by Ilsa J. Bick
“Well, honey, I hope that’s not it.” Her breath rose in a tangle of mist that the breeze picked apart. But what did I see? What was that? Turning away from the house, she stared back down the hill at the lake. Just couldn’t put her finger on—
“Wait a minute.” She squinted against the yellow glare bouncing up from unbroken snow over icy water. I saw this. A feeling of unreality swept through her. It’s not the same perspective, but if that was the lake … “During the mind-jump, I saw the lake on my left. So that means I was coming from the west.” Her eyes widened. And I saw three kids, way ahead, running away …
“No, that’s not quite right. Push-push-push,” she whispered, her eyes watering against the light. “Go-go-go.” What did that mean? “Think it through, Alex, come on.”
First, she and the monster had jumped—no, no, been pulled—into someone, a boy. A Changed, brimming with the single-minded urgency and intensity of a pursuit. He’d been with that red storm, the push-push go-go. There’d been someone else, too, screaming: Let me go-go-go.
But then her perspective had shifted. I jumped ahead and into someone else, another boy. The feeling she’d gotten then was also different: not only the push-push go-go but a sense of being driven and pushed after two … no, three other Changed the way old-style cowboys might herd cattle. Two she’d seen pretty clearly: that lanky kid with the wild hair and a shorter, smaller …
“Oh my God,” she breathed. Alex, you idiot. That was Marley, which means the smaller kid has to be Ernie. “And that means those other Changed are all chasing—”
The afternoon cracked open with a shot.
68
“Hannah!” Chris beat the window with his fist. Below, on the snow and now much closer to the barn, the Changed were splitting up, five right, five left. Coming at them from both sides. He slammed the thick, double-paned glass again. “Hannah, Hannah!”
Stupid, useless, what are you doing? He had to get out of the room. His fingers fumbled with the window latch, but it wouldn’t budge, and a second later, when he saw the slot for a key, he understood why. “A lock?” Whoever had built this room really didn’t want anyone getting out. So, either break the window and clamber down that trellis, or kick open his door. Neither was great, but the window would be faster.
Scraping up his chair, Chris grabbed the legs, wound up, and swung. He felt the impact in his wrists as the high split-rail back banged glass before bouncing back. The panes were seamed with a sudden silver tracery of cracks, like a psychotic spider’s web. Roaring in frustration, he swung again. This time the panes shattered with a tremendous crash, the chair’s ears and top rail smashing through. Whipping up cloth napkins Hannah had used to cover his food, he wrapped his fists, knocked hanging daggers out of the way, and bellowed: “Hannah! Hannah, look out, look out! Isaac, Isaac!”
Across the snow, he saw that steady, deadly stream of Changed suddenly come to a dead stop. They were too far away for him to make out faces, but he could see when they twisted to look back at the house. Good, good! He’d slowed them down, at least for a second. Cupping his hands, he screamed: “Hannah, Hann—”
The barn’s west door suddenly swung open. A head appeared, a froth of white above broad shoulders. “Isaac!” Chris bawled. “Barricade the doors! There are ten, there are ten!”
The old man’s head jerked back as the barn door snapped shut hard enough for Chris to hear the faint clap and then its echo. Okay. He’d warned them. Now to help them. Crossing to the door, he hesitated, studying the jamb, that lock. God, a dead bolt? Whatever. Just do it. Backing up, he aimed his right shoulder, grabbed his right arm with his left, then charged. He hit the door hard enough to feel the impact in his teeth. His shoulder let out a bark of pain. The door, solid oak and stout, shivered, but there was no splinter or scream of wood. He hammered the door again, and a third time, a grunt jumping past his teeth. By the fourth time, the bark in his shoulder was a roar, and still the door held tight.
“Damn it.” Cold air gushed through the shattered window. His puffing breaths plumed as he planted his fists on his hips and tried thinking past the ache in his shoulder. Maybe have to climb out the window after all. That was when he noticed what he should have seen at the very beginning. This door locked from the outside but swung in.
“Hinges.” He spun back to the table. Hannah hadn’t given him a knife or fork, but … “There is no spoon,” he said, giddily, sweeping that up along with one of Hannah’s books. The spoon was heavy stainless steel and would break before it would bend. Wedging the handle under the hinge pin’s flattop, he beat it with the book’s spine. To his surprise, the pin let out a metallic screak after only a few blows and jumped a half inch from the knuckle. “Come on,” he grunted, beating the spoon. The pin hitched another half inch. “Come on, come—”
The unmistakable crackle of gunfire came through the broken window. He froze, heart thumping. Another shot. The distant bawl of cattle and bray of horses.
Shit. “Got to get out,” he said, using his fingers to pry the pin the rest of the way. The hinge uncoupled, and now he could see a gap between the top rail and frame. One more, then I can just tear it down. Dropping to a crouch, he braced his shoulder against the jamb, rocked the now nicked handle beneath the head of the middle pin. This time, there was more resistance from the weight of the door. His left hand ached from his death grip around the spoon; his right wrist was throbbing. The spoon had punched and then cut a crescent moon through the book’s clothbound cover and a quarter inch of pages. Thank God it wasn’t a paperback—and then he wondered if he wasn’t getting just a little hysterical. More spackles and muted pops of gunfire, and now he was talking to the pin: “Let go, let go, let—”
Shooting straight up from the middle hinge, the pin popped free to clatter to the floor. Shoving the spoon into a back pocket, Chris flung the book aside, then wrapped his hands around the edge of the door and put his weight into it. The butt hinge cried in a long, high squall before giving way all at once. Raking the door aside, he bulled into the hall.
His room was at one end. Two doors on his right, one on his left, and, a little beyond that, a short banister marking the head of the stairs. Wheeling around the newel post, he pounded downstairs. Through pebbled glass sidelights on either side of the front door, he could see a huge porch he hadn’t known was there because his room was at the back of the house. To his left was an enormous front room with several long benches that looked like some kind of meeting room. He spotted a swinging door at the far end. Jess’s house had a door just like that, between the kitchen and parlor.
Grab a knife. Sprinting across the front room, he straight-armed the push plate, banging the door aside. Maybe a poker from the woodstove.
The kitchen was on the southeast corner of the house, same as Chris’s room, and already going thick with shadows. Directly ahead were eight chairs ranged around the long oval of a butcher block pedestal table, draped with a light blue tablecloth and set for a meal, probably a late dinner for Jayden and Connor. An ornate, old-fashioned kerosene wick lantern with a frosted shade and green glass base stood in the center. To the right was a black cast-iron cookstove on a square of raised red block, with a box of oak splits, a pail for ash, a brush, and shovel. On the stove, a saucepan steamed. Three iron pots and two large skillets dangled from a potrack. Beyond the kitchen table were oak cupboards; a butcher block bristled with knives. The way out was a door with floral chintz to the left of an old-fashioned refrigerator.
Then he registered what he hadn’t a split second before. The room wasn’t toasty warm and it wasn’t freezing. But there was a lingering raft of cold air, as if someone had just gone out—
Or come in.
That also was when he noticed how the flowery curtains over that kitchen door … still swayed. Not a lot, but enough.
It dawned on him then. The kitchen was right below his room. Whenever Hannah worked in here, he heard her. So when he’d shouted his warning, he’d shown the Changed exactly
where, in which corner of the house, they should start looking.
A small shuffle.
Right behind him.
69
Rifle. Alex knew from that distinctive whipcrack. Close, coming from the west. Before the first echoes had died, she was pelting up the hill. “Penny, get in the house, get in the house!”
The smell was rolling from the woods, too: not only that familiar scent of cool shadows but a rancid fug of desperation. It’s Wolf, close enough to smell now. Wolf was in trouble, maybe hurt. She felt herself reaching out to him before she even realized what she was doing—and deep in her brain, the monster again shuddered to life, her thoughts slipping sideways. In an instant, she was both in her body and elsewhere, seeing through Wolf’s eyes: tangy fear in her mouth, sour sweat on her chest. Ahead, the house was coming together out of the trees, light winking off windows like beacons. Something heavy, the sack, tried to slip off her shoulder—
Only it’s not me. Her head was huge. Yet everything that was her felt very far away, like Alice shooting up after nibbling that Eat Me cake. Alex was in here and out there, with Wolf.
The air crackled with more gunfire. The sound socked her back into her own head. They’re heading straight for us. Her stomach double-clutched with dread. Move, move, move!
She sprinted for the house. Ahead, Penny and Bert were just scuttling inside, though Penny was awkward, slow. Darth grabbed the girl’s arm and reeled her in. As Alex tore up the last few steps, the big boy clamped a hand the size of a ham on her shoulder and heaved her the final ten feet. She gave a startled yelp as she hurtled past the threshold to crash onto hardwood.
“Wait!” Scrambling up, Alex wedged herself between the door and jamb before Darth could slam it shut. He might not understand, but speech was all she had. Even Darth would get her meaning. “They’re almost here! Those shots are close. Give Wolf a chance!” She could tell he didn’t want to do it, smell it fuming through his pores, but his arm relaxed.
A minute, maybe more like thirty seconds. She tossed a wild glance around the room, trying to figure out the best cover. This great room was sparsely furnished: fireplace and woodstove on a brick pedestal to the left, leather couch and two upholstered armchairs on an oval rug in the center to catch the view from that big picture window. Not enough to really barricade the door, and trying to take cover in this great room would be suicidal. That sofa wouldn’t stop a spitball. With that picture window, they’d be like fish in an aquarium.
Her eyes flitted past Penny, who’d retreated behind a long breakfast bar on which Alex had stashed the camp stove, Coleman lantern, and spare fuel canisters. The girl had the right idea. The kitchen was further back, and that window over the sink gave them a way out. Topple the refrigerator, and she could take cover there.
Second best would be up those stairs at the extreme right, which emptied into an open loft and then a short hall, down which was a bathroom and two bedrooms, one right, one left. Easier to defend, but just as easy to get themselves trapped.
Kitchen, then. It was closer and she liked the look of that back window more and more. Without a weapon, she couldn’t help defend the house anyway. She had a brief moment to wonder why she would help them altogether and then thought, Got a better chance with Wolf than the guys after him.
Steaming past Bert, who clutched a twelve-gauge but was otherwise rooted to the spot, she dashed into the kitchen. There was a freestanding refrigerator on the left, an old retro model, aqua and white with a chrome handle. She’d already searched inside and found only four toxic eggs and a gray-green jungle fuzz that the jar claimed once was mayonnaise. Now, squirming into the gap between the wall and fridge, she braced her back, tucked her knees, planted her feet, and gave the fridge a hard shove. The refrigerator lurched and then toppled, slamming down with a thunderous crash. From deep in its metal guts came the smash of glass and clang of shelves; a second later, the gassy, fecal gag of fungus and gooey dead chick.
“Penny, over here!” Springing for the breakfast bar, she grabbed the girl’s wrist. With a startled eep, Penny tried twisting away. “Stop it!” Alex panted, hauling the thrashing Penny the way she would a stubborn toddler. “You want to get shot? Get behind the refrigerator! Get—”
From across the room came the shriek of hinges. Marley blew through the front door on a blast of wintry air and a swirl of dreads. Swiveling, he socked his rifle home and got off another shot as Darth also opened up against the spak and crackle of more weapons’ fire.
Wolf, where’s Wolf? “Get down!” Shoving Penny behind the refrigerator, she ducked back into the great room. She heard the pock as a slug drilled into the heavy oak door and showered splinters. “Marley! Where’s—”
A second later and to her horror, she had her answer as the boys blundered up the steps. A lumpy sack hung over Wolf’s left shoulder. His right arm was wrapped around Ernie. As the two staggered inside on a fresh fusillade of snaps, the drone of bullets whirring overhead, she got a good look. Wolf’s face was whiter than bleached linen.
And covered in blood.
70
Chris didn’t turn. He barely thought. Maybe his mind had already ticked through the math and realized that facing whatever lay behind would only waste time—or make him freeze.
Chris dodged right. Out of his left ear, he heard a quick inhale, the sudden stomp of a boot; sensed something rushing in from the side. A hand whisked through his hair. Ducking, Chris raked the first chair he came to, flinging it without turning around. He heard the clatter of wood on the floor and then the stutter of boots as whatever was back there bumbled into the chair. But whoever—whatever—it was didn’t fall. A second later, a huge hand snatched at his neck, got a fistful of shirt collar and the tight silk thermal underneath, and twisted.
Suddenly, his breath was gone. His heart began to pound as his vision reddened, first with panic and then lack of air. Flailing like a fish hopelessly snagged on a line it could not break, he got his hands up, but the silk thermal was so tight, he couldn’t hook his fingers. His flannel shirt ripped; buttons popped free, pattering to the floor like jumping beans. Yet the strong silk weave only grew tauter and tighter. Whatever held him was shaking him now, like a puppet. Chris heard, but only dimly, the thump and thud of his boots skating over the floor. His knees buckled; Chris felt himself falling; felt the impact of the table against his forehead as he pitched forward. Something, a lot of somethings, bounced to the floor and smashed. Plates, a glass … Chris didn’t know. Although his hips and legs were on the floor, his chest wasn’t flat. The hardwood was still a half foot from his nose because the Changed was holding him up by that noose of silk, suspending his head and chest to allow gravity to do its thing. The Changed would let Chris’s own weight kill him, bit by bit.
What happened next was an accident.
Chris’s right hand closed over something. He registered that it was sharp, and his last chance.
Chris’s fingers clutched that dagger of glass, and struck.
71
“No!” Squirting past Bert, Alex made a diving grab for Wolf as Darth and Marley muscled the door closed. Splashes of blood painted Wolf’s face and hands and the wolf skin knotted around his neck. That lumpy sack he’d slung over his shoulder was sodden.
No. For one second—a single terrified moment—her stupid, stupid heart turned over. No, you can’t die, Wolf, you can’t die!
Then she realized that the blood wasn’t his.
Ernie’s face was gray, his lips dusky. To either side of his piggy little nose, his small pellet-gray eyes rolled. His hands clutched his soupy middle. From the strong stink of iron and the liquid slop as Wolf tore open the boy’s jacket, she already had a pretty good idea of just how bad this was.
Ernie’s abdomen was awash in gore. Some had already clotted into grape-jelly goo. Most of it was only tacky and a lot of it fresh. That was because the rips in his abdomen were ragged, wicked, and very deep: gaping wounds that began just beneath his left rib cage to sl
ash through skin and belly fat and muscle. Bluing bags of wormy intestines bulged from three of the tears. The smell was gagging, round and thick and fecal. Eyeing the slow eel of a length of intestine, Alex saw how it was already beginning to bloat. She felt the knot in the pit of her gut try to urp its way into her throat.
Probably hooked him first, then ripped. Teeth and nails, she guessed, which meant that Wolf’s group had gotten into it with that pack on their heels. She watched as a bubbler of blood surged in a bright fresh fountain. Tagged an artery, for sure. Well, this kid wouldn’t have to worry about getting an infection from all that torn bowel. The bowl of his belly was overflowing, his lips paling as his arteries emptied. A clammy sweat filmed his face and neck, and the boy was starting to shudder with shock.
Her eyes tracked to that lumpy, blood-soaked sack. From the smell, the body inside was a man’s this time, and there was a lot of blood. But no guts. Which was wrong. From experience, she knew that Wolf and his crew liked liver, loved the heart, tolerated kidneys, didn’t much care for tripe. Much more to the point, though, Wolf never butchered or sank his teeth into a kill until he and his crew made it to safety. She understood why. Once upon a time and in a different life, her dad always hung their food well off the ground in a bear bag, same as Wolf and his crew secured their supplies in that stuff sack. When you were on the trail, you didn’t want unwelcome visitors making off with your stash. (Why more Changed didn’t flock to Wolf’s little hideaway, like ants to spilled sugar, she didn’t know. They had to smell the meat. She sure did.)
But the body in that sack, this man, was in pieces. He was missing several more, and here was Ernie, ripped to shreds, and other Changed out for Wolf’s blood.
“You stole it from them? They caught you stealing?” And she’d been worried he was hurt? Wolf was tight-lipped, ashen, but his dark eyes—Chris’s eyes—blazed. Bert, Ernie’s brother, was hustling across the great room with his shotgun in one hand and her medic’s pack swinging from the other. From the corner of her eye, she saw Darth lurch from the door, heading past the window for the far side of the room in an awkward crouch. For a fraction of a second, she almost bawled, Get down, you idiot! Darth would be as tempting a target as a metal duck in a midway: Three hits, and the little lady gets a stuffed pig. Instead, she snatched her medic’s pack from Bert and shouted, “Wolf, what do you expect me to do? I can’t fix—”
