Monsters: The Ashes Trilogy

by Ilsa J. Bick

  “What? Who?”

  “The guys in the movie.” The people-eaters were very close now, their finger-shadows brushing her hair and arms in crawly spiders.

  “Oh yeah.” She felt the chain bite again as Eli redoubled his grip. “The good guys always make it. We’ll do it, too. We’re Jayden’s Killer Es, remember? Good guys? So …”

  She waited a beat, the steady thump of the people-eaters’ march over the ice keeping pace with the race of her pulse. “Eli?” When he didn’t respond, she risked a look. “E—”

  His expression was one she knew. Her Grandpa Jack had worn the same mix of sorrow and shock and rage the day the Army people came to tell them that her daddy was dead.

  “Eli,” she said, heart going so fast her chest was about to explode. “What is it?”

  “Lena,” Eli whispered, aghast. Then, louder: “Lena?”

  What happened next happened fast.

  81

  Bolting over the snow, Alex barreled into the trees. That burst of strength during the gunfight and then their escape was tailing off, the tang of adrenaline going stale on her tongue. She was huffing, her lungs laboring both from the cold and a smoky haze steaming through the trees in a thickening fog. Snatching a look back, she got a fix on the burning house. The roof was ablaze, a gigantic fiery tongue licking the sky. A little further left, southeast, until I’m even with where the chimney used to be.

  Finding what she was looking for again—that was the problem. She’d come from a different angle the first time around. Back here, the snow was all torn up, not only from the frequent passage of game but her own meanderings. Yeah, but all these tracks might be good. Stopping a quick second, she eyed the path she’d taken so far. They’ll have a hard time figuring out which way I went—

  “Oh hell,” she breathed. Against the snow, her prints were stark potholes etched in gray-black smears. Must’ve been that last fireball, all that ash. All anyone had to do was follow the yellow brick road right to that old oak—

  A distant, shrill shriek. Penny. Those men must be up the hill. Please, Peter, don’t let them hurt Wolf. She tensed, waiting for the shot that didn’t come and didn’t come. Which didn’t mean a thing. She thought about those weird Changed, that red storm. What if they tried the same on Wolf? And Peter, something was very wrong with Peter; she could smell it …

  You can’t worry about that. Come on, think of something, a plan B. Except she didn’t have one, and with those sooty tracks, she was leading them right to her. When they caught up, she wouldn’t be able to fight for long. She was tiring fast. Snow sucked and grabbed her calves. Her thighs were lead, and she was battling not only snow and gnarled overgrowth that snatched at her pants and parka but days without proper food.

  Keep going, don’t stop. Plowing through a whippy tangle of branches, she heard the crackle and pop, felt them pluck and tear at her hair. To her right, she saw a snare flash past. Crossing a trapline. One look, and that would clinch it, too. They’ll know the Changed didn’t set them. Might even give the man in black ideas. He would be curious: why hadn’t the Changed eaten her yet? That would make him all the more interested in Wolf: a Changed boy who protects a pregnant girl and keeps another, not Changed, for … a pet? No, a friend. Maybe, in Wolf’s mind, she was even more.

  A faint aroma of human skin, horse sweat, and toe fungus drifted in with the smoke. Men, on their way. How many? Couldn’t tell. The Changed boy was big trouble, too, but her nose hadn’t found him yet.

  In fifty feet, she saw the slight break in the trees, felt her heart give a mighty thump of relief. Almost there. A few seconds later, she spotted four ratty boards nailed to the trunk of a towering oak. To the left and behind the oak was the corkscrew of a red pine. Not an option. But to the right grew a bristle of small, immature hemlock, and just beyond reared a huge, bedraggled white spruce, with low-hanging boughs still heavy with snow. Eyeing the spruce, the glimmer of an idea forming, she thought, Wait a second.

  Her original plan had been simple. Thirty feet above, seated in its V, was the old tree house. Other than a slight warp in the boards and slivers of daylight, the platform was solid. So, get up there, try not to get shot, maybe even go higher or shimmy out on a long stout branch, drop to the snow well away from the tree, and keep running while they tried to figure out where she’d got to. Now, though, there was that spruce …

  At the oak, she wrapped both hands around the lowest board and tugged. Black with mildew, the swollen board might have broken in summer, but the winter had iced it in place. Clambering up, she found the same in the second and third boards. She might be able to sell this without it, but a broken board added that extra touch that made her look like easy pickings, a scared little girl out of options.

  And never mind that I am. Jumping to the snow, she backed up, eyed the trunk, then figured screw it. If it didn’t work the first time, she wouldn’t try again. Cranking up her right leg, she turned her hip, and pistoned up and out in a swift, hard kick. She felt the bam of the impact against the sole of her boot. To her amazement, neither her foot nor ankle broke. It didn’t even hurt that much. With a crisp snap, the board sheared in a ragged split at the nailhead.

  Excellent. Fishing the splintered fragment from the snow, she positioned it close to the trunk. Then she dropped to the snow and churned her arms and legs. There. Shaking snow from her hair, she picked herself up. If that didn’t look as if she’d tried climbing up into the tree house but then fallen to the snow when the board broke, she didn’t know what would.

  Okay, now show them panic. Thrashing through unbroken snow, she attacked that densely packed hemlock, breaking branches, sending a shower of green growth to the snow. Anyone looking would see that this was one scared little bunny rabbit of a girl, so freaked out she tried running straight through the trees before turning back. A moron could figure this out.

  Floundering for the drooping, heavy-limbed spruce, she swam beneath the boughs and through mounded snow into a fragrant cave. Most of the light was blocked by the low-slung bell of limbs. The air was a little warmer here, the ground matted with dead brown needles. Dropping to her rump, she shucked the pack and pushed it far back, close to the trunk. Stripping off her soot-stained boots, she thought about it a second and then peeled and stuffed her socks inside. Socks would protect her feet from spruce needles and the cold but slow her down, and she sensed she would have only one chance to make this work. Squaring the boots beneath a dense, snow-matted bough, she wiggled out of the cave. Dancing back, bare feet already yammering that they really didn’t appreciate this, she eyed the gap between the boughs and the snow line. The toes of her boots were just visible.

  Okay, this would have to do. If she was lucky, it would look to the guys on her tail as if she’d first tried the tree house, panicked when the board broke, and then tried running through the hemlocks before giving up and ducking to hide like an ostrich under the spruce.

  Diving back into her cave, she squirmed out of her grimy but still mostly white parka, draped the jacket over her head, eased down, and tucked herself into a crouch. Her calves would complain soon. That might be a relief since her feet were really nagging, the toes singing with the cold. Yet pain was good, pain kept her sharp. A passing glance, and her parka should look like heaped snow. The boots were what she wanted them to see. As for what happened after that … she hadn’t quite worked that out. The flare gun was too loud. The tanto? Long blade, better reach, but what good was a knife in a gunfight?

  The crackle of a breaking branch made her heart skip. To her left, the human stink was much stronger and …

  Oh no no no. The hairs along her neck bristled at another aroma drifting in from her right. This was much more distant, but the chemotherapy tang, cisplatin wreathed in rot, was unmistakable.

  A Changed, probably that boy. They’re coming at me from both directions.

  She wet her lips. She couldn’t get out of this. But if she could get a gun, give them a fight … Can’t let them take me. Us
ing her fingers, she eased her parka up until she got a small sliver of daylight. They’ll turn me into Peter. Or worse. If the red storm was any indication, the man in black would feel how she was different, and then there was just no telling. With her luck, he’d hack open her skull and try to figure out what made the monster tick. If he was really good and knew what he was doing, that wouldn’t kill her either. The brain felt no pain. Once through the skull and dura, that red storm could flay and probe every cranny, every crevice, right down to the monster.

  A thump, the squeal of snow to her left. Boots. Big guy. Spokes of hazy late-afternoon sun jabbed thick forest canopy. Through that narrow sliver, she saw white snow, a screen of hemlock, and the tall oak beyond that. Another thump—

  A man passed in and then out of a shaft of sunlight. His white and gray hooded snowsuit was fringed, a fancy 3-D jacket with strips of fabric designed to look and flutter like leaves. When he stood absolutely still, she almost lost him in the trees. Light winked from his scoped rifle. His head bowed to study her trail. When he looked up, she saw him train a long look at the oak tree.

  Go on, go on. Check it out. She stifled a moan of disappointment as the man, no fool, faded behind a neighboring pine. Easing his rifle to his shoulder, he sighted and then squeezed off a quick shot. There was the hornet’s sting of a ricochet. From somewhere came the startled rasp of a crow. A second later, her ears perked to an odd series of cicada-like clicks.

  Radio. She recognized the sound from her days in Rule. Someone heard the shot, wants to know what’s going on. Probably that red storm. There was a pause, then a series of break-break-breaks as the hunter sent off his own code. Thought I was up in the tree. But she hadn’t returned fire or screamed or died. So what was he waiting for?

  Suddenly sprinting away from cover, the hunter made a mad, weaving run for the oak. Fast for an old guy. If she had been up there, he’d be tough to hit. Crowding up to the trunk, the hunter shot straight up, threw his bolt, squeezed off another shot and then another and another: crack-crack-crack-crack! Probably some big holes in that tree house now, plenty of daylight. Enough to show him there was no one there.

  More radio clicks. More returns from the hunter. Probably something like roger-dodger, A-OK.

  Okay, now, please. She gnawed her cheek. Look down. See the broken step.

  Socking his radio onto his hip, the hunter stepped away from the tree and tipped his head back as his eyes climbed branches, searching for a person huddled even higher. Then, finally, he dropped his gaze to the snow. His exaggerated, almost stupefied double take and then slow crane as his eyes followed her blundering progress made a boil of hysteria push against her lips. That quickly died as he threw his bolt, racked in another bullet, and started her way, the fake leaves of his fancy 3-D camo-jacket fluttering.

  She knew he was looking at her boots, which was good. She also knew something else that wasn’t so good. That was a six-shot rifle, and he’d used five. It hit her then that she couldn’t afford him getting off even one more shot. Every time that rifle cracked, the radio clicked.

  All of a sudden, from her left, came a new scent, but one she recognized. No, no! A jab of terror spiked her gut. She should have thought of this. After all, this had happened in Rule, that very first night. Go away; don’t do it, you nut. Stay away, stay—

  “Come on out.” Now that the hunter was close, all she saw were legs in sturdy, thick-soled winter boots. Ten feet away, no more. “I know you’re there.”

  Make the play before he starts blasting. “I’m hurt.” She pitched her voice into a high, small, shaky whimper. It actually helped that she was freaked. “I fell … when I t-tried …”

  “Come out.” His tone was flinty. “There’s nowhere left to run.”

  “You’ve g-got a g-gun,” she said. “Don’t sh-shoot me.”

  “I will if you don’t come out.”

  Maybe this was a guy who hated being a grandpa. “They were going to eat me. Don’t let them get me.”

  “No one’s going to hurt you,” he said. Had that been gentler? She couldn’t tell. His boots shifted a bit and then she saw one shuffle forward as he dropped to a crouch. That was bad. Any lower, and he’d realize those boots were empty. “Come—”

  The scent she’d recognized suddenly bloomed peppery and hot. No, no, no, he’ll shoot, you nut. Her stomach bottomed out. Stay back!

  But the wolfdog didn’t stay back. It charged because she was in trouble and it was part-dog, and dogs had done this for her once before, that first, awful night in Rule.

  She saw the hunter pivot fast. “Jesus—”

  “No, over here!” Shoving the parka aside, she surged from her cave. “Here!”

  82

  An inky shadow flickered over Ellie’s head as the boy with the machete leapt the gap and landed behind her. A split second later, Eli was shrieking, his hands clapped over his middle, blood already pouring as the dogs surged.

  The raft should’ve tipped right then. But at that moment, Ellie felt something give her arms a great yank. Instinctively countering the pull, Ellie looked back and nearly screamed.

  It was the girl with the green scarf, the one Eli called Lena, stretched full-length on the ice. Two people-eaters had Lena’s legs, tacking her in place. Wrapping her other hand around the auger’s screw, Lena tugged again. Water slopped over the ice floe as it lurched closer.

  “No!” Ellie gave the auger a furious shove, ramming it toward the girl’s face. Startled, Lena let go, dodging as the auger’s razor-sharp blades buzzed past. For a split second, Ellie saw not only hunger but bewilderment in Lena’s expression. In that moment, Lena looked almost like a girl who just couldn’t understand what she’d become.

  That was where the good news ended, though. The instant was past in a flash. Now, with no one to anchor her and the raft overstressed and unbalanced—poor Eli still screaming, the dogs snarling, the people-eater yowling and thrashing—the entire ice shelf tipped. Releasing the useless auger, Ellie tried swinging around to snag ice with her fingernails, but she might as well have tried climbing a vertical sheet of perfectly smooth glass. She felt the slide begin, her body pick up speed. No, no, no, no! Something cracked and then cracked twice more, and she thought she heard shrieks, but she was screaming, too, and wasn’t sure if those cracks were ice, or something else.

  Then she was out of time. Everyone and everything behind Ellie—the snapping dogs, Eli, the boy with the machete—whacked her broadside.

  Shrieking, Ellie shot off the ice.

  83

  Alex shot from her hiding place. Out of the corner of her left eye, her vision blurred gray and white, and she sure as hell hoped the wolfdog would stop its charge. Then she had no more time to worry. All she cared about now was that this old man’s rifle not go off.

  At her shout, the hunter spun, his long gun swinging around. Right arm already cocked, she got in under the rifle but not fast enough. The muzzle flash and crack were virtually instantaneous. She never heard the shriek that crashed out of her mouth. The bullet burned a groove over her left temple. Something shattered in that ear, and by the time she registered the shot and that he was out of ammo, his seamed face filled her vision.

  She stabbed.

  She’d had time to think and mull over the hospital smell of that syringe, and why Peter might have it. She remembered his books. Mammalogy. Evolution. Genetics. Wolves.

  Whether it was Penny Peter had first brought to the lake house or Wolf, the problem remained: how? How do you put down a foaming, frothing, feral Changed? How do you bring something like that under control?

  If you had majored in mammalogy and studied animals in the wild, or were only a sheriff’s deputy, you’d done it before: to frightened dogs, wolves that had to be relocated, coyotes you didn’t want to kill. Even a bear or two. Or maybe you’d seen someone else do it. Whatever. You knew the theory: trank the hell out of those suckers. Put them to sleep—with a pressurized tranquilizer dart.

  She stabbed wi
th the needle: a quick, lunging jab.

  She was aiming for the hunter’s throat.

  She got his eye.

  84

  As soon as the frigid water hit her face, most of Ellie’s air gushed out in a shimmering, bubbling cascade. Her heart whammed her ribs like the steel toe of a boot. For a startling moment that seemed to last forever, her brain blanked out.

  Then someone—Eli or a dog or the people-eater with the machete—landed on top and drove her deeper. A gout of icy water shot up her nose, the pain like red-hot pokers jammed into her brain. The cold punched at her eyes. The stringer chain was still around her middle, and for a weird second, she thought the lake might actually grab it and pull her down. With precious little air left, she struggled free of a tangle of arms and legs and looked up in time to see something coming straight down like a guided missile. Letting out a bubbling little cry—and the last smidgeon of her air—she jerked aside as the machete skimmed past.

  Above, the churning water was murky with billowing curls of blood stirred by pedaling legs and paws. It was like being caught at the very bottom of a giant washing machine. Kicking, lungs imploding with the burn, she grabbed water and swept her arms in a mighty heave.

  Shattering the surface, she gulped air so cold it torched her throat. Eli was nowhere in sight. Neither were the dogs. No. They were just here. “M-Mina?” she coughed. “Eli?”

  To her right, Mina’s head suddenly popped up like a float freed from the monster of a fish that had swallowed the hook. Chuffing, Mina turned frantic circles, looking for a place to go.

  The raft. Furiously treading water, Ellie twisted, trying to get a fix on where she was. Got to find the raft, something to hang onto, and Eli, where’s—

  To her left came a watery crash and then the sound of someone hacking and spitting. A surge of relief: Eli. He’d know what to do. He was stronger than her. But he’s hurt, he’s hurt, he was bleeding … No, Eli was fine, he couldn’t die, he’d be okay; they’d get out of this and she’d never, ever make fun of him again! “Eli!” Gasping, she croaked, “Eli, are you—”