Snow

CHAPTER TWELVE

Slowly, Todd’s eyes unstuck. And his first thought was, I’m blind. He couldn’t see a damn thing. He was lying down on something hard and uncomfortable, and although he was without sight, he got the sense that the darkness was expansive. Like waking up in a giant cave.

He groaned and rolled over onto his side. He heard movement in the darkness close by, which sent him into self-preservation mode. He recalled having had a gun at one point; he patted himself down but could not locate the weapon. Also, his head throbbed and he thought he tasted blood at the back of his throat.

“Who’s there?” he asked the darkness.

“Shhhh,” came a voice. Female. “You’ll be all right.”

“Where am I?”

“St. John’s. A church. You’re safe here.”

He swallowed what felt like a chunk of obsidian. “Who are you?”

“My name’s Meg.”

He felt the girl slide closer to him in the darkness. A moment later, he felt the fabric of her clothing brush against his bare hand. She sat beside him and he could smell the staleness of her flesh. Panic raced through him. He imagined the faceless little girl sitting beside him in the blinding dark, taking to him with a mouth she did not have.

A scrape of a match, the stink of sulfur, and a candle was lit. Above the flame, the girl’s face was a quilt of candlelight and shadows. She looked like a teenager, possibly younger.

“Are you okay?” she asked him.

“I think so.” He looked around and realized he was sitting up on one of the church pews. Deep in the shadows, the altar loomed atop the pulpit like a Stonehenge pillar. “Where’s Kate?”

“That lady you were with?”

“Yes. Where is she?”

“She’s getting cleaned up in the back. You can get cleaned up, too, if you like.”

“Who are you?” he asked again.

“I told you. I’m Meg.”

“I meant, where did you come from? How did you get here?”

“Our folks brought us here when it started. They said it would be safe.”

“So you’re from town? From here in Woodson?”

“Yes.” She looked him up and down. Her grimy clothes were in tatters. Her dark hair hung in unkempt coils at either side of her face. “But you’re not,” she said.

“No,” he said. “My friends and I were driving through. Our car broke down back on the highway. We came here for help.”

The girl giggled, covering her mouth with one hand. Then she quickly apologized. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to laugh. It just sounds funny, saying you came here for help. Of all places.”

“Yeah, right,” he said, running his hands through his hair. He sniffed and smelled blood in the air. “How many of you are hiding in this church?”

“It’s just me and my brother. His name’s Chris.”

“What happened to your parents?”

The girl looked away. Her profile made her appear more adult than Todd guessed she was.

“I’m sorry,” he said, not waiting for an answer. Anyway, he didn’t think one would come. “Do you have access to a car?”

“I can’t drive.”

“But is there a car here at the church? Something we can drive away in?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so. We didn’t come in a car. We ran here.” She blew out the candle, dousing them both in darkness once again. “Chris says not to leave the candles burning for too long.”

“Where is Chris now?”

“In the tower. He can see the whole town from up there.”

“What happened to my gun?”

The girl didn’t answer.

“I had a gun,” he said. “What happened to it?”

“Chris took it.”

“Why?”

“For protection. He said we needed weapons and God provided one for us.”

“God?”

“God sent you to us for protection. That’s what Chris says.”

“Terrific. How old is Chris?”

“Twenty.”

“And how old are you?”

“Fourteen.”

Todd was startled to feel the girl’s hand slide into one of his. He was too shocked to pull away. “I think I should see my friend now,” he said.

“What’s her name? Kate?”

“Yes. Can you take me to her?”

“I can do it in the dark,” the girl said. “I don’t even need to light the candle to take you.”

“I won’t be able to see where I’m going,” he said…although he was beginning to make out the lighter shades of darkness as moonlight struck a series of stained-glass windows. Directly above the chancel, he thought he could make out panels of glass in the ceiling, though the cloud cover on this night was too great to permit the moonlight’s full penetration.

“Just hold on to my hand,” she said, and stood up.

Head back against the headrest and her eyes closed, Shawna took in great whooping breaths. Beside her in the passenger seat, Nan wept almost soundlessly into her hands. As her heartbeat regained its normal rhythm, Shawna opened her eyes to find herself staring at a windshield that was completely covered in snow. She slid the rifle between the two seats, then gripped the steering wheel, if for no other reason than to anchor herself to some tangible form of reality. She could have been in a convertible cruising down a desert highway, the sun glinting off the chrome and the wind in her hair. It was all she could do to fight off the reality of her surroundings…and she surrendered to it before too long.

Also, the fucking car stank. She shifted in the seat and heard ice crystals crunching beneath her weight. Leaning forward, she could make out what appeared to be frozen blood on the dashboard and along the console. She reached up and adjusted the rearview mirror until she could get a view of the backseat.

There was something dead back there. A person. She could make out a white, blood-streaked hand.

Oh Jesus oh Christ oh fuck oh Jesus…

“Calm down,” she told Nan. She reached down and cracked the window the slightest bit. The wind that whistled in was ice cold but it helped clear out the smell. “Nan, please calm down.”

Nan swiped at her eyes. Once she got her crying under control, she stared down at her hands. Her breath came out in little clouds of vapor and fogged up the windshield. “He’s dead. He’s really dead. You shot him.”

“He was dead before I shot him,” Shawna promised. “Believe me.”

“I know.”

Shawna reached out and felt the steering column. A sudden spark of hope ignited within her as her hand closed on a set of car keys in the ignition. She turned them but the car made no sound. “Goddamn it.”

“Fred already tried this car,” Nan said, her voice so small it was practically nonexistent. “He tried every one on this side of the street. That’s when that…that man came out of the shadows and started chasing us. The man you shot.” Nan turned to look at her, but Shawna could not face her. “What are we going to do?”

We’re going to sit here and freeze to death in this car, Shawna thought. Amazingly, the thought nearly sent her into a fit of laughter. Surely that would have calmed Nan. Sitting in a car with a crazy person…

“What if we just walked back out to the main road?” Nan suggested. “We could wait for another car to drive by and flag them down.”

“We’d never make it.”

“Well, we certainly can’t sit here all night, can we? We’ll freeze.”

“I know. I’m thinking.”

“It…it became real for a minute in there, didn’t it? That thing. When you set it on fire, you made it whole.”

“I know. I noticed.” She ran a hand through her tangled nest of hair. “Those oil drums outside, the ones with the fires burning in them? That was Jared’s idea. He noticed those things tend to stay away from anything too warm. Heat makes them tangible, and when they’re tangible they can be hurt, probably even killed. I think that’s why they get inside people to feed—the warmth of the human body makes them whole enough so that they can eat.”

Nan said, “Who’s Jared?”

“My boyfriend. The dead guy back at the Pack-N-Go.” Lowering her voice, Shawna said, “They got to him two days ago. I had to shoot him. This is his rifle. He used it to hunt deer.”

Suddenly, she laughed. And her laughter turned into tears. Nan draped an arm around her neck and drew her closer. Together, they cried.

Through absolute darkness, Todd followed the girl deep into the bowels of the church, her slender hand cold in his. When they reached a narrow corridor, Meg relit the candle, casting tallow light down along the wood-paneled walls.

“Come on,” Meg urged him, continuing down the hallway.

Todd followed. Lithographs of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary glared accusingly down at him from the walls. At the end of the hall, Todd could make out a single closed door, beneath which radiated a soft orange glow. Meg stopped outside this door, resting her hand on the doorknob.

“Don’t be mad,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Just promise. Don’t be mad.”

Stupidly, he nodded. “Okay. I promise.”

Meg opened the door and led him into the room.

Kate was tied to a chair in the otherwise empty room, a series of candles burning in ceramic plates on the floor. Kate lifted her head, her hair a stringy mess before her eyes, her shoulders and arms bound by rope. Her sweater had been removed—it sat balled up in one corner of the room, dangerously close to one of the burning candles—leaving her in nothing but a flimsy satin bra.

“Jesus, Todd,” Kate groaned.

Todd rushed to her, dropped to his knees in front of her. “What the hell happened?” He glared at Meg. “What’d you do?”

“You promised not to get mad.”

“There’s another one,” Kate said quickly. “A boy. He tied me up…took my cluh-clothes off…” She was shivering from the cold, her skin bristling with gooseflesh.

“Hang on,” Todd said, moving around back to untie her.

“You shouldn’t do that,” Meg said. “Chris tied her up for a reason.”

“Oh, yeah?” Todd returned. “What reason was that?”

Angry, Meg did not answer. She blew out her candle, which was pointless, since the room was littered with them.

The ropes untied, they dropped to the floor and onto Kate’s lap. Kate squirmed her way out of them and up out of the chair, hugging her bare chest. Her breasts were small and prickled with goose bumps, the nipples straining against the fabric of her bra in the cold. Embarrassed, Todd looked away. He gathered up her sweater from the floor and tossed it to her.

“Did your brother take the bag of ammunition, too?” he asked Meg.

But Meg was insolent. She would not answer.

“I think so,” Kate told him, tugging her sweater down over her head. “I…I don’t really remember what happened.”

“Are you hurt?”

“No.”

“All right.” Todd turned to Meg, who was watching him with a bored expression. “I want you to take me to your brother, Chris. I want to meet him.”

“He saved your life,” Meg said.

“But Chris said God sent me here to protect you, didn’t he? So let me do my job, kid.”

Conflict flickered behind Meg’s small black eyes. After a moment of quiet deliberation, she turned and marched out of the room. Crossing over the threshold, she once again relit her candle. Casting a look over her shoulder, she said, “Well, come on, then.”

Todd and Kate followed.