The minivan had gone to the shop just before the trip. Clancy was sure to splurge on winter tires, an undercoating, and even had the driver's side seat warmer fixed. They were running low on gas, and it was a while since anybody had stretched their legs, but they'd just passed a sign that said the next town was only a few miles away. He redirected the heat to blow on his icy boots, turned the new wipers to max, and drove more confidently through the snowy hills.
"What if the next town's anything like Mountain Crest?" his daughter Marta asked from the back seat.
"That would be a giant pain," Clancy said evenly. He didn't want to scare anyone if he didn't need to, and he tamped down the instinct to complain about how they were driving on empty. Mountain Crest was an hour or two behind them. The place was sealed up tight with roadblocks, police cars, and military trucks. Once the contagion broke loose, nobody was allowed in or out.
"We'd survive," Gil said from the passenger seat. Gil was one of Clancy's grandsons. The smart one. He and his twin, Johnny, had just turned twenty, and there was a big joke in the family about how their Aunt Marta was nearly a full year younger than them.
"He's right," Johnny agreed from somewhere behind him. "Dad taught us how to survive out here. You guys don't have to worry."
"I agreed to Christmas weekend at the cabin," Marta reminded them. "Not surviving in the woods, eating squirrels with no fucking internet connection." She held her dead cell phone up listlessly for them to see.
"Watch that language, young lady," Clancy warned over his shoulder as the town's festive welcome sign came into view. "Look. We made it," he said with a grin.
They rolled past colourfully lit homes with green-needle wreaths, blow-up Santas, and plastic reindeer. Children played in the street as their elders strolled, carrying gifts stashed in flashy bags. As the minivan pulled up to the gas station, everybody opened their doors, filling the cabin with crisp mountain air mixed with spicy pine and petrol fumes. Clancy's daughter and grandsons didn't even wait for the engine to turn off before leaping out, only to stand there, groaning and complaining about how their muscles ached from sitting for so long. They filtered across the street to gawk at a giant snowman the locals had bulldozed together beside an overpriced tourist-trap hot chocolate stand. Clancy shook his head and kept pumping gas.
"Here you go, Aunt Marta," Gil said, handing her a steaming drink in a paper cup.
"How many times do I have to tell you not to call me that?" she asked. "I don't call you Nephew Gil, do I?"
Johnny snickered. "She's got a point, man."
"Auntie M, maybe?" Gil joked as she swatted him with her free hand. "What?" he teased, retreating behind the giant snowman. "Help! My auntie's beating me," he whined as the hot chocolate lady glared from her shack. "Shit, I spilled my drink," he complained, looking down at his sticky fingers and the brown drips in the snow. "Why don't they give you a damn lid?"
Just then came a sound like someone was having their guts torn out across the street. Marta stared at the twins, her eyes bulging with fear. The three of them went silent as they waited, listening, hidden from the street, just like they'd been taught. Unfortunately, this kind of thing was all too common these days. They'd all heard the stories, read the pamphlets, and completed the training. Hide. Observe. Escape. The HOE method, that's what they called it.
Johnny was the only one stupid or brave enough to peek. As he edged carefully around the large snowman's ice boulder base, Gil reached out, suddenly snatching his brother's brightly coloured pom-pom hat off his head. They tried not to let their breath steam as Johnny recoiled from the view, shaking his head, wild-eyed and afraid.
"What did you see?" Marta whispered when a loud crash and frantic shouts shot out from near the hot chocolate stand.
"It's an outbreak," Johnny told them between shallow breaths. "I didn't see Granddad. We have to leave!"
"Go, Team HOE," Gil said unenthusiastically, his own panic setting in. He'd never been in a real contagion situation before. He took a few steps to the side for a better look, thinking that this whole thing was already completely different from any training they'd done.
"This is suicide," Marta whispered, stepping up beside him as the street came into view.
An SUV had crashed into the hot chocolate stand. The server lady lay motionless, bloodied, pressed unnaturally between her broken shack and the twisted bumper. There were two vamps, a male protecting himself from the sun with a brimmed hat and a long jacket, and a female covered in dark bed sheets.
They were hunting humans using their preternatural abilities just across the street. They ran like the devil with his hair on fire, ten or fifteen times faster than anyone else. When they leapt from high places, it seemed like they were flying. And when they caught their prey, they used their fangs and claws to tear them open, draining their blood in seconds. The ravenous monsters screamed like dying cats strapped to megaphones as they chased after a group of tourists whose arms were overflowing with gifts.
"Now!" Johnny said.
Marta was afraid to leave the safety of their hiding place, but Gil urged her forward, tugging her sleeve. Once she got going, the twins could only try to keep up as she sped across the street toward the minivan and her father. The vamps were howling, shredding and dismembering their victims just up the way. When she came around the side of the vehicle, the fuel cap was back on, the bill paid, but Clancy was on the ground, twitching, a meaty hole where his throat used to be, his ribs torn open, his heart and lungs missing.
"Dad..." Marta mumbled in shock as one of her nephews grabbed her, dragging her away.
They sped off in the opposite direction with Gil behind the wheel, driving as fast as he could without sending them careening off the road. They shot past the decorated neighbourhood with the Santas and reindeer. People were running from their houses, screaming, bleeding, and being chased. As the town's welcome sign disappeared in the rear-view mirror, replaced by a mesmerizing blizzard of big fluffy flakes, Marta began to cry. Johnny comforted her while Gil focused on keeping his trembling hands on the wheel, squinting to see through the storm as he took them deeper into the hills.
"Where are you driving us?" Marta asked through a flood of tears.
"The cabin," Gil said flatly. "We're still more than an hour away."
"Is that far enough?" she demanded.
"There isn't anything any further away," he explained, a tear rolling down his cheek. "Sorry about Granddad, by the way."
Dusk fell as they drove the last few miles. The snow had stopped, but there were no plows this far out. Drifts of powder stretched over the road, too deep to cross easily in many places. Just as the lake they were heading towards came into view, the wheels began to lose grip, sinking several feet into the snow. Gil tried to reverse, then tried going forward. He rocked the vehicle back and forth, but it was no use. Twisting to look back at the passenger seats, he noticed Marta was sleeping, her mascara smudged, her head wedged under his brother's arm.
"Nice going," Johnny whispered.
