He placed the keys on top of the stack, scooped them into his arms.
And turned around to meet the cadaverous face of a young man sporting a mouthful of worms. A glossy tag pinned to his shirt identified him as a “Deliveryman.”
“I’ll get that for you, sir,” he said, taking the boxes.
And before Ron could react, the thing was walking away, vanishing into the throng of inhuman customers.
Ron stared after him, numb. He spun to reach for the phone, but now the wall showed no sign of ever having had one installed.
Thoughts clashed in his mind, from the question of whether or not Wendy had returned to the real world and was even now trying to find help, to the idea that a reanimated corpse was driving cross-country with four boxes of god-knew-what, bound for his family.
In the end, he pushed those mind-shattering contemplations aside.
He’d wait, bide his time. But he had to remain sane.
At the counter, he slipped on an apron, faced the masses waiting to order, and stepped up to a register.
He cleared his throat.
“Next.”
THROUGH THE VALLEY OF DEATH
Jacob wiggled his toes inside his loafers, finding that the soft material of the shoes had almost frozen solid. He wondered how long it would be before his flesh did the same.
He hugged himself tighter, drawing his wool dress-coat snug to his body. Though no wind gusted along the narrow mountain road, the thieving winter air had already seeped through his clothing and gone to work at stealing his body heat. If another vehicle didn’t come along soon, he knew the situation would become far worse than a mere inconvenience.
He glanced back and forth as he wiggled his toes again.
To his left the two feet of fresh powder covering the road appeared smooth and unbroken, better resembling a frozen forest stream rather than twin lanes of asphalt. To his right, the only sign of traffic came in the form of the overlapping tire tracks cut through the snow by his own SUV. Hoof prints from the deer that had bound into his path dotted the snow mere inches away from them.
Jacob cursed at the sight, knowing there was nothing he could’ve done to change what had happened. His only solace to having crashed his vehicle, avoiding a collision, was that he’d swerved to the right, toward the cushioning snowdrifts lining the forest, rather than left, where he could’ve smacked head on into the towering wall of granite bordering that side of the road.
He sighed, creating a miniature cloudbank in front of his face.
Across the road, his wounded vehicle sat at an odd angle, nose pointing toward the forest. The Chevy’s rear end canted upward, its undercarriage resting on an old log that had been concealed by snow until the SUV’s front tires crashed over it. Even at a distance he spotted the broken branch that had impaled the fuel tank like a medieval pike, spilling over thirty-five gallons of gasoline. Fumes still haunted the air, lingering around the wreck like a disquieted spirit with nowhere to go.
“Nothing yet?”
Jacob turned at the sound of his wife’s voice. Thirty feet away, Kate emerged from a small corpus of pines, carrying Sadie on her back to spare her from having to tromp through the hip-deep drifts on her own. In her puffy pink snowsuit, their daughter looked like a three-year-old astronaut.
“I peed and pooped,” Sadie cheered.
Jacob laughed. “Good job. Just remember that these are special circumstances, though. I don’t want to start finding surprises in the front hedge after we get home.”
He looked to Kate and winked, hoping the comment would soften her look of concern. She formed a weak smile and winked back.
He took Sadie in his arms when Kate walked up beside him, allowing her to brush off the snow that had crusted on her dress pants and in the imitation fur surrounding the tops of her boots.
“It’s been over an hour,” she said, her teeth chattering every few words. “We can’t stay out here much longer. Did you check the car again?”
He frowned. “We could use if for shelter, but we’d probably all start hallucinating within five minutes after sitting down.”
“That bad?”
“Afraid so.” He shifted Sadie in his arms as they crossed the road to the vehicle. Within five feet of the tailgate Kate stopped and waved one hand in front of her nose.
“Ugh,” she said. “You’re right.”
“Pee-ewe,” Sadie agreed.
A hawk shrieked from somewhere along the higher reaches of the cliff behind them, its icy cry accentuating the enormity of the wilderness around them. The sound echoed once in the dead winter silence then faded.
Sadie searched for it, squinting against the cloudless blue overhead.
“So what do you think?” Kate asked.
Jacob shrugged. He kicked the back bumper, knocking loose the crust of dirty snow that had caked on the license plate. “California tags, small family all dressed up like they’ve got money, gas-guzzling SUV… What do I think?”
He put Sadie down and covered her ears with his hands.
“Daddy!”
“I think those hillbilly bastards at the gas station screwed us,” he said. “I think they sent us up the wrong road on purpose, knowing we’d get stuck, so I’d end up having to trudge back there and pay a fortune for a tow.”
“Daddy, you’re deafing my head,” Sadie yelled.
Jacob released her. “Sorry, kiddo. Better?”
She nodded and ran over to a snowdrift.
Kate shivered. “If the road was closed we would’ve seen signs, though, right?”
Jacob put his arms around her, pulling her close. “You heard the radio. They were measuring nine-foot snowdrifts along I-80 after yesterday’s storm and that’s just a few miles from here. Remember those mounds we drove around that Sadie said looked like big molehills? One of them might’ve been covering a roadblock for all we know.”
Kate exhaled a fogbank of a sigh and leaned into his chest. “This is crazy,” she whispered. “There’s got to be someone who patrols this area: a local sheriff, DNR, someone. And how long before anybody knows that we’re missing? I told a few people at work we were going to your friend’s wedding, but that was over a month ago, when the invitation came. I didn’t think to mention it again. Hell, we were only supposed to be gone for the day.”
Jacob looked at his watch. “The ceremony won’t start for another two hours, and even once it does I don’t think we’ll be missed. Paul’s a good guy and all, but I doubt he’s counting the minutes until his old college roomy shows up.”
“Shit,” Kate replied. “Suppose no one comes. What do we do once it gets dark? We can’t sleep in the car with those fumes.”
“And we can’t make a fire,” he added. “You tossed out the cigarette lighter when you quit smoking, remember?”
“Hey, for the record, that wasn’t easy.”
Jacob rubbed her back. “And I applaud you, but right now I’m thinking we’ll have to hike back.”
Kate had tucked her head down into the lining of her coat to cover her mouth from the cold. Now she perked up, her rosy red lipstick matching the crimson color of her unprotected cheeks.
“Hike?” she asked. “Montgomery must be over a half hour drive from here.”
“Easily,” Jacob agreed. “But that’s not where we’re going.”
“Where then?”
Jacob tipped his head toward a gap in the tree line.
Kate’s mouth dropped open. “You can’t be serious. Cross country, in these clothes?”
He cringed at the thought of it. “It’ll suck, but I don’t think we’ll be out there too long. Look at that.”
Beyond the gap in the forest a wide valley opened up lower in the woodland, appearing as a huge swath of white surrounded by trees. There, on the other side, a series of angular gray shapes poked over the far treetops.