Free Snowblind by Michael McBride

chaos of invisible motion mere inches away.
    “ rrrRRaaAHHhrrr! ”
    Coburn directed the rifle toward the source of the motion as best he could and fired. The bullet whizzed past his ear and embedded itself in the hillside behind him before he even saw the sparks where it ricocheted from the floor and the stones on the far wall. A heartbeat later he felt the sting on his cheek and the warm flow of blood where the rock chip had embedded itself.
    Ringing.
    Pull-jack-chamber-slam.
    No sensation of movement.
    No roar.
    Only ringing, which slowly gave way to the surprising proof that he was still alive.
    Thump-thump.
    Thump-thump.
    Thump-thump .
    Coburn sat shivering in the freezing nothingness, finger on the trigger, and waited. For another attack. For the impending dawn. For whatever came next.
    All he knew with any kind of certainty was that he was too frightened to move.
    * * *
    The way he saw it, there were really only two options.
    He could live.
    Or he could die.
    It was the only black and white decision he had made in his entire life.
    Yet it was still a conscious choice.
    He hadn’t heard them out there in hours. Not since the ringing in his ears faded. But that didn’t mean they were gone. For all he knew, they could still be sitting to either side of him, waiting in the shadows for him to make his move. Or they could be miles away by now.
    But they would come back. Of that he was certain.
    They come at night .
    He tried to push aside all extraneous thoughts and focus on the prospect of his own survival. Not on his dead friends or the sound of Baumann’s dying scream, which still reverberated in his very soul. Not on the sickly sweet scent of blood as it slowly soured around him or the lingering residue of scorched gunpowder. Not on the marrow-deep cold or the blizzard outside. Those were distractions he could ill afford right now. There would be time to mourn his friends later. Time to follow through on his promise to Baumann. But only if he figured out a way to live through this.
    The problem was that they had been focused solely on themselves. On their escape. On their survival. They hadn’t given enough consideration to exactly what was hunting them. They had never actually seen their enemy, but that didn’t necessarily mean that Coburn didn’t know enough to piece together a picture. So what did he know?
    They came at night, but their movements weren’t restricted to the nighttime. Shore had been killed during the day. They’d been in the dense forest at the time. Did that have to do with an element of concealment? Was there an aversion to light or did they simply not want to risk being seen?
    They consumed their prey. No doubt about it. The bite marks didn’t resemble those of an animal, however. In fact, judging by Vigil’s hand and Shore’s remains, the dentition almost appeared human.
    They had clawed appendages. He had seen the deep scratches in the wood on the window sill and the plywood sheet, in the hand- and footprints in the snow. He’d heard them clattering on the roof. Seen the damage they inflicted.
    They had fur. He remembered the faint impressions on the accumulation beside the prints and the dried clumps still down here in the pitch black with him, assuming they did indeed shed them.
    They were capable of both bi- and quadripedal locomotion. In his lone, fleeting glimpse of them, he had mistaken them for bears, even after they rose to their full height and extended their arms. And especially when they dropped low to the ground and charged the house.
    Their mental acuity was staggering. Regardless of the physical evidence, they didn’t hunt like animals. They had outthought and outmaneuvered Coburn’s party at every turn. They’d anticipated and outflanked every movement. They’d even used both Vigil and Shore in an effort to cripple their prey with fear and doubt.
    All indications pointed to some kind of amalgam of man and animal. Or at least some kind of animal with seemingly human