Monsters: The Ashes Trilogy (56 page)

Luke was so freaked, a scream fizzed into his throat that he just as
quickly bottled behind clamped teeth. The impulse to turn and run
was so strong the flashlight jittered from a sudden fit of the shakes.

The wolf didn’t move. But the girl did, raising a warning finger to
her lips and then crooking her hand the way Morpheus had to Neo:
not
bring it on
but c
ome here.

For a split second, he thought,
Oh, you got to be kidding.
This was
like the wolf in
Little Red Riding Hood.
Get near a strange kid who was
just
the right age to be a Chucky? Hell no. Then he considered that
this girl was a) hiding and b) with an animal, and that except for Finn’s
weirdo Chuckies, all the ones he knew were the kind who snacked
first and asked questions later.

“Kid, what the . . .” The mustached guard’s voice was lost as the
guy hacked, then hawked up something from deep in his chest. He
spit and then croaked, “Damn coffin nails.” Louder: “What’s the
holdup?”

“Uh . . .” Luke dragged up his voice from his toenails. The girl was
shaking her head. “There’s a lot of ice. Be up in a couple seconds.”
The guard muttered something, and Luke thought the guy might
come down after all. But then a flame leapt as the guard lit up a fresh
smoke. Turning, he saw that the girl was now only a foot away, her
wolf—or maybe a really big husky or something—at attention by her
side.
“Who are you?” he whispered.
“How many guards?” she murmured. Now that she was closer,
he thought she must be around seventeen, eighteen, and decked out
in a funky, fluttery camo-jacket, the hood cinched down tight, accentuating high cheekbones, a narrow nose, and strong jaw. The sharp
dash of a widow’s peak was just visible high on her forehead, but
he couldn’t tell what color her hair was. Her eyes, though, were an
intense, deep emerald green, as bright as the wolf ’s. From her clothing and roughed hands—not to mention that Springfield she was
packing and the sheathed knives strapped to either leg—he thought
she’d been in the woods, on her own, for a long time. She looked like
a wild wolf-girl.
“Four. One here, three back at the tents.” He paused. “Are you
from Rule?”
She shook her head. “Weapons?”
“Uzis, and they all have pistols.”
A deep wrinkle formed between her eyebrows. “Can you handle
a gun?” When he nodded, she said, “Get the guard to come down.”
It was on the tip of his tongue to ask what she was going to do,
then he considered how that was just dumb. Nodding, he stood and
called, “Hey, I need some help down here? I . . . I . . .”
“What the hell,” the guard said, bored, no question in his tone at
all. “What happened.”
Luke injected a note of misery. “I fell in,” he said, then plunged his
hand into ice water and splashed around. “And my boot came off. I
can’t find it and . . .”
“Aw, Jesus.” An exasperated sigh, followed by the clop of heavy
feet. “Hang on.”
“Thanks.” Luke managed a pathetic note. He risked a quick peek
with the light, but the girl and her humongous wolf or dog or whatever had vanished. Swiveling, he pegged his flashlight beam to the
guard, who was working his way down in a crabbing sidestep. Too
late, he remembered:
Shit, I’m supposed to have lost my boot.
“Hey,”
he said, then dropped to his knees, angling his light until the beam
splashed directly into the guard’s face. “Over here.”
“Jesus, kid.” Squinting, the guard put up both hands to shield his
eyes. A fresh cigarette was screwed into his mouth. “Move the light,
you’re gonna—”
Luke saw the girl, who must’ve scrambled higher until she was
well above the guard, suddenly rear into view like an actor caught
in the flare of a full spot. Her elbows were cocked, and then she was
jabbing fast. The butt of her Springfield hit the guard’s skull with a
loud
thock
. The old man grunted, a short
huh
; his cigarette shot away
from his mouth, the orange eye streaking like a comet. The guard’s
feet tangled, but he was already unconscious, completely limp, only
his momentum tumbling him face-first to a skidding stop just short
of the water.
Whoa.
For a stunned second, Luke could only stare as the girl
swiftly stripped the guard of his Uzi and passed over the handgun
to him. Standing, she let out a loud cough at the same moment she
cranked back the Uzi’s bolt, the metallic
crick-crack
lost in the noise. “I
really don’t want to risk shots,” she whispered, then suddenly winced.
A hand snuck to her temple, and she swayed as if from a sudden
shove. “The sound will . . .” She broke off with a harsh grunt.
“Are you okay?” He reached an automatic hand but reconsidered
when the wolf, obviously sensing the girl’s discomfort, whined and
then nosed the girl’s thigh. She looked like someone had just clocked
her, but her expression was eerie, something he’d seen before. Then
he had it: she looked a little like Peter when Finn lobbed one of his
brain-bomb things
.
Luke let his hand drift back to his side, suddenly
unsure she wouldn’t go just as ape-shit. Maybe she was a Finn experiment who’d escaped.
“I’m fine.” A tight smile died midway to her mouth. Sprawled at
their feet, the felled guard snored. Kneeling, she turned the old man’s
head until his breathing quieted.
“Who are you? Where’d you come from?”
“Been following you the last two days,” she said. Her wolf was,
he thought, some kind of half-breed, a cross between a wolf and a
malamute or huge husky. “Had to wait until they moved out. Buck.”
Turning, she patted her leg and the wolfdog eeled to her side. “All
right,” she said, jerking her head toward the slope. “Get as many
down here as you can.”
“How do I do that?”
Now, a true smile, as fleeting as a swift high cloud, touched her
lips. “Panic.”

“Help,
help!
” And then while Cindi was still digesting that, Luke followed the cry with a screech that raised the hairs on her arms and
neck.

“Oh!” Heart cramming into her mouth, she jumped up and cast
a wild look in the direction from which Luke’s screams had come.
“Luke?” she called. “Luke, what—”

“What’s going on?” Chad cried. He and Jasper had bolted to their
feet. Weapons drawn, the three guards were hurrying over just as
Luke clawed his way out of the grainy half-light. His eyes were shiny
as headlamps.

“What is it, kid?” one of the guards demanded as Luke stumbled
over. “Where’s—”
“By the stream. I think he . . . he had a heart attack or something.
He just kind of grabbed his chest and—” Luke’s face crumpled. “I
don’t know CPR!”
“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.”

“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.

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?”