Monsters (Ashes Trilogy 3)

From somewhere far behind came two thundery rumbles. Every hair rose on Ellie’s arms. Gasping, she sat straight up and turned to look the way they’d come, as did all the children and the dogs, too. The wagons stopped rolling; the horses ceased clopping. While the forest was still gloomy with dissolving shadows, slashes of bright light showed through the trees to the east. Due south, Ellie caught brief, bright pillows of pulsing orange light.

“Oh.” Sarah’s hand was over her mouth. Beside her, Lucian had gone so pale his stubble looked like dirt. “Oh God,” Sarah said.

The dogs began to bark. All around, kids were jabbering: “Wow.” “What was that?” “Did you see that?” “Is it a fire?” At her elbow, the white-haired girl had her hands clapped to her ears and squeaked over and over again, “What was that? What was that? What was that?”

“Explosions!” The elfish boy’s voice rose above the general gabble. “Like bombs.”

Tom does bombs. She was trembling. So much fear and dread coiled through her body that when Mina suddenly let out a frenzied, furious volley of barks, she almost sprang out of the wagon. “Mina, stop!” Twisting, she buried her face in the dog’s neck, not really registering right away that the dog was wildly trying to pull away. Please, God, please, not Tom, not Tom, not—

“Hey. Hey, look.” It was the white-haired girl, her voice now a wavering whisper no more substantial than a faint breeze and so soft Ellie was the only one who heard. “Everybody.”

I don’t want to look anymore. She kept her head down. It never gets better. Everyone dies. When Mina suddenly growled, Ellie looked up and said, “No, Mi—”

And stopped.

Everyone else—everyone, that is, except for the now growling dogs and the white-haired girl—still stared back the way they’d come, and they were all talking at once. Many kids had begun to cry, although above the din, she thought she heard the old doctor’s voice drifting back from Jayden’s wagon: “What is it, Daisy? Where? Jayden, son, I think we got trouble. I think—”

Oh boy, I think he’s right. Their dogs and the little girl were riveted to the trees on their left. The little girl was so terrified she’d stopped crying. Barely daring to breathe, Ellie inched her eyes west, away from a new day—

And saw stark silhouettes slip from behind tree trunks that, in such bad light, you might mistake for fence posts. Or dead trees.

Except posts didn’t move. Trees didn’t have arms or legs.

Or teeth.

112

In the instant after Tom’s warning shout, the world hiccupped. Something kicked Chris in the back. There was a brief sensation of hurtling through air. Then, there was nothing: no impact, no dreams this time around, or nightmares either, quite possibly because he was living one. But time lurched, like a really old movie missing the middle reel, the story dropping out.

The next thing he knew, he was facedown, hands clawing for purchase, blindly worming his way over a still-hissing debris field of splintered wood, twisted metal, molten glass. In the distance, he heard the dong-bong of the church bell, sounding the alarm. When had that started up? The air boiled with screams and wails. Someone was bellowing, “What what what what!” Much closer, someone was moaning. After another second, he understood the moans were his. He tasted blood at the back of his throat. His stinging face was wet with melted ice and snow, but his hand came away red, and he thought, I can see this; I can see color.

Because there was light.

Time, time . . . how much had passed, how much? The world was both bright and murky. Intermittent black clouds smoked over sky that was denim overhead and a lighter turquoise to the east from the first spokes of sunlight. The air stank of spent fuel, burning wood, scorched metal, and overdone Sunday roast. Those clouds . . . smoke . . . The sparse pines on this plateau were torches. Behind and off to his right came the crackle and sputter of another, larger fire.

Got to get out of here. Rolling, he looked toward the tower a hundred feet away. All that remained was a gnarled ruin of skeletal struts and one remaining flight of steps leading nowhere. One horse, Jarvis’s, was down, its belly a ragged blast crater of mangled entrails. Night, his blood bay, was still on his feet. Tom’s dun mare was in the trees. One hand pressed to his head, the other clutched around a rifle, a man tottered and screamed, “What what what . . .”

“Jarvis?” Staggering to his feet, Chris coughed, moaned again as his cracked ribs sent knifing jabs through his chest. “Jarvis, where’s Tom, wh—”

“Here.” To his right, a tangle of wire mesh moved. Chris saw first the bore of the Bravo, still in its scabbard, and then Tom, on hands and knees, struggling against a pile of debris.

Uh-oh. Wobbling over, Chris dragged away mesh and smashed wood. His heart turned over when he saw the spike of metal sticking out of a star of blood and ripped cloth from a spot high on Tom’s left thigh, just beneath his hip. “How bad?” Chris dropped to his knees. He reached a hand, then snatched it back, afraid he’d make something worse.

“Dunno. Don’t think it’s that deep. Doesn’t feel broken, and it’s not pumping. Help me up.” Tom suppressed a groan as Chris got a shoulder under and boosted him up. “Hurts like hell,” Tom said, his face screwed against pain.

“Can you walk? Can you ride?”

“Yeah.” Hissing, Tom took a limping experimental step and then another. “I’ll make it. We’re both lucky we’re not dead from the pressure—” Tom stopped, sniffed, then said, “Oh shit.”

“What?” Chris said, but Tom was already lurching for the edge of the basalt plateau. Smoke jetted, like the exhalations of a subterranean dragon, from somewhere just below. Wincing with every jarring step, Chris caught up and squinted down. In science, they’d studied Mt. St. Helen’s, and Chris remembered the way the blast flattened all those trees. This wasn’t quite as bad, but it was close. The blazing abatis looked as if it had been smashed by a giant’s boot. Nearby trees had toppled. He could see where snow had either been vaporized instantly by the heat or melted.

Four men, two RPGs. Chris’s eyes roamed the wreckage. The legs were easy to identify, as were the half-torsos and . . . and . . . “H-heads.” He hadn’t meant to say anything. It just came out. The heads were very distinct. A few looked like eight balls, without the white: no skin, no hair. Others had cracked open like walnuts to release red and pink sludge. “Tom, I see—”