Snow(71)

What if they attack? Todd thought. What if they all charge us at once? Could we possibly defend ourselves against so many of them? And how many more are out there that we haven’t spotted yet?

“They’re rejects,” Bruce said, pushing between Todd and Brendan. “Freaks. When the creatures get inside little children—like preadolescents—they corrupt them and break them and turn them into those things.”

Brendan was trembling. Kate had told Todd that Brendan was the father of Molly’s baby; now, Todd wondered if Brendan was thinking of his unborn child while staring across the forest floor at these sad misfits.

“Pay them no mind,” Bruce told them, walking ahead of them. “Just keep moving.”

They continued deeper into the woods. At one point, Todd looked over his shoulder to where the children had been standing, and was surprised and a bit unnerved to find that they had vanished. He imagined packs of feral children, disfigured in their featurelessness, roaming the forested hillsides of the state for years and years to come.


In the basement of the sheriff’s station, Kate attempted to keep Charlie and Cody occupied by playing board games with them. They’d gotten through one full game of Monopoly and were halfway through Life when Cody began to whimper. The little girl climbed up onto one of the empty cots and curled into a fetal position. Worried, Kate got up and sat down on the edge of the girl’s cot.

“What’s wrong, honey?”

Cody just rubbed her eyes with her fist.

Kate pressed the back of her hand to the girl’s forehead. “She’s warm.”

Seated cross-legged on her own cot across the room, Molly grunted and began stacking pillows around her. “Are you a nurse or something?”

Kate ignored her. She stood and searched randomly around the desktop for anything that was not a bottle of liquor. In one of the desk drawers she located some bottled water. She opened one of the bottles and gave it to Cody. The girl took a few hesitant sips, then lay back down on the cot.

“I think your sister’s got a fever,” she said to Charlie.

“She gets headaches,” Charlie informed her.

“Does she? What kind?”

Charlie shrugged. He was picking at the rubber sole of one of his sneakers. “I don’t know. She used to take medicine.”

Oh please, you’re f*cking with me, kid, Kate thought. “What kind of medicine, Charlie?”

“I don’t know.”

“Was it special medicine or just aspirin?”

“What’s a ass-prin?” he said. “I don’t know what that means.”

Molly snickered.

“Something funny?” Kate said, looking at Molly from the corner of her eye while she unfolded a blanket and placed it over Cody. The little girl was shivering now.

“You’re trying to be that little girl’s mother,” Molly said.

“No,” Kate corrected, “I’m trying to take care of her because no one else is here to do that.”

“Do you have any kids of your own?”

“No.” She hated answering Molly’s questions, humoring the bitch like that, but she couldn’t help herself.

“Are you unable?”

“Excuse me?” She felt some of the old Kate Jansen return to her—the Kate Jansen who would have gotten up, swaggered over to snide little potbellied Molly, and cracked her across the jaw. Lord knew she’d done similar things to nicer people in the past.

“I’m just saying,” Molly crooned, continuing to fluff her pillows. “It’s just, you’ve been fawning all over those two ever since you got here. It’s like you’re trying to make up for something.”

“Are we seriously having this conversation?”

“It’s just talk,” Molly said, as if her comments thus far had been completely innocent. “I’m just passing the time.”

“Well, you can pass it by telling me where I could find some aspirin.”

Molly shrugged and looked bored. She picked up one of the paperback novels stacked beside her cot and absently thumbed through the pages. “This is a police station,” she intoned, no longer looking up at Kate. “I’m sure there’s Tylenol or something around here somewhere.”

Kate tucked the blanket up under Cody’s arms and legs, then stood, running her fingers through her hair. Part of her was holding on to Gerald, and how worried he must be by now that he hadn’t heard from her…but a larger part was out there with Todd. Standing in the doorway of the sheriff’s station as they headed down to the road, she’d had the sinking feeling that she would never see him again.

“I’m going to find some aspirin,” Kate announced, and left.


They reached the river and found it frozen. It was about twenty feet wide and couldn’t possibly be very deep; nonetheless, Todd did not like the idea of plowing through the ice even up to his shins. It was cold enough out here that his feet would freeze instantly. And there would be no turning back until after they’d completed their task. He would just have to be careful.

“You can use these overhangs for handholds,” Brendan said, inching his way out onto the ice while he gripped overhanging tree limbs like monkey bars. “They don’t go all the way across but it’s better than nothing.”