Monsters: The Ashes Trilogy

by Ilsa J. Bick

  Squared in his fighting stance, Davey—a Changed boy Peter hadn’t seen in more than two weeks—only waited. He wore camo-whites. His leather control collar was a black cut across his throat, and there was something terribly wrong with his eyes. At first, Peter thought that Davey had been blinded, the eyeballs scooped out, leaving only scarlet sockets. Then he realized that the whites of Davey’s eyes were a deep, dark bloodred.

  Jug Ears: What happens to them? Their eyes?

  “No.” The word foamed in a snarl from Peter’s lips. “No, he’s mine. Lang’s—” Uncoiling, Peter sprang. At the same instant, Davey leapt, matching Peter move for move in an eerie, silent pas de deux. They crashed together in midair, then tumbled to the snow in a thrashing tangle. Peter’s fists bunched in the boy’s camo-whites as Davey’s hands slipped and slid over Peter’s skin. Planting both feet in the boy’s chest, Peter bucked him up and over in a somersault. Floundering in the deep snow, Peter got over onto his left side just in time to see Davey somehow tuck, hit, tumble—and set his feet with the nimbleness of an acrobat. In a split second, the boy was steaming over the snow. Turning, Peter swam to his hands and knees, but not fast enough to avoid Davey, who vaulted onto his back. A second later, Peter’s right shoulder exploded with pain.

  “Aahh!” Now this hurt. Rearing, Peter flailed, spinning a mad circle around and around. Clinging like a wolf latched onto prey, Davey readjusted his jaws and sawed his teeth deeper into muscle. Peter felt the spurt of blood down his back. Reaching around, he clawed wildly for the boy’s face, then thought, I’m heavier. Throwing himself straight back, Peter dropped to the snow. He felt the boy’s grip loosen; that maddening grind of teeth and jaws suddenly ceased. Bellowing with both pain and rage, Peter kicked up, twisted, got a fist in Davey’s hair, cocked the other for a punch—

  An orange-red blaze of heat detonated in his head, an immense thunderclap like a pillowing wave of napalm. Peter wailed in agony as another shock wave blasted him back. Still screaming, he toppled. The pain was molten and all-consuming. Through the clamor, he just made out a voice he knew too well: “All right, boy-o. Let’s everybody cool down.”

  As suddenly as the pain swept through, it evaporated, as if someone had flicked a hidden switch. Wallowing in snow, Peter turned a look to where Finn stood, massive and compact, a monolith in a uniform as black as a crow’s wing. A long, curved parang hung in a scabbard from his left hip. At his right rested his pearl-handled Colt. Flanking him were two Changed girls, also in camo-whites, and their eyes were like Davey’s: bloodred pools.

  “Ease down, boy-o,” Finn said.

  “No, no!” Peter rolled to all fours, like a seething animal. “Let me finish!”

  “And you will, but not today or with Davey. Unless you want a repeat?”

  It was a question that required no response. Peter spat a bullet of blood. “How did you do that?”

  “Oh, it’s complicated. Come on, on your feet. We’re all friends here.”

  “I’m not your friend.” Blood from his torn shoulder spilled to the small of his back and leaked along his right arm to drip from the knob of his elbow and melt into the snow. The red on white was, eerily, like the girls’ eyes set against the white ovals of their faces, and Davey’s—and, probably, his own. “I’m not his. I’m not theirs.”

  “But you are mine.” Finn’s fissured face didn’t crack a grin. “I’m your world, Peter. Look at yourself. Naked as a jay but not cold, are you? Don’t need to sleep?”

  “No. But I dream.” To his left he saw Lang, coughing, struggle to a sit. Already on his feet, Davey slid to Finn’s right. Peter’s blood was smeared over Davey’s mouth in a drippy clown’s grin. “With my eyes wide open,” Peter said. “Daymares.”

  “Ah, yes, the flashbacks. Those’ll wear off. They’re a … glitch.”

  “You drugged me from the beginning, didn’t you? When I was in the infirmary and after I broke down and ate …” He clamped off the rest. “Will it wear off?”

  “Possibly, but I sincerely hope not. The withdrawal’s a bitch. But you were too good a specimen to pass up. Your brain is already different. We know because you’re still alive.” Finn regarded him with the kind of curiosity reserved for a new and fascinating lab specimen. “Do you really want this to wear off, Peter? To end?”

  “I—I,” he began, and stopped. Weren’t those two different questions? Being with Finn, yeah, he wanted out. Yet riding that electric red swoon was like nothing he’d ever felt. And really, had that been so bad? No. I want that feeling back. I’m new, different, better than I was, but if I can hang on to part of who I was, maybe I can use this somehow. As for the winged thing muttering its dark language … he could live with that.

  Which perhaps proved that he really was insane and never coming back, no matter what. Maybe Simon had been right: You were lost the moment you decided the Zone was a good idea.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “Not surprised. Great high, isn’t it? Betcha that shoulder isn’t too happy, but you’ll muscle through. And all that energy? Maaania?” Finn waggled his thick eyebrows, which were as white as his squarecut hair. “You’re not indestructible, but you are different. Tell me: say you killed Lang, what was supposed to happen next? Where could you run?”

  Peter realized that he hadn’t thought that far ahead. Strange, too, how that electric red swoon was guttering. Already, he could feel his body yammering after it, craving the rush.

  There is no going back to Rule, or even Chris. All I can do is press my face against the window. I’m an exile, an Azazel: the red heifer that bears all sins, sent to wander the desert. Considering his eyes, that was apt.

  “You’ve come too far to turn back,” Finn said, as if Peter had spoken aloud. “And do you know why? Because you chose to live. To survive, whatever the cost.”

  “Chose?” There was no choice involved. Finn had broken him. “You fed me a drug, locked me in a cage, made me fight, wouldn’t give me water or f-food …” His tongue stumbled.

  “You chose to fight, to eat. You broke yourself, Peter, because of the compromises you’re willing to make and the rules you’re willing to break to stay alive. And don’t you see? You are the Changed.”

  “No.” There had to be a way of coming out the other end of this. “What do you want? If I was an experiment, if they are …” He jerked his head at the red-eyed horrors. “What now?”

  “Depends. What would you like?”

  Revenge. Because what the hell? He was already lost. “I want what’s coming to me.” He pointed a dripping finger at Lang. “You’ve got me, but I want him.”

  “In your dreams.” Snuffling, Lang spat out a jellied clot.

  “How about a trade?” Finn said. “I give you something, you give me something.”

  “What?” Startled, Lang looked up, eyes wide above a crimson bib. “Boss?”

  “A trade?” Peter cawed a harsh laugh. “What’s left that I could have or give?”

  “A few things,” Finn said. “Depends on how badly you want Lang, I guess.”

  “What?” Hand drifting for his pistol, Lang backed up a step. “This wasn’t the deal.”

  “Well”—Finn’s black eyes flicked toward Davey—“deals meant to be broken and all.”

  “I don’t think so,” Lang began, as Davey stiffened like a dog catching a new scent. In the blink of an eye, both girls swiveled in an eerie, silent synchrony toward Lang.

  “How are you doing that?” Peter asked, sharply—just as he realized something else. At the moment the Changed reacted to Finn, that electric red rush also thrummed through his brain, but it was much more muted now, only a tingle. His thoughts were still clear. It’s like I’m picking up only the overflow.

  “Oh, trial and error.” Finn’s mouth stretched in a death-head’s grin. “I’ve been at this awhile, for decades, and well before the world did me the immense favor of giving us the Chuckies.”

  As if suddenly released from whatever held them in che
ck, the girls charged. They went so fast that Lang never cleared his weapon. In a flash, the first girl head-butted the old man to the snow as the other whipped her knife to his throat.

  How is he doing this? Peter watched as one of the girls confiscated Lang’s pistol. “Is this … telepathy?”

  “Not entirely,” Finn said. “At least, not the way books and movies would have you believe.”

  “B-B-Boss!” Lang brayed, eyes round as moons as he craned over the girl’s blade. “I’ve been loyal! We had a deal.”

  “I—” Finn held up a finger as the walkie-talkie, always clipped to his hip, chirped. “Hold that thought, would you, Lang? Little busy here.”

  “But boss!”

  “Shh.” Finn shushed the other man as if chiding a two-year-old: Now, Johnny, no candy before supper. “Don’t piss me off, Lang.”

  The code was Morse with something else Peter didn’t understand. He caught a t and w, maybe an r. He watched Finn acknowledge: break-break.

  “And where were we? Oh yes, telepathy. Well, it’s nothing supernatural, boy-o. You’ve got the ability. We all do. Think of ecstatic experiences, how people speak in tongues or crave to let Jeeesus”—Finn sang it like a tent preacher—“into their hearts. People love that expansive, bigger-than-me feeling. It’s why people have been mixing potions and using psychedelics for centuries since Og wondered about the stars. My particular favorites are those found in the writings of the Hindus: Vedas devoted to decoctions and hallucinogenic elixirs derived from a very particular, very special family of mushroom that not only allowed for communication with the divine but conferred immortality and brought the dead back to life. But read any religious text and you’ll find that all the greats—Shiva, Vishnu, Moses, Ezekiel, Jeeesus—get high, see visions, come back from the underworld or the Land of the Dead … and they all hear that still, small voice.”

  Chris. Peter remembered how his friend suddenly appeared … and that clear, calm voice. So what did I hear? Who? A horrible new thought: God, what if that was Finn? “But hearing … well, God … that’s not communication.”

  “Ah, boy-o, but it’s a beginning.” Finn tapped a finger to his temple. “All this suggests multiple modalities through which the brain can be rewired to receive and issue commands. We know that not only is the brain hardwired to seek the mystical, we can recreate the experience. Goose that temporal lobe with an electrode in precisely the right spot, spark it just so—and you, too, can have an out-of-body experience. The potential’s there, except we’ve let it go fallow, using speech instead. Yet now, we have the Changed, who do not speak but still act together and clearly communicate with one another.” Finn favored Davey with the look of a proud dad whose kid had just won the hundred in ten seconds flat. “What makes you believe that the Changed can’t access senses and abilities you’ve let atrophy, and that we—well, I—can’t alter the chemical mix to allow for new possibilities? You’re not the only one whose brain is different, boy-o.”

  Or who’s been fed a drug. And what did Finn mean by not the only one? Was Finn referring only to the Changed? Or was Finn talking about himself?

  My God, is Finn different? Has he been like the Changed in this way for years now and only waiting to find people like him?

  Or had Finn given himself the same drug he’d used on Peter and Davey and these girls? History was littered with examples of doctors and scientists experimenting on themselves first.

  “You can’t have figured all this out just now,” Peter said.

  “Of course not. I told you, Peter.” Finn arranged his fingers in a professorial steeple. “I experiment. I have always experimented. And I infer, I deduce. Think of how much more efficient an army might be if they moved to a single purpose. If commands did not rely on only one sensory modality or communications channel. There are no miracles, boy-o, only things we can’t explain and abilities we don’t know how to exploit, switches we can’t throw … until we can and do.”

  The idea—the image of Finn marshaling an army of Changed—stilled his blood. And he said decades. Finn was in Vietnam; maybe he was experimenting back then, too, the way the military did with LSD and sarin and other drugs. So if Finn had been at this awhile, he just might succeed. The Changed were his happy accident, a stroke of very good luck and serendipity. A Eureka moment.

  I must be the same thing. I didn’t die or Change, and I should have. All the Spared—Chris, Alex, Sarah, Greg, me—we’re specimens.

  “What do you want?” It finally hit him that he was completely naked, in the snow, having a conversation with a lunatic. The ache in his shoulder had dulled to a grumble, and the pain in his head was only a memory. He hugged his arms to his chest, more from habit than because he was cold. Could you fake your way to being human again? “You’ve taken everything else. You won’t even let me die.”

  “That’s not true. You wouldn’t let yourself die. Oh, wait.” Finn did a mock Homer Simpson slap. “Doh. You mean, not letting you hang yourself? You weren’t in your right mind, but if you’re really hot to finish the job, you’ve got a knife. Go ahead, slit your throat. Stab yourself in the heart. Dig out your eyes for all I care.”

  Choices that were no choices: Finn excelled at this. “What do you want?” he repeated.

  And so Finn told him.

  What bothered Peter most was he could muster only a small flower of outrage. Yet as he listened, this also answered a very important question. Finn had to ask. He can’t read my mind, but only influence it. Peter recalled the explosion in his head, and the ecstasy of the red swoon. He can give pain and pleasure. Which was much less than Finn managed with Davey and the other Changed. So what did that mean?

  “No,” he said when Finn was done.

  “Then you guarantee extermination,” Finn said. “You know they return to the familiar, and the clock is ticking, boy-o. Less than two months to go, right?”

  How does he know that? If Finn couldn’t read Peter’s mind, then the old man must’ve heard rumors, or maybe had spies in Rule all along. Instead of answering the question, he said, “Why would I agree?”

  “Because it’s a question of the lesser evil. It’s a way out.”

  “Way out?” Now he did laugh. “How?”

  “You need me to spell this out? You’re a smart college boy. Michigan Tech, right? Oh, but you didn’t graduate, that’s right. A semester shy, as I recall, because of that little”—Finn wiggled his fingers—“accident. But you studied this phenomenon, did field research on the wolves of Isle Royale?”

  “Yes.” God, Finn did know all about him. “Genetic rescue in captive populations.”

  “So, think of what I offer, Peter: protection, enough diversity to keep the population humming along, food.” He did Peter the favor of not smiling. “Think of me as providing genetic rescue.”

  “But you’re not using all the Changed the way you have Davey and these girls. What about the ones in the prison house? I recognize a few. What are you going to do, Finn?”

  “I might not have to do much at all. You know history, Peter. Rome wasn’t built in a day, but it did fall in three. Rule’s like that. With the mine gone, no supplies, and everyone so old, the village will eat itself alive, like a cancer, inside and out. Remember, Chuckies return to the familiar. So just think what’s heading their way as we speak.”

  The idea of even a few Changed actually making it back to the village sent a slow shudder up his spine. He knew Finn had kids from Rule; he’d recognized the doe-eyed Kate Landry and burly Lee Travers. And if Finn’s gathering Changed like Kate and Lee and the rest are his new army … It would be like the last emperor of Rome watching the Visigoths boil through the city’s Salarian Gate to storm the Seven Hills.

  “I give it”—Finn tipped his wrist to check a phantom watch—“oh, another day or two. Or the prodigals might already be there, Peter. So what do you imagine will happen?”

  It was on the tip of his tongue to say that the Council couldn’t fall and Chris would find a way. But C
hris came in a vision. Forget the drug. Something’s happened to him and in Rule; I know it. Finn is too confident. The hurt—the idea that Chris really might be dead—was a barb of grief in his heart. Yet he grabbed hold, pulled it closer, deeper, wanting the pain, wishing for the hurt. If I know what grief is, there’s a chance I might come out the other side.

  “Why do you hate Rule so much?” he asked. “Who are you, Finn?”

  “I am what I am.” Finn spread his hands. “And mine is the way, boy-o.”

  No, but you are the only way left. He closed his eyes not so much against Finn but the sudden icy tide that passed for his blood. In his brain, he could feel the winged thing’s claws hook a little more firmly. He almost wished for the bells again. Or Simon. Then he would be only insane and have an excuse.

  “All right.” He opened his eyes. “But I want to be there. I need your word.”

  “Scout’s honor. Now, whaddaya say we get you inside before you lose a foot?” Finn tipped him a wink. “Or something more vital that a healthy young buck like you would be sorry to see go? Oh, but wait.” Finn did his mock head-slap. “We forgot Lang. You still want him?”

  “Yes.” Peter felt the winged thing shift. “You know what they say about revenge served cold.”

  “No!” Lang reached for Finn like a bawling baby. “Boss, no, I’m your man!”

  “Plenty more old farts where you came from, too.” There was a scrape of keen steel on leather as Finn unsheathed his parang. “Who’s hungry?”

  PART FOUR:

  TRIALS BY FIRE, AND ICE

  55

  “Think you can leave me?” His father’s voice was a roar that carried from the downstairs kitchen like a megaphone blast. There was a very loud bang of metal on wood, the chatter of dishes, and then a muffled shriek from Deidre, his father’s girlfriend of the moment. “Think I don’t got eyes?” his father raged.

  I don’t hear this. Shivering under the dark dome of his blanket, Chris screwed his eyes tight, tight! He clapped his hands over his ears. This is just a bad dream—