Snow(44)

Directly above them, the sky looked like a volcanic eruption. Lightning flashed horizontally from cloud to cloud. There was no moon.

Todd grabbed Kate’s arm. “Use the fire if they get too close.” He pulled her through the snow while Kate, in turn, pulled Meg. The townspeople began closing in on them. Todd let a few rounds rip from the handgun but that didn’t seem to deter any of them, except for the one or two that went down from the force of the bullet. When clutching hands got too close, Kate singed them with the torch. One of the townspeople howled…and suddenly dropped to the snow like someone shucking off an old housedress. Something semitransparent and hulking flitted off into the night.

The church grounds sloped downward to Pascal Street. There were a number of dead vehicles staggered at intervals down the street and two tipped over on their sides in a nearby ravine. Todd led the charge, panting and out of breath by the time they reached the street. Kate nearly slammed into his back and managed to hold on to the torch before it tipped out of her hands and clattered down into the frozen culvert.

Kate chanced a look behind her.

The church was a black smear at the top of the hill. Thick smoke billowed up through the rent in the roof and melded with the low-clinging clouds. The lower windows were alive with firelight as the interior of the church burned. The townspeople still stood on the snowy slope, staring down at them. Strangely, none had pursued.

Something’s wrong here, Kate had time to think. Something is very, very wrong…

Though he was still breathing hard, Todd straightened up and began moving farther down the road. “Come on. We can’t stop now.”

Kate lifted the torch above her head and gripped Meg’s hand. It felt limp and lifeless; the girl was no doubt shocked into immobility by what she’d just witnessed happen to her brother. Kate tugged her through the icy streets, close on Todd’s heels.

“Where are we going?” Kate called to him. Before Todd could answer, she looked over at Meg. “Where do you think we should go? Where would be safe?”

The girl only stared at her without expression. She was still in shock.

“When I was up in the bell tower,” Todd said, “I saw a fire hall and a police station up this road. I don’t know the condition they’re in but we need to—”

A mound of snow burst up from the ground along the shoulder, showering the night in white crystals. A lion’s roar shook Kate to the marrow of her bones and she nearly dropped the torch. The snow rose up and towered over them, three stories high, undulating like the segmented body of a worm. A blade of ice protruded from it and reared up—

Kate charged forward and drove the torch into the wall of snow. She had expected the flame to immediately extinguish upon impact, but instead the snow solidified and turned the color of a catfish. Kate could make out the vague suggestion of a rib cage and, beneath the translucent scurf, the throb of a white light at the center of the being. The flame ignited its flesh and the creature emitted a bone-numbing shriek that shook the tops of the nearby pines. Then it folded in on itself and scattered in a cloud of sparkling mist across the snowy ground.

Todd could only stare at the space where the creature had been just a moment ago. It looked like he was holding his breath.

Kate put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay,” she said, though she thought her voice sounded too nervous and uncertain. “We’re okay.”

“Right,” he said, nodding without really hearing her. “Right…”

She pushed him forward. “I’m right behind you,” she told him.





CHAPTER FIFTEEN



Crouching behind a veil of holly bushes, Shawna peered at the back of Rita Tubalow’s house. Shaking from a mixture of cold and fear, Shawna counted to fifty, until she could feel her heartbeat regain its normal rhythm again. The rifle clinging to her side, she surveyed Rita Tubalow’s backyard, now blanketed in an undulating carpet of snow. The moonlight made the snow radiate with nacreous light.

A doghouse sat at an angle beneath the deck, and a concrete sundial, the top of which held about eight inches of compacted white powder, rose up out of the center of the yard like a lighthouse on rocky shores. The house itself looked deserted, all its windows black, like a mountainside pocked with caverns.

What she had told Nan Wilkinson had been true—that while many of these houses appeared empty, that was far from the truth. She’d seen the worst of what had come to Woodson over the past week, and it was all too horrible to attempt to relay to any outsider who hadn’t witnessed it all firsthand. As Shawna had.

It had started quietly in the night, without anyone’s knowledge. Like a sneak attack from an advancing army, they had entered the town under everyone’s radar. And maybe that analogy wasn’t too far off—after all, what were those things and where had they come from? It was anyone’s guess. It was a sneak attack from an advancing army; the only difference was that their attackers hadn’t been human.

The snow had been falling steadily since the middle of November, so it was impossible to pinpoint exactly when things had changed. If they had come in on some special storm, or if they were actually the storm itself, Shawna had no clue. For all she knew, they could have been here since November, unobserved and biding their time until the right moment. But what Shawna did know was that the horror hadn’t begun until earlier that week. And it had started with Jared.