Ronald Malfi - Snow

“This is going to sting,” Fred said, and poured some of the peroxide into the wound while he held it open just slightly with a finger and thumb.

“Oh,” Shawna cried, and bucked her hips. One hand shot out and grasped Todd about the wrist. “Oh, shit!”

“Easy-easy-easy-easy,” Fred crooned. It was probably how he muttered to the dogs and cats he worked on in a typical day at the office. “Atta girl…” Glancing over at Kate, Fred said, “Give me some light, will you?”

Nan held up the dish towel to shield the soft beam of the flashlight from anything that might be just beyond the convenience store’s windows. Todd snuck a glance over Fred’s shoulder. The gash was deep, the tissue dark red and fibrous inside. Something wet rolled over in his stomach.

“How did this happen?” Todd asked.

“One of those things took a swipe at me.”

“What things? You mean like that guy out there dead in the street?”

“No,” she said, gritting her teeth as Fred addressed the wound once again. “I mean like what was inside that guy dead out in the street. What came out of him when I shot him.” She grunted and added, “That was Bill Showalter, by the way. Owned the hardware store since I was a kid.”

Todd and Kate exchanged a glance over Fred’s head.

“Shit, that hurts!”

“Hold still, darling,” Fred said, his nose nearly pressed to the wound. “Kate, would you give Nan the flashlight? I need you to find me one of those portable sewing kits.”

“No fucking way,” Shawna said, and attempted to draw her injured leg up to her chest. Fred’s hand was surprisingly firm and held her down on the counter. “You’re not seriously gonna sew me up, are you?”

“You need stitches. It’s the best I can do.”

Kate handed the flashlight to Nan, then slipped down the nearest aisle in search of the sewing kit.

Shawna’s grip on Todd’s wrist tightened. She looked up at him with dark, bleary eyes. Her face looked muddy and out of focus. “That bourbon I mentioned,” she said. “It’s down behind the counter.”

Todd nodded, then liberated his wrist from her grip. He dipped down behind the counter and was uncharacteristically heartbroken by the tiny dog bed, blankets, paperback novels, and random snacks stacked back here: Shawna’s makeshift hideaway. He located a bottle of Wild Turkey and unscrewed the cap.

“One for you, one for me,” he said, taking a swig, wincing, and handing the bottle over to Shawna.

“Down the hatch,” she said, and embarrassed Todd with the amount of alcohol she downed in one swallow.

Kate returned with a little plastic case full of various threads, some sewing needles, and spare buttons.

“Perfect,” Fred said. “I’ve got a lighter in my right coat pocket. Heat the needle to sterilize it.”

“Fuck,” groaned Shawna. She took another swig.

Kate fished the lighter out of Fred’s coat pocket and proceeded to heat the needle while Nan balanced the flashlight beneath the tented dish towel.

“They’re almost not even there,” Shawna said. She was looking blankly across the store, her eyes unfocused. “They’re like smoke. They showed up with the snowstorm earlier this week. They look just like little…little tornados of snow, just twirling in the air, until they let themselves be seen. Then they only look like ghosts…like the suggestion of a person, an unfinished drawing. Not all there.”

Once again, Todd thought of the little girl with no face. Emily. Who the hell was Emily? Who the hell was Eddie Clement? Or what the hell was he?

Kate handed over the sterilized needle to Fred, who managed to thread the eyelet on the first shot.

“They can pass right through you and you wouldn’t even know it,” Shawna went on. She was in a different place now, her eyes so completely unfocused she could have been staring at the surface of a different plane of existence. “Except for their arms. They can concentrate and make their arms solid, just long enough to get inside you. See, that’s how they do it—with their arms. But they’re not like regular arms. They’re more like those big curved sickle blades. Like the kind of blade you see Death carrying in the movies.”

“A scythe,” Todd said.

“They can make those bladed arms solid just long enough to drive them inside you. They go in through the shoulder blades and they walk people, like puppets. Ouch!”

“Sorry,” Fred murmured. He was stitching up her leg now.

Shawna took another hit from the bottle. Todd had to steady her hand to prevent the gingery liquor from spilling all down her chest.

“That’s how I got cut,” she went on. “One of those bladed arms came swinging out of the blizzard and split me right open. But, see, they can’t be solid long enough on their own. That’s why they climb inside people. In people, they can move around and do whatever they want.” Her muddy brown eyes swung back to Todd. “They can feed.”

This can’t be real. This can’t be happening. I’m probably on the airplane right now, snoring loudly in my seat and disrupting half the passengers, on my way to Des Moines. Because this isn’t real. It can’t be.

“Ugh,” Shawna groaned, and her head slumped backward on her neck. Todd was quick to slide his hands against her shoulders to prevent her from cracking her skull on the countertop, but he wasn’t quick enough to catch the bottle of Wild Turkey before it rolled off the counter and broke on the floor.

“Ease her down,” Fred said serenely. “She’s okay. She just passed out.”

“Was she delirious?” Kate wanted to know. “All that talk of…of whatever the hell that was?”

No one answered.

CHAPTER EIGHT

And there was Justin, tiny baby Justin, just a pink and puckered smear in Brianna’s arms, the smell of him—of the baby—infused throughout the nursery: that smell of powder and warmth and new skin. Eyes squinted into piggy little slits, knuckled fists pumping blindly at the air, the baby cried a soundless cry. Brianna fed the child, looking tired and worn out but looking somehow refreshed and vivacious and full of some indescribable light, too, all at the same time. It was a wonder to behold, all of it. And Todd thought, I’m going to be a better man for you, little baby. I’m going to do things better than I’ve ever done them before, harder than I’ve ever done them before. I’m going to do all that for you, little baby. I’m going to try to make the world just one iota better for our little family and for you, for you, for you.

He grunted awake, a moan caught somewhere in his throat. Kate was lying beside him on the floor where they’d spread out pads of foam from egg crates they’d found in the storage room. One of Kate’s arms was draped over his side.

He sat up stiffly and looked around. Fred was awake, the rifle in his lap while he kept guard by the darkened windows. On the floor beside him, Nan was sleeping soundlessly on her own foam bedding, Fred’s coat draped over her. Snoring loudly by the checkout counter, Shawna slept beneath a bundle of dirty dish towels and aprons.

“I can’t believe I actually fell asleep,” Todd whispered. He eased Kate’s arm off him and she rolled over, murmuring in her sleep. “How long have I been out?”

“Only about an hour.”

“Seen any action?”

Still peering out the windows into the pitch-black night, Fred said, “I thought I saw movement between the barbershop and the bank across the square, maybe fifteen minutes ago. But I can’t be sure. And there’s been nothing since.”

Todd looked across the store to where Shawna slept fitfully beneath heaped towels and aprons. “Will she be okay?”