Monsters: The Ashes Trilogy (41 page)

In fifty feet, she saw the slight break in the trees, felt her heart give a
mighty thump of relief. Almost there. A few seconds later, she spotted
four ratty boards nailed to the trunk of a towering oak. To the left and
behind the oak was the corkscrew of a red pine. Not an option. But to
the right grew a bristle of small, immature hemlock, and just beyond
reared a huge, bedraggled white spruce, with low-hanging boughs still
heavy with snow. Eyeing the spruce, the glimmer of an idea forming,
she thought,
Wait a second.

Her original plan had been simple. Thirty feet above, seated in
its V, was the old tree house. Other than a slight warp in the boards
and slivers of daylight, the platform was solid. So, get up there, try
not to get shot, maybe even go higher or shimmy out on a long stout
branch, drop to the snow well away from the tree, and keep running
while they tried to figure out where she’d got to. Now, though, there
was that
spruce
. . .

At the oak, she wrapped both hands around the lowest board and
tugged. Black with mildew, the swollen board might have broken
in summer, but the winter had iced it in place. Clambering up, she
found the same in the second and third boards. She might be able to
sell this without it, but a broken board added that extra touch that
made her look like easy pickings, a scared little girl out of options.

And never mind that I am.
Jumping to the snow, she backed up, eyed
the trunk, then figured screw it. If it didn’t work the first time, she
wouldn’t try again. Cranking up her right leg, she turned her hip,
and pistoned up and out in a swift, hard kick. She felt the
bam
of the
impact against the sole of her boot. To her amazement, neither her
foot nor ankle broke. It didn’t even hurt that much. With a crisp snap,
the board sheared in a ragged split at the nailhead.

Excellent.
Fishing the splintered fragment from the snow, she
positioned it close to the trunk. Then she dropped to the snow and
churned her arms and legs.
There.
Shaking snow from her hair, she
picked herself up. If
that
didn’t look as if she’d tried climbing up into
the tree house but then fallen to the snow when the board broke, she
didn’t know what would.

Okay, now show them panic.
Thrashing through unbroken snow,
she attacked that densely packed hemlock, breaking branches, sending a shower of green growth to the snow. Anyone looking would see
that this was one scared little bunny rabbit of a girl, so freaked out
she tried running straight through the trees before turning back. A
moron could figure this out.

Floundering for the drooping, heavy-limbed spruce, she swam
beneath the boughs and through mounded snow into a fragrant cave.
Most of the light was blocked by the low-slung bell of limbs. The
air was a little warmer here, the ground matted with dead brown
needles. Dropping to her rump, she shucked the pack and pushed
it far back, close to the trunk. Stripping off her soot-stained boots,
she thought about it a second and then peeled and stuffed her socks
inside. Socks would protect her feet from spruce needles and the cold
but slow her down, and she sensed she would have only one chance
to make this work. Squaring the boots beneath a dense, snow-matted
bough, she wiggled out of the cave. Dancing back, bare feet already
yammering that they
really
didn’t appreciate this, she eyed the gap
between the boughs and the snow line. The toes of her boots were
just visible.

Okay, this would have to do. If she was lucky, it would look to the
guys on her tail as if she’d first tried the tree house, panicked when
the board broke, and then tried running through the hemlocks before
giving up and ducking to hide like an ostrich under the spruce.

Diving back into her cave, she squirmed out of her grimy but still
mostly white parka, draped the jacket over her head, eased down, and
tucked herself into a crouch. Her calves would complain soon. That
might be a relief since her feet were really nagging, the toes singing with the cold. Yet pain was good, pain kept her sharp. A passing
glance, and her parka should look like heaped snow. The boots were
what she wanted them to see. As for what happened after
that
. . . she
hadn’t quite worked that out. The flare gun was too loud. The tanto?
Long blade, better reach, but what good was a knife in a gunfight?

The crackle of a breaking branch made her heart skip. To her left,
the human stink was much stronger and . . .
Oh no no no.
The hairs along her neck bristled at another aroma
drifting in from her right. This was much more distant, but the chemotherapy tang, cisplatin wreathed in rot, was unmistakable.
A Changed, probably that boy. They’re coming at me from both directions.
She wet her lips. She couldn’t get out of this. But if she could get a
gun, give them a fight . . .
Can’t let them take me.
Using her fingers, she
eased her parka up until she got a small sliver of daylight.
They’ll turn
me into Peter.
Or worse. If the red storm was any indication, the man
in black would feel how she was different, and then there was just no
telling. With her luck, he’d hack open her skull and try to figure out
what made the monster tick
.
If he was
really
good and knew what he
was doing, that wouldn’t kill her either. The brain felt no pain. Once
through the skull and dura, that red storm could flay and probe every
cranny, every crevice, right down to the monster.
A thump, the squeal of snow to her left. Boots. Big guy. Spokes
of hazy late-afternoon sun jabbed thick forest canopy. Through that
narrow sliver, she saw white snow, a screen of hemlock, and the tall
oak beyond that. Another thump—
A man passed in and then out of a shaft of sunlight. His white and
gray hooded snowsuit was fringed, a fancy 3-D jacket with strips of
fabric designed to look and flutter like leaves. When he stood absolutely still, she almost lost him in the trees. Light winked from his
scoped rifle. His head bowed to study her trail. When he looked up,
she saw him train a long look at the oak tree.
Go on, go on. Check it out.
She stifled a moan of disappointment
as the man, no fool, faded behind a neighboring pine. Easing his
rifle to his shoulder, he sighted and then squeezed off a quick shot.
There was the hornet’s sting of a ricochet. From somewhere came
the startled rasp of a crow. A second later, her ears perked to an odd
series of cicada-like clicks.
Radio.
She recognized the sound from her days in Rule.
Someone
heard the shot, wants to know what’s going on.
Probably that red storm.
There was a pause, then a series of
break-break-breaks
as the hunter sent
off his own code.
Thought I was up in the tree.
But she hadn’t returned
fire or screamed or died. So what was he waiting for?
Suddenly sprinting away from cover, the hunter made a mad,
weaving run for the oak. Fast for an old guy. If she
had
been up
there, he’d be tough to hit. Crowding up to the trunk, the hunter
shot straight up, threw his bolt, squeezed off another shot and then
another and another:
crack-crack-crack-crack!
Probably some big holes
in that tree house now, plenty of daylight. Enough to show him there
was no one there.
More radio clicks. More returns from the hunter. Probably something like
roger-dodger, A-OK
.
Okay, now, please.
She gnawed her cheek.
Look down. See the broken
step.
Socking his radio onto his hip, the hunter stepped away from the
tree and tipped his head back as his eyes climbed branches, searching
for a person huddled even higher. Then,
finally
, he dropped his gaze
to the snow. His exaggerated, almost stupefied double take and then
slow crane as his eyes followed her blundering progress made a boil
of hysteria push against her lips. That quickly died as he threw his
bolt, racked in another bullet, and started her way, the fake leaves of
his fancy 3-D camo-jacket fluttering.
She knew he was looking at her boots, which was good. She also
knew something else that wasn’t so good. That was a six
-
shot rifle,
and he’d used five
.
It hit her then that she couldn’t afford him getting off even one more shot. Every time that rifle cracked, the radio
clicked.
All of a sudden, from her left, came a new scent, but one she
recognized.
No, no!
A jab of terror spiked her gut. She should have
thought of this. After all, this had happened in Rule, that very first
night.
Go away; don’t do it, you nut. Stay away, stay—
“Come on out.” Now that the hunter was close, all she saw were
legs in sturdy, thick-soled winter boots. Ten feet away, no more. “I
know you’re there.”
Make the play before he starts blasting.
“I’m hurt.” She pitched her
voice into a high, small, shaky whimper. It actually helped that she
was freaked
.
“I fell . . . when I t-tried . . .”
“Come out.” His tone was flinty. “There’s nowhere left to run.”
“You’ve g-got a g-gun,” she said. “Don’t sh-shoot me.”
“I will if you don’t come out.”
Maybe this was a guy who hated being a grandpa. “They were
going to eat me. Don’t let them get me.”
“No one’s going to hurt you,” he said. Had that been gentler? She
couldn’t tell. His boots shifted a bit and then she saw one shuffle forward as he dropped to a crouch. That was bad. Any lower, and he’d
realize those boots were empty. “Come—”
The scent she’d recognized suddenly bloomed peppery and hot.
No, no, no, he’ll shoot, you nut.
Her stomach bottomed out.
Stay back!
But the wolfdog didn’t stay back. It charged because she was in
trouble and it was part-dog, and dogs had done this for her once
before, that first, awful night in Rule.
She saw the hunter pivot fast. “Jesus—”
“No, over here!” Shoving the parka aside, she surged from her
cave.
“Here!”

An inky shadow flickered over Ellie’s head as the boy with the
machete leapt the gap and landed behind her. A split second later,
Eli was shrieking, his hands clapped over his middle, blood already
pouring as the dogs surged.

The raft should’ve tipped right then. But at that moment, Ellie felt
something give her arms a great
yank.
Instinctively countering the
pull, Ellie looked back and nearly screamed.

It was the girl with the green scarf, the one Eli called Lena,
stretched full-length on the ice
.
Two people-eaters had Lena’s legs,
tacking her in place. Wrapping her other hand around the auger’s
screw, Lena tugged again. Water slopped over the ice floe as it lurched
closer.

“No!” Ellie gave the auger a furious shove, ramming it toward the
girl’s face. Startled, Lena let go, dodging as the auger’s razor-sharp
blades buzzed past. For a split second, Ellie saw not only hunger but
bewilderment in Lena’s expression. In that moment, Lena looked
almost like a girl who just couldn’t understand what she’d become.

That was where the good news ended, though. The instant was
past in a flash. Now, with no one to anchor her and the raft overstressed and unbalanced—poor Eli still screaming, the dogs snarling,
the people-eater yowling and thrashing—the entire ice shelf tipped.
Releasing the useless auger, Ellie tried swinging around to snag
ice with her fingernails, but she might as well have tried climbing
a vertical sheet of perfectly smooth glass. She felt the slide begin,
her body pick up speed.
No, no, no, no!
Something cracked and then
cracked twice more, and she thought she heard shrieks, but
she
was
screaming, too, and wasn’t sure if those cracks were ice, or something else.

Then she was out of time. Everyone and everything behind
Ellie—the snapping dogs, Eli, the boy with the machete—whacked
her broadside.

Shrieking, Ellie shot off the ice.
Alex shot from her hiding place. Out of the corner of her left eye, her
vision blurred gray and white, and she sure as hell hoped the wolfdog
would stop its charge. Then she had no more time to worry. All she
cared about now was that this old man’s rifle not go off.

At her shout, the hunter spun, his long gun swinging around. Right
arm already cocked, she got in under the rifle but not fast enough.
The muzzle flash and
crack
were virtually instantaneous. She never
heard the shriek that crashed out of her mouth. The bullet burned a
groove over her left temple. Something shattered in that ear, and by
the time she registered the shot and that he was out of ammo, his
seamed face filled her vision.

She’d had time to think and mull over the
hospital
smell of that
syringe, and why Peter might have it. She remembered his books.
Mammalogy. Evolution. Genetics. Wolves.

Whether it was Penny Peter had first brought to the lake house or
Wolf, the problem remained: how? How do you put down a foaming,
frothing, feral Changed? How do you bring something like that under
control?

If you had majored in mammalogy and studied animals in the
wild, or were only a sheriff ’s deputy, you’d done it before: to frightened dogs, wolves that had to be relocated, coyotes you didn’t want
to kill. Even a bear or two. Or maybe you’d seen someone else do it.
Whatever. You knew the theory: trank the hell out of those suckers.
Put them to sleep—with a pressurized tranquilizer dart.

She stabbed with the needle: a quick, lunging jab.
She was aiming for the hunter’s throat.
She got his eye.
As soon as the frigid water hit her face, most of Ellie’s air gushed out
in a shimmering, bubbling cascade. Her heart
whammed
her ribs like
the steel toe of a boot. For a startling moment that seemed to last
forever, her brain blanked out.

Then someone—Eli or a dog or the people-eater with the
machete—landed on top and drove her deeper. A gout of icy water
shot up her nose, the pain like red-hot pokers jammed into her brain.
The cold punched at her eyes. The stringer chain was still around her
middle, and for a weird second, she thought the lake might actually
grab it and pull her down. With precious little air left, she struggled free of a tangle of arms and legs and looked up in time to see
something coming straight down like a guided missile. Letting out
a bubbling little cry—and the last smidgeon of her air—she jerked
aside as the machete skimmed past.