Monsters: The Ashes Trilogy

by Ilsa J. Bick

  “Aw, shit. He ain’t breathing? Shit. All right, come on, come on, quit bawling and show us, kid.” Slinging his weapon onto his shoulder, the guard gave Luke a push. “We’re going to have to carry him,” he said to the others as they hurried off, all talking at once: “Where the hell is the flashlight?” “What do you mean, you dropped it, kid?” “Jesus, I told him to knock off those damn smokes after he run out of pills for his ticker—”

  Cindi waited until the guards had disappeared into the trees, then looked at Chad and Jasper. “Luke knows CPR,” she said, quietly. “Tom taught us, remember?”

  “He didn’t teach me,” Jasper said.

  “You’re too little.” Cindi saw that Chad now had the still hissing coffeepot in one hand. “Something’s going down. Cindi, Jasper,” Chad said, “grab a couple rocks from around the fire. Don’t burn yourselves.”

  “They have guns,” Cindi protested as she grabbed a sharp-edged stone as big as her hand.

  “Maybe not for long,” Chad said, interposing his body and squaring off so Cindi and Jasper were behind him. “Anything really bad happens, you just run.”

  From the trees came muffled cries, a sharp “What—” Then a deep, throaty growl and the bap of a handgun that made Cindi jump.

  “Oh shit.” Chad was breathing hard. “I can’t tell if …”

  If those are animals or Chuckies. Cindi pulled in a squeaky inhale that she stifled with a hand. More sounds now: the clatter of rocks, a strange yipping cry, a crack.

  “Jeez, that was an Uzi. Maybe you guys better get out of here,” Chad said.

  “We stay together.” Cindi’s heart was fluttering like the wings of a trapped parakeet. “I’m not leaving you to get eaten.”

  “Can’t be Chuckies or animals. Luke’s still alive … Hey!” Jasper pointed to where the guards and Luke had disappeared. “Look!”

  What first emerged from the trees was a gigantic gray-white wolf, as big as a Warg in that battle from the second Lord of the Rings movie, only not as ugly and with no snarling, sword-wielding Orc either. Still, Cindi gasped, took a step back. No way I can run fast enough.

  “Oh man, that thing’s huge,” Chad said, his voice shaky. “Where—”

  Two figures trotted out next. The first to pull together was Luke, weighted down with rifles. “Luke!” Cindi started forward, relief singing in her veins. She’d had visions of Luke with his throat torn out and blood splashed over his chest. “What’s—” She skidded to a stop as a second person came into view: an older girl, in a queer camo getup, with an Uzi in her hands and a bolt-action rifle over her shoulder.

  Hey, haven’t I seen her somewhere before? “Who are you?” she asked.

  “My name’s Alex,” the girl said. “Who are you guys? How come you’re with Finn?”

  At that, all four of them—Cindi, Luke, Jasper, and Chad—looked at one another before turning to the girl. Cindi opened her mouth, but Luke beat her to it. “Alex?” Luke said. “Tom’s Alex?”

  The girl halted in mid-stride, astonishment leaking over her face. “You … you know Tom?” One hand went to her throat. “You’ve seen Tom? You’ve seen him?”

  “Sure, we all did,” Jasper said, and Cindi could have strangled the stupid kid. “Tom was our friend. He helped us.”

  “Did?” Alex paled. Her green eyes went suddenly glittery and wet. “Was?”

  “Yes.” Luke tossed Cindi an unhappy glance before turning back. She knew just how he felt.

  “I’m sorry, Alex,” Luke said, helplessly. “But Tom’s dead.”

  108

  “I don’t see them,” Tom said. He and Chris had taken it fast, urging their horses down the shimmering cut of a trail that wound through a dense grill of hardwood and evergreen to the lookout that perched southeast on a broad basalt plateau a hundred yards up from the hastily erected abatis. Now, standing in the lookout’s cab some seventy-five feet aboveground, he lowered his binoculars. Overhead, the brightest stars shone from deep, dark cobalt, but to the east, a smear of silver smudged the horizon. To his right, clouds smoked over a light green basketball of a moon balanced on the rim of trees. With the diminished snowpack and large swatches of bare ground, they no longer had the advantage of reflected moonlight. Shadows wavered over this southern approach. Bad luck for them, good for Finn.

  “Gonna be daylight soon. It’s the damn clouds. Glass it south and wait for it,” Jarvis said. “They’re already over the rise. Can’t make out if they got weapons.… There. Dead ahead. You see them?”

  “Yeah.” The shadows rolled aside as if someone had peeled away a blanket, and then, through his binoculars, Tom saw something that reminded him of columns of black ants swarming over a checked tablecloth. With the fitful light, it was impossible to tell just how many they were talking about here, but he guessed there must be at least a couple hundred Changed. The sizes seemed right. These were kids, moving nimbly and swiftly in a relentless tide, coming on fast, spilling down the hill. At that pace, they’d be here in less than thirty minutes, just in time for the first glimmerings of sun.

  Smart. His men will be able to see what they’re shooting at. The light would work to Tom’s advantage later, however. The trick would be keeping Finn’s men in the square just long enough. Ten, fifteen minutes, that’s all.

  “Hey,” Chris said, standing at Tom’s right elbow. “Top of the hill? See those horses?”

  “I see them.” Impossible to miss, the horses were just moving over the crest. He’d known some would ride: Mellie, Finn, a few of Finn’s men. What he had not expected was the gleam of over-whites. “That’s them. The altered Changed I told you about.”

  “The ones in white? On horseback?” Jarvis sounded startled. “I know horses don’t react quite as bad, but … my God … there have to be at least twenty or thirty of them.”

  “If they’re so good at fighting, why aren’t they leading the charge?” Chris asked. “Wouldn’t you want your best guys on point?”

  “Well, not if you want them to stay your best guys. This is like the Mongol hordes.” Tom could see men now, too, to the extreme right and left, broader in the chest and clad in what looked like soft gray and white winter camouflage. From the occasional wink of metal, he knew the men were armed, and some, he thought, might be carrying bulkier munitions; he just couldn’t tell what yet. “Let the grunts take the bullets.”

  “Our grandkids as cannon fodder.” Jarvis was silent a moment. “Spooky, the way they move, how quiet they are.” Another brief silence. “How’s he controlling them?”

  “Don’t have a clue,” Tom said, still straining to pick up Finn and failing. Until sunrise or the riders were closer, Finn—probably all in black on that gelding—would be virtually invisible. Instead, he trained his binoculars beyond, sweeping the distant knolls and flatlands.

  “Maybe he gets into their heads.” Chris’s ragged voice was hushed. “You said he has to be giving them something because of their eyes. What if they can hear his thoughts?”

  “I can sort of buy that with the altered ones.” Tom slowly panned right to left. The night was starting to unravel and gray, and he shifted his gaze slightly off-center the way he might if trying to glimpse a distant galaxy. God, please, make them be there. “But that doesn’t explain the others …” He stopped as he spied an orange flicker in the middle distance. “Got ’em. West, near the tree line. There’s a stream there, still iced up in parts, but flowing pretty good now. That’s where I would put my camp.” He looked over at Chris. “Good a time as any to send Pru and your guys. They can be there pretty fast.”

  Nodding, Chris tugged out his radio just as Jarvis said, “Tom, you see those guys breaking off from the main body?”

  “Yeah, I do.” Four men on horseback were storming past the advance line of Changed. Still too dim for him to make out well, but he was getting a very bad vibe.

  “What,” Jarvis asked, “are they doing?”

  109

  Over the past few minutes, that push-push go-
go had surged back with a vengeance, knocking the breath from Alex’s lungs. From its deep cave, the monster seethed the way a worm eeled under the thin skin of a too-ripe fruit.

  Running out of time. Her aunt always said that time healed. Yet time had only brought her more people to care about, and lose. The sobs she kept swallowing back tried climbing her throat. All she wanted was to howl, break something. Maybe shoot someone. Stop, Alex. You are no different from these kids. Focus. There’s still Wolf and Peter. Chris might be in Rule, too. You have to help them. Tom wouldn’t want to see you like this. Be strong for him.

  “Take this.” Leaning down from the saddle, Alex handed the Springfield to Luke. Without a rifle scabbard, the more compact Uzi would be easier to handle. Tucking the guard’s pistol, a blued Colt Gold Cup .45, into the small of her back, she slotted an extra magazine for both weapons into her cargo pants. She felt a mild ping of unease that she didn’t have time to search for a Glock, then pushed that aside. The Colt would do just as much damage. Just remember to flip the safety. Still, not having a Glock felt like a bad omen. “Between this and what’s in the wagons, you have plenty of food and firepower.”

  “For a fight?” Luke said, his voice tight.

  “If it comes down to that.” The day was coming on fast. In the first wash of silver spreading over the eastern horizon, there was enough light to see how pinched and white Luke’s face was. “It doesn’t have to. Take the tents, a couple wagons, and get out of here.”

  “Alex, there are thirty of us. We’ll be easy to follow, easy to catch again.”

  There was no sugarcoating this. “You’d rather wait for Finn?”

  “But why can’t you stay?” Cindi’s glasses blazed with reflected firelight. “They’re Chuckies. What do you care? We’re normal. We need you more. Tom would never leave. We’re supposed to believe that there are good Chuckies? And Peter, so he’s only half a Chucky—so what? Why are you taking his side?”

  “Whoa,” Luke said. “Cindi, calm down.”

  “What if I don’t want to be calm? This is like helping terrorists! Just because Wolf didn’t kill you, Alex, doesn’t mean he’s good. It’s like you’ve been brainwashed or something.”

  “And you might be right,” Alex said. “But Peter is a friend. I have other friends in Rule. Wolf saved my life when he didn’t have to. That counts for something, and I have to deal with it right now. I have to go to Rule and try to do something, anything, or a lot more people are going to die, including kids like you. If I can take Finn by surprise, if I can stop or kill him”—and where was that coming from?—“then he won’t come after you again. Everyone wins.” She paused. “Pretty much.”

  “And what about all those other Chuckies?” Cindi asked.

  “They’re at least four miles away. Most are on foot. Plenty of time.”

  “Well, the white Chuckies have horses,” Jasper said, and then, as if in afterthought: “Of course, if you kill Finn, the network kind of falls apart and they might not work so well. The signal intensity will degrade for sure.”

  “What? What do you—” Alex began, but then Cindi interrupted, “So we keep running is what you’re saying.” The younger girl’s lips were quivering now. “You’re just leaving us.”

  Alex felt a twang of impatience. “Oh, for God’s sake, yes, you run. You’re not three years old. Step up to take care of yourselves, because, right now, there’s no one else. Even if I stayed, I am one person. I’m not that much older than you and I’ve got …” She bit back the possible words—cancer, a monster—before any could jump out of her mouth. God, Alex, calm down; she’s just a kid. Closing her eyes, she took a steadying breath, then looked down at the teary-eyed girl. “I’m sorry, Cindi. Maybe Tom would stay. That doesn’t make him right and me wrong. It makes us different. I wish …” She pushed back the sudden choke. “I wish he was alive so we could argue about it. But don’t think this is easy, or that I’m not scared to death.”

  No one said anything for a long moment. Then Luke stepped closer. “What if we wait for you? Tom would want us to. We pack up and move, say, a mile or so west, into the woods.”

  This was the mountain again, the day of the Zap, when she was saddled with Ellie and terrified out of her mind. She didn’t want all this on her. Yet if Ellie hadn’t been there, would she have tried so hard? Ever left the Waucamaw? Every step she’d taken since the Zap had been because of someone else. She might still be lost if not for Ellie and Tom and Chris. Even Wolf. All those connections led her out of those woods, from a very black place, and pulled her from the brink of a leap where there was nothing and no one waiting but death.

  Tom said we saved each other. She ran her eyes over the upturned faces. Maybe he was saving me for this.

  “If I can,” she said to Luke, “I’ll be back. We’ll figure this out. But don’t wait too—”

  A quick kick of pain, a fireball behind her eyes. Deep in her mind, the monster flexed, teased awake, and she could feel it stretching, trying to muscle open that box. She blinked, and it was as if the shutter of a camera suddenly opened, a third eye—

  —and she is behind those eyes again, in that body she is beginning to think might be a boy’s and in the heart of the pushpush gogo. High on a horse, dressed in white, the red storm on the left, and the other screaming: GOGOGO LET ME GO. Silently streaming over patchy snow, flowing with the pushpush gogo of the red storm, breathing in the ripe meat smell it wants, he wants, she craves. In the distance is a high hill and the stark outlines of a tower—

  —then a shift—

  —into and through many eyes—

  —a shimmer—

  —and now, closer still—pushpush gogogogo—she is looking through a tangled curtain of matted hair. This body is another boy, and he is wild at the aroma of salt and meat, of prey dead ahead and just up that hill, in the tower—gogo pushpush—I want I want I want I need—pushpush gogo—

  Two rumbling booms suddenly cannoned like distant thunder. Some of the kids let out startled cries. Snapping back behind her own eyes, Alex saw two faint yellow-orange candles shoot into a pewter sky due north. The flares faded fast, swallowed by distance, the coming day to her left, and the gleam of the moon, low on the western horizon.

  That tower. That’s where the Changed boy was focused: the tower, and men. Meat.

  “Go, Alex. Good luck,” Luke said. “We’ll watch for you. Come back.”

  She wanted to say she would, but all those words hung in her throat. “Stay safe.”

  Then she spurred her horse as Buck sprang after, and galloped for Rule.

  110

  Tom wasted ten minutes piecing it together. By then, Jarvis was on the ground and Chris was trotting down the last flight. On the final landing twenty feet above the ground, Tom turned a troubled look back. Those men should’ve been on them, or very close. A fast horse can cover a lot of ground in no time flat. And yet … Glassing the plain through breaks in the trees, he saw they’d dismounted. Maybe—he chewed his lower lip—a half mile? Working on …

  “Tom?” Chris, just below. “What is it? You see something?”

  “Yeah, but their backs are to me. Can’t tell what …” As a cloud finally drifted aside to bathe the plain with moonlight, he raised his binoculars. “Why send only four—”

  “Tom?” Chris’s voice was sharp. “What …”

  “Oh Jesus.” Alarm ripped through Tom’s gut as he finally understood. Two men were kneeling, and now he could see what they balanced on their shoulders.

  “RPGs!” Whirling, Tom planted his hands on the metal guardrail. “RPGs, RP—”

  111

  “Jesus Christ, kid,” the bald boy snarled. With dawn filtering through low-slung evergreens, Ellie saw the creep’s hair was growing back around spidery scabs. “Give me the damn gun.”

  “No.” Ellie hugged the Savage to her chest. This was so embarrassing. All around, kids, most older and a few younger, were all big eyes and sniggery mouths. To her right, a tiny girl with a
froth of fine, nearly white hair was cringing, like Ellie had sneezed and gotten her all boogery. “It’s my gun. Jayden lets me.”

  “This isn’t Jayden’s wagon, and I don’t care.” Creep totally freaked her out. All those eyebrow hoops, and that safety pin, crusted with old blood, through his right earlobe, not to mention the tongue stud … it was just plain sick, like the kid got off on deciding what part to stab next. As if life wasn’t bad enough already. “Now hand it over,” the boy said.

  “Lucian, leave her alone.” It was the thin, tired-looking girl, Sarah, who was driving the swaying wagon as they jounced over humped ice and sparse snow. “She’s not hurting anybody.”

  “Yet,” Lucian said. “You want that gun to go off?”

  “It’s safetied,” Ellie said. Sensing her distress, Mina clambered to her feet and pushed her snout into Ellie’s stomach while Jet and Ghost also struggled up to see what was the matter. That started a general heaving and jostling of the other dogs, which staggered and bumped kids, who started up with the complaints, and blah, blah, blah.… Maybe they’d let her walk. That would certainly solve the whole gun thing. Exasperated, she pushed Mina to a sit. “My finger’s not even in the guard. What do you think, it’s going to go off on its own?”

  “All right, listen,” Sarah said, hoing the horse to a halt. Sarah’s expression reminded Ellie of teachers she’d like to forget: sympathetic about her dad but always saying stuff like we can’t have that kind of behavior in class. “Give Lucian the gun, please? I can’t drive with you guys arguing and a loaded gun pointed at my back.”

  “It’s aimed at the sky,” Ellie said. Well, trees: dense forest hemmed this snaky curlicue of a road. Limbs jutted like fingers trying to lace. They were making lousy time; she bet they weren’t more than three, four miles out. If they needed to turn around or move fast? They were sunk. Jayden was having a heart attack; Ellie saw him in the driver’s box of that first wagon, his head going every which way, trying to watch everywhere at once. “Even if it went off, which it won’t,” she said, “it wouldn’t hurt anybody.”