“Benjy,” Violet said, “we’ll do all we can to make sure you get home safe. What’s the last thing you remember?”
The boy blanched. His eyes widened, and his chin quivered. Tears filled his eyes, and Malcolm knew memories had begun to return. “Mommy?” he said quietly, voice breaking, heart breaking. Then he screamed it, shrieking for his mother, sitting up and looking around like he thought they might comfort him, tell him the memory crashing into him had only been a dream. Seconds of this desperate yearning passed, and he must have seen in their eyes that no comfort could be found, because the screams grew and there were no more pauses for breath. Benjy screamed on and on, no matter how Violet and Malcolm tried to comfort the boy.
Malcolm caught a glance from his sister in the rearview mirror. Jennie said nothing, but she wept for the boy, lips pursed.
“It’ll be okay,” Malcolm told him. “You’re not alone, Benjy. We’ve got you.”
The boy hitched his breath, shuddering, and tried to focus onMalcolm, but then his gaze shifted past Malcolm. He seemed even paler, whiter, but a heartbeat later, Malcolm realized it was not the boy’s skin but fresh illumination. Light coming through the rear windshield.
Violet saw it at the same time.
Malcolm turned and looked back. Twin ghost lights, truck headlights approaching. As it closed the distance between them, he could make out the shape of it, looming back there in the storm.
“It’s a plow,” he said.
“How long till Shediak?” Violet asked.
Jennie kept her eyes on the road, but the headlights reflected off the rearview, making a slash of light across her face. “An hour. Maybe less.”
“Make it less,” Violet said. “Speed up.”
“I can’t. It isn’t safe.”
Malcolm glanced at Maggie, lying dead beside him, watching him from inside her corpse. The headlights grew brighter.
“It’s not safe either way, Jen,” he said.
Jennie tensed, but she began to accelerate. The wind cutting through the slashes in the vinyl roof grew fiercer, colder.
They could hear the roar of the plow’s engine.
Something landed in front of the Frazer. The flying one, there in the road, in the storm. Malcolm would have tried to swerve and probably killed them all. Jennie knew better. She accelerated a bit more. The thing shrieked and tried to take flight again, but too late. The Frazer might not have had the weight of that plow, but Detroit steel was heavy.
Malcolm felt the flying thing go under the wheels. The suspension bounced. He doubted it was dead, but he hoped the thing was badly broken.
“Look,” Violet said.
They all turned this time, even Jennie. Even Benjy.
The plow had gained so much ground that the driver didn’t have time to slow. The big blade wasn’t touching the pavement,but it hung only half a foot above the snow, and it tore the flying thing in half.
Nobody in the Frazer celebrated. They knew the thing hadn’t come alone.
The plow closed in.
45
The flying one perched on the sharp tip of the plow, right at its center, wings pinned to its back like a full-size gargoyle hood ornament. The wind buffeted the thing, but it clung to the V-shaped blade, snow whirling around it. Alfie had tried to shout it away—the monster blocked part of his view of the road—but it ignored him, just put its head back and smelled the night air.
Alfie’s throat felt dry. He could taste blood, bubbling up from somewhere inside him. His body still felt strong, pulsing with Root’s influence, but his thoughts had turned weary and begun to stray further than before. Root curled in the passenger seat, mouth a tight line of pain. It tried to hide that agony, but it’d gone rigid and quiet. The farther northeast they traveled, the more Root seemed to radiate malignant hate. Alfie could feel it in the cab of the plow, as if this inhuman thing wanted desperately to scream, and only loathing prevented it.
“Can you still feel the boy?” Alfie asked.
Root’s gaze shifted toward him. “No,” it sneered. “But he is just ahead.”
His heart skipped. No. Root couldn’t sense Benjy’s presence any longer. The monster had admitted that the connection had become faint, but they had been traveling along this route as fast as the plow and the snow would allow because Root insisted it could still feel Benjy ahead.
Now it couldn’t. What did that mean?
