Monsters (Ashes Trilogy 3)

“Jesus.” Reining in his blowing animal, Weller armed his forehead, then shrugged his bum right shoulder. “I won’t ask what the hell you think you’re doing.”

There was brown blood caked on Weller’s neck below the jaw he didn’t have anymore, and Tom could see the useless worm of a blue tongue. Not real. Averting his eyes, Tom pulled in a breath that reeked of diesel fuel and burning oil. “I had to get out. I couldn’t think . . .” He gathered himself. Come on, Tom; look at him; Weller is fine; the rest is a damned flashback. He forced his eyes back and thought, to his immense relief, that Weller could use a shave. “What Mellie wants makes no sense. You have to know that.”

“I do.” Weller threw him an irritated look. “But there are better ways to get your point across than challenging her in front of the kids. Only puts her back up.”

“I know. I left because I didn’t want to completely lose it in front of them.”

“Oh no, it was so much better for the kids to see you tear out of camp like a crazy person.” Screwing up his mouth, Weller spat, sighed, then prodded his silvery-white gelding north. “Come on, might as well walk the horses the rest of the way to the church and pick up Cindi and Chad. We can talk this out. You and me, Tom, we’ll figure a way.”

“How? Mellie won’t listen. She thinks you’re better off without me. Maybe she’s right.”

“Don’t be stupid, Tom. Those kids need you, and I think you need them just as much.”

“Then we have to stop her.” After five seconds, he realized that the smell of fuel and oil had vanished, and he no longer heard the ululating wails of women. “She’ll push those kids until there’s an accident, Weller, or worse. Mellie will keep going until those kids are dead.”

“Tom, take a breath.” Mellie’s tone was that of a playground monitor heading off an eight-year-old’s tantrum at being forced off the jungle gym. “I hear you, but aren’t you supposed to be heading for the church? We’ll talk when you come back, all right? Now is not the time for this discussion.”

“No, Mellie, you don’t hear me and this is the time.” Tom tossed a glance at a clutch of some two dozen kids. Only Luke stood apart, throwing worried looks, clearly wanting Tom to put on the brakes. The rest excitedly milled around the concrete cap of a cistern behind an all-metal equipment shed where Tom had set up shop several weeks before.

He’d been afraid this would happen. Kids loved a ka-boom. It was why he hadn’t allowed anyone to watch him put together the penetrators they’d used in the mine. Gathering what was left—the det cord, the C4, caps, detonators, everything—he’d divvied it up, stashing most where no one would think to look. He only wished he’d remembered the aluminum powder and magnesium ribbon. And that bottle of glycerin. Stupid.

“Yes, it’s great that Jasper’s motivated. I agree he’s smart. But Mellie . . . seriously? A ten-year-old monkeying around with thermite? Trying to slow the reaction?”

“Are you saying it can’t be done? It was your idea, wasn’t it?” “Yes, for the time delays at the mine, when I thought we might need it.” Thermite was a great primary incendiary. The problem was the reaction was very fast. He’d hit on the goofy idea of using fire retardants to stretch the reaction time, and it had worked. The last time he tried, he got nearly ten minutes, but the ratios had to be just right and he was still uncomfortable with an unpredictable incendiary whose temp topped over three thousand degrees. “Unless you’re planning to rob a bank, I can’t think why you need something that can melt steel. Mellie, these are children. I know what I’m doing.”

“You do? Have you taken a good look in the mirror?” She flipped a dismissive hand at the Uzi, on a retention strap so his hand was on the pistol grip at all times. Jed’s Bravo was slotted in a back scabbard. The Glock 19 rode in a cross-draw on his left hip, and he carried two knives: the KA-BAR in its leg sheath and a boot knife as a last resort. “Armed to the teeth. Riding out to the church every day as an escort? You look ready for Armageddon.”

“I . . . what I do is . . .” Was what? Only common sense? That was a lie. Never far away to begin with, all the old horrors—flashbacks, nightmares, that awful crushing panic—had roared back after the fight on the snow to fuel the black monster growing in his chest. Whenever he walked into the farmhouse or barn now, he immediately scanned all the exits, tried to work out the fastest way to egress. Get out, move, go, evade. Two days ago, when a group of kids got between him and the door, a flood of adrenaline drowned his mind and then he was in a cold sweat, heart pounding, thinking, Thirty-two rounds in the Uzi, nineteen in the Glock, five in the Bravo, as he methodically devised an escape route, which children to shoot and in what order he should kill them. That scared him so badly he’d bolted, shoving Luke aside and banging out into the snow where he’d run, fast, air ripping his lungs until the razor panic dulled.

To Mellie, he said, “Don’t twist this around to be about me, all right?”

“But this is about you. You want us to move. You want us to find a more secure location. You hide our det cord, our C4, everything, and all of a sudden, you have decided we don’t need to go to Rule. These are not your decisions, Tom. I’m in charge, not you.”

“Last time I looked, I was in charge, too.” Weller had been so quiet, Tom forgot he was there. “Tom’s right. Maybe there are better things we should be teaching those kids.”

“Oh, how perfect.” The frost in Mellie’s tone was unmistakable. “A convert.”

“Those things were out there,” Tom said. “I fought one. I saw more. We need to move.”

“That was two weeks ago, Tom, and where are these monsters? Don’t you think that if there were something to be worried about we’d have seen it by now? Now, I’m sorry about the mine. I’m sorry about Alex. But you need to get over that already.”

“Mellie,” Weller said sharply.

“If I had a nickel every time someone suggested I should just get over Afghanistan already, I’d be a millionaire five times over,” Tom said. How could you get past a splinter that had worked into your eye and scratched deeper every time you blinked? “Hear me out, all right? Let’s leave”—his throat tried to knot—“let’s leave Alex out of it. Let’s talk reality. Luke is fourteen, Cindi is twelve, Chad’s thirteen. That leaves, what . . . three other twelve-year-olds?”