Monsters (Ashes Trilogy 3)

“I hear that.” Kincaid leaned down and grasped Tom’s hand. “Luck. Stay safe, son.”

“Right back atcha.” Tom offered a hand to Jayden. “Be careful. Watch out for Ellie.”

“Watch her yourself.” Jayden surprised him by pulling Tom into an embrace. “I never thanked you,” the boy said, roughly. “For, you know . . .”

“It’s okay.” Tom gave the boy a squeeze. “Good luck.”

“Don’t be long?” Jayden clung to Tom’s forearms. “Stick with Chris. He’s got a radio. I’ll keep mine on so you two know where to find us. Don’t get any dumb, stupid ideas, Tom.”

Had Jayden read something in his face? “Don’t worry. Now go.” Turning, he saw Chris, at Ellie’s wagon, reaching up to give the girl a hug. Chris’s big black shepherd leapt nimbly alongside Mina and a sleek Weimaraner Chris said had belonged to Alex. Seeing them all together like that, knowing Ellie would be cared for and loved, made Tom feel . . . a little easier.

Beyond, a large dray hitched to a third supply wagon was snorting, picking up on the sudden urgency and eager to be off. Three other boys—Aidan, Sam, and Greg—were already on their horses. Aidan and Sam, who smelled like bad news, moved to take point, while Greg waited to bring up the rear.

Please, God. As Ellie’s wagon rumbled past, he raised a hand. He thought Ellie shouted something, but her words were drowned by the clop of horses’ hooves and the creak of wagons and the few excited huffs of dogs. Please, keep her safe.

In another moment, the moon hid its face, thick shadows swallowed the wagon, and Ellie was gone from him, again, lost to the dark.

106

“How long are we going to stay here?” Cindi asked the guard. She curled against Luke the way he remembered his cat used to: warmthseeking behavior, his mom called it. Luke used to hate how much that cat shed, but now he really missed the dumb thing, not to mention his parents. Slipping an arm around Cindi’s shoulders, he pulled her a little closer. A half hour after Finn’s men and their Chuckies had streamed into camp, two more men had trotted up, leading a mare. When Luke spotted her and an ashen Chad astride the horse, he’d made an idiot of himself, twisting away from Mellie and capturing Cindi in a bear hug: I thought you were dead, I thought you were dead!

“S’up to the boss,” the guard said, tipping coffee into a camp mug. Half a smoke was glued to the guard’s lower lip. Exhaling a gray jet, he sipped, sighed, pulled in another drag, and said, in a strangled voice, “Wouldn’t mind some decent sleep when this is done, though.”

“So we’re at Rule?” Luke waved away fumes. The way these guys smoked, they should chew burnt logs and get over it already. This particular old guard sported a ratty moustache so saturated with nicotine it was dirty orange. “Are we staying here? What about the kids in Rule?’

“You ask too many questions, you know that?” Turning away with a lazy shrug, the mustachioed guard hooked a thumb under the carry strap of his Uzi. “If I was you kids,” he said, sauntering toward a much larger fire and the other three guards, all of them sucking cancer sticks, “I’d get some sleep instead of freezing your asses. Gonna be light in about an hour.”

From his place opposite Luke, Chad muttered, “Yeah, well, it’s my ass to freeze, butt-face.” Sighing, he stirred a steaming MRE, listlessly chewed a mouthful of macaroni and cheese, then dropped the spoon into the pouch. “Stomach’s too jumpy.”

To Chad’s left, Jasper piped up. “You going to finish that?” “How can you eat?” Cindi asked.

“I’m hungry.” Jasper shoveled in a huge mouthful. “Too wired to

sleep,” he said, his voice clogged by cheesy noodles. “This has to be it. I mean, he took all the Chuckies.” He gestured with the spoon to a large stainless-steel animal cage, standing empty on a flatbed slotted in with the other wagons. “Even those guys.”

“So if this is Rule,” Cindi said, “and those kids are still there, what will they do with us now? Do you think they’ll . . . that they might . . .”

“No,” Luke said, and put both arms around her. He wanted to say something movie-tough, like Finn’s guys would have to get through him first, but the words just wouldn’t come.

“But we should make a move.” Chad tossed a look over his shoulder to check for the guards, then leaned closer. “We’re the three oldest. There’s four of them, three of us.”

“Hey,” Jasper said around a mouthful of macaroni. “I’m here.”

“You’re ten. Keep eating.” Chad rolled his eyes. “If we can get guns . . .”

“Yeah, well, if is a pretty big word right now,” Luke said.

“But we’re just sitting here.”

“I don’t see that we can do anything else.”

“I agree with Chad.” When Luke looked down at her, Cindi continued in a whisper, “Except for those guards, everyone else is gone. We’ll probably never have a better shot.”

“And go where, Cindi?” Luke asked.

“Anywhere. Luke, we could raid the supply wagons, grab some guns and food, and go.”

“Cindi, we have thirty kids. Us three and a couple other guys can handle a gun, and that’s it. How would we move everyone and all the stuff we need? We can’t outrun Finn.”

“But I don’t like waiting around for Finn to decide what happens next.” Chad jerked his head at the transport cage. “You want to end up in one of those?”

“No, I don’t,” Luke said to Chad. “But staying alive beats dying.”

“Not if we end up like Peter,” Jasper said.

After five days with Finn and his weird Chuckies, who were exactly like the girl Tom had fought weeks ago, Luke had a queasy sense of what was in store.

Peter was too old to be a Chucky, older than Tom for sure, by a couple years. But his eyes were raving red, and God, he ate what the Chuckies did: thawed slabs of frozen oldsters stacked like cordwood in a special Chucky chuck wagon. Which meant that Finn had probably given Peter the same crap Tom figured someone fed those Chuckies in white. Only it hadn’t worked on Peter, who spent half his time in his cage screaming—let me go, let me go, let me go go go—and the other half trying to get at Finn. Sometimes Finn hurt him pretty bad. Never laid a hand on Peter, but wow, a couple seconds with Finn and that creepy Davey, who followed Finn everywhere like a dog, and Peter was moaning, howling, clutching his head.