Ronald Malfi - Snow

We’re going to sit here and freeze to death in this car, Shawna thought. Amazingly, the thought nearly sent her into a fit of laughter. Surely that would have calmed Nan. Sitting in a car with a crazy person…

“What if we just walked back out to the main road?” Nan suggested. “We could wait for another car to drive by and flag them down.”

“We’d never make it.”

“Well, we certainly can’t sit here all night, can we? We’ll freeze.”

“I know. I’m thinking.”

“It…it became real for a minute in there, didn’t it? That thing. When you set it on fire, you made it whole.”

“I know. I noticed.” She ran a hand through her tangled nest of hair. “Those oil drums outside, the ones with the fires burning in them? That was Jared’s idea. He noticed those things tend to stay away from anything too warm. Heat makes them tangible, and when they’re tangible they can be hurt, probably even killed. I think that’s why they get inside people to feed—the warmth of the human body makes them whole enough so that they can eat.”

Nan said, “Who’s Jared?”

“My boyfriend. The dead guy back at the Pack-N-Go.” Lowering her voice, Shawna said, “They got to him two days ago. I had to shoot him. This is his rifle. He used it to hunt deer.”

Suddenly, she laughed. And her laughter turned into tears. Nan draped an arm around her neck and drew her closer. Together, they cried.

Through absolute darkness, Todd followed the girl deep into the bowels of the church, her slender hand cold in his. When they reached a narrow corridor, Meg relit the candle, casting tallow light down along the wood-paneled walls.

“Come on,” Meg urged him, continuing down the hallway.

Todd followed. Lithographs of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary glared accusingly down at him from the walls. At the end of the hall, Todd could make out a single closed door, beneath which radiated a soft orange glow. Meg stopped outside this door, resting her hand on the doorknob.

“Don’t be mad,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Just promise. Don’t be mad.”

Stupidly, he nodded. “Okay. I promise.”

Meg opened the door and led him into the room.

Kate was tied to a chair in the otherwise empty room, a series of candles burning in ceramic plates on the floor. Kate lifted her head, her hair a stringy mess before her eyes, her shoulders and arms bound by rope. Her sweater had been removed—it sat balled up in one corner of the room, dangerously close to one of the burning candles—leaving her in nothing but a flimsy satin bra.

“Jesus, Todd,” Kate groaned.

Todd rushed to her, dropped to his knees in front of her. “What the hell happened?” He glared at Meg. “What’d you do?”

“You promised not to get mad.”

“There’s another one,” Kate said quickly. “A boy. He tied me up…took my cluh-clothes off…” She was shivering from the cold, her skin bristling with gooseflesh.

“Hang on,” Todd said, moving around back to untie her.

“You shouldn’t do that,” Meg said. “Chris tied her up for a reason.”

“Oh, yeah?” Todd returned. “What reason was that?”

Angry, Meg did not answer. She blew out her candle, which was pointless, since the room was littered with them.

The ropes untied, they dropped to the floor and onto Kate’s lap. Kate squirmed her way out of them and up out of the chair, hugging her bare chest. Her breasts were small and prickled with goose bumps, the nipples straining against the fabric of her bra in the cold. Embarrassed, Todd looked away. He gathered up her sweater from the floor and tossed it to her.

“Did your brother take the bag of ammunition, too?” he asked Meg.

But Meg was insolent. She would not answer.

“I think so,” Kate told him, tugging her sweater down over her head. “I…I don’t really remember what happened.”

“Are you hurt?”

“No.”

“All right.” Todd turned to Meg, who was watching him with a bored expression. “I want you to take me to your brother, Chris. I want to meet him.”

“He saved your life,” Meg said.

“But Chris said God sent me here to protect you, didn’t he? So let me do my job, kid.”

Conflict flickered behind Meg’s small black eyes. After a moment of quiet deliberation, she turned and marched out of the room. Crossing over the threshold, she once again relit her candle. Casting a look over her shoulder, she said, “Well, come on, then.”

Todd and Kate followed.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“What it is? What do you see?” Nan asked, leaning closer to Shawna to peer out of the driver’s side window. Shawna could hear the older woman’s teeth rattling in her head. Sure enough, if they stayed here much longer, they’d both turn into popsicles before morning.

Shawna pressed one finger against the glass. “I keep seeing something out beyond those buildings. A bright light. Flashing.”

“I don’t—” Nan began, but was cut off as the light flashed once again. It was like a camera’s flashbulb going off in a dark alley across the square. “Yes! What is that?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s back there?”

“That’s Fairmont Street. My house is back there.”

“What could be flashing like that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think it could be help?” Nan’s voice was sadly optimistic.

“I think,” Shawna said, “it could be absolutely anything.” She pulled the rifle up into her lap and proceeded to load it to capacity. “I should probably check it out.”

“Alone?”

Shawna surveyed the woman. She was in fantastic shape, but was she mentally prepared for another trek across town? She’d witnessed her husband turn into a monster, then have his head blown off, less than an hour ago…

“I don’t want to sit in this car by myself, Shawna. I’ll go crazy.”

Try locking yourself in a convenience store with your boyfriend’s headless corpse, she felt like saying, but didn’t.

Shawna nodded. “All right. But we have to be quick and careful.”

“If there’s— oh!” Nan had turned and caught sight of the mess in the backseat. She stared at it, her jaw unhinged. “Dear Jesus.”

“Don’t look at it.”

“Oh. Oh. Oh.”

“Are you with me, Nan?”

Nan took a deep breath, then turned away from the backseat. She sat facing forward, her hands planted firmly in her lap. After a few seconds, she said, “I’m with you.”

Meg led them both up a flight of narrow, atticlike stairs that creaked beneath their collective weight. The flame of her candle caused their shadows to jump and bob along the walls. Despite the drop in temperature and the fact that he’d left his coat back at the Pack-N-Go to fit in the ventilation shaft, Todd was sweating profusely. Something was roiling around in his guts—a warning. Something was very wrong here.

There was a hatch directly above their heads at the top of the stairs. Meg knocked on it twice, then pushed it up to open it. Hinges squealed. Before crawling up, the girl castigated them with a disquieting stare that made her seem much older than her fourteen years. Then she climbed up and out of the hatch.

Todd followed, bracing himself for anything.

Topside, he found himself in a square room with windows on every wall—thick, hand-blown glass panes reinforced with iron piping. The whole town was visible from this vantage. Directly above his head, an ancient copper bell hung from recessed rafters. He caught a whiff of something in the air, something that was not necessarily dangerous but nonetheless did not belong. It took him a moment to place the smell: corn chips.