Ronald Malfi - Snow

Ahead of them, Brendan stopped suddenly. Todd nearly walked into him, catching himself at the last minute. He began to say something but Brendan quickly shushed him. Then Brendan pointed off into the distance, where the trees crowded together like soldiers trying to keep warm on a cold winter’s night.

“What is it?” Todd said, whispering now. “What are you pointing at?”

“There.”

It took a few seconds for Todd’s eyes to adapt and relate to his brain what he was seeing: two children dressed in tattered, soiled clothing, the hair on their heads beaded with frozen clumps of ice.

They had no faces.

“Jesus,” Bruce said from behind Todd. “Jesus, will you look at that?”

Todd’s hands clenched. “What do we do?”

“Just stand tight for a minute,” Bruce told him. “I don’t think they see us.”

“I don’t think they can see us,” Brendan said. “My God, how in the world do you think—”

Behind the two children the trees seemed to disassemble themselves, until Todd realized that much of what he’d thought were trees were really just more faceless children, their skin the color and texture of bark, their clothes muddy and earthen in hue. They seemed to float right out of the trees like battlefield ghosts, each one’s face a blank bulb of flesh-colored putty. Todd counted twelve, thirteen of them…

What if they attack? Todd thought. What if they all charge us at once? Could we possibly defend ourselves against so many of them? And how many more are out there that we haven’t spotted yet?

“They’re rejects,” Bruce said, pushing between Todd and Brendan. “Freaks. When the creatures get inside little children—like preadolescents—they corrupt them and break them and turn them into those things.”

Brendan was trembling. Kate had told Todd that Brendan was the father of Molly’s baby; now, Todd wondered if Brendan was thinking of his unborn child while staring across the forest floor at these sad misfits.

“Pay them no mind,” Bruce told them, walking ahead of them. “Just keep moving.”

They continued deeper into the woods. At one point, Todd looked over his shoulder to where the children had been standing, and was surprised and a bit unnerved to find that they had vanished. He imagined packs of feral children, disfigured in their featurelessness, roaming the forested hillsides of the state for years and years to come.

In the basement of the sheriff’s station, Kate attempted to keep Charlie and Cody occupied by playing board games with them. They’d gotten through one full game of Monopoly and were halfway through Life when Cody began to whimper. The little girl climbed up onto one of the empty cots and curled into a fetal position. Worried, Kate got up and sat down on the edge of the girl’s cot.

“What’s wrong, honey?”

Cody just rubbed her eyes with her fist.

Kate pressed the back of her hand to the girl’s forehead. “She’s warm.”

Seated cross-legged on her own cot across the room, Molly grunted and began stacking pillows around her. “Are you a nurse or something?”

Kate ignored her. She stood and searched randomly around the desktop for anything that was not a bottle of liquor. In one of the desk drawers she located some bottled water. She opened one of the bottles and gave it to Cody. The girl took a few hesitant sips, then lay back down on the cot.

“I think your sister’s got a fever,” she said to Charlie.

“She gets headaches,” Charlie informed her.

“Does she? What kind?”

Charlie shrugged. He was picking at the rubber sole of one of his sneakers. “I don’t know. She used to take medicine.”

Oh please, you’re fucking with me, kid, Kate thought. “What kind of medicine, Charlie?”

“I don’t know.”

“Was it special medicine or just aspirin?”

“What’s a ass-prin?” he said. “I don’t know what that means.”

Molly snickered.

“Something funny?” Kate said, looking at Molly from the corner of her eye while she unfolded a blanket and placed it over Cody. The little girl was shivering now.

“You’re trying to be that little girl’s mother,” Molly said.

“No,” Kate corrected, “I’m trying to take care of her because no one else is here to do that.”

“Do you have any kids of your own?”

“No.” She hated answering Molly’s questions, humoring the bitch like that, but she couldn’t help herself.

“Are you unable?”

“Excuse me?” She felt some of the old Kate Jansen return to her—the Kate Jansen who would have gotten up, swaggered over to snide little potbellied Molly, and cracked her across the jaw. Lord knew she’d done similar things to nicer people in the past.

“I’m just saying,” Molly crooned, continuing to fluff her pillows. “It’s just, you’ve been fawning all over those two ever since you got here. It’s like you’re trying to make up for something.”

“Are we seriously having this conversation?”

“It’s just talk,” Molly said, as if her comments thus far had been completely innocent. “I’m just passing the time.”

“Well, you can pass it by telling me where I could find some aspirin.”

Molly shrugged and looked bored. She picked up one of the paperback novels stacked beside her cot and absently thumbed through the pages. “This is a police station,” she intoned, no longer looking up at Kate. “I’m sure there’s Tylenol or something around here somewhere.”

Kate tucked the blanket up under Cody’s arms and legs, then stood, running her fingers through her hair. Part of her was holding on to Gerald, and how worried he must be by now that he hadn’t heard from her…but a larger part was out there with Todd. Standing in the doorway of the sheriff’s station as they headed down to the road, she’d had the sinking feeling that she would never see him again.

“I’m going to find some aspirin,” Kate announced, and left.

They reached the river and found it frozen. It was about twenty feet wide and couldn’t possibly be very deep; nonetheless, Todd did not like the idea of plowing through the ice even up to his shins. It was cold enough out here that his feet would freeze instantly. And there would be no turning back until after they’d completed their task. He would just have to be careful.

“You can use these overhangs for handholds,” Brendan said, inching his way out onto the ice while he gripped overhanging tree limbs like monkey bars. “They don’t go all the way across but it’s better than nothing.”

“We should probably go one at a time,” Todd said, bending down to survey the thickness of the ice. He thumped a gloved knuckle against it and it seemed sturdy enough.

When his handholds ran out, Brendan stretched his arms out like airplane wings. He took minuscule steps and looked like a tightrope walker overcautious of his balance. On the other side of the streambed, the scraggly twists of overhanging limbs dropped back down; Brendan’s long arms rose and he gripped the limbs. A number of branches snapped away and shattered like glass on the surface of the frozen stream.

With two ungraceful bounds, Brendan made it to the other side of the stream. He executed an awkward bow that nearly sent him tumbling back onto the ice, before seating himself in the Y of a nearby tree. He lit a cigarette, looking like someone waiting for a bus.

Bruce eased himself out onto the ice next. As Brendan had done before him, he utilized the overhanging limbs to facilitate his way out to the center of the frozen stream. Releasing the last of the limbs, the deputy sheriff crossed the center of the stream much quicker than Brendan, his balance more aligned and steady. He didn’t even bother grabbing for the overhanging branches on the far end of the streambed; he simply continued across at a steady pace, half sliding, half galloping.