Monsters (Ashes Trilogy #3)

books. That would be all right.”

That sounded like something he would enjoy. “Maybe you should

make it happen.”

“Well, I couldn’t do it alone, for one thing, and you have to get

there, for another. Oh, and hope all the people-eaters have moved out

of town.” She gave another wry shrug. “Anyway, Peter really loved

school. His big thing was Isle Royale. We’d go back and forth on what

they should do about the wolves.”

“Wolves? Isle Royale?” It was like listening to someone tell him a

bedtime story in a foreign language. “Where’s that?”

“In Lake Superior. It’s a national park, but hardly anyone goes. It’s

tough to get there. It’s where they were doing this fifty-year study on

the wolf and moose populations?”

“They were?” He felt incredibly dense. “Why?”

She gave him a look. “Isle Royale’s an island, but it’s got wolves

and moose. So how’d they get there?”

“Swim?”

“Only the moose. Wolves can’t swim that far. The lead scientists

were all in Houghton at Michigan Tech. They figured the wolves

came across on ice bridges way back, but because of climate change,

there hasn’t been a stable bridge since the mid-eighties. So the wolves

are stuck. Their population’s been tanking for the last ten years.

Before the world went dark, there were about nine wolves left. Only

abour half were females. So there was a lot of debate about how

or whether to save them. Over the summers, Peter did fieldwork.

mo ns ters Tranquilizing wolves, collecting samples, fitting them with collars, hunting down moose carcasses. He was very passionate, thought it was our fault for wrecking the environment. I think if he could’ve figured out a way to sneak wolves onto the island, he’d have done it. You have to admire that.”

“I guess.” Chris felt a nasty ping of envy. If things hadn’t fallen apart, that might have been him going to classes and arguing ethics over coffee. “How does all that relate to Penny?”

“Because of one really bad decision Peter made. The island’s all backcountry and very remote. You either go five to seven hours by ferry, fly in on floatplane, or pilot your own boat. Peter had this vintage thing he’d refitted with a fiberglass hull. It was like Quint’s boat in Jaws: pilothouse, engine room, galley. He turned the forepeak into sleepers. Over spring break of his senior year, he offered to take a bunch of us over to the island. The catch is, the park officially opens in mid-April, and this was mid-March. You can get into huge trouble if you’re caught, but Peter knew a cove to slip into on the north end, closer to Canada. I figured, a little winter camping, a little hiking, a nice boat ride, it’d be fun. Twelve of us crowded onto this old boat, including Penny”—she paused—“and Simon. He and Peter were close, even then. I think the grandparents hoped Simon and Penny would hook up.”

That was exactly what Isaac described, too. “They weren’t like that?”

“I never got that vibe. From what Simon said, he always thought he should look after her the way Peter did for him.”

Interesting. Just how close had Hannah and Simon been? “How did Penny feel?”

“Well, she and I never”—she inserted air-quotes—“bonded. She was nearly fifteen and still pretty young in a lot of ways. Peter had this real blind spot for her, just adored her. But she was already very troubled. You could see it, the way she hung on some of Peter’s college friends. And it was”—her gray eyes slid up in a sidelong glance—“spring break.”

Meaning lots of alcohol. “What happened?”

“Everyone got drunk,” she said, simply. “That is, everyone but Simon. Even then, he was a very careful, very private kid. Being a freshman, I didn’t know Peter’s friends very well, so Simon and I hung. Talked about college, his interests, what I was doing. Anyway, there we are, in the middle of Lake Superior. No one’s wearing a life jacket. It’s March, and freezing. The water’s forty degrees. Peter’s completely wrecked, a beer in one hand or a shot, and knocking them back. People are goofing around. A bunch are below, some making out in the bunks and . . .” She punctuated the sentence with the arch of one eyebrow—“Penny, too, with a guy. I think Simon lost track of her. If he’d known, he’d have gotten her out, but I guess he was a little distracted, talking to me and keeping an eye on Peter.”

He still didn’t see where this was leading or how Penny got a girl killed. “So what happened?”

“Penny set the boat on fire,” she said.

This wasn’t just any pistol. Alex knew it as soon as she saw that hinged steel barrel, and a plastic baggy with a cartridge the size of a twelvegauge shell.

A flare gun. She’d seen only one in her life, the time she and her parents had taken a coal-fired ferry boat that chugged between Ludington, Michigan, and Manitowoc, Wisconsin. The captain had shown her his flare pistol when he gave them a tour of the pilothouse. His flare gun had been orange plastic. This pistol was metal and looked old and worn.

She thumbed the release and broke the weapon open the way she would a single-shot shotgun. The barrel housed a removable metal insert. Opening the baggy, she shook out the shell. The cap was brass; the cartridge red, with bam-pm 1-060-062 stamped in black. Below that was the word laliber and then numbers: 12/70. On the back was the word signalpatronen, also in black.

No way she was leaving this behind. “And where are you, Darth?” Her heart gave an unpleasant lurch as she did a peek around the bureau just in time to see her guard zipping his fly. Hell. Her pants weren’t exactly skinnies, but someone might notice a pocket bulge. Slipping the shell into the barrel, she quickly shoved the flare pistol beneath her sweatshirt and flannel into the small of her back, then fluffed out her parka.

You’re crazy; you’re nuts. One good whiff of that pistol and you’re dead.

She was about to push up from the still-open drawer, but hesitated, her attention still pinned by that bizarre hospital smell. Something still there. Peering into the very back of the drawer, her eye ticked to a fluffy, feathery red splotch. She made a swiping grab and her hand closed around a very slim plastic tube that she instantly knew was both too narrow and too long to be a spare cartridge for the flare gun.

In the eight seconds before Darth clumped to the door, she had enough time to think how strange it was to find a flare pistol beneath a stack of jeans. Although she could wrap her head around it. This was a boathouse. When you were out on a boat and needed help, you got off a flare. The fact that there was no boat was a little strange. Didn’t the gun belong where you might conceivably need and use it? Why hide it?

And now here was another puzzle squirreled away and under wraps, just like the signal gun: a common hospital item in an uncommon place.

All she could think as she stared was, Peter. What the hell? Because what she held in her hand was a fluid-filled syringe. The way Hannah told the story, it was a wonder anyone made it off that boat alive. The watertight fiberglass hull meant the wood beneath was dry as kindling, a fire waiting to happen.

Hannah was on deck at the time, propped against the pilothouse, her eyes closed against the wooziness in her head and the heave of her stomach: “It was so cold, I was turning blue.” She lay there, shivering, until Simon peeled out of his jacket and draped that around her shoulders. Wouldn’t want you to catch your death was what she remembered him saying. She’d just opened her mouth to thank him when there was a huge bang and something hot and white suddenly blasted through the hull not five feet from her face.

After that, Hannah’s memories were a chaotic blur: screaming kids stampeding from below; flames shooting first out of the forepeak and then the hatch; the boat taking on water; the electrical failing a second after Peter, sobering fast, got off a Mayday. There was a life raft, but it was designed for eight, not twelve. Once Simon and Peter got the raft into the water, keeping people calm enough not to swamp it was another nightmare, especially when Peter’s boat began to sink.

“It wasn’t dark yet, but the water was so black Peter used a flashlight. That boat filled and rolled pretty fast. Once you were in the water, you really couldn’t see, had no idea which way was up. I don’t think he or Simon realized Penny and another kid weren’t there until they did a head count,” Hannah said. By then, the fire was out, but the boat had disappeared.

Both frantic, Peter and Simon jumped out of the raft and swam back to the spot where the boat had gone down. What happened next was . . . a little hazy was how Hannah put it. As Peter later told it to the Coast Guard, he and Simon dove a good fifteen or twenty feet, grappled their way through what was left of the hatch, and surfaced in the skeletal remains of the engine room. The remaining air pocket was tiny, no more than a ten-inch gap. Numb with cold and nearly exhausted, Penny was treading water that was up to her chin. The other girl, a townie no one really knew except for the boy who’d brought her aboard, was already dead.

“Peter told them the other girl must’ve gotten snagged on something that held her underwater,” Hannah said. “Simon said the same.”

“Who was she? The girl who died?”

“Amanda . . . Peterson? No, Pederson.” She paused. “You know, I remember that at the time, there was one thing I thought was . . . weird. As soon as the boys got Penny to the surface? Peter screamed at Simon to take care of her and not follow, and then Peter dove back under, on his own, and he was gone a long time. I thought he’d drowned.”

“Why would that be weird?” he asked. “He probably tried to get that girl’s body out.”

“I guess.” Smoothing back her hair with one hand, Hannah rose to go. “Maybe you had to be there, but I know something happened down there, in that boat. I just don’t know what.”

“Why do you think that?”