Mountain Madness (45 page)

Hand.

Right. Just the one.

He shuffled toward the pile of ice that had been the creature, trying not to look at the other mess, the colorful bits in the snow. His broken arm had started to ache again, and he thought every last bit of warmth he might once have had had seeped out. Without shoes, his layers of clothing seemed useless; he might as well have been walking through the storm naked.

When he got within reach of the tentacles, he hefted the torch and eyed the creature. The snow continued falling as hard as ever, but nothing else seemed to move.

Maybe that’s what it wants you to think. Maybe it’s just waiting until you get closer before it grabs your leg, pulls you in, and rips you into a dozen gooey pieces.

Didn’t matter. Without the snowmobile, he’d never get away from any other monsters that might be out there. He needed that key.

Shivering, teeth clattering, he turned away from the creature and looked for Jan’s arms.

He found the first one half-buried under one of the monster’s outstretched limbs. He propped the torch up in the snow and dropped to his knees. He had to dig the ice out from around the arm to pull it free, and he hated being so close to the creature’s tentacle. The thing had proved what it could do with those appendages (as biologically impossible as it seemed), and every time Warren thought he saw the thing twitch, he just about screamed. 

But he did get the arm free, and although he was sure he saw the creature’s tentacle move at least twice, it didn’t attack. Jan’s arm was covered in icy blood and bent ninety degrees the wrong way at the elbow. He gripped it with his knees, grimacing and holding back the urge to barf, and pulled down the sleeve to check for the strap.

Nothing.

He dropped the arm. Before he hunted down the second one, he buried the first in the snow. It was probably a stupid thing to do, a waste of time—the falling snow would cover it before long anyway—but he didn’t feel right just leaving it there.

He found the second arm not far away. He pulled back the sleeve, sure the key wouldn’t be there, that it was buried in the snow somewhere and he’d never find it.

But it
was
there, wrapped around her forearm halfway between her wrist and her elbow. He’d barely been able to pull the sleeve back far enough to reveal it.

Okay, you found it. Great job. Now get the hell out of here.

He buried the arm first. As he was patting the last bit of snow in place, something wiggled out from under the creature’s remains.

It was a tendril of ice, about as thick as a thumb. It slithered out of the rubble, raised its head like a cobra, and then slid toward him.

Warren reached for the torch and realized he’d left it near where he’d found the first arm.

Never mind that. It’s just a little wisp of a thing. You don’t need anything more than the heel of your boot.

Except he wasn’t wearing boots, and he didn’t think he could get his foot far enough out of the snow to stomp on the thing anyway. He decided to grab it and break it apart in his hand instead.

When it got close enough, he spread the fingers of his glove and reached for it. Instead of slithering into his hand, it leapt out of the snow and hit him in the chest.

Warren fell back and grappled for it. He got his fingers around the thing’s tail (or maybe it was its head; it looked the same on both ends), but it was too slippery to hold on to.

It jerked out of his grasp and slid toward his neck.

It’s going to choke you.

But it didn’t. Instead, it slithered into his mouth.

And so Warren did the only thing he could think to do: he bit down.

The length of ice in his mouth wriggled around, clacking against his teeth and trying to wrap itself around his tongue. The remainder of the tendril curled up, sprang off his face, and slipped away.

Warren chewed the ice, breaking it in half and then breaking each of the halves in half. He crushed it, liquified it, and spat out the mouthful before he swallowed any. He didn’t think swallowing would have hurt him, turned him into some kind of monster like in a bad science fiction movie, but he wasn’t taking any chances.

Before any more bits of the creature could come back to life—if that was in fact what had happened—he retrieved the butane torch, and shuffled through the snow toward Rick’s body. He doubted his feet had much chance of surviving any of this, but he didn’t think it would hurt to put on the other man’s boots.

If he could find them.

One of them was easy enough to see; it was right in the middle of the whole mess. He managed to pull the foot out of it and fumbled it onto his own with his one hand.

It took him a few minutes to find the other one, but he eventually saw it poking out of a snow-covered evergreen bush. It was torn and covered in blood, but he put it on anyway. And then he shuffled back to the snowmobile, feeling like a thief and a scavenger.

He slid the box with the remaining Molotov cocktails across the snow and managed to strap it back in place with his good arm and a series of careful, almost acrobatic moves.

He thought he heard a distant, ringing roar and told himself to ignore it, to concentrate on getting the snowmobile started.

He strapped the key to his wrist, stuck it into the ignition, and turned the snowmobile on. He dropped onto the seat and grabbed the starter cord.

It won’t start. The engine will be flooded and you’ll have to hoof it.

But it
did
start. And on the first try. When the motor turned over and kept turning, he pumped his fist and grabbed the throttle. He wouldn’t be able to control the brake (it was on the left handlebar, on his broken-arm side), but he didn’t think that would be a problem. As deep as the snow was, if he wanted to stop moving, he’d need only to let go of the throttle and let the snowmobile coast to a stop. If he’d been headed downhill, toward town, running the thing at full speed, he guessed it would have been another story.

He turned the snowmobile back onto its own tracks, hoping he’d be able to follow them back to the road, hoping he’d know the road when he saw it, and gave the machine some gas. It didn’t move for a second, but then the treads caught and he slid through the falling snow.

He thought of Tess and Bub, hoped they were okay, hoped he’d get to them in time if they weren’t.

The snowmobile bumped over a drift, and his broken arm slapped against his belly. He shut his eyes against the pain and forced himself to reopen them immediately.

Don’t you dare crash. No matter how much it hurts. Don’t you dare let it end like that.

Something moved ahead. Not a monster, just a tree swaying in the wind.

Snow and sleet blew into his face, and he wished he hadn’t lost his scarf. He’d be lucky if he didn’t lose most of his face to frostbite.

When he found what he thought was the road, he gave the snowmobile more gas, and headed up the mountain.

20

THE COLD WAS
unbelievable. She’d never felt anything like it. She was surprised she wasn’t freezing solid right then and there. The wind and snow blowing into her barely clad back and the crumbling powder and ice beneath her bare feet were so cold they seemed almost hot. She knew that couldn’t be a good sign, that even if she lived through this she was going to suffer some serious physical damage.

Whether it was the drastic change in temperature, nerves, or just a residual effect from her fight with the monsters, she felt like she was going to be sick. She doubled over, still holding Bub, leaning past him, and a gust of wind hit her back, chilling her further still. But the nausea passed without any actual vomiting. And it was a good thing, too. She was sure anything she’d thrown up would have been mostly blood.

She gripped Bub tighter than ever and kept pulling.

When she’d dragged him far enough into the snow (leaving a pink trail of blood across the ground and trying hard not to look at it), she let go of the dog and reached back inside to pull the door shut. The creature had made it through the kitchen and almost into the hall. A pair of its tentacles wrapped around the doorframe. Dozens of fingers gripped the wood and the sheetrock. A third tentacle poked through the doorway and turned toward her. She jumped back but shouldn’t have bothered. The limb wasn’t even close to reaching her. She wrapped her fingers back around the doorknob and pulled the door shut.

When she got back to Bub, he looked up at her and barked. It was a sad sound, barely audible, but Tess was glad to hear it. If he could bark, maybe he could live.

So, what now? You escaped the monsters, at least temporarily, but what next?

She turned around, surveyed the blizzard. She couldn’t see more than halfway across the yard, and what she could make out wasn’t anything more than a swirl of meaningless white. If there were more monsters out there, she couldn’t see them.

If? There’s at least one out here. You know it.

Maybe, but the kitchen monster had been injured. There was a chance it had died.

You wish.

It didn’t matter. Until they ran across another creature, she had other things to worry about. If she didn’t get Bub and herself out of this weather soon, they’d both die. Monsters or not. Simple as that.

She couldn’t go back into the house. Not through the back door and probably not through the front. The fire had gone out and there was nothing else to use as a reliable weapon.

So what does that leave?

And then she knew. It was an obvious solution, and although her mind had been understandably distracted, she couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of it sooner: the shed.

She supposed the garage was also an option. It was detached, after all, but it was also full of junk and had three windows, which would make it almost impossible to defend. The shed surely wasn’t any more structurally sound, but it had only the one point of access, a door at least as sturdy as the doors in the house. Unless the monsters tore down the whole building, they’d have to come through that door, and judging by how long it had taken the first creature to break out of the bedroom, Tess thought hiding in the shed might buy them at least some time. If nothing else, it would be warmer.

Assuming she could make it there.

Assuming she could drag Bub that far.

Assuming they both didn’t freeze to death first.

She turned back for Bub, checked to make sure he was still breathing (he was, barely), wrapped her arms back around his body, and saw the sled in a drift of snow beside the house.

The blizzard had almost covered the thing. If she’d come out fifteen minutes later, she might never have noticed it. She let go of Bub and shuffled over to it, her bare feet tingling, stinging, her mind screaming at her that she had to get out of the cold immediately.

She dug the sled out of the snow with stiff, almost useless fingers, and slid it over to Bub. The blizzard had already started the job of covering him up, of burying him. She did her best to wipe the sleet off his fur. When she rolled him out of the snow and onto the sled, she saw the icy bloodstain he’d left behind. It seemed like a lot of blood, especially combined with what he’d lost in the hall, and she told herself he might not make it, that she ought to prepare for that possibility.

Bub didn’t move much as she centered him on the sled, but he did stick out his tongue and lick her hand when she got near his head. His tongue stuck to her skin, and she had to pry it off.

“You’ll be okay,” she promised him and patted him on the head.

By the time she got him situated and turned the sled away from the house, she couldn’t feel much of her body. Snow covered her clothes, packed into her hair, thickened her eyelashes. Her body shook violently, and her mind started to shut down. As hard as she tried to concentrate on the task at hand, she couldn’t seem to focus. It felt like going to sleep after a very long day, like wanting nothing more than to lie down and take a nice, long nap.

She moved, took a few sweeping steps through the high snow with the sled’s frayed rope wrapped around her numb fingers. The world spun. Hard little pellets of icy snow hit her in the head and body. She looked down, trying to keep the wind and sleet out of her face, but the movement made her dizzy. She stumbled forward and barely caught herself.

And then her face hit the snow and she realized she’d fallen after all. As far as she could remember, she’d gone from standing to lying instantly. Like a mini blackout.

Get up. Pay attention. Get up and get to the shed. Focus on that. Don’t you dare give up.

She pushed herself to her feet and looked toward where she thought the shed should be, but she couldn’t make it out. She turned back toward the house and realized she hadn’t moved more than a few yards. Half a dozen shuffling footprints and a short pair of sled tracks marked her progress from the back stoop.

Don’t think about that. And definitely quit thinking about the cold. Think about the shed. The shed. The shed and nothing else.

She’d dropped the sled’s rope. When she’d picked it up and wrapped it back around her unbending fingers, she told Bub once more that it was going to be okay, that they’d make it to the shed, not sure if he could hear her, not even sure if he was still alive to hear anything, and then she resumed her trip across the yard.

As she moved, she glanced left, right, left again, looking for any sign of the creatures, not sure what she would do if they attacked but wanting to be ready for them anyway. The sled hit a drift and she jerked to a stop. She looked back to make sure Bub hadn’t slipped off; he was already mostly covered in snow again. He moved his head, which was proof enough he was still alive, but seeing him like that made Tess want to cry. Again.

You’re still thinking. Stop thinking and move.

She tugged the sled over the drift and trudged on, no longer able to feel her feet at all. She looked back once to see if she could still see the house, but it had disappeared in the storm. She knew this was the most dangerous part of the journey: nothing to see in any direction, nothing for her to use to orient herself, the point at which it would be oh so easy to get lost.