Monsters (Ashes Trilogy #3)

Come on, cut it out. This was the problem with hunger: all you thought about was food. She had to get a grip. Having been here before, she knew she was heading into dangerous territory as her body crept ever closer, day by day, to a very desperate place. Every time she pushed to a stand now, she got dizzy. The pit of her stomach was a continual sharp, beaky gnaw. Sometimes, she thought her monster had migrated down and was trying to eat its way out of her guts.

We’re all starving. She poked at the pine, moving very slowly, all too aware of Acne’s glittery stare and the urgent, raw fog of his hunger and just how closely his Mossberg tracked her. The last thing she needed was for Acne to mistake a sudden move and splatter her brains over a lousy piece of boiled bark. Given how famished he was, he might do it anyway, then beg Wolf ’s forgiveness later: Yeah, Boss, I know, bad call. Acne’s hunger had a real reek, too, the gassy aroma of fermenting fruit. Wonder if I smell the same way. She’d never stopped to think much about that. Probably, to Acne and the others, she smelled like raw steak. Nice southwest rub, juicy and done rare so the fat melts when you take a bite . . .

“Oh God, what I wouldn’t give for a steak,” she said. (To her left, Acne’s response was a fresh fume of rot and starvation. No surprise.) If only Acne hadn’t been in such a rush to get back indoors. Outside, she’d spotted all that chicken wire and thought, Garden? Somehow those crushed cans argued against it, but it was worth checking out. Man, she would kill for a wrinkly old potato or wizened carrot.

Also near the garden, against a shed, was a weird mound that smelled like a bakery. A compost pile? Could be. Stuff that hadn’t rotted yet, especially with the cold: gnawed melon rinds, leathery apple cores. Half-eaten cobs. Banana peels had potassium. She would take anything she could get. Boil the hell out of it, swallow it back, and not think too hard about it. And what about that rickety shed? People left all kinds of things in drawers or tucked in knapsacks or hanging from hooks and joists, jammed in glove compartments. Petrified granola bars. Candy. Power bars. Those little boxes of raisins and bags of nuts. Just thinking about what she might find made the saliva pool under her tongue.

And there could be other things I might use. Sheds were excellent places to forage for weapons. Anything would do; she wasn’t persnickety. Nails, an old hammer. Rope. Electrical cords. Saw blades. A gun would be best, but shotgun shells would be almost as good. Crack ’em for the powder, make bang-sticks. Something.

Yet she had to be cautious. She had more freedom this time around. Wolf let her forage and keep Leopard’s knife. No way in hell she’d risk losing that. The knife and a flint striker were her only survival tools. Without them, she was as good as dead when and if she managed to make a run for it.

When and if ? Oh, dream on, honey. Honestly, some days, even she got exasperated with herself. This was like sitting through Titanic: just sink already. She was always under guard. And exactly where would she hide all these marvelous weapons? Get herself caught and she could kiss her little foraging forays good-bye. Then she’d completely starve. While Wolf might protect her, she didn’t think he’d take kindly to her whacking him with a crowbar. If she even could. Because she already had a knife. That Wolf let her keep it after that first day was nothing short of miraculous. Yet had she gotten all Princess Bride and slunk around at night to slit a couple throats? To reach over as Wolf lay dreaming his happy, lusty little wolf-dreams and cut out his heart?

No. Get real. That stuff only happened in the same books where the heroine scarfed down raw white pine. This was real life.

And yet she had motive. She had opportunity. She knew exactly where the carotids were, and how deeply to hack. Do it fast and she actually might pull it off. After all, it was only five against one. So what was she waiting for?

Well, hell, I don’t know. Focus on what you can do, all right? Like that garden; you ought to check it out. Sighing, she sheathed her knife. If I get a chance . . .

Acne exploded. No warning, no red-alerts from the monster, no change in Acne’s scent at all—really, how much hungrier could the kid get?—and he did it fast, in absolute silence, launching himself like a missile she only half-registered from the corner of her eye. Gasping, she jerked her arm partway up just as his fist rocketed for her face.

The hit was blinding, a stunning white detonation in her left cheek, just below her eye. A cry tried jumping off her tongue, but then his hand muscled around her throat, clutching at her jaw. Yanking her upright, Acne began drunk-walking her across the cabin.

“Ac . . . B-B-Ben!” she wheezed as she stumbled, off-balance, her hands hooked onto his. “Ben, d-don’t! St-stop, stop!”

But Acne, the boy who’d called himself Ben Stiemke, was an insatiable storm, in the mood for meat. Driving her the length of the room, Acne slammed her against the wall. Her head thunked hard enough for her vision to drop out, like a jump cut in time. Her jaws snapped. Pain erupted in a red dazzle as her teeth tore her tongue. Blood flooded into her throat. Gagging, she felt Acne’s hand shift and knew, instantly, what he was going to do.

Panic sheeted her brain. Try to kill her by strangulation and she still had a chance: a knee to his groin, a punch, maybe take out his eyes with her fingers. But pinch off her carotids in a blood choke, and she’d gray out in seconds, be dead in minutes, and with a lot less fuss.

Then she thought, The tanto. She’d sheathed the knife. Dropping her right shoulder, she twisted, fingers straining. It was a desperate move, hopeless from the start because even in a killing frenzy, Acne read the set of her body. Viper-fast, he snatched the tanto from its sheath and turned the blade until that razor tip was poised over her left eye.

Her blood slushed; she stopped fighting. She could see how this would go. A quick flash of cold steel and then she’d be screeching, eye gone, the screaming socket dripping eye jelly and blood.

They hung there, unmoving, a shuddering instant out of time. Then, Acne dragged in a harsh, preparatory breath and she had time to think, No!

Lips peeled in a snarl, Acne drove forward. Whirring, the knife flickered past her face to bury itself in the wall. From the green, liverish stink boiling from his skin, she knew then that, however much Acne wanted to rip out her throat and gorge himself on her meat—feel its warmth and her blood in his mouth—first, he wanted her to suffer. He had her, and he was going to enjoy this. He would enjoy her.

She began to thrash. Bracing her back against the wood, she kicked, aiming for Acne’s groin. But this wasn’t as it had been days ago in the snow. His reach was so much longer it wasn’t really a contest, and he arched out of the way. Yet it did her some good, bought her just a few more seconds, because he had to shift his grip to hang on. As soon as he let up, she managed a single sip, a terrible sensation of dragging air through a rapidly collapsing straw, and then that was it—and not nearly enough. She had nothing with which to fight, and she was starting to lose it, her vision going first blurry then motheaten.

Deep in the dark, the monster came alive, a spider skittering in the cave of her skull, and then she was tumbling into that black whirlpool behind Acne’s eyes, watching her face going the color of an eggplant, the whites showing in half-moons as her eyes rolled. The end of her life unspooled in a jumble of images: Acne choking her, but only to the point where she passed out, then allowing her to wake, driving her to the floor, letting her wake just enough to do it all over again . . . three times, maybe four . . . with the peculiar sadism of a kid pulling wings off flies before crushing them underfoot. He would wait for her to surface, regain consciousness, all the better to feel the instant his teeth clamped onto her throat and tore and her blood fountained to bathe his cheeks a bright, stinging red.

From . . . somewhere . . . there came a hard bang that might have been sharper and louder but for the cotton stuffing her ears. An instant later, Acne let out a sudden, sickening ungh, and the pressure around her neck was gone. Why, she didn’t know. Something scraped her back. Wood, the wall—I’m falling. Hacking, she landed in a heap, limp as wet laundry. For a few seconds all she concentrated on was dragging air through a throat that felt as stable as the crushed stem of a tulip.

Through the blur that passed for her vision, she saw them: Wolf and Acne, across the room, facing off. The air in the cabin had quickened, popping and crackling with heat, the acrid sting of murder, the cold steel of Wolf ’s rage. Blood trickled from Acne’s nose, and he was shaking his head like a bull. Crouching, eyes narrowed, Wolf began to circle. Acne tried to follow, but he was either still stunned from Wolf ’s first punch or simply weakened by lack of food, because he stumbled. Seizing his chance, Wolf ducked and charged. Dazed, Acne actually backed up and tried a sidestep, but not fast enough. Plowing into Acne, Wolf wrapped his arms around the other boy’s waist and gave a mighty heave. Acne’s legs flew out from under as Wolf upended and then smashed him to the floor. Acne’s head rebounded against wood with a sharp crack. His limbs went limp, the connections between brain and body winking out as Wolf dropped like a boulder on top of him. He brought his fist down like a hammer, once, twice—

A huge roar shook the cabin. From her place on the floor, Alex saw Marley, long dreads still frosty from cold, swinging the Mossberg’s muzzle from the ceiling and bringing it to bear on the two boys. Wolf and Acne froze in an almost comical tableau: Wolf astride Acne’s chest, his bloody fist cocked for another blow. Acne’s eyes were swelling and purpling in a mask of blood. Combined with all those acne scars, the boy looked as if his skin was being chewed from the inside out. His chest was a broad bib of red. With every breath, blood bubbled through his shattered nose.

To Marley’s left were the brothers, Bert and Ernie. From the smell drifting out of that green duffel slung over Bert’s shoulder, she knew that the woman was frail and birdy, wreathed in a fruity bouquet of starvation, with very little meat. Look at it a certain way, maybe Wolf and his crew had only done the birdy woman a favor, in the same way that sheriffs shot deer too weak to even realize they’d wandered into the middle of the road during a hard winter. If, that is, you really could see things from the Changed’s point of view.