Monsters (Ashes Trilogy #3)

“Jesus.” Pru pressed a hand to his forehead like a kid taking his fever. “A Changed?”

“Maybe more than one.” The bell was still tolling. Greg could feel the dry air wicking the wet from his face and chest, leaving behind a tacky, toxic sludge of half-congealed blood and ruptured guts. “Whatever. I’m going inside.”

“Are you nuts?” Pru’s hand shot for Greg’s arm. “What’s gone down has gone down.”

“Stay here if you want.” Greg tore himself free. “I don’t care what you do, but Tori’s in there, and Sarah, and I’m going.”

“No.” Pru tried another grab but missed. “Greg, be smart. Chris or Peter wouldn’t—”

“Fuck smart,” he said. “And that just shows what you don’t know, because they would, and so will I.”

Turning, he dashed the last hundred feet. The door was open, not yawning but wide enough for him to scuttle through with room to spare. He held his breath as he did it, expecting the shot. None came, and he heard the air sigh from his mouth. As soon as he was inside, the bell’s clanging diminished. Directly ahead and up a short but very steep flight of stairs, he made out the arched entryway into the sanctuary. Enough of the day’s dying light splashed in through the open door for him to see a stack of folding chairs leaning against the wall to his right. This was bad because it meant that he could be seen if someone was on the altar platform, maybe waiting out of his line of sight.

If anyone’s still in here. When the bells started, the smart thing for the Changed would be to get out, fast, just as the wiser play for Greg would have been to wait, like Pru said. He hoped the Changed were smarter than he was. He’d been here only a couple of hours before and remembered the layout: that the stairs to the basement were on his right. He peeked, saw the door was open, and thought, Oh boy, that’s bad. With no flashlight, it would be crazy to go down—

He heard something shuffle off his left shoulder, tensed, swiveled, socked the Bushmaster in place, then felt a surge of relief. “I thought this wasn’t smart.”

“Yeah, so we’re both stupid. Now wha—” Pru’s voice died as he saw the gaping maw of the basement door. “Shit. Block it?”

The door opened out, so that should work. “I’ll do it,” he murmured. He didn’t want to let go of his gun, but he couldn’t do this with one hand. He laid the Bushmaster flat, then gently pulled one folding chair away from the other ten, the metal letting out a faint, rasping scaw that made him wince. Slowly padding down the steps, he levered the door closed, all his muscles trying to turn to jelly at every creak and squeak, and wedged the chair under the knob. He repeated this maneuver twice more, moving as fast as he could. Total time: maybe a minute.

“Good deal. Anything in there’ll be trapped like a bug in a jar. You remember the layout?” Pru chinned toward the sanctuary. “Sundays, I try to sleep with my eyes open.”

“Three steps and you’re on the platform. Choir on the right, altar on the left along the wall and under the cross. Pulpit at one o’clock on the far end. Go straight through and you’ll be in the organist’s pit.” He thought. “I’ll go right, down the side aisle. Depending on what happens next, you head for the platform.”

Pru nodded, and Greg took the stairs as fast as he dared. He saw the cross suddenly slip into view on his left and then the high arches of stained glass lining the sanctuary’s far wall; heard a sudden creak under his boot and thought, Shit, in the movies they hug the wall, so stairs won’t—

There was a thundering roar, a clap of lightning. Greg let out a startled gasp as the wall above his head suddenly cratered. Swaying, he stumbled back, tripped over his boots, and fell the rest of the way as another shot blasted past. Greg felt the whir of a slug cleave air by his left temple.

“Shit.” Pru’s face swam into view. “You hit?”

“No.” His left ear felt as if someone had crammed in a fistful of cotton, but he could hear the tick-tick-tick of buckshot and the lighter patter of grit and pulverized drywall. Well, at least they knew what kind of weapon the Changed had. Eyeing the hole in the drywall, Greg saw the teardrop shape and how it curved up. “I think he’s under the altar table.”

“Yeah? And?” Pru sounded angry. “How the hell are we supposed to . . . wait, Greg, why are you taking off your boots?”

Giving him something else to look at. Quickly yanking off his other boot, Greg stripped the sock, then crammed both socks into a parka pocket. Hefting the boot in his left hand, Greg glanced back at Pru. “He’s got a shotgun.”

“So?” Pru gave him a strange look and then Greg saw the second his friend got his meaning. A shotgun had a max effective distance of about forty yards. Plenty of stopping power, but if he could get far enough away, his rifle, or Pru’s Mini-14, would be much more effective. Pru jerked a nod. “Okay,” Pru said. “Just . . . run fast.”

I hear that. Greg pulled in a breath. Oh God, please make this work.

Then he stopped thinking and moved. Dashing up the steps, Greg lobbed the boot in an awkward throw and then immediately dodged right. The shotgun roared at the same instant, following the trajectory of his boot. Through the ringing, he heard Pru squeeze off a shot as Greg hit the stone floor in a hard thump. The shotgun thundered to life again. This time, the pew just above his head exploded in a mushroom cloud of wood splinters. Ducking, Greg threw up a hand to protect his head and neck as he scuttled as fast as he could down the side aisle. Behind, he caught the sharp crack-crack-crack, the Ruger’s raps growing closer and louder as Pru stormed up the steps. Wheeling to his left, still hunched over, Greg dashed the cramped length of the pew, bare feet slapping stone, the center aisle dead ahead.

At that moment, the bell cut out. The others are in. They’re safe. He felt a sting in his throat, gulped it back. Tori’s safe.

From the altar to his left, he heard something shrill—a shout, a scream?—and then he was lifting onto the balls of his feet, pivoting, thighs tensing, his Bushmaster swinging clear of the pew, thinking, Aim up.

But he never had a chance to take the shot.

51

In the sudden thrumming silence, Greg saw Pru looming over the writhing body of a boy. When he’d been shot—a belly wound from the way the Changed was curled in a comma—the boy had tried rolling away, because once Greg squirted past, the Changed needed to move, fast, or end up full of holes. But the kid couldn’t move fast or far enough to outrun Pru’s bullets, and Greg saw why.

A forked splinter of bone jutted from a juicy rip in the boy’s thigh. Now that Greg was standing, he saw the trail of blood smeared over the sanctuary’s floor and up the altar platform’s steps. The altar carpet was purple and sodden. Dragged himself all the way. Turning, Greg followed the blood trail’s wavering path and realized that the boy must’ve broken his leg outside the sanctuary. Maybe in the vestibule, or even the breezeway. But how? That kid would’ve had to fall pretty far.

Through the sanctuary’s thick double doors, he could hear a growing gabble and maybe . . . was that a scream? Couldn’t tell. Way back, he’d read that you lost some of your hearing if you shot at a range and didn’t wear gear. Keep this up, he’d be deaf by the time he was twenty. His ears still buzzed so badly he couldn’t tell or tease apart the muted sounds seeping through the doors. No gunshots, though, so that was good. As desperately as he wanted to burst through those doors and find Tori, he knew he ought to wait. No rush now. The girls were safe.

We did it. So why didn’t he feel good about that? It was the Changed boy, the screw of his face, the way he writhed. Dying hard, Kincaid would say. Not right to feel good about that. He started back for Pru. “You okay?” He thought he said it too loudly.

“Yeah. Can’t say the same for our buddy.” Pru toed a shotgun away from the boy’s spidering fingers. “Can’t decide whether to finish him or let him bleed to death.” He paused. “Dude’s pretty messed up. Carpet’s ruined. So’s the altar cloth.”

Greg picked out splashes of blood on the wood, even the walls just below the cross. If you didn’t know better, you’d think Jesus’s ghost was up there, dripping. He stared down at the boy. Seventeen, eighteen, he guessed, greasy hair down past his shoulders and a ton of yellow pus balloons and zit scars to boot. Someone had rearranged his nose, too, and recently. The boy’s skin was the color of moldy cheese, and his eyes, already glazing, were sunk deep in sockets rimmed with fading yellowish bruises. This Changed was starving to death, just like them.

Stooping, he reached for the shotgun—and froze. He must also have . . . what . . . gasped? Cried out? He didn’t know, but Pru said, sharply, “What? Greg?”

No. Maybe his heart had stopped somewhere along the way. He thought that must be it, because he felt the muscle seize in his chest and his center go cold and still and black. For a crazy instant, he thought, This will be what it’s like when I’m dead. He watched his hand float toward the weapon; saw his fingers—small, so distant—wrap themselves around the shotgun’s walnut stock, then creep over the ridges and swirls of those intricate curlicues of carved flowers and vines as a blind boy reads Braille.

“Oh Jesus,” Pru said. Then: “Greg, look at me, man. This doesn’t mean anything—”

But he was on his feet, backtracking a stumbling step and then another, and now he’d gotten himself turned around and had begun to run, the Changed’s blood sticky against his bare feet, and then the sanctuary’s double doors were suddenly swinging wide, as if in a bellow, because now the voices all crashed through in a huge wave that the men rode, spilling into the sanctuary. The faces blurred—all black mouths, black eyes—and now hands were floating to meet him like exotic sea life on an incoming tide.

Of them all, he recognized only three people in those first few seconds: Sarah, hair wild, face smeared with blood; Yeager, somehow pathetic in a red-checked flannel he hadn’t managed to button correctly; and Kincaid, who crowded through, with his arms out to grab him, hold him back, spare him for one more second: “No, son. Don’t look, don’t look, son, don’t . . .”