2
“THIS WAY!” A boy’s voice, coming from her left. Turning, she spotted a rust-red truck, its gray-white exhaust pluming in the still, frigid air. Eric and Casey were nearly there already, although Casey was listing now, leaning heavily against his brother. Two other boys stood on the running boards. One, so lanky and thin he was like the slash of an exclamation point, hoisted a rifle in the air one-handed, like a cavalry commander ordering a retreat. “Over here, come on, come on!”
Rima sprinted for the truck. Above the shriek of her breath, she heard the birds, still crowding the dome of the sky, but the grating, mechanical clacks of their cries seemed closer than before. Flicking a quick glance, she heard herself gasp, and for a second, she actually faltered and slowed. Maybe it was an illusion, but was the sky lower? She thought so. It felt as if the glowering, inky sky was beginning to crouch and crowd down. Or perhaps there were only more crows whizzing back and forth, coming together in darker clots before unwinding in screaming spirals to sweep over the trees—where, she saw, the fog huddled. Drawing down the death, she thought, not really understanding what that meant but knowing it was true because the death-whispers she’d sensed before were still gone, taken away when the crows spumed from the snow.
“Come on, come on, move it!” The wiry kid who’d called was already dropping into the passenger seat. “We got to boogie!”
Running out of time. Tearing her gaze from the crows winging over that doomsday sky, she got herself moving. But her chest was fizzing with panic, suddenly filled with a terrible foreboding. The space of this place was being closed up, pinched off, extinguished the way an upended jar smothered a flame.
Eric had just slotted in the two empty shotguns and was helping Casey clamber through the back passenger’s side door, so she rounded the nose for the opposite side. She wheeled around the back door just as the driver craned a look—and she almost screamed. Because this was another boy she already knew, had met before, and she thought now as she had then: What are you?
“Get in!” Then a look of shock swept through the boy’s face, and Bode’s mouth unhinged. “Whoa. What the hell, what are you doing here?”
She almost said, Trying not to die, but the lanky kid—Chad, she remembered now—interrupted. “Oh shit.” She looked and saw Chad staring back the way she had just come. “Aw, Jesus,” Chad said.
From his place directly behind Chad, Eric said, “What?” Rima saw his head snap a look, and then his body stiffen. “Oh God. Bode. Bode?”
“Yeah.” Bode’s tone was grim. “I see them.”
So, now, did Rima. Tania was on the snow and so was the man-thing Eric had shot. Instead of coming for them, both Tania and the man-thing were heading toward those distant woods, and she thought back to Father Preston’s lightning dash. Tania and the man-thing weren’t exactly running; even half-mended monsters must have a few residual aches and pains. But they weren’t tottering, shambling zombies either. Still, hit the gas, and the truck would leave them in the dust, no sweat.
The problem was … how the hell to outrun the others.
RIMA
Think My Hand
THE DENSE WOODS beyond Tania and the man-thing and the stalled snowcat, and over which the fog brooded, were alive with creatures—hundreds, thousands streaming from the trees. They were like the crows that had bulleted out of the snow, and Rima watched, stupefied, as they joined into broad, sweeping formations, spreading out to flank the truck like an army. They were a wall, a tidal wave of death, and all the more terrible because they came in absolute silence.
“Rima!” Casey grabbed her wrist and pulled. She tumbled in, and then Casey was reaching past her, dragging the door shut with a chuck as Chad screamed, “Go, Bode!”
“We’re gone!” Bode hammered the gas, the sudden acceleration throwing Rima back against her seat as the Dodge surged forward with a throaty vaROOOMMM. But Rima felt the change almost instantly, after less than twenty feet: how the truck balked and tripped and stumbled, as if they’d hopped onto railroad tracks by mistake. After another moment, the Dodge bogged down even more, suddenly churning what felt like taffy, the tires miring in deep snow that had been as solid as ice only two seconds ago.
“What the …” Cursing, Bode butted the stick into first and gunned the engine. This time the Dodge jolted forward by less than a foot.
“Aw, Christ,” Chad said. “Look, right under us. Look what’s happening to the goddamned snow.”
Rima plastered her face to the window glass and peered down. The snow was no longer unbroken or a vast white expanse but seamed with jagged cracks growing wider by the second. Yet a quick glance past Eric and toward the trees showed the snow there to be intact and unchanged. Beneath the truck, more splits appeared and the seams became ruts that rapidly filled with gelatinous ooze, like lava bubbling from the deep heart of a volcano. Except this lava was black and boiled up so quickly, it overflowed and began to spread over the snow in a tarry lake. It didn’t seem to be hot, but Rima thought it was the fog’s dark twin: quivering and molten, sucking at the truck’s tires to hold it fast. Looking back across Casey and Eric, she saw the creatures still coming, but now those fissures and cracks in the snow were spreading out, stretching in jagged fingers.
We’re the focal point. It’s all centered on us. It was as if they were the spider spinning a fractured web. Above the woods, the birds were still drawing down in an obsidian curtain, blacking the sky, shutting the lid on this day, this place, their lives. We’re causing this, making it happen. But how?
“Bode, do something. Get us moving!” Chad screamed. “The things are almost here, man, they’re almost here!”
But they may not be able to get to us. Rima saw that, further away, the snow seemed to be pulsing, the swells widening in ripples like a pond after you heaved in a heavy stone. Like Tania’s face, her neck. She eyed a swell, saw how fast it raced under the snow. Even at this distance, she could see Tania, who’d now linked up with the creatures, stagger.
“Can’t!” Bode yanked the truck’s gearshift, dropping them into first and pumping the accelerator, fighting the black lava’s grab, trying to rock them the way you might try to jump a car out of a deep rut. The truck’s engine whined, its growl rising to a high howl, and still they were only crawling over the snow, going nowhere fast. Now Rima could smell something burning. The pistons, the engine block itself—it didn’t matter.
“Is there anything we can do?” Eric asked, tensely. “Bode?”
“I got nothing, man,” Bode said, tersely, teeth bared. Sweat beaded on his forehead. “We’re sitting ducks. I don’t know what else I can do. I’ll keep fighting this hunka junk, but …” There was another tremendous grind of gears. “How you and your brother set for ammo?”
“My gun’s dry,” Eric said. “Case is out, too.”
“Which leaves the Winchester with five”—the Dodge bucked as Bode fought the stick—“and eight in the Colt. Plenty to go around.”
“Plenty? Aw, man, you crazy?” Chad moaned. He’d clapped both hands to his head. “Thirteen measly shots or thirteen hundred, there are too many of them, man.”