Drifting

Chapter 8

The cold was a rabid animal, tearing at them, rending their skin with icy teeth and frozen maw. They stumbled away from the building, from the scene of madness, in no direction in particular, tramping through a circle drive in front of a dental office and cutting behind the building through another parking lot. Raising her hands away from her armpits, where she protected them, Lara shielded her eyes a moment, trying to read a street sign. There were none in sight, though she could make out the indiscriminate shapes of snow-crusted playground equipment on the other side of a chain link fence across the street.

No coats. No gloves. No hats. No backpack. No phone. And they had just done something horrible and otherworldly.

Panicked tears pricked Lara's eyes and froze against her face as she flailed her arms at Jesse in a gesture of silent, frantic confusion.

Jesse took her elbow, careful not to touch her bare hand, and guided her across the street toward the playground. When he pointed, Lara saw it — an SUV crunched up against the fence. As they neared, Lara was able to track the damage. The bashed-in front end told the story of an encounter with a nearby telephone pole, and the car had then slid into the fence over the icy pavement, bowing it inward beneath the back bumper. Neon orange ribbons hung from its broken side mirror, and the windshield was obscured with snow.

Jesse tried the driver's side door, wincing as his tender fingers touched the frozen door handle. To their collective surprise, it opened, and they slid inside, slamming the car shut against the wind.

The inside of the abandoned car was hushed, muffled, and eerily still. Lara shivered uncontrollably, her jaw clenching as her teeth ground against each other. Jesse turned in the front seat and wiggled into the back, reaching into the trunk space and rummaging around. He came up with a roadside emergency kit and unzipped it with numb fingers.

"Here." He tossed Lara a small cellophane-wrapped square. It was a space blanket. Lara opened it and shook it out. "Put it on," he said.

"Shouldn't we both—"

"I'm okay," Jesse promised. He was still wearing Mr. Norris's Carhart coveralls and had only removed his thin leather jacket when threatened by the doll hag. "Wrap up and get warm while I look through this."

Lara nodded, nestling in as best she could, the space blanket crinkling wildly.

He combed through the small blue kit for anything else they could use. "Flashlight," he said, snapping the batteries in and testing it. The beam was weak, but it worked. There was also a small first aid kit that Jesse slipped into his pocket. Lara watched him in the snow-scrim dim, her mind belching a thousand questions, but her voice too faint to bubble forth from her shivering throat.

Next, he dug through the compartment in the console between them, crammed with CD cases, pens, and ATM receipts. "Hey there," he piped up, removing a half-empty can of Pringles and a bag of gummy bears. He dipped two long fingers into the candy and stuffed a handful of colorful bears in his mouth. Grimacing, Jesse munched for a few painful moments, and then swallowed. "Frozen," he explained, and then let a laugh escape. "You," he said, "look like a foil-wrapped burrito. You are Chipotle right now."

She fixed him with a gray-steel gaze. "Jesse," she said, her words trickling out a dangerous rumble. "We just went all Carrie on some woman... and you're making Chipotle jokes? Jesus!" She shuddered, pulling the blanket tighter around herself. "What the hell was that? We did that, didn't we? How did we do that?"

"I don't know!" he snapped, irritation matching and exceeding hers. "Why do you think I would know? I've never, never seen anything like that in my entire life."