Snowblind II: The Killing Grounds (14 page)

The sound barely penetrated the ringing.

A splash of heat on his legs. Soaking into his skin. Raising the goosebumps.

The tinny, staccato sound of barking.

Zeke lunged for the tunnel.

Dayton caught his collar and jerked him back.

“Help me, goddamn it!” he shouted.

Avery struggled to all fours and crawled toward the sheriff. The ground was warm and slick, already softening. His fingers were so cold the sensation was almost painful. He grabbed Zeke’s collar and pulled him away from Dayton, who shouldered past him, raised his pistol, and—

Thoom!

In the strobe of discharge, Avery saw it. The face. It was unlike anything he’d ever seen. The skin, so pale he could see the vessels through it. The nose, short and squat. The eyes, at least the one he could see through the hair matted to its bloody forehead, were undeniably human. As was the shape of the mouth, if not the teeth, which were like those of a gorilla.

And then the face was gone. Crumpled in upon itself, as though the bullet had grabbed hold of it on the way in and turned it inside out.

“I got it,” Dayton said. He rounded on Avery and shook him by the arm. “I got it!”

Avery could barely hear the sheriff over the ringing in his ears, let alone concentrate on his words. Especially not after what he’d just seen.

He picked up the tracker and tilted it toward the carcass in an effort to use the glow to better see it. The bones in the thing’s face stood from the ruined tissue. But the eyes…they stared out from beneath the ridged brow and straight through—

Movement.

It couldn’t have been the body. It had to have been—

The tracking device. The beacon was moving. And it was moving fast.

“There’s more than one!”

Avery released Zeke’s collar, reached into the tunnel, and grabbed a handful of tangled hair. Felt burs and knots. Pulled as hard as he could.

Dayton grabbed him by the shoulder and shouted into his ear.

“What are you doing?”

“We have to get it out!”

The monitor was on the ground to his right. From the corner of his eye, he could see the beacon tracing the contour of the middle ring.

It was circling around behind them.

Dayton squeezed in beside him and bellowed with the exertion. The beast was enormous and covered with hair from the top of its head all the way down its back. There wasn’t enough room for all of them in the cellar. Its chest was on Avery’s lap by the time its legs cleared the tunnel. All he could think about was its eyes, how they looked so much like his own. Only the color of the irises, a shade of blue so pale it fell outside the traditional human palette.

Zeke fired through the tunnel, his nails clattering on the frozen earth.

“Hurry up!” Dayton shouted, and squeezed into the small orifice.

Avery extricated his legs from beneath the carcass and squirmed into the darkness. The walls were flush with his shoulders. He couldn’t raise his head without smacking it. Couldn’t bend his knees enough to gain traction. How that thing could have gotten in there was beyond him.

A sensation of panic overwhelmed him. He flailed and wriggled like a fish in an effort to move faster, to get out of the awful tunnel, which abruptly widened and angled upward. He looked up to see Dayton’s haunches silhouetted by the red glow of the monitor, which faded by degree as the tunnel sloped increasingly upward toward the outside world.

The temperature plummeted by the second. Snowflakes struck his face. Accumulated on the dirt and gravel.

Before he knew it, he was pulling himself out of the ground and into the deep snow beside a large boulder. A granite escarpment loomed over him, its crown of pines nearly invisible through the storm. Behind him, nothing but open air and blowing snow, through which, for the most fleeting of moments, he saw the roof of the decrepit house and the hint of the forest beyond it.

“
rrrrrrRRRRRaaaaaAAAAHHHHHhhhhrrrrrrr!
”

The sound was hollowed by the acoustics and attenuated by distance. The way it echoed from the hillside made its point of origin impossible to divine.

A tug on his jacket.

“Move!”

And he was running. He slipped and fell on the loose, ice-rimed talus beneath the snow. Slid downhill. Fought his way back up. Over and over. The trail was maybe two feet wide, the bottom of the cliff to his right maybe twenty times that far down, and falling farther away with every step.

The only sign of Zeke was his tracks. He was probably miles away by now.

The forest closed in from either side. The accumulation diminished beneath the canopy, but they were forced to duck under the branches and slalom through the trunks. And even then they were rewarded with facefuls of pine needles and snow.

Avery’s legs ached and his lungs burned. The adrenaline would only take him so far. It was only a matter of time before his legs simply gave out.

He hurdled a fallen trunk, burst through a wall of branches, and had to throw himself to the side to keep from careening into Dayton, who crouched behind a stand of junipers. Zeke stood in the bushes to his left, head down, ears forward, tail stiff.

Avery followed their line of sight, through the trees and into the clearing beyond. The blowing snow made it impossible to tell how large it was. He was about to ask what in world they were waiting for when he saw it. A silhouette. Maybe thirty feet away. He couldn’t see it well enough to tell for sure, but it looked like a man. Here one second and gone the next, swallowed by the blizzard.

“
rrrrrrRRRRRaaaaaAAAAHHHHHhhhhrrrrrrr!
”

From behind them. Closer than before. He was certain of it.

There was no turning back.

“Stay right behind me,” Dayton whispered. “And for the love of God, make sure nothing gets around behind us.”

The sheriff stood before Avery could object and strode out from the forest and into the windswept field.

* * *

Dayton advanced into the clearing in a shooter’s stance. The wind bludgeoned him from the side with enough force to knock him off stride. Snowflakes struck his exposed skin like shards of glass. He could barely see uphill to his left through the storm, but he wasn’t about to take his hand off the gun to shield his eyes.

Something wasn’t right. The silhouette. It wasn’t moving. And each step brought them farther out into the open, away from cover. Even with the dramatically limited visibility, he felt completely exposed.

Thooshthooshthooshthoosh
.

The clearing was surrounded on three sides by a horseshoe of pines. There was a sudden drop-off to his right, beyond which he could only intermittently see the upper canopy of the hundred-foot pines.

“
rrrrrrRRRRRaaaaaAAAAHHHHHhhhhrrrrrrr!
”

The roar sounded closer with every recurrence, although he couldn’t fathom why it continued to announce its presence when it owned the advantage of stealth.

Zeke stayed slightly ahead of him and to his right. The dog glanced back. Dayton recognized the fear in its eyes and nearly lost his resolve. This was their only option, though. Heading back into the teeth of their pursuit was suicide. Uphill, there was nothing but dense forest all the way to timberline. Even if, by some slim chance, the helicopter were able to find them up there beneath the clouds, the steep, rocky slopes offered no place for it to land.

The silhouette drew contrast from the storm. It was definitely a human shape, although after what he’d seen in the house, that wasn’t the most comforting thought.

Thooshthooshthooshthoosh
.

His hands were so cold he could barely hold his weapon. The wind abraded his skin and froze his joints. His breath plumed in clouds that froze to his lips and nostrils before being swept away by the wind.

The silhouette.

Standing.

He could see two distinct legs. Moving ever so slightly. Shivering, or maybe gently stomping for warmth. The arms swung and the jacket flared with every gust. Whoever it was had his back to the gale and his chin tucked to his chest. The man nodded as Dayton neared, but offered no other form of acknowledgement, even with the gun pointing at his head. His profile came into focus as he nodded, over and over, his arms and legs swinging—

“No…”

Dayton fell to his knees in the snow and brayed in anguish.

Zeke edged closer, scenting first the breeze, and then the man’s legs. The wind made them sway, causing the bare feet to dig trenches in the snow. There was barely enough of Thom’s face left to identify him. He’d been staked into the ground by a pair of pine branches run up the back of his blood-spattered jacket.

He’d been posed. As though meant to be seen.

Thoosh…

Thoosh…

Thoosh…

Thoosh…

“Get up.” Avery tugged on the back of his jacket. “We have to keep moving.”

“You realize what this means, don’t you?”

Avery jerked on his collar. His zipper bit into the skin on his neck. He jumped to his feet and turned on Avery. Shoved him in the chest.

“We’re fucked! You get that, right? This guy here? He was our only hope! Understand? He never made it to my truck! He never called the station!”

“This doesn’t change anything!”

“Doesn’t change…? This changes
everything
! There’s no chopper! There won’t be a chopper! We’re miles from the nearest road and I can’t even tell which way it is from here!”

Avery’s eyes ticked to his right. Over his shoulder. Past him.

“We won’t last the night out here! We’re dead. All of us. You. Me. The damn dog. We’re all going to die here!”

* * *

Avery could only watch as the storm came to life behind the sheriff, as though the blizzard itself took physical form. Where there was sheeting snow, there was now hair whipping on the wind from a vaguely human shape. Only its eyes stood apart. A glacial blue so light they appeared incapable of sight.

Time slowed to a crawl.

Dayton’s expression metamorphosed from anger to confusion.

And then to comprehension.

He raised his weapon as he turned, but his attacker was faster.

It raised its arms over its head like an ape and brought them down hard on Dayton’s shoulders.

Thoom!

The sheriff fired as he was driven to his knees. His collarbones broke and his shoulders dropped several inches. The gun fell from his hand.

The creature staggered backward. Blood rushed from its abdomen, soaking into the hair and pouring over its groin, down its legs.

And then it was on all fours, its thick arms thrust into the snow like a silverback. It rocked back and roared up into the storm.

“
rrrrrrRRRRRaaaaaAAAAHHHHHhhhhrrrrrrr!
”

There was nothing remotely human about the sound.

Zeke lunged from Avery’s peripheral vision and went straight for the beast’s throat. It howled and flung itself from side to side in an effort to shake off the shepherd.

Avery dove for the hole in the accumulation where Dayton had dropped the gun. Shoved his hands into the snow. Found the hot barrel. The butt. Pulled it out of the snow.

A thudding sound.

Zeke stopped snarling and let out a high-pitched whine.

Avery looked up in time to see the dog strike the ground and tumble through the snow. Then at the creature. At its manlike face. Watched what looked like a smile form.

He raised the pistol—

It sprung forward, its jaws opened wide.

—and fired.

Its mandible vanished into a spray of blood and teeth and a crater opened in its throat.

Warmth spattered Avery’s face. Struck his eyes, forcing them closed.

Impact with his legs, sweeping them out from underneath him.

He hit the snow, head-first, and scurried away from the creature. Wiped the blood from his eyes. Again, aimed the gun and prepared to pull the trigger.

His arm fell to his side when he saw what was left of its face.

Its momentum had carried it forward, spurting dark arterial blood across the snow. A pool spread around its body and toward his feet.

Avery took a step back.

“Goble,” Dayton said.

Avery turned to see the sheriff looking up at him from the ground, his eyes wide and filled with terror. Blood leaked from the corner of his mouth. Sharp length of bone stood from his jacket to either side of his neck.

“Goble,” he sputtered. Strands of blood slopped from his mouth when he spoke.

Avery dropped to his knees beside Dayton and rolled him onto his back, his useless arms flopping to his sides. He started to unzip the sheriff’s jacket, but stopped when he saw the way the broken ribs tented the fabric. It was the only thing holding his torso together.