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A hinged jaw clamped shut and the snoring sound was clipped immediately. Two seconds later the jaw yawned wide open again and the enormous snoring sound poured forth—a sound that was more mechanical than human. Artificial.

I got to hand it to them, I thought. I really wasn’t expecting that.

I heard a clump and realized the gun had fallen out of my limp hand. I also realized my jaw was hanging open. I tried to pull myself together, forced my legs to step forward. I reached out toward the thing, wanting to touch it, no idea what good that would do. I blinked-

-the gun was back in my hand. Amy was back on the couch, sitting bolt upright, looking blankly into space. I immediately looked at my watch-

3:20 AM

SHIT.

Amy slowly turned her head, coming to. She saw me, saw the look on my face. Realization washed over her and her hand flew to her mouth, her eyes suddenly wide.

“Did it—did it happen? It happened, didn’t it?”

I said, “Go upstairs and pack as much stuff as you can carry. We’re getting outta here.”

* * * * *

She bounded down the stairs seven minutes later, a satchel over her shoulder and the laptop under her arm.

We found Molly in the kitchen, standing on a chair and eating from a box of cookies that had been left open on the table. After some coaxing and threats we got her to follow us out to my truck. We loaded up, the engine growled to life. The windshield was a solid sheet of white.

Amy found the cardboard GhostVision glasses on the dashboard and examined them with a quizzical look. I found my ice scraper from under my seat and jumped out to scrape the ice from the windows. Outside I turned toward the house and stopped in my tracks. I mumbled, “Oh, shit, shit, shit.”

There was a figure on the roof, silhouetted against the pearl moonlit clouds. Standing near the chimney. I was unsurprised to see the figure was nothing but silhouette, a walking shadow. Two tiny, glowing eyes.

“What are you looking at?”

I saw Amy standing there, trying to follow my gaze.

“You can’t see it.”

She squinted. “No.”

“Get back in the truck!”

In a series of frantic bursts I managed to scrape a lookhole in the powdered sugar crust of ice on the windshield, then jogged around to the back to do the same.

I heard Amy say, “Hey! What’s he doing up there?”

I leaned around the truck and saw Amy was wearing the Scooby Doo ghost glasses and was staring right at the spot where Shadow Man was standing. She pulled off the glasses and looked at them in amazement, then looked through again and said, “What is that thing? Look! What is it?”

“What—are you using the damned Scooby glasses?”

“I can see it! It’s a black shape and... it’s moving! Look!”

I did look, long enough to see the shape spout giant black wings. No... that wasn’t right. It became wings, two flapping wing shapes that didn’t quite meet in the middle. It flitted into the sky, a black slip against the clouds, higher and higher until it vanished.

I heard barking. Molly had gotten out of the truck, was at my knees.

Amy kept staring up, her mouth hanging open, steam jumping out in little puffs. She said, “David, what was it?”

“How should I know? They’re Shadow People. They’re walking death. They take you and you’re gone and nobody knows you were ever there.”

“You’ve seen them before?”

“More and more. Let’s go, let’s go.”

We climbed in, called to Molly. She didn’t move, stood stiffly, trembling, growling at the sky. I called to her again, jumped out, picked her up and threw her inside. I jumped in, I floored it.

We fired down the road, fishtailing on the glaze of skating rink-caliber black ice that was left over from the road graters. The house shrank in the rear view mirror. Beyond it, the low, flat Drain Rooter factory.

Amy twisted in her seat and peered back through the rear window, then did the same with those stupid ghost glasses. Molly was up and dancing behind us, bouncing around, probably thinking she’d be safer out on foot. Amy squealed, “Look! Look!”

I gave it a glance in the mirror, saw nothing but high headlights behind us that I figured was a Rooter truck leaving with a load—Amy had said the things passed about every half hour on this road—but Amy was looking up, at the sky.

I did something they don’t teach you in driving class, which was to lean my head out into the blistering wind and look backward, steering blind with one hand.

Black shapes were swirling overhead, winged things and long, whipping forms like serpents. Swirling, stopping, turning, like bits of debris in a tornado.

They were congregating around the factory.

Most of them were. Some of them were breaking off and following us, dark shapes flitting across the sky and into the shadowy trees and houses around us, vanishing from view. I pulled in my head and focused on the road.

Amy sat and strapped her seatbelt on, screamed, “What do we do?”

“We’re doing it.”

Another glance into the mirror, headlights closer now. Trucker hauling ass, hauling drain cleaner like they always did, no idea their workplace was infested by what flying bits of living non-existence. Molly went into a barking fit that tapered off into low growls.

A shadow flicked across the hood. I freaked.

I stomped the brakes, the Bronco spun out, skidded, plowed ass-first into a bumper-high snowdrift alongside the road. Silence for a second, then the apocalyptic sound of eighteen wheels skidding on ice.

This huge rectangular shape, white and seeming as big as a building, was plowing right toward us. The semi had jackknifed, the front end stopping and the heavier rear still pushing forward, toward us. A giant cartoon plumber, a red “X” through him, looming in the windshield.

The trailer skidded to a stop about six feet from the bumper, then rocked threateningly back and forth, deciding whether or not it wanted to tip, clumps of snow spilling off the roof with each sway.

Silence, save for the tick of the engine and the rushing of the wind. Finally, Amy said, “Are you all right?”

“Uh, yeah.”

I was scanning the sky for shadows. I glanced at the red cab of the semi, could see somebody moving inside. An elbow.

A hand clamped on my arm. A whispered, “There. Over there.”

Amy was pointing, with her handless wrist, God bless her, at a black shape growing on the side of the semi, several shapes, molding together, forming something like a spider. Sitting there on the white wall of the trailer, like a piece of black spray painted gang graffiti. The West Side Arachnids. The little hand clamped tighter on my forearm, hard, like a blood pressure cuff. A low growl from Molly, who had backed up all the way to the rear wall of the Bronco, pressed against the rear door like she was trying to escape by osmosis.

“David, go. Go.” Amy was whispering it hard, harsh hisses of “GO GO GO GO GO...”

I slammed on the gas. The tires spun. Spun and spun and spun. Four wheel drive. Two wheels buried in packed snow, two wheels spinning on an icy glaze.

The shadow spider moved, blurred, flicked across the length of the tractor trailer and appeared right next to the cab. Just a few feet from the driver inside. I threw the Bronco into reverse, then forward, rocking out of the ruts dug by the spinning tires, praying for traction.

“David!”

I looked up. The spider shape was gone.

I heard screams, curses. Rage. The driver had stumbled out of the cab, a big guy, tall and fat, a goatee.

The man was ranting, spit flying from his mouth, staring us down, fists clenched. Face pink with the effort of it. He turned his eyes on us. A rabid dog. “Cunt blood fucking cunt motherfuckers-“

Maybe he thinks we’re plumbers...

He stomped toward us and I could see them now, shapes moving around him, shadows wrapping around him like black ribbons twisting in the wind. And his eyes. His eyes were pure black now, the pupils and the whites gone in coal-black holes.

A few feet away from us now, trudging toward us like a robot. I frantically slammed on the gas again, spun again, felt the rear end shift and then settle in, the tires making a pathetic, wet whine against the slush. A thin arm shot across my chest and it was Amy, reaching over and slapping the lock shut on my door a milisecond before the truck driver started clawing at the handle.

Crazed curses muffled by the door, his breath steaming up the glass. Tires whirring against ice. “FUCK YOU MOTHERFUCKING MOTHERFUCKERS EAT YOUR FUCKING-“ A meaty hand smacked the glass.

The curses were replaced by a long, howling scream. The man stumbled back as if shot, a hand flying to his forehead. He stumbled, went to a knee, screeched like a saw blade on metal plate.

He exploded.

Limbs flew, flecks of red splattered over the windshield, Amy screamed. I saw a head tumbling through the air, landing on the road and bouncing out of sight. The tire sounds stopped. I realized I had let off the gas, was gawking at the looping remains of the man’s intestines, steaming in the frozen air.

The shadows, restless again. Crawling over the truck and the snowy ground around us, the things as stark as black felt in the snow-reflected moonlight. A tall one grew in front of us, almost the shape of a man but without a visible head and with too many arms. Molly went wild, barking and barking and barking, then melting into high, breathy whimpers.

I stomped the gas pedal one more time, got the tires spinning, heard bits of ice and dirt smack the fenders. The shape moved toward us, melting into the hood, walking through the engine block, moving across the hood like wading into a pond. It reached up with an arm, an arm as long as a man, then plunged it into the hood. The engine died instantly. The headlights went dark.

Shadow everywhere now. Movement, hints of it through the moonlight. Amy breathing next to me, quick, nervous gasps. For a long time, nothing happened.

Amy mumbled something, too low to hear. I glanced at her, she leaned in and said, “I don’t think they can see us.”

I didn’t get it at first but it almost made sense. Whatever they were, they didn’t have corneas and pupils and optic nerves. We couldn’t see them, normally. They were sensing us, feeling us out, searching without seeing.

I looked up, saw one shape flit away and disappear into the sky. Another, floating past the semi trailer, crawling over the plumber logo, then dissolving into the darkness.

I nodded, slowly, whispered, “They don’t belong here, in this world. They’re flying blind, with no eyes to-“

A soft thump on the window. Amy screamed.

Outside my window, inches from my face, was the severed head of the truck driver. A six-inch hunk of spinal column dangled from his neck, hanging in mid-air. His eyes were wide open, no sign of lids, two orbs twitching this way and that, taking us in. Amy was still screaming. Some lungs, that girl.

“Amy!”

The head pressed up against the window, squishing its nose, cramming its eyeball against the glass to get a look in. Its mouth hung open, lips pressed against the glass, teeth scraping.

“Amy! Plug your ears!”

She looked at me, saw me pull out the gun, pressed her forearms over the side of her head. I started rolling down my window.

I created a gap of about six inches when the head tried to ram into the opening, jaws working, teeth snapping. I jammed the gun in its mouth and squeezed the trigger.

Thunder. The head disintegrated, became a red mist and a rain of bone chips. I glanced at the gun, impressed, wondered about the loads the stranger had sent me. I leaned to the window and screamed, “You should have quit while you were a-“

“David!”

I turned. Darkness was falling around us now, pooling, the clouds over us vanishing behind living shadow. Suddenly it was dark, cave dark, coffin dark. I opened my mouth to tell Amy to run, to run and leave me behind because it was me they wanted and not her, but nothing came out.

I twisted the key, the engine turned over, stalled. I tried again, it fired to life, I stomped the gas. I floored it and we went nowhere, nowhere, nowhere and then lurched forward, across an unseen street, smacking into the drift on the other side of the road. I threw it in reverse, floored it again, spinning out and then crawling forward-

-We were off. Out of the blackness and into the night, eating up the street, my hands strangling the wheel. The speedometer crept up, tires floating under us, like driving a hovercraft. I felt a hand on my arm again, Amy, breathing, whipping her head around, trying to see everything at once through the ridiculous cardboard glasses.

The night outside got darker and darker, shapes swirling around, blackness closing in, swimming in it, like being downwind from a forest fire.

And suddenly, Amy was gone. An empty seat.

And then I felt stupid because of course the seat was empty, because I came out here alone and we had never found Amy, the house had been empty and we all knew she was actually wrapped up in a tarp in my-

The darkness swallowed me. The passing scenery outside was gone, no houses or grass or snowdrifts, like driving in deep space.

Shadow poured into the Bronco like floodwater. A blade of ice pierced my chest, cold flowing in like poison.

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Copyright © 2008 David Wong and Jason Pargin - All rights reserved. No part of this book or website may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the express written consent of the author and publisher. This online book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidence.