The Shuddering

when the stink finally made it across the kitchen to where she sat. Ryan swept the butcher knife off the kitchen island, the blade glinting with cold winter light. Outside, the snow continued to fall. Sawyer decided to keep his skepticism to himself, trying to convince himself that this was a good, solid plan, their only plan. But if it continued to snow, their work would be under inches of powder before any of the others could sniff it out.
    He watched Ryan lean in, hovering over the creature that had nearly taken them out, poking at the dead thing with the tip of the knife like a curious kid. The blade scraped across one of the creature’s fangs, setting Sawyer’s teeth on edge.
    “Look at the eyes,” Ryan said, noting the beads of onyx deeply set above those gaping jaws. “No eyelids. And the hands…” They nearly looked human, albeit flattened out, the fingers gruesomely crooked and long.
    “Hurry up,” Jane told them from behind a cupped palm. “It stinks.”
    “What’s this supposed to accomplish again?” Ryan asked, seemingly hesitant to hack up the thing in front of her.
    “They might have an aversion to the scent of their own blood, or the sight of their own kind dead somewhere. Some animals see the corpses of their own species as a sign of danger. They avoid it.”
    “And if these things don’t avoid it?” Ryan asked. When Jane failed to reply, he looked back down to the corpse and took a breath. “Let’s get this over with,” he said, and before Sawyer could step back, he plunged the knife into the creature’s chest. Jane gasped and looked away, but the blade hardly pierced the thing’s flesh, striking the breastbone, leaving Ryan struggling to free the knife. A moment later he straightened out of his crouch, cleared his throat, and made an announcement. “I’ll be right back,” he said. “I need to get the ax.”
    Jane’s eyes went wide.
    “ What? ” Sawyer asked, blinking at his friend. He couldn’t believe it. They had fought that thing off with fireplace tools when they could have been swinging a hatchet.
    Ryan threw his hands up in surrender. “I forgot about it,” he confessed. “It slipped my fucking mind.”
    “Are you kidding me?” Sawyer shook his head, backing away from the cadaver on the kitchen floor. “Are you sure that snowplow I asked you about doesn’t exist?”
    Ryan scoffed. “You got me. It’s there. So is the helicopter that’ll whisk us to safety. I’ll grab the keys.”
    “We could have been killed,” Sawyer insisted. “That thing nearly took off my shoulder. I mean, really?”
    “What do you want me to say?” Ryan asked. “I couldn’t take inventory of the garage that doesn’t belong to me because I was busy shitting my pants .”
    “What if it had gone after Jane?” Sawyer shot back, aggression tingeing his tone.
    “Jesus, seriously?”
    “How would you have felt if it had got her and then you remembered the ax, Ryan?”
    “Hey, guys?” Jane rose from her seat.
    “I would have been thrilled,” Ryan said. “Really happy. I’d have thrown a goddamn party.”
    “Yeah?” Sawyer challenged. “And I bet if she was outside you would have gone out there to find her, right? No matter how big of a risk.”
    Ryan’s expression wavered from defensive to guilt ridden. He looked away, and Sawyer immediately regretted going there. He knew Ryan was doing the best he could. He was trying to protect them, trying to keep his shit together despite watching Lauren get torn apart, trying to be the voice of reason while Sawyer swung from cautious to utterly reckless, ready to stomp into the snow like some kamikaze with nothing left to lose.
    “Sorry,” Sawyer said quietly.
    Ryan didn’t respond. He marched down the hallway, a flashlight beam illuminating his path.
    Sawyer and Jane were left to stare at each other. She tried to look confident, but it was obvious that she was questioning her own plan.
    “You think this will work?” Sawyer asked, if only to breach the silence, to keep himself from looking back down at the thing between them.
    “I think so,” she said after a moment, but she didn’t sound sure of herself. He supposed that was just as well. How could they be sure of anything with a nightmare lying at their feet?
    “It’s a good idea,” he said after a moment, watching her vacillate between going through with it or calling the whole thing off. “You’re right; we can use its scent to disguise ourselves. If it wasjust