Thirty feet.

Wind blew past him and whipped snow into the open doorway.

Twenty feet.

His brother felt like a block of ice in his arms.

“Please . . . please . . .”

Ten feet.

When he reached th

e doorway, his questing left foot stepped down but the ankle and knee had no more to give. He fell forward and down. He tried to hold on to Mason.

Tried.

But his brother fell from his hands, landed, slid inside the house.

Dan fell on his face. On a thin carpet of snow over a thick carpet of soft fibers.

He felt toward the light, but he landed in darkness.

7

Dan opened his eyes and saw the wrong thing.

Not snow.

He saw a pillow.

On a carpet.

A pillow under his head, on the carpet.

It made no sense.

His mind struggled to understand it while his body struggled to wake up. There was pain everywhere. In the legs that had walked for so many miles. In the arms that had held Mason for so long. For too long. His biceps and forearms felt stretched. His fingers were like rusted hinges.

He could understand the pain.

Not the pillow.

He couldn’t understand the pillow.

“Danny—?”

Dan’s head whipped sideways, and there was a face. Inches away.

Mason.

Not frozen.

Not dead.

Not undead.

Mason.

Tags: Jonathan Maberry Benny Imura
Source: readsnovelonline.net