Ashes (Ashes Trilogy 1)

People took roads. Honestly, they might as well have been wearing cowbells, because it looked to her like those brain-zapped kids weren’t simply sticking to the woods now. They might live there, but they’d figured out that if they wanted to eat, they had to go where the food was.

Then she noticed something else.

Some of the dead people were very old. They had died because they’d been shot: in the back, some in the chest, and many in the back of the head. Their clothing had not been tattered or ripped by animals, but, it seemed, simply taken. These bodies were fresher, too, and lay in bunches in a scatter of discarded, empty knapsacks and duffel bags and suitcases.

These people had survived only to be robbed and then killed by their own kind: the Harlans, the Bretts, the Marjories.

And that’s when she finally understood that Larry had been right.

Those brain-zapped kids weren’t the only—or maybe even the worst—enemy.

As she passed by a panel truck—doors open, two ravaged and nearly skeletonized bodies dragging from shoulder harnesses—she heard something that was not the harsh caw of a bird. The sound was pathetic, a whimper, almost like the cry of a baby. She looked down and saw an old man and an even older woman, sprawled facedown near the truck in a scatter of pilfered duffels. They’d been shot in the back of the head, and not too long ago, judging from the lack of snow cover. The woman’s coat was bunched up, so Alex could see the spread of her fleshy thighs, ropy with bulging, green varicose veins, above her support stockings. The woman was flat on her face, her arms flung out in a reverse snow angel. Alex spotted a loop of leather around the woman’s right wrist and more leather snaking beneath the truck.

Then she caught the scent, something very familiar.

“Oh my God,” she said out loud. Dropping to her knees, Alex searched the shadows under the truck.

Cowering next to the right front tire was a shivering gray puppy.

She had no idea what the puppy was, though it looked like a cross between some kind of hound and a Labrador. When it saw her, it whined, then scooted toward her, just an inch, on its belly. The stub of its tail moved in a hopeful wag.

All of a sudden, rescuing the dog felt important. If she could save the dog, it would be a good sign, like an omen. If she saved the dog, she’d save Tom, too. Later, she’d think about how illogical this was, but that didn’t make the feeling any less strong at the time.

She tore open a packet of beef jerky and offered a piece to the pup. At the smell, the puppy inched forward again, its nose brushing her fingers, and then it wolfed down the meaty bit, only to spit it out a few seconds later. Whimpering, the pup pushed the jerky with its nose, and she understood that the meat was too tough for the dog to chew. She shoved another piece into her mouth, working it into mush. The rich flavor of spicy, smoked beef was so good her stomach cramped, and it took all her self-control not to swallow. When she spat out the meat, she heard herself groan.

This time, though, the dog snapped the food up right away, then scooched forward for more. Three more pieces of jerky and the puppy squirted out from beneath the truck, grunting like a little pig and squiggling and wagging the cropped, gray pencil stub of its tail.

Unclipping the leash from its collar, she gathered the dog in her arms. “So what’s your name?”

The puppy let go of a little yap. The dog’s coat was short and silvery-gray, and it—he—had very blue eyes and big paws, and must weigh a good ten pounds. She fed the puppy the rest of the jerky, then scrounged in the discarded duffels and came up with three cans of puppy food, a foil packet of puppy kibbles, and a small aluminum water bowl into which she poured a scant two inches from her bottle.

Afterward, she buttoned the dog up in her jacket, cinching the belt around her waist so the puppy couldn’t slip out. When she was done, she looked either a little bit pregnant or in need of a very large bra. The puppy was very warm. When it poked its head out to watch the sights, she started laughing.

“I got you,” she said as the puppy waggled all over and kissed her fingers. “I got you. Don’t you wor—”

That was when she smelled the wolves.

38

No mistake. The wolves were behind her. That she didn’t need to see them to know what they were freaked her out even more. She didn’t know how many might be there, but their scent was indescribable—not like dog at all. Some primitive part of her brain set off a complete total-body alarm that dried her mouth and made her muscles seize. Her heart was a fist pounding the wall of her chest.

The puppy sensed them now, too. She felt it go rigid, and then the puppy was hunkering down and shivering all over, trying to make itself very, very small. She kept her left hand under the puppy but let her right drift to her hip. Her fingers curled around the butt of her father’s Glock.

Then she pivoted—slowly, carefully—to face them.

There were three.

She didn’t know anything about wolves, other than what every hiker knew: you didn’t want to run into them, despite the fact that wolves were supposed to be as freaked out by people as people were by them. She’d heard wolves off and on throughout her time in the Waucamaw. Back when things were normal, their plaintive cries were eerily soothing. Of course, that was then and this was the end of the world.

These wolves were big and charcoal gray, like something out of National Geographic, and clustered on a small rise at the edge of the woods, perhaps a hundred feet away. The alpha male—she knew it by its smell, which was more acrid and quite strong—was very tall with rangy legs, a broad chest, and golden-yellow eyes: alien eyes for an alien world. It wouldn’t have surprised her at all if that rogue moon had risen.

A stationary target, at this distance, was no problem. But wolves were very fast. She could never outrun them, and if they charged, she would probably empty her magazine and not hit one.

She left the Glock in its holster. Instead, she held her right hand, palm out, hoping that the wolves would know empty when they saw it. Locking eyes with any animal was a very bad idea, but the alpha male’s gold eyes grabbed hers, and she couldn’t look away.

The wolves stared. She remembered to breathe.

The alpha male moved first. It settled onto its haunches and then sank to its belly, like a dog settling down for a nap, and began to pant. The sense she got was that the wolf was not necessarily comfortable, but it was ready to wait until something changed. As if by silent command, the other two sank down as well. The smallest squirmed on its belly to lick the alpha male’s jaw. The alpha’s scent—all their scents—had changed, too: still wolf, but now mingled with something a little less sour. Another one of those weird flashbulb moments flared in her mind: Mina, lying by the fire, pressing against her thigh. This was not exactly the same, but the scent was calmer somehow, like … friend? The tense spring of her guts uncoiled just a smidge. Well, perhaps not friend so much as no threat.