Monsters: The Ashes Trilogy (11 page)

I have to know, I don’t want to know . . . This can’t be her, because if it
is, there’ll be nothing left for me after this.
But he
had
to see, he had to
know.
He dug, heaving out blocks of
snow, unearthing this tomb hewn of ice and rock. The curve of her
hips, just the barest suggestion, appeared, and then the outline of a
torso encased in a frozen balloon: a moss-green parka, swollen with
snow, rucked up her sides. He gave this a cursory swipe and kept
going. Later, yes, later, he would free her completely, but now he had
to see her, find her face, her face, her face. . . . He plowed through
snow, smashing and breaking and scratching his way up to the humps
of her shoulders and then her neck, shouting like a crazy person:
“Alex Alex Alex Alex
Alex
?”
At last—it seemed like an age; it went by in a minute—all that
separated them was a thin veil of snow and ice. And that was when
he paused.
I don’t want to see this.
A deep, hard shudder worked through his
bones. Tiny red pinpricks from his torn hands dotted the snow like
candy sprinkles. He’d seen buddies like this, cocooned in yards of
bandages into rough, anonymous mummies. Trying to find their
faces was always the worst. Sometimes the location of the blood
helped, huge blotchy patches of rust leaking over gauze to mark
where something wasn’t. But the very, very worst moments came
when what he stared at was a blank: no peak of a nose, no broad
expanse of a forehead, or even valleys where the eyes might be. The
worst was when there was nothing at all.
This
was like that, as if Tom were poised over a satin-lined casket,
looking down at a body so brutalized, so utterly destroyed, that the
undertaker had draped gauzy linen over the face as a final kindness,
an act of mercy.
Please, God, it can’t be her. I need it to be, but I won’t be able to stand it
if it is.
“Oh, Alex,” he said, and used the side of his hand, as gently as he
possibly could, to sweep the last of that ice-shroud from her face.

“Aahh!”
Screaming, Ellie flung her arms like Wile E. Coyote just figuring out that he’s run off the cliff. Her Savage clattered against stone.
Mina yipped as Ellie tumbled from her knees to her butt. Frantic,
she crabbed back. She could feel her mouth hanging open, her eyes
bugging from their sockets, the next scream boiling its way up from
her stomach.

That was it; she was getting out of here. The crows, this creepy
room full of dead people, a bag that
moved . .
. Probably a mouse or
a rat or something in there, eating the body’s eyes or tongue or—

But there are no mouse turds,
a small voice from somewhere in the
more reasonable part of her mind said.
There are no holes in the burlap.
“So it’s a s-s-small h-hole,” she said.
It’s cold,
the voice said, patiently.
The bodies are frozen, remember?
They can’t rot. They don’t smell.
“Yeah, but then why are the crows here?” This was stupid; she was
arguing with herself. But hearing her own voice made her feel better,
too, more in control. “Because they must
not
be frozen, right?”
That could be. Unless crows also mean something else,
the voice suggested.
“What?” Ellie frowned. How could crows be anything more than
what they were? She was about to ask the voice what the heck it was
talking about when she thought,
You dummy, you’re talking to
you
. So
what do
you
think you mean?
She had absolutely no idea, and the voice
sure wasn’t saying. From her place by the pallet, Mina was looking
at her with a perplexed expression, as if wondering what all the fuss
was about.
The star moved, didn’t it?
Could she be wrong? Ellie squeezed her
eyes tight enough to see fireflies flitting across the dark.
Maybe it was
a cloud or something.
The fact that there was no blue sky and no possibility of a cloud was . . . well, that didn’t matter.
Oh, come on, you big baby.
Opening her eyes again, Ellie gave her
head an angry shake.
You walked through crows. You opened the stupid
door. So why bother if you’re going to be a little girl about it?
She retrieved her rifle, her hands shaking very badly. She balled
them tight, squeezing out the fear. Her legs felt wobbly, like overdone
noodles, so she hitched over to the pallet on hands and knees, thinking over and over again, a little like a prayer,
Tom could do this; Alex
would do this; Tom could do this; Alex would . . .
But she kept her eyes on
the floor the whole way, not daring to look at the body, that burlap
bag—not just yet. Instead, she let her head butt Mina’s shoulder just
ever so slightly, the way Mina sometimes nuzzled her palm when she
wanted a pat. Her dog snuffled at her neck, then dragged a warm,
reassuring tongue over her cheek as if to say,
Hey, it’s okay, Ellie; we’re
all entitled to a freak-out every now and then.
“Yeah.” Burying her face in Mina’s shoulder, she slid her arms
around the dog’s neck. Then she blew out and turned her eyes back
to the pallet. The purple star was still. So was the burlap bag. No big,
bad boogeyman. Just a dead person in there, a people-sicle.
The little voice was suddenly back:
Yes, but what about the birds, and
Mina—
“Oh, be quiet.” It had been a shadow. Her imagination. For a second, she felt an absurd disappointment, as if her panic had been just
a beginning emotion, something you had to get out of the way first
before getting down to the real feelings. Like when your Grandpa
Jack took you home and didn’t tell you about your daddy, who you

thought was in Iraq and not due back for two months. But then you
opened the door and there was your dad, and Grandpa’s yelling,
Surprise!
But you, you’re so
stunned
that you have to reach to touch
your daddy’s cheek—

“To make sure you’re not dreaming. To make sure he’s real.” Her
voice was thick. She was crying again, and how stupid was that?
Why
can’t anything good ever happen?
Still weeping and without understanding why, she laid her hand over the star and the tiny bulge of the spell
bag just beneath. The body was still, but . . .

No.
Blinking, her tears suddenly drying up, she took her hand back
and turned it over to inspect her palm like a fortune-teller studying a
lifeline.
No, that can’t be right.

Well,
the little mind-voice said,
you
could
check one of the others.
Then compare, right?
“This is dumb.” But her right knee crick-crackled in the hush as she
rose and sidestepped to another body in the row just above: Travis,
dead—well,
put out of his misery,
as Hannah liked to say—only a month
ago. Ellie feathered her palm over that tent of burlap and the spell bag
beneath. The hex star’s purple paint was riddled with thin fissures, like
a dried-up creek bed. Travis was still. But Travis was also very, very
cold. Cold as the stone, as the snow. As ice. So was Rudy, one body
over, and Mrs. Rehymeyer two rows up.
They’re all cold.
Returning to the last and freshest body, she eased
her hand over the star.
They’re ice cubes. But
this
one is
—
“Warm.” A lance of shock stabbed her chest. “You’re
warm.
” Not
blazing
hot or feverish, or even normal-warm like her. But the difference between this body and the others . . .
This is real.
She watched
her fingers walk the hills and ridges of ribs, reading the chest like a
blind person. Lower down, just below that last rib, she traced the
bit of wound wood—a piece of an ash tree prepared in some weird
Amish magic way—that Hannah had placed over the rip where that
killing spike had driven through.
I really feel this.
Her hand drifted back to the star. Now that she was allowing
herself to linger, to concentrate, she detected a very light but very
distinct flutter, like the flip of a goldfish in a too-large bowl. Hannah
said that when you took a pulse, you had to be careful not to mistake
your heartbeat for the other person’s. So Ellie pressed her hand just
a little more firmly against the body’s chest. The fish-flutter nudged
her palm again, but stronger now, as if the spell bag was a heart struggling to fill with blood.
“Oh!” Gasping, Ellie jerked away again and saw that it was . . . the
star was . . . “Moving,” she whispered. “You’re really
moving
.” The
words came out sounding too ordinary, but there was no mistake.
The hex sign
heaved
and
rolled
: not the up-and-down, in-with-thegood, out-with-the-bad of a breath but the slow roll of a wave, like
there was something eeling along under there.
Animal.
She could feel
her mind snatch at the idea. A mouse or even a snake, and no, don’t
bother her with little details like snakes didn’t come out when it was
freezing
. There had to be an animal in there. It was the only explanation that made sense.
But the body’s warm, Ellie,
the little voice said
. It’s not frozen or
ice-cold, it’s
—
Ellie lost track of what the closet-voice said next.
Because from that burlap shroud came a low moan.

A boy stared up at Tom. Stared
through
him and beyond, into the
red socket of that dying sky. If a look had a sound, this boy’s was
silence. The kid’s eyes were vacant, their color as flat and murky
as stones in deep water, and so still. Nearly bleached of color, the
boy’s face was frozen in a death mask, a bloodless, gaping scream. Or
maybe he’d only been choking to death on that ball of ice, jammed
in his mouth like an apple in a roast pig, or suffocating because of the
snow plugging both nostrils.

“Nooooo,”
Tom groaned. A weird palsy shook him to the bone.
In a saner moment, he might have been glad it wasn’t Alex. Every
second he didn’t find her—entombed in ice, torn apart under the
snow, broken to bits among the rocks—was one more moment
when she still might be alive. Those Chuckies had had the time.
They’d reached her, stolen her from him, spirited her away. But for
him, this was the rise all over again, the feeling of the earth swelling
and heaving and breaking, and then he was gasping, shuddering,
staring down through streaming eyes at that dead boy, the bright
flare in his chest exploding in a scream: “God,
why
? What are you
doing, what are you doing, what are you
doing
?”

His vision purpled. He didn’t remember picking up the rock,
which, he saw later, was jagged and long as an ax head, completely
right for the job. But time shrieked to a halt, stuttered . . .

And when he came back, it was to sounds, raw and crisp and
glassy: the boy’s frozen flesh breaking, the face and skull shattering
and splintering to bits. Or maybe that was only Tom’s mind finally
blasting apart; the black thing inside cracking him wide, wide open
to be birthed on a bellow of agony and grief.

“No, God, no, no,
no
!” On his knees, rearing up, his arms hurtling
down, the rock-hatchet cleaving air with a whistle, as he smashed and
hit and
hit
and
destroyed
: “Fuck you, fuck you,
fuck you
!”

Why did he stop? Hell if he knew. But that burst of manic energy
suddenly drained away; all his muscles went wobbly and weak, and
he couldn’t hold on anymore. The rock tumbled from his fingers,
and then he was falling back, his lungs working, the sweat running in
rivers down his face and neck and over his chest. God, he was burning
up. Pawing at his parka, he finally managed to drag down the zipper
and flop his way free of that tangled embrace.

Of course it wasn’t Alex.
You
knew
it was a boy’s boot; look at the
ankle, look at the size, you idiot—how could you miss that?
“Because,” he
choked, pulling in icy air that slashed his lungs, “you want it to be her,
Tom; you don’t want it to be her, but you want it, you need it, you
need her, and oh God, oh God . . .”

His maddened eyes skated over the rest; saw now the hips that
were much too narrow.
And the hands, look at the hands, the
hands
!
He’d skimmed right over the large knuckles. Snugged on the right
hip, just below where the parka had ridden up, was a holster with a
real cannon he’d recognize anywhere: Desert Eagle .50AE, a huge
weapon for a Chucky with big hands.

“I am losing my mind.” Groaning, he rolled to his belly and
grabbed the snow, the white blushing to pink as he dragged himself
from the wreck he’d made of that boy’s head. When he just couldn’t
keep on, he stopped, let himself sink. His head was pulsing, the pressure pushing at the limits of his skull. Clamping his bruised, bloodied
fingers to his temples, he
squeezed.
Under his belly, he could feel the

earth opening, as welcoming as a grave; the snow melting, bleeding
to water, stealing his heat. Above, the fickle wind streamed down
from the lake, licking sweat from his neck, his shoulder blades, and
wicking the wet from his hair and scalp so that he shivered. His
breath came in sobs, and the taste of snow on his tongue was bitter,
like gunmetal.

Just lie here and let go. Lie here long enough so you fall asleep, pass out,
freeze to death. Or take the damn shot, you coward. One shot, and then you
can just let go of all this.
Not with the Bravo, though; it wouldn’t be
right to use Jed’s weapon for that. The dead Chucky had that Eagle,
though—a real monster. Yes, but the gun had been buried under
snow.
Mechanism’s probably frozen. With my luck, it’ll explode in my hand.

So, not the Eagle either—and not here. Someone from camp
would eventually wonder and come looking, sooner rather than
later. Cindi, most likely, and she’d bring Luke. Even with the crows
and other scavengers, it would take time to pick him down to bone.
He couldn’t do that to any kid. It wouldn’t be right. Moaning, he
craned up from the snow as the wind sighed past his right cheek.
He was turned halfway around and was now facing northwest, the
dead Chucky at his two o’clock, the blighted woods at nine. Bolts of
light, laser-bright, burned tears, and he winced, instinctively raising
a hand.
I don’t even know what living feels like any—