Ashes (Ashes Trilogy 1)

She thought of the wolf: no threat.

All around, dogs bristled and snarled—but not at her.

They were growling at their owners.

The voices in the crowd fell instantly, deathly silent, and people let go of the dogs. Surging forward, the animals ranged around Alex in a tight, protective circle. Some licked her face. Others nosed at her as she dragged the rope from her neck. The big black shepherd pressed against her, as if daring someone to cross it, and then something very small spurted from the crowd and into her lap. It was the puppy, wriggling all over, so frantic with relief that it tried to climb on top of her head.

“Good boy,” Alex said, still stupid with amazement, and then looked up as the crowd wavered and broke. She saw old men with rifles and shotguns parting the crowd like Moses at the Red Sea, wading into the dogs.

Looking up, Jet let out a soft whine, his black tail whisking the air in greeting. Following the dog’s gaze, Alex pulled in a sudden, startled gasp.

“Are you all right?” He knelt on one knee and reached a hand to steady her. His eyes were as jet-black as his dog, his cheekbones were high and sharp as ax heads, and his scent was a complex mix of the darkness itself: cold mist and black shadows.

With a little yelp, the puppy jumped to lick at his hand, and the boy smiled.

“Hey, you,” he said, ruffling the dog’s ears. “That’s a good pup.”

42

The dark-eyed boy’s name was Chris Prentiss, but his friend, Peter, was in charge of men who were, with few exceptions, old enough to be grandparents.

“I don’t care about the damn dogs. We don’t know that it’s not a trap.” Peter didn’t look much older than Tom and had a tumble of wheat-brown hair that fell to his muscular shoulders. “She could be luring us, man.”

“I’m not,” she said. They’d marched her back, under guard, behind the semi, and she now sat cross-legged in a wagon. They’d taken her pack, and one of them might have her Glock, but she wasn’t sure. The puppy curled in her lap, its ears lifting anxiously as Chris and Peter argued. When they’d nudged her into the wagon, the shepherd had sprung up after to lie quietly by her side, as Mina had done. “Aren’t the dogs supposed to know?”

Peter’s face flashed with annoyance. “Could be early yet. You still might change. Anyway, the dogs won’t know if you’re telling the truth about this other guy. We go out there, you’ve got an ambush set up, and there go a wagon, horses, weapons …”

“I think the risk is worth it,” Chris said. He was the quiet one, the observer, and Alex thought he was about her age, maybe a year older. “We need someone like him. He’s a soldier; he knows bombs. You’re always saying—”

“I know what I’m always saying.” Fuming, Peter planted his hands on his hips. “Okay. But we wait until morning.”

“That’s too long,” she said.

Peter fired a warning glance. “I don’t think I’m asking you. But if you want to march on out of here, fine by me.”

“Peter,” said Chris in his calm, patient way. “You know we can’t let her leave.”

Alex wasn’t sure she liked the sound of that. On the other hand, she wasn’t particularly anxious to face that mob again. “Look,” she said to Peter, “I’ve been out there all day. We’re not talking zombie hordes.”

“I’m sorry, but you don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Chris. His tone didn’t change, but she heard the rebuke. “You’re lucky to be alive. Three attacked you, and you said one had a club. That’s new. Even though they didn’t coordinate their attack, they’ve never really hunted together before either.” Chris looked at Peter. “Could be a first step toward them getting organized.”

“All the more reason to get Tom now,” she said.

“If he isn’t dead yet,” Peter said.

“You keep saying that, he will be. Is that what you want?”

Peter scowled. “Of course not. I’m not an ass**le. I’m just saying that you’re really lucky. If you’d been caught farther out from town when it got dark, you might not be sitting here.”

In case they hadn’t noticed, a bunch of old people had nearly lynched her, so she hadn’t exactly been safe close to town either. “Is that why you’ve got the roadblocks? To keep out those brain-zapped kids?”

“Brain-zapped.” Peter barked a humorless laugh. “I like that. We call them the Changed. But yeah, that perimeter’s one of the reasons they’re not walking down Main Street.”

But a perimeter couldn’t be the only reason, Alex figured. Short of building a fence, how did you secure an entire village?

“What sucks,” Peter continued, “is that they’ve figured out how to survive. They know to get warm, they know to find shelter; they follow people. From what you said, it sounds like they’re learning how to really hunt.”

“So maybe they’ll kill each other,” Alex said.

Peter shook his head. “They don’t, which completely blows. Right now, they’re not organized enough to overrun the town. They might get there, though, and then we’re screwed. There are way more of them than we got bullets for.”

She wasn’t giving up on Tom. “You have all these people. You’ve got guns. With the horses, you could get to Tom in a couple of hours. If one of you were hurt, you’d go after him, wouldn’t you?”

“I’m not doing hypotheticals,” said Peter. “Look, I understand. You care about this guy. I get that. He sounds like he was a pretty good guy.”

“He is,” she said, her eyes filling. “He is.”

“Peter,” Chris said quietly, “I say we go after him. It’s not like there are a lot of us. If we don’t fight for each other, who will? If he’s Spared, then it’s worth the risk.”

Alex heard the emphasis: Spared. Like Changed. These people didn’t see Tom or her or even themselves as survivors. They were Spared, like people who’d escaped some sort of wrath-of-God thing.

“Damn it,” said Peter. He scuffed snow with the heel of his boot, and Alex smelled the peppery edge of his resistance ease. “All right. But you stay behind, Chris.”

Alex didn’t like the sound of that either—not because Chris was such an ally, but because Peter already didn’t like her. So if there was a little accident …