then and there. The wind and snow blowing into her barely clad back and the crumbling powder and ice beneath her bare feet were so cold they seemed almost hot. She knew that couldn’t be a good sign, that even if she lived through this she was going to suffer some serious physical damage.
Whether it was the drastic change in temperature, nerves, or just a residual effect from her fight with the monsters, she felt like she was going to be sick. She doubled over, still holding Bub, leaning past him, and a gust of wind hit her back, chilling her further still. But the nausea passed without any actual vomiting. And it was a good thing, too. She was sure anything she’d thrown up would have been mostly blood.
She gripped Bub tighter than ever and kept pulling.
When she’d dragged him far enough into the snow (leaving a pink trail of blood across the ground and trying hard not to look at it), she let go of the dog and reached back inside to pull the door shut. The creature had made it through the kitchen and almost into the hall. A pair of its tentacles wrapped around the doorframe. Dozens of fingers gripped the wood and the sheetrock. A third tentacle poked through the doorway and turned toward her. She jumped back but shouldn’t have bothered. The limb wasn’t even close to reaching her. She wrapped her fingers back around the doorknob and pulled the door shut.
When she got back to Bub, he looked up at her and barked. It was a sad sound, barely audible, but Tess was glad to hear it. If he could bark, maybe he could live.
She turned around, surveyed the blizzard. She couldn’t see more than halfway across the yard, and what she could make out wasn’t anything more than a swirl of meaningless white. If there were more monsters out there, she couldn’t see them.
Maybe, but the kitchen monster had been injured. There was a chance it had died.
It didn’t matter. Until they ran across another creature, she had other things to worry about. If she didn’t get Bub and herself out of this weather soon, they’d both die. Monsters or not. Simple as that.
She couldn’t go back into the house. Not through the back door and probably not through the front. The fire had gone out and there was nothing else to use as a reliable weapon.
And then she knew. It was an obvious solution, and although her mind had been understandably distracted, she couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of it sooner: the shed.
She supposed the garage was also an option. It was detached, after all, but it was also full of junk and had three windows, which would make it almost impossible to defend. The shed surely wasn’t any more structurally sound, but it had only the one point of access, a door at least as sturdy as the doors in the house. Unless the monsters tore down the whole building, they’d have to come through that door, and judging by how long it had taken the first creature to break out of the bedroom, Tess thought hiding in the shed might buy them at least some time. If nothing else, it would be warmer.
Assuming she could make it there.
Assuming she could drag Bub that far.
Assuming they both didn’t freeze to death first.
She turned back for Bub, checked to make sure he was still breathing (he was, barely), wrapped her arms back around his body, and saw the sled in a drift of snow beside the house.
The blizzard had almost covered the thing. If she’d come out fifteen minutes later, she might never have noticed it. She let go of Bub and shuffled over to it, her bare feet tingling, stinging, her mind screaming at her that she had to get out of the cold immediately.
She dug the sled out of the snow with stiff, almost useless fingers, and slid it over to Bub. The blizzard had already started the job of covering him up, of burying him. She did her best to wipe the sleet off his fur. When she rolled him out of the snow and onto the sled, she saw the icy bloodstain he’d left behind. It seemed like a lot of blood, especially combined with what he’d lost in the hall, and she told herself he might not make it, that she ought to prepare for that possibility.
Bub didn’t move much as she centered him on the sled, but he did stick out his tongue and lick her hand when she got near his head. His tongue stuck to her skin, and she had to pry it off.
“You’ll be okay,” she promised him and patted him on the head.
By the time she got him situated and turned the sled away from the house, she couldn’t feel much of her body. Snow covered her clothes, packed into her hair, thickened her eyelashes. Her body shook violently, and her mind started to shut down. As hard as she tried to concentrate on the task at hand, she couldn’t seem to focus. It felt like going to sleep after a very long day, like wanting nothing more than to lie down and take a nice, long nap.
She moved, took a few sweeping steps through the high snow with the sled’s frayed rope wrapped around her numb fingers. The world spun. Hard little pellets of icy snow hit her in the head and body. She looked down, trying to keep the wind and sleet out of her face, but the movement made her dizzy. She stumbled forward and barely caught herself.
And then her face hit the snow and she realized she’d fallen after all. As far as she could remember, she’d gone from standing to lying instantly. Like a mini blackout.
She pushed herself to her feet and looked toward where she thought the shed should be, but she couldn’t make it out. She turned back toward the house and realized she hadn’t moved more than a few yards. Half a dozen shuffling footprints and a short pair of sled tracks marked her progress from the back stoop.
She’d dropped the sled’s rope. When she’d picked it up and wrapped it back around her unbending fingers, she told Bub once more that it was going to be okay, that they’d make it to the shed, not sure if he could hear her, not even sure if he was still alive to hear anything, and then she resumed her trip across the yard.
As she moved, she glanced left, right, left again, looking for any sign of the creatures, not sure what she would do if they attacked but wanting to be ready for them anyway. The sled hit a drift and she jerked to a stop. She looked back to make sure Bub hadn’t slipped off; he was already mostly covered in snow again. He moved his head, which was proof enough he was still alive, but seeing him like that made Tess want to cry. Again.
She tugged the sled over the drift and trudged on, no longer able to feel her feet at all. She looked back once to see if she could still see the house, but it had disappeared in the storm. She knew this was the most dangerous part of the journey: nothing to see in any direction, nothing for her to use to orient herself, the point at which it would be oh so easy to get lost.
Wouldn’t that be the perfect ending to this hellish mess, to get lost halfway across her own back yard?
She moved on, toward where she thought (hoped) the shed would be.
The wind gusted and brought a long, ringing shriek. One of the monsters.
She didn’t believe that, wouldn’t dare believe it. She pulled the sled’s rope over her shoulder and pulled harder than ever.
Something loomed ahead. She started to scream, to turn around and shuffle back in the opposite direction as quickly as she could, but then she realized the shape in the snow ahead wasn’t one of the creatures. A door, a snow-covered roof. She’d made it. Believe it or not, she’d gotten them to the shed.
Another shape moved to her right, too far into the blizzard to make out, just a flickering shadow and then nothing at all. And although she couldn’t see it, she sensed how fast it was moving, slipping through the storm, speeding through. The things in the house might not have been especially zippy, but out here, in what she guessed was their natural habitat (as if there was anything natural about them), they seemed to be lightning quick. Or at least this one was. Another icy roar echoed through the air, and Tess let out a short, fearful squeal. Fighting the dizziness, the fatigue, the raging cold, she lowered her head and shuffled forward, eying the shed, imagining slipping through the door into semi-safety.
