Monsters: The Ashes Trilogy (25 page)

Starving.
Horrified, Sarah watched the boy’s Adam’s apple bob
in a swallow as he simultaneously crammed in another mouthful.
The boy had one of the worst cases of acne she’d ever seen. His face
looked broken and bruised. With all that blood smeared over pitted
skin and bulging sacs of yellow pus, the Changed looked
diseased
,
something out of
The Walking Dead
.

She had to get out of here. Clawing to her feet, she lurched in a
stumble-stagger that sent her crashing into the door. At the sound,
the Changed twisted, seemed to see her for the first time, and began
to surge up from the floor. Turning, she blundered down the narrow
alley of the kitchen, banging like an errant pinball between counters.
With no flashlight, she was blind, driving forward on memory and
fear. As she crashed through the dark, she felt a sudden, slight change
in temperature, a puff of even colder air from the common room.
Wheeling drunkenly to the right, she groped, found the corner, and
then she was half falling, half sprinting up the stairs.

Her ears caught a thump behind and below. A steady, fast clump of
boots. Coming for her. Not much time. Even starving, the Changed
boy was faster. Sarah tore a screaming breath from the air and then
another. Above, she could see the slight gray-green glow of the
vestibule. Once she made it up and then out of there and into the
breezeway, if she could just make it to the doors, lock him out of the
school . . .

My keys.
A moan fell out of her mouth. Her keys were behind her,
on the floor. She doubted she was fast enough to outdistance this boy
anyway. Even if she could, there might be more. Cutter was dead.
There was no reason for anyone to check on them until the guards
switched off. And what if someone
did
notice that the side door was
open and came in to investigate? What if that someone was Pru or
Greg? This Changed would be on them in a second.

Flinging herself up the last step, she staggered into the vestibule.
From below, she could hear the boy’s grunts, a stumble as he misjudged the distance between one stair and another.
Can’t lead him back
into the school.
Darting right toward the bell tower door, she fumbled
for the handle.
Please don’t be locked.
Mashing down on the icy iron
thumb plate, she cocked her elbows, jerked back hard. The door was
oak and as solid as any other in the church, but it moved, swinging
open with a rusty squall. Cold air spilled and she saw a shimmery
curlicue of narrow stone steps.
Bell tower must open at the top. That’s
why it’s colder and there’s light.

A sudden gush of air sucked at her back and stoppered her ears.
Someone was pushing through from the breezeway into the vestibule, following a cone of orange light that splashed her shadow onto
stone. For a crazy moment, she thought the Changed had her flashlight, but he was coming from the wrong direction. Then she heard
Tori call, “Sarah? Where are you going? What’s hap—”

No.
Darting a glance left, Sarah saw the boy storming up the last
few steps. “Tori, run!” Sarah spun on her heel and waved the other
girl back. “Run,
ru—
”

Surging from the dark like a demon summoned from hell, the
Changed threw himself into the vestibule. Cringing, Tori raised both
arms to ward him off. Her flashlight tumbled from her right hand as
she unlimbered her shotgun, racked the pump, socked the butt to her
shoulder—

And in that small span of time, Sarah finally remembered.
The gun.
Sweating, Sarah fumbled for her pistol just as the boy
ducked his shoulder, dropped below Tori’s line of fire, and sprinted
across the vestibule at a dead-on run. Tori let out an explosive
oomph
as the boy smacked into her middle and bore them both crashing to
the stone. Somehow, Tori still had the shotgun clutched in her right
hand and was trying to bring it around when the boy balled his right
fist, still smeary with Cutter’s blood, and smashed Tori across the jaw.
A yelp jerked from her mouth, her hold on the shotgun loosened,
and in one swift, practiced motion, the Changed boy swept up the
weapon and jammed the muzzle under her chin.
“N-no.” Tori’s bloody lips were purple in the yellow glow of the
flashlight. “Pl—”
“Stop!” Sarah poked the Sig out in both hands, but the gun wavered
and she was shaking so badly her knees wobbled. The Changed went
rigid, and she thought,
Now, shoot him, shoot!
Gritting her teeth, Sarah
squeezed the trigger—and nothing happened. The trigger didn’t
budge.
“The safety!” Tori shrieked. “Sarah, release the—”
Too late.
“Heard what?” asked Pru.
“I don’t know. A . . .” Greg groped for the word. A
thump,
but so
muffled it was more like the sound of a heavy cardboard box on a
wood floor. “Sort of a thud
.
I’m not sure I really heard it.” Maybe
migraines made you hallucinate sounds, too? He didn’t remember
Kincaid mentioning that.
“I didn’t hear anything.” Pru turned to look down at the others
clustered at the bottom of the village steps. “You guys?”
In reply, Jarvis cut Pru a curt shake of his head, while Henry and
Lucian only looked blank. “Man, I can barely hear you,” Aidan said
from the depths of his snorkel. “Can we, like,
go
? I’m freezing my ass
off.”
“Just a sec.”
Maybe this is all the headache’s doing, but . . .
Puzzled,
Greg peered through the gathering twilight at the hunkered edifice
of the church, the bony finger of its bell tower stabbing a sky beginning to turn cobalt. From this vantage point, he couldn’t see the
attached school or the rectory. He stared a long second, saw nothing,
then tossed a look opposite, at the far end of the square toward a
brooding row of shuttered shops and a defunct Christian combination coffeehouse and bookstore. The storefronts were dark, the black
windows empty as sockets. In the center of the square, the snowy
mushroom of an octagonal gazebo, probably once used for summer
band concerts, huddled beneath a trio of towering oaks. “Thought I
saw something, too. This
flash.
”
“What? Where?” Pru twisted a look right and left and then behind,
across the square. “I don’t see anything.”
“Me neither,” the snorkel put in.
“You getting another headache?” Pru asked. “Didn’t Kincaid say
that might make you see flashes of light and stuff ?”
“Yeah.” Greg realized his hand had snuck up to pinch the bridge of
his nose. “But I could’ve sworn—” Behind, Greg heard the scrape of a
door and then a guard call: “Everything okay out here?”
“He thought he saw something,” Pru said to the guard.
“I heard something, too,” Greg said.
“Yeah? I didn’t see anything.” The guard craned a look at his companion, who shook his head, and then back. He chinned the sacks.
“Whatcha got?”
“Loot,” the snorkel said, “which I would really, really like to put
away now, please.”
“Sure. Okay,” Greg said. His headache felt like it was sprouting
claws and digging at the back of his left eye. “You’re right. It was
probably nothing.”
The shotgun blast was enormous, a
BOOM
Sarah felt and heard crash
and bang against the vestibule’s stone walls. A tongue of muzzle
flash, bright as lightning, spurted from the weapon’s throat, sheeting
the stone gray where it wasn’t purpled with Tori’s blood and bits of
her brain and skull.
Without pause, the boy simultaneously worked the pump and
pivoted as Sarah shrieked and leapt again for the bell tower steps.
Hooking the wrought iron latch with her left hand, she dragged
the door partly shut just in time. Another flash, a gigantic
BOOM
.
Something slapped her right calf, and she stumbled as more buckshot
punched through the wood, exploding in splinters that nipped her
back and blew past her cheeks. She careered up the slippery steps as
her calf bawled, the blood streaming in runnels down her pant leg
and sock.
Shot, I’m shot.
She gimped up steps before her leg suddenly gave.
Pitching forward, she sprawled against stone. Her heart was yammering, not only in fear but pain. With all these gunshots, someone
would hear, wouldn’t they? She didn’t know. All this heavy, thick
stone and wood . . . Maybe no one could.
He was down there, waiting,
deciding
. She could feel him.
Have
to save myself.
She still had the Sig.
Is there a round ready?
She didn’t
remember or know how to check. Any sound would give her away.
The Changed had already seen her with the weapon. The longer he
assumed she didn’t know what to do—not such a stretch—the better
off she might be.
Then, the glimmer of an idea . . .
Find the safety.
Her fingers walked
the weapon. This time, she found the lever and thumbed it off.
Grimacing, she eased onto her back, reached down, and skimmed an
oozy handful of warm blood to smear her cheeks and neck. Scooping
another palmful, she slathered her chest.
There, that ought to sell it
.
One
look at me and he’ll think I’m dying.
Shuddering, she scrubbed her hand on her jeans, then pulled herself into as tight a crouch as she could manage, hissing at the pain in
her calf. No expert on guns, but she knew geometry. They were in a
tight tube, a circular space with narrow, essentially triangular steps
that tapered to a point around the stone newel. He was a boy and
much bigger, and had the long gun besides, which meant he had no
choice but to hug the outer wall. But she was above him, and small.
Clutching the Sig, she steadied her hands on her knees, aiming for
what she thought would be the most logical spot.
“Help.” She injected as much fear and pain into that little whimper
of a word as she could. It wasn’t such a stretch. “I’m
shot.
Please don’t
hurt me. I won’t tell anyone you’re here, I promise.”
Nothing.
This isn’t going to work.
She listened, straining above the
thump of her heart, the buzz in her ears. She was trembling so badly
her teeth stuttered. Sweat, oily and as thick as the blood seeping into
her right boot, spilled over the shelf of her eyebrows to burn her eyes.
“Help.” She threw in a long grind of a groan for good measure. “I’m
hurt.
Please,
help
me.”
A second later, from somewhere below, she heard the distinctive
rasp of a boot over stone. A
clup.
Then another
clup
.
Coming up.
How many steps had she managed? She couldn’t
remember. “Help.” Her hands were cramped so tightly around the
Sig’s butt, the ridged grip digging into her palms. Her right index
finger curled over the trigger. “I’m
hurt.
”
Another
clup.
And another.
“Please. Help me.” The newel was cold on her neck. She was staring so hard into the silvery gloom, her eyes watered. “I’m bleeding,
I’m—”
A dark, stiff finger slid into view. She felt her breath catch as the
barrel of Tori’s shotgun—just the tip—hung there a moment. She
was afraid to call out again because she didn’t want him to look her
way. The sound of his boot on stone reached her again, just that
single step. The shotgun moved. The shotgun was pointing up, away
from her and at an angle. He had no choice because of the tower’s
geometry. It would take time to swing down for a shot.
Heart rampaging in her chest, she watched the barrel bob as he
took another step and then another. First, his hands came into view—
wait, wait
—then the hump of his forehead, the jut of his nose—
wait,
just another second
—and then he was only three steps below her—
wait,
wait—
and she saw shoulders, his chest, how his head was swiveling,
his face ballooning to a gray oval—
almost, almost
—and then she
heard his quick inhale the instant he realized he was looking in the
wrong place at the wrong time and the sharp rap of the shotgun’s
butt against stone as he tried swinging down but couldn’t—because
he was a tall boy with a long gun trying to turn in a too-tight space.
“Ahh!”
The sound was more wheeze than scream. But she
squeezed the trigger.
And this time, the gun went off.
Greg’s headache still pulsed in his teeth. His vision was fuzzing
around the edges, but as he shouldered open the door and stepped
from the village hall’s entryway and back into the cold, Greg huffed
out in relief. The village hall triggered a lot of bad memories: images
of refugees, all of them old and decrepit, cringing along the walls; the
Council eyeing him owlishly from their raised bench in that bat cave
of a courtroom the very first day he’d sought sanctuary.
Probably that post-traumatic stuff.
Pulling on his gloves, he stomped
his feet in a freezing-kid two-step, shuffling from right to left as he
waited. The others were still inside, offloading their loot. Located
belowground and through a double set of iron doors, the basement
jail was where they stored what remained of their food and feed as
well as stockpiles of fuel, high-grade fertilizer, and ammo.
What nagged even more was how much they
didn’t
have. The jail
was wide and deep, equipped with ten four-person cells, five to a row.
One huge iron cage—probably once a drunk tank, from the faint,
steeped-in odor of old vomit—dominated the wall at the very back.
This was where they kept their fuel stores: propane tanks, red plastic
cans of gasoline siphoned from stalled cars, fuel oil, premix. Of all
their supplies, their fuel situation was the least dire simply because
no one did any welding, went boating, fired up a chain saw, or headed
out for a nice country drive anymore. All that combustible material
made him nervous, too. No one had asked him, but he always worried
about what might happen if someone got careless, or a spark flew.
Couldn’t you use premix or fuel oil and fertilizer to make ANFO?
Of the remaining cells, only three held food, and of those, one
was devoted to dog food: cans of wet, twenty-pound sacks of dry
kibbles. While not exactly barren, the steel shelves in the remaining
cells weren’t fully stocked either. What had looked so amazing in
the tight, dark cubby of the Landrys’ pantry hidey-hole made barely
a dent. Those eight jars he’d hauled now huddled in a forlorn little
knot, surrounded by a lot of empty space. As the guard had slotted in
the jars, Greg had counted the cans of condensed soup on the shelf
above . . . just to see.
Thirty cans.
The thought sent a shiver down his neck. That would
last forty hungry kids about three minutes. The guards also kept a
very careful tally of every single can and jar, every sack of kibble. So
just how were
they
supposed to sneak out food, much less bricks of
ammo, for their great escape?
Hopeless.
He massaged his right temple
with a forefinger.
We’ll never find enough—
Something
snapped
. The sound was very brief, crisp, firecrackershort. Greg stiffened, his ears suddenly tingling, aware of just
the faintest echo bouncing off brownstone.
That
had been a shot.
Headache forgotten, he turned in a full circle. But from where?
Behind, he heard the door scrape open. “Boy, I’m glad that’s . . .”
Then Pru must’ve gotten a look at Greg’s face. “What is it?”
“Either I’m going crazy,” Greg said, “or I just heard a shot.”
Sarah wasn’t aware she’d screamed or even fired until she felt the burn
in her throat and the kick in her hands. The sound was monstrous,
although the muzzle flash was more like the burst of a spent bulb. Yet
in that brief, spastic light, she saw him drop, not straight down as if he
had ducked—or, better yet, had no head left to duck
with
—but backward. Just falling? Or dead? She didn’t know, couldn’t hear anything.
Scrambling to her feet, she turned to scurry up but pivoted much too
quickly. Her right boot skidded on a slick of her own blood. Her center of gravity shifted; she could feel her balance going, and then the
scream tear itself from her throat.
Sarah knew how to run with a weapon about as well as she knew
how to fire it. So she was holding onto the Sig in exactly the wrong
way, with her finger through the trigger guard. When she tripped and
fell up the stairs, her hand hit stone, and the gun went off again. This
time, she lost her grip, too. The Sig went skittering down the steps as
shards of stone—blowback from where the bullet punched into the
newel—nipped her face and neck and cut fresh blood.
God, oh God, please make him be dead or hurt or gone. . . .
If he was still
alive, he’d now have her pistol. How many bullets did that thing hold?
Doesn’t matter. One will be enough.
She scrabbled up the slippery steps. All she could hope now was
that the Changed was running the opposite way. Maybe no one had
heard the shotgun because the church’s walls were so thick, but
someone
had to have heard those pistol shots through the open bell
tower. So where
was
everyone?
All at once, she ran out of stairs and stumbled into a short, stonelined passage slotted with rectangular openings on either side to let
in light. Dead ahead, no more than ten feet away, she saw an array of
trusses and ropes and handles that reminded her of a weaver’s loom.
But where are the bells?
She stood, panting, heart thudding, calf
screaming with pain, ears still roaring. The bells must be above
her somewhere. Lurching to the tangle of ropes, she saw how they
looped around dowels and were tied off in hard knots. The icy ropes
would be stiff, and her chilled fingers were tacky with blood. If the
knots were too tight, she’d never loosen them. But all she needed was
one, right? She yanked ropes, searched the knots with quaking fingers, then gasped as the tip of her right index finger slipped through
a very small loop.