Shadows (34 page)

As he slid to a stop, a muzzled dog slinked from a blind. A scruffy boy, all in winter-white, followed a moment later. “Hey, Tom,” the kid said.

“Chad.” Tom unclipped from his skis, then ruffled the dog’s ears. The kid had an Uzi carbine fitted with a suppressor—another of the toys Weller and Mellie had in abundance
.
“Is Luke here?”

“Yeah. He and Weller showed up twenty minutes ago.” Chad lifted a chin toward Tom’s pack. “Those them? Can I see one?”

“Okay.” Kneeling, Tom opened the pack and withdrew a steel cylinder the size of a soda can. Three metal legs, secured with duct tape, protruded several inches from one end.

“Whoa, that’s pretty funky,” Chad said. He ran a finger in a copper concave divot capping one end of the cylinder. “So this is like Iraq and Afghanistan, right? An IED?”

“On a smaller scale, yeah.” Tom pointed to the divot. “That’s your penetrator. Same principle as a bullet. Throw a bullet at a deer, it bounces off. But if you put a lot of force behind it, the slug punches through. A shaped charge channels energy. It’s why bullets are so destructive. It’s not the hole that kills you. It’s the energy transfer to the rest of your body—or, in this case, the rock.” It actually wasn’t that simple, but Tom wasn’t wild about giving any of the kids a crash course on explosives manufacturing. Bad enough that he was forced to take Luke, but working alone or with only Weller would take too long.

Returning the charges to his pack, he cinched the drawstring, then stood and offered his hand. “Later, dude.”

“Is it okay to wish you luck?” Chad asked.

In Afghanistan, guys had all kinds of superstitions, like never eating the Charms from an MRE. M&Ms were okay, except the blue ones. But Charms were the kiss of death. Charms they dropped in the burn shitter. Wish someone luck, you got your ass kicked.

“Oh, sure,” Tom said.

The others waited on a small rise behind a screen of scrub. Luke heard him coming first and tipped a wave. Weller only nodded. Mellie and the other lookout didn’t turn around. Ducking beneath brush, he squatted in the hollowed-out snow at Mellie’s shoulder. “Anything new?”

Mellie didn’t look up from a pair of 26×70s mounted on a low tripod. “I see some movement to the north, and there might be another group looping in from the west. Cindi?”

“Too far yet.” Peering through Big Eyes 25/45×100s, Cindi, a freckle-faced twelve-year-old, nibbled her lower lip. “But I think those guys dropping down the north approach road have prisoners.”

Tom’s stomach tightened. “How can you tell?”

“The flashlights.” Luke was fourteen and the oldest after Tom.

He’d attached himself to Tom almost right away; nearly all the kids had decided Tom was their big brother. He really didn’t mind. All these kids made him feel a little better. He worried, too, what would happen to them when he and Alex left. Maybe . . . take along the kids who wanted to come? Yeah, but could they really all manage?

One step at a time,
he thought.
Do this and then find Alex. The rest will sort itself out.

Luke sipped watered-down instant coffee from a mess cup. “We’ve been watching for a couple weeks. When there are flashlights, that usually means prisoners. The Chuckies don’t seem to need a lot of light to see where they’re going.”

That was interesting. It might be another reason why the Chuckies favored the mine. “Do you know how many?” Tom asked.

Cindi did a one-shouldered shrug. “Four, five in that group. Maybe more. The Chuckies have really stocked up, though. There are a lot of people already in the mine for . . . you know . . .”

“A snack,” Tom said. “Innocent people they’re putting by for a rainy day.”

“Aw, Christ,” Weller muttered.

“Tom,” Mellie said.

“Ah . . .” Cindi’s cheeks flushed a sudden, furious scarlet. Her eyes pinged from Tom to Mellie and back again. “Yeah. Anyway, when this group gets a little closer, I can tell better.”

“Tom, we knew there would be prisoners,” Mellie said. Her tone sounded more like a warning. “You’re okay with this, right?”

“Which part? The killing innocent people part, or the burying Chuckies alive part?” He knew it was the wrong thing to say, but he didn’t want this to be easy either. “This isn’t a video game, Mellie. Real people are going to die
.
”

“Well, isn’t it good we got ourselves a group conscience?” Weller growled. “Tell me something, Tom: you get all soft and gooey on patrol?”

“I got my job done,” Tom said.

“Glad to hear it.” Weller unscrewed the thermos and splashed coffee into his cup. “I guess that explains why you’re
here
instead of
there
.”

He saw Luke and Cindi exchange startled glances, and a surge of anger brought the blood to his face. “Listen,” Tom began.

“Tom?” Mellie pushed to her feet. “Let’s walk. Weller, why don’t you come with us?”

Weller’s expression suggested he’d rather hug a cobra, but he recapped the thermos and followed. Mellie waited until they were behind a thicket of denuded scrub oak and a lonely jack pine. Then she crossed her arms over her chest. “Something on your mind, Tom?”

“You know what’s bothering me,” he said.

“Yes, I do. So let me be clear. This is not a rescue mission. We need to make sure those monsters do not survive.”

“At the cost of innocent lives?”

“Don’t tell me about innocent lives. You know Daniel and the rest of my kids never made it.”

“But that doesn’t mean they’re dead,” Tom said. “They might have gone their own way.”

“Unlikely.”

“Then has it occurred to you that they might be there, in the mine?”

“Of course it has, but we’ve seen no children. Even if we had, that changes nothing. This has to be done.”

“I don’t know what your problem is,” Weller put in. “You’re not a cherry fresh outta basic. Collateral damage is part of the game.”

“It’s not a game,” Tom said. “This is like storming a concentration camp.”

Weller snorted. “Jesus.”

“No, Weller,” Mellie said. “He’s got a point. But, Tom, those people are dead men walking. If we succeed, some might live. Many won’t, but we don’t have a lot of choices. You’re a soldier. Don’t tell me you never fired on enemy targets when there were civilians around.”

Not as a first choice, no. They were under orders, although his captain had changed his tune after an ambush killed his sergeant and wounded another. Tom hadn’t fired the javelin; that wasn’t his job. But he saw the house cave in and, later, the three small bundles of bloodied sheets. The father was dead, too, and so were four Taliban holed up inside. No one fired a shot from that house ever again.

Now he said, “It wasn’t my call to make then, but this will be. We go through with this, it’s
on
me.”

“This is a war,” Weller said, like that was supposed to be explanation enough. “Us against the Chuckies. Us against Rule. Taking out that mine is the first step.”

Hard choices. Collateral damage.
Mellie and Weller were very fond of catchphrases. “What about the people who have no say? The ones trapped in that mine who can’t get out?”

Weller cursed, then tossed the dregs of his coffee onto the snow. “I’m not debating this anymore. You’re not in charge of this operation.”

“You’re not my CO either,” Tom said.

“Well, lucky me, ’cuz ain’t he dead? In fact, it’s a good bet your entire brigade’s gone, isn’t it?”

The words dropped like hammer blows. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Because we’re what’s left. I was in ’Nam before your parents were in diddies. There is nothing about war I don’t know. You want to see Alex again?
This
is how we do it.”

“Weller.” Mellie planted a palm on the old man’s chest. “We need to work together here.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Tom said, roughly. Later, when he was alone, he’d probably put a fist through something, but right now there was Alex to think about. “I’ll do my job.”

“All right then.” Weller’s mouth worked as if he’d like to spit. “No harm, no foul.”

Liar.
But he kept his mouth shut. He’d taken his best shot. There was absolutely nothing he could say to this old man that wouldn’t be a mistake right now.

“Oh, Tom,” Mellie said. She reached for him, but he sidestepped and left her grabbing air. Her sympathetic expression slipped then firmed, but didn’t quite leak into her eyes. “We’re all on the same side,” she said.

“Sure,” he said.

Cindi feathered the mag on her Big Eyes. “Hunh.”

“What?” Luke asked.

“I think . . .” Yup, she was sure of it. The sun wasn’t below the horizon yet and the light was behind her, so she could see pretty well. The image coalesced and resolved. “Remember that pack of Chuckies, the ones who wear those wolf skins? They’re back.”

“Yeah? How can you tell?”

“Come here.” She waited until he wormed over on his belly and peered through her tripod-mounted binocs. “It’s the flutter. You know, the wolf skin is loose, so it catches the wind? Dead giveaway. It’s still the same girl, but the guy she’s with is new.”

“Okay, I see it . . . whoa,” Luke said. “What’s going on with her face?”

“Dunno.” Either the girl had the world’s worst zit or she was sprouting another eye on her cheek. And who was this new guy? What had happened to the old one? Dead, maybe. Boy, that would be okay. The more Chuckies that bit the dust, the safer they all were. Besides, those wolf-people were a little freaky, kind of
Mad Max
y with those wolf skins.

“There are a
bunch
of new guys with those wolf-people,” Luke said. “Check out the hardware.”

“Yeah, I saw them.” Some serious firepower there: a couple Uzis, for sure, or maybe MAC-10s—she wasn’t that much into guns. One kid wore this very funky bandolier slotted with what looked like huge bullets. Those brass heads must be the size of her fist. “Scoot over. I want to check on how many normals they got.”

“I think at least five,” Luke said, making room. “The way they kind of walk, you know? All shuffly?”

“Uh-huh.” She eased her eyepiece into focus, then said, “Oh boy.”

“What?”

“I think there are two kids. Like, you know, old enough to be Chuckies.”

She could hear Luke’s eyes go wide. “Really?”

“Yeah.” Up till now, she’d never seen any normal kids walking into that mine—and now here were two. They were still too far away for her to make out much detail, but she thought one was a girl. The other kid wasn’t walking right. Hurt? Maybe.

“What’s up?”

She jumped, then looked over her shoulder at Tom, who was staring down at both of them. God, he was quiet as a cat. “Nothing,” she said, hoping Luke would keep his trap shut. Mellie said Tom needed to focus:
Don’t make him feel worse about this than he already does.
Telling him about two normal kids suddenly being on the Chuckies’ dinner menu would not be cool. “I mean . . . you know.”

A frown crept over his face. “You okay, Cindi?”

“She’s okay,” Luke said. “We were just looking at the wolfpeople. They’re this tribe into wearing wolf skins. We think something happened to the lead guy, that’s all.”

“And there are more Chuckies than we thought,” she added. “Like they hooked up with some friends and all came here together, you know?”

“Oh.” Tom was quiet a second, then said, “Luke, we better get going. I want to be in position by the time the moon rises. See you soon, Cindi.”

“You bet, Tom.” Okay, if she was honest, she knew that the fluttery feeling she got whenever Tom was near was incredibly lame. Like, hello, she was
twelve.
But Tom was
so
hot, with those dark blue eyes and wavy hair that was this incredible shade of brown with a lot of red, like really expensive cinnamon. And muscles. Like, real guy muscles. And he was so
brave
. No way she’d make things worse for him. “Be careful, okay?” She cringed as soon as the words were out of her mouth.
Of all the things I could’ve said, that’s, like, complete girl.

“You, too.” Tom’s expression remained serious. “Things go bad, you get out of here, okay? Don’t let Mellie talk you into sticking around.”

“Nothing’s going to go wrong,” she said. “Good luck.”

Something swept through his face, fleet and fast. “Yeah,” he said, but the tight smile looked more like a grimace. “Luck.”

Much later, Cindi saw something that changed her mind about those two new kids. The one she’d thought was a girl definitely was, and probably a junior or senior. Nice hair, too: long and red. She’d kill for hair like that. Anyway, the girl, Red, was helping this seriously good-looking blond guy. But what got Cindi’s attention was when Red suddenly pulled up at just about the same moment as the wolf-girl, the one with the messed-up face and blonde hair.

That was when Cindi knew for sure: Red wasn’t a prisoner. She was a Chucky.

Well, thank goodness she hadn’t said anything to Tom. The knot in Cindi’s gut unraveled. If Tom had found out, he might not have gone through with bombing the mine. But there was no doubt in Cindi’s mind now. Only Chuckies acted like dogs catching a scent. So Tom and Luke and Weller blowing Red and her friends into eensy-weensy pieces was fine.

Oh, Red,
Cindi thought, and smiled.
Sucks to be you.

The mine complex was like a ghost town or something out of a news report on Iraq or Afghanistan, cluttered with decayed and bombed-out-looking buildings that were mostly broken shells of native stone and red brick. In the distance, south and east, the rusting girders of a steel headframe reared. But it was when she caught her first glimpse of the entrance to the mine that Alex was certain. She’d seen this before in all those photographs on the display table in that lake house. Why the Changed would gather together in the first place was anyone’s guess, but if they kept to the familiar, then coming here made sense. This must’ve been a favorite hangout, not only for the kids from Rule but for those of surrounding villages and towns. Actually, the scene reminded her, crazily, of a huge high school courtyard mobbed with students just before that final morning bell.