A thick, strong rope—no, an arm, a tentacle; what is this thing?—wormed around his middle.
No no no! “OHHH!” The scream bubbled from his mouth on a choking gout of fresh blood. He felt the rope tighten and bunch, the muscles tensing. “OHHH!”
With one savage jerk, it yanked him from the glass. Wailing, Tony hurtled backward, rocketing through the night like a yo-yo recalled by its owner at the twitch of a finger. The rope flicked, releasing him, and Tony let out another scream as he flew in a plunging arc. He crashed to the gas-slicked ice, like a large stone dropped into a still pond. A wide corona of gasoline shot up, then splashed back down to mingle with his blood.
Got to get away. He rolled to his stomach, his parka bunching around his middle. Oh God, I don’t want to die, please. He began a desperate, flopping wriggle, and he thought about worms trapped on the sidewalk after a hard rain. He had no idea where he was going, or how far he’d get, but if he could just get away, if it would stop hurting him …
Then, around the iron fist of his fear, he registered something hard digging into his belly—and remembered. There was something he could do. It would also be the very last thing he ever did.
No. For a second, everything stilled: the wild rampaging of his heart, the thrum of his blood, the breaths that hacked his throat. No, I can’t. God, don’t ask me to.
From not very far away, the thing let out a high, rusty shriek. He rolled onto his back, eyes bulging from their ruined sockets, straining to see, to make sense. My God, he didn’t even know what was out there, but it would unzip his skin with a single swipe of a claw. His guts would slosh onto the ice, and then it would hunker over him and feed. He might even be still alive when it did; he would die feeling it rip him to pieces. And there was nowhere to run, no place he could find to hide.
The thing screamed again, and he felt the dig at his middle and thought, Well, why the hell not? I’m going to die anyway. And God, was that too weird or what? A laugh boiled in his throat to tangle with a bloody sob. A year left before graduation, and he’d never even kissed a girl. How pathetic was that? But he remembered the moment he and Rima touched. Not love at first sight so much as a connection and, perhaps, a promise. Or maybe it was nothing more complicated than hope and a single kindness. Whatever it was, he knew: despite his fear, he could do it for her.
Groaning, he forced his shredded hand into his pocket, then willed his nerveless fingers to close. He had to move his whole shoulder to tug his hand free. He was starting to shake now, too—shock and pain and the cold and black terror so complete it was a wonder he was still alive. It took nearly all his strength just to twist off the cap. Once done, he leaned back on his elbows, panting, swallowing back blood, listening to the splash and slither as the thing crept closer …
Wait … He could hear his breath shuddering from his throat. Not yet …
And closer …
Please, God—he stifled a scream as ripples of gasoline broke against his legs—if you’re real, if you’re there, please help me, keep me alive just a little longer …
And now so close he heard the moist, fleshy smack-smack of its jaws …
Hang on, Tony. He could feel his mind trying to fall away in a final swoon, like a heavy boulder plunging from a cliff so high the drop was bottomless …
The slap-splash of its body heaving over the ice …
Focus. His heart was racing, frantically trying to pump what was no longer there. The shuddering was out of his control now, and he was cold, so cold … Stay with it. His ears sharpened on the soft plik-plik-plik of the last of his blood as it dripped into the larger lake of gasoline in which he lay. Don’t die yet, Tony. Stay alive a few more seconds.
And now he smelled it: more potent than the cloying reek of gasoline, this was a stink as dank and putrid as the moist carcass of a long-dead animal, so rotten that a single touch would rupture the thin membrane of papery skin to release a runny spume of green goo, yellow pus, a liquefied heart. The smell was, he realized, the reek steaming from his mother at the very end. It was the stink of the fog itself—his personal nightmare—and it was close now, right on top of him.
