Monsters: The Ashes Trilogy (48 page)

Tom nodded. “Has to be, unless it really was Mellie. But I’m thinking that it’s someone she knows and who could convince the kids he
wasn’t a threat.”

“I . . .” Weller’s gaze danced to the snow as he drew a careful hand
over his mouth. “I’m not seeing it, Tom. Why would she do that?”
Tom’s stomach went leaden. He knew Weller’s mannerisms and
tells, and now he had to be careful. More compact, the arc of swing
required to bring his Uzi to bear was much shorter than for Weller’s
rifle. This was a contest he could win. But they weren’t there yet, and
he had no wish to nudge them any closer to the brink. If this old man
wanted Tom dead, he’d already had plenty of opportunities. “I guess
that’s what I’m asking you,” he said.
For a long, tense moment, Weller only looked at him. He must’ve
read something in Tom’s face he didn’t like, because the old man suddenly raised both hands in surrender. No way Weller would win in a
draw down now. “Take it easy, Tom.”
“Two kids are missing, this horse and the dog are hamburger, and
I should take it easy?” When Weller said nothing, he said, “Do you
know what’s going on?”
“No,” the old man rasped, then sighed. “Not entirely, and not anything about
this
.”
“You want to tell me what you
do
know?” At Weller’s silence, he
said, “Am I
not
supposed to make it back alive?”
The utter astonishment on Weller’s face was real. “What? Tom,
that’s crazy.”
“According to Mellie, I’m the resident expert on crazy.” Now he
felt a simmer of anger, the sneak of a finger on his trigger guard.
Take
it easy. Don’t make a move you can’t take back.
“What’s going on?”
“I don’t
know
what’s going on here,” Weller snapped. “Whatever
game Mellie’s playing,
if
she even is, I don’t have a clue. Now I’m
putting my hands down.”
Sentimentality aside, he wasn’t stupid. Tom took another step
back. “You could put the rifle down, too.”
“Not a chance in hell. I’d like to live to see tomorrow, thank you
very much, and there is no way you’re taking my weapon. So either
shoot me and go save those kids, or we get out of here now, together,
because I do . . . not . . .
like
this, Tom. There is something going
down, and we are in the
wrong
place to stop it.” When he didn’t move,
Weller grated, “Jesus Christ on a crutch, Tom, I do
not
want you dead.
I don’t want
any
more dead kids if I can help it. I will tell you what I
know, but right now, all we got is each other, and
we
got to get to our
kids. You’re going to have to trust me that far. You have my word on
it, Tom, soldier to soldier.”
That, he believed. “All right,” Tom said, breaking his elbow, hoping it wasn’t the last thing he ever did. “But I’m not sure we should
race back. We need to think this through because it might be that
what’s going down is going down now. We still need to find Cindi
and Chad.”
“I’m with you on all that.” Weller’s shoulders drooped with relief.
“For what it’s worth, I don’t think Mellie would hurt the kids, not
intentionally anyway.”
“You don’t sound very certain.”
“Because I’m not,” Weller said. “So let’s go figure out what to do
next.”
* * *
They were halfway to the horses, Tom a step or two behind Weller
because, soldier to soldier notwithstanding, it paid to be careful. All
of a sudden, Weller came to a dead stop and tipped a look at the sky.
“Where the hell’s my head?”
Tom narrowly missed plowing into the older man’s back. “What?”
“We’re going to need to scout things out, work some sort of
angle, right? Well, I don’t have my binos. Do you?”
“They’re back at camp. We can take Cindi’s. I’ll go back up—”
“No, you go on, get the horses. It’s further, and I’m a lazy cuss.”
Cracking a grin, Weller was already trotting back up the steps. “Won’t
be but a minute.”

It was when Tom was leading the horses back to the church that he
realized what else it was that bothered him about that mess in the
belfry.

An overturned stool. A dropped book. The tipped thermos. And
garbage.
Cindi’s a neatnik.
Whenever she visited him, she carefully refolded
paper bags, waxed paper. Yet now there was trash, and not just
anywhere, but—
You’re startled enough to drop a book and your binoculars. You kick over
the stool. There’s chicken soup on the floor, and litter.
His eyes widened.
But that one mound of trash is piled
on
the binoculars, and that can’t be,
not if she dropped—
“Weller!” Tom charged for the church. “Weller,
no, NO!
”
Click-click-click. Click. Click.
And now a sputter, like a snake.
Static.
The hairs stood on Luke’s scalp.
Mellie’s got a radio, and she’s
talking
to someone, in code.
Against every particle of good sense, he eased down the hall. The
clicks sounded at erratic intervals. His pulse banged in his ears. This
was dumb; what could he tell Tom?
Well, there was this funky clicking?
But if there
was
a radio and someone
spoke
—
From beneath his left boot came a loud, high squeal of a fatigued
board: a real horror-show
CREEEEE
that made his brain freeze. A second later, he heard the telltale squall of bedsprings, and . . . “Hello?”
The tone was sharp, the volume growing as Mellie moved for the
bedroom door. “Who’s—”
Get out, get out!
Whirling for the front door, he stumbled onto
the porch at the same moment a door slammed drywall and Mellie
shouted,
“Who—”
Still running, he took the front steps in three leaping strides and
plunged down the slope. What to do, what to do?
Tom, Tom, where
are you?
Tom would know; Tom, he could trust. But Luke was on
his own, and all he could think of was to run. He’d automatically
headed toward the equipment shed, but now he thought,
Wait, I’m
safer around other people.
He veered toward the cow barn and corral,
steaming through the snow. Ahead, there were knots of kids, the
bonfire. All the dogs had trotted halfway up the knoll past the far
horse barn and were barking their communal
yark-yark-yark
. In the
back of his mind, in that very last second before things fell apart for
good, he thought,
Wait, what’s got them all . . .
There was an immense explosion: not a boom but a
ker-POW
that
was so violent, he felt the sound rebound and bounce and barrel its
way around and over him. The blast echoed and caromed off the
buildings. Gasping, his heart fluttering into his throat, he spun and
looked north.
A pillar of smoke, a massive gray-black mushroom cloud, swelled
and pillowed above the trees. Downslope, he could hear the other
kids’ chatter suddenly cease. For a second, even the dogs fell silent,
and he forget all about Mellie and her strange coded clicks.
Because the only thing out there worth blowing was the church
.
The church.
Luke’s blood slushed. Cindi was on lookout, and Chad—
and Weller had gone that way an hour ago; he’d taken off after . . .
after . . .
“No.” It was a broken sound, hardly a word at all, and then he
was stumbling into an awkward, spastic run, aware that Mellie was
shouting after him. He heard the bang of a door, and saw Jasper,
face chalk-white, stumbling out of the equipment shed. Other kids
were rushing for and after him because he
was
the oldest and if
he
thought there was something out there worth seeing . . . “No, no.
Cindi, Cindi!
Tom!
”
“What happened?” Jasper’s shout was a needle of sound. “What
happened, what—”
All at once, the dogs started up again, but that steady
yark-yarkyark
was now a yammer: a frenzied, rapid-fire staccato, as clear as
any alarm. The sound pierced the bright balloon of his panic—of
Cindi Cindi Cindi TOM
—and he skidded to a stop so quickly he almost
tripped and fell to his knees. He turned, wondering what could possibly be more upsetting to the dogs than the bomb that had just
destroyed the church and killed his friends.
From the east, still well beyond the staved-in barn, two horses
bolted over the rise, scattering all the dogs but one, a blundering
chocolate lab that just wasn’t quick enough. There was a high shriek
as one horse plowed it under and then a second, longer scream as
the horse’s legs tangled. Crashing to its knees, the horse turned a
complete flip. Screaming, the boy—Luke thought from the cap of
sandy hair that it might be a twelve-year-old named Colin—blasted
over the horse’s head. The boy landed in a heap beyond his horse,
which had already struggled up. Veering a sharp cut to the left, the
other rider and horse only just missed the boy as they continued in
their headlong crash down the hill.
What the hell?
Colin was still on the snow, trying to wallow to his
feet, but his horse was losing its head, panicking, rearing and plunging down. “Colin, get up! Look out!” Luke screamed as the boy only
raised an arm. “Get up, run,
ruh
—”
The horse stabbed down, and Colin’s yell abruptly cut out.
No.
Luke clapped both hands to his mouth to hold back the scream.
Both Colin and the dog were ruby splotches, like what was left after
you swatted bloated mosquitoes. He scrambled to higher ground,
not much caring anymore if Mellie snagged him or not, wallowing
uphill until he had a good view to the east, the way the lookouts had
come, wondering what in hell had scared them.
And then he saw them, in the distance.
Monsters, heading their way.
“Get in the barn!” Spinning on his heels, Luke waved the kids back.
“Get in the barn! Jasper, everybody, get in the barn, barricade the
doors, go,
go
!”
He saw Jasper suddenly whirl in an about-face and streak for the
corral. Other children, who’d been surging for him, abruptly changed
course, only to pile into those just behind. The air prickled with panicky screams, and Luke could hear the horses in their stalls braying in
alarm. Kids shot right and left, like a rack of billiard balls on the first
break. Some—the littlest ones—fell, and Luke watched, horrified, as
two other kids stampeded over a fallen boy until a third scooped the
kid up on the fly. Some headed for the barn, while a ragged cluster
scurried north, streaming past the equipment shed and on down the
road toward the trees. This wasn’t a bad idea, but the forest was a
good quarter mile distant and the kids would be caught out in the
open, with no protection at all.
He dropped his arms, stopped shouting. Useless to try and herd
or head them off, and no way to gather them all together. This was
something they’d never practiced or prepared for.
But I can fight.
Turning, he saw Mellie standing not thirty feet
away. She faced east, watching that oncoming tide, her arms akimbo.
Her .44 Mag gleamed in its holster. “Mellie, we have to unlock the
guns! I need a gun!”
“Can’t. Weller’s got the keys.” After a pause. “Church made a hell
of a bang.”
“You don’t have
keys
?” That couldn’t be right. He tried to think.
Would she have them on her, or would she have left them back at
the house? On her, he decided, somewhere. A pocket, in her coat,
somewhere.
But he couldn’t just
take
them. What was he supposed to
do, knock her down? “Well . . . ,” he fumbled. The guns were in an
old olive-drab trunk, secured with a padlock. “Then . . . then
shoot
the
lock off !”
She didn’t look at him. “That only works in movies, Luke. You
need bolt cutters.”
“Mellie, you have to have keys. Open the trunk.” When she didn’t
turn, he snatched at her arm. “We have to
fight.
”
“No, we don’t. We can’t. Not against that many Chuckies. Go on,
Luke. Get down to the barn. Keep everyone inside. I don’t want more
kids to get hurt than absolutely necessary. Any who manage to get to
the trees, we’ll gather later. They won’t get far.”
“Are you—” He would’ve said
crazy
, but the word evaporated in
his mouth as her words finally registered. “Later.” He let her arm go.
“What do you mean, gather them later?”
She didn’t answer but only stared at the advancing Chuckies.
Given the shallowness of the snow, they were coming on pretty fast,
but he had an idea of their numbers now. Maybe . . . thirty? Forty?
Ten would’ve been too many. But what scared him more was how
quiet
they were. No shouts, no jungle screams. For an eerie second,
he thought he might actually be looking at some kind of formation:
armed Chuckies in front and beyond—
Oh no.
He felt himself back up a step, away from Mellie. Beyond
these Chuckies were at least twenty horses a half mile back of the
advance force, and they were gaining fast, blasting over the snow in a
wedge. Without binoculars he couldn’t be sure, but he thought there
were two distinct groups: men in gray and white winter camouflage—
And kids. Kids in white, still too distant to see faces, but he
thought some were girls and all were old enough to be Chuckies.
No,
that’s crazy.
Horses didn’t like Chuckies, although some didn’t go as
wild as others.
Or maybe there’s something different about these Chuckies.
There has to be.
Because these Chuckies
were
riding, and they were
with people. Men.
He tried again. “Mellie, we still have time. Please, help us. Give
me the keys.”
“The best help I can give you is some advice,” Mellie said, with
that eerie calm. “Get in the barn. Run, Luke.”
For a split second, he almost did what she said, because she
was
the
adult. But then, he did the unthinkable, what he’d never have dared
with any adult, because good kids like him didn’t do things like this.
He hit her.
The move—a sudden punch to her chest—surprised him almost
as much as her. Mellie was smaller but compact as concrete and no
lightweight. Off-balance, Mellie only backpedaled. Now that he was
committed, Luke stayed with her, grabbing her parka to keep her
from falling, afraid that if she landed on her butt, he wouldn’t get
the gun in time. The flash of shock in her eyes hardened to anger,
and then her right hand was reaching for that huge, wicked .44 Mag.
No choice now. Luke’s free hand jumped for the weapon. His fingers
found the grip and yanked at the same moment that he gave her a
shove that dumped her on her ass.
I’ve gone nuts.
Panting, he held the massive revolver in both trembling hands. The gun wavered in his grip. The thing was a cannon.
He could empty this sucker and never once hit a target. It occurred
to him then that if she hadn’t worn a cross-draw, he’d probably have
a new hole in his head. No, two: front and back, and most of his skull
gone, too.
“Give me the keys, Mellie.” His stomach tightened as he cocked
the revolver. “Please. I don’t want to hurt you, but . . .”
“You’re going to shoot me, Luke?” She stared up with eyes so
colorless and cold, he felt the chill wrap its fingers around his heart.
“You won’t do it. You’re not a killer.”
“But why are you doing this? Why won’t you
fight
?”
“This isn’t a fight we’re going to win—”
“But it’s better than just
dying
.”
“No,” she said. “You won’t die, Luke.”
Her certainty, that dead calm, scared him even more. “What are
you doing, Mellie, what are you
doing
? Give me the keys, please, give
me . . .”
Over the raging of his heart, he heard a new sound: a steady, inexorable
shush-shush-shush
, the sound a hundred snakes might make
over sand
.
His eyes jerked toward the rise. The Chuckies, that first
wave, were just spilling downhill. Some carried clubs or bats, and sun
winked off a few machetes. Most, however, had no weapons at all.
Just their teeth, their hands.
He could see it, too: Chuckies swooping
down and tearing little kids apart, plucking off arms and legs as easily
as the wings and drumsticks of tender young chickens.
Something blurred to his left, a silent rush as Mellie shot up from
the snow. Startled, Luke gave an abortive shout:
“Mel—”
He had no memory of squeezing the trigger. More than likely, it
was a simple flinch. The Magnum bucked. The shot was a thunderclap. The recoil jammed his wrists. Even in the midafternoon sun, the
flash was very bright.
And he missed. Of course, he would. The gun was much too big,
and he wasn’t prepared. In another second, Mellie’s fist drove into his
stomach. Gagging and retching, he doubled over as the gun tumbled
from his hands.
“You’re lucky your brains are still inside your skull.” Mellie reholstered her Magnum. “Don’t try that again, Luke.”
“Meh
Mellie . . .
” His breath wheezed. “Wh-why are you
—
”
A ferocious clamor rose from the dogs. Sprinting uphill, the three
remaining animals bulleted past Colin and the trampled lab. At the
point of the spear was a fast, lean border collie named Tess. Sick with
horror, he watched as she launched herself at a girl with a whip of
blond hair—and a bat. The Chucky sliced hard and fast. He doubted
the poor dog ever really saw it. They had to be at least three football
fields away, and still he heard the
thunk
as the bat connected while
Tess was in midair. A spurt of blood jumped straight up in a startling
exclamation point, and Tess’s head blew apart.
At that, the other dogs broke. One, a flop-eared red and white pit
bull, squirted left and then shrieked as a Chucky brought a machete
down in a two-handed ax swing. The third, a square and sturdy elkhound, got the message. Whirling in mid-stride, the dog zoomed
back down the hill, careering past the barn and the corral, heading
north for the road and, beyond, the cover of forest. That dog always
struck Luke as pretty darned smart.
Luke looked beyond the advancing Chuckies. From this vantage
point, he could also see, much more clearly than before, the men
on horseback—and one in the center, all in black, astride a gleaming
horse the color of a raven’s wing.
“No,” he said, brokenly. The clicks he’d heard, the explosion, and
now this . . . “No, no, no. What have you done, Mellie? What have
you