Snow(86)

“They’re…they changed.” She stared at him, her eyes frighteningly lucid. “No faces.”

Todd felt his muscles clench. He turned back to the window. “They’re all out there now.”

Kate ran her fingers through her tangled hair. “God, what are they waiting for? Just let it happen already.”

He squeezed her shoulder.

Her smile warmed him, though there was little effort in it. Then her eyes widened and she looked past him and out the window. “Todd, they’re running.”

He looked and saw them—all of them—charging toward the building at breakneck speed, their feet kicking up clouds of snow, their arms pumping like machine pistons.

“What—” he began, just as they simultaneously pummeled the side of the building. Blood went everywhere. Some of them fell backward into the snow. But the ones who remained standing, which were most of them, slowly backed away from the building…only to rush at it again. This time, Todd heard a distant window shatter. Beneath the awning, the station’s front doors appeared to buckle.

“They’re smashing their way in,” Kate said.

Todd pulled open the window, the cold quickly sinking its teeth into his flesh, and shoved the nose of the shotgun out. He fired at the closest townsperson, who went down in a gaudy display of radiating innards. One of the snow-beasts whirled out of him and spiraled off into the night.

Kate scrambled over to the next window and followed suit, poking the barrel of her shotgun out, charging a round, and firing.

On the floor between them lay a pile of shells. Not enough to fend them all off, but maybe enough to lessen the numbers.

There’s no use in lessening numbers, Todd thought, continuing to fire the shotgun out the station’s window; he was going deafer with each blast, his entire body vibrating from the recoil. There’s no use in doing any of this. There’s a whole town’s worth of things out there, ready to rip and tear and bite into us…not to mention that thing in the snow and whatever else awaits us…

He chose to think of his son while he shot. The good times, like the Christmases and birthdays, the times they’d gone to Prospect Park or the Jersey Shore. He’d taught the boy to fly a kite in an open field where wildflowers burst like supernovas from the green grass, and the boy had cheered and shouted and beamed as the kite climbed higher and higher and higher. As a tiny baby, eyes all squinty and fists clenched and pink, he’d been nothing more than a mushy hump in his mother’s arms. The way the sunlight coming in through the side windows bleached the nursery, and the one time the hornets’ nest fell and got caught behind the shutter. All the hornets rasping against the windowpane. Laughing. That’s not scary, is it? No, Daddy, it’s not. I’m a big boy. Yes, you are. Yes! Yes! Fishing off Luck’s Pier, hooking bass and, holy Jesus, a snapping turtle, would you look at that? Yes! I’m a big boy. I’m a big boy and I love you, Daddy.

I love you, Daddy.

The front doors caved in and the front awning collapsed. One of the creatures was shambling through an open window. The snow around the building pulsed with a lifelike current.

“Todd!” Kate shouted at his ear. She grabbed hold of his hair, shook his head. “Todd! Look!”

He looked…just as an arc of white flame shot out of the darkness. He couldn’t tell what the hell he was looking at. As he watched, one of the skin-suits went up in a blazing inferno. A second skin-suit leapt at the quick-moving figure but was ignited just like his brethren.

It was Bruce. Bloodied and battered, but it was Bruce.

“Holy shit,” Todd mouthed.

Bruce charged across the lawn, igniting every single one of the bastards that hazarded to block his path. Within seconds, the snowy front lawn of the sheriff’s station was alight with burning people, screaming and running and falling on their faces in the snow. Some of the snow-beasts escaped in a whirl of white smoke, but this time they didn’t dissipate into the ether: they swooped toward Bruce now, coming down low as he launched fire from his flamethrower.

“Jesus,” Kate said, “they’re trying to extinguish the flame.”

Todd nodded. “Just like Tully said.”

“Where’s he going?”

Bruce continued across the lawn, his big booted feet leaving behind craters in the snow. He was heading for a thin fence of trees. And beyond the trees stood the decrepit little gas station.

“They’re following him,” Todd said. “I don’t believe it.”

The thing beneath the snow swirled like a whirlpool, then began tunneling toward Bruce. It was moving too fast; Bruce would never reach cover before the thing was on him.

No, Todd thought suddenly. I don’t think Bruce has any intention of reaching cover. I think Bruce is here to end this thing, one way or the other.

The skin-suit that had been squirming through the broken window dropped back out onto the snow. It was a heavyset female with a face like sagging dough. She began running after Bruce—just as they all did.

Todd grabbed Kate’s wrist and yanked her to her feet. “It’s not safe in here anymore.”

Together they ran back to the computer room, Todd slamming the door shut behind them. On the desk, the computer continued to ding as all of Todd’s messages were returned.

Kate hurried to the window, stared out. “He’s luring them to…”