Read Online Snowblind by Michael McBride - Free Book Online Page A

was falling too hard to be able to tell for sure.
    It was next to impossible to focus on anything through the scope. The snowflakes looked like bed sheets billowing past; big white blurs that obscured all but the most generalized details.
    The wind shrieked. There was the sound again. Louder. Vibrating up from the ground and resonating in his chest like a freight train thundering past in the distance.
    More motion at the edge of the forest. This time there was no doubt.
    “Movement at twelve o’clock,” Coburn whispered. “One o’clock now. No…eleven…”
    “What do you see, Will? Tell me what you—”
    A loud roar.
    “ rrrRRaaAHHhrrr! ”
    There was no wind to conceal it this time, no mistaking it.
    A deep, feral roar that cut through the night. It grumbled like an avalanche across the clearing and left in its wake a silence so oppressive Coburn feared even to breathe.
    “Was that a bear?” Baumann whispered.
    “That didn’t sound like any kind of bear to me.”
    “Then what in God’s name—?”
    “ rrrRRaaAHHhrrr! ” from off to his left. He had barely started to turn his head toward the source when another roar answered from his right.
    A third. Directly ahead.
    “They’re coming for us,” Baumann said. His voice rose an octave. “They’re coming!”
    Another roar. Another. They echoed from the side of the mountain, making their precise origin impossible to pinpoint.
    “ rrrRRaaAHHhrrr! ”
    Shadows against the forest, barely distinguishable from the night. Mere specters darting from behind one trunk to the next.
    They were out there.
    The entire forest appeared to ripple with movement.
    “ rrrRRaaAHHhrrr! ”
    And another.
    One on top of the other.
    “ rrrRRaaAHHhrrr! ”
    Frenetic movement.
    Then sudden stillness.
    Silence settled over the entire valley. Even the wind, it seemed, hesitated to draw breath. The flakes settled like the wings of butterflies onto a placid mat of their brethren.
    Coburn’s heartbeat thudded in his ears as he scanned the tree line.
    Where did they go? They were just there. Where did they go?
    “Talk to me, Will. What do you see?”
    “Nothing.” Coburn scanned the forest, first one way, then the other. The trees faded in and out of the storm. “I can’t see a…wait.”
    A lone silhouette separated from the shadows. Large and hunched. Low to the ground. Was it a bear? He couldn’t…couldn’t quite tell. He tried to zero in on it through the scope—
    Another silhouette materialized from the woods to the right of the first.
    Another to its left.
    “Fall back,” Coburn whispered.
    “What is it? Damn it, Will! What do you—?”
    “I said fall back!”
    The lead silhouette rose to its full height and extended its long arms out to its sides. Coburn caught but the most fleeting of glimpses, but the silhouette appeared to be made from the blizzard itself. It arched its back and roared up into the sky. Clumps of snow fell from the trees behind it.
    “ rrrRRaaAHHhrrr! ”
    And then it was low to the ground and hurtling across the clearing.
    Coburn shouted and fired at the lead blur streaking through the snow.
    “Move! Move!”
    Forty feet.
    Thirty miles an hour.
    Half a second.
    They were coming too fast to hold them off.
    Coburn whirled and leapt to his feet in one motion. Embers exploded ahead of him as he kicked through the fire. He barely managed to keep from falling onto his face.
    Baumann was already exiting the rear of the main room as he entered.
    A crash behind him. The front door shuddered. Debris tumbled from the barricade and scattered around his feet.
    Grunting sounds, like someone being repeatedly punched in the gut.
    “ Umph. Umph. Umph .”
    The distinct clattering sound of nails on the roof overhead. On the bedroom window sill.
    Coburn charged through the doorway and dove through the dead saplings. He slid on his belly across the frozen ground and through the small hole into the cold storage room.
    Baumann was already shedding his backpack and