Ashes (Ashes Trilogy 1)

The southwest corner was her best option. Greg had said there were not as many guards, although Sarah said there were guards in the woods, some in the trees. Yes, but she had an advantage. She ought to be able to smell the guards and avoid them. If they had dogs, she might be in trouble, but she couldn’t think how a dog would be of any use in a tree stand.

Yeah, but then maybe she shouldn’t bring the horse. A horse made a lot of noise, and this night was very quiet, no gunfire at all. Even raiders didn’t want to freeze their asses off.

There would be the Changed, though, and they weren’t stupid. Yeager could call them beasts all he wanted, but they knew what clothes were for; they’d be out there. She wondered if they’d learned about fire yet. Sure, why not? Jim, Tom’s friend, remembered how to evade, and that girl at the gas station had a club. And if one of them figured out how to use a gun …

Stop, you’re overthinking it. One disaster at a time.

When she turned into the village square, there were more men, and they all gave her a very long look as she passed. She screwed on the cheerful, chipper, just-minding-my-business look and kept moving….

“Hold up there a sec.”

Shit. For a split second, she thought about kicking the horse to a wild gallop, but she pulled up and waited as another rider came alongside. He was squat, with arms like Popeye and no neck. She knew him, had seen him around the village hall, but couldn’t dredge up a name.

“You shouldn’t be out alone,” he said. He even sounded a little bit like Popeye. “That’s Doc’s horse.”

“Yeah, but don’t tell anyone, please?” She gave what she hoped was a tired, grateful smile. “Doc let me take him. We’ve been up all night, and I just needed to get out of there.” It helped that this was true.

“That boy they found up by Oren?” He gave her a one-eyed Popeye squint. “Yeah, heard about that. How’s he doing?”

“He’s dead.” She was so tired that her eyes began to well, and then she was crying for real. “We were up all night. It was … pretty bad.”

“Hey, wow, it’s okay.” He tried giving her an awkward pat on the shoulder but didn’t seem to want to touch her and only ended up patting air. “You’re a good kid. It’s okay, you’re just all done in.”

“I’m really tired,” she said, backhanding tears from her cheeks. “I just need to lie down, I think.”

“Sure, sure.” He pulled up in his saddle, looked over his shoulder and then back at her. “Look, I’d take you home myself, but I got to head out, meet up with the guys coming back…. You going to be okay going by yourself the rest of the way?”

“Yeah,” she said, and snuffled. She used her jacket to wipe her nose. “I’m okay. I should sleep.”

“Yeah, that’s a good idea. You do that.” Then he wheeled around and let her go on her way.

Hurrying back to Jess’s, she considered the problem of Lena.

Lena was the only person she knew who’d gotten anywhere close to leaving Rule, and Lena was also from Oren. She would know the quickest way and what they ought to avoid. Hell, for all she knew, that dead boy might be related to Lena somehow.

But taking Lena, even trying to talk to her, made her queasy. Even if she hadn’t seen her with Chris—and Lena had avoided her since—Alex didn’t know her well enough. What she did know of Lena, she really, really didn’t like. The last thing she needed was someone along she’d rather kill than have watching her back, and there was the little problem of trying to sneak back into the house, which was a complete nonstarter….

Ghost.

A small moan pushed out in a steamy cloud. She would have to leave Ghost behind. The thought made her heart knot. There had to be a way to retrieve her dog. It was so unfair. Why was she always losing—

She pulled in a breath. Oh shit, shit.

The ashes.

The ashes were upstairs, in their case, on the desk in her bedroom.

No way to get at them. No way to take them.

No, no, no, not again, not again, not again.

Mom. Her throat convulsed, and then she was crying again, only soundlessly, like a very small child. Dad … Daddy …

She’d completely forgotten about the stupid guard.

Nathan’s dog fawned over Alex like a long-lost relative. She gave the same story to Nathan about Kincaid, then said she wanted to take the horse down to the garage at the end of the cul-de-sac where she stabled Honey. If he suspected anything, Nathan didn’t give any indication; he just dragged off his dog and waved her on her way.

As a precaution, she crossed the street, hugging the sidewalk where the snow was deep enough to muffle the sound of the Appaloosa’s hooves. Jess’s house looked quiet enough, curtains drawn tight. All the bedrooms were at the back, anyway. No one would be up quite yet, not even Jess.

Honey nickered when she led the Appaloosa into the garage. “I’m glad to see you, too,” she whispered, stroking Honey’s nose. “But you can’t come, girl.”

Climbing a stack of boxes, she reached up, patted around until she found the feed bag, and then pulled it down from the ceiling joists. Her stash was miserably small and she hadn’t managed to find any food other than peanut butter and a few energy bars and four petrified rolls she’d wrapped in napkins and snuck out of the kitchen the week before. She scooped some oats into saddlebags, threw the bags behind the cantle, then tied them off.

Then her eye fell on a wooden dowel protruding from a bale of hay, and she felt a surge of elation: Yes! She twisted out the hay hook. The point was wicked and the hook itself was high-grade. She could smell it: white and icy, the cold-rolled steel as thick as her thumb. The white, clean smell of the steel was nearly

overpowering and—

White?

Wait, she thought, that’s not right; steel doesn’t smell white. Steel smells like metal. Steel doesn’t smell like glare-white ice.

Only one thing, one person, smelled like that.

She wouldn’t go back without a fight. Her fingers curled around the hook’s wooden dowel. No way, no way she was going back.

Fight. She turned, hay hook in hand, thinking, Fight, fight.

“Well,” said Jess. She racked her shotgun. “It’s about time.”

66

“Why,” asked Alex, “are you helping me?”

“I’ve been trying to help you all along, girl,” said Jess. Beneath her parka, she still wore a white flannel nightgown, but her hood was thrown back and her hair was loose, flowing over her shoulders in a river of steel. She wore her shotgun—a Remington—slung over her back in a cross-carry. “You had to come to this yourself. Besides, I had to make sure that—” She broke off as Nathan slid out of the darkness with two horses. “Well?”