Ashes (Ashes Trilogy 1)

“Alex!” Closer now. She risked a quick peek back, saw that Chris was chewing up the distance between them; saw that he was gaining, would catch them, catch her. “Alex, stop!”

“Let her through!” Jess shouted, and then she gave the Appaloosa one final, vicious cut of her reins.

Kincaid’s horse screamed, a braying screech, and then it rocketed through the snow, bearing down on the mounted guards, and then they were there and gone in a flash, and she was past them and still going. Streaking beneath the archer in his stand, she broke through and then she was out of the Zone, she was out of Rule, she was out of reach and gone, and Chris—

A shotgun boomed, a blast that sounded like the earth was breaking in two—and Alex just had time to think, God, no, Chris!

With a high, bawling cry, Kincaid’s horse reared. Alex shrieked and flung herself at the horse’s neck, knotting her fists into its mane. The horse reared again, its neck popping back. It hit Alex’s forehead, and for a dizzying moment, she thought she would be thrown for sure. There was blood in her mouth, and her vision tilted as the horse stabbed down, but she held on.

They were turned around now, the horse dancing beneath her, and she was looking back down the trail, back toward Rule. She saw the shotgun in Jess’s hands, saw that Night was still rearing, saw that the guards had converged and were now wrestling Chris from his horse. Chris tumbled to the ground, but he was flailing, fighting them, clawing his way back to his feet. She saw one guard slip and fall, and then Chris was free, and he was churning through the snow, trying to get to her.

“Alex!” He was close enough now that she could read his despair, and then she suddenly caught the keener edge of another scent she knew: horror. He shouted, “Please, Alex, you don’t know what you’re—”

Jess clubbed him with the Remington. The blow was short and precise and caught Chris behind his right ear. Chris dropped to the snow in mid-stride and was still.

“No!” Alex cried. She tightened her knees, and the Appaloosa started back toward Rule. “What are you do—”

“Stop.” Jess racked the Remington and pointed it at Alex. In the tree stand, the archer leveled his bow, his arrow ready to fly into her chest. “Not another step.”

“But Chris …”

“Will be fine. Shake thyself of dust and loose thyself, o’ captive daughter of Zion. Go, Alex,” said Jess, “and do not look back.”

She did as she was told.

PART FIVE: MONSTER

69

Four miles on, she was on foot, having dismounted and then slapped the Appaloosa’s rump to send it on its way back. The horse hadn’t seemed to need much convincing and cantered away toward Rule. The correct trail was marked with a blood-red kerchief, and was so narrow and twisting that she thought it had once been a deer path, something a hunter might follow to find game. In a way, it was like the footpath that had led her and Ellie, in what seemed like another century, to the river and then to those dogs and poor crazy Jim—and, finally, to Tom. Which made her wonder if she was doomed to spend the rest of her life blundering down one path after another, searching for God knows what.

The snow was deep and heavy and sucked at her boots. Her thighs were starting to burn, and her head ached. Her mouth hurt from where she’d bitten her tongue. When she swallowed, she tasted old blood, and her body was sore and bruised and shaken from her mad, wild dash through the woods, like she’d been stuck in a blender while Jess hit “frappe.”

A test. This was all a test for Chris. She was free, but Chris couldn’t be, not until he broke the rules of Rule … whatever they were. Frankly, she thought that all of Jess’s spouting was about as nutty as Yeager’s.

Her eyes snagged on something blue protruding on a stick from the snow about ten feet ahead, to the right of the trail at the base of a spindly pine. The color was startling and very clear, like a daub of turquoise paint on a perfectly white canvas. At first, she thought it was an old nylon trail blaze, the kind hiking clubs tied around tree branches.

But when she got closer, she saw that this something was the remains of a sleeve.

And the stick was a bone.

She went absolutely still. Her mind blanked. She froze in mid-step, and for a second, she could only stare, waiting for the white grip of stunned horror squeezing her brain to let go.

She thought the bone was an ulna, not that it really mattered. The small bones of the hand and fingers were gone, so either the rest of the body was buried under the snow, or the arm had been dragged here by whatever scavenger had claimed it before stripping off the meat.

Okay, this is like the road. It’s not like you haven’t seen a body before. There are scavengers. You’re outside of Rule’s protection now, so of course you’re going to find bodies. People dropped dead in their tracks, remember?

She took a cautious sniff, but smelled nothing more than the forest. No wolves, no raccoons. The bone wasn’t that old and it was not as white as the snow, but it wasn’t fresh either.

It’s okay. Thumbing the rifle’s carry strap, she checked the safety, and then she stripped off her glove and snaked her right hand to her back, her fingers slipping around the wooden dowel of the hay hook where it dangled from a belt loop. She had the rifle, the hay hook, a knife. She’d be fi—

She wasn’t sure what she sensed first: the long furl of something obscenely pink hanging from an oak to her left, or the rot.

The smell made the tiny hairs on her forearms stand on end. She knew the stink was dead meat but not them, not the Changed. But there were bodies here—a lot of them—and she knew that things would not be fine.

The thing dangling from the tree was a body, but it was not human. The fur was completely gone, peeled from the flesh like a glove. The animal’s muscles were intact, not so much as a scrap missing, which was very strange, considering all that meat. And come to think of it—she listened over the thrum of her heart—no birds here. No crows. Nothing.

The thing hung from a noose like some weird imitation of a scarecrow. She recognized what it was from the shape of its head and the curve of its teeth.

A wolf.

There were more wolf bodies now, on either side of the trail, marking the way like flags down the avenue of a parade. In less than an eighth of a mile, she came to a small clearing, a circle where the snow was tamped down like a dinner plate. Which was, when she stopped to think of it, pretty apt.

Actually, if you didn’t know about the bones, you’d have thought that the clothes had all gotten dumped out of several, very large laundry bags. There was a jumble of mismatched shoes and tightly laced boots, several with splintered leg bones poking from stockinged feet that had rotted—that she could smell, very easily, even in the cold—as if clawing away the laces had been just too much trouble. The clearing was a riot of color and deflated sacks of clothing filled with bones; she even spotted the black tarantula of a toupee and a silver wig of tight, permed curls. A golden puddle of chain nestled in a swath of shimmery black fabric.