Monsters: The Ashes Trilogy (23 page)

“That all goes to the dogs,” Greg said, unsure if he only wanted
to kick Lucian in the teeth or never touch anything Aidan got near
again. Maybe both. “So where’d Chester get it?”

“Fine.” Verna’s voice ratcheted up a notch. “
Fine,
yes, we had a cat.
It was Lisa’s, but it ran away once she . . .” Verna petered out, then
revved up again: “We still had the food.”

“Then you should’ve turned that in last time we did a door-todoor.” Pru moved a little closer and said, “Council gave orders right
after the ambush.”

“All right, we made a mistake. But did you find a cat
then
? No. And
why pick on cats? Why not dogs and horses?”
This was why Greg had left Daisy with Tori and Sarah. All they
needed was a pissed-off villager taking a potshot. “Please, ma’am,
this’ll go a lot easier if you just open the door.”
“Not until Chester gets home. You’ll just have to come back when
he—”
“Do it.” Greg was suddenly just so sick of the whole thing. Let
them just get in, get out, get this over with, so he could go back to
Tori.
“Playing our song,” Aidan said. Moving in a swift sidestep around
Greg, he and Lucian pistoned quick cop-style kicks. The old woman
saw them coming, let out an abortive squawk, but didn’t move fast
enough. There was a splintering scream as both the lock plate and
chain popped free of the jamb. Greg heard a sickening
thuck
and an
ugh
as the old woman’s head first connected with wood, then snapped
on the spindle of her neck. Lurching back, a hand clapped to her
streaming nose, she began a stuffy screech: “Mah noth, mah noth!”
“Lucky it’s still attached,” Aidan said.
“Fucking A,” Lucian said, though whether he was agreeing or
commenting on his friend’s prowess at breaking an old woman’s
nose, Greg didn’t know and didn’t care.
“Henry, make sure she doesn’t go anywhere,” Greg said, stepping
over the blubbering old woman as Henry doddered up and piped on
an improbably high note: “Now, Verna, I coulda tole you . . .”
Man, I hate this.
Striding past an understairs closet, Greg moved
down the hall, darkened now with late afternoon gloom, and toward
the kitchen with Pru and Jarvis on his heels. For no particular reason,
his scalp suddenly tingled, and a maddening itch dug at the back of his
neck.
Whoa, something wrong here.
He had this very weird sense that
the house was both empty and yet occupied. He shot a glance over
his shoulder. Aidan and Lucian were sauntering, their eyes roaming
over walls of photographs, tables cluttered with bric-a-brac, ready
to liberate anything they took a fancy to the second Greg or Pru or
Jarvis might not be looking. He watched Aidan open that under-stairs
closet, peek, then move on.
Nothing really untoward. He frowned.
So why am I so spooked?
Something wrong . . .
“Bingo. Food dish.” Pru chinned a cheery yellow placemat tucked
into a corner of the kitchen, behind a farmhouse table and chairs.
A round ceramic bowl decorated with fish skeletons and the words
Meow
and
Yum Yum
squatted next to an aluminum water bowl, which
was half full. The food dish held a single kibble. “I don’t see a litter
box.”
“Maybe they let it out,” Aidan said. “Might still
be
out unless the
old geezer run off.”
“Hey,” Greg said, uncomfortably aware of Jarvis, who fit the definition of both
old
and
geezer
. Aidan really needed to watch his mouth.
“Just keep it zipped, okay?”
“What?” Aidan managed to look confused. “What’d I say?”
“Nothing,
kid
,” Jarvis said, laying it on thick, then looked at Greg.
“Chester wouldn’t run. And that fuss Verna put up? Ten to one, that
cat’s still here.”
“Maybe they shoved it into a closet or something.” Spying a corner
pantry, Greg pulled the door. The pantry was completely enclosed
and pitch black. Pulling out his flashlight, Greg sprayed orange light
over the pine floor. “Got a bag of dry, couple cans of wet . . .”
“What?” Aidan and Lucian both asked when Greg trailed off.
“Hang on.” The wood floors of the old house were none too
clean, but with so little traffic here, the pine was much lighter, and he
spotted one board that looked scuffed, its seams wider than the rest.
Like it’s been replaced or popped.
When he pushed, the board rocked.
Oh boy.
He was afraid to hope, but his heart drummed just a little
faster.
We might have something here, we might really . . .
Flicking open
his pocketknife, he worked the tip into a seam. The blade passed
through easily.
“Hey,” he called. As the others crowded in the doorway, he
pointed. “This board’s been pried. I can’t get enough leverage to pop
it, though.”
“Here.” Lucian pulled a black, carbon steel machete that probably
could carve a buffalo from his waist sheath. “Try this.”
Working the blade, Greg eased it a good eight inches through the
gap before the steel
ticked
. Metal? “Got something.”
“Sure you don’t got just a joist?” Pru asked.
“It’s not wood. I can feel a draft. I think this is a crawl space under
the house.” Another five seconds and Greg popped the board, stared,
then said, “Oh, holy shit.”
In the cone of orange light thrown by his flashlight into this
hidey-hole, the jars sparkled like a hoard of rare gems: small, beveled glass jars of strawberry jelly, deep orange marmalade, blueberry
jelly; larger pint and glittering quart mason jars packed full of pickled
carrots, asparagus spears, mushrooms, potatoes, and other vegetables, as well as fruits.
“Whoa,” Lucian said, and Aidan added, “Oh, fuck me.”
“Jesus Christ.” Jarvis said it like a prayer. Crowding in, he reached
past Greg and withdrew a quart of tightly packed fruit swimming in
clear syrup. In the light, the peaches looked like golden half-moons.
“They’ve got all this
food
. They’ve got
food.
”
Gooseberries
, Greg read on another jar, the word done in delicate,
precise letters, along with a date. He’d never tasted gooseberries,
but they sounded deliriously good. His stomach was moaning, and
there was so much saliva pooling under his tongue, he was afraid he’d
start drooling.
Apricots. Cherries.
To distract himself, he counted jars.
“Thirty-six. Not huge, but . . .”
“Hell with huge.” Jarvis had folded that quart of peaches to his
chest the way Reverend Yeager sometimes clutched his Bible during
a sermon. “I should’ve thought of this. I’ve known Verna since we
were kids, going on sixty years now. Her mom canned like crazy all
summer and fall. We searched here six weeks ago. Bare as a bone, and
I thought how strange that was. Not like Verna at all, but it’d been
months since everything went to hell and I thought, okay, they ate
it all.” Jarvis’s face suddenly darkened. “And they’ve still been taking
rations.”
“Assholes,” Aidan said.
“Yeah, that isn’t right; it’s not, you know,
fair
,” Lucian put in.
“But I don’t get it.” Pru was examining a jar of bright purple eggs
pickled in beet juice. Greg bet if anyone had suggested eating something like that to Pru five months ago, he’d have told you to get real.
“Why does that old lady look like she’s starving?” Pru asked.
“Maybe this is their emergency stash,” Lucian suggested.
“Or they’ve been eating only a little bit here and there.” Aidan
hefted a jar of pickled brussels sprouts. “Man, I used to hate this shit,
but now? No problem. We got to tear up the rest of the house. We
oughta tear up all the houses, X ’em off.”
“Wait, wait, not so fast.” Greg was getting dizzy. The urge to crack
the seal of that jar of cherries was nearly overwhelming. “This is cool,
but we came for the cat.”
What am I saying?
“Screw the cat.” Lucian fished out a mason jar swimming with
ruby-red plums. “Man, we could—”
“Don’t even think about it.” Greg replaced the cherries, although
letting go took effort. “Come on, hand them over.”
“Hold on.” Lucian cocked his elbow, holding his jar out of reach,
leaving Greg with air. “Don’t we get a say?”
“No.” Greg’s stomach fluttered. From the knot of frustration on
Pru’s face, he wasn’t sure this wouldn’t end up being four against
one. Maybe even five, if you counted doddering old Henry. “Listen, I
understand, but we can’t. It’s not fair to everyone else.”
“Fuck fair.” In the gloom, Aidan’s tats looked like bugs that had
chewed their way out of his cheeks. “Dude, I’m hungry. We keep
quiet, no one has to know.”
“Old woman’ll know,” Lucian rumbled.
“We can do something about that,” Aidan said.
“No,” Greg repeated. “The only thing we’re doing is turning this
stuff in.”
“What if I don’t?” Aidan said. “You can’t make me.”
The words were so like a five-year-old’s, Greg had to bite his
cheek.
Just get one of them to hand over a jar.
“We can’t go there. Come
on, guys.” He held out his hands to Pru, who, he thought, would
relent first. “Hand it over.”
After what seemed a very long second, Pru pushed the jar into
Greg’s hands. “Here,” Pru said. “Take the damn thing before I accidentally break it on purpose.”
Slotting the jar back, Greg tilted his head toward Aidan and
Lucian. “You, too. You know the rules. We share food. That’s the way
it has to be.”
Aidan’s head swiveled to Lucian, whose shark eyes ticked to
Pru and then back, weighing the options. A moment later, Lucian
shrugged and silently passed over his jar.
“Fuck.” Aidan tossed his brussels sprouts in an underhand pitch
that Greg fumbled and nearly dropped. “Asshole. Hope you fucking
choke.”
“Jarvis?” Heart banging, Greg looked up at the old man. “Come
on.”
“It’s a jar of peaches.” Jarvis’s tongue flickered over his lips. “No
one has to know.”
“I’m with you, brother,” Aidan put in.
“I’m seventy-fucking-five years old,” Jarvis said, and then his face
knotted. “Council cares more about you. Spared eat better. You’ll get
it
all
.”
“Hey, fuck that, Jarvis,” Lucian said. “I’m scraping empty.”
“Yeah,” Pru chimed in. “We Spared are doing
so
great.”
“All I’m asking for is a lousy jar of peaches, for God’s sake,” Jarvis
said.
“Jarvis.” Greg swallowed around the stone in his throat. “We’re all
hungry. But you know the rules.”
“Rules.” Jarvis’s eyes narrowed. “Real easy for you when the rules
break your way. Guess that’s what comes with being the Council’s
private pets.”
“Whoa, who you calling a pet?” Aidan said. “We gave up our food,
too, you know.”
“Yeah, but why?” Jarvis rifled a glare at Greg. “Because the Council
gives you the authority? Here we’ve supported them for
years
. We
gave up on our grandkids. We let them get rounded up and shot without ever being given the
chance
to get better, come back to us—and
now we’re supposed to starve, too, to save
you
? Kids that aren’t our
blood, not our family? Hell with that.”
“Okay, wait.” Pru put his hands up, palms out. “Let’s all just cool
off, okay?”
“What if I don’t
want
to cool off ?” Jarvis’s eyes hadn’t left Greg.
“What if I’m
done
taking orders from the Council? From
punks
?”
“Hey.” Lucian’s forehead furrowed so deeply the scabs on the
dome of his skull bunched. “Watch the punk shit.”
The pantry was, suddenly, very cramped, and much too dark, and
he’d left his rifle in the kitchen. So had Jarvis, but he also carried a
pistol in a paddle holster. Greg flicked a glance to the old man’s waist,
then wished he hadn’t given himself away like that.
Jarvis read the move. “Afraid I’m going to take a shot?”
Before Greg could think of the right answer—was there one?—
Pru said, “Seeing as how I’m right behind you, Jarvis, that would be
a real bad idea.”
“You got a Ruger, kid.” Jarvis cracked a laugh. His Adam’s apple
wobbled in his turkey neck. “Punch right through. Blast me, you blast
him.”
There was the sound of metal sliding over plastic, and then Greg
saw Jarvis’s back stiffen. “Yeah, but this don’t have bullets,” Aidan
said, and he must’ve pressed the tip of his knife just a touch more
into Jarvis’s neck, because the old man gasped. “I did this once in bio,
to this big honking bullfrog.”
“I remember that lab,” Lucian said. “Kind of a rush, the way the
frog spazzed?”
“No one’s pithing frogs, and no one’s blasting anyone. Now I’m
just picking up Lucian’s knife here, okay? Everyone be cool.” Slowly
unfolding himself from the floor, Greg raised his right palm out while
he held the machete’s blade in his left and prayed Lucian didn’t grab
it so quickly he lost a few fingers in the bargain. Beyond, he could
see Pru, his Ruger Mini-14 holding steady on the back of Jarvis’s
head, and Aidan, whose lips were drawn into a predatory grin Greg
knew all too well. Lucian only looked thoughtful, like all the gears
were clicking away in there, all the angles being considered.
That
was
somehow even scarier.
“Here’s what we’re going to do.” His jaw was so tight, Greg could
barely get the words past his teeth. “Screw the cat, okay? We pack
up this stuff and then we all leave,
together.
We take everything to the
food stores and then we don’t have to worry about it anymore, all
right?”
“Out of sight, out of mind?” Jarvis gave a bitter cackle, like the
snap of bad ice. Didn’t sound—or look—much like a gobble-gobble
now. “You think it’s that easy?”
“Hey.” Aidan’s teeth showed in a snarl. “You threatening us poor
little punks?”
“Aidan, put the knife away.” Greg’s eyes slid to Pru. “You, too.”
After a long second, Pru’s elbows broke, and Greg heard the click of
the Ruger’s safety. “Aidan,” Greg said again.
“Yeah, yeah,” Aidan said, but from the way Jarvis’s cheek twitched,
Greg thought the little rat-creep still managed a cut.
“Okay,” Greg said. “We need something to carry this stuff. Pru,
you and Jarvis go look for some pillowcases.”
“How do we know you won’t slip a jar into your pocket or saddlebags while we’re gone?” Jarvis said. “Why should we trust you?”
“Because you can. Jarvis, really, we’re on the same side,” Greg said.
“Yeah?” Jarvis said. “Which side is that?”