Shadows (Ashes Trilogy 2)

Wait. He raked his teeth over his chapped lower lip, considering. Could she be dying? Oh, boy, he’d never thought about that. And if she was dying, they all were. He was just as exhausted, and Nathan was so much thinner—one stiff breeze and he’d blow away.

But she’s sick to her stomach. He chewed off a strip of dead skin. Mornings are worst. So maybe—

Movement. On the snow. His gaze snagged on a dark slink. Even without the binoculars, he knew this was no wolf or coyote. He thought it was another boy, but one kid in a bulky parka looked pretty much the same as any other.

He watched as the kid made a beeline for the bodies. When Chris had come up with the idea of piling a goodly number of the dead out there on the snow, he’d simply told Nathan that he didn’t want to risk any Changed trying to get into the school. That had enough truth that the old man hadn’t questioned him. They thought ten bodies ought to be enough for the night, but Nathan hadn’t understood why Chris decided that two piles of bodies were better than one.

Now, he held his breath as the dark, distant figure crept toward the first pile, which Chris had deliberately positioned closer to the woods. The shadowy figure lingered there for a long moment— and then kept going.

Shit. His stomach iced even as his brain argued, Relax, you don’t know what this means; it might not be anything more than he’s checking them both out. He watched as the kid knelt over the second tumble of bodies. If more of them come and most head to the second pile, then it counts.

Within minutes, more slinks did appear, the Changed making their way across the open field, trickling over the snow like black ants homing in on spilled sugar. In total, he thought there were about thirty. Only a few stayed with that first pile. Mostly, they clustered around the second. From what he could see through binoculars, these Changed were pretty primitive, too: baseball bats, golf clubs. He spotted one with a human femur. Another had an ax. No guns, though, and no throwing weapons. Knives would be tough to see in the bad light, but he thought they mainly used their teeth and their hands, gnawing flesh from joints, snapping and twisting off arms and legs the way you tore apart a turkey’s carcass at Thanksgiving. A wing here, a drumstick there. Skulls weren’t like hips or knees, where you really had to work to get past thick protective ligaments. A head was like a bowling ball balanced, precariously, atop a flimsy tower of vertebrae, held in place only by cords of thick shoulder muscle and sinew that were easily chewed through.

He turned away from two kids playing tug-of-war with a tangle of intestines and looked down at Lena, now deeply asleep. Please, he pleaded silently, please, Lena, keep sleeping. Don’t wake up. You shouldn’t see this.

Mercifully, she didn’t, but he saw plenty. The Changed remained for what was left of that night, squabbling over the bodies, with no real cooperation that he could see. They were more like a flock of vultures. Not once did they look at the school.

The worst moment was when one Changed—he was almost positive it was a boy—reeled out something long and ropy from the pile of bodies, then looped his prize around his neck: once, twice. Oh boy. Chris felt his stomach plummet. He squinted through the binoculars but couldn’t be sure. Might be guts. From a distance, you might almost think the kid was double-looping old-fashioned linked sausages. That would be weird; he’d never run into any Changed who actually wore body parts. But this kid might be doing nothing more complicated than carting off a mid-morning snack.

Or . . . it could be way more complicated. He wouldn’t know until first light.

A half hour before dawn, the Changed oiled their way across the snow and into the darkling woods, vanishing like smoke. The night drained away. The moon had long since set, so he had to wait until a smear of thin morning light appeared. That second pile of corpses reminded him of the wreckage of a platter of chips and dip. Not a whole hell of a lot left, only leavings strewn over trammeled snow and ruined clothes. He looked hard but didn’t see it. That wasn’t necessarily bad. He lowered the binoculars. His arms were lead pipes and his eyes raw and gritty with fatigue. They had a long day ahead and he should rest, but he had to be certain, which meant he had to go out there, alone, right now, before Lena and Nathan woke.

Lena stirred only once as he slid from his stool. His heart scrambled into his throat, and he froze, the hackles along the back of his neck spiking with alarm. No, no, no! Not now, not now! After a moment, Lena sighed and let out a thick, incoherent mumble before falling still once more.

It was the longest walk of his life, like marching to a scaffold. Outside, the air was deeply cold but dry, and his eyeballs seemed to shrivel. Breathing hurt. The hard crunch of his boots over icy snow was so loud that he winced. There was a pressure at his back, like someone watching, but every time he glanced back, only the school stared. With every step, he half-expected hands to slip around his throat from behind or look up and find faces staring from the thick gloom of those woods. He had never felt more alone. What would he do with what he found—or didn’t find? What then? He could turn back. He was probably wrong. If he found nothing, that didn’t prove anything. Even the Changed got cold.

But, God, I hope I find it, he thought. I really, really do.

But he didn’t.

Two hours later, they led the horses from the gym. The sun was out; the snow glittered, diamond-bright. Chris’s eyes, already raw, began to water.

“Chris,” Lena said. They hadn’t said much to each other all morning, but now her eyes brushed over his with a look he couldn’t decipher. “I’m sorry. I’ve looked everywhere, but I can’t find it. Are you sure you don’t know where my scarf is?”

Slipping on his sunglasses, he hid his eyes and lied a second time. “Nope,” he said. “Can’t say I do.”

64

“You should leave the dog,” Mellie said as Tom hefted Raleigh onto the swayback’s saddle. Catching the dog’s scent, Mellie’s horse, a mild tobiano paint, nickered. Mellie gave its poll a reassuring scratch. “An extra horse only slows us down.”

“I don’t care,” Tom said, briefly. Turning aside, he began laboriously tying off the ropes securing the bulky blue tarp with its sad bundle. His right hand complained, but he forced the muscles to obey. Dixie’s wound had healed enough that he felt comfortable riding her, but he worried that Raleigh’s body would upset her, so he’d settled on the Kings’ horse. As he worked, a solitary crow perched on the flagpole let out a mournful cry that sounded like a person hurt bad: Oh. Oh. Or maybe it only sounded that way to him.