Monsters: The Ashes Trilogy (32 page)

“. . . correspond with images of the naked, red-eyed, wild-man god known
in Vedic mythology as the Red Howler, the Raw-Eyed Beast, or Red Storm.
As father of the Hindu storm gods, Rudra was clearly linked to intoxication.
With his mad eyes and golden hair, this is a white-skinned god, the divine
link to the Land of the Dead . . .”

“Which doesn’t prove anything other than people have been
getting high for thousands of years,” he muttered, eyeing the stack
of books Isaac had carted up:
The Ethnobotanical Encyclopedia of
Psychoactive Plants. Medicinal Plants of the Great Lakes Region. Little
Deaths: The Physiology of Coma and Trance States
. Not light reading,
but they’d kept him isolated in this bedroom for the last two days,
and Chris had plenty of time on his hands. Anything was better than
stewing over what Isaac had said about Penny Ernst and Peter, Simon,
his grandfather—and Jess.

“Tempting as it may be to regard Rudra as the physical manifestation of
the Fly Agaric mushroom, I believe there to be a much better candidate for
this lost, mysterious, and mystical drink. Close study of Vedic poetry—with
its frequent mentions of regenerative ‘death sleeps,’ resurrection, and divine
visions—point to the much rarer and more lethal cousin,
A. pseudomori
.
‘Death sleeps’ clearly suggest comas of varying durations, during which
times metabolic demands . . .”

From across the room came a timid knock. “Chris?”
“Come on in. Oh, sorry, I forgot. It’s locked.” Yes, it was perverse
and a little nasty, but he was starting to go bat-shit stir-crazy. There
were only so many sit-ups and push-ups a guy could do. Any longer
in solitary and he’d be as beefy as an inmate. Now, the fact that he
was
feeling so strong after both weeks on the trail and some time in cold
storage . . . he didn’t want to think about that.

An uncertain pause on the other side of the door. “Do you want
me to go away?”
Don’t be a creep. It’s not her fault.
Other than Isaac, the rest were
hanging back, spending as little time with him as possible. As pissed
as he was, he wasn’t sure he blamed them. “No,” he said, and shoved
back from the table. “Come on in, Ellie.”
There was the thunk of a lock being thrown. The door cracked
a few inches, revealing the worried eyes of that morning’s guard—a
strawberry blond named Eli—and then a flash of golden braids as
Ellie pushed past.
“Ellie.”
Eli made a grab that Ellie easily dodged. “Jayden said we
should wait for the dogs.”
“Mina knows he’s okay.” Ellie gave her dog an affectionate ruffle.
“Don’t you, girl?”
“Relax, Eli, I’m still talking,” Chris said as Mina trotted over, gave
Chris’s hand a welcoming snuffle, then immediately flopped on her
back, tail thumping. Grinning, Chris obliged with a furious belly
scratch that set the dog to squirming. “You like that, girl, you like it?”
he said as the dog’s back legs pedaled. “That’s a good girl.”
“She’s such a baby.” Dropping to her knees, Ellie brushed aside a
corn-tassel curl that had escaped her left braid to coil at her temple.
“Like I
never
pay attention to her.”
“It’s okay,” Chris said as Mina stretched both front legs and let out
a blissful moan. “I like it. My dog did this all the time.”
“You miss him?”
“Yup. Jet’s a good dog. I bet you’d like him.” Chris gave Mina’s
belly a firm clap, then looked up at the little girl. “Going fishing?”
“She’s
always
going fishing,” Eli put in.
Ellie showed Chris an exaggerated eye-roll. “I was wondering if,
maybe . . . in a couple days, if they let you out . . . you want to come
with me?”
“Sure,” he said, then couldn’t resist the dig. “But I guess it all
depends on whether Isaac and Hannah think I’m going to eat you.”
“God.” Eli’s face darkened. “Don’t be such a jerk.”
The hopeful shine on Ellie’s face dimmed. “They don’t think that,
Chris. You know they have to be sure.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Don’t be such a turd.
“Sorry. I’m not usually an ass . . .
uh, such a creep.”
“It’s all right. You’re just upset.” But her smile was more tentative
than before.
“No excuse.” Reaching across the dog, he tucked that corkscrew
curl behind her ear and let his hand linger a moment, enjoying the
flush of delighted surprise that spread over her face. Cute kid, but he
could see the sadness in the slightly dusky hollows under her eyes.
“The least I can do is be nice to the girl who saved my life . . . and
don’t start.” He held up a finger. “It is
so
a big deal.”
“Yeah, I guess it is.” Ellie looked pleased enough to burst. “Now
that you’re feeling better, is it okay if I ask you a question?”
“Of course.” He said it easily enough, but he felt his stomach suddenly knot with apprehension. “Shoot.”
“Before I came here, I had these friends.” Ellie nibbled at her lower
lip. “Alex and Tom. Not my age, but older like you? Actually, I think
Tom was even older. He was a soldier, like my dad, only Tom was
in Afghanistan, not Iraq, and worked on bombs and stuff. Anyway,
we were all together. They . . . they took care of me, but then we
got separated. When Tom . . .” Her eyes shimmered, and her mouth
twisted exactly the way a little girl’s would if she was trying hard not
to cry. “When these adults took me, Tom got shot and . . .”
He listened with growing dismay as she narrated a story he’d heard
once before. Ever since that morning on the snow, when he’d swum
back in such pain and fear to put two and two together, he knew this
moment would come. Until this second, he wondered what he would
do—and why that should be a question.
This kid risked her neck for you. The least you can do is man up.
“So, what I was wondering”—Ellie dropped her gaze to her hands
as if afraid of finding the answer in his face—“was if Tom and Alex
. . . if they got to Rule?” A tear broke against her fingers. Eyes still
averted, Ellie knuckled her cheek. “Are they there? Are they okay?”
He was going to hate himself forever.
“I’m sorry, Ellie,” he said. “But I never met them.”

You are such an asshole.
Through the windows, Chris watched as Isaac
put a hand on the little girl’s head. That loosened something, because
Ellie suddenly flung her arms around the old man’s waist and buried
her face. Even two stories up and across a half acre, Chris could see
the little girl’s shoulders shudder.
She’s the only one who cares, and you
go and lie.

“Yeah, well, you get fed poison, cut off from a bunch of spikes,
and left for dead, see how you feel.” The self-disgust on his tongue
was so thick a bottle of mouthwash wouldn’t cover the taste. “You
think she’s going to like you so much once she finds out that you got
Alex killed? That you decided it was easier to pretend there was nothing the slightest bit weird going on with the Zone?” He wouldn’t be
surprised if Ellie wanted dibs on the firing squad, and
no
, he was not
overreacting.
These kids
put down
people.

What bothered him, too, was how quickly the lies came. He
thought he was past all that, the Night of the Hammer and his father
and the strange, meaty thunks and Deidre’s screams. Ten years later,
and he still remembered answering that detective’s questions:
No, sir,
I didn’t hear anything. No, I was asleep. Hammer? No, sir, I haven’t seen a
hammer anywhere. I don’t think we even have one.

“No, Detective, I love my dad.” He leaned his forehead against
chilled glass. Just below the sill were stark coils of some very thick
but snow-covered vine winding up a high iron trellis. “I’m only eight,
and I’ve just listened to my dad kill someone, and no, sir, he never
hurts me.”

Despite the bright sun of early afternoon, the double-paned window fogged with his breath. Through the patchy haze, he watched
Ellie boost herself onto the saddle of a dingy brown mare. The way
to the lake wound through thick woods fringing a vast bowl of glittering snow that, from the wire and steel posts, must be the farmstead’s
garden plot. Chris saw the old man raise a hand as Ellie, Eli, and their
dogs disappeared and then gather the reins of a dun-colored saddlebred, which he led toward a weathered, dark gray stable just off the
long frozen oval of a duck pond south of the house. Switching to the
south-facing window, Chris tracked Isaac’s progress as the shadows
of the man and his horse, long and spider-thin, dashed away toward
distant, wooded countryside. Nestled a short distance to the right of
the stable, a clutch of cows had gathered in a white corral around a
feed station outside a red, high-pitched gable barn with a stone foundation. Like the stable, the barn was decorated with several hex signs:
half-stars in fake arches over the windows that Hannah had called
“Devil’s doors,” as well as white rosettes. With its east-to-west orientation, Chris could just make out a swirling blue and gold Wheel
of Fortune beneath the peak at the gable end. As he neared the barn,
Isaac waved to another boy—not tall enough to be Jayden, so maybe
Connor or Rob—pushing a barrow of soiled hay.

Man, I would muck stables 24/7 if they’d just let me out of here.
Sighing,
Chris closed his eyes. He wasn’t stupid, so why was he acting that
way? Forget how this would hurt Ellie in the long run. What about
the fact that he was only digging himself in deeper with lies? Once
the truth got out—and it would—they’d find it that much harder to
trust him.

Yeah, but look how long everyone’s been lying to me.
The story was so incredible, he doubted anyone could make it up.
As much as he didn’t want to believe it, what Isaac said answered a lot
of questions. It even explained Peter’s reaction when Chris showed up
in Rule. One look at Chris, and Peter probably stalked into the Council
to demand an explanation. What would Yeager have admitted?
“Betcha not much,” Chris said. “You really think an old asshole
like that is going to fess up to getting his business partner’s wife pregnant?”
Or that Chris’s grandmother . . . was Jess?

All Isaac knew was that when Yeager and Jess’s daughter—Chris’s
mom—showed up with twin baby boys, Yeager agreed to take only
one, who turned out to be Simon. Chris was sent back to his dad,
who probably raised a huge stink or got some money out of it. Not
that his father spent a dime more on Chris than he had to. This was a
man who never had two nickels to rub together; who always kept the
money Chris made from summer lawn mowing jobs.
For safe keeping
;
was what his dad always said.
For college.
Right. When you boozed as
much as his dad, you needed all the pocket change you could scrape
together.

But how had Yeager decided something like that? Put him and
Simon side by side and done eeny-meeny-miny-mo? Drawn straws?
Chris could count the number of times he’d actually spent more
than five minutes with Yeager on one hand. But he now understood
why all his meetings with Yeager only happened once a year, and
always in restaurants in other towns outside of Merton and nowhere
close to Rule. No way Yeager would risk anyone seeing him and asking Chris,
Hey, Simon, how’s it hanging, kid?
Or risk him and Simon
laying eyes on each other.
No wonder Dad always got roaring drunk afterward. Every time he saw
Yeager was just one more reminder of how he’d ended up stuck with—

The knock was perfunctory, a warning more than a request. He
heard a jingle of keys, the rattle of the knob, and then Hannah was
hip-butting in on an aroma of stewed carrots, boiled potatoes, and
rich sauce. A handgun rode just below her right hip.

“Lunch. Better late than never,” she said, by way of greeting. “Got
tied up with the lambing. Still have four ewes waiting to deliver.”
“What, no Jayden to make sure I don’t jump you?” he said.
“He and Connor are out hunting and checking traplines. They
won’t be back until they have something. Jayden always pushes the
envelope.”
“At least he gets to do something. I
could
help out around here,
you know.”
“No, that won’t be necessary.” Butting the door closed, she walked
to the table where he’d laid his books. “Do you mind?”
Although the smell was driving him crazy, he didn’t move a muscle. “You aren’t worried I’ve got a sudden hankering for a chicken
wing instead of beef stew?”
“No, you’re still talking; it’s venison; and I don’t insult easily.”
Her gray gaze was unflinching. “I’m also much faster, younger, and
quite possibly a better shot than Isaac. Now, are you going to help, or
would you like me to leave this on the floor?”
Wordlessly, he swept the books into an untidy heap and dumped
them on the bed. Leaning against a brass bedpost, he crossed his arms
and watched her lay out his food with efficient, economical movements. It bothered him that he noticed how neatly that buckwheat
mane wove into a smooth braid. Or that she still smelled like honey
and oatmeal.
“Besides the stew,” she said, showing him her back, “there are
some peaches put up last year, and I brewed you a cup of nettle tea.
It’s high in iron, and good for correcting any anemia.”
“Yeah? Maybe I should have a taster first.”
When she turned, she did it without a lot of drama, the way a
kindergarten teacher understands that screaming at the annoying little kid will only make him tantrum harder. “I’ve already apologized. I
know I’m not perfect, but given the circumstances . . .”
“Yes, blah, blah, blah . . . if you had to do it over again, you’d still
make the same choice. I know. Like you said, we’ve been over this.”
“Then what do you want from me?”
Someone to argue with, so I don’t have to think about what to do next.
“How about letting me out of here for starters?”
“You know that’s not my decision.”
“But Isaac would listen to you.”
“Probably, but I don’t think this is a bad call either. While I’ve not
seen that many kids turn, what happened to you is very different.”
“Like you said, I’m still talking. I came back as me.” From
where
was a question he didn’t want to think about and couldn’t answer
anyway. He made a sweeping gesture at the books. “You’re the college kid. There’s the science. What more do you want?”
“My advice is still the same. Take this up with Isaac. Now, if that’s
all”—she began to move toward the door—“I have chores that need
doing, and lambs that need feeding.”
“Wait.” As angry as he was, he needed a break from himself.
“Look, I’m sorry I’m being a jerk. I guess I’m not used to getting
killed and then waking . . . Sorry.” He held up a hand. “Sorry. That
was the wrong thing to say. Can you stay for a little while? No one but
Isaac and Ellie talk to me. You treat me like I’m some kind of leper;
I can’t decide if Jayden wants to dissect me or run experiments to
figure out what makes me tick.”
“If he had access to a lab, he’d probably do both” Hannah said,
though she didn’t smile.
That did not make him feel better. “Why are you guys so afraid
of me?”
“You need to ask that? We can’t explain you, we don’t know what
will happen, and, oh, you’ve been just a little violent.”
“I was confused, okay? You try getting crushed, poisoned, and
then woken up with some old guy doing a bunch of mumbo jumbo
on you and see if you’re not just a little freaked out.”
“Has it ever crossed your mind that I
am
, Chris? I’m not exactly
thrilled
to have misread the situation.” She sounded angry now.
Misread the situation?
Had she just admitted to making a mistake?
“So can we agree that we’re all a little on edge? Please, stay awhile. I
hate
being alone all the time. All I’ve got is what’s running around in
my head. Five minutes. If I’m a jerk again, you can leave.”
“I don’t need your permission,” she said, although he thought
there might be the ghost of a smile this time. “What do you want to
talk about?”
“Um . . .” Now that she was staying, everything seemed to jam
behind his teeth.
You thought I was Simon. How well did you know him?
Did you know Peter? Tell me more about Penny.
But all that felt too personal, too fast. “Do you want to sit?”
“Thanks.” Slipping onto a straight-back, she clutched the tray to
her chest like a shield. “So . . . what’s on your mind?”
“Okay, here’s what I don’t understand.” Actually, there were quite
a few things he didn’t get, but he decided to start with something that
was not only safe but pointed out that, really, he
could
be trusted. (
Oh,
riiiight
, his inner voice needled,
that
so
explains why you lied to Ellie
and haven’t told them about Lena.
) “You know I’m the one who’s been
taking
your
sickest kids back to Rule.
I’m
the one who’s left food and
supplies.”
“Yes, and you can leave kibbles out for a stray cat,” she said, with
that same neutral tone, “but that doesn’t mean you won’t skin it for
stew the minute it gets close.”
“But all I did was show up at that bookmobile. I never knew you
guys were there until you left that first little girl for me to find.” This
was only a small lie. He’d made it his business to visit Oren after
Jess pointed him that way. Why she never said she’d broken from the
Amish herself or mentioned boo about Isaac was something only Jess
could answer.
“Actually, no. That was another group’s decision. I had no part in
that, and I wouldn’t have agreed if I’d been asked.”
“That’s pretty harsh.”
“Is that a question or an observation?”
“Both. Don’t you guys have rules or something? Doesn’t Isaac tell
you what to do?”
“Of course not. He’s an . . . adviser.”
“So you guys run things yourself ?”
“More or less. We’re free to disagree, but there’s a certain consensus from group to group.”
Yeah, like the one about putting down kids you don’t think will make it.
Yet even that must not be an absolute. He’d rescued several, very sick
kids, some of whom had died once back in Rule. “Isaac’s the only
adult?”
“The only one left. He keeps tabs on us, moves from group to
group.”
“How many groups are there?”
“Is that important?”
Okay, so they weren’t going there. “Fine, you’re right. Not important.” Not entirely; Peter had talked about carrying capacities, how
alarmingly fast Rule had grown beyond its resources. “So, what about
my original question? You guys made the first move, not me.”
Which was not entirely true. After Jess mentioned there might
be kids around the old Amish settlement, he made it his mission to
rescue as many as possible. He’d visited, frequently, aware of the eyes
on his back, careful to always leave some token supplies—batteries,
food—at the old bookmobile where he’d found that first Spared, a
very sick girl, just inside the front door. She was also the only child he
hadn’t had to jump through hoops to find.
“Discovering that girl wasn’t a fluke,” he said. “Those kids made
sure I found her. After her, they left a note to clue me in on the hex
signs. They obviously didn’t think I was a threat.”
“And as I said, it wasn’t my call. Look, we could go round and
round about this for days, so let me ask
you
something, Chris.” She
leaned forward. “If there
had
been other children who weren’t sick .
. . say, you stumbled on us . . . would you have taken us back to Rule?
By force?”
“Probably.” He could feel the heat splash his cheeks. “Yes.”
“Then that makes you no better than the people who stole Ellie.”
“It’s not so black-and-white.”
“Yes, it is.
I
never stole a child. I’ve never allowed anyone to use a
child as a way to buy sanctuary.”
“As you might say . . . that wasn’t my call.”
“But you enforced it.”
“We’ve all had to make choices. All I ever wanted was to help. I did
what I thought was right at the time.” Coming out of his mouth, they
sounded like the platitudes they were.
“And you’d still do it, all over again.”
“You mean, like you deciding to kill me?” he shot back. “Yeah, I
guess I would. So we’re even. I’d try to find ways to keep kids alive,
and you’d
trick
people into taking poison.”
He could hear the echo of his shout in the sudden silence. She
was rigid, the skin around her mouth tight, her cheeks high with wild
color.
Idiot.
He had to stay calm, be reasonable. Push people too far
and they exploded.
Sorry, Dad, sorry, it’s my fault; I won’t do it again.
“I never . . .” She cleared her throat. “It’s never a trick. When
someone is beyond help, when there is no hope, it’s a choice. When
we know for certain, when the dogs warn us that a child is”—her gray
eyes shuttled away—“
turning
, it’s still a choice.”
“A choice between what and what?”
“What do you think, Chris? If you were turning, if you knew that
you’d try to kill your friends, people you loved . . . are you telling me
that you’d choose to become one of
them
?”
“Between what and what?” he asked again. At that moment, he
understood, completely, why Peter set up the Zone. Despite the
secrets and lies, he knew Peter still loved him, would die for him. If
Peter had confided in him, would he have helped?
Maybe I would. Because if Alex Changed . . . if Peter did . . . I could never
pull the trigger.
He bet Peter would’ve felt no differently. Watching
his friends and people he loved Change in front of his eyes, Peter
would’ve tried to find a way. Where there was life, there was hope.
They might Change back, get better. The trick was keeping them
alive long enough to give them that chance.
Yes, but how long would you run the experiment? Months? Years? Does
hope have a termination date?
“Don’t tell me you let
any
kid you think is Changing wander
around. So what’s the choice?” He realized that he really was spoiling for a fight, some way of hitting back. “What do you do, lock
them up and starve them to death, or only shoot them when they
go rabid?”
“Don’t you judge us.” Her gray eyes went flinty. “Don’t you
dare
. I
don’t owe you answers, Chris. You think you’re so superior, so right?
You know nothing about us.”
“You don’t know me either. You’re not even interested in my point
of view. You’ve already judged me.” His voice was shaky. The low
simmer in his gut was near a boil. “So, fine. Let’s do a little math,
Hannah, because math is clean, it’s pristine, it’s so scientific that
Jayden would approve. You can’t massage numbers. There’s no arguing with two plus two.”
“This is pointless—”
He rode over her. “Not counting me and Nathan, there are eleven
bodies in that death house. Assuming your group started with twenty
people, give or take, that means you’ve lost seventy percent of your
original population in five months.”
“Some of those people were old.”
“But the majority weren’t, isn’t that right? Some kids Changed
after
and either you killed them before they could Change all the way
or once they had. But there were others, Hannah—others who were
sick and you couldn’t help. So they died.”
“You can’t always cheat death, Chris.”
Yeah, but there’s a time for everything, even death.
Then he thought,
Get out of my head, Jess.
Aloud, he said, “Let’s exclude the kids who
Changed, okay? What about the others, the ones who were just plain
sick? Why not accept help? Hannah, do the math. At this rate, by the
end of the year, there won’t be any of you left.”
“Is that why you came, Chris?” Her voice was cold. “To convince
us to go back with you?”
“Maybe. In the beginning.”
“What about now?”
“Beats me.” He threw up his hands. “I don’t know. I think there’s a
better way than simply giving up and accepting, all right?”
“You want to fight.”
“Of course I want to fight. Life may not be great, but it beats
dying. I just don’t know how to change things in Rule, or if I even
can.”
“Is that where you want to go? Back to Rule?”
“I don’t know.” If his grandfather had anything to say about it,
he’d be dead or in the prison house before he had a chance to do
anything. “This whole thing about Isaac? It was a setup. I was supposed to find out about Jess and Simon and Yeager. I was supposed
to figure out about the Zone.”
And Peter
. “I see it’s wrong. But I also
understand.”
“You
understand
?”
“Yes, I really do see both sides,” he said, and thought,
Chris on the
right, Chris on the left. Eeny-meeny . . .
“Not everything about Rule is
bad. Like, take Ellie: You seriously believe an eight-year-old girl isn’t
better off someplace where she can be protected? Or that she even
has the ability to
make
that choice? What if she was seven? Or four?
How young is too young to know better?”
“You’ve got a point?”
“Yes. You have a cutoff where it’s no longer a kid’s choice. But
how did you get there, Hannah? What makes you think you’re right?”
Hannah threw up her hands. “Fine. We’ll never agree. You are
so
like Peter, wanting to reduce all of life and death to cutoffs and
percentages, when to step in, when not to.”
Of all the things she could’ve said, this wasn’t it. “Wait a minute,”
he said as she stood. “What do you mean? How well did you know
Peter?”
“Well enough.” She was already turning away. “I really don’t want
to talk about this right now, Chris.”
“But what if I do? What if I
need
to? Hannah.” He had to snatch
back the impulse to grab her wrist. “Please. Please don’t go. Please . .
. what are you talking about?”
He saw the warring emotions chase over her face, and the moment
she made her decision. “I’m talking about the accident,” she said.
“Accident?” he said. “What accident?”
“You’re not going to like it, Chris. You think you’ve found out all
there is to discover about Peter? About Simon?” She showed a brittle
smile. “Believe me, those waters run deep.”