The origin of the sound was so close he felt it reverberate in his chest.
* * *
Avery looked up from where the sheriff’s blood eroded through the snow and toward the tree line. The wind blew directly into his eyes, nearly blinding him with snowflakes. Yet still he saw the movement. Subtle and indistinct. Between the branches. No, not between them. Through them.
Zeke growled. Tested his paw with his weight. Quickly raised it again.
The antenna protruded from the snow at his feet. The monitor was half-buried in the snow, but he could still see the beacon, heading slowly and steadily toward the crosshairs from somewhere off to his left, circling around the clearing, keeping to the forest.
They were everywhere.
The way they hunted. As a pack. Like it was a sport. Using the corpses as decoys, to lure them closer, to flush them into the open. They were as cunning as man and as fearsome as primates.
Avery understood on a primal level that he was about to die. He imagined Michelle standing out here just as he did now, facing her imminent death every bit as alone. Her final thoughts had been of protecting her family, of protecting him. Warning them not to come looking for her because she knew the horrific fate that awaited anyone who did. And it broke his heart.
He should have been there for her, if only to hold her hand and let her know that she wasn’t alone. So that neither of them would have had to die all by themselves in a place where no one would ever find their remains.
At least no one knew he was here. He’d distanced himself from everyone in his life who cared about him. They wouldn’t know he was gone, let alone come looking for him. The others, though…they’d be missed.
“rrrrrrRRRRRaaaaaAAAAHHHHHhhhhrrrrrrr!”
The sound was closer than he’d expected. Not at the edge of the forest, but maybe halfway in between. A shape, low to the ground. Nearly indistinguishable from the blowing snow.
These mountains would be crawling with people searching for the others. A sheriff couldn’t go missing without impacting his entire county, and, like Dayton said, Search & Rescue would scour every square foot to find one of its own. The ranger and the kid whose body was staked into the ground mere feet away. Their families undoubtedly wouldn’t rest until they learned what happened to them.
And these creatures would be waiting, as they had been from the beginning.
Umph.
The shape inched forward. Sniffed.
Avery focused on its silhouette, on the long hair whipping in front of it on the wind, alternately revealing and concealing its blue eyes and the brownish crust on the side of its face.
He couldn’t allow anyone else to throw their lives away. That was what these creatures wanted. How they survived. This was their killing grounds, and the reason no one lived long enough to betray the secret of their existence.
Umph. Umph.
It lumbered forward, its fists deep in the snow, its head cocked to the side.
Avery glanced at the monitor. The beacon was directly above the crosshairs. He looked back at the creature. Then the beacon.
Both drew closer.
He needed to find a way to warn anyone who would come after them, like Michelle had attempted to do with the video camera. All he had was his cellphone, and it was too late to do anything with it now. By the time he fished it out of his pocket and opened the camera app, it would be upon him.
It rose to its full height and watched him through the snow. Its legs were disproportionately short, its arms too long. Its head appeared to rest directly on its shoulders, as though lacking a neck.
Its chest swelled and it lowered its head.
“rrrrrrRRRRRaaaaaAAAAHHHHHhhhhrrrrrrr!”
The trees came to life behind it.
Umph-umph.
Umph. Umph. Umph.
Umph.
It walked closer, its body moving in a way that made its motion impossible to differentiate from the blowing snow. Others materialized from the storm in the distance, white against the bark of the trunks.
Avery glanced down at the monitor. The red dot continued its incremental approach.
Zeke growled and hobbled forward. He positioned himself between Avery and his impending demise. His orange saddlebag was torn and bloodstained, but the pouches on either side still appeared largely intact.
Umph-umph-umph-umph.
The ground trembled as the entire pack raced into the clearing.
Maybe there was still a way to warn those who would come looking for them.
Avery raised the pistol in one hand and slowly knelt in the snow beside Zeke. Cautiously. Never taking his eyes from the creature as it continued to close the gap.
Twenty feet.
Fifteen.
He tried not to look at Dayton’s remains for fear of losing his nerve. The sheriff’s blood was still lukewarm when he reached into the snow and fumbled for the antenna.
The beast crept closer down the sightline of his pistol, as though entirely unafraid.
Twelve feet.
Ten.
Avery opened the pouch on Zeke’s left flank. Felt the dog flinch. Shoved the broken antenna in and velcroed it closed.
Eight feet.
Six.
He pulled the cord and the monitor followed. Stashed it in the pouch on Zeke’s right side. Prayed the shepherd could still run.
The creature towered over him. Maybe five feet away. Barely outside of reach. The hair on its face grew from beneath its cold eyes in a beardlike pattern. It was crusted with blood from where the corner of its mouth had torn all the way back to its ear. The wound was still raw, the upper portion of its cheek bunched upward to the point of narrowing its eye. There was a small black box embedded in its upper gums by two long screws, which protruded from beneath its cheekbone. The lip was trapped above it, revealing the molars all the way back to the exposed muscle. It had obviously gotten far more than it bargained for when it went for the bighorn sheep’s throat.
Avery sighted the weapon between its eyes.
It slowly lowered itself to the ground.
He tracked the movement with the pistol. Hoped there was at least one shot left.
The muscles in its shoulders quivered in anticipation. Its legs tensed. The expression on its face was feral, bestial, outside of the range of human emotion.
From behind it. Umph-umph-umph-umph.
It flattened itself until it nearly vanished into the snow before his very eyes.
Avery thought of the way a tiger did the same thing before it pounced.
He bent at the knees and wrapped his arm around Zeke’s midsection. Tried to find anything resembling a decent grasp.
It flung syrupy strands of blood from its ruined mouth when it roared.
“rrrrrrRRRRRaaaaaAAAAHHHHHhhhhrrrrrrr!”
The others responded in kind. The resultant sound was like a jet engine, only deeper, more resonant. And beneath it, the earth shuddered with their advance.
Avery shouted at the top of his lungs and in one motion fired the gun, scooped up the dog, and sprinted away from the beast. He thought he saw the bullet hit and spatter the snow with blood, but he couldn’t be sure and he wasn’t about to look back. He focused on the cliff, twenty feet ahead of him. On the treetops beyond it.
“rrrrrrRRRRRaaaaaAAAAHHHHHhhhhrrrrrrr!”
The sound was filled with rage and pain.
And came from directly behind him.
Fifteen feet.
The dog squirming in his grasp. Clawing at him to break free.
Ten.
The edge, approaching fast. Close enough to see the individual needles on the branches.
Five.
Avery wrapped both arms around Zeke. Hugged him tightly to his chest. Planted his left foot. Lunged with his right.
Searing pain in his left calf. The ground, rushing toward his face.
He tucked his shoulder to absorb the collision. Tumbled forward. Over the edge.
A sensation of weightlessness.
Then of fa
lling.
He saw the branches against the storm.
The tree trunks.
The impression of the ground, far below, through the blowing snow and the broad boughs.
More trunks.
The beast’s bloody face against the sky. Its mouth opened into a roar he couldn’t hear over the air rushing past his ears.
The trunks.
The ground, rushing toward him.
More trunks. Beyond them, the face of the cliff passed in a blur.
Branches pummeled his back. Snapped. Barely slowed his descent.
He thought of Michelle. Of her smiling at him with that mischievous sparkle in her eyes. She was so real. So real.
The sky, sealed off by the pine limbs racing away from him and the cloud of needles descending in his wake.
He closed his eyes. Buried his face in Zeke’s fur. Held him as tightly as he could.
Impact.
An explosion of snow.
An abrupt blow from behind and an expulsion of breath.
The back of his head struck—
Darkness.
* * *
Cold on his face.
Avery opened his eyes. Closed them again.
The pain. It was beyond anything he’d ever imagined. He drew a breath to cry out and the pain intensified tenfold.
His eyes snapped open and he saw a blurry black blob. It resolved into Zeke’s nose.
The dog nuzzled his cheek again.
“rrrrrrRRRRRaaaaaAAAAHHHHHhhhhrrrrrrr!”
Avery glanced up. Saw the white bodies bounding down toward him through the canopy.
“Get out of here,” he tried to say, but the words came out in an unintelligible jumble.
He pushed Zeke in the chest and ignited a whole new kind of pain in his upper back.
The dog bit the collar of his jacket. Tugged on it.
The agony was exquisite.
Avery bellowed and shoved the dog again.
“Good boy, Zeke. You’re a…good boy.”
The dog released his jacket and stared down at him through empathic brown eyes. Something passed between them. A form of communication that transcended the barrier between species.
Zeke turned and limped off into the forest.
Avery rolled over, pulled himself up onto the accumulation, and watched the shepherd vanish into the underbrush. He could feel the bones shifting inside of him, the broken ends cutting through his flesh, the warmth of his blood flooding onto the ground beneath him. Dropped his face into the snow and wept with relief.
Zeke would find his way back to town. They’d see his broken leg and his torn saddlebags and understand that something terrible had happened. They’d take samples of the blood dried into the fabric and knotted in his fur, run their forensics tests, and learn not only that those who had bled on him were likely dead, but that there was something else out here, something that defied classification. And when they did come, they would do so in large numbers and with even larger firepower.
And the ability to track these monsters.
They would make sure this never happened to anyone else ever again.
Avery smiled and blood dripped from his lips.
Crashing sounds from above him. The ground shook. Twigs and pine needles clattered onto his back.
It was all he could do to keep one eye open and above the snow. He watched the bushes fall back into place, sealing off Zeke’s passage behind him.
“rrrrrrRRRRRaaaaaAAAAHHHHHhhhhrrrrrrr!”
He saw movement through the trees and nearly despaired at the thought of Zeke returning, but the shape resolved into that of a woman. She wore skin-tight ski pants and a Spyder jacket. Her long blond hair blew on the wind.
Weight on his back, driving him deeper into the snow. He no longer felt the pain.
The woman passed through the shrubs and stared into his eyes.
Massive hands closed around the sides of his head, covering his ears. Claws sank into his cheeks and temples. Wrenched his neck back.
Michelle smiled and beckoned him with her index finger.
A crunching sound he felt as much as heard. Pressure in the back of his skull. The snapping sound of bone breaking. Teeth. Inside of him.
Avery took her hand and welcomed eternity.
November 27th
Wolf Creek Pass
Today
“For Christ’s sake,” Len says.
The animal hardly looks like a dog anymore. Its snout is flattened and its tongue juts out from between its clenched teeth. One whole side of its face is destroyed.
“Damn thing ran right out in front of me. You saw it. Like it wanted to get hit.”
“It’s a dog, Len,” Ashley says. “You killed a dog.”
“Shut up so I can think, okay?”
“That’s somebody pet. They’re probably driving around looking for it right now.”
“Are you kidding me? All the way up here? In this weather?”
“Then you tell me how it got out here in the middle of nowhere.”
Len opens his mouth. Lets it close again. How had it gotten out here on its own? They were at least ten miles from the nearest town, three thousand feet straight down at the bottom on the pass.
He nudges its head with his toe. It rolls to the side with the grinding sound of the broken bones in its neck and reveals its collar. He crouches and leans closer so he can better see the dog’s tags. His name was Zeke and he belonged to someone named D. Crowell, whose phone number and address were engraved at the bottom of the tag.
For a moment he debates writing down the number so he can call it when he has a signal again, but figures someone else will find it soon enough, and it won’t be any less dead when they do. He doesn’t need to embroil himself in a domestic nightmare, anyway. The moment he received a summons to appear in small claims court, his wife would know he wasn’t where he was supposed to be. Nothing good could come from reporting the incident.
Nothing.
“Get back in the car. I’ll be right there.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I can’t just leave it here, can I?”
Ashley meets his stare, then quickly looks away. Len recognizes the expression on her face and understands there won’t be a second rendezvous.
He looks up at the sky as she walks away. The car door slams behind him.
“What did I ever do to deserve this?”
Len groans and grabs the dog by its hind legs. Its fur is frozen and covered with snow, beneath which he can see that it’s not entirely white. There are brown and black patterns. Not to mention a whole lot of blood. He drags it to the side of the road and kicks some snow over it for Ashley’s benefit.
He turns back toward the car and brushes his hands off on his slacks before catching himself. He’ll have to send them to the dry cleaner’s from work, or, better yet, just toss them into the incinerator and be done with it. He didn’t care if his wife noticed they were missing and wondered what happened to them; he wasn’t wearing pants with dead dog on them again.
The headlights blind him and he looks away. Something catches his eye from the opposite side of the road, near the buried guardrail. It’s tattered and orange and has the remnants of a reflective stripe.
He glances back toward the car, shields his eyes from the glare, and sees the hint of motion as Ashley leans across the seat and honks the horn.
If that’s how she’s going to be, then fine. Let her wait.
He passes the point of impact, clearly demarcated by the blood spatters on the snow, and stands over the object. The last thing he wants to do is touch it, so he slides his toe underneath it and lifts it out of the accumulation. It’s a saddlebag of some kind. The dog must have been wearing it, like it was a person or something. He’s never had patience for people who dress up their animals.
There’s an official insignia on one of the pouches. Some county seal or other. Search & Rescue. Metal prongs protrude from the pocket. It takes some doing, but he opens
the pouch with his foot and reveals what looks like an old television antenna. A cord connects it to the pocket on the other side.
Len tucks his hand into his sleeve, grips the cord as well as he can, and pulls on it. A handheld monitor slides out of the pouch. It reminds him of a GPS unit, only much older. Rather than a digital map, the screen features a series of concentric rings surrounding a crosshairs. A red beacon glows just off-center, near the bottom of the first ring.
The horn blares again.
“I’m coming, damn it!” he shouts, and starts back toward the SUV.
A crash of shattering glass.
“What the hell?”
He should have known better than to piss her off to such an extent. The kind of women willing to do whatever it took to climb the ladder were notoriously unpredictable, especially the young ones. They were used to getting exactly what they wanted and became more than a little volatile when exposed to the way the world really worked. Breaking his window, though? This was a new low.
Ashley screams.
He holds up his hand to block the headlights.
She was throwing a tantrum in there. Hurling herself from one side of the Range Rover to the other. Kicking at the driver’s side window. If she broke that one, too, it wouldn’t matter how good the heater was, he’d be frozen solid by the time—
A spatter of fluid strikes the windshield.
From the inside.
Len stops and stands perfectly still.
The wind screams over the pass and batters him with snowflakes.
“Ashley?”
He drops the monitor and resumes walking, barely conscious of the glowing red dot approaching the crosshairs, nearly right on top of it.
A crunching sound behind him.
Len turns and sees the crushed monitor sticking out from beneath the big foot that stomped it.
He looks up. Into its face.
It opens its mouth and roars past the black box jutting from its upper gums.
“rrrrrrRRRRRaaaaaAAAAHHHHHhhhhrrrrrrr!”
The blizzard comes to life with a flurry of teeth and claws.
Author’s Note
Snowblind II: The Killing Grounds Page 11