Monsters (Ashes Trilogy 3)

Pulling Buck close, she crouched in a drift of old snow behind the last detached garage on the left and at the very edge of the alley. Two choices: the village hall or the church. Keep to the woods, and she and the wolfdog had a much better chance of slipping inside the church. They were ringing the bell, too. Which meant the tower was open. Get up high, scope things out, see where Peter and Wolf and Penny are in relationship to Finn. She might even spot Chris. The Uzi had a scope. Wait, could she shoot Finn? Oh, get real, honey. She wasn’t a sniper. She didn’t know if the Uzi even had the range. Besides—she felt her chest squeeze down—what would happen if Finn died? With all those Changed, she bet: nothing very good.

“They’ll be off the leash. They’ll go out of control.” When the wolfdog let out a soft whimper, she stroked his ears. “I know. I smell them, too.” The Changed’s rank fog was getting stronger by the second. “I hear you, boy, we’re going.”

As she scurried past the village hall, she caught a strange odor: just the slightest curl, like a finger of spiced smoke dissipating on a strong breeze. The spice made her falter. No. She battened down on the association before the grief could wind itself up and undo her. Enough, Alex. She centered herself, focused on the beat of her heart. You’re upset; it’s your imagination. You want it to be Tom. “Get through this, and you can cry later,” she muttered.

She took another, deliberate inhale. This time, there was no spice, no phantom of Tom. What she got was diesel fuel and scorched . . . metal? Like a blackened can of beans set to heat in a campfire. Yet the smell was also oddly chemical: gunpowder and . . . She flashed to a summer’s afternoon: her dad, cursing, aiming a fire extinguisher. The chalky chemical gush, and her mother fretting about how they’d have to wear masks to clean up the mess: There’s the phosphoric acid to worry about.

Then the village hall was behind her, and she and the wolfdog were darting into the woods around the rectory. After slipping in the side door, she and Buck cowered on the landing, sniffing and listening. Something awful had gone down in the sanctuary and the basement, too. Her mouth puckered at the tang of cold blood and spent gunpowder. The black maw of the basement door exhaled mangled flesh and sweat and fear and a Changed, for sure, an eye-watering reek of stewed, smooshed raccoon.

Dusty bolts of colored light streamed through the stained rosette window at the east end of the church. The pews were empty, although the smell of people and a few spent candles lingered. . . . Wait a minute. Gathering more air into her mouth, she tongued the aroma, then gasped. “Oh God. Acne . . . Ben?” He’d come back to Rule after all. And died here, in the church. The aroma was . . . violent. Wreathed in a mélange of bleach and pine tar, Ben’s smell was everywhere, as if they’d scrubbed and scrubbed, knowing that nothing could erase the stink of this horrific death. The altar cloth was gone, as was the platform’s carpet. Someone had tried scrubbing Ben’s blood from the wall where the cross still hung, but too late. The sight of those ghostly, purple splashes drew a cold finger down her neck. How anyone could still worship here, she couldn’t imagine.

More blood in the vestibule, worked into stony crevices. She couldn’t tell whose, and she had no time to worry the smells. The bell tower door was open. No one up there she could suss out, although the reek of Finn’s Changed cascaded in a waterfall of cold air. The church doors were also slightly ajar, and through the crack, she saw them, as well as Finn’s men and horses, streaming into the square.

Sprinting up the tower’s circular steps with Buck on her heels, his nails clicking on stone, Alex vaulted into a short, stone passageway. Light streamed in through rectangular slots in the wall that reminded her of a castle’s arrow loops, only much wider. From the square, she caught the clop of horses, a low muttering from people, but no screams. Which was strange: with all those Changed, she’d expected hysteria and a fight. Yet there was no gunfire at all, here or north now either. Ahead, she spotted ropes and a wood console, the kind bell chimers used to play melodies. One rope dangled, probably attached to that working bell.

She was so intent on getting a look at the square that she’d already turned aside before her brain processed what she’d seen: a bulky rectangle, in shadow, fixed to the lower left corner of that carillon console.

Oh. Her eyes ticked back. Shit.

A bomb.

118

“What?” Greg heard Chris snap into his walkie-talkie. His voice was very loud in the hush; most kids had stopped crying. Sarah had gathered the youngest into a solemn knot to wait until they were ready to move out. On the bed of Jayden’s wagon, a blood-spattered Kincaid was tending to a boy whose arm had been broken by a bat. They’d been lucky, though. The survivors mostly had bumps, scrapes, cuts, bruises. Except for Ghost, whose right ear was ripped off by a Changed, the dogs had made out just fine.

Well. Greg tossed a look toward the back of the wagon train. Almost all the dogs. Sitting cross-legged on the ground, Ellie looked like a kid whose parents were just killed in a hit-and-run. Not far from the truth, what with Tom staying behind. Forefinger corking her mouth, the little girl—Dee?—leaned against Ellie while Ghost, a blotchy bandage wound around his ruined ear in a lopsided turban, sprawled by Ellie’s side. Jet and Daisy sat nearby.

“What’s that?” Chris said. Normally, they used coded breaks, but Pru had come through in an excited sputter of static. So either the message was complicated or Pru was in a big hurry. Plugging an ear with a pinky, Chris walked a short distance away from Ellie and the dogs and held the walkie up to the other ear. “Say again, Pru.”

Can you hear me now? And then Greg thought, That’s not even remotely funny. Clamping a bloodstained parka with an elbow, he bent, hooked the girl who’d been driving the supply wagon under the arms, then glanced up at Jayden, who had the legs. When Jayden nodded, they hefted the body, sidestepped a dead Changed boy with only a nubbin of a nose, and laid the girl out alongside the others. Counting Aidan, Sam, and Lucian—all of whom had booked—they’d lost nine kids total. Not a disaster, but one kid was too many. They were also down the two horses Aidan and Sam used to get away.

Oh, but you guys had better keep away from us, because I will shoot you. Greg really meant that, too. Shaking out the parka, he draped it over the girl’s head and shoulders. There, that was the last. Once they rearranged the supplies, they’d load the dead, including Mina, and move out. The idea of traveling a full day with the dead sent shivers up his spine. They couldn’t waste time burning the bodies here, though. The smell would give away their position. If the gunfire hasn’t already. But no one other than Chris had come storming up the road, and he’d said Finn was close but not yet in Rule.