Ashes (20 page)

She felt a little squirt of adrenaline, which she tried to quash, but she knew as soon as her shaking fingers touched the cardboard, and then she was carefully prying the Marlboro box free. Interesting place to keep a stash, but she'd heard of people squirreling away drugs in spare tires, so maybe not so strange if you didn't want your wife or husband to know you couldn't quite kick the habit. The Marlboro box rattled and smelled like cold tar. She didn't care about the cigarettes. But if someone had stashed the pack into the trunk for a rainy day, he'd need a light.

She was almost afraid to look, but she did. Inside the box were three cigarettes—

She let her breath go.

A matchbook. The book had once been white but was now gray. She could still make out the words beneath a stylized martini glass—eddie martini's—and, in much smaller letters below that, the restaurant's address and phone number. She held the matchbox between her fingers for several seconds, thinking,
You just watch. There won't be any matches left. There won't.

But there were: a half dozen.

She let out a whoop. “Tom!” Elated, she ducked out of the trunk, shovel in one hand and the matchbox held high in the other—and then the stink of rotted flesh cut right through the lingering aroma of stale tobacco.

Later, she would wonder if things might have turned out differently if she hadn't just inhaled a snootful of Marlboro. But that would be later.

Now she saw not just one kid, or two.

She saw three.

Two boys and a girl, and they were very close, no more than twenty feet away, and between her and the front door of the station. Judging from the snarl of leaves and debris in the girl's hair, they must have come from the woods behind the gas station. They were filthy and dressed in a motley assortment of clothes that couldn't be their own. The boys were older, maybe in their early twenties. The oldest, lanky with a flop of black hair, wore a woman's pink, fur-trimmed parka. The other boy was very fat and wore the remnants of a tattered black poncho so thoroughly used that he looked like a Batman blimp passed through a shredder.

The girl was her age, Alex thought. Somewhere along the way, the girl had picked up a man's torn camouflage pants and a too-small smeary gray peacoat that rode midway up her arms. Every inch of skin not covered by clothing was a swirl of dirt and blood and what was either engine oil or feces—probably both. The left sleeve was mangled, as if the girl had caught her arm on a branch and simply yanked until the wool ripped. The girl shifted, and Alex saw, peeking beneath her pants' tattered cuffs, a single sneaker on the girl's right foot. The girl's left foot was bare save for an anklet of bloodied sock. Alex thought back to the blood-prints in the store and, with a sudden, sickening twist, realized that the footprint Robinson Crusoe had seen did not belong to Friday. The print had been made by a cannibal.

This
cannibal—the girl—had a club: a polished length of what looked like very stout, very heavy wood, probably an ax handle.

The car. She could dive in, lock the doors. But she was afraid to move. Her knees were wobbly. The Toyota's open back door looked a million miles away. Anyway, she couldn't just wait them out. The front door to the store was open, and so was the back, and if they got in, they would find Tom—

The girl rushed her. She was absolutely silent and insanely fast. Her wiry arms lashed out in a blur, her left hand hooked into a claw, the right swinging the club. Almost too late, Alex ducked. She heard the club whir through the space where her head had been a second before. Then she screamed as a starburst of pain tore into her scalp. The girl had her by the hair, and now Alex was lurching forward, being pulled and dragged off her feet. Off balance, her boots tangling, she stumbled to the icy asphalt, still clutching the shovel in her left hand. The matchbook went flying as she tumbled onto her back. She saw the blur of the club again as the girl cocked her elbow, and Alex jerked left just as the club axed down, crashing against the concrete with a solid
thunk
, so hard that the club splintered. A huge, ripping laser burned fire into her scalp, and she felt a stinging jolt; then she was free, rolling away onto her hands and knees.

Left with nothing but a bloody knot of Alex's hair and a toothpick of a club, the girl bawled in frustration. The boys had not moved; Alex didn't have time to wonder if maybe they took turns or simply thought the girl could handle her. Scrambling, Alex was just getting her feet under her when the girl charged again.

What happened next was pure instinct. Still crouched on the ground, Alex saw the girl coming, heard the slap of that bare foot, felt her fingers fist around the shovel. Her brain detached, and her body simply took over, because then she was unfurling, driving forward, closing the gap.

She feinted low, then aimed high. The shovel cut the air, blade on, in a vicious chop. The sturdy metal edge sank into the soft exposed flesh of the girl's neck. There was a great jet of spurting blood burning into the snow like red sprinkles on white icing, and then the girl was falling away, the momentum wrenching the shovel out of Alex's grasp. The girl sprawled, hands wrapped around her throat, gargling as blood pumped between her fingers. The shovel clattered to the ground.

Her own momentum spun Alex almost completely around. Disoriented, she looked up, realized she was staring at the stalled Caravan half-in, half-out of the gas station's driveway, and thought,
Oh God, they're
behind
…

She caught a papery flutter, the thud of boots against thick snow, and as she turned, a black rippling blur swooped in from her right.

The gun,
she thought suddenly. In her terror, she'd forgotten all about it. She fumbled the coat open, wrapped her fingers around the grip.
The gun, the gun, the gun, the gun …

Blimp Boy plowed into her. The Glock went flying; she saw it cartwheeling through the air, heard the
thunk
as it hit the Toyota, and then she was on the ground again, the boy using his weight to pin her down. The tattered plastic of the boy's poncho dragged at her arms like tentacles, and she thrashed, trying to bat her way free. Gasping, she looked up to see the kid's lips twitching back from teeth that were stained and slimy with gore.

“No!” she screamed as the boy's teeth flashed—

Tom slammed into the boy. The blow knocked Blimp Boy onto his back, and then he and Tom were rolling, thrashing, grunting. The pudgy boy was snapping at Tom's face, his teeth clashing together. Tom rammed the heel of one hand into the boy's lower jaw. The pudgy boy let out a gurgling howl as his teeth drove into the soft flesh of his tongue. Rearing up, mouth drizzling blood, the boy let loose with a vicious backhand to Tom's jaw: a solid
crack
loud as a gunshot. Tom's hold slackened for just an instant, and then there was a flash of bloodied teeth as the pudgy boy's jaws battened down on Tom's neck, just above his right shoulder.

Tom screamed.

No, no, no, no!
Frantic, Alex clawed her way to her knees. Tom and Blimp Boy were still struggling, but even if Tom hadn't been sick and weak, the boy was much heavier and he was astride Tom. Tom's shirt was saturated with blood. Blimp Boy brought his cocked fist down. There was a sound like eggshells being crushed by a heavy boot as the blow connected with Tom's nose, and then Tom went limp.

Screaming, not even aware that she was moving, Alex grabbed up the fallen shovel, wound up, and then swung it with all her might. The shovel hit with a hollow
thunk
; she felt the jump and sting of metal against her hands and the force of the impact shiver up her arms. Howling, Blimp Boy went sprawling, but he was still conscious, already rolling onto his hands and knees.

That's when she spied the butt of the Glock sticking out from behind the rear tire of the Toyota. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Blimp Boy on all fours, shaking his head like a dog, and she whirled, grabbing for the gun …

The third boy—whom she had forgotten about—rammed her at a dead run. The blow drove Alex back against the unyielding metal of the Toyota. Alex felt a lightning surge of pain as the car's rear fender jammed her spine. Gagging, Alex sagged, and then she was on her back, the boy slashing with a claw-fist. Alex's face fired white-hot as the boy's nails scored her flesh from the corner of her left eye to the angle of her jaw. Alex tried twisting away, but the boy brought his balled fist down like a hammer, catching her just above her ear. Her head banged the asphalt, and then a burst of wet copper filled her mouth—and she lost the shovel.

Dimly, her head singing with pain, Alex heard the boy screech again, felt his hands close around her throat, and then her air was gone. Her fingers scrambled over his, but he had her tight and he was shaking her now, pounding her head against the snowy asphalt. The edges of her vision went red and then black, and then the margins began to contract, grow smaller and tighter. Her lungs screamed, and her pulse thundered in her oxygen-starved brain. She fought, but his grip tightened; his thumbs crushed her throat, and the pain was huge: not just a burn, but a sensation of something breaking in two like a dry twig. Her arms and legs were no longer listening to her, and her hands began to loosen as her hold on consciousness started to slip-slide away. She was going numb, the strength flowing from her like blood, and the pain, too. The bitter cold was no more substantial now than smoke, and her vision was nearly gone, her consciousness fading, and there was nothing she could do—

And then, her mind gasped a single thought, so crisp and clear it was like a word scissored out of black paper:
KNIFE
.

Against every instinct, she made herself let go of the boy's hands and reach for her boot. Her fingers brushed fabric and then curled in a sudden convulsive spasm, bunching her pant leg, not because she was thinking anymore but because she was dying.

Her hand closed on hard plastic.

With the last of her strength, she jerked the knife from its holder and drove the blade into the boy's left flank. The knife was very sharp and she felt just an instant's hesitation as the tip met fabric, and then the nothing as it sliced cleanly all the way through the parka and the shirt beneath and buried itself to the hilt in the meat of the boy's back.

Arching, the boy shrieked. His hands flew away, and then she was gawping like a fish, pulling air in great, wheezy gasps that cut her throat. Tumbling from her body, the boy was shrieking, his fingers closing over the knife handle, tugging, trying to work the blade free.

Get up.
The fog over her mind bled away. Gagging, she rolled onto her stomach—and spotted the Glock, six inches away.

Snatching up the gun, she twisted, crabbing onto her back. She saw the boy, on his knees, two feet away. Her knife, smeary with his blood, was in his hand now, and his raging eyes locked onto hers and he bellowed—

She squeezed the trigger.

The shot was very loud. The Glock bucked. The boy's chest bloomed red, and the warm, wet blowback of his blood misted her face. The boy flopped onto his back without a sound.

She had time for nothing, not even relief. In the next instant, she heard that familiar papery rustle, turned, and saw Blimp Boy surging forward, Tom's blood smeared over his mouth in an obscene leer. And then the fat boy loomed, huge and horrible, only five feet away; he was there, he was right
there
!

She shoved the gun at his face, and fired.

Tom bled a long time, soaking through a balled-up shirt and his own flannel before the flow finally slackened. Then he told her to use the bourbon. She didn't want to—she knew the alcohol would burn like hell—but she did what he said. As soon as the bourbon hit the raw, macerated tissue, Tom's whole body went rigid, the cords standing out like wires on his neck, his teeth bared in a grimace.

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry,” she said helplessly. The last thing she wanted was to hurt him even more. Already dark amber, the bourbon turned a muddy brownish-purple as it mingled with Tom's blood. She used a scrap of torn shirt to wipe away the sweat from his face.

“It's okay,” he said, his voice rusty with pain. There was a crust of blood under his shattered nose, and his eyes were beginning to puff. “You're doing f-fine.”

“I don't
know
what I'm doing,” she said. She felt sick, not with fear now or hunger, but dread. The wound was very deep, enough to expose tendon and muscle and a glimmer of bone. The blood welling up wasn't pumping, and she dared to hope that he wouldn't bleed much more. But she knew she could never move him now. Tom was too weak, too drained. He already had one infection, and she was pretty sure that human bites were as bad as an animal's, maybe worse. “What about your leg? Should I wash—”

“Cut it.”

She froze, unable—unwilling—to believe her ears. “What?”

“Cut it,” Tom whispered in that same pain-roughened voice. “T-too much pus … has to d-drain.”

“I can't,” she said, horrified. “Tom, I
can't
—”

“Please. Alex … I can't … can't do it m-myself.” He paused, his chest heaving, his face oily with sweat. When he spoke again, his words broke with airy gasps. “The knife … use a fl-flare … st-sterilize …”

“But I'll burn you.”

Tom actually laughed, a faint splutter that quickly died. “Least of my p-problems. Skin's dead anyway, but the … the tissue underneath … m-might be okay. But you have … have to d-drain it. A-Alex … Alex, d-do it,
please
.” His glittery, fever-bright eyes locked on hers, and she read his desperation and fear. “Before I l-lose my n-nerve …”

This was like his story about Crowe. For Tom to ask her to do something like this, he must know he didn't have many options left, or much time. But what if he was wrong? What if she did more harm than good?

Outside, she retrieved her boot knife, prizing it from the dead boy's clutching fingers. Plunging the knife into deep snow got rid of much of the gore, and then she used bourbon and water to wash away the rest. At the convenience store's front door, she twisted off the cap of one of the flares and scraped the tip against the striker. The flare caught, the crimson flame spitting fiercely. The knife's handle was a hard black polymer, so she was able to hold it without burning herself as she heated the blade, watching as the color changed from silver to a dull gold to a bright lava-red.

“Tom,” she said, kneeling over him. The knife had cooled to a dull orange, but she could feel the heat radiating in waves and knew the steel was still plenty hot. “You're absolutely sure there isn't another way.”

“C-cut it fast as you c-can. I'll try n-not to move. Once you're through skin, you'll have to … have to maybe c-cut deeper. H-heat will help with th-the bleeding. When the pus starts coming, st-stop. You'll … you'll kn-know when,” he panted. Turning his face away, he pulled in another gasping sob. His eyes screwed shut and his hands balled to fists, but a deep shudder was running through him now, a trembling he couldn't control. “I'll t-try to stay on … on t-top of it, but no matter what I s-say … don't stop, Alex. Finish the j-job….”

Oh please, God
, she thought, staring down at Tom's thigh and the blackened, angry eye of his wound.
Please save him; please help me.

She had seen movies: scenes where men dug around for bullets with bare hands. In movies, people passed out when the pain was too much.

But this wasn't a movie or a book.

This was, in fact, much, much worse because Tom did not pass out, and he lasted only three seconds before he began to scream.

“That's the best I can do.” She thumbed his tears away. His pain-ravaged face was dead-white, his eyes sunken into purple-black hollows. The fleshy lips of his wound gaped, and his thigh was streaked with thin rivulets of bright-red blood, but there seemed to be very little pus left. The air reeked with the stink of dead meat, boiled pus, and cooked blood. The mats under his leg had gone soupy with the muck, and she'd dragged them out, pitching them into the snow before retrieving the floor mats from the abandoned van. She'd used straight bourbon on the raw flesh of his thigh, but now she used a wad of torn shirt, stuffed with snow, to mop sweat from his forehead. “You smell like a bar.”

“Yeah.” His weary gaze fixed on her neck. “L-lot of b-bruises.”

Her throat still felt broken. “You should see the other guy.”

“Not … not a joke. That was t-too close. C-can't l-lose you …”

“I'm not going anywhere,” she said, knowing deep down that she would be forced to. She sponged away dried blood from his chest. His torso was stippled with other, older wounds, shiny with scar tissue.

“Sh-shrapnel,” he whispered, feeling the question in her fingers. “Got myself fr-fragged six months ago. You ought to s-see me l-light up metal detectors at an air-airport.”

“And this?” She touched what looked like small burn marks just under his left armpit. Then she peered closer and made out letters:

EDEN

Thomas A.

A series of numbers.
Social security number
, Alex thought. The line below read
O POS
, and, beneath that,
Catholic
.

“A tattoo?” she said.

“Yeah. We call them m-meat t-tags. Sometimes there's not a lot l-left after …” He swallowed. “You know.”

“Tom.” She reached up to stroke the damp hair from his forehead. His lips were pale, as transparent as glass. “What are we going to do?”

“St-stick to the p-plan.” He tried a smile that quickly faded. “We … we leave in the m-morning. All I n-need is a little r-rest.”

He needed a lot more, and she knew it. They spent the night on a mound of car mats in the convenience store's back room. A few hours before dawn, Tom either passed out or fell asleep—she couldn't tell which. Stretching out along his left side, she hugged his body to hers, so close she heard his heart. She was exhausted but afraid to sleep, worried that he would be dead when she woke up. But eventually, her thoughts thinned and she spiraled down and—

The dream, again: the one where she saw the chopper, the one carrying her mother and father, take off in that snowstorm. The helicopter rose like a helium-filled balloon, higher and higher, until at the very limit of the sky and the edge of night, it exploded in a fireball.

Alex hadn't been there. She'd waited at home, alone, as the storm raged, while her mom did her doctor thing, accompanying a patient on an emergency evac. The only reason her dad was even aboard was that the med tech, freaked by the storm, chickened out and her dad, trained in ACLS because all cops are first responders, took his place.

The chopper had not bloomed into a fireball either. After delivering the patient safe and sound, the helicopter took off for home—and simply crashed into a hillside. No drama, no Fourth of July, although the fire had been so intense that they'd identified the pilot and her parents by their teeth.

She was fourteen. She'd felt nothing when her parents died: no premonition, no seismic shudder, no chasm opening beneath her feet. She had been awake, watching the snow swirl in a golden nimbus around the streetlight at the end of the block, waiting for her father's patrol car to turn the corner. She'd even pictured how that would look: first his lights and then the cruiser itself pulling together out of the snow like something from a dream.

And then a cruiser
had
appeared, although she'd known, immediately, that it wasn't her father's. His was a newer model white-and-black. The one that pulled into the driveway was older, all black. Still, she didn't think anything of it; even when she saw the officers unfold and flounder toward the front porch—even when she recognized her father's old partner—she still didn't understand what was happening. Leaving her seat by the window, padding to the front door in her slippers, she didn't get it. Throwing open the deadbolt, opening the door, feeling the gust of cold air push in … she didn't get it. She never got it; it just never dawned on her that anything horrible had happened—until she recognized the minister from their church.

Then she got it.

A month later, the nightmare started. A year later, when the smoke smell started and Aunt Hannah sent her to that shrink,
she'd
spun some crap about Alex being Dorothy and her parents flying away to Oz, blah, blah, blah. For the shrink, the dream was all about Alex's fantasy that her parents were still alive somewhere.

Alex thought the shrink was full of shit. Her parents were dead. She knew that. The dream was all about her life jumping the rails, blowing up in her face, leaving her with nothing but ashes.

Which was happening now, with Tom, all over again.

When she awoke, Tom's skin was clammy. His fever raged and his heart was rabbiting in his chest, and she knew she couldn't wait any longer. She had to bring help, or Tom would die. He might die before she returned, but she couldn't just sit and wait either.

Tom wanted her to take the gun. “You might need it.” His skin was whiter than salt, so translucent she saw the faint blue worm of tiny veins under his eyes. At least the shakes had vanished, if only temporarily. “I'm not going anywhere.”

“That's not what I'm worried about. If anyone gets in here, the gun's all you'll have.”

“If someone breaks in—if it's a couple of those things … a few bullets won't make any difference. Besides, I don't think they're smart enough to do that. They're too one dimensional.”

She wasn't so sure the brain-zapped kids were as dumb as all that—they knew enough to stay warm—but she saw what he meant. While the kids could easily have overwhelmed them both if they'd planned their attack and acted together, they hadn't.
The girl had a club, and that kid I stabbed figured out the knife pretty quick, but they worked separately. What if that changes?

Tom lifted a hand to touch her face. His fingers were ice. “Please, take it. If something happens to you, then it won't matter about me.”

Privately, she thought she stood a much better chance of being shot if she advertised the gun. Given her age, she might be shot on sight anyway.

“All right,” she said. Then she surprised herself, and leaned down and kissed him. She meant to pull back, but his other hand snaked into her hair to cup the back of her head, and the kiss turned into something she didn't want to end, that she worried might never happen again. Her heart filled and her blood warmed, and Tom's scent—spicy and strange—bloomed, nearly overpowering the choke of sickness and decay. Whatever Tom's secrets, this was no lie.

When she finally broke away, he said, weakly, “At last. Something to live for.”

His face splintered into shimmery prisms, and she knew she would never leave if she started crying. “Don't you dare die on me.”

“I'm not gone yet.” But then that twist of emotion, furtive and fleet, chased through his face again. “Alex, what happened before we lost Ellie … I need to tell you—”

“No.” She put a hand to his lips. If he told her, would he die? Isn't that what happened when people made confessions in books and movies? “Don't. It doesn't matter now. Tell me when I see you again.”

He captured her hand. “But it
does
matter. I
need
you to know. Please, just listen.” He paused, shutting his eyes against some other, hidden pain.

“I'm here,” she said. “I'm listening.”

“You were right.” A single tear trickled from the corner of one eye to disappear into his hair. “About me looking for my fate. I won't … can't tell you everything now. It's not the right time. But I want you to know.” He opened his eyes, his feverish gaze holding her fast. “I found it. I found my fate.”

“Me, too,” she said, and meant it. For the first time in what felt like forever, she wanted a future, and she wanted Tom in it. She kissed him again, memorizing the feel and the taste and his scent.

Then she shut the door and locked it and left him there.