Monsters: The Ashes Trilogy (54 page)

The secret about what they were doing and who was coming Rule’s
way kept until about three a.m., just long enough for Chris and his
people to retrieve the needed supplies and start packing up the kids,
who were now gathered at the hospice. To Tom’s surprise, only fifty
or so oldsters, most of them refugees in Rule to begin with, elected
to take a share of what supplies remained and get out of town. Of the
roughly one hundred and fifty elderly remaining, Jarvis had chosen
ten to man an abatis from trees they’d felled and then hastily arranged
to guard the southern road, the most direct approach from the mine,
which cut through rolling, sparsely forested countryside.

“I got a couple other men working on trees to barricade the north
road out of town once the children are gone. Everyone else wants
to wait in the church,” Jarvis said to Tom, who’d visited the defunct
school for a few, very special items before heading into the church’s
bell tower. “At least until Finn’s in the village.”

“Wait? What for? You can’t be serious.” Tom was horrified. “Jarvis,
you need to make people leave. They’ll be sitting ducks. They should
get out of Rule. This isn’t Judgment Day. This isn’t Jonestown. For
God’s sake, no one’s asking you to drink Kool-Aid. They’ll kill you.”

“But the Rev’s right: no place is truly safe.” Jarvis’s eyes were so
far back in his skull, you needed a flashlight to see them. “It comforts us to gather; I can’t take that away. Besides, our grandchildren
are finally coming home and . . .” His voice thickened. “They’re our
responsibility, always were. If my grandson’s with Finn, I need to
know he’s at peace.” No amount of argument changed the old man’s
mind, or anyone else’s, and Tom finally gave up.

Later, crossing the square to the village hall, Tom spotted people
trickling into the church. The stained-glass windows shimmered with
color, something he’d have found calming on any other night. As he
mounted the village hall steps, the faint strains of a hymn wound
through the open church doors:
I fear no foe, with Thee at hand to bless.

Bum leg nagging a touch from all the up-and-down—not to
mention wrestling plastic primer buckets and bags of high-grade
fertilizer into a back storage room just above the jail before humping
back for cans of diesel and fuel oil and hoping he really
did
have the
proportions down—he headed downstairs to check out the building’s air-conditioning ducts. He’d already found they were just large
enough for him to worm through. (Thank God he wasn’t claustrophobic.) Now, to figure out how far he could stretch that det cord and
if the math worked. All he needed to buy were fifteen, twenty lousy
minutes on the outside.

Two hours later, he heard the clump of boots.
“Tom?”
“Up here, Chris. To your left. Hold on.” He was flat on his back, on

a high shelf, a partially dismantled alarm clock in his hands, the jail’s
ceiling a foot from his face. Wedging a finger on the clock’s escape
wheel, he carefully seated a sliver of whittled matchstick between
one tooth and the lever’s entry pallet before slowly easing pressure on
the wheel. The pallet bit into the wood but didn’t break it. The clock’s
gears were still, the hands frozen. “So,” Tom said, gently laying the
clock aside and picking up a pair of crimpers, “guys at the barricade
set?”
“About as ready as they can be. Kids should be away in another

hour.”
“Cutting it close. Going to be dawn soon.”
“Can’t be helped.” Chris was taking in the tanks of propane, cans

“Yup. Just got to hope it’s enough of a bang.” Coring a hole in the
end of a grayish-white block, he slipped in a slim length of tarnished
pipe—yes, close enough to pass for an M18, a lucky break—then used
his teeth to tear strips of black electrical tape. “You got your guys?”

“What’s left. There weren’t many of us Spared to begin with, and
even fewer now. Pru and Greg are the oldest. I’d send both, but I held
Greg back to go with us. There are some guys, Aidan and Lucian and
Sam . . . after I left, they went over to the dark side. You know, locking up Pru and Greg? I don’t trust Aidan and his guys but can’t leave
them. Wouldn’t be right.”

“Your people, your call. But you really want them for the long
haul? Eventually, you’ll have to choose.”
“I know.” Chris shrugged. “We’re all Spared. If we make it, that
might be the time to give them a share and cut them loose. Anyway,
Pru and three other guys’ll go after your kids when we say.”
“Excellent.” Tom gestured at a thermos on the floor. “Coffee, if
you want. I’ve been mainlining for hours. I’m so jacked, I’m vibrating.”
“Thanks.” Uncapping the thermos, Chris poured out a cup, sipped,
then blinked. “Wow, that’s strong. I think my teeth just curled.”
“Enjoy it while it lasts. Found it in Weller’s stuff.” Tom returned
his attention to his work. That sea of red hemorrhage in Chris’s eyes,
so like Finn’s altered Changed, unsettled him. “You sound better.”
“Yeah. Kincaid said I was lucky my larynx didn’t fracture.” He
heard Chris take another halting swallow. “How’s this going to work
exactly?”
“Going to wire the block to an alarm clock the way I already have
four others. Once I pull the matchstick, clock’s ticking. But this way,
I can control exactly when we start instead of setting it now and then
hoping we get lucky.”
“Won’t they hear it from the door? The ticking?” Chris gestured
with a finger at a finished bomb attached to a bottom shelf. “That
one’s in plain view.”
“Something interesting for Finn to look at. I’m betting they won’t
have time to yank them all before one blows,” he said, amazed at how
smoothly the lie flowed from his tongue.
“Wow, they really teach you guys a lot.” Chris ran a forefinger
over the cup’s rim. “I saw this movie about this bomb disposal squad.
You did stuff like that?”
“Yeah.” Tom used his knife to flay electrical cord. The more juryrigged this looked, all the better to fool Finn. “I know the movie.”
“Did they get it right?”
“Some. Most of the time we sent in robots and built water charges
or used a hunk of C4 to blow IEDs. The suit’s a last resort.” He
paused. “I’m not trying to be an asshole, but I really don’t want to
talk about it right now. I have to stay focused. Going back there in my
head . . . it’s nowhere good.”
“Okay.” He felt Chris’s eyes. “What did Weller say?”
He knew what Chris meant. “Nothing very nice,” he said, ripping
another long piece of electrical tape. Thank goodness, there was
plenty. He’d worried he might not have enough for the real thing.
“This isn’t how I imagined we would meet.”
“Oh?” Chris’s voice grew cautious. “How was that?”
“I was going to kill you.” He smoothed tape with the flat of his
thumb. “For what Weller said you did to Alex. After the mine went,
killing you was all I could think about. It was a . . . poison?” He felt
his tongue test that, then shook his head. “That’s not right. It was the
only thing I had to hang on to, that hate. Hate makes you feel more
powerful, like you can keep yourself pumped, so you put one foot in
front of the other, thinking that you’re going somewhere even if all
you’re doing is looping the same movie over and over in your head.”
“Of how you were going to kill me.”
“Technicolor.” He nodded. “This afternoon . . . well, yesterday
now . . . when Jayden called you by name, I thought, Jesus, it’s
him
;
this is the guy I’ve come to kill.” Sighing, Tom folded his hands over
his chest. When he was a kid, he used to lie like this in sweet-smelling
grass and study clouds. “There was a second there when I thought,
fine, let him die.”
There was a long pause. “What changed your mind?”
“Ellie.” He rolled his head to look down. “She was frantic. It finally
dawned on me that Weller told so many lies, what he said about you
might be just one more.”
A brief smile flickered over Chris’s lips. “Thanks for giving me the
benefit of the doubt.”
“You’re welcome.” Despite the weeks nurturing the monstrous
blight in his soul, Tom liked this boy. In another time and place,
they might be good friends. He felt a brush of sadness that, now, the
chances were nil. He had so many questions, and no time. He wanted
to ask about Alex: each memory, how she looked, what she said. He
even thought he could take it if Chris and Alex . . . but did that matter
now? Nothing could change how he felt about Alex, nothing, and he
still had the miracle of Ellie, too: so sweet, a final gift.
Hang on to that.
Everything that happened next would hinge on
Chris, a boy he’d dreamt about so often and barely knew.
Hold on to
Ellie and Alex until the very last second.
“Kids are about ready,” Chris said. “We should go.”
“Yeah.” Showing the other boy a tight smile, Tom tore off a few
strips of electrical tape and began strapping the alarm clock to the
gray-white block he’d fashioned. Not a bad looker, if he did say so
himself. Ought to kick-start a couple hearts. “Few more seconds.”
“Okay.” Chris was quiet a moment. “You ever wonder who did it?”
“Did what? The EMPs?” He shook his head. “If this was a book
or movie, there’d be some guy who’d explain it, give you all the
answers. Tidy everything up, wrap it with a bow. We’ll never know,
and it doesn’t matter. This is like war, Chris. When the soldiers come
marching in, all you care about is protecting your family. When you’re
boots on the ground, all you think about is the mission and your buddies, your brothers. It’s not political. There’s no big picture. You don’t
agonize over the morality. Everything narrows down to the essentials.
Yeah, some days—the impossible days when no matter how careful
you are, someone will die—you wonder what it’s all for. But in the
end, there are your brothers, your people, and only that. You’re not
looking to die, but you’ll sacrifice it all for them. I lost that for a while,
too. When I went on leave, got stateside?” He paused, wondering if
he really wanted to admit this, out loud, and then thought that, hell,
in a few more hours, nothing he said now would matter. “I was on
the fence, maybe a step away from never going back. Deserting. Had
it all mapped out, too, how I would lay tracks in Michigan but then
work my way over on the sly into Minnesota and then Canada. Big
country, easy to get lost. But my best friend, Jim—we were on the
same EOD team—I bet he knew something was up when I mentioned
the Waucamaw. My family was in Maryland; there are plenty of nice
places to camp there. So why was I going to the U.P.? I think that’s why
Jim invited himself along: to remind me of my brothers, my people.
But then . . . the world died and it just wasn’t an issue anymore.”
“Would you have gone back if nothing had happened?”
“I’ll never know, will I? I’d like to think that I would have. But
then I found”—he swallowed back the lump—“found my people
anyway. Found Alex and Ellie. For a little while, I got back what I’d
lost. So, to hell with the rest, Chris. How this happened, who did it
. . . all I care about, all that matters, is that Alex and Ellie helped me
find myself again.”
Chris was silent a long moment. “It was the whistle, Tom,” he
said, quietly.
“What?” For just a second, he’d been back in the Waucamaw:
striding in with an armload of wood as Alex looked up with a smile
that found its way into his chest. “What are you talking about?”
“Alex,” Chris said, shaking out the dregs before carefully twisting
the cup back onto the thermos. “She ran because of the whistle.”
He remembered the high, impossible note that pierced his heart.
“How do you know?”
Screwing on that cup seemed to take all Chris’s concentration.
“Ellie told me. She gave the whistle to a boy we brought back from
Oren. I think her idea was that if Alex and you were in Rule, Alex
would put it together that Ellie was somewhere up there, and you
guys would go get her. So if Alex had a whistle at the mine, she
must’ve found hers on that boy. Too much of a coincidence otherwise, isn’t it? Alex left to go after Ellie. I got here too late, and the
rest was just”—Chris tightened the cap—“lousy timing. Or good timing for Jess, I guess. If I’d gotten back sooner, I might’ve saved Alex.
Knowing Jess, though, probably not. One way or the other, Jess was
bound and determined that Alex should go, and then me, too.”
He didn’t know how he was supposed to feel. “Why are you telling me this?”
Chris’s violent red eyes met his. “It’s the end of the world, Tom.
Rule is done. I don’t know if we have a tomorrow. So there’s one
thing you need to get clear in your head. You found your people, and
you
never
lost them. Alex left because she wasn’t sure she could count
on me to help her. Knowing how I was back then, she’d have been
right. But I don’t think she would’ve felt the same way about you,
Tom,” Chris said. “Not then—or ever.”

Dawn was an hour away, more or less, as Chris walked the now empty
hospice halls. All the terminal patients with whom he’d spent time
were long dead. Illuminated only by moonlight, the halls were sultry
with shadows. He slowed as he approached the only occupied room
left. Through the open door came a light floral perfume, but the rest
was silence. Hesitating a moment, he quietly rounded the corner and
saw first the woman on the bed and then, belatedly, a figure huddled
in a large bedside chair.

“Oh. I’m sorry,” he said, already beginning to back out. “I didn’t
know—”
“No, no.” Between the soft upholstery and a blanket, his grandfather looked gnomish. His bald scalp gleamed in a splash of silver-green
moonlight that cut his face into deep black wedges and taut skin over
stark ridges of bone. “You’re not disturbing me. Leaving soon?”
“Yes. Sarah and Jayden are still settling the kids, but . . . soon,”
Chris said.
“What about you?”
“I’m staying a while longer with Tom. We’ll leave together.”
Although Chris had a very bad premonition he couldn’t put into
words or quite shake: leaving wouldn’t be quite so simple.
“Well, come in,” Yeager said, beckoning. “You don’t need my permission.”
Chris crossed to stand over the bed. The silence was eerie. Jess
lay on her back, hands curled over her stomach because the small
muscles had atrophied with disuse. Someone had brushed her hair,
which spilled over the pillow and her shoulders. Kincaid, probably. In
the moonlight, the whites showed through her lashes in thumbnail
slivers. Chris kept expecting her to say something, or those lids to
snap open, and to see himself captured in those black-mirror eyes.
The prolonged bout of REM sleep that had seized Jess for weeks
had ended abruptly only a half hour ago, Kincaid said. Chris had felt
only a mild shock when the doctor showed him the book from which
he’d gleaned the drug’s formula:
Ghost-Walkers: The Ethnobotanical
Encyclopedia of Medicinal and Psychoactive Mushrooms
. In another half
hour—and probably less, because Kincaid hadn’t stinted on the dose
this time—Jess would be past dreams.
“Would you like to sit?” Yeager indicated a chair with a bony hand
that jutted from an arm as thin as a chopstick. His clothing puddled.
“We haven’t talked.”
It was on the tip of his tongue to point out that he’d been in cardiac
arrest part of the time and busy the rest, but he let that fizzle. The
last time he’d seen this old man, his grandfather had smacked him
around. Taking a seat also made him uneasy, as if he’d be conceding something, maybe getting himself under this old man’s thumb.
“What for? I don’t have anything to say. I don’t forgive you, if that’s
what you want. You and the Council let terrible things happen. I
don’t even care about whose idea it was first, because if it was Peter’s,
you should’ve said no. If it was yours, then you took advantage of
Peter and that’s even worse. You had every chance to stop this, but
you didn’t. You didn’t even save Kincaid, a friend. You let Aidan take
his
eye
, for God’s sake. What could you say that will make any of that
better, or even justify it?”
“Nothing,” Yeager said, his tone void of emotion but not indifferent or cold. “But I thought you might have questions.”
“Like I said—”
“Then I have one. How is my brother?”
“Last time I saw him, he was pretty sick from smoke inhalation.”
Which was totally my fault.
“I’m sorry for that. We haven’t always seen eye to eye, but I admire
him for setting up a place for children who wanted a different life
from their parents. He always did want to help.”
“He helped me when I was hurt. It’s a long story.” Coming back
from the dead wasn’t a subject he wanted to broach with this old
man.
“How much did he tell you?”
“Pretty much everything. Some stuff, I figured out on my own.”
“Ah. Do you have questions?”
Oh, about a million.
Although he’d resolved that it didn’t matter,
that it was water under the bridge, he couldn’t help being curious.
“Yes. How did you decide? Between me and Simon, I mean.”
“Mmm.” Yeager knit his skeletal hands together. If he’d had a
sickle, he could’ve passed as the Grim Reaper. “To be honest, I chose
the infant on the right.”
“What do you mean?”
“I could only take one. Your mother was holding you both at the
time, and she cradled you on the left.”
“What does that have to do with anything?” The mention of his
mother stung. He heard the sharpness, his simmering anger, and
decided,
Screw it
. “What difference did the
side
make?”
“Oh . . .” Yeager drew a slow hand over his bald scalp, the gesture
of a man who’d once had hair to smooth. “Because Christ sits on
God’s right hand, I suppose. If you want something scriptural. But
it’s mystical, really. Goes back to the Jews. For them, the body’s two
sides mirror the divided nature of our soul. There is the power to give
and hold back. The right hand is stronger; you give with your right,
whether it’s justice or kindness. With your left, you hold back. The
left hand is discipline and restraint. The left hand keeps its secrets.”
And lives in the shadows.
His grandfather had just described him
and his life to a T. “So you went for strength.”
“I chose the sword.” Yeager paused. “But in my arrogance I forgot
that it takes just as much strength to refrain, be slow to anger and
rash action. It’s easy to trick yourself into thinking that in the righteousness of your anger, cruelty is justified. But you are strong, Chris,
much stronger than I’ve given you credit for.”
“I’m not strong,” Chris said. Yet of all the things he remembered
about Rule, a place where he thought he might finally find a home,
the mornings after a fight were the most vivid: kneeling next to Peter
in church, as everyone—including Alex,
especially
Alex—looked on,
and feeling his grandfather’s hands on his head in blessing. It was
hokey and stupid and incredibly sexist, and yet he
had
felt pride:
This is
what it’s like not to be afraid. This is what it feels like to belong.
He was like
Tom, wasn’t he?
Looking for my people
. . . Except Alex was gone, and
if his dreams held true, Peter was worse than dead. A strange lump
forced its way into his throat. He should go. No way he’d break down
now. He didn’t forgive Yeager, he couldn’t. Chris could let go of the
hammer for Peter but never for this old man. “Sometimes I wait too
long and then it’s too late.”
“But you never broke, Chris. You’re following your path and still
finding your way. Take it from an old man: sometimes, you get a
second chance.”
Not with Alex.
What he said next surprised him. “What do I do
about Simon? If he’s alive . . . we’re enemies. Did he even know about
me?”
Yeager shook his head. “What you do depends on what you find.”
“He eats people.”
He’s my brother; we’re identical twins. He’s me and
I’m him.
“If that is
all
he is, then you have your answer, don’t you?”
“How can he be
more
than that?”
“I love him, Chris.” Too dark to see his grandfather’s expression,
Chris heard the catch in his voice. “That makes him more.”
That Yeager could not say the same about him hurt more than
Chris would’ve imagined. Well, what did he expect? He’d shown up
in town a virtual stranger, only a copy, a faded Xerox.
“Try not to be bitter for too long,” Yeager said. “Life is hard
enough.”
“Whose fault is that? I was a
kid.
I saw you, what, five times before
the world blew up? It was Peter who really cared, who went out of
his way—” He swallowed back the rest. “How else am I supposed to
feel?”
“You’re entitled to your anger.”
“I don’t need your permission.”
“But you’re not stupid, Chris. Of all people, you should know
what anger does to the soul. You have only to remember your father.”
Chris stared. “You’re going to lecture me about anger and my dad?
You knew what he was like. It’s why you agreed to take Simon in the
first place. You were rich. You could have fixed things, done
something
to get me out of there. But you left me alone with him. So don’t give
me any bullshit about what anger does. I
don’t
forgive you. That’s
what you’re really asking for, so you can die and believe everything’s
all right. What you did and let happen—to me, to Peter, Alex—those
are your mistakes, your sins to bear. Know what? Take it up with
God, if you see him.”
“
It is the time of the Lord’s vengeance, and he will pay her what she
deserves.
Jeremiah was referring to Babylon, not Rule, but I take your
point. You asked about Simon. There really is only one choice you’ll
need to make: life or death.”
Someone will die.
Chris looked back at Jess.
Someone must.
“I need to go,” he said. “Kids are moving out soon.”
“All right.” Yeager peered up at him. “Why did you come? You’ve
made it abundantly clear it wasn’t to see me.”
“I’ve been thinking a lot about Jess, I guess.” Now it was his turn
to pause. “Why did you think it was okay? She was married. So were
you. You’re a
reverend
.”
“Oh . . .” His grandfather brushed an errant strand of hair from
Jess’s forehead. “The heart wants what it wants, and only I was married. I was selfish, and she was vulnerable: beautiful, a widow. . . . At
least, we thought so. Her husband had been declared legally dead.”
“A mistake, or did he really disappear?”
“Perhaps a bit of both? Even before Vietnam, he was involved in
some very . . . questionable projects.” Yeager’s hand lingered on Jess’s
cheek. “When did you figure it out?”
Technically, he’d known ever since Peter mentioned the name in a
dream. But that wasn’t something you could say, even to a guy who
believed in the two halves of the soul.
“When Tom showed us the picture. Isaac said he was a business
partner and then I remembered that it’s the only mine shaft that was
never finished,” Chris said. “That’s when I knew that Jess had been
Finn’s wife.”