17

THE WORST PART ABOUT being a traveling rep for a struggling replacement computer parts firm was having to drive through the God-forsaken north country, which in some ways seemed to Frank Cheslo like it couldn’t possibly have changed at all over the last several thousand years. Of course, that notion was ridiculous and Frank knew it. For one thing, there were no paved roads thousands of years ago in the God-forsaken north country. Or anywhere else for that matter.

But if you used your imagination just a little, Frank thought it was easy to see exactly what this area looked like way back when, and that was something he was still trying to come to grips with. Traveling didn’t bother Frank—he had been a salesman his entire adult life and at 44 years of age that meant he had done a lot of traveling and a lot of selling over a lot of years. The thing he had a problem with at this point in his life was where he had to do that traveling.

As the newest sales rep for Computer Solutions of New England, Frank had been issued the least desirable sales territory. He understood how things worked in the corporate world and knew that before too long someone higher up in the food chain would die or retire or contract some terminal illness or move on to bigger and better things, and when that happened Frank would have the opportunity to inherit a more lucrative—and less remote—sales route.

In the meantime, though, Frank was stuck schlepping around the northeastern United States in his company-issued Ford Focus sedan. His sector of responsibility included the entire geographical area north of Boston all the way to the Canadian border which, by Frank’s calculations, wasn’t too terribly far away at the moment. For a guy who enjoyed the nightlife and the company of as many different women as he could sample since his divorce, the assignment was roughly comparable to having an eyeball sucked out of his face with a vacuum cleaner hose.

Now, to make things worse, this excruciatingly bad weather was causing Frank Cheslo to question his decision to drive all the way home to his apartment on the outskirts of Boston, rather than waiting out the storm in a motel and continuing on after the weather cleared.

He had started out in Presque Isle, Maine, after concluding his business at seven o’clock in the evening when the driving conditions were poor but not unmanageable. The intervening seven hours had seen the weather deteriorate drastically, until now it was all Frank could do to keep his car from sliding off the road in an uncontrolled spin. He prayed that wouldn’t happen because if it did, way out here in the middle of nowhere, probably no one would find him until next May.

Any thoughts of driving home had vanished in a solid wall of freezing drizzle. All Frank wanted now was to find a motel—any rotting piece of crap would do—on the side of the road and wait out the storm. But of course there were no motels because he was driving through some of the most desolate goddamned land this side of frigging Death Valley. He was currently motoring slowly along a lonely two-lane blacktop at two o’clock in the morning with no sign of human habitation in sight. Never mind motels; hell, there weren’t even any towns around as far as Frank could see.

He tried to puzzle out exactly where in the vast wilderness of northern Maine he might be, but this territory was still new to him, and he couldn’t pinpoint his location with any degree of accuracy. Goddamned company ought to provide their sales staff with GPS units, Frank thought, but of course, as was the case with small and medium sized companies everywhere, money was tight and GPS units for ordinary working stiffs just weren’t in the budget. Undoubtedly the big shots at the top of the corporate ladder had all the fancy shit in their cars, and they didn’t even drive all over New England like Frank did. Pricks.

“So here I am,” Frank muttered to himself, as was his habit, in between trying to keep his car on the road and attempting to find a radio station that would come in as anything other than toneless white noise. “I’m lost, I’m tired, and I have no freaking clue how far I am from a decent sized town. Or any town. God, I hate this job.”

Frank continued cautiously along Route 24 because, really, what choice did he have? Pull over to the side of the road and hope someone would stop and take pity on him? Not goddamned likely, especially way out here in the boonies. Another car might not come along for ten hours, especially in this weather, and if one did, it would undoubtedly just cruise on by, its owner intent on getting home and out of the storm as soon as possible.

Plus, and here was the cherry on top of the ice-storm cake, Frank’s car was dangerously low on gas. He had badly underestimated how much extra fuel it would take to drive so slowly in such poor conditions, and now he was paying the price for that miscalculation, or soon would be, anyway. Freaking job.

Tree limbs and even entire centuries-old trees were down everywhere. Frank could see shiny ice coating them and it appeared in places to be three or four inches thick. Considering the difficulty he was having just keeping his car on the pavement, Frank believed it was entirely possible that was exactly how much ice was on the branches, on the road, on the power lines, on pretty much everything.

The car’s headlights fought a losing battle against the looming blackness as gale force winds whipped rain over and around the vehicle. It rocked on its springs from the force of the heavier gusts. Frank fought the steering wheel, cursing himself under his breath for his stupidity in trying to get home tonight. He resolved to stop at the very first opportunity and sleep in the car if he had to. He would wait wherever he parked the car until the sun came out.

Frank rounded a corner and gasped as a massive upended oak tree filled his field of vision. The huge tree lay on its side blocking most of the road and he slammed on his brakes, praying the car would somehow find enough traction to come to a stop before he plowed into it. The car slewed sideways as the back end tried to pass the front. All Frank could do was hang on for dear life and hope the damage to the car would not be so extensive the tiny piece of shit stopped running.

He had a fleeting vision of himself slowly freezing to death in his disabled car, a passing motorist discovering his dead body days from now lying on the front seat, alone and stiff from rigor mortis, and then he slammed into the big tree with more force than he would have thought possible considering how slowly he had been driving. Metal crunched and shrieked, the crash sounding incredibly loud even over the screaming wind, and Frank found himself pulled taut against his safety belt for what seemed like hours but was probably only a second or two. Then everything stopped and silence covered the accident scene like a wet blanket; even the wind seemed to subside for a moment.

Frank sat absolutely still for a few seconds, taking unconscious inventory and discovering to his surprise and delight that none of his body parts seemed to be broken. His chest hurt when he took an experimental deep breath and he figured the upper-body restraint portion of the safety belt must have bruised his sternum. Under the circumstances, Frank decided, he had been damn lucky.

Of course, now that the accident was over and Frank was alive and more or less unhurt, the concept of luck seemed relative. He was okay physically—if you excluded his frantically thudding heart and the adrenaline now coursing through his body—but unless the damage to his car was a lot less serious than it appeared at first glance, he was going to be stuck here in the middle of nowhere in freezing temperatures at two o’clock in the morning. Wonderful.

Frank’s hands shook as he grasped the key in the ignition. He wondered whether the shaking was from the adrenaline rush or from the possibility of being stranded here for who knows how long. He wasn’t a religious man, but he said a quick prayer—more like a desperate non-denominational plea just in case someone up above might be paying attention, as unlikely as that seemed—and turned the key.

The Focus’s engine had stalled when the car slammed into the fallen tree, but now it started up on the first try and purred like a kitten. There was no guarantee it would continue to run, of course, what with the fact that the front grill seemed to be crumpled backward into the engine compartment, but Frank took the fact that the damned thing started at all as a very encouraging sign.

He pictured important fluids spraying out of the engine as he sat doing nothing and decided he’d better find out if the car would actually move. Frank could see a miniscule opening on the far side of the two-lane road between the downed tree and the edge of the thick forest that looked like the car might be able to squeeze through. Branches tumbled across it but they looked relatively small, and Frank thought if he got up a little bit of speed and tried to crash through that the car might actually make it. He had no idea what hazards the road held beyond the tree of course but at the moment was focused only on getting out of his current predicament. Everything else could wait.

Frank shifted into reverse and eased his foot down on the accelerator. The transmission caught with an audible THUNK, and the Focus lurched backward away from the tree trunk. Something screeched under the car’s frame and then stopped. Frank realized he was sweating, although the temperature inside the car’s cabin had already begun dropping.

Now that the car was moving backward, Frank was hesitant to stop in order to shift into drive. He had an irrational fear that if he changed anything he was doing at this very moment, anything at all, the damaged car would give up the ghost; it would simply sputter to a halt and go belly up right there in the middle of the road, never to move again.

He said another quick makeshift prayer to the same unknown being who had answered his first one, and then stepped on the brake. The car shuddered and ground to a halt, the brake pedal vibrating violently. Frank took aim at the opening on the far side of the road—it looked a lot smaller all of a sudden—and stomped on the gas. He knew he needed to build up enough speed to blast through the branches if he wanted to avoid getting stuck in the tangled mess.

The Focus hit the upper portion of the tree doing close to thirty, a dangerous speed on these icy roads even if he wasn’t navigating directly into a downed hardwood tree. Frank put the odds at roughly fifty-fifty that he would spin off the road into the woods and end up even worse off than he already was but figured worrying about that was irrelevant now because he was committed.

The car rocked and squealed as branches grabbed at its front and sides like the grasping dead hands of a band of marauding zombies. A particularly large branch smashed into the windshield and cracks spider webbed in front of his eyes as Frank instinctively ducked. He kept going. The car was slowing rapidly with the tree clutching and grabbing, unwilling to give up its newfound prize.

Then he was through. The little Focus burst through the tiny opening just as Frank had hoped it would, and even though the car slewed dangerously on the ice, miracle of miracles, it was sliding into the middle of the road, not the woods. Finally, Frank had caught a break!

His stomach felt like he had eaten too much of his grandmother’s chili and sweat poured down his face. He realized he had been holding his breath and he chuckled tensely, his voice sounding strangled and foreign. The road ahead appeared relatively clear, at least for the short distance he could see, and Frank allowed himself a glimmer of hope that maybe things were going to work out okay after all.

He straightened the car out, pointed the crumpled nose down the middle of the deserted road, stepped on the accelerator, and—

—And the car ran out of gas. The engine sputtered and coughed, sounding exactly like his mother’s Craftsman lawn mower when he forgot to fill the tank before cutting her grass. It almost died, caught for a second, almost died again, caught again, the little car lurching comically, before finally giving up and shutting down altogether, rebuking Frank with one final angry BANG!

He guided the disabled vehicle to a stop as far on to the shoulder as possible, not sure exactly why he was doing so. It wasn’t like a caravan of vehicles was likely to come charging down the road, smashing into his piece of shit little car. He tried to recall how long it had been since he had seen any other motorist and realized he couldn’t. It had been hours, and the storm wasn’t abating at all. If anything, its fury seemed to be intensifying.

He pounded his fists on the steering wheel in frustration. It was so unfair! He had worked his way out of a dangerous frigging situation and the moment he did he was beaten down by fate. As usual. Frank felt like it was a pretty fair representation of his whole trip. He had driven ten long hours up to Presque Isle and sold less than half of the hard drives and other computer components he needed to unload to break even, and then he had to fight the worsening storm the whole way back and now this.

Plus, Frank was getting cold. The temperature inside the car was beginning to drop noticeably, and it had only been a few minutes since he had struck the tree, setting this fiasco into motion. Frank kept a bag filled with supplies in his trunk for just this type of situation, and although he had never needed it before, he was thankful he had had the foresight to prepare for a worst-case scenario.

Getting to his bag was going to be a bitch, though, in this weather. Frank pulled on his light jacket and prepared to get drenched. His heavy winter parka, the one with the fur-lined hood that he could zip until it enclosed almost his entire face, was packed away in the trunk along with the rest of his supplies because he hated driving with such a big, bulky coat on.

Cursing fate one last time for emphasis, Frank opened the door. At least most of the major damage seemed to be limited to the right side of the car rather than the left. He wasn’t sure the passenger door would even open, crunched up as it was, but the door on his side was untouched and opened smoothly.

Rain poured in, soaking his head and neck and running under his shirt, down his chest and back. It was unbelievably cold; it took his breath away. He leapt from the car and staggered back to the trunk, fighting the gusty winds every step of the way. The freezing rain appeared to be flying sideways, and Frank wondered how long it would be before another tree fell across the road, crushing him like a bug and finally putting him out of his misery. Probably not before he had suffered long and hard, he decided.

He popped the trunk and pulled out the duffel bag containing his emergency gear. He yanked it clear and began trudging back toward the driver’s side door which he had foolishly left open, allowing the rain to soak the interior of the car. Frank shook his head in disgust and out of the corner of his eye saw what he would have sworn was a flash of dull red off to the right, moving rapidly through the woods.

A split second later, a sharp crack! echoed through the wind and freezing rain. It seemed to Frank like the noise originated in the general vicinity of that flash of red he wasn’t even sure he had just seen. It was loud, almost like the sound of thunder. But of course it wasn’t the sound of thunder; it couldn’t be. This wasn’t a thunderstorm.

Frank stopped in his tracks, a feeling of irrational dread filling his gut. Something was out there, just out of sight in the woods, and it seemed to Frank’s feverish mind to be tracking him. A bear, maybe? He had heard that black bears could be vicious and this was definitely black bear territory. Whatever it was, he was making himself too easy a target standing still in the driving rain and wind like an idiot.

He turned toward the open driver’s side door, and when he did he ran headlong into a gigantic figure. It appeared almost but not quite human and was monstrously large, clad in a tattered reddish-plaid wool hunting coat and soaking-wet, muddy jeans.

Frank let out a yelp of surprise and jumped back instinctively. He opened his mouth to say, “Thank God, I need some help here,” and then realized the man—if it even was a man—was staring at him, staring through him really, with eyes black and dead and devoid of any spark of life. They looked to Frank like the eyes of a shark sizing up its prey.

Panic took over and Frank turned to sprint in the opposite direction, away from the thing with the shark eyes that may or may not be a man. This would take him away from the shelter of the car, but Frank didn’t care. He wasn’t thinking about cars or shelter or anything else at the moment. Right now, all that mattered was getting away from that awful shambling thing behind him.

Three running steps later, the thing pulled him off the ground from behind, grabbing his jacket with two hands and lifting him high into the air. How that was even possible, Frank had no idea. He was a large man, tipping the scales at well over two hundred pounds. He couldn’t believe how quickly the monstrosity moved, especially considering its massive bulk. The thing had to be close to seven feet tall if it was an inch.

Frank looked down at the thing and decided it definitely resembled a gigantic beast now more than an actual human being, although its features seemed semi-human. Its hair was greasy and stringy and unwashed and its beard was the same. Clumps of straw and dead grass protruded at odd angles out of that shaggy hair, nestled securely into the tangled mess despite the high winds and driving rain.

The dark, red, wool coat hung unbuttoned, flapping loosely off the giant’s frame in the shrieking wind, and its jeans were torn and filthy. The thing hefted a terrified Frank Cheslo onto its shoulder, letting go of him momentarily but only to adjust its grip. It then lifted Frank high above its head and slammed him down onto the pavement.

Frank’s head bounced off the hard surface with a sickening wet SMACK! Bright lights flashed and danced in his vision, and he had a vague notion of blood splattering and mixing with the icy wetness in the road. It was an impressive amount of blood, and Frank realized it was all his blood. The pain was immense and the computer parts salesman kicked once, violently, and then his own internal hard drive failed and he was still.