Maybe I’m only one step away from dead.
“Oh man.” Chad’s sharp gasp cut through the maelstrom of his thoughts. “Man, you see that?” Chad said. “Off to the right?”
“What is it?” Eric asked, hoarsely. Really, he was grateful to have something else to worry about.
To his right, the night wasn’t exactly there anymore. Instead, an anvil of thick white fog extended from the ground and rose all the way up and across the dome of the sky.
“Oh my God,” Eric said, and felt the sudden kick of his heart in his teeth. “It’s getting closer. Jesus, it … it’s moving.”
“Bode? Bode?” Chad said, his voice rising. “Bode, we got to turn around, man. We got to turn around right now!”
“I hear that.” There was a sudden lurch as Bode jammed the brake, then muscled the stick into reverse. “Hang on.”
“What? No, wait, Bode. Stop!” Eric clamped a hand on the other boy’s shoulder. As frightened as he was of this thing gathering itself in the sky—and freaked out by what might be wrong with him—he loved his brother more. “We can’t turn back now. What about the others?”
“Devil Dog, I’m sorry, but we are bugging out PDQ.”
“But my brother’s still out there!” If this isn’t a fever, a hallucination, a last gasp … But even if it was. Because Casey is here, with me, in this, and that’s on me. “We can’t just leave him.”
“Yeah? You wanna watch us? We get ourselves killed, won’t do him no good anyway,” Chad said, as Bode swung the truck around. “Go, man, go!”
“I’m going.” Bode mashed the accelerator. The truck’s wheels spun in the snow, caught, and then they were churning back the way they’d come, the Dodge’s snow chains chattering over packed snow: chucka-chucka-chucka-chucka-chuck!
“Bode, wait, think,” Eric said. “You’re a soldier. You don’t leave your people behind. Please, don’t do this.”
“Screw that. Just go!” Chad shouted, his voice riding a crescendo of panic: “It’s getting closer! Go, Bode, go, go!”
“I’m going, I’m going!” Bode hammered the accelerator, and the Dodge surged, the engine chugging like an eggbeater. They flew over the snow, going so fast the outside world blurred into a silvery smear. “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon, you hunk of junk! Move, move move move!”
Not going to make it. Eric knew that. They would never outrun that white cloud or fog or whatever it was. They would spin out, or Bode would lose control and they would die out here, because, despite everything, Eric was convinced that death, like pain, was real here … wherever that was.
“Bode, you’re not going to make it,” Eric said. “Slow down, slow—”
“Shut up.” Bode pushed their speed. “Shut up, shut up!”
“But Bode—”
“Shut up!” Bode stomped the accelerator so hard Eric heard the hollow thud of Bode’s boot. The Dodge rocketed over the snow, slewing right and then left, the wheels spinning, seeking traction, any kind of traction at all. “Marine, get it through your head: we are leaving!”
Chad was still chanting: “Go, Bode, go. Go, Bode, go, go go go!”
“Bode, slow down, you can’t outrun it! You’re going to lose it, dude, you’re going to lose it!” Eric hooked his fingers into the front seat as Bode jinked the wheel, doglegging to the right. The Dodge’s rear swayed. “Bode, you lose it out here, we’re dead.”
“I’m not going to lose it!” Bode shouted.
“You’re going to get us kill—”
“Man, you don’t shut up, Marine or no Marine, I’m tossing you out of this truck, right now!” Bode roared. “You got that? Now shut up!”
“I only—”
“Did you not hear the man? Ain’t you listening?” In the next instant, there was a pistol in Chad’s hand. He jammed the muzzle into Eric’s cheek. “You want me to end this right now?”
“Hey, hey,” Eric said, raising his hands in surrender. “Easy, Chad, easy, it’s cool, we’re cool.”
“We are not … COOL!” Spit foamed at the corners of Chad’s mouth, and he rammed the gun into Eric’s flesh so hard the front sight clawed his skin. “We will be cool if you shut up, if you shut up, if you just shut up!”
So Eric shut up. There was nothing else he could do. This was out of his control. He shut up, and after a long second, Chad jerked the gun away.
This is a nightmare, but I’m living it. Eric felt blood welling from the fresh wound on his cheek. I’m real; I’m bleeding; you can’t bleed if you’re not real. He watched that fog, all that brilliant empty white, storming after them, filling the world. You can’t be scared to death if you’re already dead.
The truck swayed, slewing into a turn, the world beyond tilting, and Eric’s blood iced, every hair on his neck prickling with a kind of stupid shock, because he suddenly understood.
The snowstorm had been a warm-up. The storm had only been a way of bringing them all together. It was the fog that mattered, the fog that would run them down and swallow them whole.
What then? Where—and when—will we be then?
“Oh JESUS!” Chad screamed. “It’s right on top of us, Bode, it’s right on top—”
RIMA
No Time
“RUN!” CASEY SCREAMED, and then he was dragging her over the snow. Rima staggered, nearly fell, but Casey gave her a mighty jerk, hard enough that a shout of pain balled in her shoulder.
“Casey,” she gasped as they floundered, their legs digging post-holes through deep snow, “the sled, where’s the sled?”
“Blast blew her off the road!” Casey’s grip on her hand was iron. “Saw it from the tree, to the left, in a ditch! No!” He tugged her harder. “Don’t look back!”
But she did—and all the strength drained from her body to seep into the snow.
The fog was a gigantic thunderhead stretching so far overhead there was no limit to it. The fog was a pillar of nacreous, roiling white that built on itself, piling higher and higher. Unlike a cloud, the fog also spread from side to side, and everything it touched, it swallowed. Rima knew the night sky was still there, that above this deadening veil were true clouds and the stars beyond, but the fog was lowering itself, filling the bowl of the valley, obliterating the sky. The fog surged, an avalanche of white steamrolling right for them.