Ronald Malfi - Snow

Returning her smile, Todd nodded. “All right. Let’s go.”

They started by peering in the window of an old hardware store. The door was locked and Todd felt uncomfortable smashing the glass. “Let’s go around until we find a shop that’s unlocked.”

“What if none of them are unlocked?”

“Then we break in. But I’m not too keen on making any unnecessary noise around here.”

“In other words, you don’t want to bring attention to us,” Kate said, the underlying message being that Todd believed there were still people around someplace. Hiding.

They crunched along the icy sidewalk, stopping at each door—a bookstore, a Laundromat, a flower shop—and tugging on the door handles. Each one was locked up tight against the dark and the cold. If the townspeople had evacuated in such a hurry, it seemed odd they’d take the time to lock up all the doors.

“You were going to tell me something about that little girl,” Kate said behind him as he peered into the smoked glass of the flower shop. Just hearing Kate mention the little girl caused the hairs to stand at attention along the nape of his neck. “Something about her face. What was it?”

“Forget it.” He turned away from the window and walked over to a convenience store. “I was just seeing things. My mind playing tricks on me.”

“You can’t even convince yourself that, let alone me. Tell me.”

He sighed. “It was…”

“What?”

But he’d caught movement inside the convenience store. “Quick, give me the flashlight.”

“Anything?” Nan called from the curb.

Fred felt around the steering column of an old Buick. There were no keys in the ignition. “Nothing,” he called back. Then, under his breath, he uttered, “Damn it to hell.” He checked the visor, under the floor mats, in the glove compartment: nothing.

He climbed out of the car and ambled over to an old Volkswagen Beetle. The driver’s side door stood open but the interior lights were off. A dusting of snow had fallen across the windshield. On his way, he summoned a warm smile for Nan. Over the years, Fred Wilkinson had become quite adept at masking his fears for Nan’s benefit. It was ingrained in him, just as it had been ingrained in Fred’s old man. Those first eighteen months when they’d moved to Atlanta and the veterinary practice seemed on the brink of failure, he’d kept a smile on his face despite the hardship. Similarly, when he’d come down with cancer five years ago, Nan would have beat him to the grave with her worrying, had he not been the poster child for optimism. He’d beaten the cancer and proved to Nan that positive energy could be just as effective as traditional medicine; even though he’d been scared shitless, Nan had never known. It was just how he was built, with those easy grins and strong embracing arms coming as naturally to him as breathing.

He leaned down and peered into the Volkswagen and immediately fought off a wave of nausea.

“Fred?” Nan called from the curb as he staggered a few steps back from the car, a hand over his mouth and nose. “What is it? What’s the matter?”

He waved a hand at her. “Stay there, hon.”

Taking a deep breath, he approached the car once again, bending down and peering inside. The driver’s seat was saturated with blood, the surface of which sparkled with ice crystals. A single sneaker was wedged beneath the accelerator, and it appeared to be filled with ink. The cold kept much of the smell at bay, although it was impossible not to catch a whiff of the underlying decay that hummed like a cloud of flies inside the car.

The keys were dangling from the ignition.

“Figures,” Fred muttered, leaning over the messy seat and cranking the ignition. The engine groaned but would not turn over. Which was just as well; could they have really all piled in here and driven away? All that blood…

Someone would have to pry that sneaker out from under the accelerator first, he thought, then immediately vomited in the driver’s side foot well. Thankfully, the snow across the windshield blocked him from Nan’s view.

After a few seconds catching his breath, Fred wiped his mouth with his sleeve, then extricated himself from the Volkswagen. As he stood, tendons popped in his back. Nan had been on him about not doing his exercises lately. He was paying the price for his lethargy now.

“No good?” Nan said.

He shook his head. “Wouldn’t start. I think it might—”

A man was standing directly behind Nan, no more than five feet away. His clothes hung off him in tattered ribbons and were splattered with blood. The man’s eyes were dead in their sockets, his face as expressionless as an Egyptian mummy.

“Hon,” Fred said quickly, holding both arms out toward his wife. “Come here. Quick.”

“Fred, what in the—”

“Come here,” he repeated. “Now.”

Todd pressed the flashlight against the window of the convenience store to eliminate the glare. Inside, the flashlight illuminated overturned aisles, bags of potato chips and popcorn on the floor. Soda had congealed to the tiled floor and busted soda cans were scattered about like spent shotgun shells.

“What do you see?” Kate said in a low voice by his ear.

“Place is a mess.”

“Is there someone in there?”

“I thought I saw movement…”

“But now you’re not so sure?”

“I’m not—”

The flashlight’s beam fell on what at first appeared to be a strange tropical plant caught in the process of blossoming. It took several seconds for Todd’s brain to register what he was actually seeing, and he jerked backward away from the glass. The flashlight clattered to the snow, causing the beam to cut out.

“What?” Kate said. “What’d you see?”

“Someone’s dead in there,” he managed. “Head was split open…”

“Oh my God…”

Again, movement from within the store caught Todd’s attention. He jerked his head up and squinted through the darkness just as a whitish shape flitted across the aisles. Whoever—or whatever—was inside was heading for the door.

“Get back,” Todd shouted at Kate. Together, they both stumbled backward off the snow-packed curb.

The convenience store’s door flung open, Christmas bells on a strip of rawhide rebounding off the smoked glass, and a shape sprung out into the night. There was the sound of a long-barreled gun being charged and Todd felt his body brace for impact.

Nan took a hesitant step toward Fred, an odd, almost coy smile playing across her features.

“Fred, what is it?”

But Fred was through pampering. He reached out and grabbed Nan’s wrist, yanking her down off the curb and into his arms. He was still staring at the man in the tattered and bloodied clothes, who was staring right back at him with inkblot eyes. Holding Nan in a strong embrace, Fred began to back away from the curb.

Nan pushed off him, looked up at his face. “What the hell has gotten into you?” But she must have noticed that he was looking at something over her shoulder, because she turned and followed his gaze. When she saw the man in the bloody clothes on the sidewalk, mere feet from where she’d just been, Fred felt her entire body go rigid.

“Are you hurt?” Fred said, addressing the stranger. He continued walking backward, unwilling to take his eyes off the stranger. “Hello? Are you okay?”

“Fred…”

He rubbed Nan’s head with one hand. It didn’t appear that the stranger had a weapon; if he were to rush at them, Fred was pretty confident he could fend him off. Still…

“Todd!” he shouted. “Kate!”

The stranger hunkered down, like an animal preparing to pounce. A silvery rope of spit oozed from the man’s bottom lip.