“Andy, please.” He heard his own voice crack a little. Was that what begging sounded like? Coming out of his own mouth? “Come on, man, this is bad, you don’t have to do this.”
“Wrong. Magnus told me to do it. It’s either me or you. Good, bad, I’m the guy with the gun, so I choose you.”
Colding’s mind raced for something to say, but words escaped him. What would it feel like to be shot? Holy shit holyshit maybe he could dive for Andy’s feet, maybe—
Andy cocked the hammer. “You ready, Bubbah?”
Colding didn’t say anything, couldn’t say anything.
A crack echoed across the darkness. Colding’s body twitched violently, anticipating the lethal pain, but after a fraction of a second he realized the sound had come from the woods. A broken stick.
Andy turned his head to look. His gun remained leveled at Colding.
Colding moved to launch himself at Andy, but he wasn’t even halfway out of his seat before Andy turned back, eyes locked on Colding. “Don’t bother, duck-fucker.”
Colding froze. He was screwed, so utterly screwed.
Another cracking sound, smaller this time but still definitive. Colding thought he saw movement deep in the wood’s blackness.
From the trees behind Andy came a low, slow, deep growl.
Colding’s skin tingled all over. He felt a new fear, a primitive fear, even beyond that brought on by a gun pointed at his face.
Andy took a few steps back, increasing his distance from Colding, then looked into the dark woods. Colding couldn’t breathe. Overwhelming. He had to get away from there, hadtohadto, but Andy wouldn’t let him move.
“There’s a lot of them,” Colding said, his words coming fast. “Dozens, maybe forty, you need me or they’ll take you down. Two guns, man, two.”
“You talk too much,” Andy said. He once again focused on Colding. “It’s been real, dick-weed.”
Something erupted out of the woods.
Andy flinched just as the gun fired, throwing off his aim. The bullet hit the seat behind Colding, ripping up the vinyl and tearing out a huge chunk of foam rubber.
Massive.
That was the only word for the thing. White with the black spots of a cow, a lion-sized cross between a gorilla and a hyena, thick shoulders, black beady eyes, a mouth big enough to bite a man clean in half and teeth that looked like they could pierce steel plate. Way over four hundred pounds, easy.
“Fuck a duck,” Andy said.
It bounded forward, roaring, huge muscles rippling under the black-and-white fur, heaving chest pushing up snow like the wake from a speedboat. A long fin rose up from the thing’s head, revealing a bright-yellow membrane running from the fin to the creature’s back.
A single thought dominated Colding’s mind: I’d rather take a bullet.
He thumbed the start button. The engine fired and Colding hit the throttle.
Andy twisted to fire at Colding, then quickly changed his mind and turned to shoot at the oncoming creature, now only twenty yards away and closing fast.
pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop
Colding’s sled shot up and over the three-foot bank, plunging into the snow beyond. He turned hard left, parallel to the trail.
pop-pop-pop-pop
Each shot made Colding wince, made him wonder if the bullets were tearing into him and he just couldn’t feel it. His sled lurched through the deep snow. He couldn’t pick up speed. He glanced over at the bloody creature struggling to crawl toward Andy. It had taken at least ten shots at point-blank range, yet still it came on, big jaws snapping on empty air.
Andy turned, his eyes locking on Colding’s. The empty magazine dropped free. Andy already had another in hand, and it slid into the Beretta with sickening, professional speed.
Colding looked forward and leaned low as the sled finally accelerated. All he heard was the engine’s powerful scream. The fallen tree passed by on his left.
Then he saw them.
To the front and the right, two more of the creatures were coming out of the nighttime woods, barely illuminated by his headlights, ten yards away and closing fast.
A bullet punched a hole in his plexiglass windshield.
Colding angled left toward the trail. He had to jump the bank like Sara had shown him. He already had the throttle opened up, but he squeezed harder anyway.
A sudden, blazing pain exploded in his right shoulder, but he didn’t let go.
Closing in from the front right, the first creature leaped for him. Colding hit the bank and pushed down hard on the runners. The sled shot out over the trail, a jet plume of snow streaking behind it. The thing’s impossibly long claws reached out and out and out, swinging down in an arc that hit the seat just behind Colding’s ass. In midair, the snowmobile’s back end lurched to the left. Colding threw his body to the right to counteract the sudden shift just as the Arctic Cat slammed hard on the trail, jarring Colding’s body and snapping his head forward. The sled skidded sideways and started to tip, started to roll, but to stop was to die and he savagely brought the machine under control.
On the groomed trail, the snowmobile hit fifty miles per hour within seconds—it shot down the dark trail like a screaming rocket. The creatures gave chase, but only for a few moments before they realized their prey could not be caught.
They turned their attention back to the other prey, the one standing behind the fallen tree.
DECEMBER 3, 9:53 P.M.
ANDY FIRED FIVE rounds at Colding before he felt the claw on his leg. He reflexively jumped straight into the air, jerking and kicking, regaining his balance just before tripping over the fallen tree. He stared down at the monster, brain awash in disbelief.
I shot that fucking thing TWELVE times.
And yet still it dragged itself along the ground toward him, leaving a trail of spreading bright-red lit up by his snowmobile’s headlight. Andy pointed the gun at the thing’s head. It opened its mouth, nice and wide, still reaching for Andy’s life.
He pulled the trigger, pop-pop-pop-pop-pop
The bullets ripped into the open mouth, breaking a pointed tooth, punching holes in the black tongue before blasting out the back of the skull in a spray of blood.
The head—mouth still open—finally fell still. A last cloud of breath hissed out, crystallizing in the cold before drifting away.
The roar of Colding’s snowmobile faded.
Andy heard sounds from the woods. A coppery, acidic feeling blossomed in his stomach as he realized that the dead thing on the ground wasn’t alone. He put his third and final clip into the Beretta.
Two long strides brought him to the Polaris. He hopped on and jammed the gun into his open snowsuit. Only a split second to decide between following Colding or turning the machine around and heading back up the trail.
Back up the trail, toward the mansion, toward the big guns.
He gunned the throttle and pulled hard to the right, body leaning far out to aid the sudden, sharp turn. On his back left, past the fallen log, he saw two of the creatures, their white fur a nightmarish red in his taillight’s glow. They pounded toward him—heads down, legs pumping hard, black eyes angry with pure hunger.
Andy finished the turn and shot down the trail, toward the mansion. Speed felt like life, like pure safety.
Two more creatures came out of the woods on his right, but they wouldn’t be fast enough to stop him. God, but they were so big, like shark-finned bears.