Ashes (Ashes Trilogy 1)

“I won’t,” she said, and then after he was gone: “Maybe.”

“You really do look beat,” said Greg, who looked only marginally better than she felt. “You want company?”

“I’m fine,” she said, and then ruined it by yawning. “Look on the bright side. You won’t have to come get me in the morning.”

“I’ll bring you a change of clothes. Chances are Doc is going to let you knock off tomorrow, though.”

“Yeah, well.” She glanced at their patient, whose color was only a little less white than his sheets. His dark hair looked artificial, like something penned in with a Magic Marker. Then she began to gather up soiled instruments. The plastic garbage bags were overflowing with soiled and bloodied gauze and the remnants of

the boy’s clothes. “Let’s see what happens. You should go home.” “I’m gone.” Greg tipped her a wave. “Just don’t tell Chris.”

Now what, she thought, as she began tidying up the treatment room, would I tell Chris exactly? Oh, bad Greg left me all by my widdle wonesome?

She had thought of Chris, too, and often. Not obsessively, not the way she had with Tom—but that had been different, hadn’t it? She wasn’t sure now what she’d felt with Tom, but they’d fought together and he’d been hurt, maybe dying, and she’d been on a mission to save him.

Yeah, like, fail.

She took the boy’s blood pressure, noted his pulse, checked his IVs. Then, gathering up a tray of soiled instruments, she dumped them in alcohol before crossing the hall to retrieve their makeshift steam sterilizer. She carried the sterilizer outside, set it on a small propane stove, and lit the stove. While she waited for the steam to build, she washed the instruments, then placed them in the sterilizer. It would take about twenty minutes of steam to disinfect the instruments, heat being their only …

Heat.

Heat.

Staring down at the tiny ring of blue flame, huddled in her scrubs and a thin yellow nurse’s gown, she frowned. Something about heat had been bothering her for hours. But why?

Kincaid’s words came back: Flies’ll die in the cold.

That was right. Flies died in the cold. Leave a dead anything out in the cold, and there would not be blowflies, not in winter. She had seen no flies in Honey’s stable at all, not even four weeks ago. She’d seen more than a few dead bodies on the road, but no flies. And at the gas station, dead Ned …

“No flies,” she murmured. But the boy had maggots. Maggots could only come from flies, but if they’d found him in an abandoned barn, how had he stayed warm? What would’ve warmed up the barn enough so flies could live in winter?

Okay, maybe the boy had started a fire. No, that couldn’t be it. That boy was out cold when they brought him in; he was just the other side of dead. Hell, he had been dead.

Which meant that someone else started the fire. Someone else kept the boy warm. There had been someone else, maybe more than one person.

But Greg had said, Found him by his lonesome in a barn.

No, Greg. Not hardly. And they’d been nearer Oren … what were they doing there? They’d been on their way to Wisconsin, unless there’d been a change in plans. Hadn’t Chris been up to Oren already? Right; that’s where he’d gotten the books. So Chris had been there not long ago.

Kincaid: Either you boys hurt? You boys get a name?

If Kincaid was worried about that, he must’ve figured there was a fight. Getting a name, though, suggested not only other people but … a conversation? Or—oh my God—a trade? Something worse?

Because Kincaid knew: they hadn’t just found this kid; they hadn’t rescued him.

They’d taken him.

62

Almost every kid she’d ever known, herself included, squirreled crap away in their pockets. Before she’d discovered Swiss Army knives, Alex’s favorites had been rocks and chewing gum. She had no idea why, and her mother was always grousing about chewing gum that melted in the dryer.

But there was nothing in the boy’s pockets.

What kid carried nothing? Alex stared in disbelief at the jumble of tattered clothing she’d retrieved from the trash. The stink was terrible: blood and pus and months’ worth of dirt. The boy’s name was penned into his sneakers but too smeary from sweat and dirt for her to make out more than a J and an N. Or maybe M. His flannel shirt had only one ripped pocket, and his jeans pockets were riddled with holes.

She picked up a limp tongue of the boy’s olive-green jacket in one gloved hand. The jacket had faux-fur along the hood and a sagging, quilted, blaze-orange, zip-in lining. She hefted the jacket. Couldn’t tell a thing from the weight. But that was the beauty of a zippered lining. Since coming to Rule she’d certainly used hers to sneak supplies for her Great Escape. So she unzipped and then pulled the lining completely from the jacket.

Something metallic chinked to the floor. When she saw what it was, she clapped a hand to her mouth to stifle the scream.

Not a knife. Not a gun.

Her whistle.

63

She did not wake Kincaid.

Instead, dryeyed, she huddled by the boy, trying to will him back to consciousness. When that didn’t work, she checked his blood pressure, fiddled with his IVs, listened to his too-rapid heart, and felt his fingertips, which were cold. That, she knew, was bad, and she might have to get Kincaid soon, but not quite yet. All she needed were a few minutes alone with the boy. If he would just wake up …

She’d slipped the whistle around her neck and tucked it under her scrubs, and now she touched it just to make sure it was still there. Of course it was. She was not dreaming. This wasn’t like her parents slipping away into the night. This was real and tangible and she ought to be able to put this together. All the pieces were there, she knew; she just didn’t know how they fit together.

Think.

They’d left the ranger station on November 10. Ellie had been taken the very next day, on the eleventh. By Harlan’s estimate, he’d last laid eyes on her a week or ten days after that. Harlan had been banished from Rule before Thanksgiving, so she couldn’t ask him, but hadn’t he said that they’d been attacked south of Rule? She thought that was right. But the boy had come from Oren, which was northwest and over fifty miles away.

That meant one of two things. Either Ellie had made it to Oren, or someone else had taken the whistle from her—maybe while she was still down south—and then found his or her way to Oren. Either the boy had actually seen Ellie and she had given him the whistle, or someone else had. Any way you cut it, someone had laid eyes on Ellie, maybe as recently as six weeks ago, when Chris had returned from Oren with books and those sunglasses.