Ronald Malfi - Snow

There’s no use in lessening numbers, Todd thought, continuing to fire the shotgun out the station’s window; he was going deafer with each blast, his entire body vibrating from the recoil. There’s no use in doing any of this. There’s a whole town’s worth of things out there, ready to rip and tear and bite into us…not to mention that thing in the snow and whatever else awaits us…

He chose to think of his son while he shot. The good times, like the Christmases and birthdays, the times they’d gone to Prospect Park or the Jersey Shore. He’d taught the boy to fly a kite in an open field where wildflowers burst like supernovas from the green grass, and the boy had cheered and shouted and beamed as the kite climbed higher and higher and higher. As a tiny baby, eyes all squinty and fists clenched and pink, he’d been nothing more than a mushy hump in his mother’s arms. The way the sunlight coming in through the side windows bleached the nursery, and the one time the hornets’ nest fell and got caught behind the shutter. All the hornets rasping against the windowpane. Laughing. That’s not scary, is it? No, Daddy, it’s not. I’m a big boy. Yes, you are. Yes! Yes! Fishing off Luck’s Pier, hooking bass and, holy Jesus, a snapping turtle, would you look at that? Yes! I’m a big boy. I’m a big boy and I love you, Daddy.

I love you, Daddy.

The front doors caved in and the front awning collapsed. One of the creatures was shambling through an open window. The snow around the building pulsed with a lifelike current.

“Todd!” Kate shouted at his ear. She grabbed hold of his hair, shook his head. “Todd! Look!”

He looked…just as an arc of white flame shot out of the darkness. He couldn’t tell what the hell he was looking at. As he watched, one of the skin-suits went up in a blazing inferno. A second skin-suit leapt at the quick-moving figure but was ignited just like his brethren.

It was Bruce. Bloodied and battered, but it was Bruce.

“Holy shit,” Todd mouthed.

Bruce charged across the lawn, igniting every single one of the bastards that hazarded to block his path. Within seconds, the snowy front lawn of the sheriff’s station was alight with burning people, screaming and running and falling on their faces in the snow. Some of the snow-beasts escaped in a whirl of white smoke, but this time they didn’t dissipate into the ether: they swooped toward Bruce now, coming down low as he launched fire from his flamethrower.

“Jesus,” Kate said, “they’re trying to extinguish the flame.”

Todd nodded. “Just like Tully said.”

“Where’s he going?”

Bruce continued across the lawn, his big booted feet leaving behind craters in the snow. He was heading for a thin fence of trees. And beyond the trees stood the decrepit little gas station.

“They’re following him,” Todd said. “I don’t believe it.”

The thing beneath the snow swirled like a whirlpool, then began tunneling toward Bruce. It was moving too fast; Bruce would never reach cover before the thing was on him.

No, Todd thought suddenly. I don’t think Bruce has any intention of reaching cover. I think Bruce is here to end this thing, one way or the other.

The skin-suit that had been squirming through the broken window dropped back out onto the snow. It was a heavyset female with a face like sagging dough. She began running after Bruce—just as they all did.

Todd grabbed Kate’s wrist and yanked her to her feet. “It’s not safe in here anymore.”

Together they ran back to the computer room, Todd slamming the door shut behind them. On the desk, the computer continued to ding as all of Todd’s messages were returned.

Kate hurried to the window, stared out. “He’s luring them to…”

“To the gas station,” Todd finished, coming up behind her.

Bruce had a sizeable lead on the pursuing skin-suits, but the thing tunneling through the snow was coming up on him fast. Moreover, the sky was alive with twisting tornados of snow, each one glowing sliver at its center. As they watched, Bruce burst through the spindly trees and crossed the tarmac of the gas station. The pumps slouched like tired old men. Bruce turned and fired another blast from his flamethrower at the encroaching townspeople.

“There must be a hundred of them,” Kate marveled.

The thing beneath the snow cut sharply to the right and ran the length of the gas station tarmac. The tarmac itself was shaded by a partial steel awning, which kept much of the snow from falling on the blacktop. It seemed the creature did not want to climb up out of the snow. Or maybe it couldn’t.

Bruce dropped to his knees and began fiddling with something on the ground.

“Oh, shit,” Kate said. “Did he drop the flamethrower?”

“It’s hooked to a cable…”

“Is he…he fucking tying his shoe?”

But no—he wasn’t tying his shoe and he hadn’t dropped the flamethrower.

“He’s unscrewing the fuel door,” Todd said. “Where the trucks come and pump full under the gas station…”

“Oh,” Kate said—almost childishly simple.

The townspeople swarmed onto the tarmac. Several of them struck the support beam of the steel awning, knocking the beam askew. The awning wavered from side to side, as if in contemplation, then crashed down onto a tow truck parked on the far side of the gas station.

Bruce stood, looking like a ghost among phantoms.

Just before the townspeople clawed into him and tore him apart, Bruce fired one final blast from the flamethrower: directly down the mouth of the fuel door.

An instant later, it was as though the apocalypse had come.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

When Todd came to, he found himself sprawled on the floor and covered in bits of glass. He sat up, aware of the aches and pains throughout his body, as the glass tinkled to the floor all around him. The room was bitterly cold. The second his vision cleared, he understood why: the force of the explosion had busted out the window.

Shaking glass out of his hair, he rolled over to Kate, who lay unconscious beside him, her face a patchwork of lacerations, cuts, and scrapes. Gently he shook her awake, brushing busted glass from her clothes, face, and hair.

Hesitantly, her eyes blinked open. “What happened?”

“Bruce blew up the gas station.”

“Are we…where are we?”

He helped her to her feet. They both went to the window, shuddering at the cold. Across the field, the gas station burned. All around the station, like a photo from some Nazi concentration camp, charred bodies littered the snow. There were dozens of them, some still burning, others smoldering like bits of charcoal in the belly of a grill. The air reeked of scorched flesh and burning gasoline. Also among the carnage, Todd could make out a number of large, hulking shapes, almost amphibian in their appearance, like frozen black relics. Charred scythes stood motionless in the air. Others had melted to a tarry black gruel along the blacktop.

“The window,” Kate said.

“Help me.” He grabbed his laptop’s carrying case from the desk and pressed it against the windowsill. Kate located some masking tape and they taped it up over the window, making sure not to leave any cracks for anything to get in. Not even wind.

“Christ, how long were we out?”

“I’m not sure. I don’t remember…” His voice trailed off. He was looking at the laptop’s screen, which was black. The row of green lights on the modem’s faceplate was dead, too. “I think our battery just died.”

“But they got your message. Everyone did. They said help was coming.”

Their arms around each other, they crept out into the hallway. Cold yellow moonlight pooled in the front hall, issuing in through the place where the double doors had been. The doors themselves now lay in concave heaps on the floor.