Freeze

20

The cold was unbelievable. She’d never felt anything like it. She was surprised she wasn’t freezing solid right then and there. The wind and snow blowing into her barely clad back and the crumbling powder and ice beneath her bare feet were so cold they seemed almost hot. She knew that couldn’t be a good sign, that even if she lived through this she was going to suffer some serious physical damage.

Whether it was the drastic change in temperature, nerves, or just a residual effect from her fight with the monsters, she felt like she was going to be sick. She doubled over, still holding Bub, leaning past him, and a gust of wind hit her back, chilling her further still. But the nausea passed without any actual vomiting. And it was a good thing, too. She was sure anything she’d thrown up would have been mostly blood.

She gripped Bub tighter than ever and kept pulling.

When she’d dragged him far enough into the snow (leaving a pink trail of blood across the ground and trying hard not to look at it), she let go of the dog and reached back inside to pull the door shut. The creature had made it through the kitchen and almost into the hall. A pair of its tentacles wrapped around the doorframe. Dozens of fingers gripped the wood and the sheetrock. A third tentacle poked through the doorway and turned toward her. She jumped back but shouldn’t have bothered. The limb wasn’t even close to reaching her. She wrapped her fingers back around the doorknob and pulled the door shut.

When she got back to Bub, he looked up at her and barked. It was a sad sound, barely audible, but Tess was glad to hear it. If he could bark, maybe he could live.

So, what now? You escaped the monsters, at least temporarily, but what next?

She turned around, surveyed the blizzard. She couldn’t see more than halfway across the yard, and what she could make out wasn’t anything more than a swirl of meaningless white. If there were more monsters out there, she couldn’t see them.

If? There’s at least one out here. You know it.

Maybe, but the kitchen monster had been injured. There was a chance it had died.

You wish.

It didn’t matter. Until they ran across another creature, she had other things to worry about. If she didn’t get Bub and herself out of this weather soon, they’d both die. Monsters or not. Simple as that.

She couldn’t go back into the house. Not through the back door and probably not through the front. The fire had gone out and there was nothing else to use as a reliable weapon.

So what does that leave?

And then she knew. It was an obvious solution, and although her mind had been understandably distracted, she couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of it sooner: the shed.

She supposed the garage was also an option. It was detached, after all, but it was also full of junk and had three windows, which would make it almost impossible to defend. The shed surely wasn’t any more structurally sound, but it had only the one point of access, a door at least as sturdy as the doors in the house. Unless the monsters tore down the whole building, they’d have to come through that door, and judging by how long it had taken the first creature to break out of the bedroom, Tess thought hiding in the shed might buy them at least some time. If nothing else, it would be warmer.

Assuming she could make it there.

Assuming she could drag Bub that far.

Assuming they both didn’t freeze to death first.

She turned back for Bub, checked to make sure he was still breathing (he was, barely), wrapped her arms back around his body, and saw the sled in a drift of snow beside the house.

The blizzard had almost covered the thing. If she’d come out fifteen minutes later, she might never have noticed it. She let go of Bub and shuffled over to it, her bare feet tingling, stinging, her mind screaming at her that she had to get out of the cold immediately.

She dug the sled out of the snow with stiff, almost useless fingers, and slid it over to Bub. The blizzard had already started the job of covering him up, of burying him. She did her best to wipe the sleet off his fur. When she rolled him out of the snow and onto the sled, she saw the icy bloodstain he’d left behind. It seemed like a lot of blood, especially combined with what he’d lost in the hall, and she told herself he might not make it, that she ought to prepare for that possibility.

Bub didn’t move much as she centered him on the sled, but he did stick out his tongue and lick her hand when she got near his head. His tongue stuck to her skin, and she had to pry it off.

“You’ll be okay,” she promised him and patted him on the head.

By the time she got him situated and turned the sled away from the house, she couldn’t feel much of her body. Snow covered her clothes, packed into her hair, thickened her eyelashes. Her body shook violently, and her mind started to shut down. As hard as she tried to concentrate on the task at hand, she couldn’t seem to focus. It felt like going to sleep after a very long day, like wanting nothing more than to lie down and take a nice, long nap.

She moved, took a few sweeping steps through the high snow with the sled’s frayed rope wrapped around her numb fingers. The world spun. Hard little pellets of icy snow hit her in the head and body. She looked down, trying to keep the wind and sleet out of her face, but the movement made her dizzy. She stumbled forward and barely caught herself.

And then her face hit the snow and she realized she’d fallen after all. As far as she could remember, she’d gone from standing to lying instantly. Like a mini blackout.

Get up. Pay attention. Get up and get to the shed. Focus on that. Don’t you dare give up.

She pushed herself to her feet and looked toward where she thought the shed should be, but she couldn’t make it out. She turned back toward the house and realized she hadn’t moved more than a few yards. Half a dozen shuffling footprints and a short pair of sled tracks marked her progress from the back stoop.

Don’t think about that. And definitely quit thinking about the cold. Think about the shed. The shed. The shed and nothing else.

She’d dropped the sled’s rope. When she’d picked it up and wrapped it back around her unbending fingers, she told Bub once more that it was going to be okay, that they’d make it to the shed, not sure if he could hear her, not even sure if he was still alive to hear anything, and then she resumed her trip across the yard.

As she moved, she glanced left, right, left again, looking for any sign of the creatures, not sure what she would do if they attacked but wanting to be ready for them anyway. The sled hit a drift and she jerked to a stop. She looked back to make sure Bub hadn’t slipped off; he was already mostly covered in snow again. He moved his head, which was proof enough he was still alive, but seeing him like that made Tess want to cry. Again.

You’re still thinking. Stop thinking and move.

She tugged the sled over the drift and trudged on, no longer able to feel her feet at all. She looked back once to see if she could still see the house, but it had disappeared in the storm. She knew this was the most dangerous part of the journey: nothing to see in any direction, nothing for her to use to orient herself, the point at which it would be oh so easy to get lost.

Wouldn’t that be the perfect ending to this hellish mess, to get lost halfway across her own back yard?

She moved on, toward where she thought (hoped) the shed would be.

The wind gusted and brought a long, ringing shriek. One of the monsters.

No, it’s just the wind.

She didn’t believe that, wouldn’t dare believe it. She pulled the sled’s rope over her shoulder and pulled harder than ever.

Something loomed ahead. She started to scream, to turn around and shuffle back in the opposite direction as quickly as she could, but then she realized the shape in the snow ahead wasn’t one of the creatures. A door, a snow-covered roof. She’d made it. Believe it or not, she’d gotten them to the shed.

Another shape moved to her right, too far into the blizzard to make out, just a flickering shadow and then nothing at all. And although she couldn’t see it, she sensed how fast it was moving, slipping through the storm, speeding through. The things in the house might not have been especially zippy, but out here, in what she guessed was their natural habitat (as if there was anything natural about them), they seemed to be lightning quick. Or at least this one was. Another icy roar echoed through the air, and Tess let out a short, fearful squeal. Fighting the dizziness, the fatigue, the raging cold, she lowered her head and shuffled forward, eying the shed, imagining slipping through the door into semi-safety.

When she saw the creature the second time, it had moved to her left and slid into her path. Or maybe this was a second creature. She imagined a whole pack of the things converging on her, slinking through the snow, baring their teeth and curling their tentacles, clacking their jointless fingers as they reached for her.

The creature ahead lifted two of its tentacles, punched them into the nearest drift, and pulled a sheet of snow up onto itself. When it dropped the limbs back to its sides, the snow drifted off its body and clouded around it, obscuring it momentarily. The gesture reminded her of a gorilla beating its chest, some kind of sign of aggression. She couldn’t tell for sure, but she thought it might be the same creature she’d fought off in the kitchen. If so, maybe it was saying, We’re on my turf now. It wasn’t standing directly between her and the shed, but it was close enough. There was no way she was going to get past it. The thing had every advantage over her: size, strength, speed. She guessed the only reason it hadn’t ripped her to pieces already was that it was playing with her, taunting her.

She turned back to Bub. He lifted his head, shook just enough to clear some of the piling snow off himself, and huffed out a wheezy breath.

“Bub,” she said. “Get up! Run!”

She knew he couldn’t do it, that he was probably using every last bit of his strength just to stay alive, but she repeated it one more time anyway: “Run, Bub!”

He lifted his head an inch or two, kicked one of his back legs, like maybe he might try to do it, to obey, to be a good boy. But then his leg stilled, and he lowered his head again.

He wasn’t going anywhere.

Tess turned back to the creature. It did its snow-to-chest thing again, shrieked, and then moved toward her. It moved like a skier, sliding down one drift and up another, barely making tracks in the snow despite its size. Tess couldn’t begin to imagine how such a thing was physically possible.

She widened her stance and tried to make fists, but her fingers wouldn’t bend. She supposed she looked like the most vulnerable, pathetic prey this thing had ever seen. She supposed she was. The thing slid closer, licking its teeth and the lower portion of its face with its long, watery tongue.

Part of Tess wanted to run, some instinctual part of her that didn’t care about leaving Bub behind, didn’t care about the logic or that she had no hope of outrunning the creature, a part of her that wanted only to live a few seconds longer. In the end, she ignored the instinct. If she was going to die, she wanted to do it on her feet, facing her killer with whatever shred of dignity she had left.

She sucked in deep, uneven breaths, trying to ignore the snow and the ice and the cold. The creature lifted a tentacle, grinned at her.

Tess raised her arms to block the attack and tensed, but the blow never came. She waited a second, lowered her arms.

The creature stood perfectly still. It had lowered its tentacle and seemed to be looking at/listening to/sensing/whatever something other than her.

Tess turned to see if she could tell what had drawn the thing’s attention. She saw nothing but white, heard nothing but the falling snow, the wind, and her own ragged breathing.

Except, no, there was something else. A distant buzz, like an insect.

The creature turned back to her, growled,

(oh how she hated that crunching-gravel, glass-in-a-blender sound)

and turned back toward the buzzing.

It raised one of its limbs again.

Okay, here it comes.

She fought the urge to close her eyes, worked up a mouthful of saliva and spat it at the creature.

“Fuck you.”

The thing lowered its tentacle again, not because of what she’d said (of course not), but maybe because the buzzing was getting louder and it couldn’t seem to ignore it.

What is that? A motor? Warren?

The monster turned to her one last time, then spun around and slithered away. Snow fell and seemed to close in around it, like a sheet. Then it was gone.

If it’s Warren, you’ve got to warn him.

But how was she supposed to do that? She could barely move, couldn’t scream over the storm, and had no kind of signal. All she could do now was get into the shed while she had the chance and try to warm up before she died.

She reached for the sled’s rope but couldn’t wrap her fingers around it. Her hand was a lifeless lump. Gusting wind blew sheet after sheet of snow into her, and she was sure she was going to black out again. When the wind let up for a moment and she was still standing, she used her teeth to pull the rope over her arm, clutched it with her armpit, and pulled Bub the last few yards to the shed.

Either Warren had left the door open or the wind had blown it open. She stared through the narrow gap and into the dark space beyond.

What if there are more of those things inside?

She doubted it. They couldn’t have known she’d come out here, and they seemed much more at home in the blizzard. Still, these things were more alien than anything she could have imagined, and it didn’t make sense to try to pretend she understood anything about them. She moved beside the doorway and reached over to shove it open, keeping her body protected from a direct attack if something did come bursting out.

The door swung in and banged against the wall.

Nothing came out.

She peeked around the corner and scanned the small space. As far as she could tell, there was nothing inside but a lot of wood and a few bits of old junk.

The buzzing sound in the distance got louder still, and although she still wasn’t sure what might be making the sound, she was more and more convinced it was some kind of motor, smaller than a car’s, something more like a motorcycle’s.

Please be Warren. Maybe on some kind of snowmobile. Please be him and don’t let those things get him.

She stepped into the shed, still holding the rope with her armpit, and pulled Bub inside with her.

The poor dog looked frozen, and she was sure when she reached down to touch him she’d find him finally dead. But when she brushed the snow off his body, his legs, and his snout, he moved. He breathed. He lived.

Snow and sleet angled in through the door, landing on the both of them. Tess moved to close the door and couldn’t quite get it shut. The storm had blown a small drift through the open gap. She’d have to shovel it out of the way before she could close the door.

In the storm, something moved.

Warren?

No, it was another creature, this one even bigger than the monstrosity in the kitchen. It slid through the snow, coming right for her.

She forgot about the wedge of slush and tried slamming the door. It came within inches but was nowhere close to latching. She opened the door again and reached down to scoop up some of the snow, unable to grip the stuff with her half-frozen fingers but using her hands like spades. She threw handful after handful back out into the blizzard, sure it was useless, like trying to bail out a boat with a ladle.

The monster was getting closer. It rolled up a drift, down, up, down. Tess threw out another few handfuls of snow and tried closing the door again. It almost made it, almost latched. She pressed her shoulder against the door and shoved as hard as she could.

The latch clicked into place.

A second later (no, a microsecond, a nanosecond), the thing outside hit the shed with a thunderous BANG!

The door shook. The whole shed shook.

Tess shivered and backed away. She knelt beside Bub and listened to the creature slam its tentacles against the structure. The door was holding for now, but it wouldn’t last forever.

Tess grabbed a tarp off the woodpile, curled up beside Bub, and pulled the plastic over the both of them. Like a blanket. A thin, cold barely-blanket.

She wished she had a lighter or a match, something to light a small fire. But she had nothing.

You did what you could. More than most people probably could have managed. If that is Warren out there, hope he finds you, and hope he brought some kind of help.

She wrapped her arms around their dog and did.