Ronald Malfi - Snow

Meg crept off into the shadows where the silhouette of another person—her brother, Chris?—sat slouched in a folding chair. As Todd helped Kate up out of the hatch, Meg thumped the figure on one shoulder. The silhouette jerked and sat upright, bags of potato chips crunching beneath his shifting feet while he smacked his lips together.

“What?” the boy growled…then saw Todd and Kate standing before him. He sprung up out of the chair and sauntered into the panel of moonlight coming in through the nearest window. He was tall and broad-shouldered but possessed a child’s face, with doughy cheeks, a dimpled chin, and an infant’s squinty eyes. Like a vagabond, he wore several layers of clothing, from beneath which his sizable gut protruded almost comically, and there was a strip of purple satin tied around his forehead like a bandana. Todd was quick to notice his pistol stuffed into the boy’s waistband.

“Are you Chris?” Todd asked.

The boy looked him up and down. Then his piggy little eyes sought out Kate and scrutinized her, as well. Turning to Meg, he said, “Who told you to untie her?”

“I didn’t,” Meg said. She pointed at Todd. “He did.”

Chris’s hand shot out and slapped her across the face.

“Hey!” Kate shouted. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”

“Who are you both?” Chris demanded. “Where’d you come from? You’re not from town.”

Todd held up both hands in an effort to show his intentions were not of the hostile variety. “Just take it easy. You’re right; we’re not from around here. Our car broke down tonight and we came into town looking for help. We have absolutely nothing to do with anything that’s been going on around here.”

“The girl’s got cuts on her back,” Chris said.

“What?” Todd stammered. For a second he thought Chris was talking about Meg. But then he remembered the lacerations he’d seen on Kate’s bare back as he’d untied her from the chair, and at least some of this madness began to make sense. “No,” Todd said, “you’re wrong.”

“I saw the cuts myself.” The boy was adamant.

“She’s not one of them,” Todd said.

“Me?” Kate said, incredulous.

“Turn around,” Chris demanded of Kate. “Lift up your shirt. I want to see.”

“Fuck off, you perverted little twerp,” Kate barked.

Chris yanked the pistol from his waistband. Todd sidestepped in front of Kate, his hands still up. “Take it easy. She’ll show you. Kate, turn around and lift up your shirt. He thinks you’re one of them.”

“This is insane.”

“So is getting shot by Lord of the Flies over there,” Todd countered. “Just do it.”

Slowly, Kate turned around and pulled her shirt up over her shoulders. The smooth canvas of her back was marred by flecks of broken skin and jagged lacerations—probably from when the gun shop’s window had imploded, sending spears of glass every which way.

“See?” Todd said, tracing a hand along Kate’s back. She shivered at his touch. “They’re just cuts. We’ve been running from those things and got hit with some broken glass. Okay? She’s normal. We both are.”

Chris was chewing on the inside of one cheek. His distrustful, oil-spot eyes darted from Kate to Todd to Kate again. Finally he returned the pistol to his waistband with an unfavorable grunt. “Okay,” he said, though he sounded miserable at having been wrong.

Kate lowered her sweater, then hugged herself with her arm. She was shivering fiercely. Todd rubbed a hand along one of her arms and asked Chris if they had any extra clothes.

Chris dropped back down into his folding chair. He glared at his sister. “Take her down to the trunk. She can pick out whatever she wants.”

Wordlessly, Meg approached Kate, took her by the hand, and led her back down the hatch. Kate cast one last glance at Todd before disappearing down the darkened stairwell in the floor.

Todd moved to the nearest window. He could see the town square clearly from up here. Beyond that, a community fire hall, a building that may have been a school, and a sheriff’s office—all dark. Cars lay overturned in ditches, and near the outskirts of town Todd could make out an ambulance that had died along the shoulder of the road, its rear doors flung open, the whole thing powdered with snow. Then a sinking feeling overtook him when he noticed that the windows of the Pack-N-Go had been blown out. “Oh, shit…”

“I saw you run across the square,” Chris said from his folding chair. He had a voice like a squeaky trumpet. The stink of corn chips was cloying, reminding Todd of awful foot odor; it was all he could do not to gag. “There’s more of you down there.”

“There were,” Todd said. “I hope they’re okay.”

“Two ladies made it out of the store,” Chris said. “I saw them, too.”

Todd turned to him. “You saw them? Where’d they go?”

Disinterested, the boy shrugged. “Don’t know.” Then, adopting an exasperated tone, he said, “I can’t see everything, you know.” The sound of his voice suggested Todd was an imbecile for maybe thinking otherwise.

Beyond the square Todd could make out intermittent flashing white lights. They looked like gunshots reflected off the buildings. “What’s that?” he asked the boy.

“Those lights? Downed power lines.”

“So that’s why the power’s out.”

“ They did it,” Chris said. “Those things .”

“Do you know if there’s anybody left in town?”

“What’s the matter with you? Don’t you know?” Chris said, nearly snorting. “The whole town is still here. It’s just that most of ’em are…well, they’re different now.”

“That’s an understatement.”

Chris sat upright in his chair. “What’d you say?” he nearly shouted at Todd.

“Never mind.” “Don’t tell me to never mind. I asked you a question.” Those bags of chips crunched beneath his feet again.

“I said, ‘that’s an understatement.’ It was sarcasm.”

“Don’t make fun of me. I was left in charge. I’m running things around here now.”

“Left in charge by whom?”

“My dad. So go fuck yourself.” He licked his lips and sounded instantly nervous. Todd assumed “fuck” was not typically part of the boy’s vocabulary. “You’re a stranger here, anyway.”

“I’m not trying to do anything. I’m not trying to take over, either. You want to be in change, Chris, that’s just fine with me. I just want to get out of here.”

“You can’t. You can’t get out of here.”

“Why’s that?”

“Those things won’t let you. There’s no way out.” He leaned forward in his chair and tapped the stained-glass windowpane with the handgun. Todd hadn’t even seen him take it from his pants this time. “They’re in the snow; haven’t you noticed? They are the snow.”

“Still,” Todd said, “there’s gotta be a way. If we can get to a car that will start, we can drive out of here—”

“The cars out in the square are dead. My parents tried to start one. That’s when they got taken.”

“Taken?”

“Taken away,” Chris said, irritated. “By the snow.”

This chubby bastard is off his rocker, Todd thought.

“My dad came back but we stopped that. I don’t know what happened to my mom.”

“What do you mean?”

Chris frowned and faded back into the gloom.

My dad came back but we stopped that…

“Are you religious?” Chris asked suddenly. “What religion are you?”

“I was born Catholic,” Todd confessed, “but this is the first time I’ve been in a church in maybe a decade. Why?”

Chris made a snorting sound but didn’t answer.