The red storm kept her company the whole way: a constant mutter, like the throb of a toothache. Her monster was very interested, too. She felt it elbowing its way around, pressing its nose right up to the limits of her skull, like a kid yearning to go out and play. Oh, I don’t think so. Bearing down, she sawed her teeth into her lower lip and felt the monster give a sharp, angry kick. Suck on it, you poor baby.
She cut northwest, keeping a good distance and some forest between her and Finn. The eastern sky brightened, going silver and then white before bluing to a light turquoise overhead. Over the thump of her horse’s hooves she heard someone shouting: not screaming so much as bellowing, a wild and incoherent note that Alex thought was a single word, repeated over and over again. Coming from that plateau. Someone still alive up there. She threw a glance, but there were too many trees, and she was much too far away to catch the scent. If she’d been closer, she might not have managed anyway because of the fire and all the Changed. The air was saturated with their stink.
She came in south of the feeding ground and that terrible pyramid. She had no desire to see either again, and no time besides, but she smelled them. So did the horse, which balked.
“Fine,” she said, swinging a leg around to dismount. “I’m not really sure I blame—” Alex gasped at a sudden shimmy, the shift, as the monster steamed to life, working its way out in fingers, and she felt herself start to fall—
—into someone else, behind its eyes, his eyes. Ahead, there is black smoke and the GOGOGO as the others work their way toward distant flames and the scream of meat. It—he—looks left, to the red storm in black on a black horse and the pushpush of the gogo—and the one who only screams LET ME GO LET ME GOGOGO. Further away, there are others streaming uphill and now many eyes full of the GOGOGO—
And then there is the jump she knows, a shimmy and shift, and then she’s there in another body, a girl’s. She can feel the difference. She’s in the middle of a jostle of bodies, a tangle of arms and legs, and GOGOGO—
Dead ahead, there is a boy, not like her at all. He is a scream of meat. He is food, and she smells his desperation and panic as he tries to get onto his horse. But he won’t be able to manage it, because this boy’s fear is strong and she is close now; his full, rich, raw scent fills her mouth, and—PUSHPUSH—she will have him. She rushes for the boy, pushing her way through the others—GOGO—she lunges, feels the rake of her nails on his leg, and he turns a terrified look, and she sees—
“No”—but she could barely hear herself. “Chris, run, get away, run—”
There was a sudden snap, either the monster letting go, or her finally recalling it, she couldn’t be sure. Her vision cleared and fixed on Buck, hovering over her, a paw on her chest. Her gaze shifted to jagged chinks of sky showing through branches. Fell off my horse. Struggling to a sit, she wiped a trickle of blood from the corner of her mouth and listened to her pulse thunder.
That was Chris. She was almost positive. The horse, a blood bay, was right, and she’d gotten a fleeting look at his face … Right hair, the face was the same, but bruised, and there was something wrong with his eyes. “Red,” she breathed. Buck nudged her neck, and she let herself sag against the wolfdog. Chris’s eyes were red. The same as Peter’s? No, the more she thought about it, the surer she was that Chris was hurt. From that girl’s perspective, Chris was food: blood and salt, fear and sweat. Meat.
Strong, too, that red storm. Every time that push-push go-go amped up, her monster leaked through. Throttling it back when there were only Finn and a few altered Changed around wasn’t as hard. But an increase in numbers meant more intensity, a wider spread. She wasn’t sure she could maintain control.
Scraping up the Uzi from where she’d dropped it, she clawed to her feet. For a moment, she thought about leaving the green canvas medic pack, now stuffed to capacity not only with medical supplies but several books and odds and ends she’d picked up along the way. The pack would only add weight, slow her down.
But Chris looked hurt. Hefting the pack onto her shoulders, she broke into a staggering, wobbly run, with Buck trotting alongside. Chris is here, and he’s in trouble. I’ve got to do something to help, somehow.
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 sci-fry. 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.