The Shuddering

there and we can just shoot those damn things and bring her back inside? Will you be able to live with that?”
    After a beat of hesitation, Ryan slid the rounds into the clip and replaced it in the handle of the gun.
    “Fine,” Ryan said. “Let’s go before I change my fucking mind.”
    Jane’s entire body prickled with nerves at the thought of it—both of them going out there, regardless of how many weapons they took.
    “I’ll go by myself,” Sawyer told him.
    “Like hell you will.”
    “Who’s going to stay with Jane?” Sawyer’s gaze paused on her, and she gave him as brave a smile as she could muster.
    For a moment she wanted to insist that Ryan stay, if only to keep one of them safe. But letting Sawyer go out there on his own was suicide.
    “I’ll be okay,” she said softly, fighting the urge to fall into another fit of terrified hysterics.
    The boys shuffled out of the room to prepare themselves against the snow while Jane sank down upon the windowsill, trying to keep it together, her gaze fixed on the deer feeder in a small clearing just beyond the house. Ryan had tossed a bale of alfalfa into it just like Jane had asked, and a family of deer was slowly approaching, thankful for the food during such a storm. Jane leaned forward, her forehead kissing the glass as she watched them, their skinny legs punching holes in the snow. But her attention wavered when a single pine shuddered in the distance, followed by another, then a third. Her eyes went wide as snow fell from the trees. She opened her mouthto yell for the guys, but she couldn’t catch her breath. The deer began to bound away from the feeder, suddenly alerted to another presence, but a smaller one lagged behind. Jane’s palms hit the glass, as though knocking on the window would somehow encourage the fawn to hurry. Before she could give a startled cry, a monster leaped from the tree, pinning the deer down against the snow.
    Jane screamed, stumbling away from the window, her hands pressed over her mouth. She could hardly process what she was seeing as her heart clenched behind her ribs, unable to believe how enormous the thing’s teeth were, how utterly emaciated it was, before it was joined by a member of its pack. The newcomer shoved the first away from the deer, determined to claim the kill for its own, tearing into the animal’s jugular as Jane continued to back away, wide-eyed, her breath escaping her throat in tiny, suffocating gasps. By the time Ryan skidded back into the living room, there were four of them fighting next to the feeder, snapping their jaws at each other, their guttural squeals loud enough to hear from inside the house.
    One of the deer that had fled into the forest circled back, bursting into the clearing, terrified as it stumbled onto one of its own being attacked. And while the four creatures were busy fighting, a fifth bolted across the snow, catching the larger deer’s neck in its jaws only to tear out its throat, blood fanning out across the ground as the deer bucked beneath its attacker, desperate to get free.
    Jane muffled her cry with the palm of her hand as she twisted away, refusing to watch any more. Those things were impossible— impossible —grotesque abominations of skin and bone, exactly as Ryan had described them. She squeezed her eyes shut, willing away the knowledge that Lauren had triedto run, she had scrambled and screamed, she had stared into those gaping jaws during the last second of her life. Terrified and trembling, Jane slowly looked to Ryan, and she could see it on his face—he knew they couldn’t go out there. They’d be dead within minutes.
    A gun wasn’t going to do a damn thing.



CHAPTER TEN
    T he sun, which had been absent all day, was now setting over an invisible horizon, and the endless gray that blanketed the sky grew heavy with impending night. But the oncoming darkness made no difference; visibility was nearly zero. She could see the deck’s railing just outside the window, but beyond that, all that existed was a deluge of white. Of all the years they had lived in Denver as kids, Jane couldn’t remember ever seeing it snow this hard in the city.
    She could only imagine how deep Sawyer’s Jeep was buried now, the tracks it had made that morning probably gone. The wind howled outside, blowing snow off the railing in waves. It was one of those storms people never forgot, the kind that refused to let up until the food and firewood were gone. They were going to die