White Space (37 page)

“Come on, come on, move it!” The wiry kid who’d called was already dropping into the passenger seat. “We got to boogie!”

Running out of time
. Tearing her gaze from the crows winging over that doomsday sky, she got herself moving. But her chest was fizzing with panic, suddenly filled with a terrible foreboding. The space of this place was being closed up, pinched off,
extinguished
the way an upended jar smothered a flame.

Eric had just slotted in the two empty shotguns and was helping Casey clamber through the back passenger’s side door, so she rounded the nose for the opposite side. She wheeled around the back door just as the driver craned a look—and she almost screamed. Because this was another boy she already knew, had met before, and she thought now as she had then:
What
are
you?

“Get in!” Then a look of shock swept through the boy’s face, and Bode’s mouth unhinged. “Whoa. What the hell, what are
you
doing here?”

She almost said,
Trying not to die
, but the lanky kid—Chad, she remembered now—interrupted. “Oh shit.” She looked and saw Chad staring back the way she had just come. “Aw, Jesus,” Chad said.

From his place directly behind Chad, Eric said, “What?” Rima saw his head snap a look, and then his body stiffen. “Oh God. Bode. Bode?”

“Yeah.” Bode’s tone was grim. “I see them.”

So, now, did Rima. Tania was on the snow and so was the man-thing Eric had shot. Instead of coming for them, both Tania and the man-thing were heading toward those distant woods, and she thought back to Father Preston’s lightning dash. Tania and the man-thing weren’t exactly running; even half-mended monsters must have a few residual aches and pains. But they weren’t tottering, shambling zombies either. Still, hit the gas, and the truck would leave them in the dust, no sweat.

The problem was … how the hell to outrun the others.

THE DENSE WOODS
beyond Tania and the man-thing and the stalled snowcat, and over which the fog brooded, were alive with creatures—hundreds,
thousands
streaming from the trees. They were like the crows that had bulleted out of the snow, and Rima watched, stupefied, as they joined into broad, sweeping formations, spreading out to flank the truck like an army. They were a wall, a tidal wave of death, and all the more terrible because they came in absolute silence.

“Rima!” Casey grabbed her wrist and pulled. She tumbled in, and then Casey was reaching past her, dragging the door shut with a
chuck
as Chad screamed,
“Go, Bode!”

“We’re gone!” Bode hammered the gas, the sudden acceleration throwing Rima back against her seat as the Dodge surged forward with a throaty
vaROOOMMM
. But Rima felt the change almost instantly, after less than twenty feet: how the truck balked and tripped and stumbled, as if they’d hopped onto railroad tracks by mistake. After another moment, the Dodge bogged down even more, suddenly churning what felt
like taffy, the tires miring in deep snow that had been as solid as ice only two seconds ago.

“What the …” Cursing, Bode butted the stick into first and gunned the engine. This time the Dodge jolted forward by less than a foot.

“Aw,
Christ
,” Chad said. “Look, right under us. Look what’s happening to the goddamned snow.”

Rima plastered her face to the window glass and peered down. The snow was no longer unbroken or a vast white expanse but seamed with jagged cracks growing wider by the second. Yet a quick glance past Eric and toward the trees showed the snow there to be intact and unchanged. Beneath the truck, more splits appeared and the seams became ruts that rapidly filled with gelatinous ooze, like lava bubbling from the deep heart of a volcano. Except this lava was black and boiled up so quickly, it overflowed and began to spread over the snow in a tarry lake. It didn’t seem to be hot, but Rima thought it was the fog’s dark twin: quivering and molten, sucking at the truck’s tires to hold it fast. Looking back across Casey and Eric, she saw the creatures still coming, but now those fissures and cracks in the snow were spreading out, stretching in jagged fingers.

We’re the focal point. It’s all centered on us
. It was as if they were the spider spinning a fractured web. Above the woods, the birds were still drawing down in an obsidian curtain, blacking the sky, shutting the lid on this day, this place, their lives.
We’re causing this
, making
it happen. But how?

“Bode, do something. Get us moving!” Chad screamed. “The things are almost here, man, they’re almost
here
!”

But they may not be able to get to us
. Rima saw that, further
away, the snow seemed to be pulsing, the swells widening in ripples like a pond after you heaved in a heavy stone.
Like Tania’s face, her neck
. She eyed a swell, saw how fast it raced under the snow. Even at this distance, she could see Tania, who’d now linked up with the creatures, stagger.

“Can’t!” Bode yanked the truck’s gearshift, dropping them into first and pumping the accelerator, fighting the black lava’s grab, trying to rock them the way you might try to jump a car out of a deep rut. The truck’s engine whined, its growl rising to a high howl, and
still
they were only crawling over the snow, going nowhere fast. Now Rima could smell something burning. The pistons, the engine block itself—it didn’t matter.

“Is there anything we can do?” Eric asked, tensely. “Bode?”

“I got nothing, man,” Bode said, tersely, teeth bared. Sweat beaded on his forehead. “We’re sitting ducks. I don’t know what else I can do. I’ll keep
fighting
this hunka junk, but …” There was another tremendous grind of gears. “How you and your brother set for ammo?”

“My gun’s dry,” Eric said. “Case is out, too.”

“Which leaves the Winchester with five”—the Dodge bucked as Bode fought the stick—“and eight in the Colt. Plenty to go around.”

“Plenty? Aw, man, you crazy?” Chad moaned. He’d clapped both hands to his head. “Thirteen measly shots or thirteen hundred, there are too many of them, man.”

“He’s not talking about enough bullets for
them
,” Eric said.

There was a moment’s trembling silence, which the birds’ shrills filled, as the Dodge’s engine muttered a basso counterpoint. “Oh no,” Chad finally said, shaking his head. “Bode, you
are out of your mind. If you think I’m gonna eat a bullet …”

“Better than them eating you,” Bode said.

“We’re not there just yet,” Eric said.

But we will be soon
. Rima felt Casey’s hand find hers. “Do you know what’s happening?” he asked.

She shook her head. But God, she thought this might be her fault.
She
knew Tania;
she
knew about Father Preston, the church. And for a while, that world was so
real
, as if
she
had pulled something together out of her mind, or memory, or both, knitting a world as surely as those creatures could remake and mend their flesh.

Then stop this
. She closed her eyes.
Please, Fog, or whatever you are … please stop or show me how. Even if I have to stay. Please
. She pushed out the thought as hard as she could, wondering if there really was anything to hear it.
Let the others go. I don’t want Casey to die
.

“Hey, hey.” She opened her eyes to find Casey staring, her hand clutching his in a death grip. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t let go.”

“Casey.” She swallowed. “I think …”

“Guys?” Eric broke in. “Look.”

About fifty yards away and all around them, the creatures were at a dead stop, gathered in a silent, milling throng at the edge of that advancing flood of coal-colored goo. Rima could see Tania pacing back and forth, looking for a way across, as the black tide lapped and gurgled around her ankles. Several of the man-things were actually backing away, and most were stumbling as the snow continued to fracture.

“Man, you know,” Chad said, “if it’s not hurting
them
, maybe be better to take our chances.”

“I wouldn’t base anything on what happens to them,” Eric said. “I blew holes in that girl and she—”

All of a sudden, Tania let out a bawling screech so loud it cut through and over the birds’ cries. Rima heard herself gasp as Tania gave a sudden, violent lurch, as if she’d been grabbed around the ankles. Her hands flew up as she dropped, straight down, the dark liquid instantly closing over her head.

“Jesus,” Bode said. “Like quicksand.”

“No, it’s too fast,” Casey said. Outside, more and more of the creatures had wheeled around to try and run, but what was left of the snow was breaking apart under their feet, the surface crumbling and collapsing. Silent before, the creatures now brayed in rusty barks. Black sludge steamrolled over the snow in a remorseless juggernaut, slopping over and slurping up the white. The crazed, ravening birds were so low now, they swarmed directly overhead, thick as blowflies over dead meat. “They’re not sinking,” Casey said. “It’s like they’re being pulled
back
.”

“Or down,” Eric said. “Like something’s
grabbing
—” He broke off as a violent shudder vibrated through the truck. “Oh boy. Bode,
Bode
.”

Chad’s eyes bugged. “What the
hell
?”

“Oh God,” Rima said, and then screamed as the vehicle suddenly jolted downward, canting at a crazy angle. “It’s happening to us.”

“We’re sinking!” Chad braced himself against the dash. “Jesus, it’s got us, we’re sinking, we’re
sinking
!”

“Can you get us moving, Bode?” Rima said. The boy shook his head, and, as the truck rose, Rima’s stomach swooped, then tried cramming behind her teeth as they plummeted on
the other side of a swell. “Then what do we do?”

“I know what
I’m
doing!” Chad popped his door. “Bode, we got to go, we got to go, we got to go go
go
!”

“No, Chad!”
Bode and Eric screamed at the same time. “Chad, stop!” Bode shouted. “You can’t go out there!”

“Well, I’m not dying in
here
!” Chad shouted, and then he was flinging himself out of the truck.

“Get him!” Rima shrilled, even as Chad tumbled out. She tried springing over the backseat, but Casey grabbed her waist and held her back. “Casey, no, we have to get him! Bode, don’t let it touch him, don’t let it—”

But Chad was out. The moment his feet hit the churning black, Chad … didn’t sink. The surface actually
stilled
, as if it were holding itself steady in order to make sense of this strange new taste.
Maybe I was wrong
. Still hunched up against the Dodge’s ceiling, with Casey’s hands battened onto her waist, Rima stared as Chad cautiously straightened.
Maybe it will let him go. Maybe it senses that we’re different
.

Then she saw how the surface shuddered, just a bit, and what echoed through her mind then wasn’t a sight but a sound: that squeaking, wet-fingers
SMEE-smee
of Father Preston’s meat inching over glass. “Chad!” she said.

“H-hey,” Chad exhaled, as if suddenly realizing what he’d just done. Turning, he looked back and spread his arms. “L-look, man, it’s coo—”

Flashing out from the murk, a black tendril shot out like the sticky tongue of a chameleon unfurling to snatch a moth on the fly. Chad shrieked as it roped around his left leg.

“Chad!”
Bode bawled.

“God, get it off, get it off!” Chad wailed, struggling to
pull himself free. His clothes were cooking, the steam rising not in white but black curls. As he bent to snatch at the black tongue around his leg, another spun out to wind around his right wrist.
“JESUS GOD!”
Chad threw back his head in an agonized scream. The first tentacle had coiled all the way up his leg to his groin, and Chad’s pants were shredding, dissolving to threads. The flesh of both his left leg and right arm began to bubble, as if Chad were a plastic bag filled with water reaching the boiling point. Then, all of a sudden, fountains of blood jetted in pulsing red ropes from where the flesh had been burned, and Chad let go of a wild shriek: “Bode, it’s burning, it’s
burning, IT’S EATING ME!
”

Of them all, it was Eric who reacted first. “Oh my God, oh my God.” He swept Rima out of the way and scrambled into Chad’s seat. “Chad, Chad, grab my hand, grab it!”

“Eric!” Letting go of Rima, Casey lunged for his brother, and just in the nick of time, because Bode, wide-eyed and ashen, was still paralyzed, seemingly unable to move. As if sensing what Eric meant to do, the inky tarn gave a mighty
heave
, and the truck dropped again with another stomach-churning lurch. Off-balance, only inches from the open door, Eric pitched forward. With a yell, Casey made a snatching grab, hooking Eric’s waistband, and then he was working his way up Eric’s back, hugging Eric in a tight embrace. “I got you, but hurry, Eric, hurry!”

“Chad!” Eric had stretched himself on the seat until his chest hung over the pulsing muck, now less than a foot from his face. Maybe a taste of Chad was all it had needed, because the black goo had morphed into a writhing sea of muscular, ropy tentacles that coiled over and around Chad to burn into
his skin and draw out his blood. Everywhere they stung Chad, fresh black steam smoked, drifting up in an inky cloud toward the birds, which were so close and thick, it was as if they
were
all that was left of a sky.

“Chad!” Eric shouted again, and thrust out both hands, straining as far as he could. “Chad, grab my hands, give me your hands!”

Saturated with blood, blind with pain, his skin steaming and bubbling and tearing open, Chad tried. He was crumpling now, not sinking so much as being eaten alive, dissolved in a vat of black acid, but his left arm was still free. Twisting, Chad made a frantic grab—and missed.

“No!” Eric shouted. Rima thought he would have leapt from the truck if not for Casey and now Bode, who finally seemed to have snapped out of it, was dragging back on Casey to keep them both from falling. “Chad,” Eric screamed.
“Chad!”