Monsters: The Ashes Trilogy (21 page)

Wolf didn’t kill Acne, and neither did any in his crew. What they
did was send Acne packing. Curled in a corner, throat aching, cheek
throbbing, Alex kept still as Acne, moving very slowly and stiffly,
rolled up his sleeping bag under Wolf ’s watchful eye and Marley’s
Mossberg.

Don’t notice me.
She hugged her knees a little closer.
Don’t see me.
I’m not here.
Fat chance of that. Through it all, she thought about the
monster: that jump behind Acne’s eyes, Wolf ’s sudden appearance. It
was possible that Wolf was close by anyway, and banged through the
door just in time.
But just as likely that the monster had something to do
with this, same as when I was under the snow.
Now as then, she’d been
teetering on the edge of consciousness, and the monster panicked.
Wouldn’t be the first time, and what the hell was she going to do
about that? What
could
she do?

Got to think of something; got to keep the monster under control.
Her
face throbbed. She thought about her med pack. Might be something
for pain.
No, stay sharp; it’s when you start to lose it that the monster gets
out.
She sucked blood from a tear on her lower lip.
I can take this.
Besides, I really ought to save that stuff for when we need it.

Only after another second did she truly
hear
what she’d just
thought:
We
?
Stop it, Alex; you’re going to drive yourself crazy.
For want of anything
better to do, she watched as Bert grabbed that green duffel, pulled it
up, gave the nylon bag a shake. The birdy woman’s body slithered out
in a loose-limbed splay like a limp, white, plucked chicken. After Bert
smoothed the duffel on the floor, Ernie rolled the body onto the sack,
then pulled a well-used knife, with a fine and silvery edge, from a leg
sheath and went to work.
Don’t look, Alex.
Fighting the sting of tears, she dropped her head
on her knees. The air bloomed with wet iron, raw meat, fresh bone.
Hell with the monster. You’re Alex. You’ll always be Alex, no matter what . . .
She felt the suck of cold air as the door closed behind Acne. A
moment later, she heard hesitant footsteps coming toward her. Even
before he knelt—before she felt his tentative hand in her hair—she
knew who it was. For a moment, she didn’t move, but not because
she was afraid.
She didn’t move because—God help her—she
wasn’t
scared of
him. At all.
Wolf ’s rage, that steel bite, was gone. What remained was rot and
mist, gassy flesh and crisp apples, and for a second, she surrendered
to a very simple, basic need. For her, at that moment, even the touch
of a monster would do.
I am so scared.
All at once, she was crying, silently, shoulders shuddering. Angry at herself, too.
Stop this, stop this . . . no one will rescue
you but you. No one else can.
Yet here was Wolf, and she wasn’t fighting
this, or him. Maybe she should. But she was so worn out. She felt
his hand move through her hair, very gently, quite carefully, as if he
were trying not to hurt her more than she was already.
Don’t touch me,
don’t touch me.
But she wanted this, craved it—a touch that was not a
blow—and she thought that meant she was pretty far gone. She let
his fingers travel over her uninjured cheek, felt his thumb skim away
her tears, trace her jaw. When he lifted her chin, she didn’t fight that
either.
Wolf ’s face—Chris’s face—was very still. Watchful. Trying to . . .
understand, she thought. His dark eyes were riveted to hers, as if trying to see behind these windows to her mind. His scent was hard to
read, but it was light and floral, the smell of
safe
and
family
. There
might even be a smidgeon of pity there, or sympathy.
“Please let me go, Wolf.” She winced against a stinging swallow
of salt. “Don’t you see? I don’t belong with you. I’m not one of you.”
Nothing changed in his scent. Maybe nothing could because he
couldn’t understand, or didn’t want to. But his thumb kept stroking
her cheek the way you might comfort a small child or lost kitten.
Right around then, she realized she wasn’t crying anymore either.
What type of monster are you, Wolf ?
It was a question she could’ve
asked herself. What was
she
now? What lived in her head that could
do these things: jump behind Acne’s eyes, slide into Spider, slither
into Leopard?
Reach for Wolf ?
The monster wants him.
Because she did?
No, not like that, never.
Whatever the monster was doing, its needs were its own; she had to
believe that, or she might as well use the tanto on herself.
But . . . what if
I
can use the monster somehow?
Her mind brushed
that idea, lightly, not lingering, a touch that was as gentle as Wolf ’s
on her cheek.
What if I can control when and how the monster jumps? Or
maybe let the monster try to reach Wolf, talk to him? Just let go and get into
Wolf and see myself the way he
really
sees me—
“What?” Abruptly, she sat up. “What the hell are you thinking,
Alex?” Her voice came out angry, and that
was
something Wolf
understood, because she saw him flinch, felt his hand fall away from
her face.
“I’m going outside.” She wasn’t going to run—she wasn’t stupid—
but she had to get out of this miserable little room with its smells of
death and Changed. Walking the wall with her hands, she made her
feet. For a moment, she thought Wolf would try to help. “Don’t,” she
said, flattening herself against cold wood. “Leave me alone. I don’t
want—”
She stopped talking then, the words turning to dust in her mouth
as she saw Bert, just beyond, coming toward her. . . .
With dinner.

The arm was spindly. It was the right. Not tons of meat. Tattered
remnants of skin and ropy veins dragged over the pinkish knob of
the birdy woman’s funny bone; and—
oh God
—the slim steel band of
a watch was still tight around that twig of a wrist.

“No!” Grabbing back a scream, she bullied her way past Wolf and
Bert. Clawing open the cabin door, she stumbled into the bronze
dazzle of a sunset. The cold was stunning, like blundering through
glass, but she couldn’t stay in that cabin another second. Of course,
the Changed would feed; they
had
to eat.
But I do have a choice.
After
a half dozen yards, her knees unlimbered—just plain gave out—and
she toppled to the snow. She dug in until her face and neck and bare
hands flinched with the cold. Eventually, she would feel the burn,
which was fine.

Burn my eyes out, take a blowtorch to my brain, anything.
She dragged
her head from side to side like a dog trying to get a bad smell out of
its snout.
I can’t go down that road. I do that, then I might as well have
eaten Jack and snacked on those kids—or let the monster out all the way.

No matter what Wolf was thinking, what
he
wanted,
she
had to
fight.
Can’t give in, can’t go there.
Behind, she heard the cabin’s door
open; felt his eyes, knew his scent. He only watched, though, and
didn’t follow.

I’m me.
Ahead, by the shed, she saw that strange mound.
I’m me,
I’m Alex.
She battled her way there, slithering through snow until the
mound loomed. She knelt before it, sweeping her eyes over patchy
snow—and spied a dark pinprick scurry over a patch of ice. And
another pinprick, and another. And another.

Fight.
She thrust both fists into the mound, right up to her wrists. Almost
at once and despite the cold, a black tide boiled to the surface and over
her forearms. Withdrawing a hand, she inspected her fingers, smeary
with dirt and so many ants her skin was a black, writhing mat. Many
carried eggs and tiny, milky larvae clamped in their mandibles.
Do it, Alex. Just do it. Hang on to who you are. Don’t let them break you.
Before her brain could really kick in and stop her, she stuck two
fingers into her mouth and sucked. Ants foamed over her tongue. She
tasted dirt, the coarse pop of grit and the yeasty tang of fermenting
earth; felt the spidery scampering of many legs, the minute pricking
of mandibles nipping at her flesh—but she bit down and killed them
all and swallowed them back and went back for seconds. And thirds.
Because, yes: things were that bad.

“Sarah, I know things are bad. That weird earthquake spooked everyone—” Greg broke off as Tori, with Ghost in tow, bustled into the
church’s main office. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, what took you so long?” Pru had parked his butt on a desk
still heaped with stacks of Xeroxed announcements for October 2.
Given that they were at the end of the first week of March of the
following year, an Amish Friendship Bread and Whoopie Pie church
bake sale scheduled for October 8
last
year was probably moot.
“Cutter and Benton’ll be back in less than twenty minutes, and Greg
and me have to be gone. A couple cans of refried beans only buy you
so much time.”

“I know. I’m sorry. Caleb’s pretty sick.” Tori backhanded honeyblond frizz from her forehead as Alex’s gangly Weimaraner made a
beeline for a muscular black German shepherd curled at Sarah’s feet.
“Honestly,” Tori said, “if one more kid decides to chow down on
play-dough, I’m going to throw it all out.”

Greg made a face. “Play-Doh? That stuff stinks.”
“Not the homemade stuff. The little kids made it back when we
actually had flour. Looks and smells like bread dough. Really salty,
though.” Propping her shotgun, a Remington 870 with a carved floral
design on the walnut stock, in a corner, Tori said, “Then I had to
shake Becky.
She
wanted to know if I was going to see you.”
“What? How’d she find out?” Greg blurted. At the dart of dismay
in Tori’s eyes, he wanted to kick himself. When the girls lived with
Jess, he’d drunk so much tea just to be
near
Tori, he could’ve floated
his own battleship. After Alex’s escape and the ambush, the Council
moved Tori and Sarah into the church’s rectory. That should’ve made
things a little easier, especially since the girls’ housemother, a lumbering hag named Hammerbach, keeled over from a stroke. But he
always seemed to say the wrong thing.
“Becky saw me unlock the choir door while I was sweeping the
basement. She was
under
the altar, playing hide-and-seek, she said.
But I think she was scoping out the pantry. A couple kids tried to
break in yesterday.”
“Because they’re starving.” A tiny girl to begin with, Sarah had
shriveled. At her right hip, a holstered Sig P225 jutted like a black
knucklebone. Greg wondered if she even knew how to fire the thing.
She turned Greg a hollow stare. “You can only live on watered-down
oatmeal, corn syrup, peanut butter, and the occasional acorn for so
long. We’ve already lost seven kids. Another few weeks, they’re going
to start really dropping like the old people.”
“Without their pills, those old guys were going to kick anyway,”
Pru said. “Nothing Kincaid can do about that either. Get pneumonia,
kiss it good-bye. Going to be big trouble.”
“We’re already in deep trouble.” Sarah spooled a listless curl
around a finger. “Why do you think they moved all of us Spared to
the center of town? We get a
little
more to eat than everyone else. But
they might as well paint a bull’s-eye on our backs.”
“Sarah’s right,” Tori said. “Wasn’t it just yesterday that old man
took a shot?”
“A .30-06,” Pru said. “I thought Greg was going to shit his pants.”
“The guy was just scared.” Greg still thought they could’ve talked
the old man down, but Pru’s Ruger Mini-14 put the period to
that
conversation. In a bedroom, they found what the old guy was protecting:
a cage of three scrawny parakeets. The sight made Greg want to cry.
“But people are shooting back, and it’s worse since the rationing.
They’re killing horses, they’re shooting dogs.” Sarah ruffled the shepherd’s ears. “Jet and Ghost are still alive because they guard the kids,
and Daisy’s yours, Greg. But they’ll come for them, too, eventually.”
“Then people, I bet.” Pru’s expression darkened. “Start off with
the real old guys who won’t last much longer anyway.”
“Eating people? Come on, get real,” Greg said. “This isn’t
Lord of
the Flies.
The Council would never allow it.”
“Oh, like they’re
so
relevant.” Pru gave an exaggerated eye-roll.
“The only reason they’ve held on this long is because everyone was
fed, and the village was real tight before everything went to hell. They
had Peter, their miracle boy: too old to Change, not old enough to
survive but Spared anyway—
and
his grandpa’s on the Council. Then,
here comes Chris, another Spared, and, oh, he just happens to be
Yeager’s grandson. A total God thing, and everyone calmed down.
Peter cleared out the Changed, killed them all. People were fed;
they felt safer. Remember their ceremonies on Sundays, how Yeager
would bless us and spout all that crap about holy missions? Now with
Peter and Chris gone and nothing coming in, it’s all falling apart.”
“Then we
have
to get out before we all starve, or get traded for
food or something,” Sarah said. “Or maybe they’ll only pass us girls
around as a reward. The way some stare, like Cutter—”
“Cutter?” Something flitted through Tori’s eyes, but when she said
nothing, Greg looked back at Sarah. “He’s one of your
guards.
”
“Yeah, and I sleep so much better knowing he’s got
keys.
He hasn’t
done anything, but you can hear the wheels turning. If he could figure a way . . .”
“I’ll get him moved somewhere else.”
“It’ll end up being the same no matter who gets posted.” Tori’s
voice was strangely toneless. “I never used to worry. When Peter and
Chris were in charge, they were like this indestructible team. But
now?” She turned him a shimmery look. “Greg, we can’t count on
the adults anymore. We need to take care of ourselves. So, either we
take over or we leave.”
Greg threw up his hands. “And go where? East is out. Lot of cities, lot of people, a ton of Changed. That’s why Peter and Chris
didn’t want us patrolling out that way. South is no good either. Once
beyond the mine and closer to Iron Mountain, it starts getting real
crowded.”
“If there’s anyone left.” Tori wrinkled her nose. “I don’t like south
anyway. That earthquake two weeks ago? From the cave-in? That was
pretty weird.”
If a cave-in’s all it was.
A finger of unease dragged over Greg’s neck.
Subsurface vibrations
was what one of the real old-timers had said:
You
can get spontaneous combustion in a coal mine. But the Rule mine was iron
first, gold second, and the rock’s inert. For that mine to cave bad enough to
set off an earthquake, you need high explosives, and a lot of them.
Which begged the questions: who had access to high explosives,
and why do it at all?
Aloud, he said, “So that leaves west. Wisconsin, Minnesota . . .”
“Wyoming,” Pru said. “Betcha it’s pretty empty.”
“Or we go north, maybe even into Canada.”
“Oren is north,” Sarah said. “Chris and Lena went north.”
There was a silence. “They went east,” Greg said.
“Greg, Chris knew east was dangerous, and he’s been to Oren. So
if he’s alive . . .”
“Big
if,
” Greg said.
“Yeah, and I’ll bet he’d be real glad to see us, too, seeing as how
he’s come back to rescue us and all,” Pru added sourly.
“No matter where we go, you’re talking forty kids,” Greg said.
“We’d need wagons, food, ammo,
horses
. All stuff we don’t have.”
“If we take everyone,” Sarah said. “Maybe we don’t.”
“Oh?” Pru raised an eyebrow. “You got someone you want to kick
off the island?”
“Yes. Aidan, Lucian, and Sam.” Sarah leveled a look. “I don’t trust
them.”
Pru shrugged. “I’m okay with that.”
“Wait. I don’t know if it should be that simple,” Greg said. “We’re
not choosing teams for a pickup game. Sure, I don’t
like
what they do,
but I don’t have any better ideas.”
“You guys could
not
do it,” Tori put in. “Just because Peter decided
torture was okay doesn’t mean it is. Won’t a prisoner say anything so
you’ll stop hurting him?”
“Hey, that’s not fair,” Pru said. “Council had to approve, too.”
“Which most of us didn’t know about until Chris ran. So if torture was so okay, why hide it?” Tori’s attention stayed on Greg. “What
would happen if you refused?”
“I don’t know.” Greg didn’t want to find out. It would be like telling the principal he was doing a sucky job:
Gee, thanks for your opinion,
kid, and that’ll be detention for the rest of your life.
Look how easily
Yeager decided to throw Chris into the prison house, and Chris was
his
grandson.
He stood. “We gotta go. Can we just not decide on
who
until we figure out
how
, or if we should do this now? It’s still
winter
,
for God’s sake.”
“Not for much longer. We need to decide, and soon.” When Greg
only bent to zip his parka, Sarah continued, “Look, if you’re not with
us? Fine. But stay out of our way.”
“What?” Greg snapped. “Sarah, in case you haven’t noticed,
I’m
not the enemy.”
“She’s just upset,” Tori said.
I’m not?
“Don’t make excuses for her.”
“But don’t you see, Greg? It’s all coming down.” Sarah’s eyes
brimmed. “Peter’s dead and Chris is gone and it’s all falling apart!”
“You think I don’t know that?” The red blaze of sudden anger was
acid on his tongue. “Let me tell you about falling apart. Peter was my
friend. The only reason I didn’t die in that ambush is because I went
to Oren with Chris. There isn’t a day goes by I don’t think about how,
maybe, I could’ve saved Peter. And what about Chris? He
trusted
me.
If Chris had asked, I’d have helped him get out. But he didn’t and
he’s gone. Now when there are decisions the Council wants enforced,
they come to me, and you know what I get to do now? Boost some old
people on a
rumor
that they got a couple spare gerbils lying around.
So don’t tell
me
how things fall apart, Sarah.” He yanked his zipper so
hard the metal should’ve sparked. “Been there, done that, bought the
goddamned T-shirt.”