Freeze

19

The first thing Warren thought when he opened his eyes was that someone had found his scarf and wrapped it back around his neck. He lay on his back, his face exposed to the falling snow and ice, freezing. He reached up with his good arm to touch the scarf and found something cold and sticky instead. He held his glove in front of himself, blinking away snow. A mess of red frost stuck to the glove’s fingers.

What the hell?

He reached for the object again and pulled it off his neck. It came unstuck like a huge bandaid, and Warren had to look at it for a long time before he realized what he was seeing. It was the hair that gave it away, the little black curls growing out of the thing from one end to the other. In the center was a bald patch, and in the center of that, a long, white scar.

It was a flap of skin. Ripped right off someone’s leg. Complete with a scarred knee.

Warren screamed and tried to throw the strip of flesh away, but it clung to his glove and swung back into his face. The already-freezing inner tissue hit him across the mouth, stuck there. He pulled it away again, turned his head, spat into the snow, and gagged.

Instead of trying to throw the skin a second time, he lowered it to the snow, held it down with his leg, and pulled his glove free.

He touched his broken arm through the snowsuit but felt almost no pain. He didn’t know whether to enjoy the momentary lack of agony or worry about it. He settled on not thinking about it either way and lifted his head to see where he was.

In the trees ahead, barely visible in the snow, one of the ice creatures had Jan Young wrapped in a tentacle as thick as a fence post, squeezing her arms against her sides. From where Warren lay, it was hard to see what was happening, but it looked like one of her hands was free and that she was trying to pull the blue plumber’s torch out of her pocket.

Between her and Warren, spread across the snow in streaks and piles of cooling meat lay what Warren could only assume had once been Rick Young. Intestines and other, unrecognizable innards littered the ground. Torn bits of clothing blew in the wind. A single boot stood in the center of the mess, a stub of a leg poking out of it and pointing to the sky.

The snowmobile lay on its side to Warren’s right. It looked dented in a few places and plenty scratched but not ruined.

Jan was yelling something at the creature and sobbing. The wind carried her words away, and Warren couldn’t quite make them out, but he supposed he had a good enough idea of what she was saying.

She jerked her arm, and although the creature held on to her, she was able to pull the butane torch out of her snowsuit. The wind died down then, and Warren was able to see the flick of fire coming out of the torch’s nozzle. He also saw another of the creature’s tentacles swinging around toward Jan’s head.

“No!”

Jan turned toward him. The tentacle hit her on the temple and all but decapitated her. Something (maybe her spine) cracked with a sickening crunch, and her head snapped back. Her throat ripped open, spraying blood across the creature and the snow beneath, and her stocking cap came off, freeing her long blonde hair. The hair blew in the wind, collecting flakes of snow for just a second before the creature wrapped another limb around her forehead and jerked her head the rest of the way off. It dropped the body part in a nearby drift.

The creature grabbed each of Jan’s limbs and, with a single movement, pulled her to pieces. The torso dropped, but the creature held on to the limbs, raising them into the air and shaking them like some kinds of trophies. It turned its mouth to the sky and screeched.

For a moment, Warren was too shocked to do anything, to think anything, but then his brain kicked back on: it’ll come after you next. You’ve got to get away. Run.

But he couldn’t run, probably couldn’t even walk. He had another idea.

While the monster rammed a tentacle into Jan’s stomach and pulled out long, dripping loops of her guts, Warren forced himself to his socked feet and shuffled to the snowmobile. He remembered the box of bottles strapped to the back. The snowmobile had crashed in snow and not on concrete or dirt or some other hard surface. There was a chance some of the bottles might have made it through. He’d need only one. He hoped.

As it turned out, there were six bottles left. The bungee cords had come undone and the box lay upright in the snow a few feet away from the snowmobile. Most of the Molotov cocktails had shattered or disappeared, probably thrown out during the crash, but half a dozen of the bad boys were right there in their individual compartments. As was the torch, the twin of the one Jan Young had died holding.

Warren glanced back at the creature and scanned the rest of the surrounding area, looking for more of the monsters, unable to see anything but a few trees and all that swirling white nothing. He took one of the bottles from the box. Although the bottle was intact, some of the liquid (gasoline, from the smell of it) had leaked out. The wick was soaked. He’d have to throw it fast or risk setting himself on fire.

And how exactly do you expect to do that with only one good arm?

He didn’t know, but he’d figure something out.

The creature had dropped Jan’s limbs and was concentrating on digging into her corpse. Its tentacles punched and ripped and scrapped, its clacking fingers audible despite the wind. Blood and bits of flesh flew. Warren expected the creature to take a few big bites of the body (that’s what wild things did with a fresh kill, right?), but it seemed more interested in shredding the remains than eating.

He turned away. If he made it through all this, he thought memories of the massacre would haunt him for the rest of his life.

Whether he watched or not, he could still hear the attack: cracking, splashing, squishing, all backdropped by the wind and falling sleet.

It knows you’re here. It’ll come for you next. Once its bloodlust subsides. If you’re going to do something, you better do it now.

He set the bottle in the snow and pulled the torch from the box. He wrapped his gloved finger around the trigger and pulled, half expecting it to be out of fuel or for the ignitor not to work. A narrow blue flame shot out of the nozzle, and Warren let out the small breath he’d been holding.

He let go of the trigger, knelt by the bottle, and pointed the torch at the wick.

Don’t mess this up. If you miss, you probably won’t get a second chance.

Warren activated the torch again. When the wick caught fire, he dropped the torch, grabbed the bottle, and flung it into the blizzard before it could explode in his hand.

The throw wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough. It exploded just before it hit the creature (or looked like it; maybe it had actually hit one of the tentacles), and the burst of fire engulfed the thing’s head.

It screamed and wrapped its blood-stained limbs around itself, but the explosion had melted away most of its upper body. Even as it tried to pull new snow onto itself, it collapsed, twitching and looking mostly dead.

Finish the job. Bring another bottle over there and blow a crater in its goddam corpse.

Warren considered it but decided to leave it alone. He thought he had surely disabled the creature long enough to escape, and that was all he needed. There was no guaranteeing another burst of fire would kill it anyway, and he might need the other makeshift grenades if he ran across more of the creatures. He turned to the snowmobile and righted it.

He’d driven similar vehicles before, but never one exactly like this, and never one handed. How had Jan started it? He remembered her pulling the start cord. And he remembered

(oh no)

the key. She had attached it to her wrist with some kind of safety strap. More than likely, she’d pulled it loose when they crashed (that was its exact purpose, after all, and the reason the snowmobile hadn’t ended up lost in the woods half a mile away). Which meant before he could go anywhere, he was going to have to go sift through her body parts.

If you’re going to go over there, better bring another bottle.

He took one of them out of the box and slipped it into his hip pocket. Then he found the torch in the snow and wrapped his finger around the trigger. He wasn’t sure how much fuel the thing held or how much Mr. and Mrs. Young might have used already, but he felt better having it. It was no flamethrower (and oh what he would have given for one of those), but it was better than his bare hands.

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.