Read Online Snowblind by Michael McBride - Free Book Online

jagged, bone-lined crater. Chunks of tissue, gray matter, bone, and hair clung to the wooden slats behind him. And yet there was no crimson starburst spatter.
    He stared into Shore’s eyes. Whatever intangible substance had once animated them was long gone. There was ice in the lashes. The lids were swollen. Only the lower halves of the irises showed. Coburn did everything in his power not to look away from the eyes, for they were the only part of his friend that hadn’t been mutilated. There were holes in the cheeks through which the teeth showed. The ears were gone. The neck was little more than sinew and knobby vertebrae. The muscles had been stripped from the remainder of the body. There was no belly, no organs, just a section of lumbar spine to bridge the torso and the pelvis. The meat had been sloppily torn off, leaving the curled nubs of tendons and an ice-crusted layer of frozen blood on connective tissue. What little flesh remained was ragged…ridged…the distinct impressions of teeth immortalized in the blue flesh and the deep white gouges carved into the otherwise rust-colored bones.
    “…out of it…”
    A voice cut through the ringing, as if from a great distance.
    “…damn it, Coburn!”
    He glanced up and stared through a sheen of tears. The fire came into focus, and, behind it, Baumann posted at the window, a dark silhouette against the whiteness outside, shouting.
    “Snap out of it!”
    Coburn focused again on his rifle and pointed it up through the hole. He scooted as far away from the body as he could without losing his vantage point.
    His tears froze to his cheeks as he stared up through the gracefully falling snow into the dense canopy.
    * * *
    “I can’t do this anymore,” Baumann whispered. “What are they doing out there? Why haven’t they attacked yet?”
    “They’re just toying with us. Stay focused.”
    “We should make a run for it now. While they’re off doing whatever it is they’re doing.”
    “They know this forest better than we do. We won’t get far.”
    “We aren’t getting anywhere just sitting here.”
    Baumann’s logic was inarguable.
    A gust screamed across the face of the house.
    Coburn was taking his turn at the window. The wind was blowing directly into his face, but at least it cleared the smoke and kept him from roasting in the heat. It had to be getting close to dawn. Or at least close to what passed for dawn in the shadows of the mountains and beneath the blizzard. At a guess, it had been about three hours since Shore’s corpse had been dropped through the roof, which, if his internal clock was remotely accurate, made it somewhere between three and four AM. There hadn’t been so much as a hint of movement and yet they both sensed their enemy out there in the darkness. The night positively crackled with violent potential, an electrical sensation that grew stronger and stronger with each passing second.
    Another gust of wind wailed and beneath it…a deep rumble…a vibrating sensation in the earth as much as an audible sound. Coburn couldn’t be quite certain he had heard anything at all.
    “Did you hear something?” he whispered.
    Baumann paused so long before replying that Coburn started to ask again.
    “I don’t know. Maybe.”
    The storm intensified outside. So many flakes filled the air that the forest alternately appeared and disappeared from the blizzard like a mirage. There had to be more than two feet of snow out there. Were it not for the open window and the heat from the fire, the drift might have swept all the way over the side of the house in an effort to bury it. He tried not to think about how easy it would be to simply walk up the snowy slope onto the roof.
    The wind screamed again. This time he was certain. Another sound lurked beneath it, a deep bass rumble.
    “Tell me you—”
    “Yeah. I definitely heard it that time. What do you think—?”
    “Shh.”
    Coburn thought he saw something move behind the tree line. Damn it. The snow