The Shuddering (33 page)

Rocked by the memory of her best friend—a face she’d never see again—Jane pressed her gloved hand onto the scarf that was covering her mouth and nose, trying to stifle the sob that inevitably tore itself from her chest.
This can’t get worse
, she thought. With Lauren and April gone and Sawyer injured, things couldn’t possibly get more grim. She attempted to squelch her tears, reminding herself that Ryan needed her to keep it together. Wiping at her eyes, she looked up just as Ryan took his final swing.

And then the snow fell.

Ryan’s torch went out.

She saw a shadow shift, and suddenly she couldn’t swallow or breathe.

She clawed the scarf away from her face, opening her mouth to scream, scrambling out of the snow shelter before stumbling toward him. Despite their distance, she saw the very moment realization dawned on him. He caught sight of her and stared. She blinked when she realized that in her panic, she had left
her
source of fire behind with Sawyer. Her torch burned just beyond the bloodied blue tarp, stabbed into the snow.

“Go back!” he screamed, tossing the ax into the basket before snatching his torch up off the ground. He had left the gas can with Jane, but he had April’s hair spray somewhere beneath those boughs. Tearing his right glove off with his teeth, he shoved his hand into his pocket, his fingers curling around Sawyer’s old lighter. His eyes darted to the tree line as he jammed his arm
elbow-deep into the sappy needles atop Jane’s snowboard, feeling around the basket’s bottom for the can he knew was there.

Jane screamed.

He whirled around, his head throbbing with the whoosh of his own pulse. He was sure he was about to see his worst nightmare come to fruition, that Jane’s scream was attached to a scene that he’d never forget—whether he lived fifty years or fifty seconds—but when he spotted her in the distance, he blinked in bewilderment.
Thank god
, he thought, because she was safe in the clearing. Nothing was coming at her, nothing was about to cut her down. But she continued to scream anyway, her words indiscernible, her arms waving every which way. Ryan veered around to look ahead.

The beast towered over him, standing on its hind legs, its impossibly wide jaws pulled back in what looked like a nefarious smile. To Ryan’s horror, he found himself staring at an oozing lesion just above those massive teeth, one of its eyes all but burned away.

Ryan jammed his arm into the basket again, desperately groping for the aerosol can. His gloveless hand tried to spark a flame from Sawyer’s lighter as he continued his frantic search, but the demon had learned its lesson. Rather than giving Ryan time to arm himself, it crouched low in the snow and sprang forward within a blink. Ryan hit the ground, feeling like he’d just been punched in the chest. Behind him, Jane continued to scream. The creature emitted a gut-wrenching squeal, as if trying to speak, trying to tell him, “An eye for an eye.” Ryan scrambled to his feet, but his right hand came up empty.

The lighter was gone, somewhere under the snow, knocked out of his grasp.

At that precise moment, Ryan was a boy again. He stood in those very hills, the snow having melted away. A young Jane
and Sawyer laughed next to him, the three of them running through a prairie of dandelions and wild grass. The peaks of distant Colorado mountains stood out against a bright blue sky, still capped with snow despite the sun that warmed their skin. Jane took both of their hands between her own, swinging them back and forth as she skipped across the prairie, her laugh like the tinkle of tiny silver bells. She turned to look at him, her eyes full of childhood wonder, but her expression eroded right before his eyes—shifted from joy to utter horror as her smile twisted into an
O
. Her eyes went saucer round as she drifted away from him, pulled back by an invisible hand. The bright green of spring browned and turned to ash. To ice. To snow. And in the distance, she screamed. And screamed. And screamed.

The creature lunged again, its gangly arms swinging ahead of it, its claws slashing through the air. Ryan felt a surge of heat light up his shoulder as he threw himself at Jane’s board, grabbing the first thing that fell into his hand. He swung the cloth-wrapped table leg at his aggressor, connecting with the savage’s stomach. The thing scrambled backward, trying to regain its bearings.

It was Ryan’s turn to not give it a chance.

Flipping the torch so that the padded end was in his grasp, Ryan charged forward, holding the table leg out in front of him like a battering ram. It connected with the creature’s ribs. The thing gave an ear-piercing screech in response, its teeth snapping wildly, and again Ryan moved, jamming the end of his torch into the parasite’s jaws as hard as he could.

The monster flailed its arms about its head, trying to wrap its talons around the thing in its mouth. Ryan twisted in the snow while it struggled, his shoulder throbbing beneath the padding of his coat, a sweater, a couple of shirts. He yanked the glove off his left hand, tossing it in the basket with its mate, before grabbing the ax from a bed of pine. The creature threw itself onto the
ground, thrashing as it choked on the broken piece of furniture rammed down its throat. It tossed its head from side to side, the torch whizzing through the air like some broken, unhinged metronome. With the hatchet’s blade balanced above his shoulder, Ryan tried to time his attack just right. The fiend threw its head to the side, its black eyes locking on Ryan as he approached. He sprang forward, jamming his foot on top of the torch that was still jammed between the monster’s teeth, putting all his weight into holding it and the creature’s head firmly in place. And then he reeled back and swung.

The ax blade sank into the beast’s neck, a crimson spray arching upward, atomizing foul-scented blood across an otherwise flawless expanse of white. Ryan shot a glance behind him, his chest heaving, his shoulder burning beneath his coat. Jane was bounding toward him, choking on her sobs as she exerted herself, her torch blazing over her head like a beacon of hope. She slowed. Her eyes went wide. Ryan knew exactly what he’d find when he looked up again—more of them—but there was no time for fear.

“Come on, come on,” he told her, waving her forward. Despite the terror drawn across her face, Jane pushed ahead. Ryan grabbed the branches he’d cut, tossed them aside, and exposed the aerosol can he hadn’t been able to find. Dropping the ax into the basket, he held out his arm, trying to breach the remaining dozen feet between them as Jane struggled on.

“Throw it!” he yelled, and Jane did as she was told. They both watched their lifeline sail through the dusk, the weight of the burning end of Jane’s torch angling the flame toward the snow.

Ryan’s heart skipped a beat as their source of fire spiraled toward the ground. He bounded forward, catching it just before it hit the snow, the flame licking his exposed fingers as he readjusted his grip. And then he veered around, facing the three
hissing, moaning creatures that he hadn’t bothered to look at but knew were there.

Ryan pointed the burning torch toward them and sprayed April’s hair spray in a graceful swoop. Jane yelped as a wall of flame went up around them. The savages reeled back and scrambled away.

“Oh my god,” Jane gasped, and he was whirling around again, searching for another parasite to toast. “Ryan, you’re bleeding.” She reached out to touch his shoulder but pulled her hand away just shy of contact. “Oh my god,” she repeated, on the verge of a breakdown. “Not you too,” she cried. “I can’t…
not you too
.”

“I lost the lighter,” he told her, not giving her concern a second thought—he couldn’t afford to. First aid had been the one thing he hadn’t thought to bring, and Sawyer was in far worse shape than he was. Handing her the torch, he approached the dead demon in the snow, secured a boot against the thing’s massive head, and yanked the table leg from its jaws. He held it up to Jane’s fire, waiting for it to catch. When it did, he turned back to the carcass in front of him, sprayed the thing with aerosol, and lit up the dead.

Ryan jerked awake with such a start he made both Jane and Oona jump. Jane stared at her brother as he patted himself down, his expression a strange mix of fascination and disbelief. She had worried that he would lose too much blood throughout the night, that he’d slip away from her when she succumbed to exhaustion, but he had insisted whatever damage had been done to his shoulder wasn’t that big a deal. Compared to Sawyer’s injury, it was little more than a scratch. Before she could ask him what was wrong, he was scrambling out of their shelter, shoving a corner of the tarp aside. Jane shielded her eyes against the glare of the sun,
the snow sparkling around her like diamond dust. Ryan’s plan had worked—the small bonfires he’d built around the opening to their shelter had kept those things at bay. They had survived the night.

Oona scrambled out after him, immediately up to her haunches in the drift. Jane moved only when she heard Ryan laughing. Crawling into the sun, she squinted up at him.

“Look!” he said, presenting a breathtaking wonderland of white as though it was hers for the taking. “It’s the fucking
sky
.” And so it was, blue and enormous with a few fluffy clouds drifting across. She grinned as Ryan laughed up at it like a lunatic. They weren’t home free yet, but the feeling was mutual: it was hope. The clouds had burned away. The wind was gone. It was a perfect day.

“Thank you!” he screamed up at the sun, spinning around to look at her a moment later. The expression on his face was enough to assure her that they had made it. It was over. Just as abruptly as the nightmare had started, it was gone.

“Tom, look!” Jane twisted around to face Sawyer, unable to keep Ryan’s joyous laughter from creeping into her tone. Sawyer was huddled beneath his quilt, his head bowed, nothing but the top of his hat visible.

She blinked when he didn’t move. Her smile faded. Her heart squeezed itself into a fist.

“Tom?”

Nothing.

Her breath hitched in her throat. Her face went hot.

Ryan was singing something as Oona barked, but for Jane, all sound was muffled. They sounded like they were underwater as she slowly sank down next to Sawyer, her hands trembling as she reached out toward her mother’s old quilt. The tips of her gloves brushed across the blanket, pulling back as soon as a corner fell away, unwrapping the man huddled inside.

A sob tore from her chest when Sawyer didn’t move, but rather slowly tipped to the side, filling the space where she had tried to sleep throughout the night—she and Ryan on either side of him—in an attempt to keep him warm.

Ryan blotted out the sun when he filled the entry of their shelter. At first his expression was nothing but confused, but as soon as Jane turned away from Sawyer, choking on her tears, his bewilderment was replaced with realization.

Sawyer was gone.

Ryan silently packed their gear as Jane sobbed next to him, her cries muffled by her gloves. He had re-covered the shelter with the blue tarp, stabbing one of their torches directly in front of it to keep those creatures away. He didn’t want to think that it would go out within a matter of hours, that by nightfall, Sawyer’s body would more than likely be gone, claimed by the things that had taken Lauren, that had most certainly taken April.

“We have to go,” he murmured, placing a hand on Jane’s shoulder. He couldn’t let the emotions overtake his logic, couldn’t allow the sorrow to keep them from their goal. They needed to get to the highway. They needed to walk.

It took Jane a few minutes, but eventually she rose to her feet and began to walk. She didn’t look at him. Didn’t speak.

They followed the protocol of the day before—an hour of trekking, then a break, stopping every few minutes when Oona would jump off Sawyer’s gurney and into the snow. The throb of Ryan’s shoulder had dulled to a nagging ache, and he had to constantly roll it to loosen the wounded muscles that had cramped beneath his coat. But he couldn’t help himself when he spotted something in the distance—hope filled his chest, dulled by sorrow but still burning hot. He grabbed Jane’s hand and pulled her
along, motivated by his curiosity to discover whether what he was seeing was real or a mirage.

He shook his head, almost brought to tears by what unspooled before them; a beautiful black ribbon of glistening tarmac. It was the highway. They had made it.

“I can’t believe it,” Ryan marveled, staring at the miracle before him. But rather than sharing in his fascination, Jane lifted her gloved hands to her face and cried.

“We were so close,” she sobbed. “Just a few more hours…just a few more and he would have been okay.”

He pulled her into a tight embrace, letting her weep into his jacket until she went quiet. He couldn’t allow himself to break. Not yet. They still had the challenge of spotting a car in the middle of nowhere, let alone getting that car to stop for a pair of blood-covered pedestrians. Inhaling a shaky breath, Jane pulled on the leash of their supply board and started to walk once more.

“I’m never seeing snow again.” She sniffed, wiping her nose with her glove. “I’m done with mountains and boarding, okay?”

Ryan nodded faintly, his legs suddenly feeling heavier than ever as they sank into the snow. His grief was starting to poison his bloodstream. He struggled against the burn of tears against the back of his eyes, squeezing his eyes shut as they continued to march.
Fucking Sawyer
, he thought.
Just a few more hours.
A few more hours and they would have made it. They would have survived this thing.

The road ahead of them was so close, yet so far away. Every step was torture. He yearned for that clear asphalt, for the ability to stomp his feet against the ground without powder sucking him down.

“We’re almost there,” he said, baiting both of them to keep going.

And after a grueling half hour, they finally made it to the embankment, snow piled high where the plow had pushed it to the side of the road.

It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen: a rich black ribbon twisting through a white landscape. The double yellow line that followed its contour reminded him that there was color in the world, assured him that with each step they were getting closer to something he hadn’t been sure would ever come. When they finally climbed over the embankment, he stood staring at it as though it were an absolute miracle. The tarmac was a line drawn in the snow, a line that despite all logic, he was sure those creatures couldn’t cross.