Monsters: The Ashes Trilogy (58 page)

In the instant after Tom’s warning shout, the world hiccupped.
Something kicked Chris in the back. There was a brief sensation of
hurtling through air. Then, there was nothing: no impact, no dreams
this time around, or nightmares either, quite possibly because he
was living one. But time lurched, like a really old movie missing the
middle reel, the story dropping out.

The next thing he knew, he was facedown, hands clawing for
purchase, blindly worming his way over a still-hissing debris field
of splintered wood, twisted metal, molten glass. In the distance, he
heard the
dong-bong
of the church bell, sounding the alarm. When
had that started up? The air boiled with screams and wails. Someone
was bellowing,
“What what what what!”
Much closer, someone was
moaning. After another second, he understood the moans were
his. He tasted blood at the back of his throat. His stinging face was
wet with melted ice and snow, but his hand came away red, and he
thought,
I can see this; I can see color
.

Because there was light.
Time,
time
. . . how much had passed, how much? The world was
both bright and murky. Intermittent black clouds smoked over sky
that was denim overhead and a lighter turquoise to the east from
the first spokes of sunlight. The air stank of spent fuel, burning
wood, scorched metal, and overdone Sunday roast.
Those clouds . . .
smoke . . .
The sparse pines on this plateau were torches. Behind and
off to his right came the crackle and sputter of another, larger fire.
Got to get out of here.
Rolling, he looked toward the tower a hundred
feet away. All that remained was a gnarled ruin of skeletal struts and
one remaining flight of steps leading nowhere. One horse, Jarvis’s,
was down, its belly a ragged blast crater of mangled entrails. Night,
his blood bay, was still on his feet. Tom’s dun mare was in the trees.
One hand pressed to his head, the other clutched around a rifle, a
man tottered and screamed,
“What what what . . .”
“Jarvis?” Staggering to his feet, Chris coughed, moaned again as
his cracked ribs sent knifing jabs through his chest. “Jarvis, where’s
Tom, wh—”
“Here.” To his right, a tangle of wire mesh moved. Chris saw first
the bore of the Bravo, still in its scabbard, and then Tom, on hands
and knees, struggling against a pile of debris.
Uh-oh.
Wobbling over, Chris dragged away mesh and smashed
wood. His heart turned over when he saw the spike of metal sticking
out of a star of blood and ripped cloth from a spot high on Tom’s left
thigh, just beneath his hip. “How bad?” Chris dropped to his knees.
He reached a hand, then snatched it back, afraid he’d make something worse.
“Dunno. Don’t think it’s that deep. Doesn’t feel broken, and it’s
not pumping. Help me up.” Tom suppressed a groan as Chris got a
shoulder under and boosted him up. “Hurts like hell,” Tom said, his
face screwed against pain.
“Can you walk? Can you ride?”
“Yeah.” Hissing, Tom took a limping experimental step and then
another. “I’ll make it. We’re both lucky we’re not dead from the pressure—” Tom stopped, sniffed, then said, “Oh shit.”
“What?” Chris said, but Tom was already lurching for the edge
of the basalt plateau. Smoke jetted, like the exhalations of a subterranean dragon, from somewhere just below. Wincing with every
jarring step, Chris caught up and squinted down. In science, they’d
studied Mt. St. Helen’s, and Chris remembered the way the blast
flattened all those trees. This wasn’t quite as bad, but it was close.
The blazing abatis looked as if it had been smashed by a giant’s boot.
Nearby trees had toppled. He could see where snow had either been
vaporized instantly by the heat or melted.
Four men, two RPGs.
Chris’s eyes roamed the wreckage. The legs
were easy to identify, as were the half-torsos and . . . and . . . “H-heads.”
He hadn’t meant to say anything. It just came out. The heads were
very distinct. A few looked like eight balls, without the white: no
skin, no hair. Others had cracked open like walnuts to release red and
pink sludge. “Tom, I see—”
“Yeah. Come on.” Turning, Tom started in a fast hobble for the
trees. “We’ve lost a lot of time. Going to be full daylight soon. We
need to get to town before the Changed get here. Jarvis!” Tom called
to the old man, still turning his circles. “Come on! We have to—”
“What?”
Jarvis whirled so fast a foamy line of spit flew. His eyes,
crimson with broken capillaries, started from their sockets. Blood
trickled from his nose, and one ear. He shot the bolt of his rifle. “Stay
away from me, stay away!”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Tom held up both hands. “Jarvis, calm
down, man. We got to go, the Changed—”
“Who? What?”
Jarvis screamed.
“What what—”
“What’s wrong with him?” Chris asked.
“Probably the pressure wave. Scrambles some people up. Jarvis,”
Tom tried again, “listen to me, man. It’s okay, but we have to
go
,
we have to—” Suddenly, Tom stiffened and turned back toward the
plateau and the smoking tower.
“What?” Chris asked. “What do you—” Then, over the crackle
of flames, Chris heard it, too: the sharp snap of brush, the stomp of
boots on rock.
Deep in the smoke, something moved. Something . . . dark
blue.
For a disorienting moment, Chris thought the
smoke
was pulling
together, changing color, becoming parkas and then jeans—and then
he realized that what he saw were Changed, a lot of them, surging
up the rise only a hundred feet away, materializing like invaders teleported from a distant planet.
“Chris.” Tom clamped a hand on his arm and tugged. “Come on.
Don’t look, just go.”
Oh my God.
Chris was paralyzed, rooted to the spot. Jarvis was
screaming again—
“What what what”
—and Chris was thinking,
I don’t
know, I don’t know, I don’t
. . .
“Chris!” Tom snapped him around so quickly Chris had to clutch
Tom’s arms to keep his feet. “I said, don’t
look
at them. Get on your
horse
, Chris! Get on your horse,
now
!”
“O-okay,” Chris gasped. He took off in a stumbling run, Tom
crowding behind, urging him on. Snatching his bay’s reins, Chris tried
to boost to his saddle, but his feet wouldn’t work. “Come on,” he
heard himself plead, “come on, come on, come—”
He heard them: boots stirring debris, kicking wood, crunching
glass.
Getting louder.
His back prickled.
Coming closer, don’t look, don’t
look, don’t!
But then, he did snatch a glance—
stupid
—and a nail of terror jabbed his heart. The Changed, so many,
too
many, were fanning
out, spilling over the plateau, charging right for them.
“Chris,
no
!” Tom was already whipping his horse around. “Don’t
look! Come on! You’ve got time, just don’t panic!”
Too late
. Socking his boot in a stirrup, he grabbed leather and swam
to an awkward half-sit on his saddle. Tried not to look. Couldn’t help
it. The Changed, these children of Rule, were less than fifty feet away.
In the coming day he could see their mouths open in silent snarls and
their eyes, their eyes, so wide, so wild. No weapons, only teeth and
clawed fingers and—
Don’t look, Chris.
No voice but his own, one that wanted him to
live.
Move, or you’re dead.
But it was fascinating, appalling, awful: every nightmare come to
life and why deer froze in headlights and people died at train crossings and Moses covered his eyes. No one can help but stare at the
monster, because horror is a cousin to awe.
“Chris, no, what are you doing?
Chris!
” Tom shouted as the same
moment that Jarvis bellowed,
“Whaaaat! Whaaat whaaa—”
Braying, Night finally shied, Chris’s panic communicating itself
to a shocked animal that understood death was a hair’s breadth away.
The bay reared. Not yet fully seated, Chris let out a strangled cry as
the slide started. He felt himself peeling backward; he was falling, he
was going to fall into the Changed and their arms, and they would get
him, they were there, they were—
“Ho!”
Bullying his prancing mare alongside, Tom snatched at
Night’s bridle. “Chris, set your damn knees, grab his mane or withers, and get on,
get on
!”
Sobbing out a breath, Chris scrambled for a handhold. Night’s terrified eyes rolled; his head snapped back and slammed Chris’s face.
The blow was terrific, so hard that Chris’s vision blacked. Stunned,
he lost his grip, began to slump . . .
And then there were hands, everywhere: skittering over his left leg
and thigh, fingers clutching to pull him off—and he thought,
I’m done
.
An enormous bang came from someplace over his head. The
questing hands suddenly fell away. Another bang. To Chris’s left, a
Changed boy slapped both hands to the crater where his nose had
been, and tumbled back. Still dazed, Chris felt Tom’s fingers claw his
shoulder.
“Don’t lose it, man!” Tom shouted, manhandling Chris onto the
saddle. “You can’t lose it, Chris, come on!” Despite his injury, keeping
to his mare with only his knees, Tom had a big black Glock in one
hand and Chris’s shoulder in the other. Another girl with very long,
filthy hair made a lunging grab. Cursing, Tom swung down, stuck the
pistol in the girl’s face. The Changed was so intent on
him
she never
saw Tom, much less the gun, and—
bang!
Her head shattered, skull
and scalp and brains and blood and wild hair flaring in a wet spray.
“Sit
up
!” Tom roared. “Get
up
, Chris, sit—”
The crack of a shot, not from Tom but to their right. The high
zing
of a bullet ricocheting off a tree. Bellowing, Jarvis fired again.
This time, a Changed boy staggered as a red sunburst suddenly flared
over his right breast. The line didn’t exactly falter, but some Changed
peeled off, heading for Jarvis, and that gave Chris the precious two
seconds he needed to slot his foot into his stirrup.
“All right, come on!” Tom shouted. Wheeling, they kicked their
horses to a run and bulleted into the trees, heading back for Rule’s
center three miles in their future.
It wasn’t a mistake, but Chris snagged one last look. Two Changed
had their arms around the still-bellowing Jarvis. The three danced
a drunken pirouette. Then another Changed joined in, and then
more and more, and then Jarvis wasn’t bellowing but screeching, the
Changed boiling over him the way ants devoured prey, and there was
blood, so much of it.
And more to come because it’s the end of the world
. Chris faced forward. His eyes stung. His cheeks were wet, and he didn’t think that
was only blood.
It’s the end, it’s the end, it’s the end.

“Get away from the edge! Get away from the edge of the wagon!”
Ellie shouted, but no one was listening; everyone was shrieking, kids
twisting this way and that to see. It was like a disaster movie where
the Martians suddenly busted up and everyone turned to scared rabbits, all big eyes and open mouths, right before the Martians blasted
them from their clothes.

“Move, get up!” Snatching her Savage by the barrel, she sprang to
her feet, cocking the weapon like a T-ball bat just as a hand hooked
onto the wagon behind the elfish boy who wanted to fish. “Get out
of the way!” she screamed, and brought the stock hammering down.

The people-eater bawled as its knuckles split wide open. As the
boy—
was
that a boy under all that hair?—gawped up in surprise and
pain, she punched his face with the butt. Toppling, the people-eater
tumbled into two others, the three going down like bowling pins.

Oh boy, we are in so much trouble
. Around her legs, the growling
dogs were jostling, trying to wedge together in a wall of balled
muscles and bared teeth. In front on the driver’s box, Lucian was on
his feet. Racking his shotgun’s pump, Lucian
boomed
out a shot, and
suddenly, a girl was missing her head, twin ropes of blood still pulsing because the heart hadn’t yet got the message. Banging out shots
with an enormous, bucking black pistol, Sarah was hitting absolutely
nothing, only driving the swarm back with the sheer volume of fire.
How long could she keep it up, though? Ellie knew they didn’t have
a lot of ammo. The way Sarah was running through that clip, unless
she had a couple spare magazines . . .

Maybe Lucian figured out the same thing at the exact same
instant: that Sarah was only wasting bullets. That if he wanted to
hang on to his creepy scalp, he better book. All of a sudden, Lucian
bent, scooped up a pack, hitched it over his shoulder, butted away
one people-eater, booted another in the face, and leapt from the box.

“Wait! You have my bullets!” Ellie shouted as Lucian hit the
ground and sprinted for the far trees. In the thick tangle of brush
and low-hanging boughs, she lost sight of him almost immediately.
Not one people-eater followed, probably because there were all these
tasty kids.

Now what? All around, kids were still screaming and only sitting
as the dogs tried surging to her left where the majority of the peopleeaters were. If the kids would just let the dogs through! Grabbing the
elfish boy by the shoulder, Ellie tugged. “Get behind me, get behind
the dogs!” she shouted.

The kid threw her a wild, open-mouthed stare. For a second, she
thought she’d gotten through, but then he scrambled in the exact
wrong
direction, for the driver’s box. A flat-faced people-eater with
only half a nose suddenly reared up. Shrieking, the elfish boy got an
arm up. Half-Nose latched a hand and yanked. Jackknifing, the elfish
boy managed to butt his free hand against the wagon. For an instant,
he swayed, facedown, like a poorly balanced teeter-totter.

“Sarah!” Ellie shouted as Half-Nose drew back for a strike. “Sarah,
behind you!” Pivoting, Sarah jabbed that enormous pistol at HalfNose, squeezed the trigger—and nothing, out of ammo, completely
dry. The elfish boy bawled a blood-curdling scream as Half-Nose
locked his jaws on the back of the boy’s neck, right around his spine.
A moment later, the elfish boy, still kicking, flipped out of sight.