Snow(76)

With sharklike eyes, the townspeople followed the course of the runaway Oldsmobile, their heads turning on their necks like wooden puppets.

Todd saw it coming before it actually happened: the Oldsmobile smashed into the front of the hardware store, sending a shock wave across the square and a display of shimmering fragments of glass into the air. An exhalation of debris wrapped in black dust showered the sidewalk.

A deep-octave moan rose up among the townspeople. Like robots programmed to do so, they pivoted in unison and faced the destroyed facade of the hardware store. The front windows were still smoking, the tail end of the Olds cocked at an angle in the center of the store like a sneer.

Then, as if someone had fired a starter’s pistol, the townspeople took off toward the hardware store. They didn’t shamble or stagger like the puppeted skin-suits they were—rather, they loped like gazelles, the width of their strides astounding. Their fierce agility and speed shocked Todd into temporary immobility; even his mind seemed to shut down. He could only watch as they attacked the hardware store, spilling into the busted front windows and swarming over the Oldsmobile like ants.

Great bursts of snow exploded from the ground as vaporous tornados of shimmering snow dust corkscrewed up into the air. Todd counted four…five of them. They rippled through the air as they soared toward the hardware store.

Taking a deep breath, Todd dashed out onto the sidewalk and ran toward the Pack-N-Go.


From the top of the hill, Brendan cheered as he watched the Oldsmobile smash through the front of the hardware store. Without someone inside the car to steer it, he’d had his doubts as to how far the car would actually get before it ran off the road, expecting it to most likely collide with a tree. As it turned out, he couldn’t have planned a better outcome.

“I was fired from that hardware store when I was in high school,” Brendan said, grinning. “Fuck ’em, I say.”

They watched as the skin-suits turned their heads and emitted a resounding wail. It sounded like an orchestra warming up. When the skin-suits began loping toward the hardware store, Brendan clapped his hands, then clapped Bruce on the back.

“Come on,” Brendan said, beaming. “We’re not done yet, compadre.”


Charlie in tow, Kate skidded to a halt halfway down the hallway. Molly stood facing Kate, the pregnant woman’s face a testament to some indescribable horror.

“They’re outside,” Molly cried. “There’s so many of them! They know we’re here!”

Kate ran past her and into the secretarial office. Peering through the blinds on the windows, she could see the shapes had crept closer to the building. There were at least a dozen of them now, all staring at the police station. Skin-suits, as Tully had termed them. Their clothing matted with blood, their eyes as vacuous as muddy pools, they were like creatures that had shuffled right out of a nightmare.

Trembling, Molly appeared in the office doorway. “They know we’re here, don’t they?”

Kate examined the empty faces of the townspeople. “I can’t tell.”

“Of course they do!” Molly shouted. “You brought them here! And now we’re going to die!”

“Shut up,” Kate barked. She doused the halogen lamp, bathing them in darkness. “No one’s going to die. Get back downstairs with Cody.”

“She’s asleep.”

“I said go!”

Startled, beginning to cry again, Molly retreated down the hallway. Charlie now occupied the doorway in her place, a terrified expression on his pale face. He was visibly quaking.

Kate turned back to the window. Something beneath the snow moved and caught her attention—a mound rose and then sank, rose, then sank, as if the snow itself were breathing. The surface of the snow began to ripple, as if something were vibrating underground. Then, like one of those old Bugs Bunny cartoons where Bugs tunnels under the ground on his way to Pismo Beach, something beneath the snow—or perhaps the snow itself—began tunneling across the front lawn of the police station, leaving in its wake disturbed mounds of upturned powdery snow.

Whatever it was, it was snaking closer to the building, heading for the front doors.

Whatever it was, it was big.

They’re surrounding us, like the f*cking cavalry, Kate thought, terrified.

One of the skin-suits—a middle-aged balding man with a beer gut, wearing sweatpants and a Chicago Bears sweatshirt—began walking up to the front doors of the station. He had that same off-kilter look in his eyes that strange Eddie Clement had had when they’d stopped to pick him up last night on the side of the road.

“What do we do?” Charlie said from the doorway.

Kate racked the shotgun and discharged a shell. She held it up to the boy so that he could see what it looked like. “I need you to go to the room with all the guns, Charlie, and bring me more of these. They’re in boxes on the shelves. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

Without expression, Charlie nodded.

“Good,” she said. “Now go. Hurry.”


The interior of the Pack-N-Go smelled like death. Todd hurried inside, crunching shattered glass and bits of cereal. The damage was unfathomable, the sights atrocious. The plastic trash bags he had used to cover the two dead bodies had blown away, revealing purpled, crystallized mummies in the aisles of the convenience store. The parts of them that still looked human—a twisted and frozen hand or the teepee bend of a leg—were somehow the hardest things to look at.