The Shuddering

here. If they didn’t starve, they’d freeze. And if those two fates didn’t get them first, the beasts that lingered in the trees would.
    Jane turned to face the living room. Ryan was sitting next to the fireplace, occasionally poking the last of a burning log. Sawyer sat on the couch, his gaze fixed on the gun she had found. It rested on top of the coffee table, loaded and ready next to the knives, though that gun didn’t make her feel much better after the display she’d witnessed a few hours before. They were speaking in low tones, trying to come up with a plan, their conversation dwindling every time she got too close. And while a part of her wanted to be involved in every aspect of their escape, hermaternal instinct pushed her into the kitchen, focused on what it would take to keep them alive while they were inside the cabin rather than what they would do once they left.
    She moved past the pantry, knowing there was nothing of use in there. After an hour of sitting in that room, she could recite the contents of each shelf by heart, and none of it would take them out further than a few days. She entered the laundry room, pulling open the cabinets that had always served as a catchall, and Jane found everything from extra paper towels to a sealed five-pack of Colgate, but no food. She sat down on the floor. It was ironic. The last time she had swung by Costco, she had stopped in front of an end cap stocked full of emergency freeze-dried food. She had rolled her eyes at it, thinking about how ridiculous some people were with all of that end-of-the-world crap. And yet here she was, cursing herself for not buying that stupid box when she had the chance. It would have kept them sufficiently fed for weeks, long enough for help to come, or at least for some of the snow to melt from the road. All they had now was a few days’ worth of groceries, all refrigerated—stuff she had bought to make dinner for everyone—and half of that stuff would be too far gone to eat in a few days, let alone in a week.
    She pulled herself to her feet, then froze.
    The light overhead flickered once, then twice.
    Outside, the wind wailed.
    Every muscle in Ryan’s body tensed when the house went dim before blazing bright again. He slowly got to his feet, as if tiptoeing would keep the cabin from throwing up its arms and declaring a blackout. Swiping the gun from the coffee table, he slid it into the waistband of his jeans as a particularly violent gust of wind rattled the windows, sending the snow upward in ghostlike tendrils before releasing it back to the ground.
    He hadn’t seen a storm like this in years, and this certainly trumped the worst. He’d gone up to Whistler a few years before, hung around the Olympic Village, had a great time at the bars; then the weather took an ugly turn. A three-day snowboarding trip had turned into a six-day hotel stay, then another day trying to get things squared away at the airport. It had been a disaster, but at least it had been within the limits of civilization. That blizzard had nothing on the one that raged outside now. With it being as cold as it was, one good gust could snap frozen branches and take down trees.
    Ryan wondered whether they were the only people left alive in the area, whether the town twenty-five miles away had seen the likes of these monsters or if these things stuck to the mountains, where they knew they could outnumber their prey. What if they were truly stuck here, everyone else for miles having been devoured, the highway closed, the roads snowed in?
    There was another flicker, the electricity’s lull humming in the silence. Where the hell had he left that goddamn flashlight? He ran down the hall and toward the game room, then stopped in the doorway, his eyes darting across the pool table they had left midplay. It had been Lauren’s shot. Jane had gone to get something to drink…and April had caught something lurking in the dark.
    It became clear in a flash—the animal they had seen out the window that night hadn’t been an animal at all. It had been one of those things.
    And it had been staking them out since they’d arrived.
    The lights flickered again, then went out.
    Jane scrambled to her feet and bolted down the hall, her heart thudding against her ribs, her fear of the dark suddenly strongerthan her fear of taking a corner straight into the jaws of the enemy. But when she reached the living room, it was empty. Both boys were gone.
    Panic seized her chest.