The Remnant (21 page)

"You’re going out into the woods," she said,
simply.

Ashley tucked the carbine under one arm,
nodding. "I’m sure it’s nothing again."

"I’m coming with you."

"No, you’re not. You’ll be safe inside with
Maxie."

"I’ll be safe out in the woods," Marie
assured her.

Something in her voice told Trace that it
wasn’t just youthful naivete speaking.

"Why are you so sure of that?" he asked,
studying her closely.

It was more than just her voice. The girl’s
entire countenance revealed a strange inner peace, and once again
Trace recalled the old mystic in New Mexico.

"It isn’t time for the killings, yet," said
Marie, simply.

Ashley gasped, and Trace glanced at her.

"What have you seen?" asked Ashley,
quietly.

Marie shook her head. "It isn’t time, yet.
That’s all. But I want to see what’s in the woods. I need to see
the light."

Ashley walked over to the girl and rested her
carbine beside the door. She stared deeply into Marie’s eyes.

"Do you love me?" she asked.

Marie frowned, nodding.

"Do you trust me?"

Again the girl nodded.

"Do you know how much I love you?"

"Yes," said Marie, swallowing a lump in her
throat.

Ashley gently stroked the girl’s cheek. "Then
I’m asking you to do this one thing for me. Let me go out there and
make sure there’s nothing there. If you go with me I’ll be more
worried about you than watching what I’m doing, and if there is
something one of us or both of us might get killed."

Marie hesitated.

"Please?" said Ashley.

Reluctantly the girl nodded, and Ashley
kissed her forehead before retrieving the carbine. She surprised
Trace by heading for the front of the house instead of the rear,
and he raced to keep up. He noticed the shotgun beside the
door.

Ashley stepped out onto the porch, glancing
back at Trace.

"Keep Maxie inside with you," she said.

"Right," he said, hefting the shotgun, hoping
he didn’t blow his foot off or shoot her or the dog.

"You aren’t coming. You don’t even know how
to use that thing."

"Just point and shoot," said Trace, waving
the gun toward the trees. "Like a digital camera, right?"

She sighed again. "Please stay inside with
Marie."

"One more time, all together now... It isn’t
gonna happen. Why don’t you come back inside?"

"Come on, then," she said, closing the door
before Maxie could escape.

She waited until Marie locked the door behind
them, then Trace followed her onto the lawn. They trotted into the
trees beside the house where she squatted on her haunches, studying
the woods and grounds.

"Why go out the front?" whispered Trace.

She raised one eyebrow. "If there
is
someone out back we don’t want to just try walking up to him across
the yard."

"Why not bring Maxie, then?"

"He isn’t programmed for attack."

"What’s he programmed for," muttered Trace,
"sarcasm?"

She rose slowly-but remained
hunch-shouldered-and Trace followed her example. He was amazed by
how lithely she slipped through the underbrush, nudging branches
aside gentle as a fawn, barely making a sound. More than once she
warned him with a nasty look when he crushed a twig or brushed too
loudly against a bramble. When they had worked their way to the
rear of the property she stopped and squatted again, staring across
the empty back yard.

Trace was surprised to see how much darker
the woods had grown in the brief time it had taken them to make
their way the hundred yards or so around the house. Although the
sun had not really
set
it had sunk behind the mountains, and
shadows were flooding the valley. Ashley shoved the barrel of
Trace’s shotgun aside and frowned.

"Sorry," he muttered.

"Can you use that or not?" she whispered
back.

He shrugged. He’d been making sure his finger
stayed far away from the trigger. She shook her head.

"Look," she said, pointing to the checkered
wooden stock below the barrel. "This is a pump slide. This is the
safety button. There’s a round in the chamber. Push the safety,
pull the trigger, and you’re in business. Once you fire it you have
to pump it. Got it?"

He nodded.

"It kicks," she said, looking him in the
eye.

"I can
handle
it," he said.

She turned back to the woods. "If I start
shooting," she whispered. "You just shoot at what I’m shooting
at."

That made sense. About as much sense at the
two of them being out here, anyway.

The farther they got into the woods out back
the more the ground sloped upward and the deeper the shadows grew.
The trees closed in around them, and every dark shape seemed to
hide a face or a silhouette. Trace sensed a waiting, watching
quality to the night, and he could tell by Ashley’s tense form that
she sensed it as well. With every tenuous step they trekked deeper
into the lair of creatures to which the darkness was not an alien
landscape, but their home, their favored haunt, their natural
hunting ground. Perhaps some of them were men. Perhaps not. He
tried to carry the gun across his chest the way he imagined a
hunter would, his finger resting over the safety button, one hand
on the pump, discovering, at least, that he was no longer as
frightened of the weapon itself as he was of whoever or whatever
might be waiting up ahead in the forest.

Suddenly starlight flickered and then
disappeared, and Trace did a double take. It seemed fifty percent
darker than it had only moments before. Finally Ashley leaned close
to his ear.

"It does that sometimes in the mountains.
It’s just clouds."

But Trace still held his breath, staring into
the crazy-quilt pattern of skeletal trees and silent, eerie
shadows, convinced that he did see something ahead that wasn’t
cloud related. Something that looked like a human figure.

Slow as sludge he reached out to grip
Ashley’s shoulder. She flinched, but he squeezed again before
returning his hand to the shotgun pump, and she followed his eyes
to the figure.

The silhouette was almost lost in the
surrounding darkness, and Trace was careful not to look away lest
he lose it never to find it again. But the longer he stared the
more he grew certain that it was a trick of the starlight after
all. Ashley still had not made a move to raise her own weapon, so
he kept the shotgun pointed at the sky.

Without warning she rose to her feet again
and started toward the figure, but he noticed that she was still
careful of every footstep, and she kept glancing all around the
woods. It dawned on him that the silhouette might be nothing more
than cardboard. A ruse. The hair stood stiffer on the back of his
neck, and he abandoned his idea of keeping his eye on the shadow,
glancing instead back in the direction of the house. He thought he
saw Maxie’s face in the door window. Then he heard Ashley gasp, and
he whirled.

The shadow figure was no longer thirty yards
away. It was standing directly in front of them looming over both
of them. Trace fumbled for the safety, his finger sliding toward
the trigger, but by the time he had the gun aimed directly at the
man
he disappeared.

They searched the surrounding woods for
thirty minutes but could find no sign anyone else had ever been
there.

"That was freaking weird," said Trace.

Ashley nodded, frowning. "Whatever it was,
it’s gone now."

"But what the hell was it?" said Trace,
shaking off a twitching along the base of his neck.

She shrugged. "Just another cloud
shadow."

But she didn’t sound like she believed that.
He could see her fighting her own fear.

"So, what do we do now?" he whispered.

Without answering she turned back toward the
house, and Trace followed her home.

Ashley locked the door behind them, and Maxie
and Marie followed Trace to the couch. Ashley stood over them, and
after a moment Trace looked up into her eyes.

"What was that out there, Ash?" he asked.

She shook her head, glancing at Marie. "We
both got a case of the creeps. That’s all."

"I saw a man."

"And I thought I did, too, but it wasn’t
there. Was it?"

"You really think it was a cloud shadow?"

"Do you have another explanation?"

He sighed. Any explanation he could come up
with seemed too ridiculous to voice.

"It wasn’t clouds," whispered Marie.

"It was, sweetheart," said Ashley.

But the girl shook her head. "It was a
message. You just don’t understand it."

"What kind of message?" asked Trace.

Ashley frowned. "You’re going to get her
worked up."

"You don’t believe what I see," said Marie,
accusing Ashley.

"It’s not that I don’t believe," said Ashley.
"I believe you see something. I just don’t know what it means. Do
you?"

Marie frowned, shaking her head. "Not
yet."

"Come on," said Ashley, holding out her hand
for Marie. "It’s been a hard day for all of us. Time for an early
bed."

Marie reluctantly climbed to her feet, and
Trace followed them down the hall. When Marie gave him a look he
turned away until she was undressed and into bed. Then he stood in
the door as Ashley continued trying to console the girl.

"There’s nothing out there to be afraid of,"
she assured her.

"There’s a lot out there to be afraid of,"
said Marie, rolling over onto her side to face the wall.

Ashley followed Trace back into the living
room and stood over him again as he sat on the sofa.

"What now?" she asked, quietly.

"What do you mean?" he said, frowning.

"Say things quiet down. If we are able to
somehow make peace with the Angels again. Will you go?"

"Will you?"

She sighed. "I told you. I can’t."

"If I could find a way to make it
possible?"

Hesitation, then a nod, but he could tell she
was just humoring him. She didn’t believe peace with the Angels was
possible. She probably didn’t believe any of them were leaving the
valley alive. He had his own doubts about that. And even if she did
believe it, it meant nothing to her now. Her tears were dry, but
the grief she felt was evident in her eyes, in her stance, and he
knew it was more than grief. The Angels had made a victim out of
Ashley for years. They had made an implacable enemy of her by
murdering Paulie. Maybe, just maybe things would still blow over
and they might make peace with the Brethren. Ashley was never
making peace with them again.

"If I can’t, I’ll stay as long as you’ll have
me," he said.

"What about Marie?"

He squinted up at her. "What do you
mean?"

"We’re a package."

"Any child of yours is a child of mine," he
said, meaning it.

He held out his hand, and when she lowered
herself onto the sofa this time their thighs touched, and an
electrical current jolted through him. She stroked his hair, and he
could barely breathe, but then she rose to her feet again too fast
for him to reach for her. She stared deeply into his eyes for only
a moment before disappearing into the hall.

Trace closed his eyes, too tired to
argue.

He wanted her desperately, of course, and he
knew now that she wanted him. But it had been incredibly
insensitive to think that with all that had happened, that a few
hours after her foster father’s death would be any time to make the
first move. Stupid, stupid thing to do.

An image of the shadow in the forest flashed
through his mind, and he instinctively recoiled from it. But the
fear it engendered broke down barriers in his mind, and he was
assaulted by other memories, sounds, smells, and emotions. He shook
his head willing the images away, but that only served to carry him
back into the tunnels in New York and then
through
that
memory and back...

He was standing atop that dank, dark, dusty
stairwell again, half into and half out of the attic. The door had
swung shut behind him. He was blind.

As long as he lived Trace was certain he’d
never forget the thick ammonia odor of that stuffy space. He
coughed-chemical knives nicking his throat and lungs-the real knife
with its busted handle clutched in his hand and seeming a very
feeble weapon. He thought to dash back down the stairs to the door,
but scurrying noises all around warned him that a million of the
sharp-toothed vermin were ready to leap onto his shoulders as soon
as he entered the stairwell again. At least in the attic he had the
height advantage, but he could also see all those ruby eyes glowing
brighter. The floor was swamped beneath an improbable tide of
meandering, milling, eeping, creeping rats that niggled around his
feet, and he kicked repeatedly, sending them flying from his
sneakers, shrieking. He could track their flight by the sea of eyes
that marked the rodents’ landing like a bloody ripple.

A louder and more insistent eeping sound drew
his attention back to the table in the center of the wide open
space, and he turned slowly to face the King Rat again, refusing to
shiver or show fear.

It was impossible to believe that any rat was
that big. Even standing on some old table it had to be well over a
foot-and-a-half tall, and in the almost pitch black gloom it’s body
mass seemed to be that of something the size of large house cat.
Yet there it was, its crimson eyes squinting with each nibbling
movement of its pincerlike jaws, and Trace could imagine but not
see long whiskers drooping from its thin black lips, and sense the
nervous twitching of a tail that had to be yard long.

Dumb animals that they were they should have
either fled at his arrival or attacked. But for that weird and
almost indescribable moment, they did neither. As he stood there
regarding the rodent, and the rodent stood there regarding him,
Trace understood that a decision was being made, one that would
likely decide his life or death. He felt himself being judged, and
the very idea sent a dark rage welling within him. His life sucked.
He was poor. His father and mother were mostly unaware of his
existence. He had no friends. He was lucky to pass a day at school
without being noticed by bullies, and now
rats
were going to
judge him?