So what in hell am I going to do now? Weller skimmed a hand over his forehead and was not at all surprised that the palm came away oiled with sour sweat. This whole ugly business was out of control. It had changed to something he didn’t recognize. He should have gotten clear as soon as the mine went. Just picked up and left. For God’s sake, hadn’t he already avenged Mandy? Peter was dead, and Rule couldn’t be far behind, what with their precious little Chuckies well on their way home by now. Shouldn’t that be enough for him? Because there was revenge, and then there was . . . End Times. Revelations. And I don’t even believe in that crap.
Should he fight this? Try to do something? Did he even have to? Sure, he could take a chance, soldier to soldier, and tell Tom what he knew. But Mellie was right. Tom was on the brink, had been for a while, and there was no way to predict what the boy’s reaction might be. Getting himself killed trying to come clean wouldn’t help anyone, and he wasn’t even sure, exactly, of the bigger picture here or what was going on. All he had were bits and pieces, suppositions and suspicions. So, would it be better to get out now, while he still had the chance? Build himself a new life someplace where he wasn’t known, with what time he had left?
But there are these kids, just starting out in life. There’s Tom, carrying grief he shouldn’t have had to bear. We got them into this. No doubt Mellie saw the kids as expendable, too. But Weller just didn’t know what he should do, what was safest and which the lesser evil . . .
Tom sucked in a sudden breath as if he’d just found something in the dark of his mind and dragged it up to the light. When Weller looked back, Tom’s eyes were open again but so clear that it was like looking into the clean, deep, chilling blue of Superior.
“What?” Weller asked.
“Zombies,” Tom said, very clearly. “We called them zombies.”
PART THREE:
BREAKING POINT
39
Ten days after the avalanche, in the first week of March, Alex staggered from the wreckage of a tumbledown cabin just off a nondescript fire road somewhere west of the mine and southwest of Rule. At least, she thought it was west-southwest. After days on the trail, she had a lot on her mind. Like finding food before she became it.
There was new blood in her mouth and a huge knot on the back of her head. She didn’t need a mirror to see the swelling under her left cheek where Acne had clobbered her not so long ago. God, the kid’s fist had felt like the business end of a pile driver.
She was headed toward the shed—and that weird mound she’d seen earlier—but halfway there, she either fell or tripped, she wasn’t sure. Blundering through snow, her boots probably tangled. When she hit, she let herself sink, really dig in so the cold could start its work of burning her skin, scorching its way through her brain. Maybe reduce the monster to a cinder.
God, please. Please, help me. She had to fight. Can’t break. Can’t give in. Got to stay me, no matter what Wolf wants or thinks.
She began to swim, dragging herself on hands and knees, carving a snail’s path through snow, heading for a dilapidated shed next to a curtain of corroded chicken wire, sucking air through a windpipe that felt as if it had been slashed by razor wire. Another few seconds with his hands around her neck and Acne would’ve crushed her throat.
On her knees now before that mound. Patchy with snow, the hill was about three feet high and reared on the shed’s south side, where there was the most light and warmth. She stared at the mound a good ten seconds, maybe as long as thirty. A loamy aroma steamed from the rich, dark earth. The smell was a little like flat beer.
Then her eyes snagged on something small and black scuttling over a white patch.
Don’t think, Alex. She eyed another tiny black scuttle. Fight, you’ve got to fight. Just do it.
Because things were bad. Really, really bad.
Ten days ago: Her memories of what happened after the avalanche were vague, a jumpy, chaotic collage about as comprehensible as a badly edited YouTube video. What came to her first was a rhythmic swaying like the pitch of a small boat in a high swell. Her chest was very hot, the tortured lining of her lungs on fire, even as her body shuddered with cold. Mostly, everything was a swirly blur as she swayed back and forth and back and forth—and then she went away again, sinking into the dark waters of unconsciousness. She probably did that a couple times, like a periscope coming up for a peek.
Finally, fading back, she was first aware of a hand cupping the back of her head. She was falling, too, and she landed on . . . a bed? A boat? Her head was swimmy but also ballooning, expanding, the monster swelling and stretching as if it had sprouted arms and hands and fingers and was searching for something—someone—to grab. She was very relaxed, almost peaceful, which was strange if you considered the cold and the steady pressure on her chest, like the heel of a sturdy boot.
Then something skimmed her right cheek. The back of a hand— and were those fingers? Her head lolled toward a coil of scent that was black mist and something sweet, crisp . . . Chris? Or wait, no—the aroma was deep and rich and smoky. Tom. It felt like a thought and then a sigh because she tasted his name in a dreamy whisper. “Tom. Tom?”
In the next moment, she was falling even further, sinking away from herself but pulling him down with her, tasting him, warm, so warm, Tom’s urgent mouth on hers, the sigh of his breath over her tongue, the desire a hot rose that unfurled in her chest. A strange liquid heat raced up her thighs, and she felt her back arching, her heart beginning to thump harder and harder, and then his weight on her body, her arms twining around his neck, his hands slipping into her hair, over her face, and she moaned into his mouth—yes yes yes yes—as Tom’s fingers trailed over the sensitive skin of her throat, the ridge of her collarbone, before slipping just a little further—
And that was when she felt a very strange tug.
Tom was . . . working a zipper? Yes, that’s what it was, and that was fine, it was good; she wanted this and him; she was so hot, burning up. And yet, she was also strangely cold, and why was that?
Suddenly, all these things—the sensations, her thoughts—slid and shifted like a slow dissolve in a movie. Now, there were other hands and a different body on hers. The aroma of wood smoke and musk gave way to shadows and sweet apples as—Chris, that’s Chris—his mouth found hers. The moment was electric, exactly like the morning, months back in Rule, when she and Chris had kissed in the sleigh: mist and darkness and a blaze of desire as their hands twined, and their bodies, too.
Yet there was still something off. She felt the hitch, the way her mind tripped over a detail that did not belong, and then she had it. It was the smell, no longer mist and apples but something fetid and spoiled. Oozy green pus flooded into her mouth. Wait. Choking, she recoiled, her throat working, the muck slithering down her throat, and now she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t . . .
“Ugh!” Gasping, she slammed back into herself, her consciousness collapsing to a point as she pulled away from the dream, and woke.
Wolf was there, haloed against a stunning, bright blue sky. He wasn’t draped over her body. His hands weren’t tracing her cheeks or the angle of her jaw, and his mouth was most certainly not on hers. But she was flat on her back, not in the snow but on a sleeping bag, and his fingers were working at a snarl of parka trapped in the teeth of a zipper, and he was trying to undress her.
“No!” She gave a spastic little jerk. She tried punching, but her arms were lead pipes, her muscles balky and uncooperative. This was like Leopard, coming for her in the mine and . . . Wait. Knife. I have Leopard’s knife . . . Get up, get up! She bolted to a sit. Caught off-guard, Wolf flinched back to sprawl in the snow, dangerously close to a small, crackling fire. Heart sputtering, she slapped awkward fingers along her right leg, clumsy fingers searching for the sheath.
Someone jammed a hand into her right shoulder and slammed her back. Thrashing, she got both hands up before Acne—the boy who had been Ben Stiemke—grabbed her wrists. Pinning her, he let his weight drop with a hard thump that drove the air from her lungs in a grunt. If she’d been thinking, she’d have twisted around for a bite or tucked her knees, but she was so panicked that she reared instead, craning her neck, teeth clashing. He jerked his face out of the way, a little too far, and that was just as good. She felt the pressure on her chest let up, read the bow of his back. Acne was off-balance and she wouldn’t have another chance. Howling, she rammed the point of her knee into his groin.
Acne let out an abortive guh! It was like she’d hit the emergency override. Acne’s eyes went round as headlamps; all the blood fled his face. She didn’t think he was even breathing. Then he crumpled, slumping to one side, hands cupping his crotch, mouth hanging open to let out this weird, choked aaawww.
As soon as his weight left her legs, she bucked him the rest of the way. Awkward as a crab, she scurried off the sleeping bag. Her body was electric, as if all the circuit breakers had been reset, the connections sizzling back to life. Dimly, she heard the clatter of bolts being thrown, the rasp of metal, and knew the others—wherever they were; she was so wild with fear she’d lost track even of Wolf— had drawn their weapons. She didn’t care. Screeching, she scrambled to her feet, Leopard’s knife now in hand, and shouted through terrified tears, “Get away, get away, get away!”
Discounting Acne, now moaning and slobbering on the snow, and Wolf, there were three others: Marley, that lanky kid with the dreads she remembered, and two younger boys, maybe sophomores and obviously brothers. Same pug nose, same piggy little eyes. Both had hair that was either very dark brown or black, and toted Bushmaster ACRs, the business ends pointed her way. The taller brother was the nervous, twitchy type; the minty fizz of his anxiety leaked through his pores. By contrast, his brother was rounder, shorter, calmer, and she thought, Bert and Ernie.
Wolf had made his feet. His expression, which was Chris’s in another life, was taut and intent but not drawn in the predatory snarl he wore right before zeroing in on his next Happy Meal. A second later, she also sussed out that telltale resin pop, the sparking of pine sap from a fire burning too hot, very bright. The air grew weighty as a heavy coat as the Changed did their weird, unknowable Changedspeak mumbo jumbo. Seated in her brain, the monster shifted, nosing up for a sniff as if about to butt into the conversation. Or only land her inside Wolf ’s head again, as had happened in the tunnel during the mine’s collapse.
