He lowered the gun. He felt Kate’s eyes hanging on him, burning through him. Instead of looking at her he just nodded toward the ambulance’s rear doors and mouthed the words, Get out. Comprehending, Kate peeled herself off the wall and practically glided past the sleeping teenage girl. Kate picked up her sconce and somehow managed to unlatch the ambulance doors without making a sound. Todd crept out after her, the freezing temperatures a sudden shock to his system the second he dropped down to the slushy road.
He stood for a long time staring into the open doors of the ambulance. If this were a movie, he’d be cursing the hero, telling him to go back in there and pull the trigger, pull the trigger, pull the fucking trigger. But this was real life, and sometimes people were just as foolish as the fake people on-screen.
Let’s be honest, he thought then, his hand holding the gun trembling. I’m not even sure shooting this girl would kill the thing inside it. The one Shawna shot outside the Pack-N-Go just seemed to flit away. Maybe they’re injured and weakened when they come rushing out of people like that, but I don’t think shooting them kills them.
Fire, on the other hand…
The thought caused him to turn and watch the conical black smoke rising up from the trees. The church. It was a goddamn funeral pyre, all right, smoldering straight through the night. He wondered what was left of the building and, moreover, what remained of the creatures inside.
Kate was staring at him by the side of the road. She looked cold and wet and uncomfortable. “Are we going?” she said, her voice just barely audible.
He nodded, and they began walking down in the culvert, out of sight from the road.
In the light of day, the massacre that had come to Woodson was horrifically apparent. Blood stained the snowy hillsides and froze in red rivulets in the ravines and gutters along the roadways. Shredded bits of clothing were strung up in trees like discarded party favors. Worse still, human bones were strewn about at random as if they’d fallen off the back of a passing truck; many of the bones still had chunks of meat on them that glittered with frost. A human head caught in midscream was propped in the Y of a yew tree, its eyes frozen into black marbles, its skin a nightmarish blue-green. At one point Kate asked if she should light the torch, just in case one of those things burst out of the snow again, but Todd said it was probably best to keep a low profile. “Besides,” he said, “it seems like they’re hiding now that it’s daylight.”
“Shawna said daylight didn’t matter, that they’re not vampires.”
Todd shrugged. “Maybe they are. Maybe these things are what we’ve come to know as vampires.”
“The sky looks funny. I’ve got a bad feeling. And that swirling electrical cloud over the hill up there?” She pointed over toward the rotating black eyelet beneath the dome of clouds. “It’s unnatural.”
Todd laughed—he couldn’t help it. “This whole fucking thing is unnatural, love,” he said, sending her laughing, too. He was starving—surely they both were—and laughing only aggravated his empty stomach…but it felt good, too. Suddenly, Todd couldn’t remember the last time he’d laughed.
“Where do we go now?” Kate asked after they’d walked for another few minutes, the laughter having subsided.
“I say we stick to the original plan. Hit one of those houses, steal a car, get the fuck outta Dodge.”
“What about the others?” There was genuine hopefulness in her voice that suggested she actually believed they were still alive. “I mean, once we find a car, do we…we just leave them here? Leave them behind?”
“Nan’s dead,” Todd reminded her. “That doesn’t bode well for Fred and Shawna, either.”
“But you don’t know that.”
“When I was up in the bell tower with Chris, I could see that the windows of the Pack-N-Go had been blown out. Chris said he saw two women come running out of there.”
“What about Fred?”
“He said nothing about Fred.”
“That doesn’t mean he’s dead. And what about Shawna? We don’t know that she’s dead, either. Not for sure. She’s lasted the whole week out here on her own, holed up in that convenience store. It’s possible she’s still around, hiding and waiting things out.”
“Listen,” he said, “I don’t like the idea of leaving them behind any more than you do. I feel like shit about Nan. But it’s not like we can tool around the neighborhoods honking our horn and shouting their names, Kate. What do you suggest we do?”
She paused. He thought she was angry with him, but when he looked at her, there was a strange expression on her face.
“What?” he said. “What is it?”
“I have to pee.”
He snorted, smiling. “So pee. I’ll wait here.”
“No. I’m not traipsing off by myself. Just turn around. I’ll do it right here.”
He took the torch from her, then turned around. He stared at the treetops while she unzipped her pants and, a few seconds later, he tried not to get embarrassed by the sound of her urinating in the snow. To make light of the scenario, he said, “Man, I hope you’re pissing on one of those fuckers right now.”
She barked laughter, then scolded him: “Don’t make me laugh! I’m squirting all over the place back here.”
When she’d finished, she balled up some snow in her hands to clean them, then took the torch back from Todd. Together they continued walking along the muddy culvert until they could see the houses looming up on the other side of the street. Someone had driven a Ford Taurus into a fire hydrant, the car’s occupant gone. A stop sign was bent at a perfect right angle, the large white STOP printed vertically.
They crossed up over the embankment and out into the street with considerable trepidation. Every footfall seemed to echo down the street. It was like walking onto a movie set. Nothing seemed real and everything was eerily quiet.
“Where do you think they all are?” Kate said. She was holding the unlit torch like a baseball bat now.
“I have no clue. But let’s not take it for granted.”
“Deal. Which house?”
“The closest one.”
They moved up the snow-packed sidewalk, their feet sinking straight down to their ankles in the freezing muck. Beyond a copse of pines, Todd thought he recognized the backs of some of the buildings. “I think we’re on the other side of the town square,” he said, trying to peek through the trees.
“God.” Kate froze.
“What is it?”
“I feel like someone’s following us.”
“Someone?”
“Or one of those things.”
Todd surveyed the empty road, the strip of houses, the surrounding wedges of trees. “I don’t see anything.”
“I think that’s the idea.” She shivered, hugging herself. “Let’s keep going. I feel like a moving target out here.”
They hurried up the sloping lawn to the first house, a quaint little Victorian with Christmas decorations in the darkened windows. Off to their left, something sizzled. Todd spun around, the gun aimed in. Kate said, “What was that?”
Across the street, a thick black cable snaked through the snow, occasionally spitting sparks from its truncated end.
“Downed power line,” Todd said. “I saw that from the bell tower, too.”
“You’re a regular Quasimodo.”
Kate advanced up the lawn but Todd grabbed her sleeve. “Wait. I think we should go around back.”
“Okay.”
The backyard was protected by a wooden fence roughly six feet high. Todd could just barely see over the top but there was no hope for Kate. However, an ivy trellis clung to the side of the house, flimsy but workable. Todd slipped the handgun into his waistband, then propped a foot into one of the diamond-shaped grooves. Hoisting himself up, he felt just how weak the trellis was. He managed to secure another foothold before leaning over the fence. A quick survey of the yard showed nothing out of the ordinary—a drooping hammock dipped in ice and a bird feeder that was, like everything else in this town, deserted. In fact, it occurred to him at that moment that he hadn’t seen a single animal—not a bird or a squirrel—since arriving in Woodson. It troubled him to think of what might have happened to all the little woodland creatures…