Shining her phone light, she noticed his collarbones jutting unnaturally against his t-shirt. His formerly flat stomach bulged in spots, as if tiny fists were trying to punch through. His pants couldn’t hide the swollen thigh muscles and misshapen knees. Everywhere she looked, something was wrong. Impossibly wrong.
Then she noticed his left hand. It dangled toward the passenger seat, and when her light fell on it, a chill of recognition snaked down her spine.
The ruptured fingers.
The busted knuckles.
The swollen flesh.
His hand was broken exactly as hers had been.
“No…” The air in her lungs turned to dust. She shook her head, unable to take her eyes off his ruined hand. “Cheeto… Why you? Why’d this have to happen to you?”
Cheeto didn’t answer. Of course he didn’t. He was gone. Gone because of Snare. Somehow the bitch had cursed him with brutal injuries—not just Ash’s broken hand but countless others. No part of his body had escaped disfigurement. He was completely, totally ruined.
Ash opened her mouth to scream, but it came out a muffled sob. Tears swamped her eyes while her nose clogged to the point of suffocation. She coughed harshly, her body recoiling until she dropped to her side. For a moment she lay there atop the van, wishing for death, until the stench pierced her blocked nostrils. She twisted sideways and dumped her guts onto the highway.
When she finished vomiting, she felt no better.
Cheeto was still dead, and it was her fault.
Snare’s doing, but her fault.
Ash pushed herself up and checked on him, hoping his condition might’ve miraculously improved since her last glimpse. Nothing changed, unfortunately, but she shined her light over him anyway, seeking answers—seeking any reason to be optimistic. His gruesome, busted chin caught her attention. She recognized the damage; it matched what she had inflicted on Mick earlier at the creek. It’s like I shot them both. She shivered at the thought, her gun weighing heavy inside her jacket pocket. Her eyes trailed to Cheeto’s swollen, misshapen knees. She thought of her father and how he’d been kneecapped three decades ago. Was it possible that Mick and Dad’s injuries had somehow been transferred to Cheeto? Bizarre as the idea sounded, it made sense.
Not that it made her feel any better.
Still nauseous, she climbed down from the van. About fifty feet away were the scattered car wrecks, their headlights and taillights glowing behind the blizzard. Alarms whined and horns moaned within the disaster. She raced toward the noise.
“Help! Somebody help!”
The closest vehicle was a spun-out SUV. As Ash rushed toward it, her feet lost traction on the slippery blacktop. Arms windmilling, she bashed into the rear door and fell hard on her hip. Slowly, she rose to her feet, found better footing on a clear patch of pavement, and gingerly moved to the driver’s window.
The dashboard display lit the face of a woman, clearly dead. Her sliced forehead dripped blood; her nose was horribly twisted. The wounds looked exactly like Cheeto’s. Ash recognized the same busted chin. The same wrecked hand. In the next car she discovered another identically disfigured mess. Horrified, she checked the other vehicles. Every driver and passenger had the same injuries, the same bad parts. Whatever had killed Cheeto had impacted everyone on the highway.
What if the fog did this?
What if it spread beyond the highway?
What if it keeps killing people?
Gazing past the still-flashing car wrecks, Ash saw nothing but blue-tinged darkness. She slid to her knees, realizing with despair that she might be the only survivor. A soul-sucking loneliness engulfed her, numbing the agony in her ribs and hand. Numbing her mind. Numbing her spirit.
After a deep breath, she returned to the Subaru. When she popped the trunk, she realized Lauren was in the same hideous condition as the others.
Ash shut the trunk, her heart ramming a thousand miles a minute. This can’t be real.
Her only hope was that this ruined world was a temporary hell. Maybe once the fog clears, everyone will somehow return to normal. Though it didn’t seem likely, it was something to cling to. After all, Lauren had been alive and moaning when the fog first appeared. At the time, the Subaru’s trunk had been outside the border of the zone, outside the fog. It wasn’t until Ash drove back into the zone that Lauren had fallen silent.
Maybe I can still save Cheeto. Driving him outside the zone might fix him.
Doing so, however, could eliminate her ribs and new hand.
This isn’t fair. This isn’t what I signed up for.
But there has to be a way to reverse this. Snare would know. Snare could undo it. The bitch had to.
Her heart heavy as lead, she climbed into the Subaru, put it in drive, and nudged the gas pedal. As she passed the van, her headlights pierced the blue haze, illuminating something she hadn’t noticed earlier.
Tire tracks. They trailed off the highway and down a nearby slope. Someone had veered off-road.
Could it be…?
Ash parked along the shoulder, got out, and peered down the snowy hill at a pair of glowing taillights. A vehicle lay on its roof at the bottom. A red BMW. The one Werner drove.
Hope flooded her chest, filled her throat.
She dashed downhill, yelling her father’s name.
67
Karl woke up buzzing. He couldn’t see, couldn’t move, couldn’t think straight. It was anyone’s guess where he was. Dry, hot air blew against his hip, but still he shivered. His toes were blocks of ice. He wiggled them but quickly discovered he couldn’t move anything else, not his arms, legs—nothing. His hands remained cuffed and he was lying on top of them, which strained his forearms. Worse, his knees crackled like Fourth of July sparklers. His skin, too. That meant…what? That Ashlee and Trent didn’t make the trades in time?
He heard a nearby hum. A motor.
Now he remembered. He’d been shoved into the backseat of Werner’s car. Which explained the blowing hot air, probably from the rear heater. But then why didn’t he feel any seat cushions underneath him? And why couldn’t he move? His buzzing body shouldn’t keep him from moving. Maybe he was stuck. Pinned against something. Or under something.
“Bill?” he croaked. “You there?”
If Werner was, he didn’t answer.
Karl still couldn’t see anything. He focused his awareness and realized something was covering his face. He poked his tongue out and encountered damp, shaggy fabric. A towel. His towel. The one he’d been wearing after Werner took him hostage.
Karl twisted his head sharply, attempting to loosen the towel. Bad idea. Hot resistance shot through his neck as something lumpy and solid pushed against his windpipe. He again rotated his neck, trying to relieve the pressure on his throat, but instead squished his nostrils against the towel. Now he couldn’t breathe.
A voice called out, muffled, as if underwater.
He struggled to yell, expending precious air. “Help!”
“Dad?” Something tapped against glass. “Dad!”
“Ashlee?” Relief flashed across his chest like sunshine.
“Holy shit, you’re alive!”
“Ashlee!” Feeling lighter now, Karl twitched his head enough to relieve pressure on his windpipe. Blood flow returned, thick and uncomfortable. “Where are we? I can’t see nothing.”