Snow

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

In her urgency, Kate had ushered Charlie and Cody into the sally port. She opened the back door on one of the cruisers and instructed the children to get inside. They were both trembling, with Cody clinging to her brother and whimpering audibly, and although Kate’s heart went out to them, she knew she couldn’t afford to slow down.

Before slamming the door shut, Kate bent down and peered inside. Both siblings were clutching each other and trembling with fear. Tears had carved clean slicks down their grimy faces. “No matter what you two hear,” she told them, “you both stay in here and don’t come out until I come get you. Do you understand?”

They both nodded.

Kate left them.

In the basement, Molly was petrified. She refused to leave her cot, having unconsciously barricaded herself with pillows and paperback novels. Kate had little hope that down feathers and John Grisham would be enough to keep those things at bay, if any actually happened to get in here.

“What happened to those things outside?” Molly wanted to know.

Kate set her shotgun against one wall and began stuffing extra clothes into a plastic bag to take back to the kids. “I don’t know,” she said. “They took off.”

Molly was inconsolable. “Took off? What the fuck does that mean? Where’d they go?”

“I don’t know!” Kate’s own temper was incontrollable; she felt it burst through her from the wellspring of her fury. “There was some kind of explosion down the road. It must have scared them off.”

“What explosion?” Molly pulled a pillow into her lap. Her eyes looked sloppy in their sockets. “My God, what if something happened to them?”

Kate knotted the bag of clothing, then tossed it on her cot. She went straight to the desk and began rummaging through its drawers for a lighter, a book of matches—anything that would catch fire. Blessedly, she located a Zippo with the Marines insignia on the side, and she silently thanked a God that she wasn’t so sure she believed in at the moment. She slipped the lighter into her pocket.

“What if they’re dead?” Molly wouldn’t shut the fuck up.

Kate reeled around to her. “Listen—if those things do come back here, I don’t think it’s a good idea that you stay down here.”

“It’s safe down here.”

“No,” Kate said. “It’s not. There’s only one door. If they come to it, where are you gonna go?”

“Are they inside?”

“No.” But she wondered. “I don’t think so. Not yet.”

“Oh, my God…”

“I took the kids to the sally port—it’s where they keep the cars—”

“The cars don’t work,” Molly moaned. She wasn’t listening anymore.

“It’s safer there. They’re hiding in the cars. I think you should go there, too. If anything gets inside, there’s more than one way out from the sally port. Plus, it’s made of concrete, like a garage.” She drummed her knuckles against the drywall. “Not like this Sheetrock shit.”

“You’re talking too fast.”

Kate squatted down in front of the woman. “Molly, I think you should come with me to the sally port. Do you understand?”

But Molly was shaking her head. “Fuck you. I’m not going anywhere.”

For one instant, Kate considered snatching her by the hair and dragging her upstairs. Had the woman not been pregnant, she might have done just that. But despite her terror, Molly had fight enough left in her; dragging her up the stairs might prove dangerous, even lethal, for one or both of them.

Smirking, Kate stood. “No,” she said. “Fuck you.”

Back upstairs, she gathered some food from the commissary—bags of pretzels and potato chips, a six-pack of Mountain Dew, granola bars, an uneaten Italian sub wrapped in tinfoil in the fridge—and, burdened with the halogen lamp, bag of clothes, and the shotgun by its strap over one shoulder, she carried the stuff back to the sally port.

She expected the kids to still be whimpering in the backseat of the cruiser, but when she opened the door she was startled to find them sitting stock still, their heads slightly cocked in the direction of the open door.

“Jesus,” Kate said, dumping the food and clothes into the foot well. She reached out and grabbed the collar of Charlie’s shirt, pulled him toward her. “Come here.” Slipping a hand down his collar, she felt around the smooth flesh of his shoulder blades.

“Stop it,” he whined. “Your hand’s cold.”

“I’m sorry.” She withdrew her hand, uncomfortable.

“We’re just tired,” Charlie said. Eerily, he sounded much older than he was.

“Here,” Kate said, opening the bag and pulling out the various articles of clothes. “I grabbed whatever was there. Put these on and stay warm. It’s cold in here. Just keep warm, okay?” She looked over to Cody. “How’s your headache?”

“Hurts.”

“Okay, okay. Todd and the others will be back soon, okay?”

“And then what?” Charlie said.

Kate did not have an answer for him. “And here,” she continued, filling their laps with the junk food and sodas. “Eat if you’re hungry, but don’t get sick.” She slipped back out of the car.

“Where are you going?” Cody said.

“I need to go back out into the hall, sweetheart. I need to check things out.”

“With the gun?” Cody sounded so small.

Kate nodded. “Yeah. With the gun.” She looked at Charlie. “Keep your sister warm.”

In the hall, she went around to every window she could find, peering out. The pebbled glass made it difficult to see what exactly was going on out there. At the double doors, she checked and rechecked the lock on the inside of the doors, even though she hadn’t unlocked it since Todd and the others left.

Get the fuck back here, Todd.

Nonetheless, she managed to drag one of the secretary desks out into the foyer and prop it up in front of the door. It might not stop the possessed townspeople from breaking in but it might slow them down. Enough to take a few down and then reload the shotgun, anyway.

She hoped.

Returning to the darkened storage room, she began looking around for things with which to board up the windows. There were more than enough wooden crates and the slats seemed sturdy enough; it was locating a hammer and nails that proved difficult. Eventually, though, she found some in a tool chest under an old poker table. Quickly, she set to work prying apart the crates, working like a demon and sweating through the layers of her clothes.

She stopped only when she felt a cold breeze at her back.

Holding the hammer up by her face as a weapon, she spun around and faced the darkness. Only stacked boxes caroused in the shadows, leaning into one another like deteriorating architecture. She bent and groped for the shotgun that she’d set on the floor, walking her fingers across its girth before snatching it up and propping the hilt beneath her right armpit.

I’m just scared and jumpy. I’m alone. There’s no one here.

But was she? Was she alone?

One of those things had been trying to come in through that pipe, she recalled. Had Charlie not seen it…had I not plugged it up…

She went to the wall to see if the oil rag was still jammed into the mouth of the exposed pipe. It was.

But there could be more.

The thought caused goose bumps to break out along her arms.

Frantically, she searched all the walls, and even moved heavy boxes out of the way to make sure there weren’t any more exposed pipes. Satisfied that there weren’t—and exhausted from the exercise—she paused to give herself a few moments to catch her breath.

Something was moving across the floor.

Her hand vibrating like a seismograph, she lifted the halogen lamp to better illuminate the room.

At first she didn’t see it—a dark patch in a world of dark patches; a slick of spilled oil on the concrete—but then it moved, betraying all sense of the inanimate, and Kate uttered a sharp cry. The halogen lamp fell from her hand and struck the floor. There was a shattering sound and the room went pitch black.

Oh my God oh my God oh my God what was that thing?

She’d caught only the vaguest glimpse of it, yet its image resonated like the afterimage of a flashbulb in her mind—a meaty twist of fibrous tissue, perhaps as long and as thick as an infant’s arm, that arched like an overgrown inchworm along the floor while trailing a slick of glistening mucus behind it…

And now it was somewhere in here with her.

In the dark.

Oh my God oh my God oh my God what was that THING?

Trying not to panic, she began patting down her pockets until she felt the bulge of the Zippo lighter in her hip pocket. She tweezed it out with two fingers, flipped open the lid, and rolled the flint wheel. A narrow white flame issued out of the lighter, illuminating a circle roughly three feet in diameter around her.

Then she heard it—a sandpapery shhhh as it dragged itself across the floor, followed by the tacky peel of the sticky mucus. The sound was like an old man smacking his lips in his sleep.

Kate squatted and brought the flame closer to the floor. She could see it, less than a foot away from her, coming toward her. Disgusted, she thought of dried meats hanging from deli ceilings, the phallic protrusion of cured, uncut salami. Acid burned at the back of her throat.

It was heading toward her, yes, but it was also moving away from its spot of origin: the place on the floor directly beneath the jutting pipe, which was now clogged with a balled-up oil rag. The inky drops of syrup were no longer patterned on the floor. With mounting horror, Kate realized that the thing before her was what had become of those gooey drops of bloodlike milk—that they had melded together to form this eel-like obscenity, this creeping phallus.

She realized she still held the hammer in her left hand. Steeling herself, she drew the hammer down on top of the atrocity. Its head was flattened and emitted a yellow puslike substance that stank like sulfur. Its rear still wriggled, side to side now as if in pain, and she brought the hammer down again and again and again until the thing stopped moving. When she’d finished, on the floor before her was a gnarled fibrous abortion in a puddle of yellowish glue.

Kate leaned over and vomited on the floor. And she might have even passed out, had she not been pulled from her half swoon by sudden pounding at the far end of the station.

At the front doors.

She dropped the hammer and wended her way through the darkness while holding the shotgun in both hands. She hit the hallway like a bullet and paused, wondering if the banging she’d heard had come from someplace else. Listening, all seemed quiet. Perhaps one of the—

The banging echoed again down the long, hollow corridor…and this time it came with such ferocity that the doors were shaking in their frames. The chains through the door handles rattled, and the desk she’d moved in front of the doors squealed across the tiled floor as it was, inch by inch, pushed away from the doors.

Kate charged a fresh round into the shotgun and held it up at eye level. She proceeded to march down the hallway, one eye closed, aiming the barrel of the gun straight at the center part of the two doors. If anything came bursting through there, it was going to get one motherfucker of a surprise.

Then a voice: “Kate! Kate, open the fucking doors!”

Confusion shook her. Then reality reached out and cracked her across the face. She lowered the shotgun and closed the distance to the double doors in a sprint. Before he left, Bruce had given her the key to the deadbolt. For one traumatizing moment, she forgot where she’d put it.

Oh God oh God oh—

But then she remembered, and dug it out of the rear pocket of her pants. It suddenly seemed so tiny, so useless, in her overlarge hand.

“Kate!”

“I hear you!” she shouted back, though the pounding of his fists was louder than her voice. She managed to shove the desk out of the way and, after three or four nervous jabs that missed the keyhole completely, she lucked out and jammed the key into the lock and turned it. The rolling of the tumblers was as loud as a truck starting in the dead of night.

Todd burst through the door, clutching a black nylon case to his chest. His hair was matted with snow and his skin looked an unhealthy shade of light blue. Blood trailed from one nostril. “Shut it! Shut it!”

Kate had been holding the door open in anticipation of Bruce and Brendan coming through…but when she saw no one else outside, she slammed the double doors and refastened the chain and padlock. Behind her, she could hear Todd’s boots squelching wetly down the hallway as he took off toward the computer room. Kate gripped the shotgun in both hands and raced after him. By the time she reached the computer room, he was fumbling around in the dark with the cables on the desk.

“Here,” Kate said, and clicked on the Zippo.

Todd nodded his appreciation and began digging the laptop out of its carrying case.

“What happened to the others? Are they dead?”

“I don’t know. They’re still out there.”

“Stop.” She touched his right forearm lightly, the shotgun inching up at him. “Let me see your back.”

He paused, the laptop halfway out of its case. He set it on the desk, then pulled his sweater and the shirt underneath over his head. His skin was pale, goose pimpled, his frame wiry. But his shoulders were clean.

Kate lowered the shotgun. “Those aren’t the clothes you went out in.”

“There was an accident. Hold the light closer.”

She brought the flame down close to the laptop as Todd plugged in the battery source, then ran a cable from the back of the laptop to the modem. He plugged the modem into the battery source, too, and watched as the row of green lights blinked in succession on the face of the rectangular black box—just as Bruce had demonstrated.

“Where’s everyone else?” he asked, still breathing heavily from his trek back and forth across the town.

“Molly’s still downstairs, but I put the kids in one of the police cars in the garage. After you guys left, those things started surrounding the station. They knew we were in here. I didn’t want them to get trapped downstairs without a way out.”

Todd flipped open the laptop, then squatted down to get a better view of it. Kate held the lighter’s flame closer.

“Oh,” Todd said. “Oh, shit.”

“What’s wrong?” Panic rang in her ears.

“Shit.” He sounded dejected. “The fucking screen’s cracked.”

Bending down beside him, Kate could see it: the crack from the upper right corner to the lower left, bisecting the screen. “Will it still work?”

“It better.” He depressed the power button and held his breath.

The laptop lay motionless.

Then it beeped and the tiny lights along the front panel illuminated. The screen blinked and then came on—the crack a disturbance, but not one that would hinder the laptop’s ability to perform.

“Jesus Christ,” she whispered, very close to Todd’s face. Her cheek brushed his bare forearm; he hadn’t put his shirts back on. “This could really work, couldn’t it?”

“Let’s hope so.” The Windows prompt appeared, requesting his password. Todd typed in TURBODOGS and hit Enter. The screen faded black, then opened to his desktop—the wallpaper depicting a remote island in the middle of some undisturbed Caribbean waters, clear as lucid thought, the skies unmarred by clouds and about as blue as a newborn baby’s dreams of the womb.

“I would give my right arm to be on that island right now,” Kate said, looking longingly at the screen’s wallpaper.

It took less than a minute for the programs to load. Todd danced his fingers over the keyboard and summoned the Internet Explorer box.

“Where are you going?” Kate asked.

“I’m going to contact the Bicklerville Police Department,” Todd said. “It’s the next town over and the closet police station to Woodson.” The Internet Explorer page was still loading, the screen blank. “Come on, come on…” He looked behind the laptop and saw the row of green lights blinking on the faceplate of the modem. “This should work. Come on, baby. Come on.”

The Web page died without loading.

“Fuck,” Kate said, the word nearly sticking to her throat.

Todd slammed a fist down on the desktop. He closed out the box on the screen and attempted it again. A new box appeared as the Internet Explorer began to load. “Come on…let’s make this happen…”

“If this doesn’t work, we’re dead. Those things will come back. They know we’re in here and they’ll come back. And they’ll find a way in.” She was thinking of the horrid wormlike thing she’d smashed to death with the hammer. She shuddered.

“It’ll work.”

The page was still loading…

“It’s our last chance, Todd.”

“It’ll work,” he repeated. Digging around in the front pocket of his pants, he pulled out a single dollar bill. He slammed it down on the table, then turned to her, grinning. “I’ll bet you a buck it works.”

Kate laughed and felt tears trace down her cheeks. “I don’t have any money, Todd.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “I know you’re good for it. Take the bet.”

She looked at the computer screen.

The page was still loading.

“Go on,” he urged. “Take the bet.”

Still loading…

“Okay,” she said. “You’re on.”

Still—

“Hot damn!” he howled, slapping his hands together. The Yahoo! home page opened, the Yahoo! icon header outfitted in a Christmas theme with snowmen and an ornamented tree. “We’re in business!”

Laughing through her tears, Kate clicked the lighter shut and said, “I guess I owe you a buck!”

In the search box, Todd typed “Bicklerville Iowa Police Department” and hit the search button.

Back out in the hallway, someone else began pounding on the front doors. “Oh, shit!” Kate cried, hopping up and banging the barrel of the shotgun against the lip of the desktop. She ran out of the office and down the long hallway, the dreary light coming in from the pebbled windowpanes making the hallway look as though it was submerged underwater. She struck the doors with such force she felt a twinge in her funny bone, and quickly unlocked the padlock again.

Brendan slouched through the doorway, bleeding from a gash at the side of his neck. He hooked onto Kate for support and Kate fought off a scream, the shotgun protruding up toward the ceiling between them. One hand pressed to the wound at his neck, Brendan opened his mouth to speak—“Mawwwh”—just as blood as black as squids’ ink spilled from his mouth and dribbled down the front of Kate’s shirt.

“Shut…” Brendan managed, “…doors…”

Still clinging to Brendan, Kate kicked the double doors shut, then shouted for Todd. “It’s Brendan! He’s hurt!” Black shapes began flitting behind the pebbled glass. “Jesus, Brendan, did you bring them back here?”

Brendan collapsed in her arms; it took all Kate’s strength to hold him up.

Todd came up behind her. He seemed to do a double take at the horrific amount of blood. “We need bandages,” he said, sliding both hands beneath Brendan’s armpits. “Lock the doors!”

Kate rushed to the doors while Todd dragged Brendan’s twitching body down the hall toward the bank of offices. Just as she pushed them closed, an arm slipped through the gap, firing like a piston and clawing at her. Kate screamed and began pounding at the arm with the butt of the shotgun. The thing on the other side of the door hissed like a snake just as a second arm appeared, this one stained with blood the color of Mercurochrome. The thing shoved itself against the doors, its strength too much for Kate. Instead of fighting against it, she jumped back several feet and allowed the doors to swing open.

The thing that stood on the other side of the threshold had, at one time, certainly been human—but what had happened to it over the past week or so had twisted it, broken it, carved away any sense of humanity it once had, leaving only a fiery, razor-eyed husk in its place. Its head tipped so far back on its neck, Kate was certain its Adam’s apple would burst through the taut flesh of its throat…then, opening its mouth, it released a deafening wail that shook the windowpanes and caused snow to shake off the front awning.

“Cocksucker,” Kate muttered, and fired a round at the thing’s head.

The blast tore through the upper torso of the thing, its chest opening up like some rare undersea plant. Blood splattered everywhere. The thing’s body shook, trembled, then folded almost neatly to the ground as something whitish and forceful as a windstorm funneled out of it. The whitish cloud took off like a shot out across the front yard and vanished into the veil of trees at the other end of the street.

Covered in blood herself, Kate rushed forward and slammed both doors shut. She padlocked them and felt the world tilt, as if to shake her off into space.

When she turned around, she was startled by Molly, who stood just a few feet ahead of her but cloaked in shadows. She had both hands resting on the swell of her belly, her feet clad in fluffy pink socks. “Did they come back?” Her voice sounded like someone had her around the neck. “Where’s Brendan?”

Kate pointed down the hall. “Todd took him down there. Molly!”

But Molly was off running. Kate shouldered the shotgun and went after her, suddenly conscious of all the blood that had slapped across her face and chest after shooting the thing on the front steps.

Todd had placed Brendan down on the floor in the computer room, one of Todd’s shirts wrapped as a loose bandage against the man’s throat. Blood pumped steadily from the wound and spread out in a growing puddle on the floor. Brendan bucked and kicked his legs and blinked his eyes in rapid succession. He was struggling to keep focus and stay alive.

Molly stood in the doorway, gaping down at him, the only light coming from the bluish hue radiating from the laptop’s screen. Kate rushed up behind her and nearly crashed right into her.

“Oh.” Molly’s voice was small—the voice of a dormouse. “Oh. Bren…”

Todd was tearing strips of cloth from a T-shirt, his bare chest smeared with Brendan’s blood. He caught Kate’s eyes and thrust the T-shirt at her. “Tighten the bandage on his neck,” he told her, then spun back around to the computer.

Kate bent before Brendan, ripping strips of fabric from the shirt. One knee went right into the spreading pool of blood. Brendan offered her a wan smile. His eyes looked as though they were rapidly losing focus.

“Get away from him,” Molly said from the doorway.

“He needs help,” Kate said, ignoring her. She began to tie one of the loose strips of cloth around Brendan’s neck. He winced as Kate slid it beneath his head, soaking her hands and sleeves in his blood.

“Leave him alone,” Molly continued. “You people have done enough.” Her voice softened. “Bren, honey, are you okay? Brendan?”

Brendan made a gurgling sound deep down in his throat.

“I think,” Kate stammered. “Todd, I think he’s choking on his blood!”

Todd dropped to her side and wrapped two hands around Brendan’s right forearm. He gave Brendan a tug, propping him up on his side. Brendan shuddered and a steady stream of thick lifeblood oozed from his lips and puddled at Todd’s knees.

“I said leave him alone!” Molly screamed. She looked instantly like a spoiled child, balled fists and all. “You’re killing him!”

“We’re trying to save him,” Todd said. He tightened the bandage around Brendan’s neck, and that seemed to slow the flow of blood. Some semblance of normalcy returned to Brendan’s eyes.

“They…cut me,” Brendan managed. His voice still sounded wet, gurgling.

“We just need to stop the bleeding,” Todd told him. He kept looking from Brendan to the laptop. A message box was in the center of the screen. Looking back to Brendan, Todd asked about Bruce.

“He was…right behind me…setting fires,” Brendan wheezed. “Whole town…burning.”

“I want to take him downstairs,” Molly said. There was a pleading quality to her voice now that sounded very unlike her. “It’s not safe to be up here, and he should have never gone out with you two.” She glared at Todd. “Help me take him down. He should rest.”

Todd nodded. “That’s probably a good idea.” He looked at Kate. “Help me lift him, will you?”

They stood and each slung one of Brendan’s arms over their shoulders. As Molly looked on, Kate and Todd carried Brendan back out into the hall and down the basement steps. Going down the stairs elicited soft little cries from Brendan as he struggled to combat the pain. In the backroom, they set him down on the cot beside Molly’s, and Todd rechecked the bandage at Brendan’s neck. Blood was still seeping through and the bandage was coming loose from jostling him down the stairs.

“Goddamn it,” Todd said. He unwound the bandage while Kate brought the halogen lamp closer. The wound was a gaping black maw in the left side of Brendan’s neck. To Kate, it looked grotesquely vaginal, and she fought hard not to lose it and throw up all over the place again. “One of those hooked claws?” Todd asked Brendan, curling two fingers in a pantomime of the creatures’ scythe-blades.

Weakly, Brendan said, “Yeah…”

Todd spun around and snatched a bottle of whiskey off the desk behind him. He unscrewed the cap and hovered over Brendan again like a guardian angel. “This is probably gonna sting like hell.”

“Already stings like hell,” Brendan offered, and there was a second appearance of that wan smile. His lips frothed blood.

Todd doused the wound in whiskey and Brendan screamed at the ceiling. Thick cords stood out on the poor man’s neck. Todd used up a third of the bottle cleaning the wound, soaking the cot and the nearby blankets in the process, then redressed it with the torn-away sleeves of a fresh shirt.

Eyes wide as Ping-Pong balls, Molly stepped across the room and eased herself down on her own cot. She looked as if she wanted to touch Brendan—either to comfort him or just confirm his existence—but she forced her hands to remain in her lap beneath the push of her pregnant stomach. Her fuzzy pink socks were black with blood; she’d left footprints on the floor.

Todd pulled on a fresh shirt from the pile on the rolling cart. As he buttoned it, he surveyed Brendan, who stared at the ceiling with a disquieting serenity. Todd looked to Molly. “You’ll keep an eye on him?”

Scowling, Molly turned away and stared at the liquor bottles lining the desktop. She didn’t give him an answer.