Monsters: The Ashes Trilogy (62 page)

“What’s that?” Chris said. Normally, they used coded breaks, but
Pru had come through in an excited sputter of static. So either the
message was complicated or Pru was in a big hurry. Plugging an ear
with a pinky, Chris walked a short distance away from Ellie and the
dogs and held the walkie up to the other ear. “Say again, Pru.”

Can you hear me now?
And then Greg thought,
That’s not even
remotely funny.
Clamping a bloodstained parka with an elbow, he
bent, hooked the girl who’d been driving the supply wagon under
the arms, then glanced up at Jayden, who had the legs. When Jayden
nodded, they hefted the body, sidestepped a dead Changed boy with
only a nubbin of a nose, and laid the girl out alongside the others.
Counting Aidan, Sam, and Lucian—all of whom had booked—they’d
lost nine kids total. Not a disaster, but one kid was too many. They
were also down the two horses Aidan and Sam used to get away.

Oh, but you guys had better keep away from us, because I
will
shoot you.
Greg really meant that, too. Shaking out the parka, he draped it over
the girl’s head and shoulders. There, that was the last. Once they rearranged the supplies, they’d load the dead, including Mina, and move
out. The idea of traveling a full day with the dead sent shivers up
his spine. They couldn’t waste time burning the bodies here, though.
The smell would give away their position.
If the gunfire hasn’t already.
But no one other than Chris had come storming up the road, and
he’d said Finn was close but not yet in Rule.

“Think they found them?” Jayden had come to stand next to him.
The other boy had a new collection of bruises to add to the ones he’d
gotten earlier. His right eye, crusted with blood, was already swelling
shut. “Tom’s kids?”

“Either that or—” He read the sudden stiffening of Chris’s back,
heard him bark something into the radio.
Crap
. As sorry as he was
about Lena, he was glad Chris shot her.
Sure would be nice for something
to break our way for a change.

“Oh brother,” Jayden said. Chris had spun on his heel, but not to
head back to them. He was running toward Night and rapping out
orders into the walkie.

“Chris, wait!” Greg jogged over, Jayden on his heels. “Where are
you going? Did they—”
“I have to go back.” Chris’s bruised and battered face was tight. He
swung up onto Night’s saddle. “You guys get out of here. Leave your
radio on. I’ll catch up when I can.”
“Why? But you’re here. What—”
“They found the kids about a half mile from where Tom thought
they were.” Chris gathered Night’s reins. “But listen to this: Finn also
has Peter.”
“Peter?” Greg felt his lips numb. “Chris, we can’t leave Peter—”
“I know that.” Chris’s voice was grim. “But it gets worse. Finn’s
done something to Peter, made him like the Changed. Not all the
way, but the kids said he’s pretty far gone.”
Greg’s stomach worked itself into a cold knot. “If he’s still Peter,
we need to get to him. You and me, we’ll go back.”
“And maybe get yourselves killed?” Jayden put a hand on Greg’s
arm. “Think about this a minute. Tom set bombs. How long do you
two really have before they blow? Finn’s there by now, or pretty close.
Tom will wait until they’re in the square, but that’s all.”
“Look, I just killed a girl I knew pretty damn well. I can’t abandon
Peter, not if there’s a chance he can come back to us. You and Hannah
and Isaac have your way, and I have mine. Maybe, if I’m really lucky,
I grab Tom, too.” Chris took a deep breath. “And I’m not letting Alex
go, not again.”
“What?” Greg wasn’t sure he’d heard right. “
Alex?
What does
she—”
“The guards were already down when Pru got there. Tom’s kids
said Alex helped them.” He wheeled Night around. “And she’s headed
to Rule.”

A red swoop of terror nearly knocked Alex’s feet out from under.
About the size of a small shoebox, the bomb consisted of an oversize
alarm clock wrapped to a putty-like block, probably C4, with black
electrical tape. Wires snaked from some lead-colored tube to attach
to the alarm’s bell and hammer. The bomb was fixed to the console
with more electrical tape.

Got to get out of here.
Sweat suddenly pearled in the hollow of her
throat.
Got to get out of the church.
Who knew when this thing was
going to blow?

But that was when she noticed two things she hadn’t because of
her fear. One, the clock wasn’t ticking. Two, the bomb didn’t smell
right.

Now, she didn’t know squat about bombs. That Rule even
had
crap like this was amazing. That they’d thought to rig a bomb to the
church was equally astonishing. But shouldn’t a time bomb be ticking? This was an old-fashioned alarm. Her aunt had one, and those
suckers were
loud
. Swallowing back the flutter in her throat, she crept
close enough to study the clock face. The smaller alarm hand pointed
to the twelve. The minute and hour hands showed that the clock had
been primed for a thirty-minute delay before the ka-boom. This particular clock had a very thin, spindly second hand, too, but that was
still.

They never had a chance to set it.
She let out a long, relieved breath.
Still, might not be safe here. What if the bomb got jarred loose, or
some vibration started the countdown?

But then, there was the smell. She worried it. Of all the scents C4
might
have . . . “Bread?” Still on hands and knees, she dropped to her
stomach, wormed closer, got her nose to within an inch. She pulled
in air. Plastic, from the electrical tape; the steel of the alarm clock;
a gunpowder aroma from that lead-colored thing, so a detonator or
blasting cap or whatever—and something else, something vital that
tugged at memory. But what she got most was flour and oil and
lots
of salt, an odor that took her back to first grade.

“My God,” she whispered. “It’s homemade Play-Doh. It’s a
fake
.”
Why would anyone plant this? Just to scare the bejesus out of
someone? Got to be another reason. “Maybe they wanted to buy
time,” she told Buck. “Make someone think they’ve found a bomb
when they haven’t. But buy time for what?” To keep them, Finn’s
guys, busy? Or
maybe
. . . “You reassure them that you’ve got nothing. Cry wolf often enough, everyone relaxes. They think you’re an
idiot.”

She could feel the questions piling up in her brain: How did they
know to set the decoys? Who could’ve done it? But the only question she could afford time to consider was whether to get out of the
tower.
Yeah, but go where?
If someone came up, she’d be in trouble,
but she
was
here, Finn was down there, and this was as good a place
to hide as—

From beyond the tower came a loud
bang
. Not a gunshot, but
more like the slam of a door. Scuttling to a slot in the stone, she lifted
up on her toes until the square below slid into view.

steps. Surrounding them, like a parade guard, were ranks of boys and
girls, about two hundred, in tattered clothing. The Changed were
weaponless because they had no need. From the hollow, clawing
scent mingling with roadkill, these kids were hungry. Many of the
old people were weeping; a smell of water and salt laced the air. That
made sense, too. If Ben Stiemke came back, and these Changed had
been around the mine, then many of these elderly were looking into
the faces of their grandchildren.

Beyond the moat of Changed were horses and the twenty someodd, white-clad kids who made up Finn’s altered Changed. And were
they wearing collars? Surrounding them in a rough, U-shaped fan
were armed men in standard winter camouflage.

At the bottom of the village hall steps, she spotted Yeager’s bald
head, Ernst’s girth. Two others, Born and Prigge, looking withered.
No robes. Considering Ben Stiemke and all that old blood in the
church, it was a good bet the Council hadn’t been calling the shots
for a while.

Flanked by armed guards on the landing were three others she
recognized. Collared and in white, gold mane loose around his shoulders, Peter was rigid. She was surprised to see that his hands weren’t
tied. On the other hand, the guns, one jammed to Wolf ’s temple and
a second to Penny’s, were probably control enough. At the scent of
Wolf ’s fuming rage, her monster gave her a nudge, wanting to get
out, make contact.

Tall and broad and black, Finn was on the landing, too. A square
woman, with a very large gun, stood on his left. A boy with dark
hair—an altered Changed, clad all in white—hovered to his right, like
a pet dog. But it was what and who she saw next that made her heart
try to break apart in her chest.

The slam had come from the village hall doors. Two of Finn’s
men were bulling their way out with someone else—bloody and battered—who still put up a real fight, kicking and bucking so much
that two more men bounded up the steps to help. One jackhammered a very hard, fast, and brutal punch to their prisoner’s gut, bad
enough to double him over. Bad enough that Alex, for all the distance
between them, heard the gasping cry jump from his mouth as he
crumpled and sagged to his knees.

At the sound, she fell to her own. Everything came together, all the
pieces: the early warning; why the children were gone; that fleeting
scent at the village hall and on this decoy bomb she hadn’t dwelled
on, something so minute, barely there at all—and she’d had to hold
her grief at bay because there were so many more important things
to worry about, like keeping the monster in check and her head from
being blown off.

Of course, he’d handled it, fashioned this, labored to make it as
flawless and perfect as he could: something that would fool the eye
for just long enough. There was no one else capable. She should’ve
understood that from the very beginning because of his scent, musk
and smoke and spice so rich and sweet and strong, what she’d told
herself was only wishful thinking.

But it was real.
He’s
real. He’s alive, he’s . . .
If she hadn’t clapped
both trembling hands to her mouth, she surely would have screamed
his name.

Tom.
My God.
They had Tom.

He hadn’t lied to Chris. When he cooked up this cockamamy plan, he
had one very healthy leg and one that was plenty strong, only slightly
gimpy. The timing had worked fine. After the RPGs, that changed. So
he miscalculated, didn’t factor in distance, how far and fast he could
hobble on a bloody leg with a hunk of metal in it that kept wanting
to give out. A lot of time got chewed up while he got the ball rolling, lurched his way to the huge compressor on the roof and then
around back, making doubly sure all the outside vents were sealed.
The last thing he needed was for the smell of burning thermite and
live det cord to leak. He went as fast as he could, but by the time he
was gimping back around the building and up the village steps to head
for the jail, Finn’s men were halfway across the square—and he just . .
. froze. Like Chris on the plateau: he looked, and the sight of all those
Changed stopped him dead a good five seconds. Three seconds too
long, as it turned out.

Which was
not
the plan. First principles, again: hold out bait, entice
the enemy, lull them into believing they were safe. The
idea
was to
arm the decoys, set off his incendiary, then hustle back to the real
deal—that back room filled with propane tanks, C4, cans of fuel oil,
and his homemade ANFO—and keep tabs on Finn while he waited
for the thermite three stories above to eat through the floor and into
an air conditioning duct where it would set off a long snake of det
cord. If something failed along the way—say, the thermite didn’t work
or the det cord didn’t ignite—or if it looked like Finn was delayed
or ready to leave, all Tom had to do was wait for the right moment
and then touch off the explosives himself. So, let Finn discover the
fakes. Even if they suspected he’d survived the church, Mellie already
thought she had all his bomb-making materials. That was the whole
point of putting that small stash under the horse trough back at their
old camp to begin with. The decoys here would reassure them they
were right. Buy the kids a little more time, and then
boom
!

Great plan. Sucked about the leg. Anyway, it was bad. Frightened
men are brutal. Storming the building, they crowded into the jail
where he was desperately monkeying up metal shelves. It took four to
pry him off, and they did it with enough violence that the back of his
head cracked stone. He still felt the warm wet slither of blood down
his neck. The rain of punches and blows was worse. One particularly
well-aimed kick nearly buried that metal dagger in his left thigh, and
his right flank, the recipient of a steel-toed boot, was screaming. Be
lucky not to have busted a kidney. The only consolation? Tom’s eyes
brushed Jed’s Timex. Assuming he got the right proportions of ABC
to ground aluminum and plaster of Paris, and his math was correct—
having experimented with those fire extinguishers enough, he was
pretty sure it was—he had about, oh, fourteen minutes left to worry
about that.

“Found him in the jail,” the steel-toed kidney kicker was saying,
“with the fuel stores. Trying to start these up, but they’re fakes. Just,
I don’t know, bread dough or something.”

“There’s nothing?” Finn was much bigger than Tom had guessed
from that picture: a wide, imposing giant, all in obsidian-black, with
a head that looked chiseled out of stone. On the other hand, Finn
might seem huge because Tom was on his knees. Standing slightly
off Finn’s right shoulder was that dark-haired boy in white, the one
with Finn at the ruined church. Now that he was close, Tom saw
how the kid’s savage, red eyes watched Finn with this eerie, quivering
attentiveness reminiscent of a really well-trained dog waiting for a
command.