There was no reply. Kenny lifted his hand up and banged it down hard on the shiny metal of the car hood, an inch away from the animal, accompanying it with a shout. It didn’t move. He backed off, afraid now.

The cat opened its mouth once more, and instead of a voice there was a dull growl, a vibrating, retching noise that was too loud and too low in frequency to come from the animal itself. The men stumbled back as the tiny body of the feline bulged for a moment, then gaped its jaws as a black sticky ooze exploded from its mouth, splattering onto the windshield with breathtaking velocity and force. The ooze hardened, rising into a glistening, crackling, insane form that was black ice.

Black ice with jaws that yawned and split. Black ice with talons that sliced and slashed. A heaving, writhing serpentine materialization of hate, that quivered for only a second before it speared the two men through with razor-sharp barbs that ripped and pulverized as they penetrated the flesh.

The older man’s face attempted a scream as the rapier of ice that had slit him withdrew, pulling the hot contents of his upper body with it, to spill viscously out into the snow. But the scream never happened, since his head was split in two by a second blow that cut it neatly below the nose. The attempted noise died in the O of the mouth that was left on its own, the decoration on a bowl of flesh whose contents were seeping grey and red brains.

The younger man was dead before he could react. The black glittering talons caught him under the chin and while the spear of ice held his quivering body, the claws wrenched his head off with one smooth movement. It turned once in the air, then bounced on the roof of the car, rolled down and landed at Wilber’s feet. The Indian was collapsed against the back wheel now, dribbling through clenched teeth, and letting the hot urine that was pissing down his leg run into the snow beneath him.

The abomination let its prey drop and engulfed the car, sweeping over either side, scraping the metal with its hellish fluid yet solid body, and reforming before Wilber, whose snot was running over a trembling lip. It had a voice, and the voice was the low thrumming of turning abattoir blades, the suppressed screams of the tortured, the triumphant bellow of the demented killer.

41

The cold snout of the dog poked into his face, nudging him twice before leaving him with a sandpaper lick. His eyes opened and he tried to focus as flakes of snow, grey against a grey sky, tumbled down towards his iris. He blinked as one found its target. Where was he? He tried to lift his head from its pillow of snow, but his numb body ached in protest.

‘What ya doin’, mister?’