The Voice is desperate.

The boy is lost to her, his mind too willful to coerce, his body too broken to mend. Without him, she'll have to take direct control of the chimera, make it feed on him and the two women here, then have it return to her prison where it will hopefully be strong enough to break her bindings.

Her plan is risky. With the human, she had an anchor to keep herself from falling back to sleep. Even though he didn't realize it, he was allowing her to share his body and whisper suggestions into his mind. In a sense, she'd drugged him. Made him give her his unknowing consent to not only host her spirit, but be linked with the chimera as well, to keep it from running off and to lead it to food.

But now, she no longer has his consent. Something about seeing his former teacher dispelled the haze that had clouded his mind. And so, she is on her own, forced to use what little energy she has and risk slipping back into sleep.

The situation is far from ideal, but it will have to do. There are no other options. She may be desperate, but she will not stop until she has freed herself. She will not sleep again until the world is plunged into eternal winter.

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Linda wants to scream, to cry out for somebody to come and save her, but she knows it won't do her any good. She watches helplessly as the monster chomps into Grace and the boy, and winces at the sounds of bones snapping and flesh being torn.

For a brief moment she considers giving up and allowing the monster to eat her once it finishes with Grace. It would be so much easier than running through all this snow, and probably faster than freezing to death. She thinks that she's lived a good life, that maybe now is as good a time as any to let it come to end.

The feeling of Charlie wriggling against her chest and the sound of his frantic yelps bring an end to these thoughts. She'll be damned if she lets her little dog suffer just because she's decided to give up. She's going to get them both out of here no matter what.

Charlie can't help it any more. He's trying to be good, but he's so scared that he can't keep himself quiet. This thing that's destroyed his house, that's hurt his mommy, it's so big and loud and foul smelling that he's completely overwhelmed by it. He can't fight the urge to run away and hide somewhere safe until it goes away. But he can't get free, he's zipped too tightly into Linda's snowsuit.

Suddenly he feels a gloved hand gingerly pat him on the head and looks up to see his mommy looking down at him. Feeling her stroking his ears calms him. He's still scared out of his wits, but he no longer wants to run away. He'll stay with his mommy until the very end, even if it costs him his life.

With a groan, Linda pushes herself into a sitting position. She'd been thrown up against the rocky ridge that separates her yard from the propane tank mounted at the edge of her property. Under normal circumstances, she probably would have broken something, but with so much snow on the ground, the impact she'd felt had been significantly lessened. Her back hurt like a bitch, but that was nothing that she couldn't fight through.

There's no time for her to regroup or come up with a new strategy, she doesn't even have time to process the grief she feels for her fallen friend. All she can do is shimmy up the ridge and hope that the creature stays busy for long enough for her to get out of its line of sight.

With her mind inhabiting its body, The Voice feels everything just as the chimera does. When she was with Andrew, she'd dampened his senses in order to keep him from experiencing anything that could interfere with his work. But with the chimera that was no longer the case. Now she can perceive the cold mountain wind rippling through its fur, and taste the bone marrow on its tongue.

As she makes it swallow a hunk of flesh and feels its muscles grow as the meat absorbs into its body, she catches a glimpse of something out of the corner of its eye. The monster's vision is poor, but she can still see the last remaining human desperately trying to escape.

Linda pulls herself over the hill and pushes with all her might through the bank of snow that's accumulated around her propane tank. She can't move quickly no matter how hard she tries, there's just too much snow on the ground, but she's not letting that stop her.

Behind her, she can make out the sounds of shifting snow, and turns to see the monster rushing toward her. With it's gigantic stature, it can much more easily wade through the snow than she can and she knows that it's only a matter of seconds before it closes the distance between them. There's no other option, she's got to fight.

Unhooking her gun from its holster, Linda takes aim and fires a shot at the monster, hitting it squarely in the chest. Charlie yelps in pain as the sound of the bullet reverberates through his ears and with her free hand, Linda pulls him in closer to her chest, before firing two more shots. Though each bullet makes contact with the monster, it barely slows down and she has to dive backwards as it leaps toward her.

With an explosion of snow, the monster lands just before the ridge, sending a shockwave through the earth that causes Linda to lose her balance and fall over.

Linda watches from her back as a twisted hand grabs at the ledge for something it can use to hoist itself up to her level. At first it can't seem to get a grip on anything solid, grasping only handfuls of snow, but after a few tries it manages to latch onto the propane tank.

Seeing it's blood soaked head slowly come into view, Linda knows that this is almost certainly the end. But she won't stop fighting. With a shaking hand, she raises her gun and fires one last shot at the monster.

The Voice can feel sharp pain as the bullet penetrates the chimera's eye. For a brief second, the sensation is too much and she loses control of the beast, which howls in agony and jerks backward. Its sudden motion is so powerful that it manages to dislodge the propane tank from the snow it's buried under and both the container and the behemoth go tumbling backwards.

As Linda watches the monster and her propane tank topple over the ledge, she hears a faint hissing sound in the wind and then a few seconds later smells an unmistakable stench like rotten eggs. It takes her a second to process what is happening, but as soon as she realizes that the monster must've ruptured the tank, her eyes go wide and she knows what she's got to do. Burn the mother fucker.

But how? She's got a lighter in her pocket, but everything is so drenched in snow that she doubts she'll be able to set fire to any of the vegetation surrounding her. Between Charlie's whines and her own frazzled nerves, she can't concentrate. Something around here has to be flammable, but nothing's coming to mind.

Instinctively, she reaches into her coat pocket for the pack of cigarettes that she'd grabbed before she and Grace attempted to make their escape. She always smokes when she feels on edge, and even in the midst of all that is happening around her, all she wants to do is have a goddamned cigarette.

When her gloved hand emerges from her pocket and she looks down to see the half-full pack of crumpled but dry Marlboro Reds, everything clicks into place. The foliage around her might be too wet to catch fire, but this pack of smokes would probably burn quite nicely.

With as much speed as her cold, achy, body can muster, she tears the glove on her free hand off with her teeth and then yanks her wool hat off her head. It's a little damp from the snow, but she figures that if she puts the burning cigarettes inside of it, she'll have a better chance of throwing the fire far enough to land near the creature and ignite the propane. Besides, the more there is to burn, the better.

After turning so that her back is toward the wind, she takes her lighter and holds the flame to the pack. Second after excruciating second passes before the paperboard begins to smolder and a bright orange flame springs forth.

Tossing the burning pack into her open hat, Linda forces herself to wait a few more seconds, just to be sure that the wool will catch fire. Then, when she sees the white hat starting to smoke and the wool fibers slowly begin to ignite, she turns and chucks the flaming bundle as hard as she can over the ridge and toward the monster.

Through an act of tremendous will power, The Voice has managed to regain control of her chimera. She can feel the creature's immense pain and prays that she'll have the strength necessary to keep it under control for just a while longer. All she needs to do is move the propane tank that pins the beast to the ground, and force it to finish feeding on the three humans that surround it. It shouldn't take long, and once it's done, she'll be that much closer to freedom.

Straining the beast's powerful muscles, she makes it lift the tank from its chest. But just as she's about to have her creature toss the tank aside and continue its attack, she sees a small flaming bundle arc through the air.

As the fire makes contact with the cloud of propane that has escaped from the tank, it erupts into an inferno that engulfs the chimera. Unbearable pain shoots across its body as it drops the tank back onto its chest and its fur begins to burn. It's too much, and once again The Voice loses control. All she can do is watch helplessly from the back of its mind as it wriggles out from underneath the tank and rises to its feet where it flails about in agony.

Less than ten feet away Linda is crawling through the snow, clutching Charlie to her chest and trying to put as much distance between them and the fire as she can. She doesn't make it very far before the smells of smoke and singed hair overwhelm her and she collapses. With the last bit of energy she has, she rolls onto her back to get a look at the scene behind her. From her new position, she can see the chimera over the ridge, staggering around on its hind legs and batting at its burning fur.

She thinks that maybe if it drops and starts rolling around in the snow, or leaps into the frozen creek that runs through the gully behind her house, the creature might be able to save itself. But it clearly lacks the intuition necessary to perform such actions. All it can seem to do is hopelessly lurch around until it finally collapses into her house with a pathetic wail.