Chapter Text
Tyler fell backwards so hard his head hit the floor and he saw stars. Delirious and Scotty were screaming, someone fell on him and knocked all the wind right out of him—
The humid darkness of the store’s backroom slammed into his face. The warm, moldy dampness of the backroom filled his lungs on the next inhale and he felt his brain actually stop working for a solid three seconds.
“What?? What, what what—” Nogla sputtered over his words, repeating frantically.
“Get your fat ass off of me!” Tyler pushed, Anthony grunting as he rolled off and landed on his chest on the cement.
“What the fuck?! ” Scotty had two handfuls of his hair in tight fists. “What was that!? ”
“ That was a werewolf cryptid type shit,” Brian said, working himself into a corner, wildly looking around like it would appear out of the walls.
“Did we fall down the ravine?” Delirious asked, gripping his jacket, breathing heavily.
“We’re high.” Tyler rubbed his face with both hands before dragging them up through his hair. “We have to be. Someone slipped something into the air vents and we’re hallucinating.”
“The same fucking hallucination?!” Marcel snapped, pointing a finger at his friends in turn, skipping Evan. “Naw. This is some white people shit. Ya’ll crackered me and I want to be un-crackered right this fucking instant.”
“We need to make a break for the cars.” Brock said tightly, rifling through his locker for his keys and coat, ignoring the shaking of his hands.
“We’ll freeze!” Scotty exclaimed, but he still reached for his hoodie.
“Look.” Brock slammed the locker, glaring. “There’s obviously something wrong with us, not to mention there’s a pedo wandering around that has eyes for Evan. We have a better chance of survival if we jump one of our cars and cram all nine of us into one vehicle to save body heat and wait for morning. The plows will be out soon and we can go to someone’s house and call the police from there.”
“Why don’t we call them now?!” Nogla asked.
“Wouldn’t matter if we did,” Anthony pointed out. “They can’t get here even if they wanted to, and that’s if we even have signal through this storm.”
“Let’s just focus on Brock’s plan for now,” Evan said, rubbing his temples.
“I brought my mom’s van,” Brian offered. “Dad put gas in it last night. It’ll last us the longest.”
Brock nodded. “Mine has an emergency kit in the trunk—blankets and stuff.”
“Okay.” Tyler took a deep breath. “Grab all the coats and blankets you can. Water bottles and food, and let’s get the fuck out of here.”
“ Quietly ,” Marcel pressed, shooting a glare at Nogla and Brian. Nogla stuck his tongue out and Brian crouched by the Employee Only door leading onto the sales floor to keep an eye out.
“I’m quitting tomorrow,” Scotty muttered, tying all the blankets in a giant bale with some twine they used to tie Christmas decorations.
“Fuck Stevens. Fuck him straight to hell,” Marcel said emphatically, zipping his hoodie all the way up to his chin aggressively.
“Do you think the pedophile dosed us somehow?” Delirious asked, wrapping his scarf around his face.
“How?” Evan asked, looking for his mittens in his pockets. “He was with us for a few minutes at most, and he spent most of them groping my ass.”
“Pretty sure he was digging a gun into your armpit,” Brian corrected.
“Are we really playing semantics while hallucinating?” Scotty asked, grabbing a shovel to dig Brian’s car out and a flashlight.
“Let’s go ,” Tyler hissed. “Coast is clear.”
They eased out in a line, like a sick game of follow-the-leader. The sales floor was eerily quiet, fat shadows swaying from their flashlight.
Tyler was halfway to the door when his foot refused to take another step. Scotty ran into him, then Nogla into Scotty.
“What the hell?” Nogla hissed.
“What’s the holdup?” Anthony whispered from the end of the line, throwing a worried glance behind them.
“I can’t move,” Tyler snapped under his breath, reaching to yank at his foot. Ice burned his fingertips. He yanked his hand back, cursing. Frostbite kissed his fingertips and he pointed the flashlight at the floor.
An icy hand was wrapped around his shoe.
Scotty saw it and screamed, jumping back instinctively. He landed on his back and Tyler had half a second to think about asking if he was okay before arms made of pure, blue ice arched out of the floor and wrapped around Scotty’s waist and pinned him down.
“ Fuck!!” Brian’s light beam when flying as a pillar of ice exploded from the floor and launched him straight up only to pin him to the ceiling on his back, icey claws wrapped around his stomach and arms. Nogla yelped as the exact same thing happened to him, only against the deli wall.
“Noooo, no no no—” Marcel, the only one with a sense of self-preservation, jumped onto a table just as the display next to Evan erupted into an icy claw. Evan squawked, grabbing at Delirious, running right into the second hand descending from the ceiling. Delirious shrieked, the both of them held together in two clasped hands of ice.
“I hate this fucking job!” Anthony screamed, scrabbling up onto a chair. Tendrils of ice wrapped up around his legs as quickly as he sat.
“Just—stop moving!!” Brock yelled, holding very, very still.
“Says the only fucker not pinned down!” Brian screamed.
“Still think we’re fucking high, huh Tyler?!” Nogla yelled down, kicking his legs helplessly.
“I’m fine, thank you very fucking much.” Marcel was his own statue on the table, moving only his eyeballs as he eyed his friends in their frozen predicaments.
“We—we can’t be hallucinating this,” Delirious said, shivering violently as Evan tried to squirm his way out of the ice.
“Delirious—” Evan said warily. “Stop moving.”
His tone drew his friends’ attention.
“Holy—” Tyler couldn’t help leaning forward in horrified curiosity, “fucking shit. Is that fucking blood?? ”
“Don’t move Delirious,” Brock said. He could only see out of the corner of his eye, but even he could make out the glittering red against the frozen blue.
The ice around Delirious’s and Evan’s chest was filling up with blood.
“It’s in mine too,” Anthony said shortly, as if having trouble catching his breath to speak.
“Uh—” Scotty flinched as a drop of crimson landed on his cheek, dripping from the ceiling.
“I don’t feel anything?” Delirious asked, doing a very poor job of hiding the break in his voice.
“The building’s bleeding, not just the ice.” Brian kicked the ceiling panel, droplets raining down. Marcel cursed at him, a few dribbles landing on his head.
“Okay—okay,” Brock said, slowly holding his hands out. “We just need to think.”
“About fucking what ?!” Scotty asked, on the verge of hyperventilating.
An ear-piercing, blood-curdling scream tore through whatever Brock was about to say next, a horrifying sound none of the boys would ever be able to put into words a description for such a terrified shriek.
The door to the backroom slammed open so hard it flew off its hinges, the pedophile coming careening out. He still had the gun, wavering uneasily on his feet. He staggered-ran towards them, but his eyes were on the door.
“It’ll kill us all!!” he screamed, voice cracked and dry and raspy. He ignored them in lieu of beelining for the door, slamming into the glass twice before pulling back long enough to figure out how to push the bar so he could actually leave. He got halfway through the parking lot before they could no longer see him through the whirling snow.
“That’s one problem taken care of,” Evan forced out, trying to be humorous.
“Yeah, now we just have the fucking bleeding building to deal with,” Nogla said tightly, trying to wiggle his way out of his personal prison.
“It’s not melting,” Tyler said, trying to use the flashlight to hack away at the ice.
“No shit,” Scotty said, teeth chattering.
“Do you guys smell that?” Marcel said, tilting his nose up.
“Smell what?” Anthony asked distractedly, not really paying attention.
“Something sweet—” Marcel said, frowning.
“I smell it too—” Evan said, craning his neck to look at the backroom door.
“Like—sickly sweet.” Brock wrinkled his nose. “What is that?”
Delirious coughed, shaking his head. “I don’t feel so good.”
“I’m feeling kinda lightheaded,” Brian said slowly, brow furrowed.
“Me too,” Nogla agreed, giving up on kicking himself free. “
“It’s—sleeping gas?” Marcel said, easing to the floor. His limbs felt like lead, each blink getting slower and slower.
“That fucker found sleeping gas?” Evan hissed, head lolling to the side. Whatever Brock was going to say was swallowed up in a yawn.
The last thing the boys heard was the distant bellow of sirens.
…
Evan jolted awake.
Delirious groaned at the sudden moving, kicking Evan in the shin and rolling over on the cot.
Evan blinked, trying to figure out where he was. There had been ice, and blood—so much fucking blood—
“Are you boys okay?!”
Evan cleared jumped into next week as Sheriff Sark swung the door open.
That door had been on the ground, snapped off its hinges.
By a pedo—
Evan sat bolt upright, heart pounding. His friends were okay, staring at each other blankly from their cots.
He didn’t remember going to bed. He didn’t remember fighting Tyler over the good cot, then getting teddy-beared by Delirious. He didn’t remember Nogla giving Anthony a wet-willy just as he was about to fall asleep and getting punched in the face for it. He didn’t remember Marcel fighting Scotty over the phone charger.
Or did he?
“Evan!” Evan couldn’t move as his mother dove into the room, wrapping him up in a hug. “Are you alright?”
“What happened?” Tyler asked, the only one who could seem to form words.
“A child molester escaped during the blizzard,” Sark said, stepping out of the way for the rest of the boys’ parents to rush in in a flurry of snow-dusted jackets and worried faces. “When the guard he knocked out finally woke up, he said he was headed this way. It took hours for them to get the message to us, and then it took hours for us to clear the road to get to you.”
“Did—” Scotty swallowed, being fussed over by his mother. “Did you find him?”
Sark smiled, but it was tight. “He’s in the parking lot. He didn’t make it—was ten feet from the door before he collapsed and froze to death. You have nothing to worry about.”
The boys nodded absently, sharing wide-eyed, disbelieving looks as their parents began to bundle them up to take them home.
They were being bustled through the parking lot when they saw the body spread-eagle out in the parking lot.
Facing away from the store, as if he had left the building and not wandered toward it.
Now, if anyone would’ve asked, the boys would’ve said the pale complexion would’ve suggested the man merely froze to death. He was pale as the freshly fallen snow because his blood was frozen solid in his veins. There could be no other explanation as to how it appeared there wasn’t a drop of blood in the man’s body.
Could there be?