Whiteout (Book 3): The Numbing Read online

  Sprawled out, I stretched for the hidden words and moved some of the snow away, my arm acting as a poor man’s plow. It was so heavy, I’m surprised my bones didn’t snap at the elbow, but slowly, the words became visible.

  The message: FOOD, SHELTER, & MEDICINE @ TOWN HALL 3 MI EAST

  I wanted to go to the town center as soon as I read the message, but the sun was on its way down, and since the snowmobiles moved like snails, the three miles it would take might as well have been a lifetime. We had no choice in finding shelter for the (hopefully) few hours without light.

  A motel was situated not far from the town square. We parked the snowmobiles outside it and broke in. That proved easy enough. The knob to the room opened after I chipped away the layers of ice covering it, and then the door swung inward. If it swung outward, it wouldn’t have gotten very far, with all the snow piled up on the walkway.

  The room number was 19, and the inside of it smelled like dust and mothballs and the cold. Always the cold.

  It wasn’t very big either. One queen-sized bed sat against the left-hand wall. Magazines lay scattered on the nightstand, next to a shadeless lamp without a light bulb. Across from the bed, on a wooden dresser riddled with pockmarks and white rings from many sweaty glasses, was an old television, rabbit ears and all. Tiny cracks zigzagged downward from one corner of the screen. No chance the TV worked now, but I doubted it had worked before either. Maybe it had in 1968.

  All in all, the Woodhaven Motel was not a five-star spot.

  “Home sweet home,” Stone said as I helped him walk through the few inches of snow piled in front of the open door. He was using a couple of two-by-fours as crutches. He pointed to the awning, which sagged with the weight of the piled snow. “Watch your head.”

  So far the awning had held up. The building was sturdy; at least it had that going for it.

  There was only a single window in the wall. Shit-brown curtains hung from a crooked rod. I closed them all the way and instantly regretted it once the movement released a dormant smell from their rough material. Stale cigarette smoke and body odor. If the Woodhaven Motel sold perfume, I figured those would’ve been the main ingredients.

  “It’s not that bad,” Mia said. “I’ve stayed in worse places.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Stone said. He plopped down on the bed, shifted a few times with gritted teeth. The springs groaned and the frame crackled. “Damn, it feels like someone made a mattress out of a bag of rocks or something.”

  “Hey, that’s fine with me,” Mia said. She plopped down next to him. The frame didn’t crackle; this time, it sounded like one of the slats actually snapped. “Any bed is a godsend.”

  “Even if it’s covered in…fluids,” I joked.

  Stone looked down at the comforter. It was green and yellow, straight out of the sixties or seventies like the rest of the place. Slowly, he raised his gloved hand and grimaced at the sight of his palm. A second after that he scooted down to the floor, which, in all actuality, was probably more disgusting than the mattress.

  Mia and Ell got a good chuckle out of Stone’s reaction, then Ell hit me on the chest and said, “You’re gross.”

  I grinned. “Only speaking the truth. Call it looking out for a friend.”

  “Hey, it’s got a connected room,” Mikey called from the alcove around the corner. He rattled the doorknob. Chewy waited patiently by his feet, tail wagging beneath the blanket we had wrapped around him and looking up with his bulging eyes. After a few seconds of rattling, the door finally opened. “Look at that! There’s another bed!”

  “Yeah…no thanks. I’ll be sticking with the floor,” Stone added.

  “More like you’ll be sticking to the floor,” I said.

  “What if the whole town’s dead?” Ell asked.

  We were all in the first room together, just hanging out, waiting for the darkness to pass.

  “Seems like it, doesn’t it?” Stone answered from the same spot on the floor. “Which means we’re next.”

  “Don’t say that, man!” Mia said, shuddering. She sat on the bed, her back against the headboard, legs stretched out. Mikey sat beside her, and Chewy lay between them, already passed out and snoring contentedly. An open National Geographic rested on Mikey’s lap. The issue was dated October 2002.

  Mikey stopped flipping through the pages and looked at Eleanor. “Maybe Woodhaven’s some purgatory or something.”

  “Kinda feels like it,” Ell said from beside me, where I was leaning against the dresser, my arms folded over my chest.

  I felt exhausted, but sitting held no allure for me. After so many hours and days crammed into the snowmobile’s cab, I wanted to stretch my legs for as long as possible.

  “What with the haze and the snow and the black clouds all the time, I think purgatory is a pretty apt description,” Ell continued.

  I mumbled my agreement. “Let’s hope this purgatory doesn’t use false advertising.” I was thinking about the cut on Ell’s head, how it needed to be properly cared for; and I was thinking about how, in less than a month, Mia would go into labor, and how none of us had any idea how to deliver a baby.

  “We’ll find out soon,” Stone said. “If the sun comes back.”

  I didn’t like hearing those words despite knowing the truth behind them. It seemed the stretches of darkness were lasting longer and longer.

  “Yeah, until then, let’s just forget about it,” Mia said, scooting to the side of the bed. Each movement looked like it was a pain. She rested her hands on her belly and took a deep breath. Mikey scrambled from his spot, got up, and ran around to her, offering help. Mia waved him off. “No, no,” she said, “I’m pregnant, not crippled.”

  “Hey!” Stone shouted in a tone of mock offense.

  Mia frowned at him. “Oh please, you’re not even that crippled.”

  “By God, I’m so glad we found you, Mia, because with that prognosis, you must be a doctor! You can deliver your own baby!”

  Mia flipped him off, making both Stone and I grin.

  “Now you’re getting the hang of it,” I said, just as she struggled to her feet. Mikey’s hands hovered a few inches away from her like someone spotting a bench presser at the gym.

  “Thanks,” Mia said, a scowl on her face directed at Mikey. “I’m going to bed because I’m wiped out and I really don’t want to be awake when the assholes outside start calling my name.”

  “Good idea,” Ell agreed. “We should all get some rest while we can.”

  That’s just what we did.

  Ell and I slept on one of the beds. Stone stayed true to his word and slept on the floor. In the other room, Mia sprawled out on the other mattress, which groaned anytime she shifted, and Mikey, after switching watch shifts with me, slept on a loveseat with Chewy curled up on his chest.

  Luckily for Mikey, our room didn’t have a loveseat. It was lucky because I knew he wanted to stay as close to Mia as possible, and Mia didn’t seem to mind.

  I thought of the gazebo before dozing off that night. I pictured the summer weddings held here in the town’s square. I pictured what the gazebo might’ve looked like before all of this.

  I see the bright sun shining down on a woman in a beautiful white dress. She’s holding hands with a smiling man in a tux, his teeth glowing as white as her dress. The wind blows a few strands of her hair out of place, and the man, still grinning, brushes them behind her ear. Friends and family, their faces beacons of happiness, are gathered around.

  In the distance, engines rumble with the regular flow of traffic. Some excited drivers honk their horns and shout their congratulations as they pass by, and each time, the bride and groom chuckle and apologize to the wedding officiant. There’s no interrupting true love though. I do’s are said, the officiant tells them it’s okay to kiss, and the crowd goes wild.

  Hand in hand, the two practically skip down the gazebo’s steps, and off they go into the sunlight of the rest of their lives.

  It was these thoughts that
had followed me into my sleep and morphed into a pleasant dream.

  In the dream, it was August, a time when the weather should’ve been sweltering, the air muggy, our shoulders sunburned and flaking. A time when people walked around outside in t-shirts and shorts, and when the women showed off their long legs, the men their six-pack abs.

  Northeast Ohio weather sucked for more months than it didn’t. Late May, June, July, and most of August, those were the times to transform from winter vampires into things somewhat resembling actual humans.

  I realized after a few moments that the happy couple I had pictured, who had followed me into my sleep, was actually Eleanor and I. As that realization hit, near-infinite amounts of snow poured down upon my idyllic dream world. The officiant changed into a floating shadow; the flower girl became the flower boy, except he was dead and his flesh was melting from his bones, constantly asking me why I couldn’t save him; and in the crowd were all those I’d lost already. They clapped with their rotting hands, showing flashes of bone and gristle, spraying cold blood.

  And then I woke up.

  Well, I’d been woken up by a sound. It was a low growling. I couldn’t see him, but I figured it was Chewy. He often made vicious noises in his sleep.

  “Hey, quiet,” I hissed.

  The growling stopped for a moment.

  My left hand ached from where I’d been gripping the comforter. I armed sweat from my brow. Icy droplets rolled down the sides of my face, bringing a ripple of chills through my body.

  The motel room had been semi-lit by a few candles when I fell asleep, but they were out now.

  “Mikey?” I called. He didn’t answer with words, but instead snorted in his sleep and rolled over by the front door, where he had presumably clonked out on the job.

  Not good, I thought, and I hadn’t been thinking of the growling that woke me up. My mind was distracted by the lack of light.

  In this darkness, my eyes hadn’t completely adjusted, but I turned toward Ell, wanting to see her and make sure she was okay.

  She was still sleeping soundly beneath the blankets, a vague human-shaped lump, hair spilling out from her winter hat. Like everyone else, she wore most of her layers—the ones we’d been able to scrounge from the wreckage of Helga’s lake house, that was.

  I set a hand on her back to make sure she was real, and my hand rose and fell with the steady rhythm of her breathing.

  It was quiet enough for me to hear Stone’s soft snoring on the floor and how, every few seconds, Mia rustled around on the bed in the opposite room, making the springs groan loudly.

  Then I heard the growling again. There was something else too. A gush of bitter cold air. It hit my cheeks and stood all my hair on end.

  What the hell? Was a window open, or had the wind really picked up? Either way, it explained how the candles had gone out. I turned, ready to get off the mattress and check.

  But as my boots hit the floor, I sighted a pair of glinting eyes in the shadows of the far room. Fear or a surge of adrenaline kicked my senses into overdrive, and I saw as clearly as if it were day.

  Whatever those yellow eyes belonged to growled again, and slowly, the beast stepped forward.

  It stood on two legs, its back hunched and knobby where its curved spine jutted out. Tufts of wiry hair dotted its gaunt and naked body. Human-like muscles showed through gray, scar-riddled flesh wherever the hair didn't cover.

  In my limited view, I came to the conclusion that it was some kind of cross between animal and man.

  The strength in my legs left me, and my body felt as heavy as stone. I tried speaking, but all that escaped my throat was a wheezy sort of gasp.

  Then I saw the face. A face that was not human at all, but canine.

  Advancing, as if I was its prey, was a werewolf. Rather, a wraith projecting the image of one to frighten me. Let me tell you, it worked. Oh boy, had it worked.

  A long-overdue scream burst from my mouth, and I rolled backward, away from the monster. Eleanor yelped at the sudden weight pressing down on her, but the yelp cut short when I pulled her to the floor.

  “What’s going on?” Stone called from my right.

  Mikey was waking up too. I saw him shifting out of the corner of my eye.

  “Oh—holy shit!” Stone now yelled.

  “What? What?” Eleanor echoed before she got a look at the beast in front of us and screamed herself.

  The werewolf reached the bed. Something shiny and wet coated the fur on its bottom jaw and parts of its chest. Blood. I couldn’t see the color in the darkness, but there was no doubt in my mind that’s what it was.

  I accounted for everyone except for Mia and Chewy. I shouted for them, but then the werewolf slammed its hands on the mattress, its razor-sharp claws ripping the sheets and the padding to shreds, and the calls died in my throat.

  Eleanor, in all her bravery, grabbed the lamp from the nightstand and hurled it at the beast.

  It swatted the projectile away as if it were a gnat at a picnic, and the lamp sailed into the wall on my right and exploded into a thousand shards of glass. The act only served to piss the werewolf off. It jumped on the bed, splintering what was left of the frame, and ripped off a growl-scream hybrid almost as terrifying as itself.

  I shoved Eleanor behind me and tensed my body. My eyes searched for our bags of supplies, which were sitting on the dresser currently covered in pieces of the lamp.

  The werewolf seemed to be mirroring my movements. Its muscles were tensed too. I knew as soon as I made for the bag, the thing would pounce on either me or Stone or Ell. My options were limited. The only sure thing in this situation was death.

  I doubted if the monster could really rip us to shreds, with it being a wraith and all, but I sure as hell didn’t want to find out.

  “What the fuck do we do?” Stone whispered.

  “The bag,” I said from the corner of my mouth, never taking my eyes off the beast. “Mikey, get the bug spray and a lighter.”

  “It’s a werewolf!” Stone shouted. “We need a silver bullet, not fuckin’ bug spray!”

  I don’t know if he was trying to be funny or if he was serious, but I ignored him and broke my stare with the monster to look at Mikey. He stood on his knees, still as a statue.

  “Mikey!” I snapped. He jumped and looked back. “The bag!”

  “Oh shit,” he mumbled, and then made for the dresser. He got there, but just as he pulled the bag down, the werewolf spun and launched at him at a speed that left my jaw hanging open. The contents of the bag scattered across the carpet. One of the cans of Off! hit the bed and bounced my way—a stroke of luck if I’d ever seen one—but the lighter remained out of reach.

  “Mikey!” Ell screamed.

  I had taken my eyes off the situation for half a second, but I wholly expected to see Mikey ripped apart when I looked back.

  Thankfully, I was wrong. The werewolf continued to stand over him as Mikey crawled away toward the spot he’d fallen asleep in. It was like it was toying with us, that it knew there was no way it could be beaten.

  I wondered for a moment where its friends were, or if this one was alone. Maybe it had sniffed us out, our fear, and decided it would take a chance. The reward was worth whatever the risk was, because we weren’t a full-course meal; we were a fucking buffet.

  The one thing the wraith hadn’t taken into account was something anyone would’ve overlooked, I think.

  It was Chewy.

  The dog came tearing out of the adjoining bedroom, barking and snarling as loudly and viciously as the werewolf had done earlier.

  The monster snapped its head around, probably expecting to see another werewolf. Or at least something bigger than a Brussels Griffon who only weighed about fifteen pounds.

  Now that the wraith was distracted, I took my chance. I dove across the carpet, grabbed the bug spray in my left hand and stretched for the lighter with my other. I wasted no time sparking a flame and spraying fire at the bastard.

  As a cloud of
flames engulfed it, I heard its howls, but those changed into screams, and then the screams finally changed into a sound so horrible I can’t even describe it.

  When those horrible shrieks stopped and the wraith was reduced from a wispy shadow to ash, I let off the spray and the lighter.

  “Is it over?” Eleanor said.

  No one gave her an answer, but I turned to Mikey and shouted, “What the fuck! Why were you sleeping?”

  He held Chewy against his chest, and they both jumped at the sound of my voice.

  Ell grabbed my arm. “Calm down, Grady.”

  That was out of the question. “Calm down?” I was looking frantically around. “Where’s Mia? How can I be calm when Mia’s probably dead? And how the hell did that thing get in? This shouldn’t have happened!”

  Suddenly, Mia emerged from the shared doorway. I feared the worst, I thought she’d been changed. Thank everything I was wrong.

  She scratched the side of her head and moaned.

  “Mia?” Ell shot up and ran to her with Mikey trailing behind.

  “I don’t feel good,” Mia said.

  I exchanged a knowing, defeated glance with Stone, but he shook his head. They hadn’t gotten to her, not the way I had thought, but they had fucked with her mind.

  To confirm this, I walked over to the three of them and slid by, already knowing what I’d see in her room.

  Sure enough, the window was open. Freezing wind made the curtains dance, and the sorry barricade of a few fold-out chairs was scattered on the floor beneath.

  Why a werewolf? I found myself wondering for a while after the attack. Then it hit me. The wolves at Avery’s Mills. The wraith had unearthed that fear and used it against us, but instead of using the form of a normal wolf, it had taken that fear one step further, into the supernatural.

  Naturally, we didn’t want to stay in the motel after that, but without any sun in the sky we had no choice.

  All we wanted was to get to one of the Cities of Light. Or the town center, if the message on the gazebo’s roof was to be believed. I doubted the town center would prove to be a long-term solution though.