Shadows (16 page)

“Then I guess it’s good,” he said to this man whose face he did not and would never know, “that you’re not me.”

Beretta crashed out of the woods first. He was breathing hard, panting like a dog. His jacket was ripped, and a patchwork of cuts and deep scratches crisscrossed his face. He’d lost a glove along the way, too. Acne got to him just as Beretta’s knees wobbled, and then Acne was half carrying, half dragging the other boy toward the fire as more Changed shot out of the woods—on skis.

“Oh God,” Ruby quailed.
“More?”

Probably another squad, Alex guessed. The newcomers were evenly divided between girls and boys, in more or less the same outfit: white on white, with matching balaclavas, so that only the dark holes of their eyes showed, like sockets in skulls. Each wore a wildly colored bandana made of tattooed skin tied around his or her forehead, like a kamikaze pilot. Gliding to a stop, they began shucking camouflage assault packs.

“Jesus, they got some serious gear,” Ray said.

He was right, but Alex knew the packs didn’t belong to these new Changed. The scents of the original owners were very fresh. She inhaled again, more deeply.
Oh my God, there’s food.
Cinnamon and raisins, peanuts and chocolate, and crackers, there were crackers and . . . Saliva poured into her mouth, and she could feel her knees start to shiver. She thought there might even be a wedge of
cheese
. Her hunger was so great that even the knowledge that the packs’ owners had been alive only a short time ago didn’t make much of a dent. She just wanted the food.

Spider’s scent suddenly cut at her nose, and then she spied the girl, on skis, floating out of the woods like a bad dream. Blood freckled Spider’s wolf skin and parka. Along the way, her hair had come undone to tumble around her face. Her wound oozed pus, but the silver shine in her eyes was bright and excited, the blood fever giving her skin a glow.

But instead of Wolf, a lanky boy she’d never seen before pulled at the snow by her side. The boy’s snow-white outfit was misted with blood and reeked of iron, scorched metal, burnt powder.

Blowback
, she thought. The shot had been up close, too. The kid was pretty buff, like a sleek, red-spotted snow leopard. Kicking off his skis, the boy came up behind Spider and pressed against the girl, reaching up to cup her breasts. Eyes closed, neck arched, Spider leaned back into the boy, grinding her hips, her arms snaking up to pull his head down to the angle of her neck. Their mingled scent—roadkill and iron and Spider’s rot—thickened, their excitement steaming up to turn the air turgid and so heavy Alex thought she might choke. She could feel the other newcomers coming alive, and then they were all knotting together in a frenzy of feverish mouths and groping hands.

“Hey, get a room, you little bastards!” Sharon shouted.

“Holy God,” Ray said. “They’re going to have an orgy out here, on the snow?”

She doubted it. This was bloodlust and, she thought, the release that came from surviving some kind of battle. That would explain the many packs that did not belong to them, the scent of spent powder, Beretta’s injury, and the blood.

But Wolf . . .
She concentrated, trying to reach past the general stink—so many new scents and, over it all, the arching fever of sex—but she couldn’t smell him.
Oh my God, he’s not—

“Where’s the other boy?” Ruby asked. “The wolf one?”

“Dead, if we’re lucky.” Sharon jabbed Alex with a knobby elbow. “Cheer up. That pimply one seems awful sweet. If you don’t like him, those other boys look ready for a little horizontal mambo.”

Alex said nothing, but she was surprised that the idea that Wolf might be dead actually
hurt
. As if she’d lost something, too.

No, don’t you dare. He was a monster and never your friend.

She forced her attention back to the newcomers. Spider and Leopard were still sucking face, but their smell was less intense now. Even a sex-crazed Changed wasn’t about to get down and dirty in the snow when there was that nice house and, probably, plenty of bedrooms. Maybe even a wet bar and Jacuzzi, which wouldn’t work, but it was the principle of the thing. The others had calmed, too, and were clustering around Beretta the way football players huddled over a downed teammate. Now that they were closer to the fire, she caught the quicksilver shine of long knives strapped to the newcomers’ backs. They were packing, too, lots and lots of firepower: rifles and matte-black handguns in cross-carry holsters and gleaming bullets on bandoliers. And was that one kid wearing a
grenade
belt?

“Shit,” Ray said in a hushed undertone. “They’re like some kind of crazy-ass ninja kill squad.”

That was, she thought, exactly right
.
So, friends? Allies? Or just a different tribe who happened to link up for a little neighborly potlatch? Her eyes brushed over Spider and Leopard, noted the way their hands ran over one another. That any Changed actually
had
sex made her flesh crawl.

But there had been Wolf, and that hunger, she thought. Maybe sex and hunger are all part of the same stew.

“Lot of guns,” Sharon murmured.

“Yeah,” Alex breathed, glad to focus on
anything
other than Spider and Leopard exploring each other’s tonsils. She eyed one kid brandishing an Uzi. Where the hell had they gotten assault weapons? “But there are too
many
guns. These can’t all be theirs. I think the weapons are like their booty or something, just like the packs. The question is, who did they fight?”

“Who’s
crazy
enough to fight them, you mean,” Sharon said.

“Who cares? About time someone had some balls.” Ray paused then leaned in closer. “Listen, they’re all over there, and we’re
here
. Know what I’m saying?”

“Bad idea,” Sharon muttered.

For once, Alex agreed. “They’ve still got guns. They’ll hunt us down easy, if the storm doesn’t kill us first.”

“But maybe not,” Ray hissed. “You saw them. They’re
wired
, distracted
.
Come on, Alex, you’re the one always going on about getting off our butts.”

“Yeah,” Sharon said, “but getting shot in the back isn’t what she had—”

An angry shout erupted from the woods. Even Acne jumped, and then all the Changed were squinting past snow and into the dark.

“Jesus,” Ray breathed. “Who—”

Oh no.
Even if she hadn’t seen the look Acne and Slash tossed one another, or read it in the body language of the others, or remembered that, with rare exceptions, the Changed did not speak or make many sounds—she would know. Still, she sampled the air, let it drift over her tongue, hoping that maybe she was wrong.

She wasn’t.

First, there was a
crack
and then a glassy splash as the picture window exploded. Jagged shards rained onto hardwood. Something whirred, cleaving air as it spun past her right ear, and then there was a softer
puh
as the bullet smacked into bone and flesh. The man’s head snapped back at nearly the same moment his skull blew out with a sound that was dull and wet, like a pumpkin squashed by a truck. The man toppled.

Grace had never been athletic. Her body was frail and she wasn’t very strong, but hate and grief gave her courage and speed. Swooping past an uncomprehending Abel, who still stood with the hunter’s brains slopping from his absurd hat, she snatched up a frying pan with her right hand, pivoted, and swung. The pan swished, and even as it bore down on its target, she was thinking,
Too bad it’s not a golf club; a club would be so much faster, with more angular momentum, less mass to overcome . . .

Abel was just turning. There was a hollow thud, like a head of lettuce smashed onto a cutting board to dislodge the stem, followed almost instantly by a tremendous, wet, mucky
crunch
. Abel’s face caved in an explosion of blood. There was a pattering sound, like rice on wood, as Abel’s teeth ticked to the floor. Abel didn’t cry out. His body jerked back a few steps and his arms shot up and out, like he was a geeky kid trying to master the jitterbug. Then he was falling, straight back. His head bounced against the rough planked floor. His eyes were open, and so was his mouth, and she could see the bloody, broken stumps where his teeth had lived only seconds before. The rest of his face was a crater. His chest wasn’t moving, but his feet and fingers were still jittering as the last of his brain died.

Total time, from the moment the bullet rocketed through the window to now: seven seconds. Maybe a hair more.

Get to the bedroom.
The pan clanged to the wood.
The speed of sound depends on the square root of the absolute temperature divided by molar mass.
The second hunter had left her alone with Abel and his now-dead partner. Which meant that he and the men she hadn’t seen yet would hear the sound of the shot in the woods and then the rain of glass just a tad slower than if it had been summer, because sound was a bit sluggish in cold air. She had, she thought, anywhere from nine to fifteen seconds, but there were too many variables and she couldn’t account for all of them.

If whoever’s out there goes around the house to listen, I’ve got more time. If they don’t . . . I’m coming, Jed, I’m coming.
She started across the room, but she was wearing fuzzy slippers, and she felt the skid begin, her balance go. Her feet flew out from under as if she’d tried running over ice, and then she was falling. The impact was solid and very hard, and she took the brunt of it on first her right leg and then the hip. She heard two sharp, brittle snaps, and then pain exploded in her pelvis and zoomed up her spine. Grace screamed, sucked in a breath for another one, and then there was blood and gore in her mouth, clogging her nose, because she’d landed facedown in the widening pool of the men’s blood. She hacked out a weak, retching cough. Her right leg was twisted, splayed at a bizarre angle, and the pain was so ferocious she was afraid to move. A second later, she realized she couldn’t.

Got to
. The coppery smell of all this blood was making her sick. A surge of vomit lurched up her chest and into her mouth. Her hip was screaming, and the pain was making hash of her thoughts.
The amount of blood in the body is dependent on mass, and I’m so tiny . . . Got to move, got to get to the bedroom . . . Jed, Jed . . .
Over the bang of her heart, she heard the click and then the creak of the door.

Someone coming. Have to get up, get up, get up!
But she couldn’t move. She was gasping like a dying trout; she couldn’t raise her head. Even the calculator in her brain had seized. How much blood hummed through her veins? Her mind had stalled; the numbers wouldn’t come.

She watched the blood pool vibrate and ripple as someone in heavy winter boots walked toward her. Then the boots hove into view, and they were different, not what she’d expected: a stained desert-style tan instead of black or dark brown. The rusty stink of blood was so heavy, she only belatedly noticed their smell: thick and somehow a little sweet.

Gasoline.

There was a burst of static and then a series of clicks, very distinct and crisp. They reminded Grace of cicadas on a hot summer’s day. A cicada’s click rate was related to temperature, but these weren’t rhythmic. A code. It might even be Morse code coming from a radio. There was a pause, and then the owner of the boots clicked a reply.

The pattern meant nothing to Grace. Her brother had been an Eagle Scout. He might’ve been able to tell her what the clicks meant, but he was dead. So, she knew, was she.

High above the boots, a new voice, one Grace knew could not have come from the men she’d seen, said, “So, it’s a boy.
Tom
.” Lingering over the word, savoring the name. “Where is he?”

Run, Tom.
Her tongue was coated with an old man’s blood and her curdled vomit. The pain in her hip and leg kept time with her heart.

“Let me tell you something. Normally, I’d turn someone like you into hamburger, maybe even a couple of rump roasts for the Chuckies. But this cabin is hell and gone, and you’re such a skinny old bird, you’re not worth the effort. So I’ll make an exception in your case.”

Run, Tom.
With the window gone, the room was growing very cold.
Run, run . . .

“So here’s what I’ll do,” the voice said. “Tell me where he is and I’ll kill you now. A bullet to the brain, and nighty-night. Don’t tell me and . . .”

The air is freezing; it’s all about timing. Muzzle velocity is dependent on
—

“I’ll let the fire do that instead. You’ll probably die of smoke inhalation before the fire does its work, or maybe your lungs will boil and you’ll suffocate. Or maybe not. Maybe you’ll be awake the whole time the fire eats you alive.”

The speed of sound is—

“So I’ll count to three.”

No, it won’t be three, not precisely. The speed of a thought is three hundred milliseconds, and then the time to perform the action is dependent on—

“One.”

Not precisely three.
She pulled in a breath and held it.
Three seconds and just enough left over, so if he’s close—

“Two.”

Run, Tom, run, run—

“Thr—”

“Ruuuuuun, Tom, Ruuuuunnnnn!”
Grace screamed, the words bursting from her mouth because the thought was there, at the front of her brain, and there was just enough time, there was just enough—

Six more ninja-kids trudged from the woods. They were working hard, their breaths coming in white chuffs. Each pulled a long, scalloped, fire-engine-colored plastic sled.

“Oh Lord.” Ruby’s hand fluttered to her mouth. “They’ve got
children
.”

Twelve in all. Very dead. Girls and boys. Two to a sled, and carelessly sprawled across one another in a tangle of limp arms and legs and dragging hair like corpses from a concentration camp. She picked out a few head shots. No mistaking that drippy third eye or the misshapen skulls. But most had their throats cut and wore wide bibs of iced blood. Some—most—had died with their eyes wide open, and their mouths, too, frozen in a final, silent scream.