Ashes and Dust (4 page)

6

When Frost had started after the frantic Jillian, whose true last name was still a mystery, she thought it might take five minutes to catch the woman. Jillian didn’t appear to be an athlete. She’d get tired. She’d have to stop. Reaching the town’s border and the potential danger beyond would take her half the day if she stuck to the road, longer if she didn’t. But as they’d moved down Main Street and discovered broken glass on the sidewalk, it became clear that the crazed woman had no intention of simply walking to the border.

She’d stolen a car.

“Anything you want to tell me about this woman?” Frost had asked Dodge.

“She’s had a rough life,” was his reply.

And now, they were at the town’s southern border—again—parked on the side of the road in Jimmy’s tank-like Phantom pickup truck, next to Jillian’s discarded vehicle, and the spot where Rebecca Rule had died. The memory of Rule’s demise made Frost pause at the clean-cut town line. She might share Rule’s fate. Worse, she could be left behind. All of them could. But Becky would have taken that risk. Would have sacrificed herself again, if she could.

She opened the driver’s door and dropped down to the pavement, while four of her passengers exited via the other doors and three jumped out of the flatbed. The truck could easily hold all eight of them, plus Jillian. While the others gathered around, she looked out at the bleak landscape, beyond the edge of town, which reminded her they were about to step foot into another world.

“Anyone hears that bell,” Frost said, knowing she didn’t need to specify the church bell, “give a shout and high-tail it back here. Do not wait for anything. If we haven’t found Jillian, and that bell starts ringing, she’s on her own.” She set her eyes squarely on Dodge.

He nodded and said, “I think she went this way.” He pointed to a rough outcropping of rocks just beyond the town border.

“What makes you think that?” Loomis asked.

Frost was wondering the same thing. Inside the town, the grass and trees were green and alive, with soft leaves shifting gently in the warm, dry breeze. But all signs of life ended at the town line. The green living world just…stopped, replaced by dry, dusty rocks and gravel strewn about a dry, dead landscape. The only aberrations in their view were the occasional spires of long dead trees and dark crisscrossing crevices in the rocks.

If that wasn’t strange enough, about fifty yards beyond the edge of town, the earth angled up as though they’d shifted into a giant rocky bowl, like a sinkhole, but large enough to hold the entire town, if only just barely.

How Dodge could be certain Jillian had come this way was a mystery, since there was no foliage to use for tracking and the dry ground gave no hint of her passage.

“Because it’s the way I would go if I were leaving town,” Dodge said, pointing up at the rise. “It’s the only place not covered in jagged rocks.” He pointed toward a rocky ledge about ten feet off the ground. Two large boulders sat atop it, but beyond that they could see blue sky. “That looks like a good place to climb out.”

Frost stared at the ledge and had to admit that Dodge had a point. It would be pretty easy to climb up there and squeeze between the two rocks. From their spot on the floor of the depression, it definitely looked like the easiest path.
Even hysterical people probably follow the path of least resistance
, Frost thought.

“All right,” she said. “Let’s go.”

Frost stepped across the town line, going from blacktop to barren dirt, and took a few more steps before she realized no one, aside from Dodge, was following her. She turned to face the group, who were staring at the town border as though it could bite them at any moment.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, even though she knew. They hadn’t seen Becky, but they had all heard about it. They had all been warned about the dangers beyond town. She’d done the warning herself.

“Look, guys,” she said. “Becky gave her life to save one of our own. She’d do it again, and...so would I. For Jillian. For any of you. So either grow a pair or go home.”

“But Sheriff Rule—” Meeks, the short one, began.

“Is dead,” she finished. “And she was closer to me than any of you. I watched her die, right there!” She pointed to the pavement beneath Grimm’s feet. The red-headed man shuffled to the side, looking down.

“How many of you lost family in the first shift?” she asked.

Every hand went up.

“Well, this whole town is your family now, and if your wife or son, daughter or sister went running off into this world, would you just let them go?”

No one spoke. No one moved. “Fucking pussies.” She turned and started toward the rise. Dodge stayed by her side. “Sorry ‘bout the language, Pastor.”

“It wasn’t uncalled for,” Dodge said.

“Sheriff,” Loomis said from behind. She turned back and found him a few feet behind her. The other men followed his lead, stepping over the town line. “We’re with you.”

Frost gave a nod. “Stay within a couple hundred yards of the town line. If the bells start ringing—”

“We’ll haul ass,” Loomis said.

“Good,” she said. “Now let’s go find Jillian.”

As they set out from the edge of town, she sent Loomis and the two blonde, bearded men, Brent and Silver, to scout ahead, while she and the rest took the rear. As they walked, Grimm, Meeks and Marshall, who weighed in at close to 300 pounds, moved ahead of them, while she and Dodge lagged behind.

Once they were out of earshot, Dodge tapped her arm. “A few hundred yards? That’s it?”

Frost nodded. “When was the last time you sprinted the length of a football field, Pastor? How about three? Think you’d make it without stopping? Winslow timed the last shift. One minute twenty seconds. Would take a running back about thirty seconds, but you and me? Three hundred yards is probably our limit, and if you hadn’t noticed, we’re not exactly walking over a flat, green playing field here.”

“What if Jillian runs farther than that?” Dodge asked.

“Then she’s on her own,” Frost stated flatly. “I doubt she’ll get that far, honestly. In this terrain, she’ll be lucky to go a hundred yards without falling and breaking…a leg.” She’d been about to say ‘breaking her neck,’ but thought better of it, when she saw the look on Dodge’s face.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “We’ll find her.”
I hope.

She heard shouting up ahead, and she and Dodge picked up the pace. They jogged up to find the other guys gathered around in a circle, staring at something on the ground.

Have they found her already?

“What is it?” Dodge asked, sounding as nervous as she felt.

“Bones,” Silver noted. He wasn’t related to Brent, but they looked similar enough they could have been brothers.

The group parted, revealing a swath of bleached white bones.

“Was it a dog?” Dodge asked.

It sure looked like a dog, or something similar. Whatever it was, when it was alive, it had walked on four legs and had a tail, along with a snout full of sharp teeth. Then again, maybe it was something else entirely, with a canine-like skeletal structure. But a dog would be a nice change to what they’d already seen.

The bones had an odd look to them. In most places, they’d been bleached by the sun, but here and there were long, dark marks that looked remarkably like burns.

Why would there be charred dog bones out here?

“What’s that?” Loomis asked, and he reached down. Just beneath the skull was a small, round piece of metal. Loomis picked it up. It looked like a dog tag. He used his index finger to wipe away a layer of ash. “Dexter,” he said.

It
was
a dog tag!

“Isn’t Dexter the name of ‘ol Tom Mungovan’s shepherd?” Grimm asked.

Frost nodded, but she knew this wasn’t the same dog. Cash had relayed Sam and Jimmy’s encounter at the Mungovan house. Dexter was dead, that much was true, but not here, and not long enough to look like this.

“What the heck is it doing out here?” Brent asked.

No one had an answer, so Loomis handed the tag to Frost. She pocketed it, deciding to keep her knowledge to herself.

After a moment, Dodge cleared his throat loudly. “It’s just an old dog tag,” he said. “But there’s a woman out here who could be in danger.”

He was right. “All right,” Frost said. “It’s just a dog skeleton. Let’s keep looking.”

“You got it, Sheriff,” Loomis said.

Frost really wished he would just call her by her name. Wished they all would. But that would require going back in time. Of course, it seemed that moving between worlds was now possible. Why not time? But she somehow knew that was impossible. At least for them. So she pushed forward before time ran out.

Loomis angled himself
to the left, moving away from the group and up a ridge, but knowing a wider search area was going to get the job done sooner. He glanced at Frost, remembering a different time, when they’d been close. He wouldn’t admit it to anyone, but since the first shift took his parents away—or rather him away from his parents—he’d felt very alone. As a result, he felt himself drawn back toward the one person in town with whom he’d ever felt a deep connection: Frost.

While she wasn’t being as cold as her namesake, she wasn’t really responding to his flirtations. Partly because they weren’t entirely appropriate, given the situation, but he wasn’t a fool. He saw how she glanced at Griffin Butler after she had laughed at Loomis’s joke in the park. She was worried about what Griffin would think.

At least Griffin was a good man. A fellow soldier. A
tougher
soldier. And while Loomis knew how to fight and fire a gun, acting was what he did best, at least by New Hampshire standards. And for that, he was glad, because no one would notice his melancholy, meaning he wouldn’t have to talk about it with anyone. And that suited him just fine. Just because he was an emotional kind of guy didn’t mean he had to wear that shit on his sleeve.

Lost in thought, he didn’t hear the first crack beneath his feet.

But he heard the second. He stopped, now at the top of the ridge. Looked down.

Shit
.

“I—I found something,” he said, eyes on the ground.

“What is it?” Frost asked. She was twenty feet away, her view blocked by several boulders. “Is it her?”

“It’s not her,” Loomis said, “but it’s someone.”

“
Several
someones,” Silver added as he stepped up next to Loomis.

Frost hurried over and looked down. Her breath caught in her throat when she saw all the bones. Then she looked up and saw the rest. She brought her hand to her face. “Oh my God.”

There were hundreds, maybe even thousands, of bones, all laid out in a dozen or so seemingly random piles, scattered among the rocks and gravel. Atop each pile sat a single
human
skull, grinning back at them.

While the macabre site was unnerving, it was the knowledge that someone had placed the skulls on top of the piles that was worse. Someone had survived whatever must have happened to this world.

7

Griffin continued at a leisurely pace, which was now a requirement, as the paved road had given way to a deeply pocked and washboarded dirt road. The car jostled back and forth through each unavoidable pothole. He thought it strange that a man with Ellison’s money and influence wouldn’t just have the road paved, but then again, the man liked his privacy. So did the few other homeowners in this part of town.

They passed Quentin Miller’s house. Quentin’s big, green monster truck sat in the driveway, sulking like an ogre in the wan light of this strange world. While it wasn’t a performing monster truck—the tires weren’t that big—it towered over every other vehicle in town, even Jimmy’s Ford Phantom, and its deep treads could sling mud like nothing else. The Millers were out of town when the shift had occurred, enjoying the fireworks in Ashland, most likely. But the truck remained behind, standing nearly as tall as the house.

And it probably cost twice as much to build,
Griffin thought.

“Jeez, that thing is ugly,” Avalon said.

“I think it’s awesome,” Radar replied.

Griffin was inclined to agree with his daughter. Quentin’s truck stood on huge, knobby forty-four inch tires. It was lime green with orange and yellow flames on the hood and front fenders. From under the hood, a huge chrome breather poked up like a shiny tank. Quentin said it fed air to the supercharger mounted on the engine, resulting in a massive gain in horsepower.

Griffin didn’t know about all that, but he did know that Quentin spent almost as much time working on his truck as he did working. Not that it mattered now, since Quentin was back in New Hampshire and his truck was...well...wherever the hell it was.

Past Miller’s house, they circled around the lake and coming into the final stretch, where they saw the house ahead, its paved drive blocked by an ominous iron gate. Griffin pulled to a stop at the gate. He leaned forward and waved at a camera mounted to a nearby tree.

The gate didn’t budge.

“Be right back,” Griffin said, putting the car in park and stepping out. He strode up to the gate, looking for a call box. There wasn’t one. He tried to push the gates in, but a lock held them in place. Losing his patience, he drew his M9 sidearm and pointed it at the lock, which clicked open, as though in fright.

He glanced back at the camera. It had tracked him. He gave whoever was watching a sarcastic smile and holstered his weapon. He headed back to the car and got behind the wheel. “Sometimes you just have to ask politely.”

Everyone in the car stared as Griffin drove up the drive toward Ellison’s massive Victorian Gothic Revival home. The house was constructed of gray stone, and included several honest-to-goodness turrets, each with its own conical roof. A stone balcony ran almost the full length of the house, ending at the conical corners, which rose up to the roof. The roof itself was out of view, hidden by stonework facades on each side of the house that were suggestive of medieval crenellations. Numerous tall, narrow windows looked out on the lawn, strongly resembling ancient murder holes or archer slits, though admittedly wider. The whole effect was like driving up to a castle.

King Ellison,
Griffin thought, as he stopped the cruiser in front of the massive stone porch.
I wonder if His Majesty will be surprised to see us.

Given the fact that someone had removed what was likely damning evidence from the Guard depot, he thought it was more than likely that they were expected.

He parked in front of a large granite staircase leading up to a set of hardwood doors. He didn’t recognize the wood grain as anything native. Probably exotic. He looked at the kids in the back. “I really don’t want to let any of you out—”

All three opened their mouths to complain.

“But,” Griffin said. “I’m going to. You’ll stay by my side at all times, and when we find Ellison, don’t say a word. Not one word. Understood?”

Three heads bobbed up and down.

He got out with Winslow and opened the back door, allowing the three youths out. He then climbed the stairs to the double doors and knocked. In truth, he pounded on them, wanting to make sure he’d be heard inside the huge, sprawling castle-like structure that was Renford Ellison’s house. He’d seen the house from a distance on numerous occasions, but he’d never had the opportunity to visit. Now that he stood on the massive front porch, he suddenly felt very small and very poor. He didn’t particularly care for the feeling. He pounded again, louder this time.

“Ring the doorbell, Dad,” Avalon suggested.

His fist hung in the air over the door, ready to pound again. He glanced to the side and saw the doorbell. “Right.” Unclenching his fist, he pressed the button and heard chimes beyond the door, playing the Winchester Quarters, which to Griffin, sounded a lot like the tones from
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
.

When the chime ended, he reached for the doorbell again, but withdrew his hand when he heard the door unlock. He stepped back as the door opened, and he saw a young African American woman standing in the doorway. She was dressed casually in a white blouse and knee-length skirt, with a wide, flat belt doing waist duty. Her black hair was pulled back in a tight bun, and she wore a pair of large-framed glasses that made her dark brown eyes look just a bit too big for her face.

“Can I help you?” she asked, sounding more irritated than anything.

“We need to see Mr. Ellison,” Griffin replied.

“He’s not home right now,” she said. “I will tell him you stopped by, Mr. ...uh…”

“Deputy Griffin Butler.” He tapped his badge. “I really need to speak to him. It’s important.”

“I told you, he’s not here.”

“We’ll wait,” Griffin said, sliding past her and walking into the house.

“Hey,” she said. “You can’t just barge in here.”

“Call the police,” Griffin advised with a grin. He knew this wasn’t anything close to proper police procedure, but honestly, it was just a badge now. There was no government left to support his authority, just the respect of the people in town who trusted Frost’s judgment.

Avalon, Winslow, Radar and Lisa followed, albeit reluctantly. And as they walked into the entrance hall, the woman closed the door, none too gently.

“I told you folks,” the woman said, “Mr. Ellison isn’t here.”

“Then where is he?” Griffin asked.

“I’m his nurse, not his nanny.”

“That’s too bad, because we aren’t leaving until we see him.”

“Well,
Deputy
Butler, I—”

“Griffin, please.”

She sighed. “Griffin. As I said, Mr. Ellison is not here. I have no idea where he is or when he will be back. So if you could just tell me what this is about, I will be sure to relate as much to him, the next time I see him.”

“Look, lady,” Griffin snapped, believing that this woman’s ignorance was simply an act. “I’ve just about—”

Winslow stepped forward and put a hand on Griffin’s chest. “I’m sorry, Miss…?”

“Jennifer Turkette.”

“Miss Turkette,” Winslow said. “I assume you’ve looked outside recently.”

Jennifer nodded. Her eyes darted to the window, and the professional demeanor she’d maintained showed a crack. “Every time that bell rings...”

“So you know what’s going on,” Griffin said.

“How in the world would I know that?” she snapped, the last of her resolve fading. She sounded more like a normal person now.

“Easy, Jennifer,” Winslow said. “Griffin just means that you’re aware of what’s been happening, not that you know anything about it.”

“I’d have to be blind and deaf not to notice that,” she replied.

“Have you been safe here?” Griffin asked.

“Fine,” she said. “Though I haven’t felt safe. When it was dark...I saw some...some things moving past the house. But they stayed well enough away.”

Winslow put a hand on her shoulder. Made sure she was listening. “See, the thing is, we think Renford Ellison might be able to explain what’s happening, or at least part of it.”

“Why would you think that?”

Griffin told her about the packages and letters back at the depot and how they were addressed to Ellison, leaving out the fact that the name was written as an anagram. “Look, we’re just trying to figure out what’s happening, and if possible, get back home to our...Earth.” The woman’s eyes went wide, but she remained silent. “Right now, Mr. Ellison is our only lead.”

She turned back toward the door, a little too quickly, in Griffin’s opinion, and she motioned toward it. “I’m sorry, gentlemen, if that’s all you came here for, you’re wasting your time.” Her professional tone returned. “Now if you don’t mind, I have a lot of things to do before Mr. Ellison returns.”

“She’s lying,” Avalon said suddenly.

“How dare you!” Jennifer replied, whirling around.

“I know liars, Dad,” Avalon said. “Believe me. I’ve lived with them. Hell, I’m one of them. And if there’s one thing I can spot a mile off, it’s a liar. She’s been working hard at it, but I’ve seen better. If she doesn’t know where Mr. Ellison is, then I’m a Disney Princess.”