Monsters: The Ashes Trilogy (38 page)

Got to hope those sparks don’t ignite all that pine. Fire’s the last thing we
need.
Ernie was a waxen doll in a blood lake. In the kitchen, Penny
was screaming.

“You have to get her out.” She was still pinned under Wolf, their
faces only inches apart, his wolf skin so close she smelled the musty
tang of the animal that had once worn it. She read his panic, smelled
the sizzle of fear on his skin. If she could only get across her meaning! For a moment, she thought,
Alex, relax; let the monster out; let it
help you.
She roped back the impulse. That
would
be insane. Instead,
she put her hands on Wolf ’s shoulders and grabbed his eyes with her
own. “Give me a gun, Wolf. Let me help—”

There was another huge
ka-BANG
, a flash of orange light as something exploded outside. A second later, a cyclone of pulverized earth
and superheated air blasted through the ruined window, knocking
Marley off his feet. The room was suddenly so hot,
scorching
, Alex felt
the burn in her throat and lungs. Above her, Wolf ’s body went rigid,
his face tightening in a pained grimace. The air inside and out dripped
with sounds and smells and sensations: the peppery sting of spent
explosives, an isolated scream from beyond the window, the mucky
rain of smoking globs of quivering flesh, the stutter of weapons fire.

Then there was a silence, as if time had decided to take a very
deep breath . . . and that was when Alex remembered what she had
forgotten, because, now, she felt the sudden flare in the center of her
brain:
Go-go. Push-push
.

For three seconds, all Chris knew was he was facedown, on the floor,
hacking and trying to breathe through a throat that felt as if a boot
had planted itself on his windpipe and ground it to pulp. Blood from
the rip on his forehead was dripping into his eyes and coursing down
his cheeks. His mouth was coppery from where he’d bitten himself,
and his right hand was slick, too, the fingers beginning to burn. Over
the thin, airy shrieks whistling in and out of his throat, he could hear
a guttural
awww, awww
. Not coming from him, though. Blinking
against blood, he managed to turn his head—and felt his heart try
to fail.

Propped against a far wall was a boy, glittery-eyed, shaggy. A
giant. Chris was tall, just an inch shy of six feet, but this kid had him
beat by at least four. The kid was big as a barrel, and most of that was
muscle. Someone or something had gotten to the kid, though. Huge
gashes scored most of the Changed’s face and oozed pus. His lower
lip was ripped in two, the flaps drooping to expose dusky blue gums
and stained teeth.

The boy’s hands were clapped to his right thigh. A triangle of
smeary glass glimmered weakly in the thinning light, and blood was
dripping to the floor. As Chris watched, the boy opened his ruined
mouth and bawled again:
“Awwww.”

Got to move.
Chest shuddering with every tortured breath, he
struggled out of his ruined flannel, then tugged off the thermal.
He’d cut his right hand on that glass dagger, but the fingers worked.
Staggering to his feet, he tried a step, slipped, clutched the table for
balance. Over the drum of his heart, he heard the stomp of a boot as
the boy pushed from the wall.

Oh God.
Chris turned, his hands convulsing as he swayed. If not
for the table propping him up, his knees might have given way again.
For a split second, Chris’s mind blanked. He forgot that he wanted to
fight. He was trapped, weaponless, already hurt. Less than a minute
ago, he’d been as close to death as when Hannah’s poison oiled over
his brain. Everything he might be able to use as a weapon—pots,
pans, those knives—was behind him, miles away. So he could only
watch the boy, this monster, totter toward him. This was the nightmare from his memory and fever dreams of Peter and Lena, and a
lifetime spent awakening to find a father reeking of booze and staring
down at Chris with hate. Of reading what was behind his father’s
red-rimmed eyes:
I’ll be safe only when you’re dead.

Fight.
Groping, Chris’s hand closed over a plate. He whipped it,
fast, in a Frisbee throw. The boy saw it coming and batted the dish
away, but Chris had already scraped up a glass, another dish, a saucer,
tossing everything he could get his hands on, listening to the crash,
hearing the crunch, trying to work his way around the table. The
Changed just kept coming, as inexorable as fate. Despite the boy’s
obvious pain, Chris also thought the kid was actually enjoying this.
Maybe the kid was looking forward to some payback. Tear out a
chunk with his teeth, hurt Chris pretty bad, but then set him loose:
Go on, little Chris. Run. Bleed. See how far you get.

As if finally tiring of the game—maybe he was fed up with swatting
away dishes, and that thigh
had
to hurt—the Changed boy grabbed
the tablecloth and yanked. With a yelp of surprise, Chris danced out
of the way as dishes and cutlery slithered to the floor in a splintery
smash. The lamp’s green glass fuel base burst, releasing a gagging
stink of kerosene that made Chris’s battered throat double-clutch.

Sweeping up a chair, the boy hurled it the way a basketball player
pops that fast bullet of a pass. The kid’s aim was perfect, the chair
growing huge in his face. Startled, Chris had no time to duck. The
boy’s chair whacked his chest. Stunned, Chris stumbled and then
came down on his back in a puddle of kerosene.

Get up, get up!
Retching against fumes, he kicked free of the chair.
Twisting, he tried to roll, get his feet under him, scramble out of the
way. From the corner of his eye, he saw the boy’s knee cock and then
the kick coming. Dropping flat, Chris heard the boot whiz over his
head. As he rolled to his right to get under the table, Chris felt the boy
clamp onto his left ankle. Frantic, Chris wrapped his hands around
the butcher block’s heavy center pedestal for leverage, then kicked
back with his right. His boot connected with a satisfying
thunk
, followed a second later by a heavy grunt. As the boy’s grip slackened,
Chris scrambled under the rest of the way, set his feet, and squirted
out the opposite side. The woodstove was in front of him and now
just to his right—and he spotted the weapon he needed. If he only
had time . . .

Whirling, Chris got his hands under the heavy table, pulled
straight up, and then pushed as hard as he could. The table toppled
with a gigantic bang. The Changed only dodged to his right, but that
was all Chris wanted: just to slow the kid down for another few seconds. As the boy barreled around the table, Chris’s hands shot for
the woodstove and the handle of that steaming saucepan. He let out
a harsh bawl of pain as hot metal scorched his palms, but he willed
himself not to let go; this was the only play he had. Still screaming,
Chris loosed the pot in a savage backhand.

Both a gush of water just the near side of boiling and the heavy
pan hit the Changed in the face. There was a hollow
chunk
as iron
bounced against bone. A starburst of blood erupted on the boy’s forehead. For a half second, the Changed boy went absolutely rigid—and
then instead of a guttural
awww
, he let go of a long, high, girlish
screech. Lurching backward in a clumsy wobble, the boy wallowed in
a swirl of blue tablecloth and slick kerosene.

Bellowing, his hands shrieking with pain, Chris charged—not for
the butcher block and its temptation of fine-edged steel, but for the
hanging rack. Seizing a skillet, he wrenched it from its hook. Two
feet away, the Changed was kneeling, fingers quaking over flesh that
blazed a hot, boiled purple where it wasn’t red with blood. Skillet in
hand, Chris drove forward, already certain what needed doing, knowing nothing on earth would stop him. At the last second the Changed
lifted his head, and Chris saw the left eye had gone as milky as boiled
egg white.

“Get up, come on!” Shouldering Wolf aside, Alex squirmed out from
under. A
hooshing
hum reverberated in her ears. The stink of cooking
meat and burning hair was so heavy it was like sucking the char from
a barbecue grill. Gobs of singed meat clung to Wolf ’s back and her
hair.

Marley had been flattened. His nose, eyelids, and lips were gone.
Fire had chewed his dreads to the scalp; his parka was melted to his
chest. Where his face wasn’t parboiled, the skin was black as briquettes. His teeth, insanely white, showed in a ghastly rictus.

“Easy!” A shout, muffled by the
hoosh
in her ears: the voice older,
angry. Male. “You want to kill everyone in—”
Men?
Were they the red storm, or working with it?
And what
is
that?
She felt her mind shuttle, the monster unsure what to do.
Even
the monster doesn’t know what this is.
At the same time, she could feel
the pull, the temptation to let go and get lost in that thrumming
surge that seemed to pulse with every beat of her heart:
push-pushpush go-go-go.
Dropping to a crouch, she scuttled toward the front of the house
and risked a quick peep through the blasted rectangle of the ruined
window. What had been a snow-mantled hill before was now a smoking crater: a sore of blackened earth and smoking remains.
Used some
kind of grenade or bomb.
It was hard to tell how many bodies, because
everything was in pieces: the stub of what looked like an elbow; a
foot, minus four toes and half the sole; three-quarters of a blasted
head teetering on the lip of the crater like a smashed Halloween
pumpkin. Another Changed—lucky or unlucky, depending on your
point of view—sprawled in a twisted tangle and a halo of blood spray.
What the hell?
Whatever was going on here—and especially in light
of the fact that there were
men
out here—this fight was over a whole
lot more than who had dibs on what. Her eyes caught a flicker to
the extreme left, the same direction from which Wolf and these dead
Changed had come only five minutes before. Something white was
darting through deep green cedar and hemlock. She saw the oval of a
face, but there was something wrong with it, and the smell . . .
Weird.
They were Changed, no doubt about it, but beneath the
characteristic boiled sewage reek was another odor: harshly chemical, completely artificial. It reminded her of the metallic odor of
the chemo the doctors had used on the monster, especially cisplatin,
a drug that had made her puke her guts out. But why would any
Changed smell that way?
Behind these weird Changed and in the trees, she spotted other
figures hanging back, got a snootful of fusty old people and horses.
Men . . . with the Changed? How can that be—
Her monster suddenly quivered, straight-arming her mind with
that strange shove—
go-go-go push-push-push—
as either it, or what
was out there, tried snagging hold.
Oh no you don’t.
Reeling back, she
snatched up a splinter of glass. Not understanding, Wolf reached for
her wrist, but she whirled away. “No, let me just—” Grimacing, she
jabbed the glass into her thigh, a quick in-out. She let out a yelp of
pain, but there was an abrupt snap in the dark center of her brain as
the monster recoiled.
Good enough.
Her mind cleared and she looked
up into Wolf ’s eyes, which were wide with shock.
“Come on, Wolf,” she panted, tossing aside the bloodied glass,
“before we all die.” Scooping up Bert’s fallen shotgun and Ernie’s
rifle, Alex bounded into the kitchen, wheeling right to drop behind
the granite counter. Racking the pump, she thought about shucking
rounds to count how many shots she had left and decided against it.
The last thing she needed was to crawl after fumbled slugs. Figure
one already gone, four left. The bolt-action should have five, maybe
six, depending on if Ernie had gotten off a couple rounds.
None of this makes sense. What do they want
?
First, one group chases
down Wolf and his gang because they’ve stolen food. Then
those
guys get
slammed by these weird Changed. Now
they’re
storming the place, but why?
Can’t be just over food.
To her right, she saw Penny’s terrified eyes over the lip of the
refrigerator. All of a sudden, a lightbulb went off, illuminating a nasty
thought she couldn’t ignore.
My God.
“Don’t tell me this is about
you,” she said to the girl.
There was a gigantic bang from the great room, followed by a
squeal of stressed wood against metal as something hit the front door.
The heavy oak shuddered but held. Given the sound, she thought
whoever was out there had a sledgehammer or log.
The air again erupted with gunfire, but this time it was close,
coming from inside. Wheeling back, she saw Wolf, still in the great
room but behind the overturned leather sofa. Springing up, Wolf
popped off another shot, then dropped as bullets whined in. Another
boom
at the door; beyond the blown-out window, she saw those weird
Changed dart past. Dancing from cover, Wolf sidestepped left, trying
to get a shot at whoever was breaking down the door, then threw
himself flat as the air rattled with another burring round of gunfire.
Bullets clanked the woodstove’s flue. Miniature geysers of stone and
white dust erupted from the walls and hearth as the bullets came,
very fast and in bursts.
Automatic weapons? Wolf was still on the floor, facedown, and for
a fraction of a second, her heart seized. “Wolf !” She saw the white
flicker of his face as he looked her way. “Wolf, come on, you can’t
do—” Another stutter of gunfire at the same instant the door let out
a huge
CRACK
. The wood blistered inward, like a boil about to rupture, and she was so busy looking at that, she only half-registered
something moving into view at the broken picture window. Looking
back, she saw Wolf, still on the floor, and a pair of gloved hands
hooked over the ruined sill.
Trying to get inside.
“Wolf !” Coming out from cover, Alex sprang
past the counter, the shotgun already coming up. “Stay down, stay
down!” She fired once, muzzle flash sheeting, the slug too high,
but she saw those hands let go. More bullets came ripping through
to clank the woodstove. One drilled into the hearth just over her
head, sending a jet of stone splinters pecking at her hair and neck.
Dropping, she scrambled forward on hands and knees over jags and
debris, feeling the bite of glass and tear of stone and the wash of heat
from the woodstove less than twenty feet away, the icy waterfall of air
spilling over the blasted sill.
She swarmed over to Wolf. “Either upstairs or out the back,” she
said, “but we can’t stay here.” Neither option was great. If they blew
out the kitchen window for an escape, they might as well take out an
ad. So that left going upstairs: get to the bathroom, put Penny in the
tub, and then she and Wolf could pick off whoever tried coming up.
We’ll run out of ammunition first.
She jumped her eyes from the
stairs to the kitchen, skimming past the counter cluttered with the
loot she’d found in the basement: camp stove, the lantern, propane.
Still, higher’s bet—
“Wait a minute.” Her gaze zeroed in again on the camp stove.
The propane. “Fire,” she said out loud. Yes, it really might work.
There was all this fresh pine. The chimney was heavy with char and
creosote. This close to the hearth, the air tasted like a lump of coal.
Yes, but it’s also crazy; we’ll be barbecued.
But it was the only thing she
could think of. Scurrying back to the counter, she shoveled the three
propane canisters into her arms and darted back to dump them into
the hearth along with the sticky pine Penny and Bert had brought in
less than half an hour before.
Behind and from the kitchen came another glassy explosion, followed by a girl’s shriek. “Penny!” Barreling into the kitchen, Alex
waded over a river of broken glass from the shattered window above
the sink. Bits of glass glinted from the girl’s hair; blood dribbled from
her scalp and down her cheeks. “Come on,” Alex said, trying to tug
the panicked girl to her feet. “Penny, come on, don’t fight me, we’re
going—”
There was the whipcrack of a rifle shot, the drone of a slug over
her head, followed by a loud, sharp scream. Gasping, she looked up,
saw the business end of Wolf ’s rifle pointing her way, then jerked
around just in time to see an old man in a hunter’s winter camouflage
clap a hand to his spurting face and tumble back from the window.
Storming the place back and front.
A moment later, the air tingled
with that resin pop and then Penny stopped struggling and broke
from behind the refrigerator as Wolf dashed up from the great room
to meet her. Clattering out of the kitchen, Alex pointed at the stairs:
“Bathroom, bathroom!” Behind, she heard the squall of hinges and
fatiguing wood and thought they had maybe ten seconds left.
As she turned to follow Wolf and Penny, she spotted her green
canvas medic pack resting on the floor near the door where it had
been blown in that first explosion. She gave it exactly a millisecond’s thought, then bulleted across the room, snagged the pack in
a one-handed grab, and wheeled back to blast up the stairs. Peeling
right, she saw Wolf kick open the bathroom door, whip aside a
shower curtain, and cram Penny into the tub.
Downstairs, Alex heard another smash of metal against wood,
more shots. And voices. It took every ounce of willpower
not
to
scurry after Wolf and Penny.
Just a few more seconds.
She felt Wolf
moving up behind her, and then his hand on her arm as he tried to
pull her out of his way. But his shot would have to be dead-on, and
there wouldn’t be time for another.
She looked at him. “I have something better than the rifle,” she
said, and then she was pulling the flare gun from the small of her
back. She read in his face and smelled in his scent the shock of recognition, and understood: Wolf
knew
this gun.
Below, she heard the door burst open. Peering around the corner,
she spied three of those weird Changed, in camo-whites and armed
with what she thought were Mac-10s, fanning out in the great room.
In the center of her head, she felt the muted thump:
go-go push-push.
Then she heard murmurs—voices—and spotted four old men moving in from the kitchen to meet them.
Okay, Dad.
Crouching, poking the pistol between the banister
rails, steadying the flare gun in both hands, she picked her spot.
Just
like the target range.
She pulled the trigger.