And then, as quickly as the animal had appeared, it was gone, snatched from the road like a cricket into the mouth of a chameleon.
Danielle lowered the weapon and stared at the spot with her naked eyes, not exactly sure how it had vanished. Did she see a white hand? Or did the squirrel suddenly dash beneath a car, erratically changing directions as they often did, hastily hopping off to some new destination.
But Danielle suspected otherwise. It was the crab she’d seen flash in her periphery moments before. She was almost certain of it.
And now she had a bead on it.
She lowered herself down to a sitting position on the roof, and then, in one motion, Danielle slid down the glass of the windshield and dismounted the car, landing lightly on the pavement, never taking her eyes from the spot where the squirrel had been only seconds ago. She listened closely for any sounds of scampering, and then for the crunching of bones or tearing of hide, holding her chin up as she did, hoping to better receive auditory signals that matched those actions.
But there was only silence on the wind, so Danielle took a step forward toward the site of the squirrel, then another, lightly touching the ground with her toes like a Special Forces soldier, craning her neck around the bumper of each car she approached.
She stepped into the wide aisle of asphalt that separated the new and used cars, exposed now, staring at the empty spot where the squirrel had just been. She engaged the rifle and stepped to the rear of the car nearest the spot and then spun the barrel to the opposite side.
Nothing.
Danielle released a sigh and closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them and turned toward the showroom of Maripo Mazda, ready to make her final journey toward her goal of the main building and eventually the roof, she shrieked at the sight of two crabs hopping from the sidewalk, now moving toward her, dashing with speed, their arms akimbo like a pair of deranged chimpanzees.
Danielle couldn’t believe the vision at first, and a low, horrified chuckle rumbled deep in her throat. But the truth of the moment quickly lodged in her mind, as did the primal instinct to run.
The used car trailer was closest; she would head toward that and pray the door would open when she arrived. But as she prepared for the desperate sprint, an even more profound force of nature took hold.
The one to kill.
Danielle knew on a baser level that running was a move of death in this situation. Even if the door to the trailer had been left unlocked, it was too far away, and though she could hold her own in a foot race, the crabs already had a head of steam while she’d be starting from still.
Danielle snapped the butt of the rifle to the pocket of her shoulder and steadied it with her left hand. She let out a breath and relaxed her neck, focusing her aim, harnessing the lessons she’d learned as a girl from her father. She exhaled fully and then squeezed the trigger in one fluid motion.
The report was deafening, but she held the position of the gun, resisting the urge to jerk her head up to witness the result of her shot.
And the technique paid off. She struck the crab coming at her from the left squarely in the face, directly between the eyes at the base of its nose, shattering its skull in a mask of red and cream. It fell to the ground in a heap, leaving its partner to carry on alone, which it did without hesitation.
The second white monster was maybe ten yards from Danielle now, and she calmly pivoted the gun to her right, calibrating the beast in her sights before squeezing the trigger again, hitting it in the chest just above the solar plexus.
This time the crab didn’t fall instantly; instead, it stopped in place and looked down at its torso as if shocked to have been hit. It lingered in place for several seconds and then dropped to its knees, its arms hanging limply at its sides. Finally, the beast toppled forward, its face smacking the ground with a dull slap.
Danielle raised her eye from the sight and stared at the two killings with her bare eyes, feeling the power of death surge through her like electricity. She then scanned the lot for any more enemies, almost wishing more would appear—perhaps three this time—anxious for their prey, yet blissfully unaware of the violent deaths they would soon meet. With the rifle now fired, warm and heavy in her hands, Danielle had a new feeling of invincibility, as well as a burgeoning sense of pride, both in her demeanor and acumen.
She waited nearly a minute without stepping from her spot, swiveling her neck slowly back and forth, listening, sensing. Finally, when it was obvious no more crabs would appear, she continued with her target goal and jogged through the lot to the door of the showroom.
She placed her hand on the rectangular metal door handle, and then tugged on it gently, just testing the lock’s engagement.
As expected, it was unlocked.
Danielle didn’t rush straight in, however, hesitating on the sidewalk instead, recognizing that the potential for trouble still existed inside. To this point in her nightmare, Danielle hadn’t seen a crab that could work a door, so anyone inside the dealership who had turned after the snow and didn’t have a way to exit would have likely remained trapped inside, at least until a door had been opened for it. Or, if there were other survivors inside, people who hadn’t turned and were armed and willing to give their turned fellow citizens the mercy of death, they may have quelled any danger by eliminating the white beasts themselves. She could hope.
The front of the dealership was a panorama of glass, and the showroom itself was a mostly white room consisting of thousands of square feet of wide-open space; so, if there was life inside, Danielle figured she would have seen it from her position at the door.
Still, there was no need to rush, and she waited several beats before tapping lightly on the glass to draw forward any lurking life. The report of gunfire from outside would likely have been enough to bring them to the surface, but one could never be too safe.
There was only stillness, however, so, finally, Danielle pulled opened the door and stepped inside, raising the rifle again to her shoulder, prepared to pick off any aggressors as they approached.
With the gun still raised, Danielle headed toward a narrow stairway that rose just to her left and which surely led to offices. She ascended the steps two at a time until she came to the top landing where a mezzanine area circled above the showroom, giving management and ownership a bird’s eye view of the daily operations below. She went left, passing the office of the general manager and, beside it, the owner. She continued walking to the far wall where the track of the mezzanine began to curve, and there, rising up next to a utility room, was another set of stairs, this one metal and painted industrial-white. She walked to the top and came to a door with the words ‘Roof – Employees Only’ painted conspicuously at the top. Danielle grabbed the knob and turned, receiving only the frustrating snag of an unyielding handle.
“Dammit! Of course.”
Don’t get pessimistic, she scolded herself. At least the front door was open.
Danielle descended the stairs and headed back down the mezzanine until she came to the GM’s office again. She pushed the door open and stood in the doorway, staring into a large room that had a long white desk and a view facing downtown. Just above her, she thought, on the roof over this office, that was where she needed to be. That was the direction to begin perfecting her shot. She had already killed two crabs, that was true, so, technically, she had achieved her next goal on the list. Again, though, killing them wasn’t really the point. She needed to pop one from a couple hundred yards out, if possible. That was the skill she would need to move on to the next goal.
Danielle walked over to the general manager’s desk and stood at the edge, studying the contents on top. Other than the usual computer and various papers and folders, there was a variety of personal things: wallet, phone, an unopened granola bar, the last of which Danielle instinctively grabbed and pushed into her pocket.
And a set of keys.
She eyed the set of twelve or so keys, instantly skeptical that any of them would f
it the door that led to the roof of Maripo Mazda. But maybe, she thought. Just maybe. This guy was the GM after all, so it wasn’t a stretch to imagine him comingling his house and car keys with the doors of his workplace. After all, Danielle had looped a key to Tom’s Diner onto her personal ring a thousand years ago, only six months or so after starting work there.
She reached forward for the set, and as her fingertips were about to touch the leather of the keychain, a shifting sound like the scurry of a dog rumbled from behind her.
She froze like a mannequin in her extended position, listening, waiting for the sound to repeat. She held the pose for several beats, then, without turning toward the noise, Danielle pressed the front of her thighs against the edge of the desk and moved around the perimeter until she reached the chair that was pushed under the desk at the head. She lifted her eyes now and stared toward the door she had just entered, searching for the source of the sound.
And she found it quickly, at least a segment of it.
She could see only one white limb of the creature—its lower leg—while the rest of the crab was covered by the door that had been swung to the wall when she entered.
She raised the rifle, locking the exposed leg into the sight, and then continued around the desk until she was at the opposite corner from where she’d started, having now circumnavigated the full length of the bureau.
The back half of the crab was in full view now; the monster was in a prone position, face down, its head somewhere in the crevice where the open door met the jamb. Its left arm hung limply by its side, its hand unmoving. If Danielle hadn’t heard the scuffle from that area earlier, she would have assumed it dead.
“Hey!” she called, touching the trigger with the side of her finger, waiting for the beast to snap to life and explode toward her.
Not a move.
Danielle repeated the lure and again got no reaction, so she moved a step forward, away from the desk and toward the entryway to the office. She took another step, then another, and was now only a yard of so from the door. She kept the gun high, pointed at the back of the crab, and when she was finally close enough, she nudged the door closed with the barrel of the gun, exposing the crab fully.
The monster was facing the wall, its left cheek flat to the floor, but the moment the door swung away, it snapped its neck around and stared up at Danielle, its teeth bared in silence, its jaws snapping up and down like a mechanical nutcracker. The creature’s black eyes were as desolate as the world in which Danielle now lived, and it sported a dent in its head that ran from the top of its left orbital socket to the middle of its skull. The depression was the width of a pool cue, and a river of blood had dried in a cascade from the indentation down to the middle of its neck.
Danielle gasped at the horror of the sight, and, as if the sound of her catching breath activated something in the crab’s brain, the beast made a lunging move upwards, grasping its fingers as it did, scrambling its feet beneath it in a cartoonish attempt to rise.
But before it could even get to the plateau of its knees, and before Danielle could snap of the round that would have brought an end to the thing’s living damnation, the beast recoiled back to the floor, flailing in frustration and torture.
Danielle moved with pace now, backwards toward the far wall of the office, the aim of the rifle still pure, only breaking its mark when she slammed her back against a bookshelf. She lowered the gun now, breathing frantically as she continued to stare at the agitated creature, still weighing whether to bring the gun back to position and let a round fly into its rotted brain.
But she refrained from killing it for the moment, and instead locked her eyes on the body of the thing, trying to find the reason for its continued occupation of the floor, for why it hadn’t rushed at her the way several dozen of its brethren had over the last few months.
And then she saw it. Its right hand was bound at the wrist by what appeared to be a thick piece of leather—a belt, she assumed—which had been wrapped onto itself and secured to a large couch that ran along the wall opposite where Danielle stood currently.
Danielle stared at the creature for a moment longer, weighing her options, trying to understand who had restrained the creature and why. Had the beast done this to itself? Before the change when it was still a man? Had he seen the result of the others in his dealership who had been out in the snow and, not knowing for sure if he was to be next, tied himself up so that he couldn’t harm anyone if he did change?
It seemed the most likely scenario, and this made Danielle feel sympathy towards the creature, an emotion she rarely wasted on them.
She decided there was no real upside to wasting a bullet on the crab—not yet anyway—and she wasn’t in the mood for blunt force murder. Maybe on her way out, after she’d achieved her goal for the day, if she had a couple of rounds remaining, she could stop back in and put the thing out of its misery.
She held the keys tightly and walked slowly back to the office door, edging sideways as she exited the room, pushing the door open onto the cornered beast again, keeping the danger of its continued thrashing at bay. Once outside on the mezzanine, she caught another glimpse of the creature, and its flailing now appeared more painful in the silence of distance. Danielle now promised herself to revisit the office before she left. The crabs were dangerous, that part was without question, but they were also suffering, and it was her duty as a human to end that suffering if she was able.
For now, however, she trotted back to the stairway that rose to the roof and then scaled the stairs two at a time until she was facing the door again. There was no point sifting through the set of keys, she figured; trying to find one that looked appropriate for the door was a fool’s errand. So, she started with the first on the ring and tried them one at a time.
The task was cumbersome with the rifle in hand, so Danielle placed the gun on the top step to speed up the process, placing the second key in the hole and turning. Nothing. Third key. Again nothing. There were maybe ten still to go, and as she put the fourth key in the lock, she heard a sound behind her.
She turned on her heels, and as she did, her toes clipped the butt of the rifle, sending it over the edge of the landing and down the metal stairway. It skimmed like a toboggan as it descended on the lips of the steps, and then, as it reached the bottom, it nearly slid through the lower railing of the mezzanine down to the showroom below. Luckily, it stopped just short, the butt peeking several inches over the rim, threatening to plummet.
Danielle descended the first two steps on her way to retrieve the gun, but as she did, she saw a glimmer of white in the top line of her vision.
Danielle stood tall in a panic, and as she did, she immediately saw the source. Coming toward her down the length of the mezzanine was the crab from the general manager’s office.
Danielle blinked several times as her brain attempted to fight off the reality of what her eyes were displaying. The crab continued bounding toward her, however, hopping on the balls of its feet, clicking its knuckles on the floor with each bounce like a rabid baboon. It then stood erect for a few paces, manlike, before dropping again to its more natural crab/chimp form.
Danielle’s heart and jaw dropped simultaneously, and her eyes watered to the point of blurring her vision. She knew instantly there was no time to retrieve the rifle; even if she was able to secure it before the crab reached her, she would never be able to aim and shoot before the crab was on top of her.
Yet, although she was now weaponless, there was something different about this crab that would give her a chance at surviving. This beast was slower than the others, handicapped somehow; any of the others she had encountered over the months would have been within a few yards of her by now. This crab still had a ways to go, however, struggling to push off from the floor, not able to achieve the typical spring and acceleration as it tipped awkwardly to its right, nearly toppling over before needing to recalibrate its proper posture and re-start its attack.
Danielle was momentarily me
smerized by the movement, and she stared squinting at the beast, curious.
The crab toppled again, and this time, as it attempted to push itself up straight, Danielle spotted the disadvantage in its gait. It was missing its right hand. The arm that had been tethered to the belt and sofa was now free of any restricting thumb or fingers, having apparently been ripped from its wrist in a desperate need to escape. Well, Danielle thought, at least I won’t have to go back to grant it mercy.
She turned back to the door that led to the roof now and, for no other reason than to break a pattern that had been unsuccessful to that point, she pinched the last key on the chain and slid it calmly into the lock, turning it to the right as she gripped the handle with her left hand.
The key rotated in the lock as if through butter, and, as Danielle turned the knob and pushed the door open onto the sunlight of the outside, from the corner of her eye she saw the attacking crab at the bottom of the stairs. It had made its way to the second step, sliding on the metal, unable to grip the floor with its injured hand. But it was progressing, and it seemed to be catching its stride. It was like a gargoyle come to life, she thought, learning the basics of human existence slowly but relentlessly.
Danielle pushed through to the roof and instantly spun to her left, ducking behind the ajar door, holding it open as if she were a butler inviting an emissary into a country manor.
Danielle counted the steps in her mind, trying to calculate when the crab would arrive, and then, as if on cue, the beast emerged through the door, barreling clumsily onto the gravelly, unfamiliar ground of the rooftop. Danielle couldn’t see the creature, but she could hear its feet and hands scurrying several yards past the opening, and she peeked around the corner of the door just as it stopped suddenly at the parapet at the edge of the roof.
They Came With The Snow (Book 3): The List Page 4
