Snow by Ronald Malfi Read Free Book Online Page A

Wilkinson sigh.
    “What’s the score, Fred?” Todd called to him.
    “PLO-744,” Fred answered. “Louisiana plates.”
    Eddie Clement remained expressionless. If he felt any vindication, he was smart enough to know now was not the time to show it.
    “All right,” Nan called to them. “Enough of this nonsense. We’re wasting time out here. We should get to that town and let the police know there’s a little girl lost out here somewhere.”
    “That radiator won’t hold up too much longer, either,” Fred added, climbing back over the ridge of snow on the shoulder of the road. “We should get a move on.”
    Eddie remained silent. His eyes were no longer boring into Todd’s; he’d turned them away and was gazing down the road in the direction they had come. There was moisture in their corners.
    “Get back in the Jeep,” Todd told him.
    Wordlessly, Eddie turned around and marched back to the Cherokee. Again, Todd saw the twin tears at the shoulders of the man’s coat. When Eddie climbed into the Cherokee’s open door, one of the tears parted like a mouth and Todd caught a glimpse of white flesh beneath.

C HAPTER F IVE
    “There’s nothing here,” Kate said, leaning closer to peer out the windshield. The Cherokee’s remaining headlight did very little to illuminate the world around them, but what it did illuminate did not look promising. “There’s no town here. There’s nothing. ”
    “Relax,” Todd said, easing the Cherokee around the bend and down a ribbon of frozen blacktop. Dark pines loomed on either side of the road. Up ahead, where they had all been anticipating the soft glow of civilization was nothing but darkness. “There’s bound to be someone. We took the right exit.”
    “Maybe it was an old sign,” Fred said from the backseat. “Maybe Woodson doesn’t exist anymore.”
    “Stop it.” It was Nan, her voice cold and on edge. “All of you, just stop it. You’re giving me the willies.”
    The Cherokee shuddered and the dashboard lights flickered out. Todd felt the steering wheel grow rigid and uncooperative in his grasp.
    “Did the car just die?” Kate said.
    Todd cranked the wheel all the way to the right until the Cherokee bounded over a crest of snow and came to a silent demise beside a stand of towering black pines. Todd cranked the ignition but the Jeep would not start.
    Slight chuckling came from the backseat. Todd shot alook in the rearview and caught Eddie Clement’s dark, hollow-looking eyes staring right back at him. The man looked like a cadaver someone had propped up in the backseat. A chill raced down Todd’s spine.
    “Forgive me,” Kate said, turning around in her seat, “but I fail to see the humor in this. Care to fill me in?”
    Eddie Clement did not respond. Gradually, his laughter dissipated, but he never pried his eyes away from Todd’s in the rearview mirror. It was Todd who eventually looked away.
    “Now what?” asked Nan.
    “We get out and walk,” Todd said. “There’s a town somewhere up ahead and we’re going to find it. Fred, I’ve got a duffel bag behind you filled with some clothes, some bottled water, stuff like that.”
    “Check,” Fred said, already popping open his door. Freezing ice whistled into the Jeep. Not wanting to be left alone in the backseat with Eddie Clement, Nan quickly followed her husband out.
    Todd leaned closer to Kate. “Grab the flashlight and the map. Also, my laptop’s under your seat.”
    “Anything else?” She looked hopeful.
    “You don’t happen to have a portable gas stove in your purse, do you?”
    “Shoot,” she said. “It’s in my other purse.”
    They both climbed out of the Jeep. Todd went around back and helped Fred pull the duffel bag from the hatchback. Nan had already scavenged the oversized teddy bear; she clutched it now, almost childlike, to her frail chest. As she stood at the shoulder of the road, Todd could hear her teeth clattering together.
    As she tested the flashlight and folded the