Snow

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“What it is? What do you see?” Nan asked, leaning closer to Shawna to peer out of the driver’s side window. Shawna could hear the older woman’s teeth rattling in her head. Sure enough, if they stayed here much longer, they’d both turn into popsicles before morning.

Shawna pressed one finger against the glass. “I keep seeing something out beyond those buildings. A bright light. Flashing.”

“I don’t—” Nan began, but was cut off as the light flashed once again. It was like a camera’s flashbulb going off in a dark alley across the square. “Yes! What is that?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s back there?”

“That’s Fairmont Street. My house is back there.”

“What could be flashing like that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think it could be help?” Nan’s voice was sadly optimistic.

“I think,” Shawna said, “it could be absolutely anything.” She pulled the rifle up into her lap and proceeded to load it to capacity. “I should probably check it out.”

“Alone?”

Shawna surveyed the woman. She was in fantastic shape, but was she mentally prepared for another trek across town? She’d witnessed her husband turn into a monster, then have his head blown off, less than an hour ago…

“I don’t want to sit in this car by myself, Shawna. I’ll go crazy.”

Try locking yourself in a convenience store with your boyfriend’s headless corpse, she felt like saying, but didn’t.

Shawna nodded. “All right. But we have to be quick and careful.”

“If there’s—oh!” Nan had turned and caught sight of the mess in the backseat. She stared at it, her jaw unhinged. “Dear Jesus.”

“Don’t look at it.”

“Oh. Oh. Oh.”

“Are you with me, Nan?”

Nan took a deep breath, then turned away from the backseat. She sat facing forward, her hands planted firmly in her lap. After a few seconds, she said, “I’m with you.”

Meg led them both up a flight of narrow, atticlike stairs that creaked beneath their collective weight. The flame of her candle caused their shadows to jump and bob along the walls. Despite the drop in temperature and the fact that he’d left his coat back at the Pack-N-Go to fit in the ventilation shaft, Todd was sweating profusely. Something was roiling around in his guts—a warning. Something was very wrong here.

There was a hatch directly above their heads at the top of the stairs. Meg knocked on it twice, then pushed it up to open it. Hinges squealed. Before crawling up, the girl castigated them with a disquieting stare that made her seem much older than her fourteen years. Then she climbed up and out of the hatch.

Todd followed, bracing himself for anything.

Topside, he found himself in a square room with windows on every wall—thick, hand-blown glass panes reinforced with iron piping. The whole town was visible from this vantage. Directly above his head, an ancient copper bell hung from recessed rafters. He caught a whiff of something in the air, something that was not necessarily dangerous but nonetheless did not belong. It took him a moment to place the smell: corn chips.

Meg crept off into the shadows where the silhouette of another person—her brother, Chris?—sat slouched in a folding chair. As Todd helped Kate up out of the hatch, Meg thumped the figure on one shoulder. The silhouette jerked and sat upright, bags of potato chips crunching beneath his shifting feet while he smacked his lips together.

“What?” the boy growled…then saw Todd and Kate standing before him. He sprung up out of the chair and sauntered into the panel of moonlight coming in through the nearest window. He was tall and broad-shouldered but possessed a child’s face, with doughy cheeks, a dimpled chin, and an infant’s squinty eyes. Like a vagabond, he wore several layers of clothing, from beneath which his sizable gut protruded almost comically, and there was a strip of purple satin tied around his forehead like a bandana. Todd was quick to notice his pistol stuffed into the boy’s waistband.

“Are you Chris?” Todd asked.

The boy looked him up and down. Then his piggy little eyes sought out Kate and scrutinized her, as well. Turning to Meg, he said, “Who told you to untie her?”

“I didn’t,” Meg said. She pointed at Todd. “He did.”

Chris’s hand shot out and slapped her across the face.

“Hey!” Kate shouted. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”

“Who are you both?” Chris demanded. “Where’d you come from? You’re not from town.”

Todd held up both hands in an effort to show his intentions were not of the hostile variety. “Just take it easy. You’re right; we’re not from around here. Our car broke down tonight and we came into town looking for help. We have absolutely nothing to do with anything that’s been going on around here.”

“The girl’s got cuts on her back,” Chris said.

“What?” Todd stammered. For a second he thought Chris was talking about Meg. But then he remembered the lacerations he’d seen on Kate’s bare back as he’d untied her from the chair, and at least some of this madness began to make sense. “No,” Todd said, “you’re wrong.”

“I saw the cuts myself.” The boy was adamant.

“She’s not one of them,” Todd said.

“Me?” Kate said, incredulous.

“Turn around,” Chris demanded of Kate. “Lift up your shirt. I want to see.”

“Fuck off, you perverted little twerp,” Kate barked.

Chris yanked the pistol from his waistband. Todd sidestepped in front of Kate, his hands still up. “Take it easy. She’ll show you. Kate, turn around and lift up your shirt. He thinks you’re one of them.”

“This is insane.”

“So is getting shot by Lord of the Flies over there,” Todd countered. “Just do it.”

Slowly, Kate turned around and pulled her shirt up over her shoulders. The smooth canvas of her back was marred by flecks of broken skin and jagged lacerations—probably from when the gun shop’s window had imploded, sending spears of glass every which way.

“See?” Todd said, tracing a hand along Kate’s back. She shivered at his touch. “They’re just cuts. We’ve been running from those things and got hit with some broken glass. Okay? She’s normal. We both are.”

Chris was chewing on the inside of one cheek. His distrustful, oil-spot eyes darted from Kate to Todd to Kate again. Finally he returned the pistol to his waistband with an unfavorable grunt. “Okay,” he said, though he sounded miserable at having been wrong.

Kate lowered her sweater, then hugged herself with her arm. She was shivering fiercely. Todd rubbed a hand along one of her arms and asked Chris if they had any extra clothes.

Chris dropped back down into his folding chair. He glared at his sister. “Take her down to the trunk. She can pick out whatever she wants.”

Wordlessly, Meg approached Kate, took her by the hand, and led her back down the hatch. Kate cast one last glance at Todd before disappearing down the darkened stairwell in the floor.

Todd moved to the nearest window. He could see the town square clearly from up here. Beyond that, a community fire hall, a building that may have been a school, and a sheriff’s office—all dark. Cars lay overturned in ditches, and near the outskirts of town Todd could make out an ambulance that had died along the shoulder of the road, its rear doors flung open, the whole thing powdered with snow. Then a sinking feeling overtook him when he noticed that the windows of the Pack-N-Go had been blown out. “Oh, shit…”

“I saw you run across the square,” Chris said from his folding chair. He had a voice like a squeaky trumpet. The stink of corn chips was cloying, reminding Todd of awful foot odor; it was all he could do not to gag. “There’s more of you down there.”

“There were,” Todd said. “I hope they’re okay.”

“Two ladies made it out of the store,” Chris said. “I saw them, too.”

Todd turned to him. “You saw them? Where’d they go?”

Disinterested, the boy shrugged. “Don’t know.” Then, adopting an exasperated tone, he said, “I can’t see everything, you know.” The sound of his voice suggested Todd was an imbecile for maybe thinking otherwise.

Beyond the square Todd could make out intermittent flashing white lights. They looked like gunshots reflected off the buildings. “What’s that?” he asked the boy.

“Those lights? Downed power lines.”

“So that’s why the power’s out.”

“They did it,” Chris said. “Those things.”

“Do you know if there’s anybody left in town?”

“What’s the matter with you? Don’t you know?” Chris said, nearly snorting. “The whole town is still here. It’s just that most of ’em are…well, they’re different now.”

“That’s an understatement.”

Chris sat upright in his chair. “What’d you say?” he nearly shouted at Todd.

“Never mind.” “Don’t tell me to never mind. I asked you a question.” Those bags of chips crunched beneath his feet again.

“I said, ‘that’s an understatement.’ It was sarcasm.”

“Don’t make fun of me. I was left in charge. I’m running things around here now.”

“Left in charge by whom?”

“My dad. So go fuck yourself.” He licked his lips and sounded instantly nervous. Todd assumed “fuck” was not typically part of the boy’s vocabulary. “You’re a stranger here, anyway.”

“I’m not trying to do anything. I’m not trying to take over, either. You want to be in change, Chris, that’s just fine with me. I just want to get out of here.”

“You can’t. You can’t get out of here.”

“Why’s that?”

“Those things won’t let you. There’s no way out.” He leaned forward in his chair and tapped the stained-glass windowpane with the handgun. Todd hadn’t even seen him take it from his pants this time. “They’re in the snow; haven’t you noticed? They are the snow.”

“Still,” Todd said, “there’s gotta be a way. If we can get to a car that will start, we can drive out of here—”

“The cars out in the square are dead. My parents tried to start one. That’s when they got taken.”

“Taken?”

“Taken away,” Chris said, irritated. “By the snow.”

This chubby bastard is off his rocker, Todd thought.

“My dad came back but we stopped that. I don’t know what happened to my mom.”

“What do you mean?”

Chris frowned and faded back into the gloom.

My dad came back but we stopped that…

“Are you religious?” Chris asked suddenly. “What religion are you?”

“I was born Catholic,” Todd confessed, “but this is the first time I’ve been in a church in maybe a decade. Why?”

Chris made a snorting sound but didn’t answer.

Todd turned and looked back out the window. “Holy shit. That’s Nan and Shawna.” He went to pry open the window and call to them but the window was stuck.

“Stop that!” Chris shouted, jumping out of his chair.

“Those are my friends down there!”

“They’re as good as dead. Hey, stop trying to open that window!”

“I’m just try—”

A dull crack to the back of his head sent Todd sailing off into darkness.

Surprisingly, they crossed the town square without difficulty. In fact, it unnerved Shawna just how easy it was. With Nan close behind her, she crept down an alley between two storefronts and climbed through a wedge of pine trees on the other side. Several times she glanced over her shoulder to make sure Nan was keeping up. Each time, the older woman offered Shawna a tired smile but showed no signs of fatigue. She’s a tough old broad, Shawna thought.

“Be quiet,” Shawna said as they reached the cusp of the pine trees. Together they crouched down in the snow and peered across the street. The houses along Fairmont were just as dark and silent as the rest of the town. Shawna could make out her own home, nearly a stone’s throw away, with its dilapidated porch swing and Christmas decorations drooping from the eaves. Was this really Christmas morning? It seemed impossible.

The street itself was utterly quiet. From what she could tell from sitting in the Volkswagen, this was where those flashes of light had been coming from…but now she could see nothing but the infestation of deepening shadows. Snow still fell lazily—a sight that caused Shawna growing discomfort. I’m never going to look at snow the same way again, she thought…then on the heels of that: If I live through tonight.

“There,” Nan said, just as a white spark of light exploded on the front lawn of the Barristers’ house. “A downed power line.”

“Damn,” Shawna muttered. “I was hoping it would be the National Guard.”

“Which house is yours?” Nan asked.

Shawna pointed.

“Can we go there?”

“No. We can’t go in any of those houses.”

“Why not?”

“Because they’re not empty.”

“What do you mean?”

“There’s roughly twelve hundred people in this town. Those who aren’t dead are something else now. There are puppets in those houses. They look like people but they’re not people. Not anymore.”

“Like those people that chased Todd and Kate up to that church? And like what happened…happened to Fred?”

“No. They were something different. Those people were like socks—they serve a quick and hasty purpose. These other people…I think it’s what happens if the creatures take up permanent residence. Not just to feed, but to live among us. They act like people but they’re not really people. Real Invasion of the Body Snatchers bullshit.”

“Lord,” Nan said. “I’ve seen one. We picked him up out on the highway. He said his name was Eddie Clement and he was out looking for his daughter. And there was a daughter, and they ran off together.”

“It’s like if those creatures stay inside you too long they get stuck there. They become some strange hybrid of monster.”

“And they’re…in those houses?”

“Yes. Some of them, anyway. No way to tell which ones.”

“But if they’re still half people, we can talk to them. They might listen to us. They could—”

“No. They only look like people. They’re different now.”

Across the street the power line sparked and popped, lighting up the front of the Barristers’ house.

“We need to find a warm place to hide,” Shawna began. “I think we can make it over to—”

“Look.” Nan pointed farther down the street. “A little boy.”

But it wasn’t a little boy. Shawna knew better. The child—maybe six or seven years of age, judging by his size—stood in the center of Fairmont Street in nothing but his pajamas and bare feet. If it weren’t for the considerable distance between them and the wedge of pines that were shielding them from the roadway, Shawna would have sworn the damn thing was staring straight at them.

“What if he’s normal?” Nan said. “What if he needs help?”

“He’s not human,” Shawna assured her. “Not anymore.”

Nan was looking hard through the darkness at the boy’s frail and seemingly trustworthy frame. After a moment, she said, “Is there…there something wrong with his face?”

Shawna was busy patting down her pockets for extra rifle rounds. “Just stay back, Nan. Don’t leave the trees.”

“I think—”

Nan’s voice cut out. Shawna whipped around to see a blurry-faced figure emerge through the pines, one hand covering Nan’s mouth. The poor woman’s eyes blazed above the soot-covered knuckles. Nan’s legs kicked out as the figure dragged her backward through the trees.

Shawna lunged forward and grabbed Nan’s ankle. With her free hand, she swung the rifle around and jammed the butt against her shoulder. Aimed high. Pulled the trigger.

The pine trees shuddered. A low howl emanated from within the copse of trees. Nan’s legs were still kicking furiously, her body buried in the pines from her waist up. Shawna yanked Nan toward her but only succeeded in tearing Nan’s pants. Shawna fell back on her buttocks, the rifle thumping to the snow.

A strangled cry broke through the trees as Nan’s legs were swallowed up into the pines.

Grabbing the rifle, Shawna charged forward, pine branches whipping at her face. She cried out for Nan but the woman did not answer. She got the sense that the figure was dragging Nan through the trees just mere feet in front of her, but she could not catch up. Risking it, she raised the rifle up high and fired another shot. This one vanished into distant space. Shawna’s ears rang.

Finally she burst through the trees and spilled back out into the alleyway. Directly ahead of her, the figure was running at breakneck speed, dragging Nan behind him by her hair. Again, Shawna leveled the gun and fired two shots in a row. Both struck the figure in the back but did not slow him down.

“Shawwwwnaaaa!” Nan screamed as the figure dragged her out into the town square.

Shawna pursued, her lungs burning, her feet numb. Just as she reached the street, she saw the upper portion of the man’s body blur and lose consistency. It became a wavering shimmer of bright light and twirling snow. The figure launched up off the ground as it simultaneously became a cloud of rattling snow, carrying Nan Wilkinson with it.

Shawna raised the rifle…but there was no longer anything to shoot at…

Nan let out one final scream as she was carried off into the night sky.

“Jesus…” Shawna’s throat rasped.

The barefoot child in the pajamas appeared at the opposite end of the square. At this closer distance, Shawna could make out the smooth, unmarred convexity of flesh that made up the child’s face. There were no eyes, no mouth, no nose—just a fleshy bubble that appeared to drip down from the boy’s hairline.

Two more white moon-faces rose up from behind a parked car. Farther down the avenue, a mound of snow rose up off the ground like a missile rising up out of an underground silo.

Shawna turned and ran.