Ashes (Ashes Trilogy 1)

Looking down at those footprints, she thought of Crusoe. They had not seen any brain-zapped kids, or even signs that they’d been anywhere around the houses or farms. Frankly, she hoped they were all dead. She hoped that with only half a brain, a cannibal kid was too stupid to come in out of the cold.

She butted open the front door and then moved the body, dragging the dead man by his feet, hoping they wouldn’t come off. It wasn’t as bad as she thought it might be, or maybe she was getting numb to the whole thing. Anyway, it had to be done, because there was no way she was spending the night under the same roof as a corpse. After the relative respite offered by the store, the cold was a shock. The wind had picked up, and icy snow needled her face, but she was relieved to breathe air that didn’t smell like decaying Ned. She thought about getting the work shirt from the back room before dark to cover the dead man’s face, and then decided that they had more use for it. She felt an urge to apologize to Ned, but didn’t.

Tom was shuddering with cold by the time she went back for him. She half-supported, half-dragged him inside, eased him to the floor, and then combed the entire store. There was no food, although Alex discovered an unopened water bottle that had rolled under the Krispy Kreme case. Near the front door, she unearthed a package of AA batteries behind an overturned magazine rack. Whoever had ransacked the place hadn’t cared if he caught a cold and had left fistfuls of aspirin and Tylenol and cold remedies in those little foil packets, as well as packages of Kleenex and tins of throat lozenges.

Behind the checkout counter, the register’s cash drawer was open and empty. Not surprisingly, there were no cigarettes or tins of chewing tobacco, but what did amaze Alex was that the plastic lottery-ticket dispensers were also empty. Like there would ever be another multi-gazillion dollar Powerball jackpot in the very near future.

There was a back office behind the counter. The door was locked, but the keys still hung on a nail next to the cash register. Inside the office was a plain metal desk and a swivel chair on squeaky casters. In the desk, she found a few pens, two pencils, three paper clips, rubber bands, and—in a bottom drawer—a bottle of Maker’s Mark, half-full.

She left the jugs of windshield-wiper fluid and antifreeze, but crammed the rest into their knapsack. She lingered over the cans of WD-40 and deicer, the quarts of oil; thought that of them all, the oil might be good. Soak some rags in the oil and throw them in a plastic bag, in case they couldn’t find tinder for a fire.

Then she tore open a packet of Tylenol, made Tom swallow back the medicine and then the rest of the water. It was very cold inside the store, but Tom’s face glistened with perspiration. His hair was damp, but when she put her hand against his forehead, his skin was very hot. “You’ve got a fever,” she said.

“In-in-infection.” He was shaking so badly she heard the click of his teeth. “I c-can sm-smell it.”

So could she, even without her spidey-sense. When she took down the bandage, she had to clamp back on a moan. The wound was very bad. The bullet had gone in a little left of center, about six inches below Tom’s hip. His thigh was swollen and tight, the skin flushed, shiny, and hot to the touch. The edges of the wound were black, and when he moved, a thick worm of blood-streaked green pus bubbled up and ran down the side of his leg. The bandages were oozy and sopping with a mixture of blood and more pus.

“I don’t th-think I can wa-walk much more,” he said.

“You walked today.”

“T-Too s-slow.”

“So what? It’s fine. I’m not leaving you behind.”

“You h-have to.” He let his head fall back, his eyes half-shuttered. His lips were split and bleeding.

“You would never leave me, or Ellie. You’d carry us if you had to.”

“D-don’t be too sure about th-that.”

“I could make a stretcher.”

His head moved in a weak negative. “J-just slow you d-d-down. We’re n-not getting anywhere f-fast this way. You’ll be a lot f-faster on your own.”

She would be; she knew that. Alone, she could cover twice as much ground in half the time, and if she kept heading southwest, she would run into Rule. If Larry was right—if Marjorie and Brett and Harlan were to be believed—whoever was there would want to help Tom.

Or, maybe, something else that Larry had said would be true:

They’ll shoot you on sight.

“We don’t have to decide anything right now. Come on.” She gave him a little shake. “You know medical stuff. Think. Would it help if, I don’t know, we got that gunk out of there?”

He gave a sluggish nod. “C-couldn’t hurt.”

“Okay, just give me a few minutes. I want to check out the cars. At the very least, we can use the mats. Better for you than lying on the floor.”

The Toyota was closest to the front door, and she searched it first. The car was barren and cold as a freezer. Her breath came in clouds as she hurriedly piled floor mats on the front seat, and then she thought, Trunk. Reaching in, she found the right button, popped the release, heard the trunk click open.

Jackpot. Inside the truck were a collapsible shovel and three signal flares. They could use the flares for fires, if they had to. Was there a way to reuse the striker? Tom might know.

The shovel was for camping, with a triangular steel head and a removable handle that unscrewed to reveal a six-inch blade saw. She pulled the shovel out to its full length, felt the heft in her hand. From the condition of the head, she didn’t think the shovel had ever been used.

Backing out with the trunk mat, her eye fell on a corner of white and red protruding from beneath the spare tire. Putting aside the mat, she reached for the bit of color. Was that …?

She felt a little squirt of adrenaline, which she tried to quash, but she knew as soon as her shaking fingers touched the cardboard, and then she was carefully prying the Marlboro box free. Interesting place to keep a stash, but she’d heard of people squirreling away drugs in spare tires, so maybe not so strange if you didn’t want your wife or husband to know you couldn’t quite kick the habit. The Marlboro box rattled and smelled like cold tar. She didn’t care about the cigarettes. But if someone had stashed the pack into the trunk for a rainy day, he’d need a light.

She was almost afraid to look, but she did. Inside the box were three cigarettes—

She let her breath go.

A matchbook. The book had once been white but was now gray. She could still make out the words beneath a stylized martini glass—eddie martini’s—and, in much smaller letters below that, the restaurant’s address and phone number. She held the matchbox between her fingers for several seconds, thinking, You just watch. There won’t be any matches left. There won’t.