Ronald Malfi - Snow

Todd cranked the wheel all the way to the right until the Cherokee bounded over a crest of snow and came to a silent demise beside a stand of towering black pines. Todd cranked the ignition but the Jeep would not start.

Slight chuckling came from the backseat. Todd shot a look in the rearview and caught Eddie Clement’s dark, hollow-looking eyes staring right back at him. The man looked like a cadaver someone had propped up in the backseat. A chill raced down Todd’s spine.

“Forgive me,” Kate said, turning around in her seat, “but I fail to see the humor in this. Care to fill me in?”

Eddie Clement did not respond. Gradually, his laughter dissipated, but he never pried his eyes away from Todd’s in the rearview mirror. It was Todd who eventually looked away.

“Now what?” asked Nan.

“We get out and walk,” Todd said. “There’s a town somewhere up ahead and we’re going to find it. Fred, I’ve got a duffel bag behind you filled with some clothes, some bottled water, stuff like that.”

“Check,” Fred said, already popping open his door. Freezing ice whistled into the Jeep. Not wanting to be left alone in the backseat with Eddie Clement, Nan quickly followed her husband out.

Todd leaned closer to Kate. “Grab the flashlight and the map. Also, my laptop’s under your seat.”

“Anything else?” She looked hopeful.

“You don’t happen to have a portable gas stove in your purse, do you?”

“Shoot,” she said. “It’s in my other purse.”

They both climbed out of the Jeep. Todd went around back and helped Fred pull the duffel bag from the hatchback. Nan had already scavenged the oversized teddy bear; she clutched it now, almost childlike, to her frail chest. As she stood at the shoulder of the road, Todd could hear her teeth clattering together.

As she tested the flashlight and folded the map into her coat pocket, Kate cast a glance back at Eddie Clement’s silhouette still seated in the car. “What about him?”

“To hell with him,” Todd groaned, pulling the strap of the duffel bag up over one shoulder. He unzipped it and squeezed his laptop inside.

Fred slammed the hatchback shut, then gently gripped Todd’s forearm. “While I’m just as anxious to part ways with our good friend,” Fred whispered, “I think I’d feel more comfortable knowing where he is for the time being. Do you catch my drift?”

Todd considered. Fred was right. Walking alongside the Jeep, Todd thumped a fist on one of the windows. “Let’s go, Eddie.”

The man’s head barely turned to acknowledge him.

Todd opened the door. For the briefest moment, a smell passed through his nose—of something moist and rotting in a hot root cellar. Inside the Jeep, Eddie’s eyes seemed to glint like stones flecked with mica.

“Get out of the car, Eddie. We’re going for a walk.”

“I’m tired of walking.”

“What about your daughter?”

For a moment it seemed that Eddie Clement would remain seated in the backseat of the Cherokee until the apocalypse showered the earth in nuclear winter. Then, expressionlessly, he shifted his considerable bulk toward the door and practically fell out onto the snow. Todd caught him with one arm. Beneath his flannel coat, the man’s arm felt like the limb of an oak tree.

As they walked, it started to snow again. Lightly at first, but with each footstep it seemed to intensify. Todd’s toes felt numb in his boots and, after just a good five minutes, his legs began to ache. Around them, the trees seemed to grow taller and denser and crowd in closer on all sides. If it weren’t for the road, which was covered in snow but still identifiable, they would have surely wandered off into the woods and disappeared.

“I don’t like this,” Kate said, saddling up beside him. Her face had gone as pale as the moon, the only exception being the tinge of red at the tip of her small nose. “Where’s the goddamn town? We should be seeing streetlights, smoke coming up through chimneys.”

Todd nodded, then shot a look back over his shoulder. Eddie had been bringing up the rear, deliberately dragging his heavy feet like some overgrown and obstinate child. But Fred Wilkinson was apparently not comfortable with Eddie walking behind him; the older man had slowed his gait until he fell back far enough to keep Eddie firmly in his periphery.

“We should have left him back at the car,” Kate said. “What was it Nan said before? He gives me the willies.”

“Fred thought we should keep an eye on him.”

“Why?”

“Because he doesn’t trust him.”

“Do you?”

“No,” Todd said after a moment.

Behind them, Fred called out to Nan. Todd and Kate stopped in their tracks and spun around.

Nan had negotiated her way off the road and over into the billowy mounds of snow that lay thick and heavy at the foot of the pines. Still clutching the teddy bear to her chest, she stood somewhat aloof, peering through the twirling snow and into the trees.

“Nan,” Fred called again, this time hustling over to her. He gently took one elbow and followed her gaze into the shadows of the dark pines. “What is it?”

Nan blinked, then shook her head. “I thought I saw someone.”

“Where?” Fred asked.

“Right there. Through the trees.”

Cupping his hands around his mouth, Fred shouted, “Hello!” His voice echoed and caused Nan to jump.

“There’s no one there,” Todd called back. “It’s a trick of the snow, Nan. Makes you think you’re seeing things that aren’t there.”

“Speaking of things that aren’t there,” Fred said, turning around.

Todd looked, too, and found that Eddie Clement had vanished. What might have felt like relief earlier in the night now caused a tremor of panic to ripple through him.

“God,” Kate intoned. There was an octave-dropping sickness to her tone. “Where’d he go?”

“Eddie!” Fred shouted. “Eddie Clement! Where the hell are you?”

Todd rushed over to where Eddie had been standing just a moment ago. “His footprints go through here,” Todd said, pointing at the ground. Eddie’s big lumberjack footprints diverged from the roadway and cut straight through the trees on the shoulder of the road. The spacing between each print suggested he had taken off at a run.

“Son of a bitch,” Fred muttered, coming beside Todd. “Where the hell do you think—”

But before Fred could finish, Todd had taken off through the trees in pursuit of Eddie. The duffel bag slapping against his ribs, he followed the footprints through the forest, bristling pine boughs whipping him at every turn. For some feral and inexplicable reason, he knew he had to pursue.

“Todd!” Fred called from far behind him, still on the roadway. “Todd! Come back!”

At breakneck speed, Todd continued through the pines. The scent of the forest was overwhelming, infusing itself in his nose and in his skin. An image of his childhood up in Hancock flashed beneath his eyelids like subliminal advertising. Something solid and unyielding struck his right shin but he kept on running. Again, he caught wind of that awful smell—the decomposing of something dead in an old root cellar—and he reached out blindly with one hand as he ran, certain his fingers would close around Eddie’s tattered flannel coat just beyond the curtain of pine needles mere inches before his face—

He stumbled out into a clearing and fell face-first into the snow. His duffel bag swung around and whapped against the top of his head. Briefly, stars exploded before his eyes. When he lifted his face up out of the snow, it took a second or two for all the little pixels that comprised his vision to fall back into place. And when they did, his breath caught in his throat. It took all his strength to push himself up onto his knees.