Mountain Madness

  Tess didn’t wait to see if it was still alive; she grabbed the other half of its head with the tongs, squeezed the handles, twisted, and decapitated the little son of a bitch. Then she smashed the remaining torso and tentacles into slush.

  From the other end of the house came the loudest cracking sound yet. A thump followed, then a series of scrapes and a triumphant-sounding roar.

  Tess dropped to her knees beside Bub.

  His eyes were closed, his fur covered in blood. She slid her hand under his head and cupped the side of his neck, feeling for a pulse, not sure if that even worked for a dog. She felt nothing.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry.” And then she was crying. Tears ran down her cheeks and into her mouth, hot and salty. Snot dripped over her upper lip and from there to the floor. She wiped her face with her arm and cried harder still.

  Quit it! Get out of here now and mourn later, or stay here and die beside him.

  She wiped her face again and took a few long, gasping breaths.

  Where was she supposed to go?

  She heard the monster sliding through the house, heard the taps and bangs she guessed were its tentacles hitting the floor and the hallway walls. She thought the fire might keep it at bay, at least for a while, but then remembered there was no fire. Not anymore.

  You’ve got to go. Go, go, GO!

  She pulled her hand out from under Bub, still crying. She guessed she had two options left: stay here and fight the thing with nothing but the tongs and her bare hands (which wasn’t an option at all if she wanted to live past the next five minutes; she’d been lucky so far, but she was no kind of monster slayer) or go out into the storm. Out with no warm clothes. Out to where the larger kitchen monster had fled, to where there might be dozens more of the things. Out to almost certain death.

  It’s certain either way, and you know it. That bedroom monster has cut you off from the rest of the house. You can’t go around it, and you can’t stay here and fight it. Going out into the storm is a sucky option, but it’s the only option.

  She stood up and reached for the door.

  And Bub moved.

  No, you imagined that.

  She wiped more tears from her eyes and looked again.

  Bub’s back leg flinched, and he opened his eye.

  Tess huffed out a sound: half laugh and half disbelieving sob. She dropped back to her knees and ran her hand down Bub’s side, trying to avoid his wounds. He lifted his head an inch or two off the floor, whined, and then lowered his face back into the pool of blood beneath him. Tess thought he’d died for real that time, that those few movements had been his last, his death throes, but then she noticed his side. It moved up and down. Shallowly but surely.

  Help him. You have to try to help him.

  The sounds coming from the other end of the house had gotten louder, and Tess thought the creature had made it out of the hallway and into the living room. It didn’t seem to be moving very quickly, definitely wasn’t rushing the way you expected nightmares to do, but the house wasn’t huge, and it would get here soon enough.

  She slid both hands under Bub’s side, trying not to think about the blood oozing between her fingers.

  “Come on,” she said. “You’ve got to get up. We have to go.”

  Bub turned his head toward her, but he didn’t try to get to his feet. Or at least it didn’t seem like he was trying. Tess guessed it was a miracle he was alive at all. She could hardly expect him to jump to his feet and run circles around her. She tried lifting him, but he was a big dog and she’d already used up most of her energy.

  “Please! Help me out here.” She lifted again and let out an exasperated groan.

  Something crashed in the living room; it might have been the sound of a chair falling over.

  Try again. You can do it. You have to do it. It’s either that or leave him here and let that thing tear him apart.

  She wondered if maybe that would be more merciful. Attempting to move him might cause him agonizing pain. The monster would kill him, no doubt about that, but it would probably be quick about it.

  You’re not seriously considering that. Leaving him here to die? You really think you could live with yourself?

  No, she knew she couldn’t.

  She tried to lift him one more time, strained until she was afraid she’d pop a blood vessel or throw out her back. She got him partway up, but he was practically deadweight

  (don’t think that)

  and didn’t do a thing to help. She lowered him back to the ground, changed position, wrapping her arms around his torso from above, and tried dragging him.

  This worked better. She was able to move him anyway. And the blood on the floor lubricated the process, which simultaneously disturbed and relieved her.

  From the sound of it, the monster had made it to the kitchen doorway. More wood cracked, and ice tinkled; she imagined the thing pushing its way through the threshold, grinning its wet, toothy grin.

  She’d pulled Bub to the door. She let go of him just long enough to reach around and twist the doorknob. As soon as she’d opened the door, the wind blew it in. The knob hit her on the hip hard enough to spin her halfway around, and for a second she’d was afraid she’d slip in the blood and fall over Bub, but she kept her balance. The door pushed the half-melted pile of slush that had been the small creature against the wall, and freezing wind and clouds of icy snow blew in through the doorway. Tess gasped. On some level, she had realized it would be colder outside than in, but she hadn’t been expecting the sudden blast, the unbelievable coldness.

  She leaned down, wrapped her arms back around Bub, and pulled him into the blizzard.

  19

  THE FIRST THING Warren thought when he opened his eyes was that someone had found his scarf and wrapped it back around his neck. He lay on his back, his face exposed to the falling snow and ice, freezing. He reached up with his good arm to touch the scarf and found something cold and sticky instead. He held his glove in front of himself, blinking away snow. A mess of red frost stuck to the glove’s fingers.

  What the hell?

  He reached for the object again and pulled it off his neck. It came unstuck like a huge bandaid, and Warren had to look at it for a long time before he realized what he was seeing. It was the hair that gave it away, the little black curls growing out of the thing from one end to the other. In the center was a bald patch, and in the center of that, a long, white scar.

  It was a flap of skin. Ripped right off someone’s leg. Complete with a scarred knee.

  Warren screamed and tried to throw the strip of flesh away, but it clung to his glove and swung back into his face. The already-freezing inner tissue hit him across the mouth, stuck there. He pulled it away again, turned his head, spat into the snow, and gagged.

  Instead of trying to throw the skin a second time, he lowered it to the snow, held it down with his leg, and pulled his glove free.

  He touched his broken arm through the snowsuit but felt almost no pain. He didn’t know whether to enjoy the momentary lack of agony or worry about it. He settled on not thinking about it either way and lifted his head to see where he was.

  In the trees ahead, barely visible in the snow, one of the ice creatures had Jan Young wrapped in a tentacle as thick as a fence post, squeezing her arms against her sides. From where Warren lay, it was hard to see what was happening, but it looked like one of her hands was free and that she was trying to pull the blue plumber’s torch out of her pocket.

  Between her and Warren, spread across the snow in streaks and piles of cooling meat lay what Warren could only assume had once been Rick Young. Intestines and other, unrecognizable innards littered the ground. Torn bits of clothing blew in the wind. A single boot stood in the center of the mess, a stub of a leg poking out of it and pointing to the sky.

  The snowmobile lay on its side to Warren’s right. It looked dented in a few places and plenty scratched but not ruined.

  Jan was yelling something at the c
reature and sobbing. The wind carried her words away, and Warren couldn’t quite make them out, but he supposed he had a good enough idea of what she was saying.

  She jerked her arm, and although the creature held on to her, she was able to pull the butane torch out of her snowsuit. The wind died down then, and Warren was able to see the flick of fire coming out of the torch’s nozzle. He also saw another of the creature’s tentacles swinging around toward Jan’s head.

  “No!”

  Jan turned toward him. The tentacle hit her on the temple and all but decapitated her. Something (maybe her spine) cracked with a sickening crunch, and her head snapped back. Her throat ripped open, spraying blood across the creature and the snow beneath, and her stocking cap came off, freeing her long blonde hair. The hair blew in the wind, collecting flakes of snow for just a second before the creature wrapped another limb around her forehead and jerked her head the rest of the way off. It dropped the body part in a nearby drift.

  The creature grabbed each of Jan’s limbs and, with a single movement, pulled her to pieces. The torso dropped, but the creature held on to the limbs, raising them into the air and shaking them like some kinds of trophies. It turned its mouth to the sky and screeched.

  For a moment, Warren was too shocked to do anything, to think anything, but then his brain kicked back on: it’ll come after you next. You’ve got to get away. Run.

  But he couldn’t run, probably couldn’t even walk. He had another idea.

  While the monster rammed a tentacle into Jan’s stomach and pulled out long, dripping loops of her guts, Warren forced himself to his socked feet and shuffled to the snowmobile. He remembered the box of bottles strapped to the back. The snowmobile had crashed in snow and not on concrete or dirt or some other hard surface. There was a chance some of the bottles might have made it through. He’d need only one. He hoped.

  As it turned out, there were six bottles left. The bungee cords had come undone and the box lay upright in the snow a few feet away from the snowmobile. Most of the Molotov cocktails had shattered or disappeared, probably thrown out during the crash, but half a dozen of the bad boys were right there in their individual compartments. As was the torch, the twin of the one Jan Young had died holding.

  Warren glanced back at the creature and scanned the rest of the surrounding area, looking for more of the monsters, unable to see anything but a few trees and all that swirling white nothing. He took one of the bottles from the box. Although the bottle was intact, some of the liquid (gasoline, from the smell of it) had leaked out. The wick was soaked. He’d have to throw it fast or risk setting himself on fire.

  And how exactly do you expect to do that with only one good arm?

  He didn’t know, but he’d figure something out.

  The creature had dropped Jan’s limbs and was concentrating on digging into her corpse. Its tentacles punched and ripped and scrapped, its clacking fingers audible despite the wind. Blood and bits of flesh flew. Warren expected the creature to take a few big bites of the body (that’s what wild things did with a fresh kill, right?), but it seemed more interested in shredding the remains than eating.

  He turned away. If he made it through all this, he thought memories of the massacre would haunt him for the rest of his life.

  Whether he watched or not, he could still hear the attack: cracking, splashing, squishing, all backdropped by the wind and falling sleet.

  It knows you’re here. It’ll come for you next. Once its bloodlust subsides. If you’re going to do something, you better do it now.

  He set the bottle in the snow and pulled the torch from the box. He wrapped his gloved finger around the trigger and pulled, half expecting it to be out of fuel or for the ignitor not to work. A narrow blue flame shot out of the nozzle, and Warren let out the small breath he’d been holding.

  He let go of the trigger, knelt by the bottle, and pointed the torch at the wick.

  Don’t mess this up. If you miss, you probably won’t get a second chance.

  Warren activated the torch again. When the wick caught fire, he dropped the torch, grabbed the bottle, and flung it into the blizzard before it could explode in his hand.

  The throw wasn’t perfect, but it was good enough. It exploded just before it hit the creature (or looked like it; maybe it had actually hit one of the tentacles), and the burst of fire engulfed the thing’s head.

  It screamed and wrapped its blood-stained limbs around itself, but the explosion had melted away most of its upper body. Even as it tried to pull new snow onto itself, it collapsed, twitching and looking mostly dead.

  Finish the job. Bring another bottle over there and blow a crater in its goddam corpse.

  Warren considered it but decided to leave it alone. He thought he had surely disabled the creature long enough to escape, and that was all he needed. There was no guaranteeing another burst of fire would kill it anyway, and he might need the other makeshift grenades if he ran across more of the creatures. He turned to the snowmobile and righted it.

  He’d driven similar vehicles before, but never one exactly like this, and never one handed. How had Jan started it? He remembered her pulling the start cord. And he remembered

  (oh no)

  the key. She had attached it to her wrist with some kind of safety strap. More than likely, she’d pulled it loose when they crashed (that was its exact purpose, after all, and the reason the snowmobile hadn’t ended up lost in the woods half a mile away). Which meant before he could go anywhere, he was going to have to go sift through her body parts.

  If you’re going to go over there, better bring another bottle.

  He took one of them out of the box and slipped it into his hip pocket. Then he found the torch in the snow and wrapped his finger around the trigger. He wasn’t sure how much fuel the thing held or how much Mr. and Mrs. Young might have used already, but he felt better having it. It was no flamethrower (and oh what he would have given for one of those), but it was better than his bare hands.

  Hand.

  Right. Just the one.

  He shuffled toward the pile of ice that had been the creature, trying not to look at the other mess, the colorful bits in the snow. His broken arm had started to ache again, and he thought every last bit of warmth he might once have had had seeped out. Without shoes, his layers of clothing seemed useless; he might as well have been walking through the storm naked.

  When he got within reach of the tentacles, he hefted the torch and eyed the creature. The snow continued falling as hard as ever, but nothing else seemed to move.

  Maybe that’s what it wants you to think. Maybe it’s just waiting until you get closer before it grabs your leg, pulls you in, and rips you into a dozen gooey pieces.

  Didn’t matter. Without the snowmobile, he’d never get away from any other monsters that might be out there. He needed that key.

  Shivering, teeth clattering, he turned away from the creature and looked for Jan’s arms.

  He found the first one half-buried under one of the monster’s outstretched limbs. He propped the torch up in the snow and dropped to his knees. He had to dig the ice out from around the arm to pull it free, and he hated being so close to the creature’s tentacle. The thing had proved what it could do with those appendages (as biologically impossible as it seemed), and every time Warren thought he saw the thing twitch, he just about screamed.

  But he did get the arm free, and although he was sure he saw the creature’s tentacle move at least twice, it didn’t attack. Jan’s arm was covered in icy blood and bent ninety degrees the wrong way at the elbow. He gripped it with his knees, grimacing and holding back the urge to barf, and pulled down the sleeve to check for the strap.

  Nothing.

  He dropped the arm. Before he hunted down the second one, he buried the first in the snow. It was probably a stupid thing to do, a waste of time—the falling snow would cover it before long anyway—but he didn’t feel right just leaving it there.

  He found the second arm not far away. He
pulled back the sleeve, sure the key wouldn’t be there, that it was buried in the snow somewhere and he’d never find it.

  But it was there, wrapped around her forearm halfway between her wrist and her elbow. He’d barely been able to pull the sleeve back far enough to reveal it.

  Okay, you found it. Great job. Now get the hell out of here.

  He buried the arm first. As he was patting the last bit of snow in place, something wiggled out from under the creature’s remains.

  It was a tendril of ice, about as thick as a thumb. It slithered out of the rubble, raised its head like a cobra, and then slid toward him.

  Warren reached for the torch and realized he’d left it near where he’d found the first arm.

  Never mind that. It’s just a little wisp of a thing. You don’t need anything more than the heel of your boot.

  Except he wasn’t wearing boots, and he didn’t think he could get his foot far enough out of the snow to stomp on the thing anyway. He decided to grab it and break it apart in his hand instead.

  When it got close enough, he spread the fingers of his glove and reached for it. Instead of slithering into his hand, it leapt out of the snow and hit him in the chest.

  Warren fell back and grappled for it. He got his fingers around the thing’s tail (or maybe it was its head; it looked the same on both ends), but it was too slippery to hold on to.