Snare’s powerful jaws snapped down across her hand with a pain so perfect that Ash forgot to scream. Waves of torment crashed in her body. Her sight went dim, but before total darkness claimed her, she yanked her clamped arm sideways and dragged the beast down.
Snare crashed into the creek bed with a wet slap, blocking the last remaining leak. Water flowed against Snare’s skinless chest, puddling there, with no way around.
Ash and Snare met eyes again. In those watery sockets she saw Hollow Hills. She saw the dead return to life. Saw Dad leaving town. Saw Trent and Jake tossing baseballs. Saw her unbroken left hand. Saw her fingers caressing Cheetos’s face.
In that moment she saw it all.
Everything she wanted.
And she forced her eyes shut.
89
Darkness captured her. Surrounded her. Annihilated her.
Ash blinked, but it made no difference. There was nothing to see but shadow upon shadow. The void of death. The end.
Her end.
End.
End.
A breeze stirred, chilling her, burning through her wet clothes. It directed the stench of dead fish into her nostrils. She coughed, tasting rot. She rolled over to puke.
But something curled against her. Seized her. Tightened its grip. The ground—
No, not the ground.
She heard sobbing above her. The sharp intake of breath.
“Ashlee?”
Something warm splashed her cheek. A teardrop?
“Ashlee?” Dad sniffled. “Please answer me.”
“What…happened?”
“Oh God.” He scooped her into a clumsy, muddy hug. “You’re okay. I thought I’d lost you both.”
“Both? Oh, shit…” She remembered. Trent. He’d fought Snare. Finished the dam. Died when the beast’s bulging red thumb pierced his eye socket. With the memory, nausea flushed through her midsection. She writhed, clutching at her father’s muddy shirt to keep from falling.
A flashlight gleamed above her.
She lifted her forearm to block the light. Pain blitzed through her hand. She seethed, teeth clenched, waiting for the hell to pass. When it did, she saw Dad looking her over, tears filling his eyes. A ripped piece of cloth was knotted around his sliced arm. She noticed that another cloth was wrapped around her ruined palm.
“Thought you were a goner, darling.”
Exhausted, she shook her head.
He stroked mud from her hair then held her, sniffling over her shoulder. His tears trickled down her neck and stung exposed cuts. She groaned.
“Hush now. Relax. You’re in my arms. You’re okay, Ashlee.” He held her tight. “My little girl.”
“What happened?” She checked the bend. Fog hung above an empty creek bed. “Where’s Snare?”
“Gone. Snare’s gone. We did it.”
“We…” She could barely believe it. “We did it.”
He cleared his throat. “We need to help Jake now.”
“Jake?” Images rushed back to her. Snare going for the kill. Jake grabbing the knife. Stabbing his eye. Stopping the beast.
Saving her.
She rolled free of her father’s arms. Her body ached in places she’d never felt before. Her wet clothes rubbed mercilessly against her ice-burned skin. But she crawled toward her nephew.
He lay in the clearing, a strip of cloth wrapped around his head like a bandanna. He still wore her jacket, the belt fastened around his waist. Some snow had glazed over him. She lifted the cloth.
His eye leaked blood.
Ash threw open the Subaru’s passenger door in a blazing panic. She checked the glove compartment for first-aid supplies as worst-case scenarios—infection, gangrene, death—rolled through her mind. She gathered the supplies as Dad laid Jake across the back seat. The boy whimpered.
They carefully cleaned his eye, then applied gauze and bandaged it with discolored sports tape.
Jake looked like a pirate wearing a fuzzy white eyepatch. The sight made Ash smile for some reason. Maybe because it was oddly cute, maybe because pirates survived stabbed eyes and so would Jake.
With the leftover gauze, she wrapped her ruined hand. It burned like a hundred hells. She couldn’t believe the heat. She couldn’t believe a lot of things.
“Let’s get moving,” Dad said.
“Where?” she said, squinting into the ubiquitous fog.
“We have to find a hospital.” He slid his hands under Jake’s knees and shoulders. With a grunt, he lifted. “Can you ride shotgun with the boy on your lap? Keep him upright?”
“Yeah.” She went to open the passenger door but stopped herself. Instead, she hurried toward the driver door.
“Ashlee? What’re you doing?”
She reached in beside the steering wheel and popped the trunk. It opened with a dull double-thud. Her heart pounded in a similar way as she approached the trunk. The closed lid covered Cheeto and Lauren. Ash curled a finger beneath the lid. The moment she lifted, the stench hit her.
The stench didn’t necessarily mean Cheeto was still dead, she promised herself. Perhaps the trunk just needed to air out. With any luck, Cheeto would leap out and tackle her to the ground with one of his signature hugs. Then they’d laugh, and she’d tell him about all the sacrifices she’d made to bring him back.
He had to be back. It was only fair.
With a nervous breath, she lifted the lid.
Slowly.
Barely enough to peek inside.
The pulse in her neck quickened. The stench grew thicker. She saw his hand. She recognized the bulging purple fingers with a crimp in her heart and a lump in her throat.
“Cheeto…” Her eyes stung, hot and wet. “No… Please, no.”
She took his hand in hers. It was cold. Mangled. Lifeless.
With a heavy heart, she squeezed.
He didn’t squeeze back.
Ash couldn’t bear to ride in the car that stank of Cheeto and Lauren, so they left the Subaru at the banquet hall and drove off in the church van. Dad steered through snowy, foggy streets. Ash rode shotgun, Jake asleep in her grasp, his cheek on her shoulder. The heater threw chilly air in her face as she looked outside. Houses scrolled by, all of them hiding dead residents, dead visitors, dead families. The more bodies Ash saw collapsed on porches and sprawled in driveways, the more helpless she felt.
There had been no mass revival. Killing Snare had ended the beast, not the nightmare. It had brought no one back. Everyone remained dead. All because of her.
Her chest felt compressed, like two trucks were plowing into her from opposite sides. She couldn’t breathe. She inhaled a deep breath and started dry heaving.
No way would she ever get over this. You don’t unleash a death plague and start fresh the next morning. Or any morning.
“Ashlee?” Dad lifted his foot off the gas. The van eased past a crashed sedan, its flashers blinking. He glanced at her. “You okay?”
“They’re still gone,” she said. “Everyone.”
“Darling…”
“They’re dead!”
He nudged the brake. “We did the best we could.”
“Did we? We killed Snare, but Snare could’ve brought everyone back. The bitch said so.”
“Snare always lied. You know that. If we’d left her alive, she’d have killed us, then maybe billions more.” His eyes found hers. “Billions, Ashlee.”