Snow drifted over Harmon’s body. His heart was on fire. The deep bites in his legs screamed in agony. Crisp cold air teased his wounds where his acidic blood had burned through to his outerwear. He could only pray his scent would go undetected by the beast he had wounded. If it returned, he held no illusion. The thing would have him.
Minutes passed, precious seconds he could ill afford, yet the respite served him. The strain in his chest had ebbed, and he began to dig himself out. He lifted his legs sluggishly, stretching them as far as he could stand the pain. Slowly, he rolled to his stomach, praying the bear-thing had decided he was tainted meat.
He rose and hobbled to the Elan. With a labored push he righted it, but even before he took six pulls of the starter cable, he knew it fruitless, resigning himself to the long walk ahead. He found his splitting ax and the gas can and trudged on into the storm.
He could barely see. He feared he might be heading in the wrong direction, only to gain assurance from the strange noises that grew around him. Incredible as it seemed, he thought he heard birds in flight, the thick sound that broad leathery wings might make. At one point they swept directly overhead, and he wondered if that illusory bird-thing that had crossed his path earlier was real after all. Still, he was certain there had been many more than one.
Other sounds tasked him. Metal, bending and crumpling. Wood, cracking and snapping. It was as if the world was remolding itself, as if it were growing into some horrific monster.
Another sensation, one so compelling, drove him. He felt his boy tugging at his heart, felt the child’s terror growing with every step. He moved faster.
He ascended a steep rise. Hunkered at the top behind a small evergreen, he sensed that steely eye of the moon beyond the storm, trained on his every move.
He had reached the slopes. The landscape dipped and rolled, falling sharply to his left toward the creek. He saw no one, yet the eyes swarmed about him as never before.
The ground trembled and he rocked. The trees—he could barely make them, so incredibly tall against the dark sky they were—began to rise before him. They stabbed the blackness, growing at a staggering rate, forging an enormous rampart that swallowed the park in one gluttonous gulp.
He moved past the rise. He kept right, avoiding the slopes, and made twenty yards before stopping cold.
Another creature lay before him, the same kind he had struck with his snowmobile. Ripped to shreds, gnawed to bone, it appeared even more human than the first. It stank of blood and raw meat.
The bear-things. Only they could have done this.
Harmon whirled left. He heard a hurried sound, a swishing sound, right next to his ear. The strange noise repeated several times.
Ahead, a brilliant flash of light pierced the storm. It glowed brightly a moment, only to be swallowed by the maelstrom. He followed it, struggling up a final crest of white, and in that moment found himself standing deathly still, cold and alone, in the very place he had stood so cold, so alone, so long, long ago.