“Tori! Duck!”
It was a risky manoeuvre, but despite her anguish, Tori heard his cry and sunk to her knees. Karl’s hand loosened around her throat, the streak of blood slickening his grip, her head moving out of the range of fire.
Unfortunately, Karl ducked, too.
The bullet whizzed over both of their heads, finding its mark as it buried into the walls. Alex lined up another shot, but there was no time to find a mark, since Tori was now careening towards him.
Her body smacked into him at full force, taking him by surprise. Desperate to escape, she clung to him with all she had. They fell in a pile on the floor. Karl rose from his crouch, mouth decorated in blood, eyebrows furrowed as he stalked towards them. The man was a mountain. From their position down low, Karl towered over both of them, shoulders like boulders, hands like anvils. Alex wrestled Tori indelicately off him, his gun fallen out of his hand and a foot away from his reach. Tori moaned in pain at the shove, but Alex already knew that the only way to end this man’s attack was to incapacitate him—whatever that took.
Alex crawled on his front, hands clawing for the gun, but a sudden weight on the center of his back stopped him in his tracks. He didn’t need to turn to know that Karl was pinning him to the ground, bearing his weight into the centre of Alex’s spine. The pressure grew. Something popped loudly. Alex grunted in pain, hoping that the increasing weight would stop.
But it didn’t.
Karl gave a throaty laugh and, as Alex turned his head, his heart sunk. Tori’s hair was back in Karl’s grasp, the mammoth man managing to take them both in his control. Tori’s face was a mask of pain. As she rotated, Alex was witness to the chunk of flesh missing from her neck. Blood pooled around the wound and trickled into the folds of her jacket, staining the material crimson. Another few pounds of pressure on his back, and Alex knew that he was dangerously close to breaking his spine.
A strange sound came from Karl, a raucous gurgling from the pit of his stomach. A belly rumble processed through a megaphone.
Karl’s eyes closed as the pain of it washed over him. He held his grip on Tori, maintained his pressure on Alex, but something was upsetting him. Based on what Alex had heard from the Iñupiat, he believed he knew what it was. If Karl was slowly transforming into one of Them, then his hunger would only grow. Painfully so.
They needed to escape. Fast.
Karl licked his lips, black eyes fixating on Tori as he dragged her closer to him. His sickly flesh was impossibly peppered in a greasy layer of sweat, the dark coils of his body hair matted into wet clumps. She kicked at him again, but this time he was prepared. He threw his head forward with such force that Alex was convinced he’d caved in her skull. There was a sickening crunch. Drops of blood splatted on the cold, hard floor. When Karl pulled away, Tori’s eyes were closed, head drooping, limbs limp, skin split in the centre of her forehead.
Karl growled. “So much for miss popular and her army of digital followers. Where are they now? Not here to save you, are they? Maybe you should have spent more time making real friends instead of chasing pixels.” He spat on the floor, white drool tinged with pink.
Karl opened his maw, set to take another bite of her flesh, when Alex exploded into a raging cry. He pressed his hands against the floor and pushed as hard as he could, adrenaline surging through his body. While he was no physical match for Karl, the sudden act of moving while Karl was distracted knocked the brute off-balance and granted Alex a brief moment of grace in which he slid forward on his stomach and crossed the final distance to the rifle.
Karl’s eyes flashed. His teeth bared. He discarded Tori with a flick of the wrist, sending her crashing into the pews as though she were nothing more than a used napkin.
Alex reached the rifle.
Karl barrelled towards him.
Alex scrambled to line up the gun.
His palms were sweaty, his finger unable to find the trigger.
Karl loomed over him, rearing back his leg for the kick. A concrete pillar of power coming straight for Alex’s head. Nowhere to turn.
The report of gunfire.
Karl’s bicep exploded in a spray of viscera, blood, and tissue. His mouth hung open in surprise.
Another shot.
The bullet grazed Karl’s hip.
A third.
Wood exploded in the pews around Tori, dangerously close to her chest.
A final bullet ricocheted off the floor around Karl’s feet.
Karl let out a frustrated growl as he clutched at his wounds, darkness swamping his features. With a ferocious swipe, he grabbed a fistful of the unconscious Tori’s hair and dragged her along with him as he turned on his heels and ran across the church. He dropped his shoulder, crashed through the wooden side door, and vanished into the storm.
Alex stared down at the rifle in his hands, the barrel cold and impotent. He couldn’t understand what just happened. Had he fired the gun? He had no memory of it. Had that all been him, without his knowledge? His body working instinctively for him.
Gentle footsteps down the aisle of the church.
Damien cautiously approached, the Winchester comically large in his delicate hands. He trembled from head to foot, silvery tears trailing down his cheeks. His lips quivered. There was a dark stain around the crotch of his pyjamas.
“I did it…” he stuttered between racking sobs. “The bad man is gone… He’s… He’s gone…”
Alex sat, frozen and not quite able to comprehend what had happened. Tori… She was…
“Did I do a bad thing?” Damien’s voice trembled. The rifle slipped from his fingers as he broke down into a fit of tears.
Alex broke from his reverie. He pushed himself to his feet, crossed to the boy, and wrapped his arms tightly around him, fingers running through his hair, pulling him into an embrace that was comforting and necessary for them both.
While Damien sobbed into Alex’s shoulder, Alex couldn’t tear his eyes away from the door, a hollow space appearing in his chest as he tried to imagine what hell that beast could inflict on Tori if he didn’t retrieve her, and what kind of trouble Cody would be in if he delayed his journey to the school much longer.
9
Brandon Trevors
Brandon Trevors dreamed of home.
His exhausted mind conjured images of all of the stuff that he cherished the most. His hand-woven blanket created by his late-grandmother and passed down through generations of Trevors, patterns stitched of moose and bison and bear. His personal home computer, a clunky, blocky thing fished straight from the late 90’s during a time when computer monitors had yet to melt and thin under the compact pressure of time. His signed posters of NBA champions through the years, a testament to the true feats of strength that his heroes held in their fields. Heights that Brandon never truly believed he could reach himself. His R2-D2 bedside clock, the red LEDs broadcasting the time on the ceiling, the familiar whistles and beeps which rang in each morning echoing through his slumbering mind.
Brandon was a boy of comfort and simplicity. In his years of existence on this planet, Brandon had asked for little and received just as much. He knew his place. While other boys and girls sought popularity and won their sporting trophies, Brandon kept his nose in his books and completed each year with solid, but not overwhelming grades. He’d watch heroes and villains on TV, read about historical figures throughout the ages, and wish he could one day amount to something.
Anything.
Yet, the cards you are dealt are rarely the cards that you wish for.
But now, somehow, Brandon was cast into the leading role of his story. He had stayed awake with Amy for as long as he could, terrified that she would submit to whatever desires were rattling around inside her head. He couldn’t understand her fixation with the door. Why her eyes kept darting to the stairs. Her sudden selective mutism. Despite how much Brandon encouraged Amy to talk through what she was feeling, the girl remained silent. Oh, there was thought swimming in her eyes, but that w
as for her own private collection. Brandon wasn’t privy to the secrets of the fairer sex, and after some time he too chose to cease his chatter.
And so they sat, cold and alone. Quiet and hungry. Tired and pained. There was no comfort to be gleaned from that room, particularly now the tunnel yawned at them both, breathing its steady breeze of cold. When the wall had been standing, at least they had each other to feed their heat off of. Now there was nothing.
Nothing, except Brandon and the most popular girl in the grade above his.
He sat close enough to her that it offered him comfort, and he hoped it offered comfort in return, but not so close that she could misinterpret any of his actions. That’s what life was in high school, every decision, every minute action a play in the grander game of power among the grades. One wrong move could see you fall from the grace of popularity and straight into the mud pits with the socially inept and the unfortunately blessed. Kids with warts and acne and braces and weight problems, minor blemishes that were no true fault of their own but determined their social standing among the unspoken laws of puberty, nonetheless.
Fuck, Brandon hated it all. If only his classmates could see him now, the only lucid survivor in that room. Him—Brandon Trevors—looking after Amy Lawson in the middle of a freak storm.
They don’t teach you about this in class your classrooms.
Brandon’s head slumped, leaning a little to one side. His neck ruffled as his chins multiplied their number. His gentle snores were rhythmic. Beneath his closed eyelids his eyes juddered in all directions, caught in the throes of REM sleep as his dream-self ran down the stairs and engaged in an early morning breakfast with his mother and father—something that would never happen again. On the menu were fried eggs, a slab of venison steak and garden peas, each mouthful as delicious as the last as he lapped it up and swallowed it almost whole, his father laughing at his fervour, a great chunk of cooked meat balancing on his fork.
“You’re a bottomless pit,” his father jested before jamming the meat into his own mouth. He spoke between chews. “You want to just bring the animal straight in here and let him eat it raw.”
Brandon’s mother stood by the sink, washing the dishes. She half-turned, a smile that lit up the room. “That can be arranged.”
The dream morphed in the way that dreams do, and as Brandon tucked into another bite, the table and the plates were gone. Inches from his face was a mass of brown fur, coarse and short. He didn’t question it, he merely chomped into the flank of the creature, relishing in the pulsating gushes of its blood as it drained and splattered on the wooden floors. The moose craned its head to watch, chewing cud and acting as if each bite was nothing more than the nibble of a nuisance insect. Brandon’s hunger surged through him, his face disappearing into the body as the hole grew larger. His hands gripped the hair on either side of support, his father’s laughter warped and echoing somewhere outside of the feast presented to him. He chomped with urgency, chewed with desperation. Brandon’s teeth jarred on the thick white bones of the moose’s ribcage, and still it showed no sign of care. It was warm and sticky. The meat was delicious. His stomach craved more, wanted more, each bite only driving his hunger until he at last came up for air, pulling away and taking a deep breath in…
The world was white. Brandon was alone. His bare feet frozen in the blood-stained snow, only the impression of the moose’s hooves remaining. Snowflakes danced lazily around him and it was then that he realised he was naked. He folded his arms across his protruding stomach, its flesh stretched and swollen from the bloody meal as he cried out into the dark… Called for help from… Someone. Anyone. A stark feeling of isolation colder than the wind that pricked his skin and…
Something cool licked his cheek.
Brandon moved a lazy arm to his face, his eyes closed tight, mind grappling with reality. Caught between two worlds.
Another cool chill, a steady stream of cold air. His groggy mind fought to surface from the dream, and as his eyelids fluttered to wakefulness, he wished he had never come out of his stupor.
Footsteps on the stairway. Brandon pawed at his eyes, fear jolting through him.
Amy was no longer beside him.
She was climbing up the stairs.
“Amy! No!”
Brandon struggled to push himself up, one leg gone numb from sleeping on the cold, hard floor. He grimaced as he hobbled across the room, relying heavily on the shelves for support as they wobbled and protested, threatening to spill their hazardous contents as he closed the gap.
Amy’s clothes were strewn across the floor. Brandon’s foot got caught up in a thick jacket and he almost fell. In front of the jacket were trousers, socks, shoes, and…
The last item was thrown casually over her shoulder, as though Amy was playing some kind of game that Brandon had only ever dreamed of playing. He paused at the bottom of the staircase, staring up at Amy’s naked flesh, the crease of her butt shifting with each step. Her back was smooth, her dark hair cascading between her shoulder blades.
Brandon’s mouth went dry. He wasn’t sure if he should look away. A knee jerk reaction for a socially shy kid. Sure, he had seen naked women before in late-night Google searches and the back of magazines with phone numbers attached to their profile, but he had never seen a girl as beautiful as Amy stripped down to nothing more than God blessed her with.
The temperature suddenly rose. Brandon tugged his collar from his neck, wanting to get some more air. Then, as Amy reached forward for the lock on the door, Brandon’s sensibilities resumed.
“Amy! What are you doing?” He use the rail to propel himself up the stairs. He was a large kid, not built for this kind of exercise. Couple that with the lingering fear of the monsters and the naked girl in front of him, and his heart pains came back in full force. Total overwhelm racked his body as he fought his way through a coming shockwave. He held his chest with one hand, teeth gritted as he forced himself onward. By the time he was halfway up the stairs, the lock clicked and plunged him into despair.
Amy’s pants were a hot pink and lay at his feet. Brandon’s breathing came in sharp bursts. Tears already glazed his vision as she eased the door opening, waiting expectantly, as though ready to receive nothing more than a simple parcel from the postman.
Brandon doubled over. Groaned in pain. He rested his hands on his knees and craned his head to the doorway.
They waited patiently. Brooding figures of monstrous proportions. The urgency from their attack had faded, but their menace lingered over them like a storm cloud.
“Close the door…” Brandon muttered, the pain taking him, his heart beating so wildly in his chest that he wondered why it hadn’t broken his ribs and exploded out of his body. “Close it…”
If Amy could hear, she paid no attention. She stood in the center of the doorway and spread her arms, head raising to the ceiling as though she were mimicking a figure from a movie before they dive off the edge of the world. He supposed that she was. Somehow, in her mind, she was there.
The closest two monstrosities crept toward her, long black fingers pulling her into their embrace as yellow-stained teeth opened wide and took their first bites. They groaned in delight as they dined, strings of tendon and tissue pulling away from the body as they reared their heads back and tugged until there was an elasticated snap and a spray of blood.
Another bite and they both stopped at once. Brandon took a few steady steps backwards as a shadow loomed down the hallway wall, stretching and darkening until another figure parted the two blood-stained monsters and stopped before Amy.
There was no sign of her pain. No registering of anything that might have suggested that several chunks of flesh were absent from her shoulders. Blood ran in rivers, staining her virgin flesh. If she was in some kind of dream, Brandon wished he could be in it too. At least in a world far from here he wouldn’t have to watch. He wouldn’t have to suffer, too.
The figure stood as silent as a specter. Brandon feared this one most of all. N
ot simply because of its overwhelming height, nor the fact that its frame was more skeletal than the others, the only substance to its body coming in the form of a ribcage which protruded from the neckline then caved into nothing where a stomach should have been. Nor was it because of the leathery flesh that was draped carelessly over the bone. It wasn’t even because of the long arms which almost scraped along the floor on either side, Neanderthalic and hideously thin, bristling with dark, coarse hair.
No.
The reason that Brandon feared this being the most was because of the mask that covered its facial features. The great dome of an adult stag, horns reaching out like grasping fingers of bone. The eyes within were nothing more than dark pools of onyx. Brandon had a feeling that behind that mask was something that no human eyes should ever feast on. An unholiness that defied the realms of science and progression and would cause the witness to go mad in an instant. That mask was a part of the being, had merged with what had once been flesh. The two were one, and the one was something powerful.
The Masked One.
The name came unbidden, sneaking into his mind on the whispers of shadows. A name plucked from the realms of time and the broiling cauldron of magic. Brandon knew the being could do things that were simply impossible, if measured by the realms of mortal.
In the next moment, The Masked One proved it.
It reached up with dextrous dead fingers, long and hooked like narrow scythes, placing the tip of a finger on either hand to Amy’s temple. At the moment the contact came, she gave an urgent gasp, then followed with an unholy screech as she buckled to her knees, hands tearing away at her hair, the skin of her supple frame stretching and revealing the nodules of her spine as her scream stretched for what felt like an eternity.
It was enough to snap Brandon from his hypnotic state, the boy once rooted to the ground, paralyzed in awed fear, now spun on his heels and fled. His mind was not with him, the room rocking like a ship tossed by unfriendly seas. A shelving unit crashed to the ground, plastic and glass tubs of hazardous substances that cracked and gave off a foul reek as they bubbled and crept along the floor. When Brandon passed another shelf, he pulled with intention this time, hoping against hope that perhaps those creatures couldn’t cross a floor laden with acids and alkalis. Maybe it would slow them down. Give Brandon a chance to escape. It was his only hope. He knew that much, at least.
When Winter Comes | Book 3 | Black Ice Kills Page 5