The Shuddering Part 18

"We could have been killed," Sawyer insisted. "That thing nearly took off my shoulder. I mean, really?"

"What do you want me to say?" Ryan asked. "I couldn't take inventory of the garage that doesn't belong to me because I was busy s.h.i.+tting my pants."

"What if it had gone after Jane?" Sawyer shot back, aggression tingeing his tone.

"Jesus, seriously?"

"How would you have felt if it had got her and then you remembered the ax, Ryan?"

"Hey, guys?" Jane rose from her seat.

"I would have been thrilled," Ryan said. "Really happy. I'd have thrown a G.o.dd.a.m.n party."

"Yeah?" Sawyer challenged. "And I bet if she was outside you would have gone out there to find her, right? No matter how big of a risk."

Ryan's expression wavered from defensive to guilt ridden. He looked away, and Sawyer immediately regretted going there. He knew Ryan was doing the best he could. He was trying to protect them, trying to keep his s.h.i.+t together despite watching Lauren get torn apart, trying to be the voice of reason while Sawyer swung from cautious to utterly reckless, ready to stomp into the snow like some kamikaze with nothing left to lose.

"Sorry," Sawyer said quietly.

Ryan didn't respond. He marched down the hallway, a flashlight beam illuminating his path.

Sawyer and Jane were left to stare at each other. She tried to look confident, but it was obvious that she was questioning her own plan.

"You think this will work?" Sawyer asked, if only to breach the silence, to keep himself from looking back down at the thing between them.

"I think so," she said after a moment, but she didn't sound sure of herself. He supposed that was just as well. How could they be sure of anything with a nightmare lying at their feet?

"It's a good idea," he said after a moment, watching her vacillate between going through with it or calling the whole thing off. "You're right; we can use its scent to disguise ourselves. If it was just me and Ryan, we'd spend all night kicking the s.h.i.+t out of it or something."

The flashlight beam bounced at the end of the hallway before Jane could reply. Ryan was returning from the garage.

"Hold this," Ryan said, handing Jane the flashlight. She pointed it at the creature's head, and without so much as a warning, Ryan reeled back and brought the blade down on the dead thing's neck.

CHAPTER TWELVE.

Ryan took out his anguish on the corpse at his feet. Every ax swing was for Lauren. Whack. That was for never seeing her face again. Whack. For the sound of her laughter. Her smell. The taste of her lips-a taste he'd never know. He felt nothing but grief as he chopped off that toothy b.a.s.t.a.r.d's apelike arms, didn't even flinch when he buried the ax blade in its chest and cracked open its ribs.

He threw down the ax and drew his sleeve across his face, then looked over his shoulder at his sister. To his surprise, her eyes were locked on the b.l.o.o.d.y mess that he'd created. The girl who couldn't handle a bit of gore on television without covering her eyes was now mesmerized by the copious amounts of foul-smelling blood. That was what the stink had been-rotten eggs and the sharp scent of iron-and the fact that he had split open some sort of organ hadn't helped matters. Ryan waited for her to look up at him, hoping to G.o.d she wasn't going into shock. When she finally lifted her chin, he nodded at her as if to tell her that everything was fine.

"Check on Oona?" he asked her. That dog was smart. She hadn't set foot in the kitchen to see what they were doing, remaining in the warmth of a dying fire, the embers giving the living room a haunting glow. Jane slithered out of her seat and carefully stepped around the gore that the tarp failed to contain. Ryan knew there was going to be blood, but he had no idea how much. It seemed like an impossible amount, as though the size of the body couldn't have contained all that fluid. Yet there it was, oozing across blue plastic, creeping across the hardwood floor.

"Are you ready?" he asked.

Sawyer swallowed, then reluctantly nodded, snapping a latex glove onto his left hand before pulling another one on top of that, doubling up for good measure. "We're going to have to be quick," Ryan warned. "I don't want to be in the middle of doing this when another one of these motherf.u.c.kers decides to make an appearance."

"Or gets curious," Sawyer said, giving a firmer nod of the head this time.

"G.o.d," Ryan groaned, a bloodied glove grabbing hold of the doork.n.o.b. "This thing reeks." He jerked the door open and stepped back to the carca.s.s, plunging his hands into its body cavity before hurling the offal into the snow.

Jane stared at the mess at her feet, the contents of the refrigerator unsalvageable, the food that would have sustained them for at least a week completely destroyed. She began to pick up the mess, tossing crushed containers and broken gla.s.s into a trash bag, wondering what the h.e.l.l they were going to do. The snow just beyond the kitchen door was now strewn with body parts and entrails. Despite the moon's dim s.h.i.+ne, she didn't need the light to see the dark streaks-black in the moonlight but red in reality-decorating a once pristine white surface like abstract art. She didn't know whether the smell of one of their own would repel the others or attract them, but this was the only way to find out. They'd either avoid the area entirely, repulsed by the scent of the dead, or fall onto it like carrion birds, hungrily picking it apart until there was nothing left.

Not even sure why she was bothering to clean the mess, she left the trash bag beside the fridge and stepped around the island, the two people she loved most in this life squatting around the remains of a monstrous body. Ryan was decorated with a spray of blood, a smear of red streaking his cheek like a brushstroke. Sawyer had gotten gore onto his arms, that beloved T-s.h.i.+rt completely ruined, offering no protection against whatever disease may have been lingering in that creature's fluids. Both of them turned to look at her when she stepped into view, their gazes strange in their expectancy, as if waiting for the schoolteacher to tell them what was next.

"I think we need to leave," she told them. "Today, when the sun comes up."

She watched their faces mirror each other in emotion, s.h.i.+fting from antic.i.p.ation to a worried sort of surprise. Ryan rose from his crouch next to the tarp, his arms at his sides, rubber gloves slick with blood.

"I thought we were supposed to wait to see what happens," he said. "Wasn't that the plan?"

"Yes, but the longer we stay here, the more opportunity they have to attack too." No matter how much they planned and waited, there really was no guarantee of safety. No matter what they chose to do, it was going to be dangerous.

"You know that if we do that," he said, his voice strangely dry, as though he'd just woken up from an eternity of sleep, "there's no turning back. Once we leave here, we can't come back."

Sawyer stood motionless next to the kitchen door, his eyes fixed on the floor, his arms hanging limp at his sides. Jane looked away from him, knowing that his thoughts were with April. But Sawyer eventually spoke, though he never lifted his gaze.

"I thought we were doing this so we could stay."

Jane's heart twisted. "We don't have anything to eat," she reminded him.

"I doubt they like the smell," Ryan said. "Though G.o.d only knows why. It's so f.u.c.king pleasant. We can mask our own scent, maybe get to the highway..."

"But what if she comes back?" The hope that flashed across Sawyer's face was too much to bear. She looked away, her jaw clenching tight.

"Did you see the way it stopped?" Ryan asked, steering the topic away from April. Sawyer's quiet desperation was getting to him as well. She could see it in the way Ryan tensed every time April's name came up. "It was scared."

But the fire was almost gone, not having been tended for too long. It was little more than a few licking flames, glowing embers at their base.

Ryan made a sudden move, stepping around the island to the stove, grabbing an empty soup pot that had been left on a burner. Jane had intended to use it to make their next meal, but that was before Ryan had burst through the door and shoved them into the pantry; that was before monsters were real. He set the pot down on the floor, then looked to Sawyer in expectation.

"Help me," he said, crouching to catch the tarp between his rubber-coated fingers.

Sawyer hesitated but did what he was told, carefully pulling the tarp upward to pool the remaining blood into the center of the plastic. Stepping forward, Jane caught the end of the tarp and helped aim it into the pot. The foul-smelling blood splashed against stainless steel.

Jane understood in a horrifying flash of realization: Ryan was serious. If they were going to leave that cabin, they'd do it covered in blood.

It wasn't that Sawyer wanted to stay. He knew they had to get out of there, knew that it was their only chance if they wanted to live. But he couldn't shake a lingering thought-the idea that somehow, by some miracle, April was still alive, and that she was making her way back up the drive through the blizzard; that she would arrive only to miss them by a window of a few minutes, and that in the realization of her being completely alone, she would die not of the cold, not of the beasts outside, but of a broken heart.

His logical mind tried to convince him that it was impossible: anyone who had been outside, even for a few hours, would have first succ.u.mbed to frostbite, and then to freezing to death. If those monsters were climbing onto the cabin's deck and peering through the windows, they had either exhausted their food supply out in the wild or were tired of looking when there was a guaranteed source here. April had become part of the wilderness over twelve hours before. He didn't want to believe it, but Ryan was right. She didn't stand a chance. Not out there. Not alone.

The dry crack of wood drew Sawyer out of his thoughts and into the present. Ryan had flipped the coffee table over and was kicking at its leg. There was a wall of firewood stacked along the outside of the cabin just beneath the deck, but despite its closeness it was too far away. They needed fire, and they were now resorting to apocalyptic means.

"The Realtor will be happy," Sawyer said.

"The Realtor won't care. The new owner will be happy," Ryan corrected. "They'll show up, ready for a relaxing weekend in their brand-new, fully furnished cabin..."

"New owner?" Jane asked, the bloodied ax in her hands. She was trying to chop a chair into pieces, but there was no power behind her swing. Sawyer forced himself away from the window and took the hatchet from her, splitting one of the chair legs in half with a single swing. "What do you mean 'new owner'?" she asked. "This place is still for sale." She blinked at Ryan when he failed to respond. "Right?"

Ryan cleared his throat and continued to kick at the table leg.

Jane looked up at the ceiling, as though suddenly overwhelmed by her brother's lack of response. "You've got to be kidding me," she said.

"n.o.body told us," Ryan said, defending his decision to crash the place.

"And yet you knew."

"I looked it up."

"Jesus, Ryan."

"What?" he asked with a shrug. "n.o.body called us for the keys. It was an innocent mistake." Ryan stopped what he was doing, a look of sudden realization crossing his face. "Oh my G.o.d," he said. "I just figured it out. Pops sold the place to those gray alien a.s.sholes. That's why they're so p.i.s.sed." He leveled his gaze on her sister when she failed to be amused. "Who cares?" he asked her. "Like anyone should ever come up here again."

"And how will they know that?"

"I don't know," he said. "Maybe by the body parts on the deck?"

Sawyer slid onto the ottoman in front of an overstuffed armchair, picturing an unsuspecting hiker stumbling onto April's body after the first thaw. He pressed his hands against his face, his elbows kissing his knees.

Both Jane and Ryan went quiet, though Ryan kept working. He grabbed the ax Sawyer had abandoned and brought it down against the coffee table's top with a crack. Sawyer winced at the noise, trying to figure out why he had brought April up here at all. Sure, they had had their issues, but what the h.e.l.l did he expect to happen with Jane being here? Why couldn't he have loved what he had rather than wanting what he had lost? It was pathetic. He was pathetic.

Jane slid onto the ottoman next to him.

"Are you okay?" she asked. He felt her hand on his back but couldn't handle the contact. Standing, he left her there, her arm floating in the air. Ryan stopped chopping, and Sawyer watched him give his sister a questioning look while his back was turned, the reflection in the window giving the twins away.

"Hey," Ryan said after a moment. "What's up?"

"What do you mean, what's up?" Sawyer asked, his hands shoved into the pockets of his jeans.

"I told you, you have to stop thinking about it," Ryan said. "I know that's an impossible request, but we have to focus here. "You feel guilty. So do I."

"I don't feel guilty," Sawyer's tone was barbed with disdain, but that was exactly it. He had yelled at her. That was why April had taken off into the snow. He had made her feel as though she hadn't mattered to him as much as his friends did, and she had run away. The ax hit the floor next to Ryan's feet with a heavy thump. Out of the corner of his eye, Sawyer saw Jane coil her arms around herself.

"Listen, this isn't exactly what you'd call a normal situation," Ryan said. "This whole thing is f.u.c.ked up, but right now you have to let it go."

"Let it go," Sawyer echoed, turning to face his best friend. "You know what's going to happen if we get out of here? You're going to go back to your fancy apartment and three weeks from now you'll be on a plane flying out to the Swiss Alps, because the show must go on. The world will go back to normal for you, because that's what you've set it up to do. And I congratulate you on that; I really do. s.h.i.+t, I'm jealous that after all of this is said and done, you can write it off as some terrible nightmare; you can tell this story at parties and impress girls you have no genuine interest in."

Ryan's jaw went rigid.

Jane squeezed her eyes shut, her nails digging into the upholstery beneath her.

"But you know what I get to do? I get to go back to my s.h.i.+tty apartment only a few hundred miles away-so close that I'll be able to smell this place for the rest of my life. And when I get there, I'll unlock my door, I'll walk into my room, and I'll see all of April's stuff strewn everywhere, because she always sucked at housekeeping. Her clothes, her jewelry, her books all over the place; and when I look away in attempt to find a patch of wall that doesn't have her written all over it, I'll see a crib...a f.u.c.king crib, still in the box, waiting to be put together for a baby that will never be born."

Ryan's gaze snapped to Jane, but all she did was nod faintly-the slightest gesture to let him know that she knew.

"I can't just let it go," Sawyer croaked. "This isn't just about me anymore. I was supposed to have a family." He felt his throat constrict around those words. "I was supposed to be a dad," he whispered, his face flaring red-hot as his tears threatened to spill over. "I'm so sorry." He turned his attention to a statue-still Jane. "So sorry it turned out this way."

Jane closed the distance and wrapped her arms around him in a tight hug just as a sob tore its way out of his throat. Ryan looked away, battling his own inner turmoil a few feet away. And for the first time Sawyer saw that Ryan's grief matched his own. Sawyer was wrong. He wasn't the only one who had lost someone on this trip. Lauren was gone too, and from the way Ryan had turned away to hide his pain, she wasn't just another girl. Ryan had finally found a girl who mattered, and just like that, she had been stolen away.

Ryan stopped by the pantry on his way to the living room. Save for a bite of chocolate cake, it had been nearly twenty-four hours since he'd eaten, and his stomach was starting to petrify. He grabbed a box of stale graham crackers, tore open the lid, pulled out a square, and stuffed the cracker in his mouth before walking into the kitchen. As he sidestepped the b.l.o.o.d.y tarp that had been left next to the door, his gaze snagged on the pot of blood in the sink.

The snow had finally slowed. An occasional flake tumbled from the sky, but the latecomers were rare. The clouds were starting to thin, the deep lavender of morning peeking through the gray. With the storm at a pause, now would be their best shot to run. Staring out the window, Ryan couldn't help but replay the events of the night before. It was hard to imagine that only a few hours ago, one of those creatures had stepped into the kitchen like it owned the place. The moment he saw that thing slink inside the cabin, he had been struck by an overwhelming a.s.surance that they were all dead.

He blinked at a swaying tree just beyond the deck, snow falling from its branches as though something were shaking the pine by its base. He couldn't see the bottom of the tree from inside the house-it was blocked by the lip of the deck-but the movement was impossible to miss in a sea of stillness.

Ryan shot a look toward the living room. Sawyer was still brooding, but he was keeping himself busy by sharpening the ends of pool cues with a knife. Jane sat next to the fire with Oona, organizing their gear, trying to consolidate to keep their exit swift. It was good that she was keeping herself busy. When she had nothing to do, she'd fall into a haunting, unnerving silence.

Ryan held his breath when the silhouette of one of those savages came into view, climbing the shuddering pine like a jungle cat. The tree shook beneath its weight, powder falling to the ground in a miniature storm. He nearly yelled for the others to come see what he was seeing when the thing leaped from one tree to another. It was trying to get a look at the deck without coming too close-a sign that Jane's plan was working. It could smell the foul stink of its fallen comrade, and it disappeared as quickly as it had come.

The fact that the d.a.m.n thing could leap from tree to tree was alarming, but as long as they stuck to the road, there would be no way for the creatures to corner the group from above. They were going to survive this thing. They just needed to get the h.e.l.l out of that cabin and down to the highway. It was a good five miles, but he was sure they could make it.

About to walk back into the living room and announce that it was time to go, he paused, reached out, and rubbed the fabric of his mother's drapes between his fingers. She had ordered them out of a catalog more than twenty years before, spending an entire Labor Day weekend meticulously measuring each window before placing her order. When her curtains had finally come in, she had admired them for weeks while waiting for their next trip to the cabin. Ryan remembered her stepping back to appreciate her handiwork after she had hung the last one-she had gazed at the very window he was standing at now. Holding that fabric in his hand, he reminded himself of the good times they all had had in that cabin; the delicious meals that they had eaten in that kitchen-Christmases and Thanksgivings, the meals perfect down to the last detail. His mother was somewhere in Phoenix at that very moment, probably sipping tea and watching made-for-TV movies while a maid buzzed around her, paid for by alimony.

And then, as if to solidify that those good times were over, he coiled his fingers into the drapes and pulled.

Jane tore her mother's curtains into long strips before wrapping them around the end of broken coffee table legs. The torches were crude, but they'd do. Ryan returned from his scavenger hunt upstairs, having tossed all their luggage down the stairs like bags of trash. They would salvage what they could. Armed with the large wicker basket from the master bathroom, he tossed it onto the couch. It would hold weapons rather than fas.h.i.+on magazines and luxury car brochures.

"I need to go outside," Ryan said.

His words tingled inside Jane's chest.

"What? No," she protested, but he held up a hand to stop her, the expression on his face confirming that it wasn't up for debate.

"First of all, we need the s...o...b..ards. I left them strapped to the top of the car, and Sawyer's is halfway down the road. We're strapping this"-he motioned to the basket-"to one of them. We can't carry all this s.h.i.+t by hand. Second, we need fuel for the torches, and there's no gas in the garage. I checked."

"Ryan..." Jane hesitated. She was scared, not wanting him to go. Crouching next to her and a silent Oona, Ryan offered a faint smile.

"I'm going to need one of those fancy torches," he told her.

"Can we at least try the car?" she asked. "Please?"

Ryan frowned, squeezing the bridge of his nose before exhaling a sigh. "You know that isn't going to work. The snow is even deeper than it was yesterday."

"There has to be a way," she insisted. "Walking out there..." She shook her head, not wanting to think about it. It had been her idea in the first place, but now that they were actually going to go through with it, she was sure this plan was crazy. Even with the fire and the blood and the spears, those things were ruthless. "And what about Oona? She can't possibly make it through the snow on her own."

"We're going to make her a sled."

"And you think she'll actually stay on it? Ryan, I-"

He caught her hands in his, leveling his gaze on her. "Hey," he told her. "Trust me, okay? Ten minutes tops. They won't bother me if I have fire."

Jane's stomach churned with nerves, but she nodded anyway. There was no way around it. They were all eventually going to end up outside in the cold with those things stalking them in the shadows. It was either that or stay here forever, where they would eventually grow so weak with hunger those creatures would simply walk in and take them without a fight. She swallowed against the lump in her throat, hoping that maybe, by some miracle, they'd be saved. Maybe a ranger would show up, making sure people were okay after all that snow, or a lineman would appear, since the electricity was out; perhaps the new owners would arrive, ready to indulge in their brand-new home; or maybe, as if being drawn down from the sky by the hand of G.o.d himself, their father would come, responding to a bad feeling he couldn't shake, a cosmic connection with his kids, knowing that something was wrong.

Ryan stood up, grabbed a torch, and turned to step out of the room.