Snow(89)

“We just need to hear it from you, Mr. Curry,” Freed said, unrelenting.

“A lot of people in that town are dead, Mr. Curry,” Shovenson added.

Todd took a deep breath, then said, “There were things in the snow.” He thought about this statement for several drawn-out minutes—the agents did not press him at all as he thought—then finally added, “I think they were the snow.”

“How did you get into town?” Freed asked.

Todd told them the whole story, starting with the flight cancellation to renting the vehicle to what had happened when they picked up Eddie Clement in the middle of an otherwise deserted road. Shovenson took minimal notes and neither man ever raised an eyebrow. When Todd began telling them about the creatures in the snow and about the walking skin-suits, he did so with terribly forced levity, the words impossible to his own ears…but the men still did not balk.

When Todd finished, he sighed deeply—which also hurt his injured shoulder—and fixed both men with a frank stare. “You probably think I’m full of shit. Ask the woman outside—the one you called my girlfriend—and she’ll corroborate everything I’ve just told you, word for word.”

Shovenson flipped his notepad closed, then stuffed it back into his suit jacket.

“This was just a formality,” Freed said. He walked over to a nightstand and picked up the remote control for the television bracketed to the wall. “We have reports to write.”

“Reports,” echoed Shovenson, as if this were some part of a private joke the two men shared.

Freed clicked on the TV. After the picture came on, he began flipping through various channels. Most of the channels were news stations, each reporter looking grim and uncertain. Freed finally left the TV on one channel where a female reporter was talking about the bizarre events that had occurred in a small town outside Minneapolis, resulting in the disappearance of half the town’s population.

Todd blinked and just stared at the TV.

“So far,” said Freed, “we’re looking at twenty-nine separate incidents across the country. Several more were reported in Canada, and more reports are filtering in every hour. The folks who rescued you wound up rescuing another thirty-eight people from Woodson, many of them hidden in basements and armed like militiamen.”

Todd studied the seriousness of Freed’s face. “So…so this happened all over?”

“Twenty-nine different towns,” Freed repeated. “Mostly relegated to the Midwest. By all accounts, it seems there was something in the storm.”

“That wasn’t just a storm,” Todd said.

To this, neither Freed nor Shovenson felt the need to comment. They adjusted their ties and passed a look between them that suggested they wanted to go back to their hotel rooms and go to sleep.

“We left a card with a contact number with your girlfriend,” Freed said as they both moved toward the door. “If you think of anything else, or just need to call and talk to someone about what happened, don’t hesitate to use the number.”

“Get well,” said Shovenson, and the two men left.


When Kate came in, she looked much smaller and emptier than he had remembered her. She watched him for a few moments in the doorway before coming to his bedside and kissing him squarely on the forehead. Her eyes glittered with moisture.

“Are you hurt?” he asked her.

She shook her head. “I guess I was luckier than you, huh?”

“What exactly happened?”

“It was Molly. She shot you just as we were heading from the station down to the road.”

“Molly…”

“Brendan died. She blamed you. After she shot you, she dropped the gun and just sat down in the snow, sobbing, until the guardsmen showed up. She’s been taken into custody.”

“Jesus…”

“There were more people, Todd. In Woodson. They were hiding in basements and attics and in different places throughout the town.”

“Yeah, I heard. Those two federal agents or whatever they were just told me.” He nodded toward the TV, which was still reporting the inexplicable occurrences that had happened across North America over the past week. “Can you believe this?”

“It’s like one big cloud came in and draped itself right over the middle of the country,” Kate said. “But it didn’t happen everywhere. Just quiet, remote towns. Just like Woodson.”

“Because they’re smart. Because to do what they needed to do, they had to be able to cut the towns off from the rest of society. They had to pick places where they could easily do that.”

“And what exactly did they come here to do?”

“Feed,” he said. “Change us, maybe. Did you see what it looked like when that cloud opened up at the end? Just as it started sucking those things back into it?”

“Like you could see through it to the other side,” Kate responded. “Like there were other places up there, beyond our world.”

The notion caused his head to throb. He rested back on his stack of pillows, his respiration labored.

“After it was all over, I went back for Charlie and Cody,” she said. “I thought maybe if those things had left their bodies, maybe they’d…you know…maybe…”

“Were they alive?” he said.