Ashes (13 page)

“What?”

Tom inclined his head at the open windows. “You want to light up a target, that's the way to do it. Only my guess is they'd have shot us by now.”

Alex didn't think that was such a comfort. “There's no one out there.”

“That we saw.”

“Maybe they're only gone for now,” Ellie said. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor, with Mina at her side.

“Mina would've known,” Alex said.
And maybe me, too.

Ellie shrugged. “Maybe they check back to see if someone's taken the bait.”

“She's got a point,” Tom said. He ran a hand through his hair. “For all we know, turning off the generator is some kind of signal.”

“Maybe the generator will blow up if you turn it off,” Ellie suggested.

“Can you check for that?” Alex asked Tom.

Tom nodded. “But I'm wondering if maybe we should stay at all.”

“You mean, go back?
Outside?
” Ellie said. The bright, brassy light had washed her skin yellow and the dirt smudging her cheeks, neck, and ears pewter gray. Her blonde hair was lusterless and clotted with trail rubbish, and her Hello Kitty parka was nearly black. Alex thought she probably looked just as bad, and suddenly, the idea of a long hot soak made her nearly faint with anticipation. “I don't want to go back into the woods,” Ellie said.

“We wouldn't have to go far. We could even stay on the lookout towe—” Tom's eyes widened. “Oh, shit.”

This time, Alex insisted on taking the Winchester:
“It's not like the dog can climb up with you, and the Winchester has a scope.” “Yeah, but by the time you see the muzzle flash, I'm dead.”
But Tom didn't have any better ideas, and in the end, he found that the tower was little more than a platform with a roof, and deserted.

They all agreed then. They were psyching themselves out. The only precaution they took was to cut the generator, which Tom did as Alex, Ellie, and the dog waited at a safe distance. There was no
ka-boom
, and after doing so long without electricity, getting rid of the racket and that brassy artificial light was a relief.

As tired as they were, they were all too keyed up to sleep and so set about putting the station to rights. Alex scrounged up lanterns, and Tom brought in armfuls of wood from one of two piles laid out neatly beneath a lean-to at the back of the station and got a fire going in the woodstove. Flopping alongside, the dog promptly dozed off. After Alex pumped water into several large pots, she set those on the woodstove to heat, and then she and Ellie gathered up dirty dishes to add to those already piled in the sink. While Ellie explored the bedrooms, Alex took a quick inventory of the refrigerator and pantry. There was fruit in the refrigerator—oranges and apples—as well as eggs, a carton of milk, butter, a variety of vegetables, and a bonus: two packages of ground beef, still fresh, and a string of sausages. Steaks and a roast, and two cartons of ice cream—chocolate and rocky road—in the freezer. The pantry was as well stocked as the woodpile, stuffed to overflowing with canned goods; boxes of dried fruit, powdered milk, and instant eggs; packets of beef jerky; bags of sugar and flour and baking soda, as well as tins of baking powder; cartons of oatmeal, grits, and barley; dried beans; two sacks of potatoes; onions and garlic; and, of course, MREs. There was so much food—and so much variety—Alex got a little giddy.

She was perched on a step stool, riffling through a shelf packed with candles and matches, when Ellie came to the door. “I found a whole bunch of clothes and soap and shampoo and tow—” The girl's eyes widened as her flashlight swept over the pantry's shelves. “Wow. We could live here forever.”

“Maybe not that long,” Alex said. “But it sure looks like they were set for the winter.”

“Hey, hey!” Ellie swooped on something on a bottom shelf. She came up with a bag of chocolate chips. “Can we make cookies?”

The girl's face shone with so much excitement that Alex laughed. “Sure, but not tonight, okay? Let's get cleaned up and then we'll scare up something to eat. Tomorrow we can see about cookies. Show me what you found.”

“Ooo, ooo, I almost forgot,” Ellie said as they left the kitchen and the still-sleeping Mina. In the common room, they passed by Tom, who was scooping the clog of ash from the fireplace. “I found the basement.”

Tom paused, shovel in one hand, broom in the other. “What basement? Where? I didn't find a basement.”

“In the
bedroom
,” Ellie said, all but adding
duh
. She tugged on Alex's hand. “Come on, I'll show you.”

“Okay, that's a weird place for a cellar,” said Tom. They were in the smaller of the two bedrooms, clustered around a small rug doubled over on itself to reveal a hinged cellar door cut out of the floor. Ellie had dragged the door open by pulling on a metal ring set flush to the wood. “And you found it how?”

“I heard it,” Ellie said. “When I walked on it, the wood squeaked, and then when I pulled back the rug, there it was.”

“I can't believe I missed this,” Tom said.

“Maybe I have better ears,” Ellie said.

“You're heavier,” Alex said to Tom. “Everything squeaks. Honestly, you'd almost have to know it was there.” She aimed her flashlight into the dark maw. The light rippled over a set of narrow wooden stairs and brick walls. At the very bottom, she saw that the floor was poured concrete. This close, she could feel cold air feathering up from underground, and then she smelled it: wet rock, moist earth, and—

She sucked in a sudden breath.

“What?” Tom asked.

The stink was almost nonexistent but absolutely unmistakable.

Probably nobody down there now, though; it's too faint.
Still, she didn't

like it. “I'm not sure we should go down there.”

Tom's forehead creased in a frown. “Why not?”

“I've been down already,” Ellie said.

Tom rounded on the girl. “You went down without—”

“Guys, it's just a great big room with a couple boxes and a big metal, you know,
box
.” At Tom's look of consternation, Ellie sighed. “I just
looked
. I didn't touch anything. Come on, I'll show you.”

“Ellie!” Tom and Alex said in unison as Ellie backed down the stairs. “Wait, Ellie,” Tom said. “Let me get—”

“And you said
I'm
stubborn,” Alex said.

“No, I said you were difficult.” Tom turned on his heel and started for the hall. “Go down with her. I'm getting the shotgun. Don't touch anything.”

“I'm not
stupid
,” Alex muttered, but he was already gone.

And the smell was still there.

Ellie was waiting at the base of the stairs. “See?” she said as Alex backed down. “It's empty except for the boxes.”

Well, not quite empty. Her light glided over a workbench running along the near right wall. A rusted iron vise was clamped to one end, and there was a mousetrap atop the work space, but no tools and only a thin rat's coil of wire hanging from the pegboard. A haphazard stack of cardboard boxes were piled against the brick to the right of the workbench.
Christmas Ornaments
was scrawled in black Sharpie on one. Another was labeled
Fishing Gear
. One stood open, and Alex saw a tongue of black cloth. The dead-meat stink was no stronger down there, though, and she thought Ellie would've mentioned a dead body or two.

She heard the creak of Tom's footsteps overhead, and a spear of light pierced the darkness as he shone his flashlight down the stairs. “What do you see?” he called.

“It's like I said,” Ellie called back.

“Workbench, boxes.” Aiming her light, Alex strafed the darkness to her left—and froze.

The metal cabinet was dark green, wide, almost directly opposite the stairs, and the door was open. Not much, maybe six inches, but enough so that when she moved a little to her left, her flashlight picked up a glint of metal, the twinkle of a scope.

“Alex?”

“Tom,” she said, and smiled. “Tom, it's a gun safe!”

“What?” She heard Tom clattering down the steps, fast. “Wait—”

“So there are more guns?” Ellie asked. “That's good, isn't it?”

“I think so.” She started forward, reaching for the safe, wrapping her hand around the metal latch. “Good thing it's open, too. Otherwise, we'd have to find the combina—”

From behind, Tom cried, “Alex, no,
stop
!”

Something slammed against her back as a bright orange flash erupted out of the dark, and a shotgun boomed.

The blast was deafening, loud enough that Alex thought her head would burst. Her ears shrieked with pain. The air split with the whirr of a slug where she'd been standing just a second before. Her throat closed on the choke of burnt gunpowder, scorched cloth, and hot metal, and her mouth was watering, her eyes streaming. She could feel the icy cold of the concrete against her hips. She thought Ellie was screaming, but the sound was muffled in cotton; she was virtually deaf and could barely breathe. Tom had hit her from behind, knocking her to the ground, but now his body lay draped over her. He was not moving.

“Tom?” She couldn't hear herself, but felt the word in her throat. Still half-stunned by the blast, she tried turning over.
God, please, let him not be dead.
“Tom?” A moment later, his hand closed on hers and relief flooded her chest. She heard the low drone of his voice, but couldn't make out the words. “What?”

“Booby trap.” His mouth was against her ear. “Are you okay?”

“Yes, I think so. What about you?”

“I'm fine.” Tom's weight eased. The ringing in her ears had thinned to a high whine, enough so she could hear the dog barking from the bedroom overhead. Her head was killing her, and when she sat up, the darkness spun.

Tom aimed his flashlight at her. “You sure you're all right?”

“Yeah.” She put up a hand to shield her eyes from the light, then spotted Ellie crouched a few feet away, mouthing hanging open, tears flooding her cheeks.

“Alex, are you okay?” The girl was crying and screaming at the same time. “Are you
okay
?”

“She's okay.” Tom wrapped up Ellie in his arms and pressed her against his chest. “Honey, shh, calm down.”

“But she almost got
killed
!” Ellie shrieked. She grabbed fistfuls of Tom's shirt and bawled, “I almost got her
killed
! If I hadn't been so nosy, if I'd waited for you, she wouldn't have—”

“This is not your fault, Ellie,” Tom said. “You didn't touch the safe. Alex did. You didn't do anything. And see? Alex is fine.”

What she'd been, Alex decided, was lucky. Clearly visible now that the concussive blast had knocked the blanket askew, the shotgun was wedged between two boxes, its barrel aimed at the safe. The muzzle flash had ignited the cloth, which still gave off a stink of burning wool. Now that she knew what she was looking for, she picked out the wire attached to the trigger easily enough and followed that to the mousetrap. A separate wire, cut from the same coil on the pegboard, snaked from the now-sprung trap, up the brick wall, over exposed beams in the ceiling, and then down to the top hinge of the safe's door. When she'd dragged the safe open the rest of the way, the wire wrapped around the hinge had tightened, the holding bar on the trap had disengaged, and the force of the hammer snapping shut had taken up enough slack to pull the trigger.

She felt Tom's hand on her shoulder and turned.

“How about we all go upstairs and celebrate being alive?” he said.

By the time Alex returned to the kitchen with Ellie, Tom had prepared a feast: panfried hamburgers with all the trimmings, a huge salad, and fried potatoes. “Wow,” Alex said, “I thought all you knew how to do was raccoon. Where'd you learn to cook?”

“For your information, I love cooking.” He grinned. “My mom's a fantastic cook, and so's my dad.”

“I don't suppose you've figured out dessert.”

“As a matter of fact.” Tom produced a box of Oreos from behind his back. “Ta-da. I liberated them from behind a sack of dog food. There's one more box and a package of Mallomars, too. Somebody didn't want to share.”

“They had a dog?” Alex asked, and wondered,
What happened to it?

“This is very nice of you, Tom,” Ellie said in a small voice. She was quite pale. No amount of reassurance from Alex had worked; the little girl blamed herself for what had happened down in the cellar. She'd been virtually mute as Alex stripped her out of her clothes, scrubbed her clean in the wood tub they'd dragged to a back bedroom, and then dressed her in a woman's flannel shirt and jeans rolled up to her calves. “But I don't think I'm very hungry.”

“Well, I'm starved.” Dropping into a chair, Alex grabbed up a hamburger bun and spooned out a huge dollop of mayonnaise.

Tom grinned. “Nothing like a little near-death experience to work up an appetite. Ellie, you want something, feel free.”

“I'm not hungry,” Ellie repeated. She looked uncertainly at Mina, who'd scrambled for the bowl Tom plunked on the floor and was now practically inhaling kibble. “I should maybe just go lie down.”

“That's fine, honey.” Layering his burger with lettuce and tomato, Tom squirted a spiral of ketchup. “You do whatever you want. Pass the mayo, would you, Alex?”

“Sure,” Alex replied, although her mouth kept trying to twitch into a smile. She caught Tom's warning look and rearranged her features to as bland a deadpan as she could manage. Alex understood reverse psychology when she saw it; she hadn't spent all that time staring at her shrink's carpet for nothing. As Alex forked a burger onto a mound of lettuce, she saw Ellie slide into a chair.

“Mustard,” Ellie said in a very tiny voice. “And relish. Please.”

“One spoonful or two?” asked Tom.

“Two.”

Tom doled out relish. “And let me give you some of this tomato here … There, that's good. Try that. There's more where that came from.”

They ate in a silence that was comfortable and almost heartbreaking because it was so normal, and Alex thought that Tom was right. Food was fundamental. After so long a time of eating only in memory, feasting in actual fact—with all its aromas and tongue-popping tastes—was a celebration.

The silence also gave her a chance to think about that cellar. Leaving aside how dumb she'd been—the promise of more guns had swept away every particle of good sense—that dead-meat stink, however faint, meant one of two things. Either the rangers had changed, or maybe some other brain-zapped crazy had been rummaging around down there. Either would account for why the rangers had cleared out in a hurry.

But why set a trap? She bit into her burger and slowly chewed as she thought the problem through. A booby trap like that would only work if you knew where the gun safe was. Tom had missed it; Ellie had found the cellar by chance. So, presumably, only another ranger would know where the safe was, or that a cellar even existed.

Say, hypothetically, there'd been two rangers. Say one had changed, and the other hadn't. Had the normal one set the trap, hoping to kill the ranger who'd changed? Or—

Wait a second. Tom said Jim was still partly Jim after he went crazy. What if the ranger who'd
changed
set it to take out the one who was still normal?

“That burger okay?” Tom asked.

“What?” Alex looked up and realized she'd stopped chewing. “It's great,” she said around burger, and swallowed.

But she thought,
Those brain-zapped kids changed the very first day. Jim was older and he changed on the second day and ended up just like those kids. And now, maybe, there's a ranger, and that would make four people who changed.

Well, actually, there were five. Because she had changed, too—just not in the same way as the others.

Not yet.