Monsters (Ashes Trilogy 3)

You can’t worry about that. Come on, think of something, a plan B . Except she didn’t have one, and with those sooty tracks, she was leading them right to her. When they caught up, she wouldn’t be able to fight for long. She was tiring fast. Snow sucked and grabbed her calves. Her thighs were lead, and she was battling not only snow and gnarled overgrowth that snatched at her pants and parka but days without proper food.

Keep going, don’t stop. Plowing through a whippy tangle of branches, she heard the crackle and pop, felt them pluck and tear at her hair. To her right, she saw a snare flash past. Crossing a trapline. One look, and that would clinch it, too. They’ll know the Changed didn’t set them. Might even give the man in black ideas. He would be curious: why hadn’t the Changed eaten her yet? That would make him all the more interested in Wolf: a Changed boy who protects a pregnant girl and keeps another, not Changed, for . . . a pet? No, a friend. Maybe, in Wolf ’s mind, she was even more.

A faint aroma of human skin, horse sweat, and toe fungus drifted in with the smoke. Men, on their way. How many? Couldn’t tell. The Changed boy was big trouble, too, but her nose hadn’t found him yet.

In fifty feet, she saw the slight break in the trees, felt her heart give a mighty thump of relief. Almost there. A few seconds later, she spotted four ratty boards nailed to the trunk of a towering oak. To the left and behind the oak was the corkscrew of a red pine. Not an option. But to the right grew a bristle of small, immature hemlock, and just beyond reared a huge, bedraggled white spruce, with low-hanging boughs still heavy with snow. Eyeing the spruce, the glimmer of an idea forming, she thought, Wait a second.

Her original plan had been simple. Thirty feet above, seated in its V, was the old tree house. Other than a slight warp in the boards and slivers of daylight, the platform was solid. So, get up there, try not to get shot, maybe even go higher or shimmy out on a long stout branch, drop to the snow well away from the tree, and keep running while they tried to figure out where she’d got to. Now, though, there was that spruce . . .

At the oak, she wrapped both hands around the lowest board and tugged. Black with mildew, the swollen board might have broken in summer, but the winter had iced it in place. Clambering up, she found the same in the second and third boards. She might be able to sell this without it, but a broken board added that extra touch that made her look like easy pickings, a scared little girl out of options.

And never mind that I am. Jumping to the snow, she backed up, eyed the trunk, then figured screw it. If it didn’t work the first time, she wouldn’t try again. Cranking up her right leg, she turned her hip, and pistoned up and out in a swift, hard kick. She felt the bam of the impact against the sole of her boot. To her amazement, neither her foot nor ankle broke. It didn’t even hurt that much. With a crisp snap, the board sheared in a ragged split at the nailhead.

Excellent. Fishing the splintered fragment from the snow, she positioned it close to the trunk. Then she dropped to the snow and churned her arms and legs. There. Shaking snow from her hair, she picked herself up. If that didn’t look as if she’d tried climbing up into the tree house but then fallen to the snow when the board broke, she didn’t know what would.

Okay, now show them panic. Thrashing through unbroken snow, she attacked that densely packed hemlock, breaking branches, sending a shower of green growth to the snow. Anyone looking would see that this was one scared little bunny rabbit of a girl, so freaked out she tried running straight through the trees before turning back. A moron could figure this out.

Floundering for the drooping, heavy-limbed spruce, she swam beneath the boughs and through mounded snow into a fragrant cave. Most of the light was blocked by the low-slung bell of limbs. The air was a little warmer here, the ground matted with dead brown needles. Dropping to her rump, she shucked the pack and pushed it far back, close to the trunk. Stripping off her soot-stained boots, she thought about it a second and then peeled and stuffed her socks inside. Socks would protect her feet from spruce needles and the cold but slow her down, and she sensed she would have only one chance to make this work. Squaring the boots beneath a dense, snow-matted bough, she wiggled out of the cave. Dancing back, bare feet already yammering that they really didn’t appreciate this, she eyed the gap between the boughs and the snow line. The toes of her boots were just visible.

Okay, this would have to do. If she was lucky, it would look to the guys on her tail as if she’d first tried the tree house, panicked when the board broke, and then tried running through the hemlocks before giving up and ducking to hide like an ostrich under the spruce.

Diving back into her cave, she squirmed out of her grimy but still mostly white parka, draped the jacket over her head, eased down, and tucked herself into a crouch. Her calves would complain soon. That might be a relief since her feet were really nagging, the toes singing with the cold. Yet pain was good, pain kept her sharp. A passing glance, and her parka should look like heaped snow. The boots were what she wanted them to see. As for what happened after that . . . she hadn’t quite worked that out. The flare gun was too loud. The tanto? Long blade, better reach, but what good was a knife in a gunfight?

The crackle of a breaking branch made her heart skip. To her left, the human stink was much stronger and . . .

Oh no no no. The hairs along her neck bristled at another aroma drifting in from her right. This was much more distant, but the chemotherapy tang, cisplatin wreathed in rot, was unmistakable.

A Changed, probably that boy. They’re coming at me from both directions.

She wet her lips. She couldn’t get out of this. But if she could get a gun, give them a fight . . . Can’t let them take me. Using her fingers, she eased her parka up until she got a small sliver of daylight. They’ll turn me into Peter. Or worse. If the red storm was any indication, the man in black would feel how she was different, and then there was just no telling. With her luck, he’d hack open her skull and try to figure out what made the monster tick. If he was really good and knew what he was doing, that wouldn’t kill her either. The brain felt no pain. Once through the skull and dura, that red storm could flay and probe every cranny, every crevice, right down to the monster.

A thump, the squeal of snow to her left. Boots. Big guy. Spokes of hazy late-afternoon sun jabbed thick forest canopy. Through that narrow sliver, she saw white snow, a screen of hemlock, and the tall oak beyond that. Another thump—

A man passed in and then out of a shaft of sunlight. His white and gray hooded snowsuit was fringed, a fancy 3-D jacket with strips of fabric designed to look and flutter like leaves. When he stood absolutely still, she almost lost him in the trees. Light winked from his scoped rifle. His head bowed to study her trail. When he looked up, she saw him train a long look at the oak tree.