“Space blanket,” she said.
“What?” Bode and Chad tossed a glance, and then Bode said to Emma, “You mean, like one of those souvenir Apollo things? From Cape Kennedy?”
“What?” she asked. “You mean, Canaveral?”
“Naw,” Chad said. “They changed it. That’s the old name.”
“Say, can we come in?” Eric interrupted. “It’s really cold.”
“Ah sure, yeah, jeez.” Then Bode glanced past Eric’s shoulder. “Hey, look at that. It stopped snowing.”
“What?” Five seconds before, the blowing snow had been thick and driving. Now, no snow fell at all, not even the occasional solitary flake. Like someone turned it off. Eric stuck his hand beyond the porch railing. No snow. What—
A static burst, followed by a staccato buzz, sounded from his left-hand pocket, and he jumped. The walkie-talkie; Eric had forgotten about it.
“It can’t be them,” Emma said. “We’re too far away.”
“Those your friends?” Bode asked.
“Might be, but she’s right. They’re fifteen miles back,” Eric said.
“Radios sometimes travel better at night,” Bode said.
“Yeah.” The handset’s oversize antennae caught on the inside fabric of his pocket, and Eric fought to work it free. A hash of static and broken words crackled from the unit’s mechanical throat: mur … danger … bodies …
“Hey,” Bode said. “Sounds like you snagged the same police channel we—”
He broke off as Eric got the handset out just in time for them all to hear the scream.
TONY
It’s a Mirror
TONY LOST THE Camry after ten yards, although Casey’s flashlight and the brighter crimson penumbras from the three flares were still visible. After five more yards, the snow swallowed the third and farthest flare; at twenty-five, more or less, the second disappeared. Casey’s flashlight dimmed, but Tony could still pick it out. As an experiment, he waved his flashlight over his head in a big arc. A few moments later, Casey’s light bobbed a reply. So far, so good.
He walked for what seemed like a very long time and until his face ached with cold. Clots of snow had gathered on his chest and shoulders, and his eyelashes dripped iced tears. Wow, had the van been this far? He didn’t think so. He turned to look back. Casey’s flashlight was gone, but the flare nearest the Camry still flickered, the pinprick of light as fuzzy as a red cotton ball.
Okay, relax. So long as you see the flare, you’re still okay. But where was that stupid van? Fifteen more steps and he would call it—
His boot came down with a splash. Gasping, he jumped back as the smell came rolling up. Gas. Was that right? He aimed his flashlight, and frowned. Gas pooled over the snow. He lifted a careful heel, eyeing how the gas slopped and rippled around his boots. Deep. This can’t be right; no car holds this much gasoline. You’d need a tanker truck for it to have leaked this much.
Even so, that the gas was still liquid was wrong, too. Shouldn’t the gas have seeped into the snow, or …
Wait a minute. He shuffled, felt his boots skate and slide as the ripples expanded in ever-wider circles. That wasn’t snow under the gas. It was ice, as smooth and featureless as silvered glass. Beneath his feet, his face wavered and swam, his reflection so perfect that he could see the swirl of snow haloing his head. It’s a mirror.
“That is too weird,” he said, just to hear himself. His heart was suddenly thumping. “This has to be an optical illusion or something. You can’t make a mirror out of ice. It’s just … I don’t know … compacted snow and gasoline and …” He stopped. Never a whiz at chemistry or science, even he knew that made no sense.
Yeah, but then what is this? Flexing his knees, he pushed off on his toes with a little hop. His boots splished, the gasoline sloshed, but the mirror-ice didn’t give or crack. He’d stirred something up, though. As he watched, a gelid veil smoked from the pool in thick, white tongues. Mystified, he swept a hand through the mist, watched as his palm cleaved the suddenly nacreous air. Where his hand touched, there was a slight give, a webby stickiness that reminded him of pushing through musty cobwebs down cellar.
This wasn’t right. A creeping uneasiness slithered up his spine. The curtain of fog was rising, not lifting from the ice so much as growing. He aimed the spear of his flashlight straight up. The light didn’t penetrate more than a few feet before the smoking mist swallowed it whole. The beam’s color was off, too: not blue-white but a ruddy orange, like old blood. Yet he saw enough.
The fog was moving: not dissipating or being swept away by the wind but weaving and knitting itself together over his head. The fog was walling him in.
Oh boy. His mouth went desert-dry. He should … yeah, he should really get out of here. The fumes were thickening, dragging over his face in cloying fingers that worked into his nose and down to his throat to worm into his lungs.
Which way? He turned a wild circle, but the fog gobbled up his light. The air was getting worse, too. He tried pulling in thin sips, but the tickle at the back of his throat became an itch, then a scratch, and then he was coughing and couldn’t stop. He felt his throat closing even as his mouth filled with spit. Something squirmed in his throat, like maybe there was an animal with furry legs and sharp claws crawling around in there.
Crazy, that’s cra—
Something ripped behind his ribs, as if the blade of a hot knife had suddenly sliced through muscle and bone. Grunting, he clutched at his chest, felt the boil of something clenching, bunching. God, there was something inside him! This was like his mother, the way she clawed at her chest.
Can’t … can’t breathe. His fingers raked his throat, scored his flesh. No air … can’t … got to get out, get out, get—
A hand slid onto his shoulder.
CASEY
This Is Creepy
“CASEY, IT WAS fifteen minutes a half hour ago,” Rima said.
“Tell you what,” Casey said. “You’re so worried, you go.”
“We should both go.”
“Why? So we can all get lost and freeze to death? Tony might have gone around to the other side of the van. That would block the flashlight. He could be turned around, facing the other way. We wouldn’t see the flashlight then either.”
“But he signaled us every couple of minutes before you lost him.”
“I didn’t lose him.”