Whiteout (Book 3): The Numbing Read online

  “Over here!” Mikey called back.

  I heard the other figure as we got closer. I couldn’t tell if the person was male or female through the haze yet, but they were moaning low, voice thick with pain.

  “I need help!” Mikey said.

  The question of the stranger’s gender was answered as I entered the alleyway. It was a man. I caught a decent glimpse of him around Mikey. The man had a long, snow-crusted beard. Judging by the streaks of gray in that beard, he was older. Maybe somewhere in his late-forties to mid-fifties. He sat against the faded brick wall. Garbage can lids were strapped to his feet. Over a puffy green jacket, he wore a tattered peacoat. The hat atop his head had WOODHAVEN POLICE stitched across the front.

  A policeman…I thought that was a good sign, but then again, the wraiths couldn’t exactly be arrested, could they? Law and order—along with the logical rules of the universe—had gone out the window as soon as the summer blizzards began.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Ell asked.

  The man shifted, trying to bring the leg obscured by Mikey’s body upward, and as he moved, he cried out in pain. I didn’t have long to wonder why because the answer presented itself—but I wished it hadn’t.

  An icicle was jutting out of the man’s right thigh.

  I’m not talking about a normal-sized icicle either. This thing looked like the spire atop the Empire State Building. It must’ve fallen from the overhanging roof of the drug store, which was only about twenty feet high, and got him deep.

  Luckily, it looked like it went clean through the side of his leg, which, in my opinion, was a lot better than if it had gone through the middle of his thigh. Still, I imagined it hurt like hell.

  Blood frothed around the wound’s opening and spilled out into the snow, which absorbed it hungrily. I had some experience in first aid, but this was far beyond my expertise. The very sight of the injury made me squeamish.

  “Can you move?” Ell asked the man.

  He stifled a sob. “No. Don’t think so.”

  “We gotta get it out of there,” I said.

  Ell looked at me. “It’ll melt right? His body heat will melt it, and it’ll just fall out?” Her voice sounded hopeful. I didn’t knock her logic. Under normal circumstances that might’ve been the case, but these were far from normal circumstances.

  “He’ll freeze to death before that happens,” I said in a low voice.

  The man tried stifling another sob, but this time couldn’t. The sound reminded me of a dying animal.

  “Just pull it!” the man shouted. “Just yank the damn thing out!”

  The three of us—Ell, Mikey, and I—exchanged a look. Ell stepped back and shook her head, and though Mikey hadn’t, his face was unsure…which left me.

  So I took the Band-Aid approach. No announcement, no countdown, no nothing. In one quick motion I just grabbed the icicle, allowing myself a half a second to take in how thick it was (like the trunk of a small tree), and I pulled it with all the strength I had left in my body.

  The man’s low moans changed into high-pitched screams then they tapered off as he craned his head up at me holding the chunk of ice in both hands. The end that had stabbed through his pants and flesh was as sharp as a blade, and it dripped with his blood. The man stayed staring at it for a few moments. Then his eyelids fluttered, his eyes rolled to the back of his head, and he slipped down to a half-reclined, undoubtedly uncomfortable position.

  “Is he—is he dead?” Ell whispered.

  “Unconscious,” I answered. “Too bad he couldn’t have fainted before I pulled it out.”

  Mikey said, “We can’t leave him here to die. We gotta take him back.”

  I nodded and then bent to examine the wound. Blood leaked from it like water from a busted pipe. The sight of it made me grit my teeth. “Ell, let me see your scarf.”

  She pulled it from around her face and handed it my way without hesitation. I tied it tightly around the man’s leg, hoping to stop the bleeding. After that, I slid one of his arms around my neck. This wasn’t an easy task in the snow, as our combined weight made us sink deeper than usual.

  “Can you lend me a hand, Mikey?”

  He bent down on the other side and got the man’s arm around his own shoulders. I told Ell to start heading back, clear a spot for the guy in the room. “We’ll be right behind you.”

  She went and Mikey and I got to our feet—again, not an easy task. I saw more icicles hanging from the gutters running along the side of the roof, their deathly sharp tips waiting to impale. I couldn’t get away fast enough.

  The trip was no more than a quarter of a mile, but the wind blew harsher this way, nearly knocking us off balance with every gust.

  We made it back maybe twenty or so minutes later. By that time, the muted sun shone through the thinner-than-usual dark clouds. Even their color wasn’t as black and dense as before, I thought.

  Eh…I don’t know, it could’ve been wishful thinking.

  Ell had laid a blanket and a couple of pillows on the motel room’s floor. Mikey and I set him down there. The scarf, along with the cold, seemed to have slowed the flow of blood, but the scarf was ruined now, completely soaked red.

  Stone and Mia looked at the man in equal parts fear and curiosity.

  “What happened?” Mia asked, and we told her.

  “Unlucky bastard,” Stone added.

  I said, “We’re all a bit unlucky.”

  We sat around in silence and waited for the man to regain consciousness. He started moaning again about two minutes later, his head nodding back and forth. He stopped and opened his eyes wide, taking in the strangers surrounding him.

  “Where…where am I?”

  I squatted next to him. “Woodhaven Motel. How are you feeling?”

  “Like shit.”

  “That’s definitely understandable.”

  The man’s eyes settled on Mikey, and he grinned a resplendent grin. “Thank you, son. Without you, I’d be dead.”

  Mikey’s already red cheeks turned slightly redder. “Yeah…it was no problem.”

  The man laughed. “No problem? Son, I owe you my life. You’re a hero. You’re all heroes.”

  His name was Robert J. Ballard, and he had lived in Woodhaven for most of his years.

  “Though, long as I’ve been here, I’ve never set foot in this motel,” he added with a shudder. “And wouldn’t, even if you paid me a million bucks. Not a lot of people ever do…or did. Fella who owned the place was a creep. People around here avoided him like the plague.”

  He had managed to get to his feet with the help of Mikey and I, but his injured leg buckled on him a few times until Mia offered him a broom she’d found in the bathroom closet. The broom helped him steady himself, and he seemed grateful for that.

  “Certainly won’t be running any marathons soon, will I? If there ever are marathons again, that is. Supposed to be one here at the end of summer. Big deal, like the Fourth is in this town. I always sign up to pass out cups of water on the sidelines. Probably sounds boring, but let me tell you, it’s a hoot.” Bob closed his eyes and frowned. “Looks like I won’t be doing that this year. Not ‘cause of the leg, I mean. But ‘cause everyone here is dead. Maybe I shoulda written that on the gazebo instead.”

  He said this last sentence mostly to himself.

  “Wait, you wrote that message on the gazebo?” Ell asked.

  The man sat down heavily on the foot of the bed. He glanced at the shreds in the mattress, picked at the yellowing foam, but didn’t mention it. Shredded mattresses must’ve been expected in the Woodhaven Motel.

  As Ballard flicked the foam from between his fingers, Chewy came out of his hiding spot in the bathroom and sniffed curiously at the man’s wound. When Ballard extended a hand for Chewy to sniff instead, the dog almost growled the way he had when the wraith got into the motel room the other night.

  Robert laughed and smacked his lips together in a kissing motion. “Come here, poochie. I won’t hurt ya!”<
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  Chewy wasn’t buying it. He snarled, then ran toward Mikey. If his tail had been long enough I imagine it would’ve been tucked between his legs the whole way.

  Mikey said, “He’s a little shy sometimes. Don’t mind him.”

  Offering a blindingly white grin, Ballard replied, “I don’t blame him one bit. You gotta be leery of strangers, especially now.” He looked over each of us. “Which begs the question: can I trust you all?”

  Stone chuckled, and though I remained quiet, I couldn’t help but find the question funny. Was this guy serious? We’d just saved his life—

  “Relax! I’m only pulling your leg!” Ballard broke out in thunderous laughter.

  We laughed with him, a little uncomfortably at first, but as he kept it going, the uncomfortableness vanished. Ballard’s laugh was infectious. When you heard it you couldn’t help but smile and chuckle to yourself no matter what mood you were in.

  “Just don’t pull my leg! But if you absolutely have to…yank on the one that doesn’t currently have a big-ass gouge in it!” He turned to Eleanor. “And yes, ma’am, to answer your question, I wrote that message.”

  Hope alighted in all of us. I could see it on the faces of the others and feel it on mine.

  “Is it true?” Ell asked. “Is there food and medicine? Mr. Ballard, we really need it…” Her eyes drifted toward Mia.

  Ballard shrugged. “Was at one point. Not anymore. Like I said, everyone but me is dead.” Another grin. “But please, call me Bob.”

  The momentary happiness deflated from the room. I hated seeing the hurt in my friends’ eyes, so I cleared my throat and spoke up. “Wait. Have you been there? Is that stuff still at the town center?”

  Bob shook his head. “Nope. Checked it out myself a few weeks back.” He made a face like he had just bit into a lemon. “I saw a lot of good people lying dead on the floor. It was a bloodbath. Damn shame too.”

  “What happened?” Stone asked. “Did the wraiths get ‘em, or what?”

  “What do you think, genius?” Mia said, flashing warning eyes toward Stone.

  Bob was obviously hurt about what happened, but he waved a hand. “It’s all right. I don’t mind filling you in. Thing is, I can’t say what happened for sure. I imagine what happened to the people up at the town center was the same thing that happened to the people all over Woodhaven. All over the world. They were killed, be it from the dark things or the crazies they produce when they get ahold of us, it makes no difference, does it?”

  “I’m sorry,” Stone said.

  “No, I’m sorry,” Bob replied. “Should’ve covered that sign up while I had the chance, so I wouldn’t give any wanderers false hope. Ran out of paint before I could. And Sherwin-Williams quit delivering, unfortunately—if they ever had in the first place.”

  I chuckled at his joke, but mostly out of politeness. Everyone else was doing enough laughing to make up for me. I saw Ell holding a hand over her mouth as she did. It was a self-conscious thing. She told me about it one quiet night at Helga’s. As a freshman in high school, she wore braces, but before the braces went on, the orthodontist fitted the roof of her mouth with an expander. I had no idea what that was, and when she explained it to me as a metal contraption with a little hole you put a key in and cranked to slowly expand your palate, I thought it sounded more like a torture device.

  “I had the biggest gap in my front teeth you’d ever seen,” she had said. “I could fit a slice of bread through it and then some.”

  A weird visual, to be sure, but it got us laughing so hard we had to actually cover our mouths not to wake the others up. She told me she wore braces for nearly three years. They gave her a retainer after they came off, a cheap plastic thing she was supposed to wear nearly twenty-four hours a day. Naturally, as the rebellious teenager she claimed to have been, Ell barely wore them, and her teeth went slightly back to their old ways, of course. By then, the thing didn’t even fit right anymore. I told her she was being cuckoo and she had proved my point by grabbing my hand, shoving my fingers in her mouth, and mumbling, “Feel them!”

  I did, and they felt pretty straight to me, looked even better. I told her she was perfect and beautiful and not to worry about what others thought, but my compliments and advice apparently hadn’t stuck. It wouldn’t until she believed it herself, and I believe that’s one of life’s universal truths.

  The laughter subsided a few moments later. Bob had achieved what I could never do, and that was to get everyone’s mind off the reality of our situation by cracking a few funny jokes. Maybe I was a bit jealous, the same way I was about Stone winning second funniest in middle school. I don’t know, but I became the things Mia often told me I was. A buzzkill. The rain on the parade. The stick in the mud. The…well, you get it. I brought the conversation back down from its momentary high point to a more serious discussion.

  “Bob, how long has everyone been…gone?” I asked.

  He answered with a question of his own. “How long has the snow been falling?”

  I had no answer for that. It seemed the snow had been falling for years. Each grueling minute spent in the cold and dark had a way of stretching on for an eternity. In truth, it had only been a couple of months—if that—but with no way to differentiate day from night, I wasn’t sure if we were in September or October or even 2020 anymore.

  “Yeah, friend, I don’t know either,” Bob said, as if reading my mind. “Weren’t a lot of people living in Woodhaven, not really, but there were a lot of out-of-towners when the first storms hit on July 4th.” He sat up straighter and leaned forward, slumping over his knees like he was about to vomit. That didn’t happen, thankfully, and instead continued talking in a low, almost shaky voice.

  “See, around this time every year, we have a big Independence Day festival. This year, the Fourth happened to fall on a weekend, so they extended it from the usual two-day celebration to a three-day shebang. Festival never got to properly get going, sadly.

  “You know, I always look forward to that damn thing. My brother brings his kids over from Pittsburgh and we spend the day chowing down on red meat and sipping lemonade, and the entire evening and part of the night at the parade. Little Anna, my niece, loved the floats as much as she loved the elephant ears. ‘Course, the mounds of powdered sugar heaped on top of the fried dough played a big part in that. Probably gave them a slight edge.” Bob shook his head. “I know what you’re thinking, and they didn’t make it either. At least, I don’t think so. They left Friday night, soon as the snow started falling. My brother, he’s always been a bit of a conspiracy freak. Aliens, Bigfoot, Loch Ness monster—that sorta thing. Soon as we got summer snow, he started going on about getting back home before the flying saucers swooped down and stuck probes up our asses.” He laughed at that. “Tried to convince me to come with him too. I probably should’ve. Then I’d at least know what happened.” He took a deep breath, held it a moment, and let it go. “But, gun to my head, I’d say they’re most likely dead.”

  “I’m sorry, man,” Mia said. “We’ve been served up a big ol’ shit-sandwich, that’s for sure.”

  With a grin that betrayed the sadness I expected Bob was probably burying, he looked at Mia and said, “Miss, if you don’t mind me asking…how far along are you?”

  Mia rubbed her belly with both hands. She reminded me of a fortune teller warming up her giant crystal ball. “Eight months and counting.”

  Bob whistled. “So any day now, huh?”

  “Feels like I should’ve had her last year.” Mia sighed. “I can’t tell ya how tough it’s been.”

  “I couldn’t imagine.”

  “Which is why we were hoping there were medical supplies and people at the town center,” Eleanor said. “We need all the help we can get.”

  Bob nodded his understanding. “You know, I’ve got a house not too far from here. It’s big enough for all of us. And I’ve got some food and a little medicine. Nothing more than your regular garden variety Advil and Tylenol, but I�
�m sure a couple of us could make a jaunt out to the nearest hospital before this young lady, for lack of a better term, pops. Definitely find better supplies there. Maybe a doc if we’re lucky. That is, if you’re planning on sticking around.”

  We all looked at Mia, waiting for an answer. She stared back at us, unsure. “What?”

  “It’s your call,” I said.

  “Well, I sure as shit don’t wanna have my baby in some mangy motel room.”

  “You’ll be taken care of, I promise,” Bob assured her.

  “Then, yeah. Why the hell not?”

  Bob flashed that winning grin again. “Great, it’s settled!”

  “Oh, thank God,” Stone whispered. “I can’t take any more travel.”

  I smiled at him, but a bad feeling had settled in the pit of my stomach. I wasn’t sure why, but I ignored it as best as I could.

  Then Bob got off the bed and this distracted me enough to ignore the pain altogether. He put a foot down to test how much weight he could handle on his bad leg. I expected him to cry out and collapse, but he stayed on his feet. To me, at least, that seemed impossible.

  I raised my hands to steady him as I stepped forward. “You got it?”

  “Yep. Feeling a little better now. Thank you kindly.”

  “That’s great to hear,” Ell said. “That whole thing was…pretty nasty. Mikey, I still think you’re a dumbass for running out in the snow and the dark, but if you hadn’t, Mr. Ballard would’ve—”

  “Bob,” he corrected. “And I would’ve become the thing that nearly killed me…an icicle.”

  More much needed laughter followed.

  Bob took a few small strides to keep the good mood going, each step more gingerly than the last. I thought he moved pretty well, almost too well, considering the brutality of his injury.

  “Wow!” Mikey shouted. “That’s amazing!”

  Bob chuckled. “I’ve always had a pretty good tolerance for pain. As a little boy, the doc could give me a shot and I wouldn’t even flinch.”

  I thought of the wraith’s projection of the doctor that had attacked me at Helga’s and closed my eyes, trying to push the image away. When I opened them, and I might’ve imagined this, it seemed that Bob was looking my way and that his eyes lingered on me a second too long. I met his gaze. He focused on someone else, the smile never wavering.