John Dies at the End

was more mechanical than human. Artificial.

I got to hand it to them, I thought. I really wasn’t expecting that.

I heard a clump and realized the gun had fallen out of my limp hand. I also realized my jaw was hanging open. I tried to pull myself together, forced my legs to step forward. I reached out toward the thing—

The gun was back in my hand. Amy was back on the couch, sitting bolt upright, looking blankly into space. I immediately looked at my watch—

3:20 A.M.

SHIT.

Amy slowly turned her head, coming to. She saw me, saw the look on my face. Realization washed over her and her hand flew to her mouth, her eyes suddenly wide.

“Did it—did it happen? It happened, didn’t it?”

I said, “Go upstairs and pack as much stuff as you can carry. We’re getting outta here.”

SHE BOUNDED DOWN the stairs seven minutes later, a satchel over her shoulder and the laptop under her arm.

We found Molly in the kitchen, standing on a chair and eating from a box of cookies that had been left open on the table. After some coaxing and threats we got her to follow us out to my truck. We loaded up, the engine growled to life. The windshield was a solid sheet of white.

Amy found the cardboard GhostVision glasses on the dashboard and examined them with a quizzical look. I found my ice scraper from under my seat and jumped out to scrape the ice from the windows. Outside I turned toward the house–

I stopped in my tracks.

I mumbled, “Oh, shit, shit, shit.”

There was a figure on the roof, silhouetted against the pearly moonlit clouds. Nothing but silhouette, a walking shadow. Two tiny, glowing eyes.

“What are you looking at?”

Amy, trying to follow my gaze.

“You can’t see it.”

She squinted. “No.”

“Get back in the truck!”

In a series of frantic bursts I managed to scrape a lookhole in the powdered-sugar crust of ice on the windshield, then jogged around to the back to do the same.

I heard Amy say, “Hey! What’s he doing up there?”

I leaned around the truck and saw Amy was wearing the Scooby- Doo ghost glasses and was staring right at the spot where Shadow Man was standing. She pulled off the glasses and looked at them in amazement, then looked through them again and said, “What is that thing? Look! What is it?”

“What—are you using the damned Scooby glasses?”

“I can see it! It’s a black shape and . . . it’s moving! Look!”

I did look, long enough to see the shape spout giant black wings. No . . . that wasn’t right. It became wings, two flapping wing shapes that didn’t quite meet in the middle. It flitted into the sky, a black slip against the clouds, higher and higher until it vanished.

I heard barking. Molly had gotten out of the truck, was at my knees.

Amy kept staring up, her mouth hanging open, steam jumping out in little puffs. She said, “David, what was it?”

“How should I know? They’re shadow people. They’re walking death. They take you and you’re gone and nobody knows you were ever there.”

“You’ve seen them before?”

“More and more. Let’s go, let’s go.”

We climbed in, called to Molly. She didn’t move, stood stiffly, trembling, growling at the sky. I called to her again, got out, picked her up and threw her inside.

I jumped in, floored it.

We fired down the road, fishtailing on the glaze of skating-rink-caliber black ice left over from the road graters. The house shrank in the rearview mirror. Beyond it, the low, flat Drain Rooter factory.

Amy twisted in her seat and peered back through the rear window, then did the same with those stupid ghost glasses. Molly was up and dancing behind us, bouncing around, probably thinking she’d be safer out on foot. Amy squealed, “Look! Look!”

I gave it a glance in the mirror, saw high headlights behind us, probably a Rooter truck leaving with a load. I did something they don’t teach you in driving class, which was to lean my head out into the blistering wind and look up, steering blind with one hand.

Black shapes were swirling overhead, winged things and long, whipping forms like serpents. Swirling, stopping, turning, like bits of debris in a tornado.

They were congregating around the factory.

Most of them were. Some of them were breaking off and following us, dark shapes flitting across the sky and into the shadowy trees and houses around us, vanishing from view. I pulled in my head and focused on the road.

Amy sat forward and strapped her seat belt on, screamed, “What do we do?”

“We’re doing it.”

Another glance into the mirror, headlights closer now. Trucker hauling ass, hauling drain cleaner.

A shadow flicked across the hood.

I stomped the brakes, the Bronco spun out, skidded, plowed ass-first into a bumper- high snowdrift alongside the road. Silence for a second, then the apocalyptic sound of eighteen wheels skidding on ice.

The semi jackknifed, the front end stopping and the heavier rear still pushing forward, toward us. A giant cartoon plumber, a red “X” through him, loomed in the windshield.

The trailer skidded to a stop about six feet from the bumper, then rocked threateningly back and forth, deciding whether or not it wanted to tip, clumps of snow spilling off the roof with each sway.

Silence, save for the tick of the engine and the rushing of the wind. Finally, Amy said, “Are you all right?”

“Uh, yeah.”

I was scanning the sky for shadows. I glanced at the red cab of the semi, could see somebody moving inside. An elbow.

A hand clamped on my arm. Amy whispered, “There. Over there.”

She was pointing, with her handless wrist, God bless her, at a black shape growing on the side of the semi, several shapes, molding together, forming something like a spider. Sitting there on the white wall of the trailer like a piece of black spray- painted gang graffiti.

The little hand clamped tighter on my forearm, hard, like a blood- pressure cuff. A low growl from Molly, who had backed up all the way to the rear wall of the Bronco, pressed against the rear door like she was trying to escape by osmosis.

“David, go. Go.” Amy was whispering it hard, harsh hisses of “GO GO GO GO GO . . .”

I slammed on the gas. The tires spun. Spun and spun and spun. Four- wheel drive. Two wheels buried in packed snow, two wheels spinning on ice.

The shadow spider moved, blurred, flicked across the length of the tractor trailer and appeared right next to the cab. Just a few feet from the driver inside. I threw the Bronco into reverse, then forward, rocking out of the ruts dug by the spinning tires, praying for traction.

“David!”

I looked up. The spider shape was gone.

I heard screams, curses. Rage. The driver had stumbled out of the cab, a big guy, tall and fat, a goatee.