Mile 44

The world was upside down and smelled of copper.

Leo blinked, trying to clear the sticky warmth running into his left eye. His vision was a blur of cracked safety glass and grey, swirling snow. He was hanging in his seatbelt, the nylon strap digging a bruised trench across his chest.

The Subaru Forester was dead. The engine had stopped, killing the heater instantly. In the Yukon, at Mile 44, silence was a death sentence. The digital thermometer on the dashboard, currently tilted at a forty-five-degree angle, flickered its last reading: *-42°F*.

Leo tried to move his right leg and gasped. A jagged scream of pain shot up his thigh. Pinned. The steering column had collapsed.

* Okay,* he thought, his medical training fighting through the concussion. *Assess. Tachycardia. Probable tibia fracture. Hypothermia risk: immediate.*

He reached for the door handle. It was jammed against a snowbank.

Then, he heard it.

It wasn't the wind. The wind was a constant, high-pitched shriek. This was different. It was heavy. *Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.*

Footsteps.

Relief flooded Leo’s chest. Someone had seen the skid marks. Someone had stopped.

"Help!" he croaked. "I'm down here! I'm trapped!"

The footsteps stopped right outside the shattered driver-side window.

Leo craned his neck, looking for a flashlight beam, for the neon yellow of a trucker’s vest.

Instead, a hand reached into the cabin.

It wasn't a hand. It was a claw, grey and gangrenous, with fingers too long to be human, tipping in black, obsidian nails. It raked across the metal of the door frame, peeling back the steel like it was wet cardboard.

A face lowered into view.

Leo stopped breathing.

It was gaunt, the skin pulled tight over a skull that seemed to be pushing through the flesh. The lips were chewed away, revealing rows of jagged, yellow teeth. And atop the head, matted with ice and blood, rose a rack of antlers.

The Wendigo hissed. The sound wasn't animal; it was the sound of a steam pipe bursting. It smelled of old meat and wet fur.

Leo whimpered. He was twenty-three years old. He had never been in a fistfight. He crossed the street to avoid aggressive panhandlers. He was prey. He had always been prey.

* Finally,* a voice said.

It didn't come from the monster. It came from inside Leo’s chest—a deep, resonant vibration that hummed against his ribs.

* The cold is here.*