The Shuddering

by Ania Ahlborn

  With the four of them drenched, he put the pot in their basket of gear. It was for later. They would remain covered in this stuff until they hit the highway, and then—Oh god, she thought, imagine seeing three bloody hitchhikers walking down the road. Nobody will stop. Nobody in their right mind would ever slow down.

  Jane whimpered softly as she stood there, wet and sticky, not wanting to move, but there was no time for disgust.

  “Hold her,” Ryan said, motioning for Janet to grab Oona. Picking up the gas can from the basket, he doused the ends of three torches in gasoline. “You have to keep an eye on this. You can’t let it go out. I burned one of them when Sawyer and I were out there and they freaked. They know it can hurt them.”

  “What if it starts snowing again?” she asked. It was a distinct possibility. The clouds were still thick. “Or if the wind picks up and blows the fire out?”

  Ryan thrust the torch into her gloved hand, giving her a look. She knew it was stupid to question it, knew it was a waste of time to think of all the things that could go wrong, because a million things could. If they operated on what-ifs, they’d never go through with it; they had to save Sawyer.

  “They’re afraid of it,” he told her again. “If you see one come close, hold the fire out in front of you.”

  “Okay,” she said, her voice fading to nothing.

  Ryan looped an arm around Sawyer and helped him across the garage, and for a moment she was frozen in place, refusing to believe their situation was so dire, that the pain that flashed across Sawyer’s face was real. But she wasn’t given time to dwell on those emotions. Ryan looked over at her and she immediately fell into step, limping across the concrete floor to help get Sawyer situated on his makeshift gurney. She didn’t want to think about what they’d do if the wires they had used to tie the thing together came apart, or if Sawyer lost consciousness again and they couldn’t manage to keep him on that crude sled, or if Oona leaped off Sawyer’s lap and was buried chest-deep in the snow. Wrapped in the quilt their mother had sewn when they were kids, Sawyer tried to give them both a courageous smile through his pain before coiling his arms around Oona, holding her in place.

  Ryan paused as if thinking the whole thing over, then shook his head and tied the leash of the supply board around one of his belt loops. “You’re going to lead. We’ll keep Sawyer and Oona between us.”

  “But—” She didn’t want to lead, but bringing up the rear seemed like an even more precarious position.

  “Janey.” Ryan looked at her steadily. “This is how it’s got to be. Let’s go.”

  Before she could say another word, Ryan rolled up the garage door and the cold swallowed them whole.

  Jane’s eyes watered against the wind. She pulled her scarf over her mouth and nose, hiding from the gale, breathing through her mouth so that her breath warmed the yarn closest to her lips. Reaching the driveway that would take them down the slope and away from that cabin forever, Sawyer and Oona sat on their makeshift sled like blood-soaked royalty. Ryan motioned for Jane to move ahead of him, and despite her trepidation she did, torch held out ahead of her.

  They trekked past Sawyer’s Jeep without incident. The trees were still, and no matter how hard she looked, Jane didn’t spot any shifting shadows behind the pines. But she knew they were there, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. When Oona whined in Sawyer’s arms, Jane’s eyes went wide with panic. She shot a look behind her at Ryan, but Ryan didn’t see anything either. He shook his head at her, his expression anxious but mercifully put together. All it would take was for Ryan to lose his cool for the entire expedition to fall apart. Jane knew that if that happened, her own resolve would crumble beneath the weight of her fear.

  “Where?” she asked, shoving her scarf down to her chin. “I don’t see anything. Where are they? Do you see them?” She waved the torch to and fro, spinning around, knowing that facing one direction for too long would render her vulnerable to an attack.

  As though having heard Jane’s question, one of them showed itself. It stood a few yards down the slope as if planning on boxing them in. The moment Jane spotted it every nerve in her body stood on end, crackling with terror. She veered around, staring wildly at her brother.

  “Face forward!” he demanded. He grabbed the leash of the supply basket and jerked it up the slope toward himself, grabbing April’s hair spray out of their arsenal. Oona bared her teeth and snarled, but Sawyer held her tight. His expression was unnerving, almost blank, as though his brain refused to register any more fear, as though it had shut down all his senses, overwhelmed by physical pain.

  “I thought they were scared,” Jane screeched. “You told me they were scared!”

  “They are scared,” he told her, trying to sound calm. He took a few steps down the slope toward the thing, and the creature crouched down, everything about its posture setting Jane’s teeth on edge. What if it lunged? What if it got him? What did he expect her to do if she was left alone out here with Sawyer and Oona? She couldn’t possibly pull them on her own.

  Lowering his torch, Ryan pointed the spray can in the creature’s direction and pressed down on the trigger. A blast of heat hit Jane’s face as the snow lit up in a dazzling display of glittering ice crystals, fire shooting toward the monster that had decided to try its hand at derailing their escape. Ryan was too far away for the flame to reach the thing, but the explosion of fire had obtained the desired effect. The beast jumped back, startled, and ran away.

  Jane found it almost disconcerting how easy it was to scare them. Was that all it took? A little fire and they were powerless? On one hand, she hoped to God that was all they needed to survive; on the other, it made her queasy to think that if it was that easy to make them scatter, all five of them could have been walking out of there instead of only three.

  While Jane and Ryan slogged through the snow, Sawyer tried to stay alert. He felt strangely removed from the situation as he watched them struggle. Other than hanging on to Oona, there was nothing he could do. The pain that encompassed his back was indescribable—a kind of agony he’d never felt before. Jane had fed him a handful of Tylenol, but it hadn’t done anything to alleviate a sensation that teetered between hellfire and numbness. Sawyer was almost positive that the numbness wasn’t his back at all—it was him slithering in and out of responsiveness, balancing on the knife’s edge of consciousness and catatonia. The nausea that roiled in the pit of his stomach was unbearable, but the cold that whipped across his face helped ease the discomfort.

  At least until a haunting wail echoed off the trees around them.

  It sounded almost human, like a valley of people moaning before death. Sawyer connected with something in that mournful chorus. At that very moment, it became undeniably clear—whatever these creatures were, they were in pain, more than likely racked with starvation, forced into a slow and bitter end. Somehow, on some primal level, he could relate to their plight. He swallowed against the lump in his throat, every breath harder than the last, his guilt over April subsiding enough to let a wave of calm drift over him. He had been so sure that he had lost her, but he’d been wrong.

  He hadn’t lost anything. They’d be together soon.

  The creatures were mercifully keeping their distance—a blessing, since the group had to stop every few minutes to catch their breath, pausing every hour for an even longer break. Maybe those things had been spooked enough to search for alternative prey. Maybe it was the blood that had frozen to their faces like war paint, stained their clothes, and clumped and matted in their hair. Ryan didn’t know exactly why they were being given this opportunity to make headway, but he also couldn’t be bothered to care. Both he and Jane were exhausted. Sawyer didn’t look good, hardly able to keep his eyes open for longer than a few minutes at a time. They were losing daylight with each pause, and all Ryan could hope for was that they’d hit the highway before nightfall. If they didn’t, they’d have to make camp, and he wasn’t convinced any of them would survive the night. Their stas
h of food was meager, their energy was low, and despite the lack of snowfall, the wind was relentless, biting at any exposed bit of skin. The chill would only grow more bitter with the onset of darkness. The windchill alone would be enough to end them.

  But after hours of trudging forward at a snail’s pace, there was no denying that they weren’t going to make it in a single day. The five miles from the driveway to the highway suddenly seemed like five hundred. They were drained, and if they pushed themselves too hard, they wouldn’t have the energy to defend themselves if they were attacked.

  Ryan shot a look over his shoulder at the tree line a hundred yards away. They were there, lurking in the shadows, watching their kill move farther and farther away as they moaned and growled within their throats; what Ryan had expected to be welcome distance made his nerves buzz with trepidation. Perhaps he had been wrong. Maybe they weren’t afraid. Perhaps they were simply waiting for the light of day to burn away before making their final move. He shoved his sleeve upward with his glove, exposing the watch that was wrapped around his wrist. It was a few minutes shy of four in the afternoon. The sun would be gone in an hour. If they were going to make camp, they had to start now.

  “We should stop here,” he announced. Jane’s expression immediately shifted from pained to anxious.

  “What? Why? I thought we were going to the highway.”

  “We are. But we’re only about halfway.”

  Jane shook her head in disbelief. “That’s impossible,” she insisted. “We’ve been out here for hours.”

  “Believe it,” Ryan told her. “We’ve gone two miles, three if we’re lucky. Sunset is in an hour. If we keep going, we’ll get a quarter of a mile farther. We need to set up camp or we’ll freeze.”

  Jane’s gaze flitted to Sawyer, her face twisting with dread. Ryan knew what she was thinking—they didn’t have much time. Sawyer was weak, and without moving around like they were, he would be cold. If he didn’t make it through the night, the blame would be on Ryan. But he had expected this. He knew the trek was going to be hard and, with Sawyer incapacitated, even longer than it would have been if the three of them were able-bodied. They could continue through the night, but there was no doubt in his mind they’d collapse only hours after nightfall—spent, freezing. Sawyer wouldn’t survive it. But there was a possibility he’d survive the night tucked into a snow shelter away from the wind.

  “I knew this would take longer than a day,” he confessed, hoping that his admission would somehow soothe her nerves. He had kept it from her on purpose, knowing that if he had mentioned it earlier, she would have demanded to stay in the cabin rather than fight to survive.

  Jane’s expression flitted between fear and anger. But without saying anything, she silently turned away from him, unstrapped the leash supply board she had taken over from her belt loop, and grabbed the lead to Sawyer’s gurney from Ryan’s hand, beginning her indignant march away from the group. She lumbered along for a few feet, the black smoke of her torch spiraling into the gray clouds overhead, releasing a frustrated cry of exertion as she tried to pull Sawyer and Oona along. But they hardly budged. Oona whined from Sawyer’s lap as she watched Jane struggle back in the direction from which they had come.

  “Jane.” Ryan sighed. “Come on, stop it.”

  “I’m going back!” She continued to push through the snow, stumbling once before regaining her footing, Sawyer’s sled sliding ever so slowly behind her.

  “Why?” he asked. “We’re halfway there. Go forward if you’re going to go anywhere.”

  Jane stopped where she was, as though considering it. Then she whipped around and began to trek forward, deciding that the highway was a better option. But by the time she reached her brother again, she was too winded to go any farther.

  “Will you please calm down?” he asked her. “We’re going to make a shelter, okay?” Ryan leaned down and swiped the supply board’s leash up in his hand, holding it out for Jane to reattach. Then he looked around, evaluating their position, took a few steps away from Sawyer and Oona, dropped to his knees, and started to dig.

  Jane turned her face up to the darkening sky, shook her head after a moment, and whispered, “Goddamnit,” before dropping to her knees next to him, burying her gloves in the snow.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Thirty minutes before sundown, they completed digging and packing their shelter in the snow. With the tarp secured over it, Ryan could only hope it would be enough to shelter them from the cold. He’d watched enough survival shows to know how to navigate down a snowy mountain, and he knew the best way to live through an avalanche, but he’d be damned if he could recall an episode that taught him how to fend off man-eating hellions in knee-deep powder.

  Those things continued to prowl just beyond the tree line, their shadows seemingly more active as the daylight bled dark. It made him nervous, because in this worst-case scenario, there couldn’t be anything more disastrous than those creatures sneaking up on them after dark. The possibility of an ambush made his hair follicles tingle.

  Jane sat on top of a tightly packed lump of snow she had created for herself—a lookout, of sorts. Sawyer and Oona were next to her, Sawyer not having spoken in the past few hours. Jane tried to get Sawyer to drink some Diet Coke from their inadequate stash of food. She fumbled with a cellophane pack of stale saltines, trying to tear them open with her teeth without pulling off her gloves. Eventually getting the packaging open, she fed Sawyer a cracker while he remained bundled and motionless under the quilt.

  With the sky a pale purple, Ryan unloaded a good amount of gear from the wicker basket atop Jane’s board, dumping spare pool cues and torches into their shelter before turning his attention to his sister and best friend. It was time to move Sawyer into the den.

  Ryan pulled Sawyer as close as possible to the snow shelter before both he and Jane hefted him up, their shoulders beneath his arms. Sawyer tried to brave the movement without a sound, but he couldn’t help crying out when they lowered him into the hole in the hard-packed snow. Oona and Jane followed him inside a moment later.

  “Stay here with him,” Ryan told her, tying the leash of the supply board around his belt loop. If they were going to make it through the night, they needed fire.

  “Where are you going?” As soon as she saw him preparing for another trek, Jane instinctively crawled out of the shelter and back into the snow. It crunched beneath her. The sun, however slight, had melted it enough so that it refroze into a brittle glittering crust. Ryan motioned toward the trees as he plucked up his torch.

  “Wood,” he said. “Stay in there.” He nodded at their makeshift shelter. “The more people inside, the warmer it’ll be.”

  “But what about you?” she asked. “You can’t go out there alone. What if they come back?”

  What if they had learned? The idea of it made his mouth taste acrid, his fear breeding a sharp, metallic taste. But he refused to let those kinds of thoughts dictate his movements. They were out of options, and showing weakness now would send Jane over the edge.

  “I’ve fought them off before,” Ryan said, emptying most of their supplies onto the snow. He’d need room for firewood and Jane would need weapons in case she and Sawyer were the ones attacked. But Jane wasn’t satisfied with his answer. She shook her head, resolute.

  “Oona will warm the place up. I’m coming with you.”

  “No, you aren’t.”

  “Why not?” she demanded. “This is insane. It’s like splitting up in the movies. Nobody comes back alive after splitting up; you know that.”

  “Jane.” He gave her a steady look. “I’m just going to be over there.” He pointed to the trees in the distance. He knew they were farther away than they looked, but he didn’t mention it. “You can watch me if you want to, but I need you to stay with Sawyer, okay? We can’t leave him alone. Try to get him to eat some more crackers. He needs to keep his strength up.”

  Jane gave in, nodding with a frown. “Fine,” she told him. “Ju
st be careful.”

  Ryan began to slog through the snow. The closer he got to the wall of pine, the more nervous he felt. The trees they had left in their wake were the closest to their camp, but those were the trees where Ryan had seen the shadows shift. There was another thicket to the north, close enough to walk to in five or ten minutes on a warm summer afternoon, but trying for them now would eat up the last dregs of daylight.

  With only a few yards left between him and the pines, he couldn’t help but think that maybe he was wrong. Maybe those things weren’t waiting for nightfall after all, but for this exact moment; for Jane and Ryan to split up, for one of them to come close enough to the forest to be pulled into the branches. He swallowed against the thudding in his throat, forcing himself to continue forward with a torch held over his head, the ax handle sticking out of his backpack, the wicker basket skidding across the top of the snow behind him. Finally reaching a tree on the outermost rim of the woods, he slid his backpack from his shoulders and grabbed the hatchet. But there was no way he could chop at the tree one-handed. Daylight was dwindling. He had to be quick. Chewing on his bottom lip, he scanned the trunks and branches ahead of him, waiting for one of those creatures to launch itself at him before he could think to defend himself.

  It was deathly silent.

  He didn’t hear any throaty growls or mournful moans.

  Only the wail of the wind.

  Slowly leaning down, he stabbed his torch into the snow a few feet away from where he stood, hoping like hell that he’d have enough time to retrieve it if he needed to.

  The ax in both hands now, he took a swing at the low-hanging branch of a sickly looking tree. He didn’t know whether live wood would burn, so he went for the conifer that looked the least healthy, hoping that the inside of its branches would be dry enough to catch a spark. The tree shuddered beneath the hit, and snow fell to the ground not just from that limb, but from the branches overhead as well. He swung again. After two more attempts, the bough released its grip on the trunk and fell to the ground. As he pulled it to the basket, it left a delicate brushstroke across the snow.