Monsters: The Ashes Trilogy (16 page)

Unfortunately, a gun either wasn’t her style or the end for him
that she had in mind. Snarling, she jammed her left hand under his
chin. His neck muscles instinctively tightened, fighting the relentless
pressure. He tried bucking her off, but despite the rocks, the deep
snow gave him no leverage. He’d sunk down so far that his hips and
legs were above him. He was fighting for his life from the equivalent
of a bathtub. Hoist someone by his ankles, and he has no way of
keeping his head above water. Hold him long enough, he drowns. So
she had a choice: push him far down into the snow and wait for him
to suffocate, or take out his throat. He couldn’t fight her forever, and
she was riding him, her center of gravity directly over his chest, and
if he let go . . .

If I let go.
Not exactly a thought. More like a last gasp. All at once,
he stopped pushing and let his shoulders sag, his neck stretch. He felt
her knees stutter as she began to slide, her center of gravity shifting.
Off-balance, she rocked forward.

“AAHH!!” He shrieked it, unaware that the scream was even in
his mouth until it wasn’t, and then he was surging up, his right arm
suddenly free, the hand hooking into her parka. He yanked her down
as quickly and viciously as he could. At the same time, he whipped
his head up. There was a loud
kunk
as the dense bone of his forehead
smashed into the delicate ridge just above her left eye. He knew the
hit was good the instant he felt her socket cave, the second her whole
body unlimbered from the shock.

The Chucky didn’t wail or scream. She had no time, or breath, for
it. Stunned, she pitched right, and he went with her, using her weight
as a fulcrum. Even then—bloody, a wound in her belly, blind in one
eye, and probably in ferocious pain—she sensed what he meant to do.
Somehow, she got her hands up, fingers clawed, and flailed, wildly,
trying to snag something: his parka, an arm, anything. Yet, to his
relief, she had no knife, and the advantage was his now.

They spooned, her back against his chest. In a novel, he’d have
broken her neck. A quick snap, the crackle, done deal. But that kind
of move, what they showed on TV or in a movie like it was no big
deal . . . it’s make-believe. The neck is much stronger than you think.

Instead, he hooked his right arm under her chin. Ramming his left
hand against the back of her head, he grabbed his left arm with his
right hand, the better to hang on to the blood choke—

In a classic figure-four choke hold, eight to ten seconds of pressure
on the carotids—thirteen at the max—and an opponent, even that
burly, double-wide guy with the neck of an ox, slides into unconscious.

Unless that guy is smart enough to protect his neck somehow.
Which, apparently, this Chucky was—because what circled her
neck was a leather collar with a metal D-ring.
Jesus, a dog collar?
Frantic, Tom tried shifting his grip, working his arm higher to hook
directly under her ears, but they were wallowing in snow and he was
already tiring, his grip starting to weaken. Then his arm slipped.
Her reaction was instantaneous. Bucking, she threw her left arm
up and back, her fingers aiming for his eyes. He jerked his head right,
a reflex he knew, too late, was a mistake and exactly what she was
counting on. Cocking her right elbow, she thrust back, fast, jamming
the bony point into his ribs. Pain sheeted his vision and he gagged.
Dimly, he felt her twisting, knew he no longer had the advantage.
Get up, get out from under, get to the Bravo!
Going for the weapon was
another mistake, because it meant turning his back on her, but he
simply didn’t see any other option. She was strong, and he couldn’t
hang on forever. That she’d even thought to wear something to protect her neck was a whole other level of crazy, and he couldn’t wait
and hope she might bleed to death, because a gut wound takes time,
more than he had. Shoving her to the left, he let go, rolled right,
spun onto his hands and knees.
That was as far as he got. She kicked him, high, at the small of his
back. A red tidal wave of agony roared up his spine, and he let out a
choking
UNGH!
The next thing he knew, he was on his belly, writhing, coughing against the snow, trying to worm away. Every nerve
sputtered; his muscles sizzled. He felt as boneless as a jellyfish from
the spinal shock. Blinking through sudden tears of pain, he made out
his pack, the Bravo, but it was so far away! Then he spied something
else, much closer, less than twelve inches from his nose . . .
There was a crunch of snow, the chatter of rock. The sun was
behind him and he saw her shadow, black and inky, leaking over the
snow, seeping onto his flesh as she came for him.
With a wild cry, he lunged, got his hand around the ski pole only a
foot away, and then he was whipping onto his back, the pole whistling
through the air; and now she wasn’t a black shadow but a white and
red missile launching itself—
Just in time, he got his arms tucked. She saw what he was doing,
tried twisting in midair, but she wasn’t a cat, just a crazy-ass and very
smart Chucky, and she failed.
Shrieking, she slammed down, the metal tip of the ski pole punching through just beneath her breastbone. The force was so great his
arms nearly buckled. By some miracle, the fiberglass pole didn’t snap
in two but held as her arms and legs splayed in a weird star.
Yes!
Still hanging on, he shoved, knocking her to one side, but he
wouldn’t let go. This was one weapon he would not lose. How he
got on his feet, he didn’t know, but then he was crouched, his thighs
bunching, and she was still skewered, feet planted, her own hands
wrapped around the pole to brace herself, as if they’d decided to play
a strange game of tug-of-war. They stayed like that for a second that
seemed a century.
In that moment, he finally saw what was wrong, how very strange
her eyes were: not only fevered with a killing frenzy but jittery, the
pupils so wide the irises were reduced to thin dark rims.
And there were no whites. At all. The whites of her eyes weren’t
bloodshot; they were crimson, as if her eyeballs had been cored with
a grapefruit spoon to leave mucky, blood-filled sockets.
My God.
The sight chilled him to the bone.
Where did you come
from? What
are
you?
As if in answer, her lips skinned back in an orange grin.
“Jesus,” he said. “Just die.” Heaving with all his might, he flipped
her to the snow the way a fisherman might jam a speared fish into
sand, and then dropped his weight in a single, killing thrust.
And then it was done.

Spent, the adrenaline that had fueled him for just long enough
now seeping out with his blood, Tom could feel his joints trying to
buckle. Trembling, he staggered back until he felt a knob of stone at
his back. He was going cold, all over, in an insidious black creep as
fatigue and blood loss stole his strength. Propping his hands on his
thighs, he struggled to stay upright and sucked air, trying to clear
away the cobwebs, waiting for his mind to firm.

Got to get out of here, back to camp.
He didn’t have a med kit, and
it would be dark soon. With his blood perfuming the air, who knew
when the next Chuckies would show?
Strip out of as much of my stuff
as I can and take hers. Those over-whites have her blood on them. So maybe
they won’t smell me. But I have to be careful. Can’t lead Chuckies back to
camp; got to protect the kids.

This was all so strange. A ton of dead people up at the lake, plenty
to eat, but absolutely no Chuckies snacking on anyone. Lots of juicy
kids at camp—an abandoned farmstead, out in the open, plenty of
pasture—and no Chuckies there either, as if the camp existed under a
dome, an invisible force field. Which he had always wondered about.

He stared down at the dead girl. He’d seen plenty of corpses.
There was
dead
, something you knew just by looking, because death
steals, especially from the eyes. Something evaporates. The eyes of
the dead are the empty windows in a deserted house. But then there
was battlefield
juju,
those few moments when a prickly spider walked
the back of your neck; when the dread ate its way into your throat,
crowding out fear. At those moments, you just couldn’t believe that
the dead wouldn’t rise.

This Chucky was like that
.
Even in death, the Chucky’s vermillion stare, still so crazy and manic, was what stayed with you after a
nightmare.

And I’ve seen your kind before. But where? What
are
you?
A violent
shiver made him gasp. Grabbing his arms, he hugged himself tight,
now truly afraid.
Where did you come from?

Then, jumping to the front of his mind in an involuntary tic:
Who
made
you?
“You’re losing it, Tom.” His voice sounded strange but felt good.
He needed to hear himself. “That’s crazy. Who could make Chuckies
worse than they are? Why would anyone do that?”
That
made him
laugh, a hacking sound harsh and far back in his throat, like the distant saw of those crows. “Jesus, listen to yourself. You were in the
Army. Who doesn’t want a better killing machine, a soldier who
doesn’t even know how to quit?”
And who, he wondered, wouldn’t train it?
The woods. That black blur. That glint.
He dragged his binoculars
from his parka, thankful that he hadn’t hung them around his neck.
Good way to end up strangled.
“You don’t have time for this,” he said, glassing the trees. “You got
ten seconds, Tom, and then you really need to get—”
But it didn’t take him ten seconds, or even seven.
All it took were three.

This was
so
bad. Cindi had
known
Tom was up to no good. Her gut
taking in what her mom would’ve said: this really queasy sense that
Tom would try something dumb.

Since that second day after the mine, Cindi went to see Tom
early mornings before hoofing to her lookout post. (Which had
been
borrring
before it turned terrible. Nothing to look at now but
a gouged-out hill and that big blue-white eye of the lake for the longest time until the crows showed up, and then . . . well . . . she was
twelve, but she wasn’t
stupid
.) Sometimes, Luke came with, but he
was fourteen, the next oldest after Tom, and didn’t have tons of time.
So, mostly, she went alone and brought food because Tom wasn’t
eating enough to keep a tick alive. His eyes had dropped so far back
into his skull it was like staring into deep, dark caves. You could get
lost down there. She never pushed him and they didn’t talk much,
but she wasn’t sure that was even important.
Just be with him
. That’s
what her mom would’ve said.
Remind him you’re still there, waiting for
him to come back.

On the fourth day, tired of
let’s give Tom space
—Mellie’s go-to for
the whole awful mess—Mellie decided,
Hey, mind if I tag along?
What
could Cindi say?
No, butt out, you old witch
? Boy, if it was freezing in
that tower before, the temperature went
waaay
below zero the second Tom’s eyes clicked to Mellie corkscrewing through that trapdoor.
Everything human in Tom shriveled until there was only a husk that
just happened to wear Tom’s face.

To Mellie’s credit, she did try. She did
nice
; she tried
you can tell
me
; she touched on a tough
buck up, soldier
(but only Weller was any
good at that). In desperation, Mellie even trotted out a whiny
but we
need you
.

To which Tom said about four syllables, all of them chipped from
ice:
Leave me alone
.
Twenty minutes later, Mellie clumped back down the way she’d
come. But when Tom turned Cindi a look, she could tell: for the first
time in days, the veil was gone, and he was seeing her, recognizing
who she
was
.
“It wasn’t my idea,” she said. “She invited herself.”
“I know that.” Tom paused. “You don’t have to go, Cindi. I’d like
it if you didn’t.”
“Sure.” A lump pushed into her throat. Tom hadn’t smiled. There
wasn’t this choir of angels or anything. There was only Tom and his
monster, the black fist around his heart that, sometimes, she worried
might squeeze so hard it would crush him altogether. But hearing
him say that he’d
like
her to stay, that was a beginning. It was a place
to start.
But now . . .
this
.

“And you’re absolutely sure he never mentioned going to the mine?”
Mellie gave her and then Luke, seated beside Cindi at a rough-hewn
kitchen table, the stink-eye. They’d made their camp in a long-abandoned farmstead: a motley collection that included an old two-story
farmhouse, hog barn, cow barn, silo, and a clutch of tumbledown
outbuildings hemmed on all sides by wide pastures and distant
knolls where they mounted a few lookouts. Only Weller and Mellie
slept in the house, along with anyone who was ill or hurt. At the
moment—
bad news, bad, bad, bad
—that was Tom, tucked in Weller’s
first-floor back bedroom. “No warning at all?”

“No,” Cindi fibbed, her right leg jumping and jiggling and making
the table rock, a really bad habit that used to drive her mom crazy:
Cindi, you make coffee nervous
. Considering that her mom had been a
child psychiatrist, that was saying something. “Is he going to be all
right?”

“I’m sure he’ll be fine and . . . please.” Mellie laid a hand on Cindi’s
wrist. The other was wrapped around a steaming mug. “Coffee’s not
so easy to come by these days that I want to waste a drop.”

“Sorry.” Cindi clamped her hands between her thighs. “There was
a whole lot of blood. He was pretty cut up.”
“Not all the blood’s Tom’s. It probably looks worse than it is.”
“Well, I hope so.” Luke was so pale his eyes looked smudged on
with blue finger paint. “Because any worse and he should be dead.
Did Tom say how many he saw? Are we going after them? Or maybe
we ought to, you know,
move
?”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, all right?” Mellie was very good
at sliding around questions. “I think the most important thing we can
do now to help Tom is—” She looked around at the sound of heavy
footsteps. “Well?”
“We’re doing okay,” Weller said, but his tone was brusque, preoccupied. Always a little grumpy, the thick grizzle of gray stubble over
Weller’s cheeks and chin only made him look meaner, like an old
bear with a toothache. Cindi thought Weller would be a lot nicer
once the mine was gone, but the longer Tom hung out in the tower,
the blacker Weller looked. On the other hand, considering the rustylooking bandage plastered over the right side of Weller’s neck and
that shoulder . . . well, she’d be an übergrouch, too, if some Chucky
snacked on her.
“Okay, as in . . . ?” Mellie prompted.
“As in we’ll see.” Heading for a counter where a Coleman hissed,
Weller rooted through a cardboard box. “You kids, go back to your
racks. Best thing for Tom is we let him rest.”
From the look on his face, Cindi thought Luke would argue, but
he only nodded and scraped back his chair. “Just tell him we were
here, okay?” he said to Weller.
“Can we come tomorrow morning?” Cindi asked.
“Let’s see what tomorrow looks like,” Mellie said, and gave Cindi’s
arm a little pat-pat the way you’d pet a puppy to encourage it to make
wee-wee. “All right?”