CHAPTER THREE
The mangy black cat limped across the road. Its yellow eyes scanned up and down, stringy fur clinging to its body. It stretched its mouth in a yawn, exposing its two remaining incisors to the air, before snapping its jaw back shut with a metallic sound. It growled as it pondered its empty stomach. Suddenly its head jerked up and peered into the fog. It could hear something approaching. The cat yowled and all but flew off the road.
It was several seconds before the sounds of footsteps and panting could be heard, and a few more before Rachel emerged from the fog, fighting the grip of exhaustion as she ran at was what barely more than normal walking pace. Her steel-toed sneakers slapped against the ground and her joints creaked. But all the same, the writer's eyes lit up as she saw what was in front of her, finally coming out of the infinite mist.
Her van.
Rachel made it to the front of the vehicle and collapsed against it, wheezing as the final iota of strength went out of her legs. After a second, she flipped and pressed her back against the metal of the van, eyes darting about.
Nothing.
Rachel's shuddering gasps of air shook her entire body as she slid down the vehicle's side, face red from running. "God," she gasped, without realizing it. "Sweet jesus of god, oh my god, oh dear mother of christ - what was that thing, what in the name of heavenly lord oh my god oh my god oh my god, oh sweet - "
From deep inside her van, something stirred. Rachel blinked, broken out of her trance. She looked down and saw that she had moved into a cross-legged position, hands subconsciously rolling her sleeves back down and playing with the buttons. She snapped her hands back, holding that position for a moment, before finally buttoning up the sleeves. She slowly stood up, leaning against the van before casting an eye through the window inside. She could identify the sound now.
The van's radio was spewing static.
Rachel opened the door and kneeled on the seat, curious despite herself. She fiddled with the radio's knob, but nothing came of it; it continued to hiss and spackle quietly. She shook her head. This was not the time! - she had a reason for being here.
Edge of town. Rachel had no logical reason to think there would be more of the thing she killed, but...the town was deserted. It was colder than summer should ever be. Something was wrong with Silent Hill. She didn't know how what, or why, but it was dangerous and she had to get away. Rachel wished she could remember what had happened today before she had crashed...everywhere else could be just like this. She could only hope not...
The static was getting louder, and Rachel tried to turn the radio off. No luck, it must have been broken in the crash. "Fucking fuck," she mumbled, in a bad mood. Walking along the highway did not sound like her idea of fun, however preferable to braving the town it was, especially now that night was ever closer - she checked her watch. Under an hour. At least it wouldn't be hard to follow...
She yanked the keys out of the ignition and stepped out of the van, not bothering to close the door. She came around to the back of the minivan and opened the hatchback, looking inside. She usually kept a few things in the back for the sake of vehicle-related emergencies, as well as any other assorted bits of crap that could find their way back there. Rachel's eyes scanned the back.
Spare tire? No. She pushed it aside. A baby blue blanket? Certainly not. She flung it out of the back of the minivan, not watching as it slowly settled towards the ground. A sturdy black flashlight caught her eye, the sort you can hold in one hand with the soft rubber button on the side. Maybe a club...no. Too light. She gave it a shove and it rolled to the rightmost of the inside of the vehicle. A pamphlet? Yeah, that sounds like an idea, papercut them to -
"Yes!" It had been hidden under the pamphlet. Lying seductively, its stainless steel surface glinting at her lovingly, was a heavy tire iron. Rachel grabbed it by the end and smacked the rounded opposite into her palm. "Yeah," she mumbled to no one, not even herself. "Just in case I meet another of them...but I won't, I won't cause I won't and I'll be gone...
"...just in case." The woman looked up, throwing her gaze all about her, as if afraid of tempting fate. She noticed something small and white out of her peripheral vision, almost imperceptible against the light fog. Her head snapped back, but it was tiny and lifeless - just a white dot drifting out of the sky...
She reached out a hand and it landed in her palm, making no effort to dodge. It disappeared in a split second, but she knew what it was. A snowflake.
Late August, and it was snowing...and...why did she care?! This town was going to kill her! Why in god's name should she give a rat's ass about snow? The ground could turn to rusty grates for all she cared, she was going to die if she stayed here! Before she had a gun and barely survived, if another of those things came at her, tire iron or no -
Rachel turned outwards, along the highway and away from Silent Hill. She took one last look around - as if she could see anything through this fog - and started a brisk walk. Her footsteps went out into the world. Her footsteps were quick.
And then, slower.
Then they slowed again, hesitant, barely drifting forward.
And then, they finally stopped - with the road. Rachel stared forward, eyes dead and unseeing, mind blown by what was before her. She had driven into town in this highway. She had to. She could see the skid marks from her tires on the road right up to what she was staring at. It wasn't possible, it couldn't...
The road was blocked by a giant cement wall, like the sort you'd see in a bunker. Rachel was ready to cry. How? How could this actually exist? She had to have driven through this wall earlier this day! It wasn't just put up, she could see - it was pockmarked, with weird greasy red-brown stains and weeds sprouting up from its feet. There was even graffiti here and there; mostly the requisite oh-look-at-me-I-want-attention expletives, although there was one exception: spray-painted on with red paint. A larger circle with a slightly smaller circle inside, and three circles in a position wherein they would make up three points of a triangle. It was decorated further with various symbols, which may or may not have been part of the original design or added on later as independent graffiti. It was an interesting symbol, actually; though Rachel was in no position to care. She was rather more interested with the fact that her way out of town was blocked and she was going to die.
"What...?" she murmured to herself. "What am I...oh my god, I'm going to die in this place - " Rachel suddenly looked up at a faint noise. She whirled, looking behind her. It was from her minivan, dimly visible through the fog and light snow - the static that was coming out of her radio earlier. A snowflake settled on the side of her nose and melted. She didn't notice. She slowly walked forward. There was more than white noise coming from the radio, she could hear. Dimly, below the hissing and crackling there was something slight, barely there - something high, tinny...sort of like a screech or, maybe san air raid siren?...
Rachel reached the car, leaning against the side and slowly bringing her head forward towards the open door, ears straining. There was more to static and sirens in the sound, which by now had grown very loud. In fact, they seemed to merge together, somehow, in some way that wasn't quite random - and Rachel couldn't be sure, but somehow, they sounded purposeful, almost like words -
WHAM! The sound went off as loud as a gunshot, right by Rachel's ear. The woman threw herself backwards in sudden shock, landing hard on her rear as she looked up. Something was on top of her minivan - something had landed on her minivan, as if it had jumped or been thrown - and it had hit hard enough to buckle the metal roof. Rachel stared up at it, standing against the backdrop of the white snow-speckled fog sky.
It looked, in a word, bloated, though sickening, demonic, ghastly, deformed or horrifying would do in a pinch. It had no head that she could see, just a chunky rounded lump splattered with blood. No arms either - or more specifically, they ended in shattered stumps just halfway down the upper arm, ribbons of red flesh trailing from snapped bones. The torso was outrageously fat and round, shaped like a light bulb with the bulbous end downward, force of the mass straining against the skin of the gut. It shifted and Rachel could see that it only stuck out the front - the back was flat, bony. Near but not quite at the bottom two huge, muscular legs extended, thicker than tree trunks. They were long, too; if the creature had a head, it would probably top out to about seven feet tall. Past the legs, the entire bottom of the creature ended in one huge, ragged hole, blood dripping from its lips and painting the inside of its legs. The flesh, save for the blood splattered ends of the neck, arms and between its legs, was vibrant and pink and healthy and plump.
It jumped off the van's roof - muscle under the skin of those gigantic legs rippling as it did so - and headed straight downwards towards Rachel. She rolled to the side, feeling the road's occasional pieces of a gravel poke into her back, as the two legs slammed into the highway where she had been. She could feel the shockwave. She scrambled to her feet, eyes locked onto the monster. She didn't even get the chance to turn to run before it lifted one leg and fired its grossly huge, four-toed foot at her. It slammed into her abdomen and threw her into the side of the van, hard. She had the distinct impression her lower body was being crushed as her lungs completely failed. Every ounce of oxygen was driven out of her chest and she couldn't get any of it back.
Desperately the woman threw herself off the side of the van, swinging her tire iron downward and bringing the round end into the shoulder of the creature. She swung it again, fast, this time from the side to smack solidly into the protruding gut of the being. It stumbled backwards, shaking, and Rachel took a step forward with her tire iron ready to strike. But then its entire body flinched at once, in one giant spasm, before it stood rock still. Rachel jumped forward, landing in front of it and was about to drive the end of the tire iron into its gut again when the entire hole in the bottom of it suddenly exploded in fresh blackish blood. She looked down instinctively, feeling it slap against the bottom of her pants, as something suddenly erupted from the hole - what appeared to be the bloody top half of a human torso, still attached to the round gut - as if someone had been hiding inside and decided to stick their head out to say hello. There wasn't much out beyond the head and two clawed arms. The upside-down upper torso looked up at her as she stared open-mouthed and apparently reacted much faster than her, as it took the opportunity to grab her by the calves and yank.
Rachel, still breathless, fell flat on her back. The upside-down segment of the creature screamed or squealed - some high pitched whining noise, anyway - as it hung from between the legs of the bloated original. The original, on the other hand, remained silent as it bent its legs. Somehow the woman could predict what it was going to do and pushed herself backwards with both arms, sliding across the ground. She struggled to bring air into her lungs; she able to take in small breaths, but it was nowhere near her normal capacity and black spots were forming in her vision.
The bloated monstrosity flung itself forward, body slamming her. Rachel had managed to move herself out of the direct line of fire, saving herself from being crushed, but not totally. Some few hundred pounds of flesh slammed down on her legs, pinning her on the spot. She tried to yank her legs out from under the squirming mass but couldn't. Furiously, she sat up and took the tire iron in both hands, flipping it. She moved the sharp, pointed end meant for prying off the hubcap downwards and stabbed it into the blob, piercing its skin. Brackish black goo, wholly unlike the (almost comforting in comparison) red blood that coloured its arms, neck and groin, bubbled up from under the wound and dribbled down the back. The monster quaked and rolled off of Rachel, who rolled to her feet before the upper torso had a chance to grab her. Gritting her teeth in a frenzy, she drew her foot back and drove the steel toe of her sneaker into the side of the its bloated gut. She could feel something deep inside its belly crack and collapse under the might of her sweatshop merchandise, and drew back her foot again. The third kick split its skin, spitting black bile over the street, and after the sixth the creature had been reduced to a twitching, quivering heap. Rachel dropped to her knees and brought her tire iron down, hard, on the thing. The fleshball fell silent.
Gasping and on the verge of unconsciousness, the novelist pushed herself to her feet and rested her forehead against the cool metal of the vehicle. After a minute the black went out of her vision, and she began to see one of everything again (although the crushing migraine still did not leave). Closing her eyes, she appeared to think for a minute before she traveled to the back of her hatchback and opened up. She shot another look down the hallway - the wall was invisible, indistinguishable in the oppressive rolling clouds of fog, but she couldn't doubt it was still there. She turned back to the open hatchback and withdrew the flashlight, checking the batteries.
She would need it. Night was coming.
Rachel, visibly shaking, sighed loudly and stalked past the van, not bothering to close the hatchback. She also deliberately drove her gaze away from the motionless corpse of the bloated creature. As she passed by the driver's seat door, she realized something.
She shot a look in through the open doorway, though her evidence was not sight but sound, or rather the lack of it. The static had stopped. She stared and started to open the door wider, but two things stopped her. The first was that the static suddenly swelled against form the radio, although this time not nearly as loud. The second is that something grabbed her ankle.
Rachel whirled and tried to yank her foot away, but the grip held firm - a red, clawed hand wrapped around like iron, attached to the skinny and bloody arm of the upper torso that had previously been sticking out from between the Bloated's (which was what Rachel had begun to term them) legs. It opened its head, thin and angular, impossibly wide - like that of a snake - exposing two rows of long, razor-like straight knives of teeth that bit down onto her sneaker. The steel toe held for the time being; needle points piercing the rubber but scraping along the metal. Rachel could see that the creature really didn't advance beyond the upper torso after all - at the point where the sternum would be on a normal human being the skin was ripped into long shreds that trailed on the ground behind it. The only thing that continued was a long, snakey tube that extended all the way back to inside the Bloated and leading up to where the belly would be. Fortunately, this mad it much lighter than the Bloated had been.
Rachel tried to yank her foot out of the demon's mouth, but it held on. That was when she swung her foot to the side, slamming it against the side of the van. That was when it let go of her foot, falling to the ground with another of its high squeals. The novelist brought up her shoe and drove her heel down into the back of its head. There was a crunching noise and it dropped dead.
Rachel stood there, staring down at the dead creature without a sound. After a second or two, she turned her eyes up to the sky.
But only drifting snowflakes answered her gaze, slowly making their way toward her.
The mangy black cat limped across the road. Its yellow eyes scanned up and down, stringy fur clinging to its body. It stretched its mouth in a yawn, exposing its two remaining incisors to the air, before snapping its jaw back shut with a metallic sound. It growled as it pondered its empty stomach. Suddenly its head jerked up and peered into the fog. It could hear something approaching. The cat yowled and all but flew off the road.
It was several seconds before the sounds of footsteps and panting could be heard, and a few more before Rachel emerged from the fog, fighting the grip of exhaustion as she ran at was what barely more than normal walking pace. Her steel-toed sneakers slapped against the ground and her joints creaked. But all the same, the writer's eyes lit up as she saw what was in front of her, finally coming out of the infinite mist.
Her van.
Rachel made it to the front of the vehicle and collapsed against it, wheezing as the final iota of strength went out of her legs. After a second, she flipped and pressed her back against the metal of the van, eyes darting about.
Nothing.
Rachel's shuddering gasps of air shook her entire body as she slid down the vehicle's side, face red from running. "God," she gasped, without realizing it. "Sweet jesus of god, oh my god, oh dear mother of christ - what was that thing, what in the name of heavenly lord oh my god oh my god oh my god, oh sweet - "
From deep inside her van, something stirred. Rachel blinked, broken out of her trance. She looked down and saw that she had moved into a cross-legged position, hands subconsciously rolling her sleeves back down and playing with the buttons. She snapped her hands back, holding that position for a moment, before finally buttoning up the sleeves. She slowly stood up, leaning against the van before casting an eye through the window inside. She could identify the sound now.
The van's radio was spewing static.
Rachel opened the door and kneeled on the seat, curious despite herself. She fiddled with the radio's knob, but nothing came of it; it continued to hiss and spackle quietly. She shook her head. This was not the time! - she had a reason for being here.
Edge of town. Rachel had no logical reason to think there would be more of the thing she killed, but...the town was deserted. It was colder than summer should ever be. Something was wrong with Silent Hill. She didn't know how what, or why, but it was dangerous and she had to get away. Rachel wished she could remember what had happened today before she had crashed...everywhere else could be just like this. She could only hope not...
The static was getting louder, and Rachel tried to turn the radio off. No luck, it must have been broken in the crash. "Fucking fuck," she mumbled, in a bad mood. Walking along the highway did not sound like her idea of fun, however preferable to braving the town it was, especially now that night was ever closer - she checked her watch. Under an hour. At least it wouldn't be hard to follow...
She yanked the keys out of the ignition and stepped out of the van, not bothering to close the door. She came around to the back of the minivan and opened the hatchback, looking inside. She usually kept a few things in the back for the sake of vehicle-related emergencies, as well as any other assorted bits of crap that could find their way back there. Rachel's eyes scanned the back.
Spare tire? No. She pushed it aside. A baby blue blanket? Certainly not. She flung it out of the back of the minivan, not watching as it slowly settled towards the ground. A sturdy black flashlight caught her eye, the sort you can hold in one hand with the soft rubber button on the side. Maybe a club...no. Too light. She gave it a shove and it rolled to the rightmost of the inside of the vehicle. A pamphlet? Yeah, that sounds like an idea, papercut them to -
"Yes!" It had been hidden under the pamphlet. Lying seductively, its stainless steel surface glinting at her lovingly, was a heavy tire iron. Rachel grabbed it by the end and smacked the rounded opposite into her palm. "Yeah," she mumbled to no one, not even herself. "Just in case I meet another of them...but I won't, I won't cause I won't and I'll be gone...
"...just in case." The woman looked up, throwing her gaze all about her, as if afraid of tempting fate. She noticed something small and white out of her peripheral vision, almost imperceptible against the light fog. Her head snapped back, but it was tiny and lifeless - just a white dot drifting out of the sky...
She reached out a hand and it landed in her palm, making no effort to dodge. It disappeared in a split second, but she knew what it was. A snowflake.
Late August, and it was snowing...and...why did she care?! This town was going to kill her! Why in god's name should she give a rat's ass about snow? The ground could turn to rusty grates for all she cared, she was going to die if she stayed here! Before she had a gun and barely survived, if another of those things came at her, tire iron or no -
Rachel turned outwards, along the highway and away from Silent Hill. She took one last look around - as if she could see anything through this fog - and started a brisk walk. Her footsteps went out into the world. Her footsteps were quick.
And then, slower.
Then they slowed again, hesitant, barely drifting forward.
And then, they finally stopped - with the road. Rachel stared forward, eyes dead and unseeing, mind blown by what was before her. She had driven into town in this highway. She had to. She could see the skid marks from her tires on the road right up to what she was staring at. It wasn't possible, it couldn't...
The road was blocked by a giant cement wall, like the sort you'd see in a bunker. Rachel was ready to cry. How? How could this actually exist? She had to have driven through this wall earlier this day! It wasn't just put up, she could see - it was pockmarked, with weird greasy red-brown stains and weeds sprouting up from its feet. There was even graffiti here and there; mostly the requisite oh-look-at-me-I-want-attention expletives, although there was one exception: spray-painted on with red paint. A larger circle with a slightly smaller circle inside, and three circles in a position wherein they would make up three points of a triangle. It was decorated further with various symbols, which may or may not have been part of the original design or added on later as independent graffiti. It was an interesting symbol, actually; though Rachel was in no position to care. She was rather more interested with the fact that her way out of town was blocked and she was going to die.
"What...?" she murmured to herself. "What am I...oh my god, I'm going to die in this place - " Rachel suddenly looked up at a faint noise. She whirled, looking behind her. It was from her minivan, dimly visible through the fog and light snow - the static that was coming out of her radio earlier. A snowflake settled on the side of her nose and melted. She didn't notice. She slowly walked forward. There was more than white noise coming from the radio, she could hear. Dimly, below the hissing and crackling there was something slight, barely there - something high, tinny...sort of like a screech or, maybe san air raid siren?...
Rachel reached the car, leaning against the side and slowly bringing her head forward towards the open door, ears straining. There was more to static and sirens in the sound, which by now had grown very loud. In fact, they seemed to merge together, somehow, in some way that wasn't quite random - and Rachel couldn't be sure, but somehow, they sounded purposeful, almost like words -
WHAM! The sound went off as loud as a gunshot, right by Rachel's ear. The woman threw herself backwards in sudden shock, landing hard on her rear as she looked up. Something was on top of her minivan - something had landed on her minivan, as if it had jumped or been thrown - and it had hit hard enough to buckle the metal roof. Rachel stared up at it, standing against the backdrop of the white snow-speckled fog sky.
It looked, in a word, bloated, though sickening, demonic, ghastly, deformed or horrifying would do in a pinch. It had no head that she could see, just a chunky rounded lump splattered with blood. No arms either - or more specifically, they ended in shattered stumps just halfway down the upper arm, ribbons of red flesh trailing from snapped bones. The torso was outrageously fat and round, shaped like a light bulb with the bulbous end downward, force of the mass straining against the skin of the gut. It shifted and Rachel could see that it only stuck out the front - the back was flat, bony. Near but not quite at the bottom two huge, muscular legs extended, thicker than tree trunks. They were long, too; if the creature had a head, it would probably top out to about seven feet tall. Past the legs, the entire bottom of the creature ended in one huge, ragged hole, blood dripping from its lips and painting the inside of its legs. The flesh, save for the blood splattered ends of the neck, arms and between its legs, was vibrant and pink and healthy and plump.
It jumped off the van's roof - muscle under the skin of those gigantic legs rippling as it did so - and headed straight downwards towards Rachel. She rolled to the side, feeling the road's occasional pieces of a gravel poke into her back, as the two legs slammed into the highway where she had been. She could feel the shockwave. She scrambled to her feet, eyes locked onto the monster. She didn't even get the chance to turn to run before it lifted one leg and fired its grossly huge, four-toed foot at her. It slammed into her abdomen and threw her into the side of the van, hard. She had the distinct impression her lower body was being crushed as her lungs completely failed. Every ounce of oxygen was driven out of her chest and she couldn't get any of it back.
Desperately the woman threw herself off the side of the van, swinging her tire iron downward and bringing the round end into the shoulder of the creature. She swung it again, fast, this time from the side to smack solidly into the protruding gut of the being. It stumbled backwards, shaking, and Rachel took a step forward with her tire iron ready to strike. But then its entire body flinched at once, in one giant spasm, before it stood rock still. Rachel jumped forward, landing in front of it and was about to drive the end of the tire iron into its gut again when the entire hole in the bottom of it suddenly exploded in fresh blackish blood. She looked down instinctively, feeling it slap against the bottom of her pants, as something suddenly erupted from the hole - what appeared to be the bloody top half of a human torso, still attached to the round gut - as if someone had been hiding inside and decided to stick their head out to say hello. There wasn't much out beyond the head and two clawed arms. The upside-down upper torso looked up at her as she stared open-mouthed and apparently reacted much faster than her, as it took the opportunity to grab her by the calves and yank.
Rachel, still breathless, fell flat on her back. The upside-down segment of the creature screamed or squealed - some high pitched whining noise, anyway - as it hung from between the legs of the bloated original. The original, on the other hand, remained silent as it bent its legs. Somehow the woman could predict what it was going to do and pushed herself backwards with both arms, sliding across the ground. She struggled to bring air into her lungs; she able to take in small breaths, but it was nowhere near her normal capacity and black spots were forming in her vision.
The bloated monstrosity flung itself forward, body slamming her. Rachel had managed to move herself out of the direct line of fire, saving herself from being crushed, but not totally. Some few hundred pounds of flesh slammed down on her legs, pinning her on the spot. She tried to yank her legs out from under the squirming mass but couldn't. Furiously, she sat up and took the tire iron in both hands, flipping it. She moved the sharp, pointed end meant for prying off the hubcap downwards and stabbed it into the blob, piercing its skin. Brackish black goo, wholly unlike the (almost comforting in comparison) red blood that coloured its arms, neck and groin, bubbled up from under the wound and dribbled down the back. The monster quaked and rolled off of Rachel, who rolled to her feet before the upper torso had a chance to grab her. Gritting her teeth in a frenzy, she drew her foot back and drove the steel toe of her sneaker into the side of the its bloated gut. She could feel something deep inside its belly crack and collapse under the might of her sweatshop merchandise, and drew back her foot again. The third kick split its skin, spitting black bile over the street, and after the sixth the creature had been reduced to a twitching, quivering heap. Rachel dropped to her knees and brought her tire iron down, hard, on the thing. The fleshball fell silent.
Gasping and on the verge of unconsciousness, the novelist pushed herself to her feet and rested her forehead against the cool metal of the vehicle. After a minute the black went out of her vision, and she began to see one of everything again (although the crushing migraine still did not leave). Closing her eyes, she appeared to think for a minute before she traveled to the back of her hatchback and opened up. She shot another look down the hallway - the wall was invisible, indistinguishable in the oppressive rolling clouds of fog, but she couldn't doubt it was still there. She turned back to the open hatchback and withdrew the flashlight, checking the batteries.
She would need it. Night was coming.
Rachel, visibly shaking, sighed loudly and stalked past the van, not bothering to close the hatchback. She also deliberately drove her gaze away from the motionless corpse of the bloated creature. As she passed by the driver's seat door, she realized something.
She shot a look in through the open doorway, though her evidence was not sight but sound, or rather the lack of it. The static had stopped. She stared and started to open the door wider, but two things stopped her. The first was that the static suddenly swelled against form the radio, although this time not nearly as loud. The second is that something grabbed her ankle.
Rachel whirled and tried to yank her foot away, but the grip held firm - a red, clawed hand wrapped around like iron, attached to the skinny and bloody arm of the upper torso that had previously been sticking out from between the Bloated's (which was what Rachel had begun to term them) legs. It opened its head, thin and angular, impossibly wide - like that of a snake - exposing two rows of long, razor-like straight knives of teeth that bit down onto her sneaker. The steel toe held for the time being; needle points piercing the rubber but scraping along the metal. Rachel could see that the creature really didn't advance beyond the upper torso after all - at the point where the sternum would be on a normal human being the skin was ripped into long shreds that trailed on the ground behind it. The only thing that continued was a long, snakey tube that extended all the way back to inside the Bloated and leading up to where the belly would be. Fortunately, this mad it much lighter than the Bloated had been.
Rachel tried to yank her foot out of the demon's mouth, but it held on. That was when she swung her foot to the side, slamming it against the side of the van. That was when it let go of her foot, falling to the ground with another of its high squeals. The novelist brought up her shoe and drove her heel down into the back of its head. There was a crunching noise and it dropped dead.
Rachel stood there, staring down at the dead creature without a sound. After a second or two, she turned her eyes up to the sky.
But only drifting snowflakes answered her gaze, slowly making their way toward her.