Her face was awfully, terribly familiar. He couldn't believe he hadn't recognised it before. It was the same face he'd fallen in love with four years earlier. It had beamed at him from behind a long white veil. And it was the face that had smile at him, sadly, anxiously, as they gazed at each other above a table littered with final notices and creditor's letters.

  A strangled sob escaped Mark’s throat, and he raised the gun, almost automatically, to point at his own head.

  Mark started awake and stood, knocking his chair to the floor. His heart thundered from a sickening nightmare, but the details were already slipping away like water through his fingers…

  25

  Hazard Lights

  Maria leaned against the car door and stared through the window at the harsh white lights spaced along the Lane Cove Tunnel. The driver kept trying to start a conversation, but she’d caught a red-eye flight and was beyond exhausted. All she wanted to do was get to her hotel and sleep for a lifetime.

  The traffic wasn’t co-operating, though. It had been gridlocked for the last twenty minutes, and, now that they were in the tunnel, it seemed even worse. Maria didn’t think they’d moved more than ten meters in the last five minutes.

  “Bad traffic today, yeah?” the taxi driver, a cheerful man with a thick black beard, said. He beamed at her in the rear-vision mirror, and Maria mustered a thin smile.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Haven’t seen it this bad in months. Must be a breakdown ahead.”

  “Hmm.”

  Maria turned to look out of the opposite window, where she could see five other car lanes – two more going in their direction, the other three opposite – all forced to a halt. Every now and then a car would crawl a few inches closer to its leader, as though that would make any sort of difference.

  The radio came to life with a crackle, and Maria jumped. She’d nearly fallen asleep.

  “We are currently experiencing an emergency situation,” the voice on the radio said, and Maria leaned forward to listen to it. Her driver hadn’t touched the radio, she knew, by the way his face had gone pale; however, as the tunnel dipped below ground to carry cars from one side of the harbour to the other, the control room had the ability to activate the car’s radios in an emergency.

  “Remain in your vehicle,” the voice said. He sounded flustered and panicky, though he was clearly reading from a script. “Extinguish all lights and remain silent. Assistance will be sent as soon as possible.”

  The radio fell silent. Maria looked to her taxi driver, whose face had lost almost all colour. He turned the key in the ignition, powering the car down and killing its lights. Around her, other cars were also being turned off

  Maria swivelled in her seat to look behind herself. She thought she could hear noises coming from deeper in the tunnel. Then the multitude of lights spaced along the concrete walls whined and died, plunging them into darkness.

  Someone shrieked, and car doors slammed. A handful of headlights were still on, and Maria tried to see what was happening through the limited glow, but everything was a mess of shadows and shapes.

  The radio crackled for a second time, and the voice returned. Its panic had been raised to a nearly hysterical pitch, and he didn’t seem to be reading from a script any longer. “They say you should remain in your cars… but… but… they’re still finding you… don’t run, don’t bother, they’ll catch you. They’re spreading so fast. I’ve never seen or heard of anything like this before… oh jeeze, I’m so, so sorry… stay in your cars, stay…”

  The voice broke off with a gasp and Maria heard a banging noise in the distance, and what sounded like metal being twisted and torn. The radio clicked off.

  Maria sat frozen in her seat as she stared at her driver. A car a few rows ahead turned its hazard lights on, and the flashing red colour reflecting off the driver’s face as he stared back.

  Then the screams started.

  Maria turned to look behind them and saw shapes – people – running between the cars. It was more than panic; it was pandemonium. Several figures shoved against her taxi as they ran past, making it sway. Maria placed one hand on the car door, preparing to exit and join the crowd, but stopped when she caught sight of other, larger shapes further back in the tunnel.

  They were barely visible in the blinking hazard light, but they were definitely not human. The shapes moved on all fours, dexterously climbing over the cars and scuttling along the tunnel’s walls. Their limbs had at least four joints each, and they were larger than an average man.

  They snatched up the fleeing humans so quickly that the motions were almost a blur. Maria thought she could hear the crackles and snaps of breaking bones underneath the screams. Glass smashed as the creatures pounded their way through car windows.

  “Get down!” the taxi driver hissed, shoving Maria out of her seat so that she was knelt in the footspace. She flattened herself as much as she could, trying to breathe through her mouth to minimise the noise. The taxi driver sunk back into his seat, his eyes wide as he tried not to shake.

  Maria’s view was restricted from her position, but she could still see the figures racing past the windows and feel the impact as they bumped the car. Then the taxi shuddered as something large and heavy landed on it, and one of the running figures by her window was pulled from view with a gurgling shriek. Maria pressed her hand over her mouth and held her breath. There was silence for a second, then a horrific crash as the windshield was broken by a long, tough limb.

  The taxi driver barely managed half a scream before he was torn out of his seat and pulled through the hole in the windshield. His voice choked off, then, and dark liquid splashed across the window above Maria.

  The sounds were changing as the screams faded into the distance. The human cacophony was replaced by steady, loud thuds as the creatures climbed over the cars, and by snapping noises, and chewing, tearing sounds. Maria squeezed her eyes closed so that she wouldn’t have to watch the shadows move past the window.

  She kept still until the noises died into the distance, and were eventually entirely extinguished. Her muscles ached from the cramped position. Outside, the tunnel remained dark except for the hazard lights, which continued to bathe the area in intermittent flashes of red. She was surrounded in near-perfect silence. No footsteps, no voices, no thudding limbs, no tearing flesh.

  Maria shook as she slowly, cautiously raised herself to her knees. She peeked through the car’s window, between the streaks of blood, to see the tunnel seemed empty. So did the cars. Their human occupants had been stripped from them, pulled through broken windows or holes that had been carved in the metal. Maria alone had been spared, thanks to her hiding place.

  I’ve got to leave before those creatures come back. There should be emergency exits placed along the walls. They should be too small for those… things… to fit through easily. If I can just get to one of them …

  Maria opened her door slowly and silently. The car’s interior lights automatically turned on in response, and Maria looked out, frozen in terror, as a dozen pairs of reflective, globe-like eyes turned towards her.

  26

  Snow Hunting

  “Hey, check this out!” Max’s boots dug up clumps of snow as he forced his way over the hill. He stopped at its crest and planted his fists on his hips to survey the valley in front of him. “Hah, it’s someone’s holiday cabin.”

  Ryan tried to keep up, though he had forty kilos on Max and had become winded hours before. He was panting and sweating despite the freezing temperatures by the time he gained the hill’s top. “Good for them.”

  “Wanna have a poke around?”

  “What, are you nuts?” Ryan stared at his friend, whose acne-scarred face had the manic grin he wore whenever he was about to get them into trouble.

  “Why not? It’s obviously a vacation house, and they’re not going to be living in it off-season.”

  “I don’t want to get…” Ryan trailed off, and Max laughed.

  “Don’t want to get arrested? Who by, the snow police? C’mon, aint nobody crazy enough to be around here ’cept for us. Let’s have a look in the rich guy’s house. It’ll give us a break from hunting.”

  Hunting had been Max’s plan for that day. He’d taken his dad’s gun and given Ryan a knife for the excursion. Ryan had been squeamish about the idea of gutting rabbit and deer, but, after four hours of wildly off-mark shots and creating too much noise for them to have any hope of getting close to their prey, he was starting to think he might not actually need to use the blade.

  “C’mon,” Max said, and took off down the other side of the hill in a windmill of waving limbs.

  Ryan sighed and followed at a more sedate pace, being careful not to slip in the thick drifts. Max was already at the cabin’s door when his friend reached the foot of the hill.

  “He didn’t even lock it!” Max yelled, shoving the heavy wood door open. “He’s basically asking for people to look through his stuff. What a moron.”

  “Hey, slow down.” Ryan staggered after his friend, but hesitated on the house’s threshold. The building looked expensive; he could imagine it belonging to one of the suited businessmen he sometimes saw picking up their children after school. He’d always felt somewhat envious of those families; their kids had the best backpacks and shoes, and showed off the latest games the day after their release, and talked about flying to France or Bali for their holidays.

  That was, if he was honest with himself, the lynchpin of his friendship with Max. They’d bonded over their hatred of the rich brats, as they called them. Max was erratic, and loud, and pushy, but, Ryan had to admit, Max had made him see and do a lot of stuff he otherwise wouldn’t have. Stealing. Skipping classes. Going hunting.

  He sighed and entered the building. Max had dropped his backpack, gun and gloves onto the wooden table that took up nearly half of the living room, and Ryan added his own backpack and knife to the pile. The room was large, richly furnished with furs and antlers, and surprisingly warm after the chill from the outside. He couldn’t see his friend.

  “Hey, Max?”

  Max didn’t reply for a moment, and when he did, his voice was strangely choked. “Get in here.”

  Ryan followed the voice down the corridor leading to the kitchen. A large freezer took up part of the room. Two marble benches and a collection of shelves covered the rest of the walls. It was clearly a hobby hunter’s area to clean, prepare and freeze the deer he’d shot.

  Max stood in front of one of the benches. His face had lost most of its colour. Ryan approached him carefully, and slapped his shoulder. “What’s up?”

  “What does that look like to you?” Max asked.

  Ryan’s stomach flipped as he turned to the marble counter. It was coated in dried blood and some sort of long fur. “Uh… he’s not good at cleaning up after himself, is he?”

  Max carefully plucked one of the strands off the bench. He raised it to eye-height. It would have been too thin to easily see except for the dried gore stuck to it. “Ever seen an animal with fur this long?” he asked.

  Ryan hadn’t. The strand was easily forty centimetres. “What’re you saying?”

  “This is hair.” Max dropped the strand and stepped away from the counter. He looked sheet-white.

  Ryan opened his mouth to disagree, but no counter-argument came to him. He raised his eyes from the blood-stained bench to look about the kitchen. It had all of the hallmarks of a hunter’s home; multiple blades hung from hooks on the walls, boxes of plastic bags and wrap lay nestled in the corner, and a large bin sat in the corner. And, of course, there was the freezer.

  “Don’t open that!” Ryan said sharply, but Max ignored him. Of course he won’t listen to me. He never does.

  Max’s face was blank as he held the lid up and stared at the box’s contents. Ryan leaned forward, afraid of getting too close, but desperately curious to see inside.

  At least two dozen plastic bags were neatly arranged in the deep freezer. Ryan could see a lot of flesh, but couldn’t even begin to guess what—or where—it came from. He thought he saw pieces of skin that looked pink, though.

  Max reached into the box and picked up one of the bags. He dropped it again immediately, but not before Ryan saw the woman’s head stored underneath. Her lips were tinged blue from the cold, her eyes frozen open in an expression of shock, her long hair painted red by the blood that had run from her severed neck.

  Ryan swore under his breath and grabbed Max’s arm. “We’ve gotta get out of here.”

  For once, they were in perfect agreement. They scrambled down the hallway and back into the living room where their equipment still waited for them on the table.

  Max froze partway across the room. Once again, he was struck by how much warmer the cabin was compared to the icy landscape. There’s no way it should be this balmy. Not unless…

  He glanced towards the fireplace, where faintly glowing coals still lived in the grate. He tried to swallow, but his throat had tightened unbearably.

  “Where’s my gun?” Max said, anger rushing into his voice, but not quite capable of masking his fear. “What’d you do with it?”

  “Nothing!” Ryan turned towards the table. Their backpacks and gloves were still scattered over the mahogany surface, but his knife was also missing. A piece of paper had been wedged under his backpack, though, and he pulled it free with shaking fingers.

  I’m in the mood for some sport, the note read. You have a two minute head start. Run.

  27

  Host

  Kira muted her television and frowned at the caller ID flashing on her phone. Jessika Kirble. It had been years since she’d last thought of Jessika, let alone heard from her.

  She, Jessika and Adelaide had been close friends in school. Just seeing her name brought up a myriad of memories: weekly sleepovers, fights over toys, and, as they’d gotten older, fights over boys. At the time it had felt like their bond would never be broken.

  Time had eroded the friendship, of course, as it did everything. When Kira’s friends split up to go to different highschools, she’d found it surprisingly easy to move into new friendships, and forget the old—and seemingly childish—camaraderie.

  So how did Jessika get my number, and why’s she calling me now, after more than ten years of silence? If she wants to recruit me to one of those pyramid scheme makeup parties, she can think again.

  Kira pressed the green answer button, and held the mobile to her ear. “Hello?”

  The voice on the other end let out a relieved breath. It sounded oddly scratchy and distant, but the tone was shockingly familiar. “Kira! Hey, it’s Jessika. From school. D’you remember?”

  “Yeah, of course!” Kira forced a note of brightness into her voice. It felt surreal to be talking to her childhood friend, like she’d stepped back in time, somehow. “How are you? Wow, it’s been ages.”

  Jessika chuckled. “It sure has. I’ve been great. Though I’ve always felt bad that we didn’t stay in touch. Do you think we could meet up?”

  Maybe she does just want to reconnect, after all. “Yeah, I’d love that. Let me take you out for coffee.”

  “No, no, I mean tonight. Can you meet me tonight?”

  Kira’s subconscious prickled. There was something unsettling about the urgent note in the other woman’s voice.

  Jessika picked up on Kira’s hesitation and quickly added, “I know, I’m sorry. I wouldn’t ask except it’s urgent. It’s about Adelaide.”

  Adelaide Du. The third member of our miniature clique. She was heart-set on being a vet, wasn’t she? “Is something wrong with her?” Kira sat forward in her couch. The muted television had moved onto a commercial break, and an enthusiastic woman was demonstrating how much liquid her mopping cloth could absorb.

  “Uh…” Jessika was silent for a very long time. When she finally spoke, a fake brightness saturated her voice. “It’s really something I need to talk to you about in person. Can you come? Tonight?”

  The unsettling prickles evolved into an anxious buzz. “…where?”

  “We could meet up in the car park by the convenience store in Mendle Street. In Reddington. Is that okay with you?”

  At least it’s a public place. Not that I don’t trust her. I just… don’t trust her.

  “That’s fine. I’ll be twenty minutes.”

  Kira almost never visited Reddington, and had never been to the convenience store Jessika wanted to meet at. It wasn’t a good part of town. Half of the shops she passed were closed, and the other half looked like they were barely hanging on. Houses had tape holding fractured windows together, or cardboard where the windows had been completely broken. Kira hadn’t seen a single other human on the streets she’d passed, though there seemed to be no shortage of stray animals. The streetlights that still functioned did an appalling job of lighting the grime-coated pathways.

  The uneasiness was growing with each turn she took. Maybe Jessika’s on drugs and is going to beg for money. Or just straight-up rob me.

  Those concerns weren’t at all alleviated when Kira arrived at where the convenience store should have been and found a long-abandoned shell of a building. Part of the roof had collapsed. The only light came from the backglow of streetlamps in the road that ran behind the store.

  This is insane. I’ve got to get out of here.

  As she coasted past the abandoned shop, she saw a figure standing near the shopping cart corrals. Its pose was, in a strange way, incredibly familiar. The woman—Jessika—stepped forward and waved an arm in an attempt to attract Kira’s attention.

  I should go. This place doesn’t bode well.

  Jessika was waving both arms. She looked desperate.

  …damn it.

  Kira pulled into the parking lot and put the handbrake on, but didn’t remove the keys from the ignition. She got out of her car and carefully moved towards Jessika, who was waiting for her by the corral.

 

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