Ashes (21 page)

She wasn't an idiot. If she kept to main roads, kept moving west and south, she would run into people way before she got to Rule. This might be good and bad: bad because the survivors were much more likely to shoot first and ask questions later, but maybe good because all the brain-zapped kids she'd seen hung close to the woods. If she paid attention, maybe she'd smell them coming, too.

She slogged steadily southwest through a good two feet of snow, keeping to the road, her eyes always scanning, searching: for movement, for brain-zapped kids, for grandmothers with rifles who thought she might be a meal ticket. There were billboards, too, advertising gas stations and mine tours and gift shops. She spotted a sign for Northern Light—god's light in dark times—and a few others suggested that people stop in at Martha's Diner: breakfast 24/7.

The day was fine, sunny and very bright, and not as cold. If the way had been level and the road clear, cross-country skis or snowshoes would've been nice. Sunglasses, too. As welcome as the sun was, her eyes streamed against the wink and dazzle of glare bouncing off snow.

The road was clogged with cars and vans and trucks hunkering beneath a mantle of snow. Most were wrecks, with smashed windows or doors that yawned like mouths. She kept her eyes peeled for
their
truck, half-hoping she wouldn't find it because she was afraid to know what that really meant. Clouds of birds circled in the sky, while crows lined the trees and perched on icy wires and studied her passage in absolute silence. She felt as if she'd stumbled onto a movie set, the kind where the camera pans back to reveal destruction and devastation all the way to the horizon, with no end in sight, and then her—the only thing moving other than the birds.

Away from the woods, the air was sullen with smells: engine oil, gasoline, rubber—and death. The stink was so thick and cloying that she gagged, and she wished she had something to tie around her mouth and nose.

There were a lot of bodies, all in various stages of decomposition. Many had died in their cars. Others—men and women who'd stumbled from their cars only to collapse on the road that first day—wore shrouds of snow. Even with the cold to slow down the rot, the corpses were hideous, as bloated as those dead cows she, Tom, and Ellie had seen. There were many animals, too: fat raccoons with paws full of meat, mangy foxes, and opossums, their white snouts clogged with gore, braving the daylight for the feast. And of course, there were always the birds, jabbing and pecking and stripping away frozen niblets of flesh right down to the bone. One pair of very large crows squabbled over something in the snow. At her approach, they fluttered off, and she spotted what she thought was a fat drop of blood—only to realize that she was staring down at a woman's disarticulated big toe, the nail still painted a bright, cheery, fire-engine red.

All the dead were adults. Most looked old enough to be parents but not grandparents. There were empty car seats and discarded lunch pails and book bags, but no kids. No bodies of anyone close to her age, or Tom's.

Then she saw something that made her blood ice. The farther down the road she went, the more prints she found from the people who'd survived: boots, sneakers, everyday shoes. Even some flip-flops.

And footprints.

Not socks.

Bare feet.

That gave her pause.

Deer laid down trails, taking the same path to and from streams and meadows. Ducks and geese flew routes they'd taken before. All a hunter had to do was either hunker down and wait or follow his prey.

People took roads. Honestly, they might as well have been wearing cowbells, because it looked to her like those brain-zapped kids weren't simply sticking to the woods now. They might
live
there, but they'd figured out that if they wanted to eat, they had to go where the food was.

Then she noticed something else.

Some of the dead people were very old. They had died because they'd been shot: in the back, some in the chest, and many in the back of the head. Their clothing had not been tattered or ripped by animals, but, it seemed, simply taken. These bodies were fresher, too, and lay in bunches in a scatter of discarded, empty knapsacks and duffel bags and suitcases.

These people had survived only to be robbed and then killed by their own kind: the Harlans, the Bretts, the Marjories.

And that's when she finally understood that Larry had been right.

Those brain-zapped kids weren't the only—or maybe even the worst—enemy.

As she passed by a panel truck—doors open, two ravaged and nearly skeletonized bodies dragging from shoulder harnesses—she heard something that was not the harsh caw of a bird. The sound was pathetic, a whimper, almost like the cry of a baby. She looked down and saw an old man and an even older woman, sprawled facedown near the truck in a scatter of pilfered duffels. They'd been shot in the back of the head, and not too long ago, judging from the lack of snow cover. The woman's coat was bunched up, so Alex could see the spread of her fleshy thighs, ropy with bulging, green varicose veins, above her support stockings. The woman was flat on her face, her arms flung out in a reverse snow angel. Alex spotted a loop of leather around the woman's right wrist and more leather snaking beneath the truck.

Then she caught the scent, something very familiar.

“Oh my God,” she said out loud. Dropping to her knees, Alex searched the shadows under the truck.

Cowering next to the right front tire was a shivering gray puppy.

She had no idea what the puppy was, though it looked like a cross between some kind of hound and a Labrador. When it saw her, it whined, then scooted toward her, just an inch, on its belly. The stub of its tail moved in a hopeful wag.

All of a sudden, rescuing the dog felt important. If she could save the dog, it would be a good sign, like an omen. If she saved the dog, she'd save Tom, too. Later, she'd think about how illogical this was, but that didn't make the feeling any less strong at the time.

She tore open a packet of beef jerky and offered a piece to the pup. At the smell, the puppy inched forward again, its nose brushing her fingers, and then it wolfed down the meaty bit, only to spit it out a few seconds later. Whimpering, the pup pushed the jerky with its nose, and she understood that the meat was too tough for the dog to chew. She shoved another piece into her mouth, working it into mush. The rich flavor of spicy, smoked beef was so good her stomach cramped, and it took all her self-control not to swallow. When she spat out the meat, she heard herself groan.

This time, though, the dog snapped the food up right away, then scooched forward for more. Three more pieces of jerky and the puppy squirted out from beneath the truck, grunting like a little pig and squiggling and wagging the cropped, gray pencil stub of its tail.

Unclipping the leash from its collar, she gathered the dog in her arms. “So what's your name?”

The puppy let go of a little yap. The dog's coat was short and silvery-gray, and it—he—had very blue eyes and big paws, and must weigh a good ten pounds. She fed the puppy the rest of the jerky, then scrounged in the discarded duffels and came up with three cans of puppy food, a foil packet of puppy kibbles, and a small aluminum water bowl into which she poured a scant two inches from her bottle.

Afterward, she buttoned the dog up in her jacket, cinching the belt around her waist so the puppy couldn't slip out. When she was done, she looked either a little bit pregnant or in need of a very large bra. The puppy was very warm. When it poked its head out to watch the sights, she started laughing.

“I got you,” she said as the puppy waggled all over and kissed her fingers. “I got you. Don't you wor—”

That was when she smelled the wolves.

No mistake. The wolves were behind her. That she didn't need to see them to know
what
they were freaked her out even more. She didn't know how
many
might be there, but their scent was indescribable—not like
dog
at all. Some primitive part of her brain set off a complete total-body alarm that dried her mouth and made her muscles seize. Her heart was a fist pounding the wall of her chest.

The puppy sensed them now, too. She felt it go rigid, and then the puppy was hunkering down and shivering all over, trying to make itself very, very small. She kept her left hand under the puppy but let her right drift to her hip. Her fingers curled around the butt of her father's Glock.

Then she pivoted—slowly, carefully—to face them.

There were three.

She didn't know anything about wolves, other than what every hiker knew: you didn't want to run into them, despite the fact that wolves were supposed to be as freaked out by people as people were by them. She'd heard wolves off and on throughout her time in the Waucamaw. Back when things were normal, their plaintive cries were eerily soothing. Of course, that was then and this was the end of the world.

These wolves were big and charcoal gray, like something out of
National Geographic
, and clustered on a small rise at the edge of the woods, perhaps a hundred feet away. The alpha male—she knew it by its smell, which was more acrid and quite strong—was very tall with rangy legs, a broad chest, and golden-yellow eyes: alien eyes for an alien world. It wouldn't have surprised her at all if that rogue moon had risen.

A stationary target, at this distance, was no problem. But wolves were very fast. She could never outrun them, and if they charged, she would probably empty her magazine and not hit one.

She left the Glock in its holster. Instead, she held her right hand, palm out, hoping that the wolves would know
empty
when they saw it. Locking eyes with any animal was a very bad idea, but the alpha male's gold eyes grabbed hers, and she couldn't look away.

The wolves stared. She remembered to breathe.

The alpha male moved first. It settled onto its haunches and then sank to its belly, like a dog settling down for a nap, and began to pant. The sense she got was that the wolf was not necessarily
comfortable
, but it was ready to wait until something changed. As if by silent command, the other two sank down as well. The smallest squirmed on its belly to lick the alpha male's jaw. The alpha's scent—all their scents—had changed, too: still
wolf
, but now mingled with something a little less sour. Another one of those weird flashbulb moments flared in her mind: Mina, lying by the fire, pressing against her thigh. This was not
exactly
the same, but the scent was calmer somehow, like …
friend?
The tense spring of her guts uncoiled just a smidge. Well, perhaps not
friend
so much as
no threat.

“I'm leaving,” she said. Maybe she should say something else? She couldn't think of anything else. What did you say to a wolf? She eased back a single step and waited. The alpha male was a sphinx. She took another small sliding step back, felt the heel of her boot butt against the dead woman's leg, and realized she would have to turn around.

She didn't want to do that. But she had no choice. All the tiny hairs on her arms and neck spiked with fear, and her skin was so jumpy she thought it might just tear itself from her bones and go screaming down the road.

Heart pounding, she turned on her heel and began to walk, not too fast, not too slow. Every jangling nerve told her to bolt like a bunny rabbit, but she thought that would make the wolves chase her, maybe change her smell from
no-threat
to
dinner
.

After thirty feet, she was still alive. The wolves' scent remained unchanged; no one was storming after her, and she decided to chance it. She craned her head over her shoulder for a look back.

The wolves were standing now, watching her go, their breaths wreathing them in smoke. After a moment, the smallest wolf turned and glided back into the woods. A second later, the third followed, leaving the alpha alone on the rise.

For reasons she didn't understand, she stopped and turned to face him. She was too far away to make out its face, but she felt its eyes. Nothing wordless passed between them, no deeper understanding; no telepathic, paranormal stuff. But when the alpha male reared onto its back legs like a playful shepherd before pivoting and melting back into the forest … when that happened, she thought maybe there'd been yet another change.

In her.

By mid-afternoon, when a sign told her she was twenty miles from

Rule, she'd noticed three things.

The closer she got to the village, the fewer dead bodies she saw.

She had yet to run into anyone who wasn't dead.

And she smelled smoke.

The smoke was very strange and very familiar, and it made her heart thump a little harder. She'd smelled this kind of smoke before, only then it had been a phantom, the first sign of the monster in her head.

God, no, not now. Don't let me die here. Please, just a little longer. Get me through to Rule so they can save Tom, and then if I've got to die—

The puppy sneezed, pawed at its nose, then sneezed again.

Her relief was like splashing into a pool on a very hot day. If the puppy could smell the smoke, she wasn't hallucinating. This wasn't a symptom. It was
real
.

She got a good snootful, trying to sort out the components: wood char mixed with a chemical sting, like the fluid her father used to spritz over charcoal briquettes, and something almost sweet and juicy like the pork roast her mother made on Sundays. But there was something sooty and unsettling about the odor, nothing that made her mouth water.

Shielding her eyes against the sun's glare, she aimed a squint at the sky. At first, she saw nothing—just an impression of white from the sun burning her retinas—but then she spotted just the faintest wispy tail, a thin dreadlock of very dark smoke. Not leaves, she knew, which burned white or gray—and not wood. A chemical fire?

Dropping her gaze to the snow, she eyed the by-now familiar scuff of boots and shoes and flip-flops and bare feet—and then spotted deep, straight cuts and the stamp of horses' hooves: wagons.

Interesting. North, up by Oren, was Amish country. With its proximity to the mine, she didn't think Rule was, but maybe even the Amish had decided to come south. Or …

Of course. They'd come out with wagons to gather up all those bodies. The people in Rule must've decided to establish some kind of perimeter. That made perfect sense. No one would want heaps of rotting corpses piled outside town.

But why no people on the road? Where was everyone? Hiding? Waiting until dark, hoping to avoid those brain-zapped kids? No, that didn't make sense. All her run-ins with those kids had been either in the early morning or at dusk. Come to think of it, she had never seen one in broad daylight. Something Larry said popped into her head:
In some ways, she's still kind of a typical teenager. Like always waking up just when I'm ready to sleep.

Well, that was interesting.
Before
the monster, when her parents were still alive, she'd been the same way. Staying awake in morning classes was an act of will. Everyone her age was chronically sleep-deprived, downing Red Bulls and Mountain Dews and coffee to stay alert.

The monster had taken that away. When she really stopped to think, smelling that phantom smoke hadn't been the first monster-sign but the second. The first sign had been the change in her sleeping patterns: frequent awakenings in the middle of the night, bizarre and fractured dreams, a feeling of restlessness as if she'd drunk two pots of coffee. The monster in her head had made her very different from her friends. Maybe very different from other kids her age. Before stealing her sense of smell and eating her memories, it had taken her sleep. And of course, there'd been her parents and that recurring nightmare, a trauma she relived over and over that blasted her sleep.

And Tom hadn't slept much either. When he did, he always seemed to pop awake just a few hours later, and he kept that up all night. From bio, she knew most people slipped into REM sleep—dream sleep—a couple hours after falling asleep, and normal people went through three or four REM cycles every night. Other than that one night—before he'd come close to telling her what weighed on him so much—Tom never slept for long stretches, maybe because he couldn't help it. Maybe Afghanistan had changed Tom and altered his brain somehow. She thought again of post-traumatic stress and nightmares that stormed in Technicolor across the black screen of Tom's mind: horrors from the past Tom could not outrun.

Horrors—nightmares—that might have saved him.

Messed-up hormones might not be the only things that had saved her from changing so far. Maybe, as with Tom, altered sleep and nightmares were important, too. More to the point, maybe it was her whole screwed-up brain.

Maybe the monster had saved her life.