Monsters (Ashes Trilogy 3)

The boy’s hands were clapped to his right thigh. A triangle of smeary glass glimmered weakly in the thinning light, and blood was dripping to the floor. As Chris watched, the boy opened his ruined mouth and bawled again: “Awwww.”

Got to move. Chest shuddering with every tortured breath, he struggled out of his ruined flannel, then tugged off the thermal. He’d cut his right hand on that glass dagger, but the fingers worked. Staggering to his feet, he tried a step, slipped, clutched the table for balance. Over the drum of his heart, he heard the stomp of a boot as the boy pushed from the wall.

Oh God. Chris turned, his hands convulsing as he swayed. If not for the table propping him up, his knees might have given way again. For a split second, Chris’s mind blanked. He forgot that he wanted to fight. He was trapped, weaponless, already hurt. Less than a minute ago, he’d been as close to death as when Hannah’s poison oiled over his brain. Everything he might be able to use as a weapon—pots, pans, those knives—was behind him, miles away. So he could only watch the boy, this monster, totter toward him. This was the nightmare from his memory and fever dreams of Peter and Lena, and a lifetime spent awakening to find a father reeking of booze and staring down at Chris with hate. Of reading what was behind his father’s red-rimmed eyes: I’ll be safe only when you’re dead.

Fight. Groping, Chris’s hand closed over a plate. He whipped it, fast, in a Frisbee throw. The boy saw it coming and batted the dish away, but Chris had already scraped up a glass, another dish, a saucer, tossing everything he could get his hands on, listening to the crash, hearing the crunch, trying to work his way around the table. The Changed just kept coming, as inexorable as fate. Despite the boy’s obvious pain, Chris also thought the kid was actually enjoying this. Maybe the kid was looking forward to some payback. Tear out a chunk with his teeth, hurt Chris pretty bad, but then set him loose: Go on, little Chris. Run. Bleed. See how far you get.

As if finally tiring of the game—maybe he was fed up with swatting away dishes, and that thigh had to hurt—the Changed boy grabbed the tablecloth and yanked. With a yelp of surprise, Chris danced out of the way as dishes and cutlery slithered to the floor in a splintery smash. The lamp’s green glass fuel base burst, releasing a gagging stink of kerosene that made Chris’s battered throat double-clutch.

mo ns ters Sweeping up a chair, the boy hurled it the way a basketball player pops that fast bullet of a pass. The kid’s aim was perfect, the chair growing huge in his face. Startled, Chris had no time to duck. The boy’s chair whacked his chest. Stunned, Chris stumbled and then came down on his back in a puddle of kerosene.

Get up, get up! Retching against fumes, he kicked free of the chair. Twisting, he tried to roll, get his feet under him, scramble out of the way. From the corner of his eye, he saw the boy’s knee c**k and then the kick coming. Dropping flat, Chris heard the boot whiz over his head. As he rolled to his right to get under the table, Chris felt the boy clamp onto his left ankle. Frantic, Chris wrapped his hands around the butcher block’s heavy center pedestal for leverage, then kicked back with his right. His boot connected with a satisfying thunk, followed a second later by a heavy grunt. As the boy’s grip slackened, Chris scrambled under the rest of the way, set his feet, and squirted out the opposite side. The woodstove was in front of him and now just to his right—and he spotted the weapon he needed. If he only had time . . .

Whirling, Chris got his hands under the heavy table, pulled straight up, and then pushed as hard as he could. The table toppled with a gigantic bang. The Changed only dodged to his right, but that was all Chris wanted: just to slow the kid down for another few seconds. As the boy barreled around the table, Chris’s hands shot for the woodstove and the handle of that steaming saucepan. He let out a harsh bawl of pain as hot metal scorched his palms, but he willed himself not to let go; this was the only play he had. Still screaming, Chris loosed the pot in a savage backhand.

Both a gush of water just the near side of boiling and the heavy pan hit the Changed in the face. There was a hollow chunk as iron bounced against bone. A starburst of blood erupted on the boy’s forehead. For a half second, the Changed boy went absolutely rigid—and then instead of a guttural awww, he let go of a long, high, girlish screech. Lurching backward in a clumsy wobble, the boy wallowed in a swirl of blue tablecloth and slick kerosene.

Bellowing, his hands shrieking with pain, Chris charged—not for the butcher block and its temptation of fine-edged steel, but for the hanging rack. Seizing a skillet, he wrenched it from its hook. Two feet away, the Changed was kneeling, fingers quaking over flesh that blazed a hot, boiled purple where it wasn’t red with blood. Skillet in hand, Chris drove forward, already certain what needed doing, knowing nothing on earth would stop him. At the last second the Changed lifted his head, and Chris saw the left eye had gone as milky as boiled egg white.

From far away, another planet, came a shout, the clap of a door. His name: “Chris! Chris, wait!”

73

“Get up, come on!” Shouldering Wolf aside, Alex squirmed out from under. A hooshing hum reverberated in her ears. The stink of cooking meat and burning hair was so heavy it was like sucking the char from a barbecue grill. Gobs of singed meat clung to Wolf ’s back and her hair.

Marley had been flattened. His nose, eyelids, and lips were gone. Fire had chewed his dreads to the scalp; his parka was melted to his chest. Where his face wasn’t parboiled, the skin was black as briquettes. His teeth, insanely white, showed in a ghastly rictus.

“Easy!” A shout, muffled by the hoosh in her ears: the voice older, angry. Male. “You want to kill everyone in—”

Men? Were they the red storm, or working with it? And what is that? She felt her mind shuttle, the monster unsure what to do. Even the monster doesn’t know what this is. At the same time, she could feel the pull, the temptation to let go and get lost in that thrumming surge that seemed to pulse with every beat of her heart: push-pushpush go-go-go.

Dropping to a crouch, she scuttled toward the front of the house and risked a quick peep through the blasted rectangle of the ruined window. What had been a snow-mantled hill before was now a smoking crater: a sore of blackened earth and smoking remains. Used some kind of grenade or bomb. It was hard to tell how many bodies, because everything was in pieces: the stub of what looked like an elbow; a foot, minus four toes and half the sole; three-quarters of a blasted head teetering on the lip of the crater like a smashed Halloween pumpkin. Another Changed—lucky or unlucky, depending on your point of view—sprawled in a twisted tangle and a halo of blood spray.