Monsters: The Ashes Trilogy (29 page)

“Oh, it’s complicated. Come on, on your feet. We’re all friends
here.”
“I’m not your
friend
.” Blood from his torn shoulder spilled to the
small of his back and leaked along his right arm to drip from the knob
of his elbow and melt into the snow. The red on white was, eerily, like
the girls’ eyes set against the white ovals of their faces, and Davey’s—
and, probably, his own. “I’m not
his.
I’m not
theirs.
”
“But you
are
mine.” Finn’s fissured face didn’t crack a grin. “I’m
your world, Peter. Look at yourself. Naked as a jay but not cold, are
you? Don’t need to sleep?”
“No. But I dream.” To his left he saw Lang, coughing, struggle to
a sit. Already on his feet, Davey slid to Finn’s right. Peter’s blood was
smeared over Davey’s mouth in a drippy clown’s grin. “With my eyes
wide open,” Peter said. “Daymares.”
“Ah, yes, the flashbacks. Those’ll wear off. They’re a . . . glitch.”
“You drugged me from the beginning, didn’t you? When I was in
the infirmary and after I broke down and ate . . .” He clamped off the
rest. “Will it wear off ?”
“Possibly, but I sincerely hope not. The withdrawal’s a bitch. But
you were too good a specimen to pass up. Your brain is already different. We know because you’re still alive.” Finn regarded him with
the kind of curiosity reserved for a new and fascinating lab specimen.
“Do you really
want
this to wear off, Peter? To end?”
“I—I” he began, and stopped. Weren’t those two different questions? Being with Finn, yeah, he wanted out. Yet riding that electric
red swoon was like nothing he’d ever felt. And really, had that been
so bad?
No. I want that feeling back. I’m new, different, better than I was,
but if I can hang on to part of
who
I was, maybe I can
use
this somehow.
As for the winged thing muttering its dark language . . . he could live
with that.
Which perhaps proved that he really was insane and never coming
back, no matter what. Maybe Simon had been right:
You were lost the
moment you decided the Zone was a good idea.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Not surprised. Great high, isn’t it? Betcha that shoulder isn’t too
happy, but you’ll muscle through. And all that energy?
Maaania?
”
Finn waggled his thick eyebrows, which were as white as his squarecut hair. “You’re not indestructible, but you
are
different. Tell me: say
you killed Lang, what was supposed to happen next? Where could
you run?”
Peter realized that he hadn’t thought that far ahead. Strange, too,
how that electric red swoon was guttering. Already, he could feel his
body yammering after it, craving the rush.
There is no going back to Rule, or even Chris. All I can do is press my face
against the window. I’m an exile, an Azazel: the red heifer that bears all sins,
sent to wander the desert.
Considering his eyes, that was apt.
“You’ve come too far to turn back,” Finn said, as if Peter had spoken aloud. “And do you know why? Because you chose to live. To
survive,
whatever the cost.”
“Chose?” There was no choice involved. Finn had broken him.
“You fed me a drug, locked me in a cage, made me fight, wouldn’t
give me water or f-food . . .” His tongue stumbled.
“You chose to fight, to eat. You broke yourself, Peter, because of
the compromises you’re willing to make and the rules you’re willing
to break to stay alive. And don’t you see? You
are
the Changed.”
“No.” There had to be a way of coming out the other end of this.
“What do you want? If I was an experiment, if
they
are . . .” He jerked
his head at the red-eyed horrors. “What now?”
“Depends. What would you like?”
Revenge.
Because what the hell? He was already lost. “I want what’s
coming to me.” He pointed a dripping finger at Lang. “You’ve got
me, but I want
him.
”
“In your dreams.” Snuffling, Lang spat out a jellied clot.
“How about a trade?” Finn said. “I give you something, you give
me something.”
“What?” Startled, Lang looked up, eyes wide above a crimson bib.
“Boss?”
“A trade?” Peter cawed a harsh laugh. “What’s left that I could
have or give?”
“A few things,” Finn said. “Depends on how badly you want Lang,
I guess.”
“What?” Hand drifting for his pistol, Lang backed up a step. “This
wasn’t the
deal
.”
“Well”—Finn’s black eyes flicked toward Davey—“deals meant to
be broken and all.”
“I don’t
think
so,” Lang began, as Davey stiffened like a dog catching a new scent. In the blink of an eye, both girls swiveled in an eerie,
silent synchrony toward Lang.
“How are you doing that?” Peter asked, sharply—just as he realized something else. At the moment the Changed reacted to Finn,
that electric red rush also thrummed through his brain, but it was
much more muted now, only a tingle. His thoughts were still clear.
It’s like I’m picking up only the overflow.
“Oh, trial and error.” Finn’s mouth stretched in a death-head’s
grin. “I’ve been at this awhile, for decades, and well before the world
did me the immense favor of giving us the Chuckies.”
As if suddenly released from whatever held them in check, the
girls charged. They went so fast that Lang never cleared his weapon.
In a flash, the first girl head-butted the old man to the snow as the
other whipped her knife to his throat.
How is he doing this?
Peter watched as one of the girls confiscated
Lang’s pistol. “Is this . . . telepathy?”
“Not entirely,” Finn said. “At least, not the way books and movies
would have you believe.”
“B-B-Boss!”
Lang brayed, eyes round as moons as he craned over
the girl’s blade. “I’ve been loyal! We had a
deal.
”
“I—” Finn held up a finger as the walkie-talkie, always clipped to
his hip, chirped. “Hold that thought, would you, Lang? Little busy
here.”
“But boss!”
“Shh.” Finn shushed the other man as if chiding a two-year-old:
Now, Johnny, no candy before supper.
“Don’t piss me off, Lang.”
The code was Morse with something else Peter didn’t understand.
He caught a
t
and
w
, maybe an
r
. He watched Finn acknowledge:
break-break.
“And where were we? Oh yes, telepathy. Well, it’s nothing supernatural, boy-o. You’ve got the ability. We all do. Think of ecstatic
experiences, how people speak in tongues or crave to let
Jeeesus
”—
Finn sang it like a tent preacher—“into their hearts. People
love
that
expansive, bigger-than-me feeling. It’s why people have been mixing
potions and using psychedelics for centuries since Og wondered about
the stars. My particular favorites are those found in the writings of
the Hindus: Vedas devoted to decoctions and hallucinogenic elixirs
derived from a very particular, very special family of mushroom that
not only allowed for communication with the divine but conferred
immortality and brought the dead back to life. But read any religious
text and you’ll find that all the greats—Shiva, Vishnu, Moses, Ezekiel,
Jeeesus
—get high, see visions, come back from the underworld or the
Land of the Dead . . . and they
all
hear that still, small voice.”
Chris.
Peter remembered how his friend suddenly appeared . . .
and that clear, calm voice.
So what did I hear? Who?
A horrible new
thought:
God, what if that was Finn?
“But hearing . . . well,
God
. . .
that’s not
communication
.”
“Ah, boy-o, but it’s a beginning.” Finn tapped a finger to his temple. “All this suggests multiple modalities through which the brain
can be rewired to receive and issue commands. We
know
that not
only is the brain hardwired to seek the mystical, we can recreate the
experience. Goose that temporal lobe with an electrode in precisely
the right spot, spark it just so—and you, too, can have an out-of-body
experience. The potential’s there, except we’ve let it go fallow, using
speech instead. Yet
now
, we have the Changed, who do not speak but
still act together and clearly communicate with one another.” Finn
favored Davey with the look of a proud dad whose kid had just won
the hundred in ten seconds flat. “What makes you believe that the
Changed
can’t
access senses and abilities you’ve let atrophy, and that
we—
well,
I—
can’t alter the chemical mix to allow for new possibilities? You’re not the only one whose brain is different, boy-o.”
Or who’s been fed a drug.
And what did Finn mean by
not the only
one
? Was Finn referring only to the Changed? Or was Finn talking
about himself ?
My God, is Finn different? Has he been like the Changed in this way for
years now and only waiting to find people like him?
Or had Finn given himself the same drug he’d used on Peter and
Davey and these girls? History was littered with examples of doctors
and scientists experimenting on themselves first.
“You can’t have figured all this out just now,” Peter said.
“Of course not. I told you, Peter.” Finn arranged his fingers in a
professorial steeple. “I experiment. I have
always
experimented. And I
infer, I deduce. Think of how much more
efficient
an army might be if
they moved to a single purpose. If
commands
did not rely on only one
sensory modality or communications channel. There are no miracles,
boy-o, only things we can’t explain and abilities we don’t know how
to exploit, switches we can’t throw . . . until we can and do.”
The idea—the
image
of Finn marshaling an army of Changed—
stilled his blood.
And he said decades
. Finn was in Vietnam; maybe he
was experimenting back then, too, the way the military did with LSD
and sarin and other drugs. So if Finn had been at this awhile, he just
might succeed. The Changed were his happy accident, a stroke of
very good luck and serendipity. A Eureka moment.
I must be the same thing. I didn’t die or Change, and I should have. All the
Spared—Chris, Alex, Sarah, Greg, me—we’re specimens.
“What do you want?” It finally hit him that he was completely
naked, in the snow, having a conversation with a lunatic. The ache
in his shoulder had dulled to a grumble, and the pain in his head was
only a memory. He hugged his arms to his chest, more from habit
than because he was cold. Could you fake your way to being human
again? “You’ve taken everything else. You won’t even let me die.”
“
That’s
not true. You wouldn’t let yourself die. Oh, wait.” Finn
did a mock Homer Simpson slap. “
Doh.
You mean, not letting you
hang yourself ? You weren’t in your right mind, but if you’re really hot
to finish the job, you’ve got a knife. Go ahead, slit your throat. Stab
yourself in the heart. Dig out your eyes for all I care.”
Choices that were no choices: Finn excelled at this. “What you do
want?” he repeated.
And so Finn told him.

What bothered Peter most was he could muster only a small flower
of outrage. Yet as he listened, this also answered a very important
question.
Finn had to ask. He can’t
read
my mind, but only influence
it.
Peter recalled the explosion in his head, and the ecstasy of the
red swoon.
He can give pain and pleasure.
Which was much less than
Finn managed with Davey and the other Changed. So what did that
mean?

“No,” he said when Finn was done.
“Then you guarantee extermination,” Finn said. “You know they
return to the familiar, and the clock is ticking, boy-o. Less than two
months to go, right?”

How does he know that?
If Finn couldn’t read Peter’s mind, then the
old man must’ve heard rumors, or maybe had spies in Rule all along.
Instead of answering the question, he said, “Why would I agree?”

“Because it’s a question of the lesser evil. It’s a way out.”
“Way out?” Now he did laugh. “How?”
“You need me to spell this out? You’re a smart college boy.

Michigan Tech, right? Oh, but you didn’t graduate, that’s right. A
semester shy, as I recall, because of that little”—Finn wiggled his fingers—“
accident
. But you
studied
this phenomenon, did field research
on the wolves of Isle Royale?”

“Yes.” God, Finn
did
know all about him. “Genetic rescue in captive populations.”
“So, think of what I offer, Peter: protection, enough diversity to
keep the population humming along, food.” He did Peter the favor of
not smiling. “Think of me as providing genetic rescue.”
“But you’re not using
all
the Changed the way you have Davey
and these girls. What about the ones in the prison house? I recognize
a few. What are you going to do, Finn?”
“I might not have to
do
much at all. You know history, Peter. Rome
wasn’t built in a day, but it did fall in three. Rule’s like that. With the
mine gone, no supplies, and everyone so
old
, the village will eat itself
alive, like a cancer, inside and out. Remember, Chuckies return to the
familiar. So just think what’s heading their way as we speak.”
The idea of even a few Changed actually making it back to the
village sent a slow shudder up his spine. He knew Finn
had
kids
from Rule; he’d recognized the doe-eyed Kate Landry and burly Lee
Travers.
And if Finn’s gathering Changed like Kate and Lee and the rest are
his new army . . .
It would be like the last emperor of Rome watching
the Visigoths boil through the city’s Salarian Gate to storm the Seven
Hills.
“I give it”—Finn tipped his wrist to check a phantom watch—“oh,
another day or two. Or the prodigals might already be there, Peter.
So what do you
imagine
will happen?”
It was on the tip of his tongue to say that the Council couldn’t fall
and Chris would find a way.
But Chris came in a vision. Forget the drug.
Something’s happened to him and in Rule; I know it. Finn is too confident.
The hurt—the idea that Chris really might be dead—was a barb of
grief in his heart. Yet he grabbed hold, pulled it closer, deeper, wanting the pain, wishing for the hurt.
If I know what grief is, there’s a
chance I might come out the other side.
“Why do you hate Rule so much?” he asked. “Who
are
you, Finn?”
“I am what I am.” Finn spread his hands. “And mine is the way,
boy-o.”
No, but you are the only way left.
He closed his eyes not so much
against Finn but the sudden icy tide that passed for his blood. In his
brain, he could feel the winged thing’s claws hook a little more firmly.
He almost wished for the bells again. Or Simon. Then he would be
only insane and have an excuse.
“All right.” He opened his eyes. “But I want to be there. I need
your word.”
“Scout’s honor. Now, whaddaya say we get you inside before you
lose a foot?” Finn tipped him a wink. “Or something more
vital
that a
healthy young buck like you would be sorry to see go? Oh, but wait.”
Finn did his mock head-slap. “We forgot Lang. You still want him?”
“Yes.” Peter felt the winged thing shift. “You know what they say
about revenge served cold.”
“No!” Lang reached for Finn like a bawling baby. “Boss, no, I’m
your man!”
“Plenty more old farts where you came from, too.” There was
a scrape of keen steel on leather as Finn unsheathed his parang.
“Who’s hungry?”