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The Last Great Effect
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Wind Chill Prologue
PROLOGUEJesus, Mary, and Joseph’s left nut!Eric Kinley woke up blind to the frozen world around him, but not to the grin that had followed him back from sleep. The face leered at him through the darkness behind his eyes. Pale cheeks squelched like maggots as the grin widened. The lipless mouth said nothing, the teeth inside clenching so tight the incisors cracked. Its sunken eyes lusted. The pinpoints of scarlet light at their centers roved up and down Eric’s body as if measuring every inch of him. Weighing him. Slowly, the jaws began to open, stretching until the swirling darkness within shamed the surrounding black. It took a lump of snow falling into Eric’s open mouth to make him realize he was awake. The visage finally receded into the blackness. He sputtered. Only the lights in the depths of the creature’s eyes lingered, intensifying for just a moment before finally flickering out.“Fucking nightmare bullshit!”“You okay, man?”Eric scrabbled at his eyelids, trying to scrap
Wind Chill Chapter 1
CHAPTER 1Emma Rawlins leaned back and watched a blade longer than her body flash across the screen. A gout of blood the tint of cherry Kool-Aid splashed the wall behind the victim. The final girl’s best friend went down clutching her throat. A chortle shot through Emma’s straw, the bubbling of her root beer dubbing what should have been a death rattle.“Shh!”Emma glanced around, ready to lob a handful of popcorn. The theater was too dark to identify the proper target. She spoke just loud enough to be heard over the score.“Bite me.”Attention back on the screen, the movie finally earned its one and only shudder. There was a close-up of the victim’s eyes. They stared through Emma, vacant . . . pleading. A sudden mist drifted into her mind, distorting the image into one far more familiar. Her fingers clutched the armrest as she leaned forward, whispering an apology she’d never gotten to make.“Mom, I . . . ”The effect only lasted until the camera panned back far enough to show
Wind Chill Chapter 2
CHAPTER 2Emma knew she was screwed before she could even flip the light switch. An exhale nearby destroyed the silence she’d hoped to maintain. The stink of tobacco drifted into her nose and dragged a cough from her lungs.“It’s an hour past your curfew, young lady.”Emma rolled her eyes before flicking the switch. Her father watched her from his seat at the kitchen table, the brown eyes inscrutable behind the lenses of his glasses. Smoke drifted up from the Marlboro smoking in his hand.Emma dug in her jacket pocket for her phone before holding it out.“My cell died. The stupid alarm never went off.”“Try again, kiddo.”Emma fought to maintain eye contact with her father. Her finger pressed on the cell’s POWER button, the nail tapping on the dead screen a moment later.“See?”Her father stood, his thin, six-foot frame dwarfing Emma as he approached her and took the device from her hand. She hoped he didn’t see her gorge rise and fall during the appraisal.Buy it. You don’t
Wind Chill Chapter 3
CHAPTER 3Emma stood outside the movie theater. Instead of the light snow that had settled on her shoulders that night, torrents of rain ate through her jacket and soaked her skin. She ran under the outcropping. To the doors.She shivered as she wrenched at the handle, a gust of cold air freezing the water to her flesh. The doors trembled, but refused to budge.Open, damn it!It was only then she realized how dark it was inside. The area holding the concession stand was pitch black. The ticket booth, empty. She pounded on the glass.“Tara! Are you in there? Let me in!”Emma jumped back when four rows of tiny bulbs flared to life on the lobby wall. She squinted, distance making the image at the center of the lights indistinct while her eyes struggled to adjust. When they did, she backed away until her heels struck the curb, the downpour drenching her.W-what . . . ?Emma stared into her mother’s eye sockets, her open mouth just visible above the bottom border of the poster’s fra
Wind Chill Chapter 4
CHAPTER 4Emma barely found the strength to open her eyes when she came to. Her body felt heavy, as if her insides had been replaced with lead. It took several long minutes before the movement of the car and the texture of the upholstery penetrated the fog in her head. So did the sharp hiss of her father’s breath as he made a hard turn on the road.I . . . wh-where . . . ?Her father took a quick look at her over his shoulder. Some of the intensity in his eyes had faded. But not nearly enough.“Try to lay still. It’s going to be a little while before that sedative finishes working its way out of your system.”Emma tried to sit up, but a wave of nausea and lightheadedness overpowered her before she’d gone up an inch. A grimace twisted her expression.Her father sighed. “Why don’t you ever listen to me?”He shifted in his seat. “Then again, I suppose you don’t have much choice right now.”He cleared his throat, and Emma didn’t have to see him wet his lips to know what was coming.
Wind Chill Chapter 5
CHAPTER 5Emma slid past her father’s hand and out of the car. Just trying to bear her own weight made her dizzy, and she had to place a palm atop the car’s roof for support. She looked upon the cabin, the snow-covered trees poking from the ground like the skeletal hands of a giant—anywhere but at her father.I . . . I kept hoping he’d get better. But it’s never going to happen. Ever. He’s lost it. He’s lost . . .Tears welled in her eyes when she tried to reconcile the gentle parent of her youth—the man who read her bedtime stories, built her treehouse, and scared away the monsters under her bed—with someone willing to pump her full of drugs to avoid an argument.Just because it was faster! Faster!Emma wiped at the tears threatening to fall.Jesus Christ . . . who are you?The hand that fell atop Emma’s head, trying to stroke her hair, felt like talons. She and her father pulled away from each other at the same instant. Still unsteady, Emma lost her balance and crashed ass-fir
Wind Chill Chapter 6
CHAPTER 6“Em! Time for dinner!”From atop the bed, Emma looked over her knees to the door. Her will fought what felt to be a nest of rats chewing at her insides, but the growl that bubbled from her guts spoke of larger creatures.“I’m not hungry.”Past the door, her father sighed.“Now, I know that’s not true. We were on the road for—”Emma leaned forward. “How long?”Searching the room, she realized she’d been too absorbed in the insanity of the situation to look for a clock. “Dad?”A tiny vibration trembled through the door as her father either leaned against it or rested his hand against the wood.“It was a long trip, honey.”“How long?”Emma imagined her father fussing with his moustache.“Seventeen hours.”“Seventeen hours?” Emma was off the bed and pacing to the door. Her hand was nearly on the knob before she relented. Images of her friends’ faces, her town, flitted across her mind like photographs. Their presence felt every bit as distant.Jesus . . . I was out f
Wind Chill Chapter 7
CHAPTER 7Emma paced her room.If I can’t figure something out and get away with it, I’ve got four months . . . four fucking months . . .Looking around, she realized she didn’t even have a calendar to mark the days. Instead, the paranoid titles of her father’s books whispered to her about the hours yet to pass. She kicked the bug-out bag to the corner. Frustration staunched the welling tears before they could drip to the floor.No phone, no computer, no movies. Not even a poster, for Christ’s sake!The window rattled behind the metal barrier. Echoes of a high-pitched gust tingled in Emma’s ears, raising the fine hairs on her arms. She rubbed the limbs, trying to subdue the sudden outbreak of gooseflesh until the noise passed.Damn, Dad. I really wish you would’ve at least let me grab my iPod.Shivering, Emma snatched the blanket off the bed and wrapped it around herself like a cloak. She scowled, drawing deeper into it.And it’s fucking freezing on top of it. Location, locatio
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