Anything Can Be Dangerous (10 page)

“
You know I don’t like the
kids eating that stuff.”

“
Please!” Ron nearly
screamed.

“
All right…” his wife
answered. “Just bring home some hamburgers, I guess. But no pop!
You know how Eric reacts to sugar.”

“
Four hamburgers to go!”
Ron called to the kitchen, almost laughing. “Right away, ma’am!
Thank you for ordering! I love you!”

“
Are you sure
you’re—”

Ron hung up the phone.

“
Let’s go!” he shouted. “I
got a VIP order to deliver, pronto!”

He moved through the kitchen, spurring
the workers faster, simultaneously searching for keys.
Miraculously, he found a set on a pegboard not far from the
phone.

“
Are we ready?” he
called.

Four burgers were passed to the front,
boxed for delivery.

He placed the keys on top of the
stack, scooped them into his arms.

And turned around to meet the
cadaverous face of a young man sporting a mouthful of worms. A
glossy tag pinned to his shirt identified him as a
“Deliveryman.”

“
I’ll get that for you,
sir,” he said, taking the boxes.

And before Ron could react, the thing
was walking away, vanishing into the throng of inhuman
customers.

Ron stared after him, numb. He spun to
reach for the phone, but now the wall showed no sign of ever having
had one installed.

Thoughts clashed in his mind, from the
question of whether or not Wendy had returned to the real world and
was even now trying to find help, to the idea that a reanimated
corpse was driving cross-country with four boxes of god-knew-what,
bound for his family.

In the end, he pushed those
mind-shattering contemplations aside.

He’d wait, bide his time. But he had
to remain sane.

At the counter, he slipped on an
apron, faced the masses waiting to order, and stepped up to a
register.

He cleared his throat.

“
Next.”

* * *

THROUGH THE VALLEY OF DEATH

This story can be found in the
anthology:

BEST
NEW VAMPIRE TALES (Vol. 1)

Jacob wiggled his toes inside his
loafers, finding that the soft material of the shoes had almost
frozen solid. He wondered how long it would be before his flesh did
the same.

He hugged himself tighter, drawing his
wool dress-coat snug to his body. Though no wind gusted along the
narrow mountain road, the thieving winter air had already seeped
through his clothing and gone to work at stealing his body heat. If
another vehicle didn’t come along soon, he knew the situation would
become far worse than a mere inconvenience.

He glanced back and forth as he
wiggled his toes again.

To his left the two feet of fresh
powder covering the road appeared smooth and unbroken, better
resembling a frozen forest stream rather than twin lanes of
asphalt. To his right, the only sign of traffic came in the form of
the overlapping tire tracks cut through the snow by his own SUV.
Hoof prints from the deer that had bound into his path dotted the
snow mere inches away from them.

Jacob cursed at the sight, knowing
there was nothing he could’ve done to change what had happened. His
only solace to having crashed his vehicle, avoiding a collision,
was that he’d swerved to the right, toward the cushioning
snowdrifts lining the forest, rather than left, where he could’ve
smacked head on into the towering wall of granite bordering that
side of the road.

He sighed, creating a miniature
cloudbank in front of his face.

Across the road, his wounded vehicle
sat at an odd angle, nose pointing toward the forest. The Chevy’s
rear end canted upward, its undercarriage resting on an old log
that had been concealed by snow until the SUV’s front tires crashed
over it. Even at a distance he spotted the broken branch that had
impaled the fuel tank like a medieval pike, spilling over
thirty-five gallons of gasoline. Fumes still haunted the air,
lingering around the wreck like a disquieted spirit with nowhere to
go.

“
Nothing yet?”

Jacob turned at the sound of his
wife’s voice. Thirty feet away, Kate emerged from a small corpus of
pines, carrying Sadie on her back to spare her from having to tromp
through the hip-deep drifts on her own. In her puffy pink snowsuit,
their daughter looked like a three-year-old astronaut.

“
I peed and pooped,” Sadie
cheered.

Jacob laughed. “Good job. Just
remember that these are special circumstances, though. I don’t want
to start finding surprises in the front hedge after we get
home.”

He looked to Kate and winked, hoping
the comment would soften her look of concern. She formed a weak
smile and winked back.

He took Sadie in his arms when Kate
walked up beside him, allowing her to brush off the snow that had
crusted on her dress pants and in the imitation fur surrounding the
tops of her boots.

“
It’s been over an hour,”
she said, her teeth chattering every few words. “We can’t stay out
here much longer. Did you check the car again?”

He frowned. “We could use if for
shelter, but we’d probably all start hallucinating within five
minutes after sitting down.”

“
That bad?”

“
Afraid so.” He shifted
Sadie in his arms as they crossed the road to the vehicle. Within
five feet of the tailgate Kate stopped and waved one hand in front
of her nose.

“
Ugh,” she said. “You’re
right.”

“
Pee-ewe,” Sadie
agreed.

A hawk shrieked from somewhere along
the higher reaches of the cliff behind them, its icy cry
accentuating the enormity of the wilderness around them. The sound
echoed once in the dead winter silence then faded.

Sadie searched for it, squinting
against the cloudless blue overhead.

“
So what do you think?”
Kate asked.

Jacob shrugged. He kicked the back
bumper, knocking loose the crust of dirty snow that had caked on
the license plate. “California tags, small family all dressed up
like they’ve got money, gas-guzzling SUV … What do I
think?”

He put Sadie down and covered her ears
with his hands.

“
Daddy!”

“
I think those hillbilly
bastards at the gas station screwed us,” he said. “I think they
sent us up the wrong road on purpose, knowing we’d get stuck, so
I’d end up having to trudge back there and pay a fortune for a
tow.”

“
Daddy, you’re deafing my
head,” Sadie yelled.

Jacob released her. “Sorry, kiddo.
Better?”

She nodded and ran over to a
snowdrift.

Kate shivered. “If the road was closed
we would’ve seen signs, though, right?”

Jacob put his arms around her, pulling
her close. “You heard the radio. They were measuring nine-foot
snowdrifts along I-80 after yesterday’s storm and that’s just a few
miles from here. Remember those mounds we drove around that Sadie
said looked like big molehills? One of them might’ve been covering
a roadblock for all we know.”

Kate exhaled a fogbank of a sigh and
leaned into his chest. “This is crazy,” she whispered. “There’s got
to be someone who patrols this area: a local sheriff, DNR, someone.
And how long before anybody knows that we’re missing? I told a few
people at work we were going to your friend’s wedding, but that was
over a month ago, when the invitation came. I didn’t think to
mention it again. Hell, we were only supposed to be gone for the
day.”

Jacob looked at his watch. “The
ceremony won’t start for another two hours, and even once it does I
don’t think we’ll be missed. Paul’s a good guy and all, but I doubt
he’s counting the minutes until his old college roomy shows
up.”

“
Shit,” Kate replied.
“Suppose no one comes. What do we do once it gets dark? We can’t
sleep in the car with those fumes.”

“
And we can’t make a fire,”
he added. “You tossed out the cigarette lighter when you quit
smoking, remember?”

“
Hey, for the record, that
wasn’t easy.”

Jacob rubbed her back. “And I applaud
you, but right now I’m thinking we’ll have to hike
back.”

Kate had tucked her head down into the
lining of her coat to cover her mouth from the cold. Now she perked
up, her rosy red lipstick matching the crimson color of her
unprotected cheeks.

“
Hike?” she asked.
“Montgomery must be over a half hour drive from here.”

“
Easily,” Jacob agreed.
“But that’s not where we’re going.”

“
Where then?”

Jacob tipped his head toward a gap in
the tree line.

Kate’s mouth dropped open. “You can’t
be serious. Cross country, in these clothes?”

He cringed at the thought of it.
“It’ll suck, but I don’t think we’ll be out there too long. Look at
that.”

Beyond the gap in the forest a wide
valley opened up lower in the woodland, appearing as a huge swath
of white surrounded by trees. There, on the other side, a series of
angular gray shapes poked over the far treetops.

His wife squinted. “Are those
buildings?”

Jacob nodded. “It’s probably Ethridge.
That’s the nearest town to Montgomery on the map. If we took the
road we’d have to detour around Voyager’s National Forest. Going
across this valley, we’ll only have to travel three or four
miles.”

Kate tucked her chin back into her
coat. “All the experts say you’re supposed to stay with your
vehicle if you get stranded.”

Again, Jacob agreed. “True, but we’ve
got clear skies and almost no wind, plus five hours of daylight.
Being that we’re still in the lowlands, I’m betting we can make the
hike in well under that.”

He turned and looked at the tower of
rock looming over them. “Besides, I’m not so sure I want to camp
out under this monster. The sunlight will have those rocks warming
up. All it takes is a few drops of melt-water freezing in the right
crack after sundown and—BAM—we’re part of the mountain.”

“
The forecast did call for
flurries tonight,” Kate said.

“
Which might equate to
another two or three feet of snow in these parts,” Jacob replied.
“If we’re going to go, this could be our best chance to do
it.”

Kate eyed him. “Aren’t you supposed to
order me to stay put while you go act brave?”

He pulled her close again, pressing
their cheeks together until their combine warmth chased the cold
from their skin. “Leave my little heater behind? Hell,
no.”

Kate laughed, her breath tickling his
neck. He held her in silence, not needing to speak to relay his
dread of what lay ahead if something went wrong. The world seemed
to shrink to a pinpoint, and the only thing left was his love for
his family.

“
It’s just a few miles,” he
said. “We’ll be fine.”

Kate nodded, her gaze flicking to
where Sadie was drawing squiggles on a tablet of unbroken
snow.

“
Hey, kiddo,” Jacob called.
“Want to go for a walk?”

“
Do I get a piggyback
ride?”

“
Sure thing.”

She ran over and he lifted her onto
his shoulders.

“
I’m taller than you,
Momma,” their daughter declared from her perch. “I’ll beat
you.”

“
Momma goes first,” Jacob
corrected. “Her boots are warmer than Daddy’s shoes. Plus, we can
walk in her footsteps so I don’t accidentally trip on something
hidden in the snow. You wouldn’t want to fall from way up there,
right?”

“
Uh-uh,” Sadie
answered.

Kate leaned in and gave each of them a
kiss. “Follow the leader,” she said.

Turning away, she stepped over the
first drift bordering the roadside. Her leg sank up to her thigh in
the powder, but she pressed on, moving into the forest, toward the
valley below.

Jacob followed.

* * *

The first fifteen minutes passed in
silence.

The ground sloped steadily downward
from the road, dotted by huge boulders that jutted from the snow
like colossal stumps of half buried bones. Even Sadie, with her
insatiable hunger for new information, fell quiet while they
navigated the terrain. The sound of their footfalls became the only
noise in the snow-muffled stillness.

Jacob tried to ignore the various
discomforts already encroaching upon his awareness as he marched.
His cheeks burned. His feet ached. The bridge of his nose felt like
a wedge of cold steel had been inserted under the skin. He had
hoped that the snow wouldn’t be as abundant here in the forest, but
the powerful mountain winds had managed to deposit a minimum
shin-deep layering throughout the area.

They trudged onward.

Roughly sixty yards from the road they
came to a vast grouping of tall pines. Each tree had to be well
over a hundred feet tall, with the space between the ground and
their lowermost branches a fifth of that distance.