The Snow and The Darkness

by Matthew Warren Wilson

too much time to mourn.”

  “Why?” Jason asked. He had asked Cliff the same thing a little earlier, but Rodney seemed to be more open with information, even if he was still heartless. “Why are you doing this to us?”

  Rodney stepped directly in front of Jason. “It’s just the food chain,” he replied. “We gotta feed our boys and we can’t buy no meat.”

  “But we’re…we’re people!” Jason spluttered. Again he knew he was being pathetic but he didn’t seem to have any control over it. “You can’t just use people for food!”

  That was when Jason saw movement behind Rodney. At first he thought it was another one of the creatures, come to snack on the remains of his brother, but a second glance proved otherwise. It was Lucy. She held a garden shovel in her hands, cocked like a baseball bat.

  Jason forced himself not to look at her. He forced himself to stare at Rodney, to pay attention to what he was saying. If Rodney saw his eyes looking elsewhere, he might turn around.

  “People is easy to manipulate,” he was saying, “easy to get here. Ya know how hard it is to steal a cow and get it out here? Damn near impossible. But people, they’s easy. And lightweight.”

  From the corner of his eye, Jason could see Lucy had removed her one remaining shoe. She now crept forward in only her socks. Her footsteps couldn’t be heard over the sounds of the creature munching on Frank’s arm.

  “But how can you? Don’t you have any compassion?” Jason wondered if maybe there was some hope in pleading with Rodney. He wondered if maybe Lucy was about to ruin any chance they had. “How can you just kill people without remorse?”

  “Does a lion feel guilty when it kills a gazelle?” Rodney asked. It was the same analogy Cliff had used. “It’s survival. We’re just survivin’ and we’re helpin’ our—”

  His voice was cut short by the garden shovel slamming into the side of his head. Lucy had swung it with surprising force, considering she had been injured and had spent too long wandering in the snow. The blow to the head sent Rodney staggering sideways, but he didn’t fall to the ground. He turned as he stumbled, seeing Lucy for the first time. He still gripped the axe in one thick hand. Lucy didn’t hesitate in swinging the shovel again. The back of it hit Rodney in the face.

  Blood exploded from his nose and mouth. He dropped the axe.

  The creature had devoured about half of one of Frank’s arms, but when it saw Rodney getting attacked it turned and slowly backed away from the scene, back toward the opposite end of the barn.

  Lucy hit him again. This third blow finally knocked him down. His knees buckled and he tumbled backwards, landing on his back with both legs bent up under him.

  Lucy dropped the shovel and picked up the axe.

  She began howling. She swung the axe as if she’d been splitting wood her whole life. It embedded itself in Rodney’s belly. She immediately wrenched it free and swung again. And again. And again.

  Jason could only watch helplessly as Lucy screamed and swung the axe repeatedly, chopping Rodney to pieces. He was long dead, and still she didn’t stop. Her screams were inarticulate, but full of rage. The carnage was overwhelming; blood seemed to cover everything. And there was more than just blood; sticky, runny, gooey bits and pieces scattered the floor and clung to the axe blade. Something viscous and not-quite-brown was smeared down Lucy’s cheek. It hung down a little below her chin and jiggled with each move she made, but it held on. In the short pauses between Lucy’s screams, Jason could still hear Valerie humming. She was still exposed to the world and she still stared blankly ahead.

  Jason began to quietly say Lucy’s name. He needed her to stop hitting Rodney with the axe. Not because he thought Rodney deserved any mercy—the man was already dead, after all—but because he needed Lucy to cut him loose. Cliff was still out there, and Jason intended to be free before he came back. Jason was surprised he hadn’t come running at the first sound of Lucy’s screams, but apparently he was far enough away that he couldn’t hear them. Or he was biding his time, waiting for Lucy to set down the axe.

  “Lucy. Lucy. It’s okay. Lucy, he’s gone. Lucy.”

  Slowly but surely, his voice got through to her. With one final grunt, Lucy swung the axe over her shoulder, but instead of bringing it down in its deadly arc she simply let it go. It fell to the floor behind her with a heavy thud. She turned to Jason. Her face was a grisly mask. The blood that had poured from her own mouth earlier was dried on her mouth and chin, and now Rodney’s blood streaked her hair and forehead. That smear of not-quite-brown was still on her cheek. Blood had soaked her sweater. It covered almost every inch of her lower body.

  “Lucy,” Jason began, but he stopped there. Lucy had turned away from him. She moved past Valerie and stopped in front of the pedestal where Frank now hung by what remained of his neck. His shoulders were pulpy stumps. With his arms gone, the yoke around his neck was the only thing keeping his body from tumbling to the floor. His body canted to the right, only still connected to his head by one side of his neck. The other side, where his shoulder parted from his neck, looked like a gaping mouth.

  Lucy stood in front of Frank for a few seconds, then threw her arms around his limp body. She seemed not to notice the open wounds at his shoulders and neck. Or she just didn’t care.

  “Lucy,” Jason said again. “Lucy we have to get out of here.”

  She paid no attention.

  “Lucy, please. Cut these cords and get me out of this thing.” He rattled his neck around inside the yoke. “Please!”

  Finally, after another agonizing few seconds, Lucy turned and looked at him again.

  “Fahnk,” she said. Jason didn’t know if she was saying his brother’s name or cursing. But did it matter? The sentiment was the same, either way.

  “I know,” Jason said. A sob hitched in his throat and a short, low sound crossed his lips before he cut it off. “I know,” he repeated, “I know. He’s my brother.”

  “Fahnk,” Lucy said again, but she released her grip on Frank’s lifeless body. Slowly she moved away from him.

  Jason felt like he was in a dream. Lucy’s movement was so slow, he was sure Cliff would come waltzing back into the barn long before she could reach him and untie his binds. He watched as she moved toward him through a mass of invisible molasses, each second an eon, each step an eternity. If only it was a dream. If he woke up, safe in his bed at home, then Frank would still be alive. Maybe he was asleep in his airplane seat; maybe they hadn’t yet landed at Dulles and he was having fever dreams because of the stress of travel. Yes, yes, that had to be it. That’s why Valerie just kept humming Twinkle Twinkle Little Star; she was sitting next to him on the airplane, fearful of the weather but without any worry of psychotic killers and other-worldly monsters with teeth that spun like rotary blades and she was just trying to keep herself calm while she ate peanuts and read Vanity Fair and she definitely wasn’t tied up and yoked in some crazy monster barn, catatonic and waiting to be turned into dessert, and Frank wasn’t dead, he wasn’t dead, and he still had both arms and all his fingers and he was waiting to pick them up at the airport and he would have a fridge waiting for them at his house, fully stocked with beer, and he would grin when he saw them, and they would all hug each other, and…

  And Lucy stood in front of him.

  Her head was cocked to the side, as if she’d asked him a question. If she had, he hadn’t heard her. That dangling piece of something still hung from her cheek. She seemed unaware of it. It jiggled and bobbed, ever so slightly. It was something from Rodney; it was a piece of Rodney. Jason couldn’t identify it, but he knew it came from inside Rodney’s body. And why would he dream that? Would his mind really concoct such a ridiculous detail? Besides, now that he knew he was dreaming, why didn’t he wake up?

  Lucy moved around him and tugged on the cords binding his wrists. The pain there resurged. He could suddenly feel it in his ankles again, too. Sharp pain.

  Not a dream.

  Oh God, it was not a dream.

&
nbsp; Frank was dead. Lucy was tongueless. Valerie was a blank slate, topless beside him and humming a children’s song as if she’d completely lost her mind.

  Jason sobbed again and tears rolled down his cheeks, uninhibited.

  Lucy tugged at the cords but they didn’t feel any looser around Jason’s wrists. She had to hurry. They didn’t have much time. Cliff could return any second.

  “The axe,” Jason said. “Cut them.” It was barely understandable through his crying and hitching breaths, but Lucy seemed to understand.

  She stepped in front of him again, where the axe lay on the ground. She moved to pick it up, then stopped suddenly as her eyes shifted to Rodney’s butchered body. He was quite literally in pieces. She stared at it as if she hadn’t seen it before; as if she hadn’t been the one responsible. Jason couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw something like guilt pass over her face. Perhaps it was just horror at the grisly scene, but Jason thought it was more likely her conscience suddenly coming out to play.

  “You had to,” Jason sniffled. He didn’t know if reassuring her would do any good, but she had to hurry. “You had no choice. Please, Lucy, we have to get out of here or there will only by more of the same.”

  She looked at him again. More tears rimmed her eyes but they didn’t fall. She bent and picked up the axe.

  And then, as is wont to happen in any bad