Monsters: The Ashes Trilogy (51 page)

Every soldier carries keepsakes and charms, usually on them or
in their over-vests: letters, pictures, Bibles, rosaries, scapulars. His
own—a St. George medal from his grandmother and a picture of
his little sisters—were tucked in the same sock drawer with his dog
tags back home, and so much dust. The tags he wore now were Jed’s.
As far as he knew, Weller had no tags, but he was an old soldier and
habits die hard.

They were in the dopp kit, the first place Tom looked, and protected by a Ziploc baggy: a newspaper clipping and an old Polaroid.
The clipping, almost three years old, read:

HOUGHTON VICTIM REMEMBERED AS “DETERMINED”
AND “GOOD FRIEND”
Friends of Amanda L. Pederson recalled a vivacious, generous, and hardworking young woman ready to offer a helping
hand and determined to return to school and pursue a college
degree.
“Totally devastated,” was how Claire Mason characterized
her reaction to the news of Pederson’s disappearance after a
freak boating accident in Lake Superior. “I can’t even imagine
what she was doing out there with a bunch of college kids in
the first place. She couldn’t swim, and can you imagine her
poor parents? How they’ll never have a body? It’s just terrible.”
The boat on which Pederson was a passenger went down in
the still-frigid waters of Superior after a fire broke out in the
vessel’s engine room. Repeated efforts by fellow passengers to
free Pederson, trapped below deck, failed, and the vessel sank
before a Coast Guard helicopter arrived on scene. Recovery
efforts were suspended due to poor visibility and the depth of
the lake, which has been recorded at over five hundred feet in
that area. No further searches for the missing boat or Houghton
resident are planned.
“Amanda was just the nicest girl,” Jack Laparma, a close
friend, said. “She’d had some hard times, but she was completely determined, ready to move on.”
Pederson is reported to have enjoyed snowmobiling as well as
time spent with family and friends.
The names of Pederson’s fellow passengers as well as the
boat’s owner are currently being withheld until a preliminary
investigation is completed and a cause of the engine fire can
be established. Given the loss of the boat, however, and the
reported lack of eyewitness accounts, a source close to the
current investigation suggested that the death will be classified
as accidental. No criminal charges are currently pending or
anticipated.
Pederson is survived by her parents, Claire and Benjamin; a
brother, Theodore; and grandparents Ron and Esther Pederson
of Houghton, and William and Rosemary Weller of Marenisco.
The picture accompanying the article showed Weller’s granddaughter in jeans and a tee, sitting atop a picnic table. In the
background was a river, boats, and a lift bridge.
The Polaroid was so aged most of the color had bled. The ghostly
image of two men posed before a Quonset. Each held an M16. Both
wore camo battle dress, but only Weller, just as grizzled then as now,
sported three tabs on his left sleeve—special forces, rangers, and airborne—and a smoke tucked behind one ear.
The man Tom zeroed in on stood to Weller’s right: grim and
blocky, with a barrel chest and thighs like tree trunks. His skull was
so large, his dark hair, cut high and tight, looked like the bristles of a
broom.
On the back, in faded ballpoint:
Finn ’68 Ben Tre
. The name of the
town or village meant nothing to Tom. He squinted at Finn’s uniform, trying to make out his rank. Major or lieutenant colonel—and
was that a medical corps insignia? He thought it might be. Weller’s
three chevrons put his rank as a sergeant.
A commander and his sarge.
Now, Tom had two names: Chris Prentiss and Finn.
Which monster to take on first . . . that was the question.

Weller had marked the most likely spots where Rule might post
archers, but Tom spotted none, and no arrows came whizzing from
the trees. While he was happy not to end up with an arrow through
his neck or in his back, Tom began to suspect that something was seriously wrong. By the third block in from the woods, he was positive.

The doors of every house stood open. From the splintered jambs
and screens hanging at cockeyed angles, these were forced entries.
Each home had been stormed, searched, and then—his eyes drifted
to a drippy, red, spray-painted X right of a jamb—ticked off the to-do
list. Raids for food and other supplies would be his first guess.

But what if they were looking for Chuckies?
If Rule’s children and
grandchildren and all their friends
had
returned, going door-to-door
to hunt them down made sense. The timing was about right. Judging
from blown snow in front halls, whatever happened was a couple
weeks back. But you wouldn’t stop there, would you? There was no
timetable, no way of knowing when more kids might show up. You’d
mount patrols and guards. So where was everyone?

He turned a slow, careful circle. Long icicles fanged eaves and gutters on those homes with southern and western exposures. Most of
the houses facing north were mantled with thick snow. Anyone still
around would need to stay warm. He sniffed and got a light scent
of wood smoke: drifting down from the northeast and the center of
town. He still didn’t hear anything other than the faint sough of a
light breeze. But people would be conserving energy, not moving
around much.

Something orange and large suddenly slunk around the corner
of a two-story to his left. Startled, he spun, Uzi up before he realized
what he was looking at. The instant the cat spotted Tom, it froze, one
paw poised above the snow. Something furry dangled from its jaws.
They regarded one another for a beat. He couldn’t speak for the cat,
but his heart was hammering. Evidently unimpressed, the cat trotted
up snowy steps, then eeled through an open front door.

Tom lowered his weapon.
A cat?
This made no sense. You break
down doors; you look for supplies. In a starvation situation, pets were
fair game. Dogs, he could see sparing; they sensed Chuckies. You
needed horses, too. But no one really
needed
—

If he hadn’t been staring after the cat, he never would have seen
them. As it was, what his eye snagged on was a distant olive-green
blur—a parka—and a quick spark of sun in the far woods to the left
behind the house.

Theoretically, you could get into Rule any number of ways. Those
two boys angling through the trees must have dropped down from
the north. Both had rifles and were moving slowly, cautiously, their
heads tilted to the snow. They hadn’t spotted him yet, but they would.

Darting up the steps, he bolted into the house after the cat. As soon
as he was inside, he noticed two things at the same time: a long-dried
bloodstain on the floor and the stink of decay. That cat had a nice
stash of rotting mice somewhere. Trotting past a narrow understairs
closet to his left, he moved into the kitchen, which was a shambles.
Cupboards stood open, drawers had been pulled and dumped. The
pantry door was open by a hair. Several floorboards had been pried
up, too, both in the pantry and out here, leaving dark rectangular
slots wide enough for a person to drop through. The aroma of decay
was stronger here, as was the smell of cold dirt from the crawl space
under the house. The cat was nowhere in sight.

Sidestepping a gap, he peered over a window sill above the sink.
The two boys were just clearing a woodpile alongside a detached
garage. Both simultaneously looked over their shoulders at something further back. One boy—smaller, a mop of brown hair—made
a warding-off gesture, waving someone back.
Bad news, if there’s more
than just these two.
Craning, he took his eyes away a split second to see
if he could make out who else was there, and how many.

It was a split second too long. When he jumped his gaze back, the
other boy—older, taller, dark-eyed—was looking right at him.
“Shit!” he hissed. He ducked, already knowing it was too late. But
he still might be able to avoid a fight. Pivoting, he started out of the
kitchen, intending to head for the second story because it was always
easier to defend high and he might be able to make his way out a
window. Something flickered to his left, and he saw a boy dashing
around to the front and the second, taller boy, down low, wheeling
around the kitchen side steps.
No time for the stairs. Dropping to a sit, Tom threw his legs over
the edge of the gap in the kitchen floor, then slid all the way through.
No more than two feet high, the crawl space was virtually pitch black
except for thin stringers of light dashing through chinks in the floor.
The air reeked of mildew and the eye-watering stench of dead mice.
Tongue cringing from the clog of decay, he took small sips through his
teeth as he slithered, on his belly, over cold earth and deeper into the
crawl space. The smell of rot and, now, a septic system desperately in
need of emptying. The people who’d lived here must’ve kept on crapping until their toilets overflowed.
Far enough.
Turning onto his side, he faced the way he’d come.
Light glimmered through the gap. If they looked, they wouldn’t see
him so long as he remained still. Then he remembered that Chuckies
saw very well in the dark. Either way, if it came down to a fight, he
thought he had a chance. Even with Jed’s Bravo in its scabbard, there
was a foot of clearance between his Uzi and the underbelly of the
house, plenty of room to roll.
Take out anything that comes through the gap.
He tucked the silenced
Uzi to his chest, business end trained on that wedge of silver light.
After that, he would have to be fast. The remaining kid could shoot
down, but both boys were carrying bolt-actions. He fingered the
Uzi’s selector to full auto.
Shoot up, really spray it, and then—
Directly over his head, the floorboards creaked. A soft
screee
. More
steps, the gauzy light rippling as the boy moved across the kitchen.
He heard more thumps as the second boy came down the front hall.
Cringing back, Tom tried making himself as small as possible—
And felt a hand on his shoulder.