Monsters: The Ashes Trilogy (20 page)

Winters were long in the U.P.; spring was a good month and a half in
the future. The days were so bone-chilling that whenever Wolf and
his crew weren’t out hunting, they all burrowed deep into their bags
and in every stitch of clothing. Alex slept with her boots clamped
between her knees and a water bottle tucked against her stomach to
keep everything from freezing.

More and more frequently, Wolf and his people also hunted
by day, because that’s when the scarce game was out and moving
around. (Or maybe the Changed were Changing in other ways. If
they grew to own the days . . . that was bad.) So far away from Rule,
there were no more pit stops at the equivalent of a McDonald’s drivethrough, no regular game trail or route they followed. This meant
no convenient herd to drive from one fun house to the next. So, no
more getting down, getting funky, getting laid, getting wasted on a
Saturday night.

This also translated into no real possibility of predictable resupply for her either. She sometimes ate when they ate, depending on
whether the person they hunted down had a pack. If that poor soul
did, she might score jerky or a granola bar or sardines. Once, she even
gagged down a tiny foil packet of cat treats that promised to maintain
good gum health and scrub away all that nasty tartar:
Crunchy outside!
Soft inside!
Whatever worked.

More often than not, however, she got zip because Wolf came up
empty. Then she was reduced to pebbly, desiccated rose hips, withered cattail tubers, dried-up platters of oyster mushrooms. And forget
those wildly popular novels where the heroine muses on how raw
pine would do in a pinch. Hah. HAH. Drinking turpentine would
have been easier. Boiling the mess worked, but she wasn’t prepared for
what happened to the water, which turned a bright blood-red. Just oh
so appropriate. On the other hand, since rose hips and pine had loads
of vitamin C, she wouldn’t die of scurvy.

Something was tracking them, too, and had been for the last week.
An animal, although she wasn’t quite sure what. The scent was familiar and yet indescribable, one that made her think both of Ghost, her
blue-eyed Weimaraner, and the road to Rule, where she’d seen the
wolves and that yellow-eyed alpha male. Whatever
this
was, it wasn’t
a wolf, not quite. She hadn’t spotted it yet, but kept a nervous eye
peeled and her nose up. Any animal hungry and desperate enough
would look for a chance to take down a person. Or maybe it was only
after scraps? Shit out of luck, if true; Wolf ’s crew even cracked bones
to suck out all the yummy marrow. If anything, one whiff of Wolf ’s
cowl ought to send this animal running for the hills.

And
that
was odd, too. Because Wolf
did
have that wolf skin, yet
neither he nor the others showed any awareness of this animal at all.
Maybe they were too hungry to care.

She didn’t know where they were going, or even why. But there was
something stuck in Wolf ’s craw. It was in his smell, one that said
family
; that breathed
safe
in a sweet perfume of lilacs and honeysuckle;
that was the scent of her father, ghosting from the haunted attic of
her mind:
Jump, sweetheart.

So she knew. Wherever they were headed, Wolf had been there
already: hiding, healing, biding his time. Waiting for the perfect
moment to come back and snatch her.

She supposed she ought to be grateful that she was off the
Changed’s takeout menu, and that Wolf let her forage. Given how
well
they
were doing—like,
not
—his new crew could’ve mutinied,
killed him, and then eaten her. The fact that the other kids stuck
with Wolf
was
a mystery, although in tough times, desperate people
gravitated to a leader who at least held out hope. From the sparse
pickings, she doubted other Changed were doing any better. Tom
once said Napoleon figured out that armies marched on their stomachs, and the best leaders were those who not only got right down in
the trenches with their men but took care of them first.

Wolf seemed to understand that. Whenever his crew bagged
a nice, juicy someone, Wolf always hung back and made sure the
others ate first before helping himself to whatever scanty leavings
remained. So Wolf must have known just how precarious the situation was.

Which probably explained why, as they slept, Wolf always wedged
himself between her and the others, spooning against her back: a
proximity that made her throat flutter and her pulse quicken when
her skin wasn’t trying to tear itself from her bones.

Now, ten days after pulling a Lady Lazarus, her luck had finally run
out. She only had herself to blame. At the time, she was boiling a
mess of white pine, daydreaming about food, and plotting murder—
and so just wasn’t on her game.

Their current accommodations were miserable: a sad, two-room
pile of aging logs and a couple busted windows. The walls were so
warped, thin drifts of snow had silted in through the chinks. From the
lingering aroma of aluminum and that small mountain of crushed
empties in one corner, she suspected the original owner was some
guy who came out to get away from it all. A little shooting, a lot of
boozing—what’s not to like?

Judging from the rose light spraying an intact west window, it was
late afternoon. Out of habit, Alex’s eyes automatically fell to Ellie’s
Mickey Mouse watch, still on her wrist: 7:13. Of course, that wasn’t
the correct time. For Mickey, it was always thirteen past seven, the
moment when the watch finally threw in the towel after all that
water. Another minute or so under the snow and she figured she
would have, too.

Anyway, call it . . . five o’clock? Wolf and the others should be back
soon, oh goody.
God, I hope he’s got something.
An awful thought, but it wasn’t as if
getting all broody about it would help whoever Wolf hunted down.
Carefully easing Leopard’s knife into a dented camp pot seated over
coals in the cabin’s fireplace, she gave her bloodred pine bark stew
a stir. She couldn’t live on this stuff. It was famine food, like acorns.
Of course, since she
was
starving, it was better than nothing. Hadn’t
she read somewhere that you could fry the bark with olive oil, add a
dash of salt? Yeah, the backwoods equivalent of potato chips. At the
thought, a ghostly aroma of crunchy fried potatoes, of
grease
and
salt
,
made her mouth water.
Come on, cut it out.
This was the problem with hunger: all you
thought about was food. She had to get a grip. Having been here
before, she knew she was heading into dangerous territory as her
body crept ever closer, day by day, to a very desperate place. Every
time she pushed to a stand now, she got dizzy. The pit of her stomach
was a continual sharp, beaky gnaw. Sometimes, she thought her monster had migrated down and was trying to eat its way out of her guts.
We’re all starving.
She poked at the pine, moving very slowly, all
too aware of Acne’s glittery stare and the urgent, raw fog of his
hunger and just how closely his Mossberg tracked her. The last thing
she needed was for Acne to mistake a sudden move and splatter her
brains over a lousy piece of boiled bark. Given how famished he was,
he might do it anyway, then beg Wolf ’s forgiveness later:
Yeah, Boss, I
know, bad call.
Acne’s hunger had a real reek, too, the gassy aroma of
fermenting fruit.
Wonder if I smell the same way.
She’d never stopped to
think much about that. Probably, to Acne and the others, she smelled
like raw steak.
Nice southwest rub, juicy and done rare so the fat melts
when you take a bite . . .
“Oh God, what I wouldn’t give for a steak,” she said. (To her left,
Acne’s response was a fresh fume of rot and starvation. No surprise.)
If only Acne hadn’t been in such a rush to get back indoors. Outside,
she’d spotted all that chicken wire and thought,
Garden?
Somehow
those crushed cans argued against it, but it was worth checking out.
Man, she would kill for a wrinkly old potato or wizened carrot.
Also near the garden, against a shed, was a weird mound that
smelled like a bakery. A compost pile? Could be. Stuff that hadn’t rotted yet, especially with the cold: gnawed melon rinds, leathery apple
cores. Half-eaten cobs. Banana peels had potassium. She would take
anything she could get. Boil the hell out of it, swallow it back, and
not think too hard about it. And what about that rickety shed? People
left all kinds of things in drawers or tucked in knapsacks or hanging
from hooks and joists, jammed in glove compartments. Petrified granola bars. Candy. Power bars. Those little boxes of raisins and bags
of nuts. Just thinking about what she
might
find made the saliva pool
under her tongue.
And there could be other things I might use.
Sheds were excellent
places to forage for weapons. Anything would do; she wasn’t persnickety. Nails, an old hammer. Rope. Electrical cords. Saw blades.
A gun would be best, but shotgun shells would be almost as good.
Crack ’em for the powder, make bang-sticks. Something.
Yet she had to be cautious. She had more freedom this time
around. Wolf let her forage and keep Leopard’s knife. No way in hell
she’d risk losing
that.
The knife and a flint striker were her only survival tools. Without them, she was as good as dead when and if she
managed to make a run for it.
When and if ? Oh, dream on, honey.
Honestly, some days, even she
got exasperated with herself. This was like sitting through
Titanic
:
just
sink
already.
She was always under guard. And exactly where
would she hide all these marvelous weapons? Get herself caught
and she could kiss her little foraging forays good-bye. Then she’d
completely starve. While Wolf might protect her, she didn’t think
he’d take kindly to her whacking him with a crowbar. If she even
could. Because she already
had
a knife. That Wolf let her keep it after
that first day was nothing short of miraculous. Yet had she gotten all
Princess Bride and slunk around at night to slit a couple throats? To
reach over as Wolf lay dreaming his happy, lusty little wolf-dreams
and cut out his heart?
No. Get real. That stuff only happened in the same books where
the heroine scarfed down raw white pine. This was real life.
And yet she had motive. She had opportunity. She knew exactly
where the carotids were, and how deeply to hack. Do it fast and she
actually might pull it off. After all, it was only five against one. So
what was she waiting for?
Well, hell, I don’t know. Focus on what you can do, all right? Like that
garden; you ought to check it out.
Sighing, she sheathed her knife.
If I get
a chance . . .
Acne exploded. No warning, no red-alerts from the monster, no
change in Acne’s scent at all—really, how much hungrier could the
kid get?—and he did it fast, in absolute silence, launching himself like
a missile she only half-registered from the corner of her eye. Gasping,
she jerked her arm partway up just as his fist rocketed for her face.
The hit was blinding, a stunning white detonation in her left cheek,
just below her eye. A cry tried jumping off her tongue, but then his
hand muscled around her throat, clutching at her jaw. Yanking her
upright, Acne began drunk-walking her across the cabin.
“Ac . . . B-B-Ben!” she wheezed as she stumbled, off-balance, her
hands hooked onto his. “Ben, d-don’t! St-stop,
stop
!”
But Acne, the boy who’d called himself Ben Stiemke, was an
insatiable storm, in the mood for meat. Driving her the length of the
room, Acne slammed her against the wall. Her head thunked hard
enough for her vision to drop out, like a jump cut in time. Her jaws
snapped. Pain erupted in a red dazzle as her teeth tore her tongue.
Blood flooded into her throat. Gagging, she felt Acne’s hand shift and
knew, instantly, what he was going to do.
Panic sheeted her brain. Try to kill her by strangulation and she
still had a chance: a knee to his groin, a punch, maybe take out his
eyes with her fingers. But pinch off her carotids in a blood choke, and
she’d gray out in seconds, be dead in minutes, and with a lot less fuss.
Then she thought,
The tanto.
She’d sheathed the knife. Dropping
her right shoulder, she twisted, fingers straining. It was a desperate
move, hopeless from the start because even in a killing frenzy, Acne
read the set of her body. Viper-fast, he snatched the tanto from its
sheath and turned the blade until that razor tip was poised over her
left eye.
Her blood slushed; she stopped fighting. She could see how this
would go. A quick flash of cold steel and then she’d be screeching, eye
gone, the screaming socket dripping eye jelly and blood.
They hung there, unmoving, a shuddering instant out of time.
Then, Acne dragged in a harsh, preparatory breath and she had time
to think,
No!
Lips peeled in a snarl, Acne drove forward. Whirring, the knife flickered past her face to bury itself in the wall. From the green, liverish
stink boiling from his skin, she knew then that, however much Acne
wanted to rip out her throat and gorge himself on her meat—feel its
warmth and her blood in his mouth—first, he wanted her to suffer. He
had her, and he was going to enjoy this. He would enjoy
her
.
She began to thrash. Bracing her back against the wood, she
kicked, aiming for Acne’s groin. But this wasn’t as it had been days
ago in the snow. His reach was so much longer it wasn’t really a contest, and he arched out of the way. Yet it did her some good, bought
her just a few more seconds, because he had to shift his grip to hang
on. As soon as he let up, she managed a single sip, a terrible sensation
of dragging air through a rapidly collapsing straw, and then that was
it—and not nearly enough. She had nothing with which to fight, and
she was starting to lose it, her vision going first blurry then motheaten.
Deep in the dark, the monster came alive, a spider skittering in the
cave of her skull, and then she was tumbling into that black whirlpool
behind Acne’s eyes, watching her face going the color of an eggplant,
the whites showing in half-moons as her eyes rolled. The end of her
life unspooled in a jumble of images: Acne choking her, but only to
the point where she passed out, then allowing her to wake, driving
her to the floor, letting her wake just enough to do it all over again . . .
three times, maybe four . . . with the peculiar sadism of a kid pulling
wings off flies before crushing them underfoot. He would wait for
her to surface, regain consciousness, all the better to
feel
the instant
his teeth clamped onto her throat and tore and her blood fountained
to bathe his cheeks a bright, stinging red.
From . . . somewhere . . . there came a hard bang that might have
been sharper and louder but for the cotton stuffing her ears. An
instant later, Acne let out a sudden, sickening
ungh
, and the pressure
around her neck was gone
.
Why, she didn’t know. Something scraped
her back.
Wood, the wall—I’m falling
. Hacking, she landed in a heap,
limp as wet laundry. For a few seconds all she concentrated on was
dragging air through a throat that felt as stable as the crushed stem
of a tulip.
Through the blur that passed for her vision, she saw them: Wolf
and Acne, across the room, facing off. The air in the cabin had quickened, popping and crackling with heat, the acrid sting of murder,
the cold steel of Wolf ’s rage. Blood trickled from Acne’s nose, and
he was shaking his head like a bull. Crouching, eyes narrowed, Wolf
began to circle. Acne tried to follow, but he was either still stunned
from Wolf ’s first punch or simply weakened by lack of food, because
he stumbled. Seizing his chance, Wolf ducked and charged. Dazed,
Acne actually backed up and tried a sidestep, but not fast enough.
Plowing into Acne, Wolf wrapped his arms around the other boy’s
waist and gave a mighty heave. Acne’s legs flew out from under
as Wolf upended and then smashed him to the floor. Acne’s head
rebounded against wood with a sharp
crack.
His limbs went limp, the
connections between brain and body winking out as Wolf dropped
like a boulder on top of him. He brought his fist down like a hammer,
once, twice—
A huge
roar
shook the cabin. From her place on the floor, Alex saw
Marley, long dreads still frosty from cold, swinging the Mossberg’s
muzzle from the ceiling and bringing it to bear on the two boys. Wolf
and Acne froze in an almost comical tableau: Wolf astride Acne’s
chest, his bloody fist cocked for another blow. Acne’s eyes were
swelling and purpling in a mask of blood. Combined with all those
acne scars, the boy looked as if his skin was being chewed from the
inside out. His chest was a broad bib of red. With every breath, blood
bubbled through his shattered nose.
To Marley’s left were the brothers, Bert and Ernie. From the smell
drifting out of that green duffel slung over Bert’s shoulder, she knew
that the woman was frail and birdy, wreathed in a fruity bouquet of
starvation, with very little meat. Look at it a certain way, maybe Wolf
and his crew had only done the birdy woman a favor, in the same way
that sheriffs shot deer too weak to even realize they’d wandered into
the middle of the road during a hard winter. If, that is, you really
could
see things from the Changed’s point of view.
It scared her, a little, that she could.