Forged From Ash (31 page)

“What about after that? I got some business to tend to in the States. I’ll be lookin’ forward to getting back home.”

Cole glanced over to him and asked, “Back to the States? As in the United States?”

“Best ones there is!”

“We’re in Wyoming.”

Asher’s pace slowed to a trot, then to a walk and finally he came to a stop while placing his hands upon his hips. Turning in place, he looked up at the canyon walls as if they’d just sprouted on either side of him. “Wyoming? Shit! Those motherless fucks had me thinking I was somewhere in Russia!”

Now Cole looked up at the tree-covered terrain. “Russia? Really?”

“Or Yugoslavia. Or…hell I don’t know. Somewhere other than Wy-fuckin’-oming!” Asher started running again with fresh resolve. His eyes were set on the canyon in front of him so intently that he seemed ready to grab onto the closest rock wall and climb all the way to the top without breaking stride. “All the rest is probably bullshit too.”

Cole ran to catch up with him and asked, “What else did they tell you?”

“A while ago, some of ‘em made it sound like the whole world came fallin’ down. Wolves runnin’ all over the place. The Army blowing up cities left ‘n right. Real apocalyptic shit, but I never believed none of that. I know a mind game when I hear one.”

“Hate to break it to you, but that stuff is true.”

“Right. We’ll see about that.”

After several solid minutes of running, they found a spot in the canyon littered with large chunks of twisted metal, broken shards of plastic and electric wiring. Some of the things laying in front of them were more recognizable. Padded seats, a large tire and dozens of pieces of baggage were also scattered on the ground. Everything was covered in mold, mud and other grime that had collected over the course of what could have been anywhere from a few months to a couple of years.

“This must be where that plane first hit,” Cole said as he looked up to a large gouge that had been taken out of the side of the canyon.

Asher’s eyes were fixed on the ground as he waded through an area covered by destroyed suitcases and shredded seats. “Surprised there ain’t any bodies lying around. Probably went down a while ago.”

“Not necessarily,” Cole said. “The bodies would have been found and dragged off to a den somewhere.”

“Right,” Asher chuckled. “Werewolf apocalypse.”

Cole had to kick over only a few of the dislodged aircraft seats to find what he was looking for. He stooped down, picked up what he’d uncovered and showed it. The bone was long and curved, obviously a rib, and was gouged along every inch of its length. He tossed it to Asher who quickly examined it.

“Something chewed the hell out of this,” Asher said.

“And this one too,” Cole said as he found a larger bone that had been snapped in half. “One pack came through and had a feast. If there were more than that, we would have found a few Half Breed skulls laying around.”

“There isn’t time to scavenge,” Frank said from above them. He crouched on one of the many shallow ledges that had been formed when the tail section of the plane had scraped against the rock. From a distance, that part of the canyon looked as if it had been slashed by a giant claw. “This is a good place to climb. I can help you one at a time to make it to the top even faster.”

“You go first,” Asher said. “I need to catch my breath.”

Even though the prisoner didn’t seem to be breathing especially hard, Cole nodded and walked over to the charred section of the canyon wall. He found several foot and handholds near the base. There were even lengths of wire snagged in some of the rougher sections, which could have been put there by any survivors from the crash who’d made their way out. When there wasn’t much of anything to grab on to, Frank crawled down to lend him a hand.

“He seems…unstable,” the Squam said as he lifted Cole to the next ledge.

Once he was there, Cole stood on the rock jutting from the wall and looked down to find Asher digging through one of the many piles of luggage beneath a wide section of bent, rusted metal. From higher ground, that piece looked like it had once been part of a wing. “He’s been locked in a box for a long time,” Cole said. “I was locked up for a while in a regular cell and felt like I was starting to come unglued. Unstable might not quite cover what that guy is. Let’s give him a little space for a while.”

“Is he what you were expecting to find?”

Cole sighed and looked all the way up to the wall stretching above him. “I don’t know yet. He’s a Skinner, though, and we need all of those we can get. Do me a favor and keep an eye on him, though. Between the two of us we should be able to watch him pretty good.”

“Watch for what, exactly?”

“Who the hell knows?”

After that, Cole devoted all of his strength and breath to getting to the top of that canyon. With Frank’s help, it took about half the time it would have if he’d been on his own. Once he’d completed the ascent, he could see a wide, charred path leading to the edge. Bits of wreckage were strewn about, but only scraps compared to what lay at the bottom of Tensleep. Cole followed the wide gouge that had been cut into the ground, trying to imagine how the plane had skidded along that trail, falling apart along the way, to wind up even further down where the fuselage now rested.

Frank made his way back down again, leaving Cole to scan the surrounding area using his rifle’s scope. There was some movement in the direction of the main wreck but not enough for Cole to signal down for the other two to pick up their pace. Surely, Frank and Asher were going as quickly as they dared. To the southwest, Cole heard an occasional engine, but that didn’t mean a whole lot. Highway 16 was fairly well traveled since there was currently a lull in pack traffic through that part of the state. More than likely, The Vigilant had taken precautions to steer Half Breeds away from their little hideaway.

“Drop it,” Frank snarled from below Cole’s position.

Picturing the other Skinner pointing a gun at Frank’s head, Cole swung the barrel of his rifle over the side and pointed it down to find Frank clinging to the rock wall like something from the pages of a comic book. Instead of a weapon, Asher held on to a pink and purple carryon bag by its collapsible handle.

“It ain’t that heavy,” Asher insisted. “You can lift us both.”

“We can move faster without it.”

Even from a distance, the almost feral rage on Asher’s face was easy enough to see as he snarled, “We’re almost there, goddammit!”

“Can you toss it up here?” Cole asked.

Both of the other two looked up at him. Asher smiled, and Frank shook his head while muttering to himself as he stretched out his free hand. With a heave, Asher tossed the bag up into Frank’s waiting hand. With an even stronger heave, Frank tossed the carryon up toward the ledge.

Cole’s intention had been to make a convincing effort before ultimately missing the bag and letting it fall. Instead, he managed to grab it by the extended handle. He was so surprised to have caught the damn thing, that he held on to it for a couple of seconds. Dropping it after that would have been an obvious move on his part. Although he didn’t care about upsetting the feelings of a cracked prisoner, it was simply easier at that point for Cole to pull the bag the rest of the way up and set it aside. By the time he’d done so, Frank was up there with him.

Perching at the top of the canyon like a gothic statue, Frank reached down to grab Asher by the arm and drag him up. As soon as he was on solid ground, Asher hurried over to the carryon and patted it. “This was the best one I could find,” he said. “Real pretty and damn durable to have made it through that crash!”

Frank walked over to him and unzipped the carryon to sift through its contents. “Was this really necessary?” he asked.

“I been wearin’ the same clothes since I was caught,” Asher said. “Hell yeah, it’s necessary! Not like those passengers are gonna need any of this stuff.”

“Let’s just get moving,” Cole said. “You want to bring a suitcase?” he told Asher. “Then you’re the one carrying it.”

“Fine by me,” Asher replied. He then set the pastel carryon down onto the little wheels at its base and pulled it along behind him as if he was walking across an airport to make a connecting flight.

They walked in relative silence for a few miles. Cole watched the road while Frank scouted ahead and Asher dragged his bag. Every so often, they could hear a car coming. When that happened, Cole and Asher hurried to the trees growing alongside the road and hunkered down. They were crouching behind some bushes after hearing what sounded like a semi approaching from the east when Asher asked, “You think Gorn is comin’ back?”

“If he wanted to ditch me, he could have done it way before now,” Cole replied.

“They eat their young, you know.”

“What?”

“The Squams. They eat their young. I’ve seen it.” Asher shrugged before adding, “’Course, could have been that the ones I was tracking at the time were just crazy. They also ate a few dogs, part of a tree stump and most of an old Frigidaire.” When Cole looked over at him, Asher nodded and laughed. “Swear to Christ. It was the big part too. The fridge. Not the freezer.”

“Weird.”

“That’s one word for it.”

The semi they’d heard rounded a bend and rumbled past them without slowing. The trailer bore the name of an auto parts manufacturer and was open at the back. Cole spotted two people sitting at the rear of the trailer, looking out at the road behind them over the top of assault rifles held to their shoulders.

Once they were gone, Cole said, “Looks clear.” He stood up, worked a kink from his back and started walking around the bushes.

Asher stayed put, hugging his pink and purple carryon. “You weren’t shitting me,” he said. “About the whole apocalypse thing.”

“Everyone likes to call it the apocalypse, but I don’t think that’s quite it. Not yet, anyway.”

“But the shifters are running loose. The air reeks of them!” Asher’s eyes bounced from point to point, faster and faster until they were rattling in their sockets. “It just don’t feel right out here. Feels…empty. Are we the only ones left? Us and those pieces of shit who kept me in that box?”

“No. We’re not the only ones.”

“Who could survive if those things cut loose? I mean…that’s always been the big scare. Every Skinner fights to keep that from happening.”

“Things could have been a lot worse,” Cole said as the all-too-familiar ghosts reached out to rake icy fingers through his chest.

“Where’s the military? Did they get wiped out too?”

“They took a hit, but they’re still pulling something together. I’ll get into it later, once we’re farther from here.”

But Asher was too distracted by his thoughts as he took in the world around him. “They should just nuke this whole fucking place.”

“Already tried that,” Cole said. “Melted a bunch of Half Breeds and burned a bunch of cities, but the Full Bloods lived. Spotters saw them bolt from the spots targeted by the nukes seconds before impact. Must have heard the missiles coming or smelled them. Who the hell knows? Some say one or two Full Bloods killed each other in the last year, but there’s more.”

“Full Bloods,” Asher snarled as his eyes narrowed into fiery slits. “Those shit bags who locked me up were real interested in them. Every so often, they’d crank open the door to that hole in the ground and question me about Full Bloods.”

“What did you tell them?”

“Not a goddamn thing. That’s how I lived this long.”

“Those shit bags are called Vigilant,” Cole said. “They’re disciples of Jonah Lancroft.”

“Yeah, they talked about him a lot. Kept tellin’ me I owed Lancroft my life just because I’m a Skinner. I even met the old prick once. At least, I met some dude who claimed to be Lancroft.”

“What did he want from you?”

Asher glanced over to him and then looked back down at his bag. He unzipped it, peeled off his t-shirt and stuck it into the carryon before pulling out another one. The new shirt was dark brown with horizontal green stripes and fit him like a pup tent. “He wanted the same thing the rest of ‘em wanted.”

“To track Full Bloods?”

Snapping his eyes up to glare at Cole, Asher seemed prepared to jump at him again. Instead, he zipped the carryon shut and swept some of the greasy braids away from his face. “Yeah,” he said. “That.”

Another vehicle was coming down the road from the direction the semi had just gone. Cole recognized the sputtering roar of his Ford pickup and brought his rifle to his shoulder in case anyone else was trying to run it off the road.

“That’s why you came, right?” Asher asked. “To get me to work for you? Maybe teach you what I know?”
“Partly,” Cole admitted. “I’ve been trying to find a way to get to one specific Full Blood ever since the day the world was flushed down the toilet.”

“Which was…how long ago?”

Cole had to think about that. The first several months after losing Paige were a blur of terrible memories and agony, blended together like watercolors smeared by pain. His time in Cody was necessary and allowed him to pull himself together somewhat, but those days formed a straight, uneventful line fading into one long, dry routine. Sick of thinking about both ends of that spectrum, he said, “Right around two and a half years. Give or take.”

“Christ.” Shaking himself out of his thoughts, Asher said, “Finding me was only part of your reason for coming here?”

The Ford had pulled over to the side of the road and was waiting there. When Cole looked through his scope, he could see Frank hunched over the wheel, glancing up at the rearview mirror. There was still nobody else on the road.

“All I knew at first was that there was a way to track Full Bloods that was better than anything any other Skinner has done before,” Cole explained. “Then I heard there was only one person who knew about all the specifics. Later, I found out that person was being held by The Vigilant. I was held by The Vigilant too.”

“No shit?”

Cole nodded. “They wanted something I had and put me through hell to get it.”

“Something you
had
or something you
have
?”