Monsters

If she only could figure out what.

Passing through Rule—its deserted streets, those wrecked houses— was like wandering through the defunct set of a disaster movie. The windows of many houses were shattered. Some had no doors. She paused only once: at Jess’s house, its door hanging askew like a rotten tooth ready to fall from its socket. Part of her wanted to go inside. She’d left her parents behind, squared on the desk in her room. But the chances of their ashes still being there were about as good as her stopping Finn.

Need to keep going . She eyed a red, spray-painted X that wept from the lintel over the ruined door. It’s like that old Bible story, the one about the Angel of Death. Except all these houses hadn’t been passed over. There were still bodies inside a few, and dead Changed, too.

But Chris was among the living, and the living needed help. And Peter, Wolf, Penny . . . what do I do, what should I do? She was still turning that over as she neared the square, dodging from house to house, slinking through backyards. As she remembered the square’s layout, the church was on the northwest corner. Jess’s house was west of the square, which meant she was coming up behind the village hall. What she’d do once she got there, she didn’t know. Was there a back entrance, a way into the building? If so . . . what then? Make her way to the roof ? Could she even do that? How would that help?

You’d better figure this out, honey. The fug of all those Changed, altered and otherwise, bled through the air, growing stronger the closer she got. Finn’s people must be nearly to the square. Their stink made the hackles rise in a Mohawk along Buck’s spine. She felt her monster suddenly perk right up, too—and, a split second later, understood why as she teased out an odor of shadows and cool mist and rot.

Wolf. She parsed more smells, got denim and wintergreen, hard steel and desperation mingling with the stench of chemo: Peter’s there, too.

So tempting to give the monster a little leash, see if it might slip behind Wolf ’s eyes. What if I could control it? Send it out to very specific targets? That was . . . a little creepy, and crazy, too. Let the red storm set its hook, and she’d be as helpless as a swimmer in a rip current. Yet the idea of actually letting the monster go, making it work for her . . . Can I do that? Her hand snuck to caress the wolfdog’s neck. God, this would be like naming her monster, which her cancer docs encouraged: fighting back by thinking of the monster as something separate and apart. One guy even gave his cancer a Twitter account. She had wanted no part of her tumor: not to name it, draw it, visualize it. She’d only fought until she couldn’t fight anymore, and left for the Waucamaw, where her tumor became a monster with slitty eyes and needle-teeth—and had saved her life, a couple of times over now.

Face it, Alex, the monster is a part of you, whether you like it or not. “So what are you saying, you nut?” she murmured. “You want to jump off Blackrocks? Gonna send out the monster with a message?” It was crazy scifry. But Finn does it, somehow. Look at those weird Changed and poor Peter. But what if she got snagged by the red storm and couldn’t get free? What if who she was drowned in it? Somehow, she thought that could happen.

People, all old, gathering in the square. Her schnoz was full of fusty stained underwear and doughy skin. She heard them, too, a low buzz. But no kids. Where could they be? She didn’t smell Chris either, and her stomach tightened with dread. Take it easy. He was on a horse. If he was smart, he was already long gone. With enough warning, all the kids might be, too. Could be why she smelled none. Except Finn made his move while it was still dark. So how would Rule have known Finn was on his way?

A distant crackle, like a string of firecrackers. She glanced north. Someone shooting out there, but far away, easily several miles. The kids? Maybe, and probably not fighting Finn’s people. She’d followed him long enough to know that no one had split off from the main group.

Oh God. What if those were Rule’s kids, and there were Changed out there? Would Finn’s, well . . . signal bleed that far? That wide? How much range did this guy have?

Range, there’s something about that; that kid, Jasper, mentioned Peter, and how Peter got better whenever Finn was further away. He said if Finn died, the network would fall apart.

She’d thought of the same thing when trying to figure out how Finn managed all those Changed. I know the signal hops because the monster does, and I go along for the ride. And look what had happened to her when Finn’s Changed attacked that plateau: big surge, huge signal, and she woke up on the snow. But what does that mean? How can I use this? What does it mean?

Dead ahead, she spied a short alley, lined with detached garages, that trickled into the village hall’s parking lot. Nosed to the back wall alongside a large green Dumpster were three sheriffs’ cruisers, minus their tires and doors, resting on their rims. To the right was a single driveway that led to the square. The long, stained-glass breezeway connecting the school to the church was on her left. Tall trees marched up to the rectory and school, and, as she recalled, a side door into the church off a courtyard.

Pulling Buck close, she crouched in a drift of old snow behind the last detached garage on the left and at the very edge of the alley. Two choices: the village hall or the church. Keep to the woods, and she and the wolfdog had a much better chance of slipping inside the church. They were ringing the bell, too. Which meant the tower was open. Get up high, scope things out, see where Peter and Wolf and Penny are in relationship to Finn. She might even spot Chris. The Uzi had a scope. Wait, could she shoot Finn? Oh, get real, honey. She wasn’t a sniper. She didn’t know if the Uzi even had the range. Besides—she felt her chest squeeze down—what would happen if Finn died? With all those Changed, she bet: nothing very good.

“They’ll be off the leash. They’ll go out of control.” When the wolfdog let out a soft whimper, she stroked his ears. “I know. I smell them, too.” The Changed’s rank fog was getting stronger by the second. “I hear you, boy, we’re going.”

As she scurried past the village hall, she caught a strange odor: just the slightest curl, like a finger of spiced smoke dissipating on a strong breeze. The spice made her falter. No. She battened down on the association before the grief could wind itself up and undo her. Enough, Alex. She centered herself, focused on the beat of her heart. You’re upset; it’s your imagination. You want it to be Tom. “Get through this, and you can cry later,” she muttered.

She took another, deliberate inhale. This time, there was no spice, no phantom of Tom. What she got was diesel fuel and scorched . . . metal? Like a blackened can of beans set to heat in a campfire. Yet the smell was also oddly chemical: gunpowder and . . . She flashed to a summer’s afternoon: her dad, cursing, aiming a fire extinguisher. The chalky chemical gush, and her mother fretting about how they’d have to wear masks to clean up the mess: There’s the phosphoric acid to worry about.

Then the village hall was behind her, and she and the wolfdog were darting into the woods around the rectory. After slipping in the side door, she and Buck cowered on the landing, sniffing and listening. Something awful had gone down in the sanctuary and the basement, too. Her mouth puckered at the tang of cold blood and spent gunpowder. The black maw of the basement door exhaled mangled flesh and sweat and fear and a Changed, for sure, an eye-watering reek of stewed, smooshed raccoon.

Dusty bolts of colored light streamed through the stained rosette window at the east end of the church. The pews were empty, although the smell of people and a few spent candles lingered. . . . Wait a minute. Gathering more air into her mouth, she tongued the aroma, then gasped. “Oh God. Acne . . . Ben?” He’d come back to Rule after all. And died here, in the church. The aroma was . . . violent. Wreathed in a mélange of bleach and pine tar, Ben’s smell was everywhere, as if they’d scrubbed and scrubbed, knowing that nothing could erase the stink of this horrific death. The altar cloth was gone, as was the platform’s carpet. Someone had tried scrubbing Ben’s blood from the wall where the cross still hung, but too late. The sight of those ghostly, purple splashes drew a cold finger down her neck. How anyone could still worship here, she couldn’t imagine.

More blood in the vestibule, worked into stony crevices. She couldn’t tell whose, and she had no time to worry the smells. The bell tower door was open. No one up there she could suss out, although the reek of Finn’s Changed cascaded in a waterfall of cold air. The church doors were also slightly ajar, and through the crack, she saw them, as well as Finn’s men and horses, streaming into the square.

Sprinting up the tower’s circular steps with Buck on her heels, his nails clicking on stone, Alex vaulted into a short, stone passageway. Light streamed in through rectangular slots in the wall that reminded her of a castle’s arrow loops, only much wider. From the square, she caught the clop of horses, a low muttering from people, but no screams. Which was strange: with all those Changed, she’d expected hysteria and a fight. Yet there was no gunfire at all, here or north now either. Ahead, she spotted ropes and a wood console, the kind bell chimers used to play melodies. One rope dangled, probably attached to that working bell.

She was so intent on getting a look at the square that she’d already turned aside before her brain processed what she’d seen: a bulky rectangle, in shadow, fixed to the lower left corner of that carillon console.

Oh. Her eyes ticked back. Shit.

A bomb.

118

“What?” Greg heard Chris snap into his walkie-talkie. His voice was very loud in the hush; most kids had stopped crying. Sarah had gathered the youngest into a solemn knot to wait until they were ready to move out. On the bed of Jayden’s wagon, a blood-spattered Kincaid was tending to a boy whose arm had been broken by a bat. They’d been lucky, though. The survivors mostly had bumps, scrapes, cuts, bruises. Except for Ghost, whose right ear was ripped off by a Changed, the dogs had made out just fine.

Well. Greg tossed a look toward the back of the wagon train. Almost all the dogs. Sitting cross-legged on the ground, Ellie looked like a kid whose parents were just killed in a hit-and-run. Not far from the truth, what with Tom staying behind. Forefinger corking her mouth, the little girl—Dee?—leaned against Ellie while Ghost, a blotchy bandage wound around his ruined ear in a lopsided turban, sprawled by Ellie’s side. Jet and Daisy sat nearby. ns class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">