Ronald Malfi - Snow

“Unless infection sets in, she should be fine.”

“What do you make of what she told us?”

“I think she was talking real fast and real loopy because I was driving a sewing needle into a hole in her leg.”

“That doesn’t really answer my question. Do you believe her?”

Fred spat a gob of brown saliva into a Pepsi bottle. He must have found a packet of dip somewhere. “I believe she’s scared pretty bad and has been trapped in this town for the better part of the week, fending off people who appear to have…”

“To have what?”

“You saw that man, Todd. I don’t know what to call it, do you?”

“It reminded me of those fucked-up zombie movies I used to love when I was a kid.”

“Yeah,” Fred said, chuckling. He spat another gob into the Pepsi bottle. In his lap, the steel of the rifle gleamed a ghostly blue. “Maybe something got in the town’s water supply, made ’em all a little bonkers. Some chemical spill or something.”

“What sort of chemical would do that?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea.”

Todd sighed and rubbed his face. “So what do we do now?” he said after a few moments of listening to the women breathe.

“We need to get out of here.” Fred jerked his chin toward the window. “I’ve been thinking. All the cars we tried in the street have either died or the keys are nowhere to be found. But those houses we passed along the street to get here? They had garages. There’re probably cars in there, full of gas, and keys hanging from a peg on the wall or something. That’s our way out.”

Todd felt himself nodding in agreement…although the thought of entering one of those dark, soulless houses did not appeal to him.

Fred went on, “I think that if—”

“What?”

Fred was staring out the window. One hand gripped the rifle stock tighter.

Todd turned and looked out the window, too. There was movement halfway across the town square, a shadow hustling among the fires that still burned in the oil barrels. More shadows. A woman emerged from behind the pedestal of the bronze statue, completely naked except for a pair of rubber boots, her hair hanging like a frozen wet mop over her face, the points of her pelvic bones jutting like bullhorns. She staggered through the snow, seeming to sniff at the air, and finally dropped down on all fours when she reached the bloodied slick of entrails that had been sprayed across the snow on the far side of the statue. As Todd and Fred watched, the woman began stuffing bits of flesh into her mouth.

“We’re not seeing this,” Todd whispered. “Tell me we’re not seeing this.”

“Look at her back. What is that?”

Todd looked. He could make out twin slashes in the woman’s flesh, cut diagonally at each shoulder blade. It was as if she were an angel whose wings had been shorn off. Instantly, Todd thought of the slits in Eddie Clement’s flannel jacket.

Fred murmured, “Now what do you suppose that is?”

“Shawna said something about…about those things cutting into people’s shoulders, wearing them like puppets.” His face was so close to the window now, he was fogging up the glass. “Remember?”

Across the square, a second figure emerged. This one was male, dressed in a bathrobe that hung open. He walked with the lumbering gait of a crippled deer. When he bent down to join the woman eating entrails from the snow, Todd could make out similar cuts along the back of the man’s bathrobe, just like those that had been on the back of Eddie Clement’s jacket.

“We can’t go out there,” Todd said.

“They’re just people.”

“No, they’re not. Look at them. How can you say that?”

“What I meant is they can die just like people. That kid sleeping back there took that guy’s head off and he dropped to the street like a wet sack of laundry.”

“But then that thing came out of him,” Todd said. “Who knows what that thing can do?”

As if the two people out in the street could read their thoughts, they perked up and sniffed at the air again. Moving much more swiftly this time, they scrambled to their feet and darted directly toward the convenience store at a steady run.

“Oh, shit,” Fred groaned, sliding down against the wall while fumbling with the rifle in his lap. “Get down.”

But Todd was already down, just barely peering over the window’s ledge to watch the two figures charge at them from across the street.

But they were not heading for the convenience store. They stopped when they approached the headless corpse in the street. The woman dropped again to her knees and began to feed. The man in the bathrobe remained standing, swaying now in the frigid night air, the strong wind bullying his hair. He began to shudder, his head lolling back on his neck. Pasty white foam began frothing from the man’s lips.

“What the hell’s going on, Fred?” Todd whispered, just as Kate, wide-eyed, sat up beside him. He grabbed her and pulled her down out of sight, pressing her face very close to his.

“Oh my God,” he heard her mutter.

The man in the bathrobe began vibrating like a tuning fork. At his feet, the nude woman continued to devour the headless corpse, hardly aware of what was happening to her companion.

Kate squealed and Todd quickly clapped a hand over her mouth. Their commingling exhalations were fogging up the glass to the point where it was becoming harder to see out.

Then, instantly, the man in the bathrobe simply caved inward, as if he were a piece of paper someone had folded down the middle. A gout of blood arched up out of his mouth just as his body, like a used husk, sagged to the snow. What remained where he stood was a partially translucent visage that, for a split second, appeared almost human. Todd could make out the suggestion of a head and limbs branching from a central torso, and there was something hideous and depraved in that resemblance. Then its arms raised and Todd suddenly knew Shawna Dupree had been exactly right in her estimation: the thing’s arms were twin scythes, like curved blades that ended in needle-sharp points of glittering light. The bladed arms reared up in a bizarre mockery of the bronze horse at the center of the square. Then the creature vanished into a whirlwind of giant snowflakes. The whirlwind twisted and floated, practically breathed, then dispersed into the night until no semblance of it was left behind.

Kate was spilling silent tears over Todd’s hand, which he still held tightly to her mouth.

The nude female stood, moon-shimmering gore spilling down her body, and took off into the shadows. She just barely left footprints behind in the snow.

It took several drawn-out seconds for the world to come crashing back down around them. In that time, no one spoke, no one moved. When Todd finally pried his hand away from Kate’s mouth, the imprint of her teeth was impressed upon his palm.

“I’m going to throw up,” she croaked, and quickly got up and rushed to the bathroom. The noise caused Nan to jar awake. She groaned and swatted feebly at the air until Fred slid over and soothed her.

Todd couldn’t pull his eyes away from the square. It seemed no matter where he looked he could see the velvet twist of shapes moving through the shadows. How many of those things were out there? Every floating ember of snow caused his stomach to clench. Was it really snow or was it something else?

“Did you see?” It was Shawna, her voice like that of a ghost speaking through the darkness. Todd turned to find her sitting upright, the towels and aprons draped about her like a homeless person. Her hair was askew and her eyes were as wide as hubcaps. “What did I tell you? Did you see them?”

“How many are there?” Todd asked.