Monsters (Ashes Trilogy 3)

Get out, get out! Whirling for the front door, he stumbled onto the porch at the same moment a door slammed drywall and Mellie shouted, “Who—”

Still running, he took the front steps in three leaping strides and plunged down the slope. What to do, what to do? Tom, Tom, where are you? Tom would know; Tom, he could trust. But Luke was on his own, and all he could think of was to run. He’d automatically headed toward the equipment shed, but now he thought, Wait, I’m safer around other people. He veered toward the cow barn and corral, steaming through the snow. Ahead, there were knots of kids, the bonfire. All the dogs had trotted halfway up the knoll past the far horse barn and were barking their communal yark-yark-yark. In the back of his mind, in that very last second before things fell apart for good, he thought, Wait, what’s got them all . . .

There was an immense explosion: not a boom but a ker-POW that was so violent, he felt the sound rebound and bounce and barrel its way around and over him. The blast echoed and caromed off the buildings. Gasping, his heart fluttering into his throat, he spun and looked north.

A pillar of smoke, a massive gray-black mushroom cloud, swelled and pillowed above the trees. Downslope, he could hear the other kids’ chatter suddenly cease. For a second, even the dogs fell silent, and he forget all about Mellie and her strange coded clicks.

Because the only thing out there worth blowing was the church. The church. Luke’s blood slushed. Cindi was on lookout, and Chad— and Weller had gone that way an hour ago; he’d taken off after . . . after . . .

“No.” It was a broken sound, hardly a word at all, and then he was stumbling into an awkward, spastic run, aware that Mellie was shouting after him. He heard the bang of a door, and saw Jasper, face chalk-white, stumbling out of the equipment shed. Other kids were rushing for and after him because he was the oldest and if he thought there was something out there worth seeing . . . “No, no. Cindi, Cindi! Tom!”

“What happened?” Jasper’s shout was a needle of sound. “What happened, what—”

All at once, the dogs started up again, but that steady yark-yarkyark was now a yammer: a frenzied, rapid-fire staccato, as clear as any alarm. The sound pierced the bright balloon of his panic—of Cindi Cindi Cindi TOM—and he skidded to a stop so quickly he almost tripped and fell to his knees. He turned, wondering what could possibly be more upsetting to the dogs than the bomb that had just destroyed the church and killed his friends.

From the east, still well beyond the staved-in barn, two horses bolted over the rise, scattering all the dogs but one, a blundering chocolate lab that just wasn’t quick enough. There was a high shriek as one horse plowed it under and then a second, longer scream as the horse’s legs tangled. Crashing to its knees, the horse turned a complete flip. Screaming, the boy—Luke thought from the cap of sandy hair that it might be a twelve-year-old named Colin—blasted over the horse’s head. The boy landed in a heap beyond his horse, which had already struggled up. Veering a sharp cut to the left, the other rider and horse only just missed the boy as they continued in their headlong crash down the hill.

What the hell? Colin was still on the snow, trying to wallow to his feet, but his horse was losing its head, panicking, rearing and plunging down. “Colin, get up! Look out!” Luke screamed as the boy only raised an arm. “Get up, run, ruh—”

The horse stabbed down, and Colin’s yell abruptly cut out.

No. Luke clapped both hands to his mouth to hold back the scream. Both Colin and the dog were ruby splotches, like what was left after you swatted bloated mosquitoes. He scrambled to higher ground, not much caring anymore if Mellie snagged him or not, wallowing uphill until he had a good view to the east, the way the lookouts had come, wondering what in hell had scared them.

And then he saw them, in the distance.

Monsters, heading their way.

“Get in the barn!” Spinning on his heels, Luke waved the kids back. “Get in the barn! Jasper, everybody, get in the barn, barricade the doors, go, go!”

He saw Jasper suddenly whirl in an about-face and streak for the corral. Other children, who’d been surging for him, abruptly changed course, only to pile into those just behind. The air prickled with panicky screams, and Luke could hear the horses in their stalls braying in alarm. Kids shot right and left, like a rack of billiard balls on the first break. Some—the littlest ones—fell, and Luke watched, horrified, as two other kids stampeded over a fallen boy until a third scooped the kid up on the fly. Some headed for the barn, while a ragged cluster scurried north, streaming past the equipment shed and on down the road toward the trees. This wasn’t a bad idea, but the forest was a good quarter mile distant and the kids would be caught out in the open, with no protection at all.

He dropped his arms, stopped shouting. Useless to try and herd or head them off, and no way to gather them all together. This was something they’d never practiced or prepared for.

But I can fight. Turning, he saw Mellie standing not thirty feet away. She faced east, watching that oncoming tide, her arms akimbo. Her .44 Mag gleamed in its holster. “Mellie, we have to unlock the guns! I need a gun!”

“Can’t. Weller’s got the keys.” After a pause. “Church made a hell of a bang.”

“You don’t have keys?” That couldn’t be right. He tried to think. Would she have them on her, or would she have left them back at the house? On her, he decided, somewhere. A pocket, in her coat, somewhere. But he couldn’t just take them. What was he supposed to do, knock her down? “Well . . . ,” he fumbled. The guns were in an old olive-drab trunk, secured with a padlock. “Then . . . then shoot the lock off !”

She didn’t look at him. “That only works in movies, Luke. You need bolt cutters.”

“Mellie, you have to have keys. Open the trunk.” When she didn’t turn, he snatched at her arm. “We have to fight.”

“No, we don’t. We can’t. Not against that many Chuckies. Go on, Luke. Get down to the barn. Keep everyone inside. I don’t want more kids to get hurt than absolutely necessary. Any who manage to get to the trees, we’ll gather later. They won’t get far.”

“Are you—” He would’ve said crazy, but the word evaporated in his mouth as her words finally registered. “Later.” He let her arm go. “What do you mean, gather them later?”

She didn’t answer but only stared at the advancing Chuckies. Given the shallowness of the snow, they were coming on pretty fast, but he had an idea of their numbers now. Maybe . . . thirty? Forty? Ten would’ve been too many. But what scared him more was how quiet they were. No shouts, no jungle screams. For an eerie second, he thought he might actually be looking at some kind of formation: armed Chuckies in front and beyond—