Ronald Malfi - Snow

“How did you get into town?” Freed asked.

Todd told them the whole story, starting with the flight cancellation to renting the vehicle to what had happened when they picked up Eddie Clement in the middle of an otherwise deserted road. Shovenson took minimal notes and neither man ever raised an eyebrow. When Todd began telling them about the creatures in the snow and about the walking skin-suits, he did so with terribly forced levity, the words impossible to his own ears…but the men still did not balk.

When Todd finished, he sighed deeply—which also hurt his injured shoulder—and fixed both men with a frank stare. “You probably think I’m full of shit. Ask the woman outside—the one you called my girlfriend—and she’ll corroborate everything I’ve just told you, word for word.”

Shovenson flipped his notepad closed, then stuffed it back into his suit jacket.

“This was just a formality,” Freed said. He walked over to a nightstand and picked up the remote control for the television bracketed to the wall. “We have reports to write.”

“Reports,” echoed Shovenson, as if this were some part of a private joke the two men shared.

Freed clicked on the TV. After the picture came on, he began flipping through various channels. Most of the channels were news stations, each reporter looking grim and uncertain. Freed finally left the TV on one channel where a female reporter was talking about the bizarre events that had occurred in a small town outside Minneapolis, resulting in the disappearance of half the town’s population.

Todd blinked and just stared at the TV.

“So far,” said Freed, “we’re looking at twenty-nine separate incidents across the country. Several more were reported in Canada, and more reports are filtering in every hour. The folks who rescued you wound up rescuing another thirty-eight people from Woodson, many of them hidden in basements and armed like militiamen.”

Todd studied the seriousness of Freed’s face. “So…so this happened all over?”

“Twenty-nine different towns,” Freed repeated. “Mostly relegated to the Midwest. By all accounts, it seems there was something in the storm.”

“That wasn’t just a storm,” Todd said.

To this, neither Freed nor Shovenson felt the need to comment. They adjusted their ties and passed a look between them that suggested they wanted to go back to their hotel rooms and go to sleep.

“We left a card with a contact number with your girlfriend,” Freed said as they both moved toward the door. “If you think of anything else, or just need to call and talk to someone about what happened, don’t hesitate to use the number.”

“Get well,” said Shovenson, and the two men left.

When Kate came in, she looked much smaller and emptier than he had remembered her. She watched him for a few moments in the doorway before coming to his bedside and kissing him squarely on the forehead. Her eyes glittered with moisture.

“Are you hurt?” he asked her.

She shook her head. “I guess I was luckier than you, huh?”

“What exactly happened?”

“It was Molly. She shot you just as we were heading from the station down to the road.”

“Molly…”

“Brendan died. She blamed you. After she shot you, she dropped the gun and just sat down in the snow, sobbing, until the guardsmen showed up. She’s been taken into custody.”

“Jesus…”

“There were more people, Todd. In Woodson. They were hiding in basements and attics and in different places throughout the town.”

“Yeah, I heard. Those two federal agents or whatever they were just told me.” He nodded toward the TV, which was still reporting the inexplicable occurrences that had happened across North America over the past week. “Can you believe this?”

“It’s like one big cloud came in and draped itself right over the middle of the country,” Kate said. “But it didn’t happen everywhere. Just quiet, remote towns. Just like Woodson.”

“Because they’re smart. Because to do what they needed to do, they had to be able to cut the towns off from the rest of society. They had to pick places where they could easily do that.”

“And what exactly did they come here to do?”

“Feed,” he said. “Change us, maybe. Did you see what it looked like when that cloud opened up at the end? Just as it started sucking those things back into it?”

“Like you could see through it to the other side,” Kate responded. “Like there were other places up there, beyond our world.”

The notion caused his head to throb. He rested back on his stack of pillows, his respiration labored.

“After it was all over, I went back for Charlie and Cody,” she said. “I thought maybe if those things had left their bodies, maybe they’d…you know…maybe…”

“Were they alive?” he said.

Kate didn’t answer, but Todd already knew what the answer would be. On the TV, the reporter was replaced by a computerized map of the United States alight with red “hot zones,” as they were labeled, throughout the country. “This just in,” the female reporter’s voice carried over the scene of the map. “Eleven people were discovered alive in the small South Dakota town of East Fork, their stories no different from the hundreds of others we’ve been hearing for the past two days now, bringing the total number of Midwestern towns involved in this uncanny and unexplainable nationwide event up to—”

“Please shut that off,” he said.

Kate clicked the TV off. “Gerald’s down in the lobby. We’ve been here for a few hours. I didn’t want to leave until I knew you were all right.”

“Thank you.”

“I took the liberty of putting my number in your cell phone,” she said. “I hope you’ll keep in touch.”

“After all we’ve been through?”

She laughed. “I’m not your only visitor, by the way.”

His own smile faltered.

Smoothing his hair to one side, she said, “I hope you don’t mind. I found the number in your cell phone and I thought it was the right thing to do…”

Looking past Kate, Todd could suddenly see Justin standing in the doorway of the hospital room. The boy was wearing the same ski jacket and bright boots he’d been wearing in what Todd had assumed had been a dream. When the boy caught sight of his father’s face, he closed the distance from the doorway to Todd’s bed in no time at all. Justin hopped onto the bed and, despite the pain it caused his shoulder, Todd gripped the boy and squeezed him hard. He smelled Justin’s hair, his skin, his clothes—taking in every bit of the boy.

“Daddy,” Justin said against his cheek. “Are you hurt?”

“I think I’ll be okay, sport.”

The boy hugged him hard and painfully around the neck. Todd felt his throat tighten and his vision grow blurry.

Brianna appeared at the foot of the bed. She looked frail and thin in a coat that hugged her too tightly, her hair tucked beneath a white beret. She clutched her handbag before her with both hands, uncertain what to say or even how to look.

“I’ll leave you guys alone,” Kate said. She turned and rested a hand on Todd’s shoulder. “Take care, Todd.”

“You, too.”

Kate did not look back at him as she walked quickly out of the room.

His arms still wrapped around his son, he offered Brianna a tired smile as he rested his chin atop Justin’s head. He could feel the boy’s heartbeat against his own, the child’s body warm and good. There was no pain here. Not here, not now. Still smiling at Brianna, he could feel the silence between them in the room, interrupted only by the scuffing of shoes outside in the hallway.

After a while, Brianna smiled back. “Merry Christmas, Todd.”