Monsters: The Ashes Trilogy (65 page)

When the screams and the guns started, it never occurred to Chris,
for a second, to turn back. If anything, he urged Night on even
faster. This was a collision he would not avoid, a fight from which
he wouldn’t back down. If there ever was a
right
time to pick up the
hammer, that time was now.

They were coming in fast from the northeast corner, a hundred
yards from the far end of the church. He could see the chaos now, the
tide of Changed sweeping over Finn’s men. Off-leash, the Changed
were tearing people apart in chunks, plunging their hands into
bloody craters to reel out double handfuls of guts. The square was
awash in bodies and pieces of bodies and gore—and old people, still
standing, as the past embraced its blighted future. He saw a woman,
her gray hair a storm cloud, dart for a brute of a boy: “Lee, Lee,
Lee!
”
Lee’s huge arms whipped the old woman—
Travers,
Chris thought,
her name’s Travers; she likes to garden
—from her feet. The boy spun his
grandmother around in what might almost be joy. When Lee sunk
his teeth into that woman’s throat, the look on her face was a species
of an awful, final ecstasy.

“Look!” Greg was pointing toward the village hall. “On the landing!”
Chris looked—and felt his heart fail. The steps were heaving with
Changed scrambling and fighting and tearing at bodies. From its
bulk, one of the dead was Ernst. And his own grandfather? He didn’t
see Yeager. But what he did spot on the landing, surging like some
behemoth breaking the surface of the sea, was Tom.
Tom was saturated with blood, so much that he looked as if he’d
plunged into a deep pool of red paint. He was staggering, too; there
was a body draped over his neck and shoulders in a fireman’s carry.
Tom had a pistol in his free hand, and he was banging out shots, trying to clear a path. Black shotgun in hand, Alex was by his side; Chris
recognized her at once and there was . . . my God, was that a
dog
?
Where had it come from? Huge, its white coat flecked with gore,
the animal was snarling and spinning at any Changed that tried getting close. Tom’s rifle scabbard dangled from Alex’s right shoulder.
Grabbing up an enormous green canvas pack, she slung it over her
left shoulder and then she was shouting something to Tom, wheeling toward the Changed boy swooping in, coming for Tom’s blind
spot. The shotgun bucked in her hand with an enormous
boom
. The
Changed toppled back in a loose-limbed splay. Alex turned a brief
look to her right, and Chris saw her lips move, understood what she
was screaming:
Come on!
But he couldn’t see to whom she was speaking and, suddenly, didn’t care, because it caught up to him then that
the body over Tom’s shoulders wore white going crimson. Where
that fall of hair wasn’t gold, it was a deep rust-red.
Peter.
“No! Alex!
Tom!
” Spurring Night, Chris plunged into the
crowd, beating a path. He snatched the reins of a stamping, riderless
roan, thinking, furiously,
Get him on a horse, get Peter to Kincaid, get out
get out get out!
Trying to cover the distance between them was like
battling a stormy sea in a rowboat with a soupspoon. The roan was
shying and squealing, and he could feel Night tensing, struggling to
find a safe place to set his hooves. Hands tore at his legs. The square
was a sea of teeth and snarling faces. This was the nightmare of the
plateau again, only this time he was trying to control two horses.
Greg had pulled beside him, and Chris heard the crack of shots as
they battled their way the last fifty feet.
“Chris, no! Stay on your horse!” Tom’s face was tense, pinched
with pain, wet with sweat and gore. There was an enormous bloody
slash across his chest, and he was breathing hard. Alex’s back was
pressed to his, the Mossberg in her hands, that big dog still whirling and snapping. “Greg, help me! Chris,” he said, as Greg hurried
around, “pass down the Uzi!”
“Here!” Chris stripped the weapon from his shoulders, turned it
butt-first. “How bad is he, how bad?”
“Bad. Alex!” Tom shouted over his shoulder. “Take the Uzi!”
Instantly, she broke her elbows so the Mossberg aimed at the sky,
and wheeled, one hand stretching for the new weapon. As soon as her
fingers wrapped around the butt of the Uzi and he felt her connect,
Chris let go. But she
did
look up. Their eyes met, and he said,
“Alex . . .”
“I know, Chris. Me, too. Help Peter.” Limbering the Mossberg, she
turned back to cover and buy them time.
“Chris!” Tom called. “You’ll have to hang on to him until we can
get clear!”
“How much time left?” he cried, steadying Night with his knees.
“Not enough! All right, let’s go, let’s go!” Tom shifted his weight,
came down on a knee, and then Peter was swooning into Greg’s arms
as Tom hefted Peter’s legs.
“Hurry!”
Alex shouted. She was backing up, the Uzi in both hands,
trying to cover all sides at once. One of Finn’s men—old, but with
only a few streamers of white hair—swam at her in a panic, arms
cranking in a herky-jerky crawl. Before she could get off a shot, the
wolfdog surged. Screaming, the old man reeled as blood spurted
from a rip above his elbow.
“Down, Buck!” As the wolfdog jumped back, Alex darted in with
the Uzi, slamming the butt into the man’s jaw, one quick and vicious
jab. There was a jet of crimson as the old man’s skin split, and he
went down. In the next second, the Changed had him, and he disappeared, shrieking, one grasping bloody hand reaching straight up as
if trying to claw his way from a grave.
“Lift him, Greg, easy, easy!” Tom said. Peter’s face was white as
salt, the blood like bright spray paint. As Greg and Tom wrestled
Peter onto his saddle, Chris saw the cramp of pain in Peter’s face and
heard his moan.
“God, oh God, Peter, hang on, hang on!” Chris said as Peter fell
into him, his back spooning against Chris’s chest. “I’ve got you, it’ll
be okay.”
“C-c-cold.” Peter was gasping. There was so much blood, Chris
could taste the iron in his mouth. Peter’s head lolled. “S-so c-c-cold . .
. C-Chris, s-sorry, s-so sorry, I t-t-tried . . .”
“Shh, you did fine,” Chris said, tremulously, sobs welling in his
throat. “You’re going to be okay. I’ve got you, Peter.” Peter was shuddering, struggling for breath.
I’m going to save you; I’m going to save us
both.
Wrapping his arms around Peter, Chris took his friend’s weight
and held him tight. “I won’t let you fall, Peter; I’ve got you, I’ve got
you, you won’t fall.”
“All right, Greg, on your horse, let’s go!” Grabbing the roan’s reins
from Chris, Tom turned to shout, “Alex, you ride with me—” He
stopped, sudden panic blooming on his face. “Alex, where’s Alex?”
“What?” Confused, Chris threw a look down to where she’d been,
then up, toward the hall. He spotted her, that red scream of hair, as
she and the dog pushed past Changed and fighting men, and exploded
for the steps—and a body. “There!” Chris shouted.
“Alex,
no
!” Aghast, Tom was already surging, whipping the pistol
like a club, trying to beat a path. “Alex, there’s no time—less than
ninety seconds! What are you doing, what are you
doing
?”
But she kept going, didn’t falter, and in that last second—before
the shot—Chris understood why.

Laid out like a sacrifice, his grandfather was crumpled on the steps.
The only reason Chris recognized him at all was because Yeager was
bald. His face was ripped, but the head was still attached. The rest
was a loose-limbed heap of gore and torn flesh.

Crouched alongside Yeager’s body was a boy, bloodied and bruised.
A girl, very pregnant, hovered nearby, uncertain, clearly terrified. As
Alex banged through, only the boy looked up.

My God.
The jolt of surprise was like a crack of lightning splintering his brain. There was an instant where the engine of time hitched,
jumped its tracks, and then simply ceased.

“Wolf,
please
!” Above all that clamor, he still heard her shout. “You
have to leave, you have to go, Wolf ! You have to run, you have to—”
And then they all saw, at the same terrible moment, what Alex
did not: a monster, suddenly risen; a ruin of flesh and bone, virtually
naked, clothed only in tatters and red rivers of blood streaming from
rips and slashes and bites. A long flap of scalp hung in a limp flag
of maroon flesh and gray hair. Pink skull showed from forehead to
crown as if this monster was in the process of unzipping and shrugging from its skin to be born.
“YOU!”—and that was the only clue Chris had that this thing once
had been a woman. Her arm, dripping blood and gleaming with bone,
swung up, fist jabbing toward Alex, the chrome of a huge Magnum
revolver winking in the day’s new light.
“YOU!”
“MELLIE,
NO!
” Tom shrieked, his pistol drawing down, at the
same instant that Chris screamed, “Alex,
Alex
, look out,
look out,
look—
”

It was, she thought, the strangest feeling, like waking from the dark
chaos of a long fever-dream with her mind burning bright and clear:
coming back to herself not within her parents’ embrace but the shelter of Tom’s arms.

Now, here they were, fighting for every remaining second, in the
middle of the end of the world, and no time left, in this growing
garden of the dead. Yet there was nowhere on earth she
should
be
other than with Tom and Chris and her people, waiting to welcome
her back, take her away.

Although the monster still searched. She felt it reach because she
did
want Wolf gone and safe. So when she spotted Wolf with Yeager,
all she could think was that he
had
to leave and take this one last leap
away from Rule to whatever future waited. Maybe it was wrong to
feel that way about a boy that was half monster, but so the hell what.

“Wolf !” Frantic, she grabbed his arm. She kept an eye on Penny,
but the girl only seemed petrified, which was fine because they had
problems enough. “You need to go, you need to get out!”

Wolf was weeping. Big tears burned in ruby trails through blood.
For a second, she knew what he felt. For this, she needed no monster. This was a boy who’d just lost everything, not only Yeager but
Peter, too. For him, there was no home left, no place to go. It was
like looking down at herself at her parents’ funeral. Or on the day of
her diagnosis: huddling in a chair in a too-cold office and seeing for
the first time what a monster, living in the dark and eating you alive,
really looked like.

“Wolf,
please
.” She could feel her lips trembling, the tears burning
her eyes. “It’ll get better, I promise it will, but you have to try, you
have to go, Wolf, you have to run, you have to—”

There was no transition at all. Despite how much had happened,
less than three minutes had passed since the moment she let her monster go. So there was a lot of gunfire and people were still shrieking.
The crack of one gun was nothing new, although . . . was that
Tom
,
scream—

Something clubbed her, very hard, in the back. She saw Wolf
flinch. Fire licked her chest. For that dead space between heartbeats,
she and Wolf only stared at each other. She still heard gunfire, but
it was so different. No cracks or heavy
bangs
. Only a muted, distant
crackle like tired cellophane.

Then her legs folded. There was the dark, waiting below, but only
that. It was Blackrocks again.
Except this time, it was the water—cold and deep—that jumped
for her.

Alex probably never heard. There was so much noise. The Magnum’s
boom was lost in the twin roar of Tom’s pistol and Greg’s rifle. What
was left of Mellie tumbled back, and then Tom and Greg were stumbling forward as Chris forced Night to follow.

Awkwardly cradling Alex in his arms, the boy—Simon, his
brother—was staggering to a stand as that huge dog snarled but dared
not strike. Alex was tall, a handful for anyone, and limp now: dead
weight, eyes closed, the long white swan of her neck dropping back.
From Night’s saddle, Chris could see where the shot plowed into her
back because of the red starburst halfway down her right chest where
the bullet cored through. When her chest struggled up, Chris heard a
horrible, sudden cawing sound, like the croak of a dying crow.

Penny was already trying to back away. When Simon saw them
coming, he took a half step back as if to turn and try to run. But
then his eyes ticked up to Chris, and Simon’s face—
my face
, Chris
thought—bleached white.

“Please,” Tom said, his voice breaking. He held out his arms.
“Wolf . . . Simon, please give her to me. Let us help her.”
“Tom.
Chris
, what the hell . . .” Greg had dismounted and already
come up with Chris’s Uzi, which he trained on Simon. “Guys,” Greg
said, shakily, “we have to go, we have to
go
.”
“I know.” For that second, Chris saw, in Simon’s anguish and
the tears streaming over his cheeks, not a Changed but a boy struggling with what he wished for versus what he could have. “Simon .
. . please,” he said, tightening his arms around Peter, who was now
unconscious. Although his friend was very heavy, his was a weight
Chris could bear. “She belongs with us.”
At that, Simon took a clumsy, hesitant step. Tom met him halfway,
scooping Alex into his arms and then turning for his roan, limping
fast as the dog broke from Simon and bounded after. “Give him the
gun,” Tom tossed over his shoulder to Greg. “Give it to him, get on
your horse, and let’s go, now,
now
.”
“What?”
Greg’s head jerked to Chris. “Chris, I know he’s got to be
your brother, but this is like Lena. He’s still—”
“Do it.” Chris looked down at Simon as Greg held out the Uzi the
way you’d offer a python a snack. As soon as Simon got a hand on
the barrel, Greg dropped the weapon and sprinted back to his horse.
“Run, Simon,” Chris said to his brother. “Do you understand? Go, get
out, take Penny, and
run
—”
“Come on!” Tom bellowed. He held Alex to his saddle as Chris did
Peter: against his chest, in his arms. She was still as death, and Chris
couldn’t tell if she was breathing anymore. Wheeling his roan, Tom
kicked the animal to a gallop. “Forty seconds, go,
go
!”
“Run, Simon!” Chris shouted, and then he was pulling the blood
bay around, spurring Night to a dead run, giving the horse his head.
“Go, Night, go, Night, go!”
Forty seconds.
They blasted past a knot of feeding Changed, the
newly dead, and those who would join them soon enough. Rushing
from the square, counting in his head:
thirty-nine-one-thousand,
thirty-eight-one-thousand, thirty-seven—
He made it to thirty.