Monsters (Ashes Trilogy #3)

“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 you do 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 Chris 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—

But then, somehow, he was huddled on the stairs. Below, his father loomed. Bright red spatters of blood painted his father’s face and wifebeater. The hammer was clotted with a gory jam of blond hair and brain and blood.

“D-d-don’t,” Dee quavered—except now Chris saw that it wasn’t Deidre at all but Lena. Lena’s face was a pulpy, misshapen horror. The left half of her head was staved. A glistening slug of pink brain slicked her neck. “P-please.” Lena raised her hands but not to Chris’s father.