Bitter Cold (7 page)

SHE PULLED OUT OF Trojan Park and noticed movement on the other side of the highway, shifting shadows in the trees. Nervous energy coursed through her veins. She couldn’t tell…was it black snow? The interplay between dark and light looked exactly the same. Soon, though, brightness prevailed over shadow as headlights appeared up ahead in the oncoming lane. Other lights, too. A dozen orange bulbs outlined the silhouetted exterior of what looked like an eighteen-wheeler.

She eased off the gas, glancing at the mirror and keeping her head forward. The NWP truck had disappeared. She guessed maybe Strawn and his men had come to their senses and decided to not murder her, after all. Giggling, she realized right then how crazy it sounded. Maybe she’d let her imagination get the best of her. She had to laugh at herself, creeping into the thoroughfare while maintaining a close watch on that big rig headed her direction.

SLAM!

Her car jerked forward. The seatbelt locked millimeters before her nose smashed against the windshield. Her collarbone burned where the safety belt dug in. It hurt her neck to look up. She did anyway, searching for a sign of what hit her. Nothing. The impact skewed the rearview mirror, and even when she readjusted it, she saw only empty road behind her.

In front, though, the headlights of the fast-approaching freight truck blinded her. She slammed her foot on the gas pedal, spinning her front tires, but going nowhere. The trucker sounded his horn so rapidly it seemed like one continuous tone. As the blinding glare from the semi washed over her face, she pressed hard on the accelerator.

When the truck got close enough for her to read
FREIGHTLINER
on the grill, her studded tires dug in, propelling the car forward. Combined with some quick maneuvering by the semi, the vehicles avoided what would have been a devastating head-on.

Still blaring its horn, the eighteen-wheeler swerved, straddling the center line as it continued on its southbound course. Finally, April allowed herself to breathe, realizing she’d been going without oxygen for the last minute and a half. Her pulse lumbered in her ears, throbbing inside her temples like a rock drummer, John Bonham hammering his famous solo from Moby Dick. She could almost hear the
snare, bass, roto-toms, bass, snare-bass-snare
.

She took another deep breath, trying to calm her erratic heart. She twisted in her seat, craning to find the pickup. It had to be the NWP truck that rear-ended her, but she couldn’t see it.

A burst of brightness turned the interior of her car from night to day. Before she had time to react, a shock from the side sent the Neon into a tailspin. She looked back and recognized the corporate pickup from its silhouette.

Her mind tried to put together what had just happened. The truck didn’t allow her the time. It sideswiped into her rear fender, denting the sheet metal.

The Neon did a half circle and pointed into the ditch. Momentum took it over the side, and down a steep embankment. The fall would have been much more devastating if not for the mounds of snow. Still, it packed a punch. The vertical terrain pitched her forward. The car’s rear upended and flipped over the front, sending it onto its top. Upside down, hanging from her seatbelt, she saw white everywhere. The air, dusty with iridescent flakes, hung in silence. Her head complained of pain, a throbbing somewhere she couldn’t quite place. She tasted blood. For a few moments, she couldn’t remember anything as she blinked away shards of shattered glass.

Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch

The sound of boots in the compacted frost brought it all flooding back to her. She realized those men from NWP meant to kill her. Pure and simple. It couldn’t have been an accident. The driver of that pickup knew exactly what he was doing, and now was coming to finish the job.

She reached for the seatbelt release and pressed the button. It wouldn’t budge.

Crunch, crunch

She saw boots. Looked expensive. Impeccable brown leather with silver fox fur lining. They stopped on the passenger side. She played dead. A face peered in. She recognized the gray-tipped hair. McCullah.

“Yoo-hoo,” he sang. Sick bastard. “You awake in there?”

She stayed quiet and motionless, blood filling her head.

“Little lady? You okay?”

More crunching. Another set of boots.

“You sure she’s dead?” as soon as he spoke, she knew it was Armstrong.

“No. I’m not sure.”

“Then what are we gonna do?”

“I’m going to strangle her fucking neck,” McCullah sounded winded. “As soon as I can get to her.”

Her pulse raced. She struggled with her seatbelt again, fighting for her life. Pressing as hard as she could, she gave it a yank. The lock clicked loose. She fell against the ceiling on her shoulders, hitting the dome light with her forehead.

“She’s alive! Hurry!”

She used her feet to clear away the remaining bits of broken glass around the window frame, then pulled herself onto the frigid tundra. Without gloves, her hands burned in the cold.

She crept only a few feet, then tumbled end over end, landing at the bottom of the hill against a thin, flexible sapling. It cushioned the blow. She didn’t wait to see if they’d come after her. After the first few steps on her knees, she managed to get to her feet. Her head throbbed. She had to run, knowing her only chance was to make it back to Jeff’s house. It had to be close. The lights from the homes on Jack Falls Road twinkled on the hillside.

“Goddammit! Get back here!” McCullah’s command only made her sprint faster into the heart of the canyon. It grew even darker and quieter. The lights from the houses disappeared behind the steep ridge.

As her eyes adjusted to the moonlight, muted from an overcast sky, her senses sharpened. Her thoughts began to race. Though the two men chasing her had murder on their minds, suddenly she sensed danger from some other source.

The snowy hillsides on her flanks looked familiar. With each step, at every turn, she felt more and more an enduring sense of Déjà vu. She’d been there before.

Then she saw something in the clearing ahead and stopped in her tracks. The dark played tricks with her eyes, yet there was no mistaking the dull shine of the chrome handlebars, the moonglow bouncing off the silvery mag rims. Dexter’s Kawasaki.

Her blood turned icier than the air. Without turning her head, she looked left, then right, scanning for movement in the shadows, feeling like the black snow somehow knew she was there, and it was watching.

A popping sound startled her, shook her from the paralyzing fear. Next to her, a bit of frost exploded into a dust cloud. It took a second to realize what happened. She’d been shot at.

She put her hands in the air, still studying the darkness, looking for something that might have been impossible to find. Unless it wanted to be seen. Then it might have been too late.

“You’re going to shoot me?” she yelled. “What happens when the police find my body full of bullets? Huh? What then? How are you gonna make
that
look like an accident?”

McCullah hurried to the bottom of the steep incline, Armstrong lagging behind. “Stupid, stupid girl. And I thought reporters were supposed to be intelligent.”

He seemed to be the only one with a gun. The full moon peeked through the cloud cover and reflected on the shiny metal. Aside from what her grandfather had taught her about his old Winchester, she didn’t know much about guns, so she didn’t have a clue what kind McCullah had pointed at her face. What difference did it make? It looked big and, most important, deadly.

“Hurry up and do it!” Armstrong’s harsh voice was an icy needle in the night. “Let’s get out of here!”

She searched McCullah’s dead stare. “You’ll never get away with this. Somebody’ll see my car and come down here.”

“I guess we’d better hurry this up, then, huh?”

“You don’t have to do this,” finally, she pleaded, compromising her own ethic. “Listen. I won’t write the story. My editor’ll be pissed, but I’ll tell him the story has no legs. He thought it was bullshit, anyway. I’ll tell him he was right. I’ll kill the story”

McCullah tilted his head.

“I’ll tell you what,” he aimed with one hand. “I’ll kill the story, myself,” he took one last moment to look her up and down. Shaking his head, he issued an audible
tisk-tisk
. “A damn shame, too. Nice piece of ass. Oh well...”

She fell to the ground, covered her face, and pulled her knees close to her chest, shielding her head and mid-section. Maybe the rounds would only penetrate through her arms or legs and not hit her head or any vital organs. That’s all she could hope for.

Or could she hope for something else?

Instead of a gunshot ringing out in the frigid night, she heard McCullah shriek louder and higher than she’d thought possible from such a burly man. She looked up, and her heart jumped into her throat at what she saw. From behind a large rock, the shadowy creature crept in thin protrusions, becoming an inky pool and circling McCullah’s feet. Its pungent smell burned her nostrils as it swirled and bubbled.

McCullah’s wry smile turned flat. Still staring at her, his eyes became enormous, lids opening beyond what should have been humanly possible. He looked down, and at the same time, tried to lift his left foot. The dark ooze held tight, refusing him any movement. Not even an inch. He looked up at her again, perplexed, like he thought for a second maybe she had something to do with it. Then he convulsed. She guessed from pain, though he seemed to be the type of guy who would never admit to such weakness. Guys like McCullah, she’d met a million of them. They’d go into surgery and refuse anesthesia, just to prove their masculinity. But this time was different. An acrid, steaming, scalding, smoldering pool of blackness had him in its clutches, a living bear trap clamping down on his ankles, forcing him into involuntary spasms.

“What the hell is this!” he pointed his pistol straight down. “What the—
AHHHHH!
”

He shot twice. His gun had a silencer, so it made only tiny concussion noises. Then he unleashed a rapid fire, changing his aim, circling his body with bullets. Each time he pulled the trigger, misty bits of black ricocheted onto his chest and arms. The dark scatter hit his jacket and hissed and popped, eating into the heavy polyester outer lining, exposing the cotton insulation. He swiped at his chest and sleeves, trying to rub away the corrosive stuff. Some of it did come off, but it stuck to his hand instead of falling to the ground. Trembling, staring at his palm, he inhaled deep then shrieked a second time, shedding all of his former arrogance.

Yelling for his partner, Armstrong came bounding with large, unnatural steps, nearly falling forward a few times. Then his eyes got wide. Swinging his arms, he slid to a stop, staring blankly.

“McCullah? What’s going on?”

Uttering a weakened, throaty moan, McCullah turned to his associate, holding his palm for the man to see. April didn’t have to see it. She saw the reaction on Armstrong’s face. She smelled it, though. Charred human flesh. Her stomach folded in on itself. She swallowed down a sudden surge of bile. Armstrong stood still, a statue, frozen in horrified silence.

McCullah faced April again. A crunching noise turned her stomach. She almost felt it in her own bones, the crackling, the grinding. McCullah’s face went ghostly pale in the diffused moonlight, snowflakes still showering down as he trembled. With one great swishing sound, the man shrank in height by a foot, sliding to his knees. His chest heaved forward and his eyes rolled back.

“Uhhh!” he reached for the blackness with his partially decomposed hand, flesh sliding off bone, more of the scorched-meat stench invading April’s senses.

McCullah snapped to attention, standing still, staring into space. The man looked thousands of miles away, maybe in some hot, humid place where the palm trees and the naked breasts swayed in the gentle breeze. She could see it in his gaze. He’d gone to his safe place. He tilted his head and almost smiled. Then the embryo of a grin faded as he gritted his clenched teeth.

The voracious creature in the snow quivered almost as if happy. It seemed to delight in the taste of McCullah’s flesh, seemed to grow more animated, more energized. April made another observation. As she watched the monster eat the man alive, she noticed it get bigger. It digested his feet and ankles, and grew a few inches in circumference.

Another hollow crunch. McCullah sank again, this time to his hips. The force brought his momentum forward. He fell flat on his face into the dark pool.

Bubbling, popping, steaming, sizzling. His skin cooked like bacon thrown on a scorching skillet. He screamed again, his cries muffled by the blackness. It crept wherever the snowflakes fell, crisscrossing his thick winter jacket, his heavy denim jeans, his exposed skin. Everything it touched, it ate. It devastated his clothes, melting them into a grayish liquid. Wincing and whimpering, he plowed his hands into the ravenous creature and did a pushup. The thing reeled him in, pulling him closer and sucking him down with a greedy
Glug!
He slumped to his chest, then disappeared, becoming nothing more than a lump in the dark snow.

“McCullah!” Armstrong pushed forward. As he drew near, his face wrinkled, his eyes narrowed. He stopped twenty feet from his slain coworker and let his jaw fall open. His stare flashed to April. She shook her head. Still looking at her, he called once more for McCullah. Nothing but churning, bubbling, steaming. The creature was digesting its meal.