Monsters: The Ashes Trilogy

by Ilsa J. Bick

  A punch of panic stole her breath. Instead of Eli, it was the people-eater, hair streaming, face going white with cold, and only feet away. No! Stifling a scream, she stroked awkwardly, laying down distance, hoping that not even a hungry people-eater would be crazy enough to go after her now. For the moment, he only seemed confused and in shock like her, and that might give her time. Directly ahead, she spotted the ice raft rocking in the turbulence. To her dismay, the floe was moving away, dragged by the current, propelled by the chop and churn.

  Maybe the ice shelf? No, no good. The people-eaters were there. So what was her choice? To tread water and hope help would come? How long would it take her to freeze to death, or drown? I’m small, I don’t weigh very much. Maybe not long at all then. Ellie turned a wild half-circle, looking for something to grab, keep herself afloat. And where’s Roc, where’s Eli? They must be trapped under the ice; Eli might be drowning right now! No, no! She squeezed her eyes tight against the image of poor Eli, pounding ice with his fist, big shivery bubbles boiling from his mouth. Or worse yet, Eli, too weak to swim, sinking as blood smoked from his belly, with Roc locked in his arms. I should get them, I should dive, I should try! He would do it for her.

  “I can’t, I can’t.” Her voice was squeaky and thin as a little mouse’s. She knew how to swim okay—dead man’s float, sidestroke, a floppy kind of crawl where she always got water up her nose—but she wasn’t great in the water. The cold blasted her face, leeched away what little warmth she had left. Her arms and legs were so heavy. Her boots had instantly filled with water, and her parka was bloated. Treading water now was like trying to run in concrete. Eli, Eli, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

  Turning again, she spotted the ice shelf, a jagged white margin that seemed very far away. She’d expected to see the girl in the green scarf, but Lena was gone. She had to try. If she could battle her way to the stable shelf, she might be able to hold on and help her dog, too. For how long she could do either, she didn’t know, but anything was better than just drowning.

  She flopped in an awkward, spastic splash that only sucked more energy and got her no closer to safety. The lake’s fingers, inky and long, wrapped around her ankles and tugged, trying to pull her under, kill her. Everything hurt. Her hands, her feet, her face were throbbing. The cold hacked her skin, and she was shuddering all over. Without meaning to or even an awareness that it was happening, her head simply slid below the surface.

  For a long, long second, she kept on sinking. Her body didn’t seem to understand she was underwater. Then, it was as if something deep inside, what was left of her, woke up. Frantic, she clawed to the surface, spluttered, coughed out more water, looked for her dog.

  Mina was gone.

  No. Not even a brain yelp, though. No energy. And where was the people-eater? Everything was starting to get black … “N-nuh. Muh-muh …” Her mouth wasn’t working. She dog-paddled, her head cranked so far back she stared at blue sky blushing orange and red, the end coming on. There was a small huh as Mina resurfaced, but barely, only her snout showing and two terrified eyes.

  A slap of water swamped her chin. A wave broke around her head and rolled past. Another hard splash, closer. Behind. Twisting, she saw the people-eater crashing across the lake, heading for her.

  “N-n-nuh.” Dredging up a last burst of strength, she swept with both arms, pulling for open water, her thoughts as tiny and shivery as soap bubbles: What’s he doing, is he crazy? The people-eater’s splashing was closer, harder, wilder. Risking a peek, she let out a gaspy, gargly scream. Puffing like a bull, mad with hunger, the boy was gaining. A sudden, horrible thought blasted her brain: he would drown her. Drown her, tow her body back, and then eat—

  “N-n-noooo!” she shrieked as he covered the last five feet in a giant surge. His hands battened on her head. She flailed, but it was like trying to fight an octopus. She went completely under. A glubby, strangled cry tried to boil past her lips, and she clamped hard, gulping it back. Can’t hold it, can’t hold it, can’t—and then she really couldn’t hang on any longer. Air bolted from her mouth, and with it, the last of her voice in a despairing wail.

  Above, the boy gave a great, spastic jolt. His grip broke. With no thought other than getting her face into air, Ellie plowed to the surface. Snatching one precious breath, she saw the boy rearing, his hands shooting for her once more. Thought, He’s got me.

  “Ellie!” She was so disoriented, she thought the people-eater had spoken. No, from the left. Her eyes jerked toward the ice shelf.

  There, a figure stood, starkly silhouetted against blue sky. And he had a rifle.

  “Ellie!” Chris shouted. “Don’t move!”

  85

  The needle punctured the globe of the hunter’s left eye with a small but audible pop. Alex had so much momentum going, she couldn’t put on the brakes. They fell, locked together, the hunter toppling, Alex still clutching that dart and riding him all the way down. When they hit, Alex felt the needle scrape and then punch through the delicate bone at the back of the socket. If her left ear hadn’t been screeching, she might have heard the pffft as the tranquilizer, under pressure, flooded the hunter’s brain.

  The hunter went instantly rigid. His remaining eye, filmy with age, bulged. His mouth jammed open. No screams, no screams! Letting go of the syringe, Alex clapped both hands over the old man’s lips. His cheeks puffed in and out. Balls of muted sound pushed against her palms. The hunter’s good eye pinned her with a disbelieving glare. How much he really saw, she didn’t know, and she hoped this was all reflex. His body was starting to quiver and jitter; his hands flapped; the dart, with its merry red tail, danced; his boots drummed snow.

  To her left, she felt the wolfdog hovering nearby and craned a look. Its ears were up, the tail nearly horizontal, and its snout wrinkled to show teeth. What she got from the smell was only threat. If it had wanted her, she’d be bleeding by now. You, big boy, are a nut.

  Under her hands, the hunter’s frantic puffing had ceased. The lone eye glared a glassy accusation. A moment later, through her good ear, she heard clicks from the dead man’s radio.

  Got to get out of here. Staggering back to the spruce, she got into her parka and pawed out her boots. Shadowing her, its alarm a red foam in her nose, the wolf dog took two soundless dancing steps, its meaning clear: Let’s go.

  “Don’t I know it.” But go where? In several more yards, she’d be in virgin snow, her trail obvious, and they had weapons. Her eyes fell on the dead hunter—and that Springfield. There was one shot left, but she smelled more bullets in the left front pocket of that camo-jacket. Yeah, but take the rifle, and they know you’re armed. They might call for reinforcements, and then she was cooked. She might be cooked either way unless she killed that Changed boy. For that matter, they might not need the boy. That push-push go-go would wear her down, eventually. If the monster jumped again or, worse, the red storm got behind her eyes …

  Oh, screw it. She snatched up the rifle. Her left temple throbbed from where the bullet had grazed her scalp, and her hair was already tacky with drying blood. Not going down without a fight.

  But it might not come to that. If she could hide … But how? How do you hide from the Changed? From the minute the hunter first shot at the tree house to now, she thought five minutes had passed. The chemotherapy tang was closer, not charging but swooping in, making a beeline for that last shot. Keep up that clicking on the radio, and they’d find the body even faster.

  What scared her more—now that she was paying attention—was the steadily increasing drumbeat of the push-push go-go. Maybe that was what the red storm wanted. If she lost control, she might be easier to control, or at least find. Every logical scrap of her shouted that she had to run. Yet the lizard part of her brain, everything that was instinct, yammered that hiding was better. Sometimes bunnies had the right idea. Be small, don’t move, don’t attract attention.

  Don’t attract attention. She looked at the wolfdog watching her. Darth didn’t see you. Maybe
he didn’t notice you. Or maybe couldn’t? No time to figure this out. The metal stink of cisplatin frothed through the trees. The red storm was a throb in the middle of her forehead, like a hidden third eye struggling to open. Decide.

  Instead of shoving on her boots, she laced them together before draping them around her neck. Her feet were passing from burn to numb, but footprints weren’t as noticeable as boots. Hooking the Springfield’s carry strap across her shoulders like a samurai sword, she crouched over the body. The only blood was a gooey, meandering trickle from the ruined left eye. Can’t leave the syringe. That makes me both dangerous and a curiosity. Gritting her teeth, she wrapped her hand around the plastic tube and pulled. She felt the scrape of bone again, and when she’d gotten the needle out, the socket puddled red. Shuddering, she recapped the needle with shaking fingers before sliding the syringe back into a cargo pocket. Then, working fast, she stripped the hunter of his fancy, 3-D camo-jacket.

  “Come on,” she whispered to the wolfdog, wincing at the throb of the red storm, that continual push-push. Her lip squirmed under a slow, snaky dribble. Cupping a hand to her bleeding nose, she scurried for a screen of dense brambles maybe fifty yards back, cringing at every crackle under her increasingly clumsy feet. She heard the wolfdog’s breaths as it followed. Good. The animal’s prints would erase hers.

  The woods here were wild, crowded with nearly impenetrable briars and underbrush. Diving into the snow, she shucked in the rifle, then swam through a narrow gap between two ragged, brambly clumps growing so close together their branches twined. She grimaced as briars forked her hair, tugged her wounded scalp—and, oh hell, the medic pack was still under the spruce. No time, no time. When she judged she was far enough, she wormed around on her stomach, figuring she’d have to coax the animal, but the wolfdog was already squirting in. Smart boy. It knew something wicked was coming this way.

  Casting one anxious glance back, she saw no bright red gumdrop trail of blood marking the way. Okay, this has to do, because, honey, we are out of time. Heaping snow into the gap, she put an arm around the animal’s neck, tucked her feet under her bottom, and hunkered down. The wiry growth was so thick, she thought they might be invisible—if they stayed absolutely still. This really could work. Hunters sat in blinds all the time; they perched in trees for hours. And fifty yards was half a football field. A lot of distance in which to get herself lost. Many people overlooked the obvious and what lay in plain sight every day. Smell … she couldn’t do anything about that. There was no real wind here, not even a breeze. But she kept thinking of Darth, and then the wolf totems hanging next to that stuff sack. Something important there …

  There was a heavy thud, and then another. A snap then crack of branches and brush, the crunch of snow. Not being very subtle, but maybe they thought they didn’t need to be. The chemotherapy fug of that Changed boy was everywhere now. Yet the scent from that man in black, the eye in that red storm, was distinctive, too. Her nose balked, tripping over his odor: definitely old, that same fustiness of wet wool socks, but also saturated with a stench of polluted gray-green water reeking of burned urine and foamy detergent that was the stink of the Chicago River after a storm.

  As much information as her nose gave her, she couldn’t see more than a foot or two beyond her sheltering bramble canopy. Somehow that made it all the more frightening, because she couldn’t assign a face to that dreadful odor, knock it down to size, make it human. It was like groping in the dark of a haunted house where what you imagined was always so much worse than what was real. Stop, stop. Clenching her jaws, she bore down, trying to force back the fear threatening to swamp her mind. She was shuddering, every muscle trying to get free of her body and run run run. Calm down, you have to try to stay in control. It wants you to bolt, show yourself.

  She closed her eyes. On the screen of her lids, the go-go push-push was like blood pounding through arteries: the red storm working fingers through her eyes, in her mind, down her throat, and then into her heart, fisting the muscle, forcing it to a different beat: push-push push-push go-go go—

  “Where are you?”

  The sound was so sudden she nearly vaulted out of her skin. She pressed her lips together so tightly they tingled. Under her arm, the wolfdog was still as death. Don’t move, don’t freak out. Wondering which of them she was coaching, she hugged the animal a little closer. Her teeth were chattering clickity-clickity-click. Ramming her tongue between her jaw, she bit down to stop the noise and focus. Don’t bolt, little bunny; that’s when the hunters get you, when they see the flash of your little white cotton tail.

  “I know you’re close. I can just feel your edges.” Even shouting across half a football field’s worth of woods, the voice carried a certain mellow, authoritative reassurance that made her think of that actor who played Lucius Fox in the Batman movies. “My name’s Finn. What’s yours?”

  That answered a question. This wasn’t read-your-mind telepathy, which would’ve been just too voodoo for her anyway. However he’s doing this, he can’t find me, doesn’t see me. Wait, that wasn’t quite right. She remembered those bizarre shifts in perspective, that sense of distance collapsing—and that had happened to her before, hadn’t it? When she was on Blackrocks, about to jump: an out-of-body experience the doctors said was a temporal lobe hiccup provoked by fear and fueled, maybe, by her baby chick of a monster.

  So … Finn was an epileptic? Or took medicine? She thought so. That polluted smell was very strong but artificial, like those Changed with their chemo stink. Maybe taking the same drug—because it had to be a drug. She just knew. So how did this work for him?

  The important thing: the voice was no closer, and the red storm couldn’t get a fix. Which meant he was only guessing, calculating the probabilities.

  Just as important: that chemotherapy, cisplatin fug wasn’t getting stronger. So that altered, engineered Changed couldn’t smell her either. Could be a couple different reasons for that.

  Or maybe only you. She hugged the wolfdog tighter. The animal’s ears swiveled like a bat’s, but that was the only movement it showed at all. Or it’s the two of us, together.

  “Why are you still alive?” Finn’s push-push amped up. “There’s something different about you, isn’t there? And about that boy … Simon? Maybe I’ll pick him apart and find out.”

  If that polluted red storm thought she was going to go all girly, Finn had another thing coming. But how to fight him? Cancer, she knew. One thing the shrinks tried to teach you was how to wall off the monster, put it in a box, lock the door.

  “Come on,” the red storm said. “I know you’re there.”

  Oh bullshit. Then you’d stop talking and your bloodhound boy would’ve already found me. The thought was angry, a kind of mental shove—

  And then she caught herself. What had he said? I feel your edges.

  Okay, there was something in that. The only way you could feel an edge was when you hit something solid. It’s like closing your eyes and trying to find your way around a wall. You only know where it ends when your fingers hit thin air. Maybe the red storm found her by the obstacles she threw up to protect herself.

  “What’s your name?” Another strong red push-push, like the sweep of radar, trying to get a fix. “Come on, I can help you.” Push-push. “We have a lot in common, can’t you see that?”

  She didn’t see it, and now she couldn’t let him see her. Don’t give him an edge. When he pushes, don’t push back. The idea of doing nothing scared the living daylights out of her. It would mean letting this wash through her without leaving a stain. She remembered Peter’s bookshelf, and Dune: that mantra about fear and mind-killers.

  Walk away. Let it go through me, over me. She knew how to walk away. She’d done that the day she’d left for the Waucamaw and a fight she knew she couldn’t win. So walk away from this. Don’t give the red storm edges to feel.

  But would that work? Wouldn’t the monster, deep in the lockbox of her mind, get out? Even if it didn’t, the
lockbox was like a drop of black ink on white paper. If the red storm saw it, she was done.

  Unless I go just as dark. Closing her eyes again, she stilled her mind just as the wolfdog had frozen to a statue by her side. There’s only night, and no stars.

  Go dark.

  Don’t move.

  86

  “Take the shot,” Jayden chanted. “Come on, Chris, take the shot!”

  “One more second,” Chris said. “If she surfaces too close …” He and Jayden were standing a good thirty feet from the edge, worried that the jagged shelf was too unstable and might crumble. In the water, at least fifty feet further out, the Changed boy was still there, but Ellie was not. His first shot was meant to startle. Ellie had been too close, and he’d been afraid to try for a kill shot. So he’d fired high; saw the boy flinch away at the rifle’s whipcrack and his hold on the little girl break.

  Wait until she clears, wait until you see her. He took up as much slack on the trigger as he dared. Ellie, Ellie, come on, you were just there, you were just …

  “There!” Jayden cried as the little girl’s head ruptured through the surface not six feet from the Changed. “Take it, Chris, take it!”

  “Ellie!” Chris shouted, hoping she heard and understood. “Don’t move!”

  The crack of the shot. The kick against his shoulder. A sudden red mist ballooned above the Changed’s shoulders, and then the headless body listed left and floated, buoyed by a bubble of air trapped under the dead kid’s parka.

  “Ellie!” Jayden was clutching a coil of rope he’d knotted to his packhorse’s saddle. “Swim this way! Can you swim?”