Dead Frost - 02 (16 page)

So Sandown had a
school, a few shops – none of which looked apt to store
anything useful, unless Marla decided to take up needlecraft during
the night – and a bronze statue of a man that looked like
someone Shane had previously detested with an unhealthy passion. It
was hardly going to increase morale amongst the troops, although
Shane found himself picturing school-dinners from his own childhood.
That, he thought, might make all the difference.

The snow was
sheeting down now, whipping at their ears like miniature razorblades.
If they were going to make a decision, now was the time.

'Votes for the
school?' Shane said, although he already knew the outcome.

Six hands went up
faster than a blink.

Marla was already
starting down the thin, winding pathway towards the building. Shane
was about to call after her – at least warn her not to get too
far ahead – when the first one leapt up out of the snow. Then
a second, and a third.

Before Shane had
time to call out, Marla was swamped by them.

Children.

Miniature lurkers
in matching uniforms.

*

Terry raced down the
path, shotgun lifted, but there was no way he was going to fire.
They were coating her, snapping at her arms and legs, and she was
shrieking, trying to shake them off as if they were rabid ferrets and
she was just the nice lady who fed and watered them. One of them –
he must have been no older than six, although the darkness of his
eyes suggested otherwise – flipped over from her back and
somehow ended up lying in the snow at her feet.

Despite having two
others trying to clamber aboard, she raised a foot – the
injured one? - and slammed it down squarely onto the face of the
child-lurker. There was a squelch, and then she squealed out in
horror as she realised that she had just put her heel through a kid's
fucking forehead.

'Marla! Don't let
'em scratch you!' Terry was shouting. He was still looking for a
clean shot, but she was wearing the things like a fur-coat which made
it impossible.

Marla knew that she
wasn't going to shake them off standing up. What was it they used to
tell you to do if you were on fire? Stop, drop and roll? If it
worked with flames, perhaps it would be just as effective with evil
bastard children.

She threw herself
down to the snow; the mini-monsters on her back huffed and wheezed as
she landed on top of them, before starting to growl and snarl once
again as they snapped teeth in her general direction.

Terry was hovering
above her, now, and Shane was dragging at the feet of one of the
creatures – the little girl one.

Marla rolled to the
right, and then to the left. The crazy part of her – the
insane voice inside her head – said, Why don't you just make a
snow-angel while you're down here? Huh? For shits and giggles...

She ignored the
madness and jabbed an elbow up and to the left, which is where it met
the face of a seven year-old boy, although this face was different
from that of an ordinary seven year-old as most of it exploded and
fell away from the skull as her bony arm impacted.

The thing cried
out, not in pain but in anger. Its food was not playing nicely.

'I've got this
one!' Shane said as he dragged the little girl across to a clearing.
The snow made pulling it – her, whatever – a helluva lot
harder. It was like trying to drag a three-hundred pound fat man in
an ice-rink.

The girl, realising
what was about to happen, tried to clamber to her feet, but it was
too late. Shane fired once with the .22 and shattered its jawbone.
The second shot put a red dot in the middle of the lurker's head, and
she fell still, her mouth agape in a terrifying O.

For a moment, Shane
saw Megan in that face.

He brushed it
aside; it was – or had been – somebody's little girl, but
not his...not today.

He turned his
attention back to Marla, who had managed to shuffle loose of the
boy-lurker and was staggering to her feet.

Terry, for a
split-second, didn't know what to do. He had to fire. He had to
take it out, but the look on his face said that he might not be able
to do it. The shotgun was ready, cocked, ready to rock, but his arm
was trembling.

Jared was as far
away from the action as possible. His experience with weapons was
not good, and the small, wet-patch blooming on the front of his jeans
pretty much summed up where he stood on getting involved.

'Terry, DO IT!'
Shane said.

As the boy –
no, it's not, not anymore, don't let the uniform fool you
–
snarled, black ooze dripped down the front of what was otherwise a
perfectly-white shirt. It hadn't fed, not yet anyhow, and the prior
cleanliness of its uniform was what had caused Terry to stutter
momentarily.

But now it was
drooling...

Black, thick sludge
which brought the old man back to his senses.

He fired; the blast
echoed through the playground. The lurker, which was already missing
some of its face from Marla's vicious elbow, flew backwards,
everything from the neck up completely obliterated. It hit the snow
with a thud and rolled a few feet, over and over. Terry breathed a
sigh of relief as it came to a halt, face-down, a few feet away from
a swing-set.

And then it was
silent once more.

Silent, spooky,
just another apocalyptic afternoon in good old Sandown, US of A.

twenty

'Down there,' Moon
said as the chopper hovered low over the forest. 'Is that them?'

Victor more-or-less
flew towards the open door, grasping onto his massive
second-in-command for stability. As he stared down into the
darkening day, he saw it, the Snatch, the whole point of the
expedition, crumpled to within an inch of its life.

'Fuck!' Victor
snapped. Moon sucked air in through his teeth as the captain's grip
tightened on his arm. 'Those fucking assholes!'

'Are they dead?'
Randall asked, though he remained in his seat. He was, all-in-all
feeling like shit-warmed up, and the last thing he wanted to do was
get to his feet.

'If they ain't,'
Victor said, making his way to the cockpit. 'They sure as fuck goan
be.'

Kyle wasn't
surprised to see the captain's head appear in his line of vision.
The crashed Jeep down the embankment was always going to piss him
off. What pleased Kyle, though, was that there was no sign of the
group, and no real sign of injury around by the demolished vehicle.

They had survived.

'Take us down,'
Victor said, although the way he spoke suggested he was close to just
shooting somebody – probably Kyle – just to get it out of
his system.

'They're not down
there,' Kyle said. 'I managed to get a good look on the first flyby,
and I didn't see any sign of them.'

'Did you see any
fucking footprints on that first flyby?'

Kyle shook his
head. He hadn't, but even if he had he would have kept it to
himself.

'Then take us down.
We need to figure out which way they went from here.'

'Wait,' Kyle said,
although he had already started to descend. 'The Jeep's fucked.
What's the point? Why don't we just go back?'

Hands, two of them,
on the back of Kyle's neck. 'They fucked up my
vehicle
,'
Victor hissed. 'Do you have any idea how important that fucking Jeep
was? Of course you don't, and do you know
why
you don't?
Because you weren't gonna be fucking invited, that's why. That was
my ticket out of that goddam place. What, did you think I was gonna
stick around forever, wiping asses and feeding ungrateful fucking
mouths? Not a chance. I'm biding my time, and then we're out of
there, and you can all go crawl back under whatever fucking stone you
came from.'

Well, that told
him. He knew that it was only a matter of time before the
military-men decided to go it alone, but he hadn't anticipated it so
soon.

'If this helicopter
isn't on that snow in less than three minutes,' Victor concluded,
'you'd better start writing what you want on your tombstone.'

Kyle was a gambler,
a bit of a maverick, but he didn't fancy his odds here.

He took the
whirly-bird down.

*

Any tracks left by
the deserters had vanished, so heavy was that afternoon’s
snowfall. Victor had been annoyed even when he thought there was
still a chance of recovering the Snatch; now he was positively
unhinged.

'They could have
gone any-fucking-where!' he snarled, pacing up and down through the
snow. He couldn't take his eyes off the mangled Jeep lying at the
bottom of the embankment. Even that was already half-covered with
snow, making it look as if it was emerging from the drift, not
sinking into it.

'They had to go
that way,' Moon said, pointing east down the road. 'If they'd have
doubled back we would have seen them; and it would be pointless when
they were only a few miles from Sa...Sand...' He struggled with the
sign at the edge of the road, not because it was snow-covered, but
because he'd never been one for reading. It wasn't because he was
dumb – not in the conventional sense, anyway – but
because he had been brought up to believe that reading didn't get you
anywhere, that sticking your head in a book all day long made you gay
– or something along those lines.

He wished he'd paid
no attention now, though, because he felt like a complete idiot,
standing there, mumbling to himself like fucking Rain Man.

'Sandown,' Randall
said, stepping right up next to the sign.

Moon felt relief at
the perfectly-timed intervention, but he also wanted to scream out at
the top of his voice,
I'm not a fucking retard! I'm not fucking
stupid!

'Then we go
to Sandown,' Victor said, almost biting his cigar in two. 'Some
fuck's gotta pay for this, and those sonsofbitches shouldn't have
ever tried to disappear into the fucking night the way they did.'

David Moon, still
trying to put the letters together on the impossible sign, said, 'So
we gonna make 'em pay for fucking with us?' It was a question, but
of the rhetorical variety. Victor knew it, so didn't even honour it
with a response.

'Let's go,' the
captain said. It was starting to get dark; it was that strange,
murky part of the day when you suddenly find yourself depressed for
no apparent reason, though maybe that was just Victor...

'I just need to
take a piss,' Randall said. He moved around the side of the
helicopter and lowered himself just out of sight down the embankment.

'Well, hurry the
fuck up,' Victor said. 'You leave your dick out for too long in this
weather and before you know it its turned black and dropped right
off.'

Moon chuckled; Kyle
didn't.

'What's the matter
with you, you miserable bastard?' Moon said to the pilot. 'This is
all gonna work out okay for you. It's your fucked-up friends who're
gonna suffer. Just be grateful you didn't go with them.'

That was a good
point. He hadn't known anything about the attempted desertion. He
and Shane had been out scavenging together on many occasions; Shane
had never let slip about any sort of road-trip.

Would Kyle have
gone if he
had
mentioned it? Possibly. Though that would
have also made
him
a target, and right now the only thing
standing between the good-guys and the bad-guys was him.

Not that he had put
up much of a fight so far. Practically sucked their dicks for 'em so
far. The thought left a bitter taste in his mouth, though not as
bitter as the actual act would have.

Suddenly, there was
a scream, a blood-curdling screech from down the embankment. Moon
pulled his rifle to his chest and stared towards Victor.

Randall? It had to
be.

'Go take a look,'
Victor said. 'If there's anything down there, don't give it a
fucking chance.'

Moon was a big guy;
the biggest in the camp, although a few of the men came close. Size,
in that moment, mattered not one iota. He was terrified. The scream
came again, and this time it sounded closer.