Shadows (Ashes Trilogy #2)

Shadows (Ashes Trilogy #2) Page 21

He’s heavier and I can’t outrun them. They’ll pin me down and then Wolf will . . .

All of a sudden, Spider faltered. A deep tremor rippled through the girl’s body, and her ruined lips twisted as that chemical nip— fear and rage combined—filled the air. Recoiling, the girl backpedaled several quick steps, then spun in a snap of wolf fur, marching down the line to stop in front of poor Otis.

My God. If she hadn’t just seen this, she wouldn’t have believed it. Wolf let me live. Wolf fought Spider, got her to back off. This, she figured, might not work out so well in the end, and for all sorts of reasons. Spider already hated her guts. And right backatcha, girlfriend. But Alex didn’t understand. Why was Wolf keeping her alive? Just so he could be the one to end her? Terrific. This might not be any more complicated than what you did with an ice-cream sundae. She didn’t know a single kid who didn’t save that cherry for last.

So how much longer did she really have?

Day 6: Thursday. A little before four that morning, Brian—the one Alex had pegged as the diabetic—collapsed. After all those miles struggling through deep snow, his feet were black with a creeping gangrene that macerated his flesh up to his knees and poisoned his blood. He was so out of it Alex thought he didn’t really catch on until, maybe, the third or fourth cut.

Then Brian began to scream. Ten seconds. Maybe twenty. Clearly tired of the fuss, Spider drew a vicious, backhanded slice. All of a sudden, Brian’s shrieks cut out as a drippy red smile stretched across his neck.

And then Brian’s head unhinged. Just opened up and flopped so far back that his startled eyes locked on Alex upside down. Chin on top, eyes on bottom, the back of his head resting between his shoulders as his blood spurted in twin red ropes. At the sight, her mind slewed and she thought, crazily, Just like that android in Alien.

Now, they were four. Saturday, early morning: Day 8.

Otis was a scatter of bones. Alex couldn’t even remember what the man had looked like. The Changed had reduced poor, sick Brian to a quivering mound of hacked mush yet hadn’t so much as tasted a mouthful, and probably for the same reason that no one in his right mind ate rotted green bologna. So, with only four of them left, if the Changed didn’t add to the herd, she had a week and a half to live, tops.

She also knew that Wolf was getting . . . hungrier. A good burger wasn’t going to do the trick either. Call it intuition or her spidey-sense, but she just knew. Wolf ’s hunger radiated like heat shimmers from baked asphalt. Sometimes he touched her. Nothing flat-out obscene, but his hand might brush and then linger on her arm, his shadowy scent strengthening, growing headier by the second. Once, he’d reached past her shoulder—for what, she didn’t remember—and then their faces were only inches apart. Again. Close enough that she saw his scar throb like something living as his heart quickened. His nostrils flared as his lips parted and he drew her in, like a snake, and the pulse of his hunger intensified and changed into something very nearly physical, as palpable and real as an embrace.

And, God help her, the longer she remained with these Changed—and especially around Wolf—the more this very strange, shimmery, swimmy feeling veiled her mind. Despite all the horrors, when Wolf touched her or came near, her heart skipped with equal parts attraction and deepening dread. She was . . . doubling somehow, her boundaries dissolving as a shadowy second self slipped from her body to straddle a divide: not quite empathy but very close.

The idea sent a shudder of revulsion through her skin and raised gooseflesh. In sophomore sociology, she’d read about prisoners and kidnap victims and what happened when a hostage began to sympathize with and see the world through a kidnapper’s eyes. There were famous examples, too: Patty Hearst; the victims from the Swedish bank robbery where the Stockholm Syndrome got its name.

But I’m not like them. That is so not happening, not ever. Yet she felt the tug. She let herself reach past that reek of decay to a familiar aroma of cool mist and swarming shadows that she savored and rolled through her mouth and allowed to linger on her tongue. So close. She shut her eyes. Her pulse throbbed. So close. If she truly let herself go, she could almost believe that this boy was Chris, because they were two sides of the same coin, one light and the other a dark doppelgänger. Neither was evil. Both were true to who they were.

But Wolf is the enemy. He will always be the enemy. Remember that. He’ll kill you, eventually. He’ll have no choice. It’s what he is.

23

Saturday had come so quickly, and now this very last day with him was nearly done.

Grace aimed a glance out the picture window. The sun was a suggestion more than a fact, a dimming smudge hidden behind a thick drapery of pewter clouds that rapidly shaded to gunmetal gray as her eye moved north. The tamaracks lining Odd’s west bank were a thicket of dark bristles and vertical slashes, like a stockade, against the fresh-fallen snow. The storm had swept through this region of Wisconsin a day ago and was now well on its way east to Michigan, but there was no telling if the storm might reverse course. Storms stalled around Lake Superior all the time. She’d hoped that might delay him, but he was bound and determined to leave.

So. This is it. A sort of last meal, she thought, and then got a little impatient with herself. Don’t mope. Don’t make this harder for him than it has to be.

Well, he would leave with a full belly if she had anything to say about it. Nearly everything was ready: potatoes, a venison stew, a trio of baked apples, and a nice pan of cornbread. All that needed doing was the cake, and that was the real challenge. Grace eyed the heavy cast-iron Dutch oven nestled in glowing coals. Burn rates varied; the shapes of the coals were important. Heat was mechanical energy converted into thermal energy, but temperature was determined by kinetic energy. So complicated.

So much preparation, but the simple pleasure of imagining the look on his face made it worthwhile. The table was strewn with tinsel from some long-ago Christmas. She’d unearthed ancient wrapping paper for the scarf and four pairs of wool socks knitted on the sly. Out of what remained, she fashioned a twinkly silver banner with his name—his real name—in big cutout letters.

Of course, she had always known. Her head might be stuffed with numbers, but she wasn’t in orbit. She only pretended sometimes. Grace had never been a stupid woman.

Take the afternoon, five years ago, when the Marines knocked at her door. The odds they’d dropped by for coffee and crumb cake weren’t high. A very nice corporal caught her on the way down. She apologized, but the corporal said that when the heart sinks, everybody falls.

Flipping the timer, she drew another hash mark on a scrap of old envelope. She stared at the tiny grains slithering in an avalanche down that miniature mountain. A single grain was a millimeter; factor in volume and there were three thousand grains per threeminute timer, a thousand grains a minute, sixteen-point-six-six-sixsix-six-into-infinity grains per second . . .

God, I’m not asking for much. Just let the cake come out all right, okay? Just this one last thing.

Another flip. Another hash mark. Six down, seven to go. Jed had strict instructions not to come back up from the boathouse for another forty-five minutes. So, plenty of time. The cake needed another nineteen, Grace figured. Twenty-one minutes, tops.

Too bad she had only ten.

24

“I wish you’d take the horse,” Jed said.

“And I’m going to say the same thing I said the other eighty times you asked.” Tom rolled a flannel shirt into a tight tube and slid it into his backpack, then hefted the pack in both hands. All told, he’d be carrying about thirty pounds on his back, which he could handle just fine. He’d taken long treks on snowshoes, sprinting up hills, timing his pace with Jed’s old Timex. The leg still grabbed and locked, but he could go a good half day without much of a break.

“You need both horses, and you know it. Besides, you’re giving me plenty as it is.”

Jed’s face puckered like he was sucking a lemon drop. “Even if I were to tell you it was a birthday present?”

“My birthday was in December.”

“Late birthday present then.”

“No.”

Pause. “Grace would like it.”

“Jed.”

“All right, all right.” Sighing, Jed hooked his thumbs in his parka’s pockets. “You are a very stubborn boy, Tom Eden.”

“So I’ve been told.” After a moment’s silence, he said, “How surprised should I act? I mean, considering you’ve told me about the cake.”

“Oh, that cake!” Jed slapped his thigh. “My God, I must’ve aged ten years listening to her go on about chemistry and all these equations and molecular coefficients. The only physics I ever needed was bullet trajectories and wind speed.”

“I think you had fun.”

“Oh yeah. Grace always was smart as a whip. Michael took after her more than me. He was gonna . . .” The old man took a hard swallow. “He was fixed on engineering school, but the money was a problem, so he joined up. Then he figured out how much he liked the Marines and that was that. I thought maybe when Alice came along, he might stop to think about what would happen to her and Deb if he was to get himself killed, but he was stubborn just like you. Once his heart was set on a path, there was no talking to him.”

Jed looked so miserable that Tom had to fight the impulse to blurt out that, fine, he would stay. There was no way around this; his leaving would hurt, and there was nothing he could do about that.

The Coleman hissed. He let Jed break the silence. “I got something else for you.”

“You shouldn’t,” Tom said, quietly. “You’ve given me so much already.”

“And not nearly half what you’re worth,” Jed said, fiercely. The deep crevices along the sides of his nose were wet.

Tom said nothing. Jed unzipped the Road King’s right saddlebag, reached in, and fished out a bulging, plastic accordion document pouch, tied with string. “You got maps, and I put down how to get where me and Grace are going come spring. There’s a list, too,” he added as Tom unwound the string. “Folks who might come in handy. I know I told you not to trust anyone, but if they’re still around, these are good people.”