whoever—or whatever—was inside was heading for the door.
“Get back,” Todd shouted at Kate. Together, they both stumbled backward off the snow-packed curb.
The convenience store’s door flung open, Christmas bells on a strip of rawhide rebounding off the smoked glass, and a shape sprung out into the night. There was the sound of a long-barreled gun being charged and Todd felt his body brace for impact.
Nan took a hesitant step toward Fred, an odd, almost coy smile playing across her features.
“Fred, what is it?”
But Fred was through pampering. He reached out and grabbed Nan’s wrist, yanking her down off the curb and into his arms. He was still staring at the man in the tattered and bloodied clothes, who was staring right back at him with inkblot eyes. Holding Nan in a strong embrace, Fred began to back away from the curb.
Nan pushed off him, looked up at his face. “What the hell has gotten into you?” But she must have noticed that he was looking at something over her shoulder, because she turned and followed his gaze. When she saw the man in the bloody clothes on the sidewalk, mere feet from where she’d just been, Fred felt her entire body go rigid.
“Are you hurt?” Fred said, addressing the stranger. He continued walking backward, unwilling to take his eyes off the stranger. “Hello? Are you okay?”
“Fred…”
He rubbed Nan’s head with one hand. It didn’t appear that the stranger had a weapon; if he were to rush at them, Fred was pretty confident he could fend him off. Still…
“Todd!” he shouted. “Kate!”
The stranger hunkered down, like an animal preparing to pounce. A silvery rope of spit oozed from the man’s bottom lip.
Fred froze in midstep. He felt his bowels clench. In Nan’s ear, he muttered, “Run.”
“Who are you?” said the stranger who’d just come bursting out of the convenience store. It was a woman—that much Todd could tell from her voice—and she was pointing a rather angry-looking rifle at them.
“We’re lost,” Todd said, somehow finding his voice. “Our car broke down just outside of town.”
“What happened here?” Kate said from behind him.
The woman appeared to scrutinize them from behind her rifle. After a few drawn-out seconds, she said, “Turn around.”
“Please,” Todd muttered.
“I said turn around.”
“Don’t shoot us,” he said, turning around as the woman requested. He consciously stepped in front of Kate, although he wasn’t sure if his body would be enough to arrest any bullets that came shooting out of that gun.
“You, too,” the woman said to Kate. “Turn around. I want to see your backs.”
Kate did as she was told, her hands up in the air.
The woman with the rifle came up behind them, grabbed fistfuls of their coats, and patted them down like a police officer searching for weapons. “Okay,” she said, and Todd and Kate turned back around to face her. With the gun lowered, it was easier to make out her features. She was young, perhaps in her early twenties, and for the first time Todd saw that she held the rifle somewhat awkwardly, as if doing so was new to her.
“I’m Todd Curry,” he said, hoping an introduction would break the ice. “This is Kate Jansen. We were driving and our car—”
“There was a man,” Kate blurted.
Todd nodded. “Yeah. He—”
From across the square, Fred’s voice carried in a wavering echo: “Todd! Kate!”
The woman jerked the rifle in the direction of Fred’s voice. She looked nervous and too thin, and she was practically swimming in her clothes. Todd noticed a fresh slick of blood running down the left leg of her pants.
“That’s our friend,” Todd said. Then, shouting: “Fred! Over here!”
The rifle swung back around to face Todd. His hands shot up immediately. “Calm down. Those are our friends. We’re lost. We’re not here to hurt you.”
“They’re running,” Kate said.
Todd turned and looked out across the square. Nan was careening across the ice, amazingly balanced, her thin arms and legs pumping like machinery. Fred followed close behind, though he was not facing forward: something, it seemed, was following them.
“Shit,” said the woman with the rifle. “Get in the store.”
Todd shook his head. “Those are our friends.”
“Get in the fucking store!”
In her panic, Nan practically slammed into a parked car. Todd reached out and grabbed her before she lost her balance and spilled to the ground. There was a look of pure terror on her face.
Fred came next, shouting something indecipherable as he ran. Also…there was someone else closing the distance behind him…
“What the hell is going on around here?” Kate muttered.
Fred barreled up over the curb and collided with Todd and Nan, his breathing whistling audibly. Fred’s pursuer slammed on the brakes, skidding to a clumsy stop on the ice before his legs pulled out from under him. Had the circumstances been different, the fall would have been comical. But as it was, tensions were high, and the man did not stay down on the ground for more than a split second. Back on his feet, he appeared to waver in the air, his weight
moving from foot to foot, like a swimmer about to dive into the deep end of a pool.
The sound of the rifle fire was almost deafening.
In the street, the man’s head evaporated into a red mist. The body sagged forward, then dropped straight to the ground, its legs folded neatly beneath it.
Nan screamed and Fred cursed. Kate clawed at the back of Todd’s neck, gripping a fistful of hair.
Then something else happened. The headless body in the street bucked once, twice, three times. Hot blood spurted from the abbreviated neck and coursed like an oil slick across the ice. There was the impression of levitation, although the dead man never actually left the ground; rather, something from within the man’s body was rising up, up. For one insane moment, Todd actually believed he was witnessing the dead man’s soul vacating the body.
But this was no one’s soul. What rose up was a hurricane swirl of snow, funneled and compacted so that it was nearly tangible. It held the vague form of a human being, though as it continued to withdraw itself from the man’s body, Todd could see its arms—or whatever served as arms—were nearly twice the length of a normal person’s. It had no definable characteristics beyond the vague suggestion of humanity. And as it peeled away from the corpse—from out of the corpse—it hovered briefly above the body, nearly solid and comprehensible, before it dispersed into a scattering of snowflakes and was gone.
The silence that followed was thundering.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“What the hell was that thing?” Todd asked.
They were locked inside the convenience store now, trapped in the dark with a young, rifle-toting stranger who looked barely old enough to drink legally. Fred and Nan sat against one wall, a dazed look on poor Nan’s face. Fred absently rubbed the back of her head while occasionally peering back out the store’s windows at the corpse in the street. Whatever the thing was that had exited the dead man’s body, it hadn’t come back.
The woman with the rifle said nothing. She went around peering through all the windows, then headed to the back of the store where she proceeded to load another round into the rifle.
Todd stood shivering in one darkened corner, his eyes volleying from the corpse out in the street to Fred and Nan and, finally, to Kate. Kate was sitting on the floor between two overturned racks of canned food and potato chip bags, her legs drawn up against her chest, her whole body vibrating from the cold. She was staring at the body that lay sprawled over a fallen crate of soda—the body Todd had glimpsed while shining the flashlight into the store moments earlier. Two dead bodies: one out in the street, one in here with them.
