Ronald Malfi - Snow

—make a promise to you make a promise if you make it to the top of those stairs you can wake up wake up wake up you can wake up if you make it to the top to the top of the—

Blessedly, she didn’t live long enough to suffer the worst of it.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

A man in a gray wool cap with earflaps and a camouflage winter coat rimmed in rabbit fur stepped out of the nearest doorway behind Kate. He was hefting what Todd at first thought was some sort of long-barreled gun, but on closer inspection proved to be a butane torch connected to a hose that ran up under the man’s coat.

Kate turned around and didn’t make a sound. She stepped coolly over to Todd, who still had the gun aimed in at the stranger.

The stranger eyed them through narrow slits beneath a rough, crenellated brow. His chin and neck were heavy with dark stubble and there was a slick of snot drooling from one nostril like an exclamation. His dark eyes fixated on Todd’s handgun.

“You ain’t from Woodson,” said the man. He had the voice of a rumbling old washing machine.

Todd’s hands shook; the gun rattled. “No.”

“Where’d you come from?”

“We were driving out from O’Hare,” Todd said. “Our rental broke—”

“What town’s that?”

Todd raised an eyebrow. “Town?”

“O’Hare.” Though Todd would have believed it impossible, the man’s eyes actually grew narrower. “Never heard of the place.”

“It’s an airport,” Todd said. “In Chicago.”

The man lowered his weapon. “I heard of Chicago.”

Unsure whether the man was joking or not, Todd kept the gun trained on him. He did not believe this man to be one of the possessed…but that didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous.

“Is this your house?” Kate asked. “We didn’t mean to break in.”

“Ain’t my house. I followed you here.”

Sweat trickled down Todd’s brow. “Followed us?”

The man sauntered into the kitchen and glanced casually into the sink, which was loaded with unwashed dishes. “Saw the smoke from the church this morning so I figured I’d have a look. That’s when I saw the two of you coming out of that amb’lance.”

“Who are you?” Todd asked the man.

“Name’s Tully. Up until a week ago I lived over on Acre Drive. I’m down at the sheriff’s station now, which is across town. It’s been safe so far; they don’t know we’re there.” Tully’s eyes flicked toward Todd’s handgun. “You can put that peashooter down now, son.”

Embarrassed, Todd lowered the gun.

“How long you two been tromping around town, anyway?”

“Since last night,” Kate said. “Our Jeep broke down on the highway. We walked through the woods and found the town…found the town like this.” She paused, then added, “There were more of us.”

Tully spat something green into the sink. “There were more of us, too. Whole town’s worth.”

Again, Todd couldn’t tell whether this stranger was attempting humor—albeit morbid—or he’d been living up here in the middle of nowhere for too long. Todd couldn’t read him. “What’s that thing you got there?” he asked Tully.

“Little homemade flamethrower.” He unzipped his coat to expose a series of fuel canisters strapped to his belt with duct tape. “Can get almost twelve feet out of her if there’s no wind.”

“So fire kills those things,” Kate said. “Or does it just hurt them?”

“Oh,” said Tully, zipping his coat back up, “it kills ’em, all right.” He leaned over the counter and peered out one of the windows. Outside, the sky looked to be the color of old dishwater. “The skin-suits need rest. They sleep during the day, but they sleep light. But those tornado monsters or snowstorm things or whatever they are—they’re still out there and they’re still plenty pissed off.”

“Skin-suits?” Todd said.

Tully raised his elbows and dangled his hands like limp rags, miming a marionette. “People puppets. Whatever you call ’em.”

“I don’t call them anything,” Todd said. “This is all new to me.”

“You think it’s old hat to me, partner?” Tully stared at him hard, his eyes rheumy. He reached up and began opening cupboards, peering inside. “Like I said—a week ago I had a nice little place over on Acre. Worked days at the plant in Bicklerville and played pool down at the Blue Shue every other night.” He bent down and went through the cupboards beneath the sink. “You think I been doing this my whole life? Running around Woodson with a flamethrower strapped to my hips?”

“No, sir,” Kate said. She sounded like someone being reprimanded by a schoolteacher.

“Damn straight,” said Tully. He stood and went over to the refrigerator. Standing on his toes, he managed to peek into the cabinets over the fridge, but they were empty. “Those things came and ate the town. They blew all the power out and then our cars wouldn’t start. Phones went dead. They’ve got us quarantined.”

“How many are left?”

Tully spat a second ball of phlegm into the sink, then tromped in his heavy boots over to a new wall of cabinets. The first one he opened elicited a wry smile from his otherwise hardened features: the liquor cabinet. “How many what?” he said.

“How many people,” Todd clarified. “How many of you are still alive?”

“There’s six of us down at the station.” He was collecting the liquor bottles and loading them into a child’s Superman backpack he’d found beside the refrigerator. “I suppose you two make eight.”

“So we’re going with you,” Kate said. It was not a question. She was watching Tully like someone who’d paid a good price to step into a freak show.

“Keep running around out here, you’re both liable to get yourselves killed. That’s a fact. See how easy I followed you both up from the amb’lance and right into this house? Them things out there are ten times sneakier and a hundred times more dangerous. It’s a fool’s game, wandering around out there in the snow.”

“What about getting out of town?” Todd said. “Is there any way?”

Tully stacked the last of the bottles in the Superman backpack, then turned to the refrigerator. He pulled the door open and reached into one of the compartments, worked his fingers around. “Told you,” he said. “Cars don’t start. Can’t call anybody to come and get us. Molly has one of them little handheld doohickeys—BlackBerry, she calls it. Tried to send out an email but the screen went all funny. Kept spitting out random math equations or some shit.” As an afterthought, he added, “Molly’s from town. One of the survivors back at the station. You’ll meet her.”

“That sounds just like what happened with the cell phones,” Kate said, picking the flip phone up off the counter. “No numbers, no letters. Just nonsense.”

“My guess is they’re jamming us,” said Tully. He paused to glance at Kate appraisingly from over his shoulder. “That angry-looking cloud out by the church this morning—well, where the church used to be, I guess—see, I think it’s sending bad signals down to all our electrical appliances. Anything that runs on batteries that they couldn’t knock out with the power—anything from cars to cell phones—they wind up jamming with astro-nonsense.”

“What’s that?” Kate asked.

“Garbage from space.”

“So that’s where you think these things are from?” Todd asked.

“Mister,” Tully said, “I ain’t got a fucking clue where these things are from.”

“They’re that smart?” Kate sounded dejected. “To scramble signals like that?” She tossed the cell phone back down on the counter and folded her arms over her chest.

“Smart,” said Tully, “or just driven by some otherworldly instinct. Who the hell knows?”