Chills, page 6
* * *
While he was gone, Jessica waited in the car, steaming the windows with her irritation. She could catch dark glimpses of Dan’s coat through the blizzard as he made his way to the front of the car, brushed the snow off it with his sleeve, and popped the hood. She couldn’t see him at all then, and could hear nothing but the creaking of the wind and the chuffing of the snow. It made her feel nettled. She didn’t like the idea of being left alone in the passenger seat, with him doing God-knew-what to the insides of the car in some half-assed attempt at being Mr. Fix-it. She took her cell out of her purse with half a mind to just call Triple-A, but a sound outside, louder than the storm, made her jump. It had sounded like a heavy thump against the outside of her car door. She waited, listening, and thought she heard, though she couldn’t be sure, something like glass scratching against metal.
“Dan?” Her voice barely broke a whisper; she shook her head and buzzed the power window down. A gust of snow-choked air smacked her face. She grimaced against it and stuck her head out the window. “Dan? Dan!”
Her hand found the door handle and hesitated. She shielded her eyes against the wind and snow as best she could and looked out into the darkness, but could see nothing. She looked down, scanning the snow drift piling up against her door for whatever could have made the banging and scraping sounds. She saw nothing.
“Dan!” she shouted, but in reply, there was only a rush of snow and ice in her eyes and down her throat, and suddenly close behind her, that metallic whine of glass on metal.
The cold formed a hard lump around the panic in her gut, and she turned her head slowly toward the source of the sound.
What she saw set loose a scream from her that the wind matched, picked up, and carried away.
* * *
Dan swore into the wind. Whatever was wrong with the car, it was far beyond his limited knowledge. No loose wires or burnt-out spark plugs. In fact, the engine was still giving off heat, so he couldn’t imagine the cold had done any damage. As far as he could tell, the battery was fine, but what the hell did he know? He was no mechanic, either.
His fingers throbbed beneath the gloves, and his toes felt like they had been shoved between sharp rocks. He’d always had poor circulation in his hands and feet, and so had little tolerance for the cold weather. He’d only gotten out to look under the car’s hood to get away from Jessica for a minute. She could get on his nerves like nobody else, and while he liked her in some ways, she often made him want to smack that expression of smug satisfaction in her own good looks and charms right off her face. He’d done a lot for her because of those looks and what those charms promised, and over the last month or so, it had not proved worth the headaches she caused him.
He slammed down the hood and huddled into his coat. He’d have Jessica call AAA. Hell, she probably already had the cell phone out, and if she wasn’t on the phone arranging for someone to come get them already, then she was biding her time, bitching to friends over texts, until he came back and she could make a big show of calling for a tow.
Dan’s overhead light was busted, so when he opened the door, it remained dark. He slid in, fully expecting an onslaught of criticism. He didn’t notice the blood until he turned toward the unexpected silence.
Jessica was gone. Her purse lay open on the floor. On the seat where she’d been, the cracked screen of her crushed cell phone offered pale slivers of light and darkness as it sat in a small puddle of congealing blackness.
“Jess?” A cloying coppery smell came from the passenger seat, from that puddle. Blood? When a gust of wind brought snow through her open window, Dan caught a whiff of something else. It was a sour smell he couldn’t place, but it reminded him of the way one’s fingers smelled after touching a metallic surface in a public place—layers of other people’s skin oils, dirty metal, germs, or how he imagined petting-zoo animals might smell after they di—
A high-pitched wail carried over the wind, scraping across his bones so that the hairs on his arms and neck stood on end.
Something was outside in the snow.
Outside—where he had just been, alone and completely unaware.
Dan pushed the window button just enough to buzz the passenger window all the way up, cutting off the cold, and then locked the doors. He peered cautiously from one dark pane to another, trying to make out what might be out there. The flakes of snow and ice brushed and slapped against the window like a thousand tiny fingertips trying to get in.
It occurred to him then that if the power windows had worked—for Jess when she’d lowered the window, and again for him when he raised it back up again—then that had to mean the car had at least some power somewhere, maybe enough to get it going again. He tried the key in the ignition. Nothing happened. Dan swore softly. What was going on? Should he go back out there and try to find Jess? He glanced again at the puddle of blood on the passenger seat, and decided a search for her would be moot. She couldn’t leave that much blood behind and still be alive, could she?
He heard the wail again, closer this time, although he couldn’t tell exactly which direction it was coming from. He whispered Jessica’s name and realized he hadn’t really made a sound. His heart pounded loudly in his ears.
A thump on the hood rattled the car, and Dan fought the urge to cry out. Through the ice-crusted windshield, he could see a shape, or at least, the occasional outline of a shape, sometimes dark and sometimes almost nonexistent. It slapped an enormous . . . paw—or claw?—onto the windshield, and Dan flinched. He could make out what looked like three unusually long, multi-segmented fingers with curving black talons. Their points screeched against the glass as whatever those fingers belonged to moved around on the hood of the car.
Think. Think. He had to think.
He could run, but how far, and for how long? Even if he stayed on the road instead of saving time by cutting through the woods, it was a whiteout out there. It was dark now, and cold enough that if he lost his bearings in the snow storm, he could very well freeze to death even with a heavy coat.
And those circumstances ignored the most glaring and immediate problem—the one which now scrabbled up the windshield. Dan had one brief, sickening glimpse of gangly, nearly translucent legs and animal feet, each with three long, taloned toes.
A thump and steel groan from the roof of the car made him jump. Over the wind, Dan heard the thing wail in frustration as it clawed at the car.
He dug his phone out of his pocket and then swore, fighting the urge to slam it against the dashboard. It had died an hour ago. He looked reluctantly at Jessica’s phone, sitting in the congealing puddle of her blood. He didn’t want to touch it or, by any extension, touch the horrible thing that had happened to her. Another thump from outside, however, decided for him. He took a deep breath, let it out in a cool white puff, and snatched the phone. The screen was cracked, and when he tried to turn it on, it stuck on the brand logo for a bit and then faded to black. He tried again, but couldn’t even access her password screen. Disgusted, he tossed it back onto the passenger seat. He plugged his own into the car charger, hoping there might be just enough juice somewhere in the car to power it back up. The thing on the roof wailed into the wind. Dan was going to die in that car, alone in the snowy dark....
Think. His stomach lurched, and he fought the rising gorge of panic in his throat. He could stay in the car. Whatever that was out there, it didn’t seem to be able to get in, so maybe he could wait it out. Maybe it would get frustrated and go away.
He glanced at Jessica’s seat again, at the blood, and felt his stomach twist in fresh knots. That thing had probably been going for him, until she’d opened the window. Why had she opened it? Why had she gotten in its way? He mashed away the beginning of tears with his fist. God only knew what that thing had done to Jessica—he didn’t really want to think about it. But if it had eaten her (his own stomach cramped at the thought), then maybe it would go away.
And just what the fuck was that thing out there, anyway? His bet was on some military experiment gone wrong, some kind of biological or zoological warfare that had gotten too powerful and too unpredictable to control. Shit like that was always going down in quiet little nowhere towns like Colby.
Dan shivered, clapping his hands together and blowing on the stiffening tips of his fingers. He hated the cold. He tried to think about anything else besides the dropping temperature inside the car and the nightmare thing outside on top of it. He was sure the two were related—that thing trying to claw through the roof of his car had caused snow in May, or the weather anomaly had spawned the thing, a military weather/monster experiment or whatever that had eaten his girlfriend.
Every ten or fifteen minutes that passed, Dan found himself checking the ignition. His fingers ached, and his toes felt like hard glass, fragile enough to send shards of pain across his feet every time he tried to stamp some circulation back into them. The accumulated heat from the interior had completely dissipated, and if he couldn’t start the engine, he’d freeze inside the car just as easily as out on the road. He had to work at keeping his teeth from chattering. He felt cold all over.
But . . . somebody somewhere had to know Colby was screwed with snow and snow monsters, right? So, where were the police? Where were the firefighters and EMTs and the fucking National Guard? He blew on his fingers again, rubbing them futilely, and flinched at a thump above his head. No doubt people in charge of these kinds of situations, military or SWAT or whatever, were in a (warm) room somewhere planning how to make the Colby problem go away. They had to be.
Not that their deliberations would do him much good right now.
A strained part of his brain, the part that had calculated the probability of freezing to death and then being eaten in his future, found it all kind of funny. Yeah, somebody somewhere had a plan, all right. The government would come in and drop bombs and wipe Colby, its townspeople, and the military’s snowbound mistake right off the goddamned planet.
Welcome to Colby, Connecticut, population negative six. A nice, quiet place to settle down. Snow here? No sir! Colby is as balmy as a paradise island, thanks to its smoking crater—all hot springs and radiation, a regular nuclear summer. How’s that for fun? Bring the kids!
He started giggling then, and was frightened by the thin, crazed, manic quality it had in his own ears. His teeth began chattering, and he found he didn’t have the strength to stop it. The chattering spread to his whole body until he was shaking. This made him feel a little warmer—not enough to be comfortable, but enough to set off an alarm in his head. He’d heard somewhere that one of the final signs of hypothermia was a kind of numb warmth, sometimes even an unbearable heat, just before death. Was this how it started? Was he starting to freeze to death?
I have to get out of here. Now.
He screamed for help into the inky emptiness all around him.
As if in answer, the thing on the roof jumped down onto the trunk, and Dan turned sharply in his seat. Puffs of its breath fogged the back window, melting the snow. For the first time, Dan saw the creature’s head, and it sucked the breath and scream right out of him.
The pale head was anglerfish-like, wide-eyed and scaly with serrated teeth swathed in fleshy, dull lips. The body crowding the rear window was all lean muscles and angles, the scales or flesh like snow and ice. It was there one second, and then it blew away, like so many flakes in the window. Then it reformed again. It growled at him, a sound like rending metal, and for one horrific second, Dan thought the thing was tearing through the car. Then it scrabbled up the back window and onto the roof again.
It seemed like a long time passed after that. The wind blew dry, anxious whisper words of snow against the windows of the car. All around him, the night exhaled its leaden grayness, separating him further from any hope of help. He waited, his breath shallow, and listened for the thing on the roof. It had been a while since he’d heard it wailing and thumping up there. Maybe it had left. He peered through the window into the swirling darkness. Everything was moving out there—it would be impossible to see where or if that thing was waiting out on the road.
His chest hurt from pulling in cold, dry air, and his body was shaking uncontrollably.
His phone! He scrambled to pick it up and turn it on. His fingers were numb and his first few attempts with the touch screen yielded nothing. Finally, though, his phone came on, and he laughed in relief. He was just about to call 911 when his phone went black. No amount of coaxing could make it come on again. The laughter died in his throat.
Dan swore, tempted to throw the phone out the window. Instead, he tossed it on the dashboard, disgusted.
His phone dinged, indicating a new text message. He frowned, confused, and picked it up to check the screen.
The new message was from Jessica Florey.
He looked at Jessica’s phone, in the puddle of blood where he’d left it on the passenger seat. It was dark and still.
He tapped the text message to bring it on screen, and the rush of anxiety that filled his chest was the first bit of warmth he’d felt in what seemed like hours.
Run Danny Ruuunnn
The world dimmed in the corners a bit. Run? Run where? Cold and confused, he looked around the car helplessly. He had recently cleaned out his car, at the behest of Jessica. Anything he could have used to layer and keep warm was gone now—old scarves and wrinkled jackets, T-shirts balled up in the back seat . . . Hell, he thought he might have at one time even had a waterproof pair of work boots back there somewhere. Now there was nothing but an empty foam cup from Wendy’s, a quarter, and—
And sweet, sweet Jesus, it was his pocket knife. He allowed a tiny smile, a slight loosening of the knot in his chest as he reached into the back seat for it. He had to force his stiff fingers to close around its handle, but he got it, and its little hard realness was something of a relief.
Run Danny Ruuunnn, the text had said. And why not? There was a good chance he would freeze to death whether he went into the snow or stayed in his icebox on wheels. His skin was so cold and it was getting harder for him to focus. Why had he wanted to stay? Was the car keeping that thing from getting to him? How long would it matter, even if that were true?
It had been a while since he’d heard the thing on the roof. A flash of panic drove him to peer out the various car windows—the thought of losing track of the thing now, just as he was contemplating escape, seemed unbearable to him.
Nothing but darkness and snow enveloped him and his car. It had to be stacking up all around him, maybe muffling the movements of the monster outside as the thing looked for ways to peel open the car like a tuna can.
Run Danny Ruuunnn
Or maybe it had given up and gone away. He clutched the pocket knife more tightly. He’d have to take the chance. He was freezing to death in that car.
His heart stuck in his chest as his hand hovered over the door handle. He counted his shallow breaths. At ten, he promised himself he’d bolt and make a run for town. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve . . . He promised he’d go at twenty. Twenty-five.
On the twenty-sixth breath, his body made the decision for him, and before his brain could object, he was in the cold, the air stabbing his face, his eyes, his lungs, the point of the knife held out before him like a beacon. And he was mostly running and sliding, sliding and running, praying he wouldn’t fall, because if he fell and that thing moved swiftly and silently through the drifts and jumped him before he could get up again....
He didn’t look behind him. He couldn’t bring himself to. He kept concentrating on running and not falling, sliding and gliding but not falling, until dual lights rounded the corner of the road and surprised him. He stopped short. The lights kept moving, but their direction was all wrong. They were moving up toward the sky, and the sky was moving out of the way. He felt his limbs move all wrong, too, and then felt the painful, bone-shattering thud of the hard-packed snowy road beneath his back. The cold ate into his pants, his jacket. And for just a moment, a half-opaque blur blotted out the snow and that scent of unclean, over-petted dead things filled his nose and throat.
A loud bang from beyond the lights was answered with that horrible wind-wail, and the blur jerked backward, out of his line of view. He waited, afraid to get up, afraid to even breathe.
A round, somewhat cherubic face with a thatch of auburn hair sticking out from beneath a woolen cap filled his vision, and he felt a surprisingly strong grip on his arm helping him to his feet.
“Oliver Morris,” the cherubic face told him. “Police. Are you okay? Is there anyone else in that car back there?”
Numbly, Dan shook his head. “Gone. She’s . . . gone,” he mumbled. “The thing got her.” He turned slowly, looking back at the car, willing himself to look down at the lump that had been taken down by the .45 Morris was holstering. It was rapidly deteriorating into slush, which flattened and froze into black ice.
The world swam in front of him and winked out as he collapsed in the snow beside the remains of the thing that had tried to kill him.
Chapter Five
“Well, if you’re Toby’s sister, I suppose it’s okay.”
From an uncomfortable plastic guest chair left for her by a surly orderly, Kathy watched the crazy woman on the bed with no expression. She did not move. It was her experience that people like Charlene Ledders were feral things, drawn to and distracted by movement, and easily put on the offensive by loud noises and sudden gestures. She wanted Charlene to talk, to respond and not react. She waited, studying the woman.
Charlene was in her late forties but easily looked ten years older. Her sallow skin looked papery thin, as if any sudden movement of her own might tear it like tissue paper. Her eyes, a dull blue, kept darting to the corners of the room—the far corner behind the door, in particular—as if waiting for something, or watching it. What might have once been soft waves of blond hair had dulled to a bleached-bone colorlessness, hanging in frizzy dreadlocks and uneven braids. She wore a gray sweatshirt and sweatpants, as well as one sock, all of which looked like they’d seen better days. One of her wrists was in a leather cuff, bound to a metal rail that ran along the far side of the bed. The free hand, a bony, spidery thing with ragged, uneven nails, she used to scratch incessantly at her scalp. Kathy could see a crust of dried blood along her hairline. Her toenails had once been painted blue, but most of the polish had chipped away. She sat with one leg tucked under her and the other tented in front of her, occasionally bouncing on her simple, cot-like bed. Behind her, the snow beyond the barred window blocked out the sky.
