Mia, teary-eyed and disheveled, managed a smile of her own. This show of confidence that everything was going to be okay went a long way, I think, and for that I’m grateful.
“Now go on and get to it, chief.”
Ramsey left me just as Chewy jumped up and rested his forepaws on my leg. His eyes were watery, and he was trembling. I lifted him and kissed him on the head, and then I set him down, hoping it wasn’t the last I’d see of the dog.
Stone rounded the snowmobile. He and I performed our handshake. “Be safe, brother.”
“You too.”
Then came Eleanor as Stone headed to the passenger’s side to say bye to Mia, Chewy in tow.
I expected Ell to be in tears, begging me not to go, but that wasn’t the case. All she did was stand on her tiptoes, kiss my lips, and say, “I love you, and I’ll see you soon.”
“I love you, and you will.”
No crying, no praying, no long, drawn-out hugs. We skipped sappy goodbyes, I think, because we didn’t want to believe this was goodbye.
“C’mon!” Ramsey shouted as he ran toward the lobby door. “I need a shit ton of light over here. As much as y’all can muster!”
Like soldiers aiming their weapons, Stone and Ell pointed their flashlights his way.
“Soon as I unlock it, just plow right through, Grady. You go too slow and they’ll get you. And keep them high beams on!”
I gave him a thumbs-up, and then I crawled into the snowmobile. I started the engine. The sound of it purring to life echoed off the walls, so loud I couldn’t hear myself think. That was okay. Thinking was bad at a time like this. If you thought too much, you started second-guessing yourself and harping on the consequences, the chances of failure, and inevitably, you’d freeze up.
Mia grunted in pain, doubled over, slapped her hands on the thin strip of dashboard and dug her nails into the vinyl, leaving divots and tears in their wake. It was a perfect reminder of how little time we had to get to the City.
Ramsey jabbed the key into the padlock and turned it. He ripped the chain through the handles, but kept his body pressed against the door as the monsters slammed into it from the outside. He scooted half a foot back before he regained his balance. “Ready?” he shouted.
I revved the engine, flipped on the headlights, and reached over and squeezed Mia’s arm.
Was I ready?
No. Not even close, but Ramsey threw the doors open anyway.
There were more wraiths than I had ever seen at once. More than what had gathered around Helga’s house the night she died. More than the few that waited in the distance while an infected Ed Hark killed Jonas after attacking us on Prism Lake.
In Woodhaven, Bob Ballard talked of the bigger cities overrun with the monsters. He said he had seen the clips on the news and the internet. I had not, but what I imagined when he told his story was similar to what I saw from behind the windshield of the snowmobile. It was like I was standing on a stage with a podium in front of me, peering out over a large crowd before I gave a speech. Except for in the front row, you couldn’t single out a lone face; they all blended together into one collective being.
Like the wraiths did now.
The front of this crowd was a line of Thumbprint People. Them with their twisted, mashed features, torn-open mouths, long limbs, claw-like fingers, and nude gray flesh.
I said you can’t afford to hesitate, yet I am only human.
I hesitated.
It was Mia, despite all her pain, who reached over and slapped me in the face. I barely felt it at the time, but over the course of our journey to the City of Light, my cheek would sting like it had suffered a bad sunburn.
“GO!” she yelled.
Lights cut through the air, beams in the darkness, and black circles of ash exploded on the closest Thumbprint monsters’ chests. They screeched and clapped their hands over the wounds. One shrieked so loudly, the slab of flesh that was its mouth tore open in a spray of blood and teeth. The mirage only lasted a few seconds before it, too, burned and reverted back to its original state—a dark shadow in a vaguely human shape.
Like the rats in the store near the lake, the flashlights weren’t strong enough to completely dissolve the monsters. Fortunately, the snowmobile’s headlights were. They stretched far, creating a wide tunnel through the black mass. I was some kind of fucked-up Moses parting not the Red Sea, but a sea of evil.
In the cone of light, heavy snowflakes fell from the sky. So many and so fast that they, like the wraiths, formed their own wall. This wall was white, however. Another blizzard.
It seemed Grady’s Law was in effect yet again. Still, there was no quitting now.
So, with the first tingles of pain rippling up my cheek, I threw the sled into gear and sped off.
As you know by now, our snowmobiles weren’t fast by normal standards. While most zipped along, ours trudged. Maybe back in the day, in the prime of their mechanical lives, they were fast, but these were old machines. How old, I’m not sure. Perhaps they had gotten good use in the past at Avery’s Mills or wherever they were before that ski resort near Prism Lake, but those years had worn them down.
As we rolled out of the theater, large hands slapped at the enclosure’s glass. Mia was screaming, and I might have been too. I was too focused on not flipping us over.
The wipers swiped the windshield at their maximum speed, and it still wasn’t enough to keep up with the torrent of snow. I could hardly see in front of me. There wasn’t much to see besides
