Ahead, she could see Acne laboring under the weight of the still-gurgling Spider draped over his shoulders. Blood from the girl’s ruined nose left a vermillion ribbon in the snow.
And that made her wonder: were the Changed following a circuit? Made sense, all things considered, but there was still the problem of supply and demand, wasn’t there? As the winter deepened, the flow of refugees had dwindled, a blessing in some ways because Rule had food and supply issues of its own. Of the few refugees who straggled in, only a handful were allowed to remain. Most were turned away.
Her nose suddenly filled with a steaming welter of odors. Dead ahead, she thought. A furtive, sidelong glance at Wolf revealed that the boy was unconcerned. Something cold and charry, like old wood smoke, and—she inhaled again—a fizz, slightly sweet . . . Spoiled fruit? For reasons she couldn’t fathom, her mind jumped to the hospice back at Rule and the thick miasma that filled the halls where the very few terminal patients waited to die. This scent was similar. But that would mean . . .
Oh boy. Her heart thudded to her toes. She was getting a very bad feeling about this. Yeah, but you might be wrong. This could be old.
Another hundred yards and they stepped into a shallow clearing. A tumble of gray stone, common to rudimentary campsites, stood to her left. Okay, given the charry scent, that added up, but judging from the snow cover, no fire had burned in that hearth for some time. Further on and to her right, close to the tree line, a series of irregular drifts abutted a three-sided wooden structure. No one there. All right, not bad but not necessary good either, because that fruity fizz was much stronger, the air more turgid and somehow rancid, like meat starting to go bad. Her eyes sharpened on the camp shelter, but aside from a stack of empty, olive-green nylon duffels on a solitary bench, the shelter was empty. Too small to comfortably house the Changed, too, come to think of it.
Which begged an interesting question. Where did Wolf and the others live? Other than her backpack dangling from Wolf ’s right shoulder, these Changed carried nothing but weapons and, probably, some extra ammo stashed in their parkas. There was no gear piled alongside the shelter. That fire pit hadn’t seen action for months. Wolf ’s clothes and those of the other Changed were well-worn but not filthy. So either they shucked dirty clothes as they went along, or cleaned up. One thing was clear, however: these Changed hadn’t been out here, in the snow, roughing it, since the Zap.
So this isn’t the last stop. Rule must be on the way between point A and point B. Her eyes strayed over the shelter again, then clicked to the woods beyond. A slight trough, judging from the slouch and dip, meandered between trees, heading vaguely northwest. Perhaps twenty yards further, her gaze snagged on a smudgy slate-blue hash mark halfway up the trunk of a sturdy oak. A blaze. So this was or had been a trail at one point. Given the shelter and hearth, this made sense, too.
Using established trails to get around, maybe even to follow a kind of circuit. They have to be putting inside somewhere. If I planned to hang around, that’s what I would do. Use a couple abandoned houses as base camps. Her eyes strayed to that shelter again. Lay in a store of ammo and supplies and then move from one to the next, give game a chance to come back before I—
By the shelter, one of the drifts stirred. She blinked. For a crazy second, she flashed to a Jack London novel she’d read in seventh grade English and thought, Sled dogs. Burrowing into snow was how Buck and the other sled dogs got through the night. Yet the mélange of warmed odors which pillowed out was full and round—and all wrong. Besides, dogs hated the Changed.
She watched as the lumps of snow broke apart. Two clenched fists punched through and then more fists and arms and now legs and heads—
People.
14
Three women and two men, all well along in years, struggled up from the snow. With no fire, rudimentary snow caves would be their best option. She’d have done the same thing.
Ten eyes set in five slack faces watched her watching them. They said nothing. Neither did she. They were—she sniffed— what? Not frightened. No one could stay scared to death all the time. Aside from their rancid flesh and that fruity fizz, these old people smelled like cold oatmeal, an odor that was almost no odor at all. Apathetic: that’s what their scent said. She even understood. Endure a couple rounds of chemo that didn’t kill the monster and only made you puke your guts out, and see just how interested in living you were. You really, truly didn’t give a shit.
She also thought, though, that pasty guy in the middle was legitimately sick. His illness hung like the fetor of a stagnant, scum-choked swamp. A diabetic? Or starvation? Maybe both, judging from the loose flesh and hard planes and edges of bone tenting skin on the faces of the others. And now her association to the hospice wing where the terminal waited to die made sense. A body smelled like that when it was eating itself to stay alive.
They’ve been here at least an hour and probably longer. So why didn’t they run? Wolf tugged, and she staggered forward as Beretta waded into the knot of bodies and began fishing for something in the snow. The oldsters shrank back, jostling and bunching the way skittish zebras clustered as the lions gathered. There’s no guard. It can’t be just that they’re scared . . .
Her thoughts stumbled as something icy brushed her left wrist. She looked down and saw that Beretta held a rope, hard and stiff with cold and as thick around as her thumb. She sucked in a startled gasp. What the hell? She followed its length and saw how it looped from one oldster to the next. Now that she was closer, she realized their wrists were bound. So were their ankles. More rope snaked from their legs and was tied off to the support beams of the old camp shelter.
Hobbled. That’s why these old people hadn’t run. They couldn’t. The Changed were gathering them up like cattle to be kept until it was time to slaughter—
“No!” Horror blasted through her body on a harsh wind. If she let them tie her up, she wouldn’t be able to fight; it would be the end, like giving into the monster. Gasping, she bucked and wrenched away, shaking free of Wolf ’s grip, and then she was swinging with her good right arm, whipping around, screaming, screaming, screaming, “No, no, no, I won’t let you!”
Startled, the scent of his surprise spiking her nose, Beretta jerked up just as her fist jackhammered his jaw. With the tidal wave of adrenaline-fueled fear surging through her veins, she felt nothing and heard the impact only as a distant, airy crack, like a punch landed in a television show: a sound effect with no substance. Later, when she studied her bruised knuckles, she would think it was a miracle she hadn’t broken her hand. The blow dumped Beretta on his ass, and then she was staggering, off-balance both from her own momentum and the snowshoes still strapped to her feet. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Slash making a grab, and she shrieked again, tried ducking out from under, but the rigid toe of her left snowshoe jammed into deep snow. Her knee twisted, and she cried out again, this time with pain. She would’ve gone down, maybe even broken her leg, but she felt a hand—Slash’s, she thought—clutch the nape of her neck and squeeze.
Oh no you don’t, bitch . Another starburst of pain as the jammed shoe came loose, and then she’d planted her feet and was uncoiling, surging up, her fist driving—
At the last second, she realized that it wasn’t Slash who had her.
Quick as a snake, Wolf lashed out, his hand closing around her wrist, stopping her fist in midair.
Please, God. Panting, she strained to complete the swing, but his grip was iron. Her body quivered, a coiled spring under too much pressure. Let me finish this. Help me just one more time.
“You shouldn’t fight.” An old lady’s quaver. Alex had no idea which of the three women had spoken and wasn’t about to take her eyes off Wolf to check. “It’ll only make them mad,” the old lady said.
“Quiet, Ruby.” A man’s rumble. “She wants it to end sooner than later, that’s her business.”
Yes, but at least she’d go down fighting, not cowed and broken like these old people. If Wolf let up, just for a second, she would finish what she started. He probably knew that, too, although his dark eyes were as fathomless as deep wells and unreadable. His breath, scented with a coppery tang of half-digested meat, slanted over her cheeks. That was her blood in his mouth, on his tongue—
His body shifted then. The change was subtle: the set of his feet, the way he held his shoulders. The hand at the back of her neck tightened, and then she realized: he was pulling her closer.
The better to bite out your throat. She saw his lips peel back and the slow slink of his tongue. The Changed’s thick funk of dead animal and stewed guts flooded her nose and mouth. The better to drink nice, warm—
Her thoughts stuttered as another, more familiar scent of cool shadows intensified, wreathing her like smoke . . . and now, there came the faint but unmistakable effervescence of crisp, sweet apples.
Chris. It was Chris’s smell but much more pointed, insistent, and it touched her, found its way into her chest as it—and Chris— had before. In a different time and place, this would be that dizzying moment of anticipation right before he crushed her mouth to his and then—
Something deep in her mind turned over . . . and . . . flexed.
No. My God, what is that? The sensation was nearly indescribable, a kind of deep mental shift, as if some part of her brain had suddenly decided to stretch and twist around to search for a better view. Her head was simultaneously both muzzy—and crowded. She remembered the instant Wolf ’s consciousness had slithered into hers and settled there; how she’d felt her body under his hands and his mouth dragging over—
No, don’t. What was happening to her? She was losing her mind. That had to be it. She was finally cracking up, going insane—and who wouldn’t? Help me, please, somebody help me. But there would be no rescue. She was on her own. Whatever happened next was up to her.
Do something. The choke of Wolf ’s excitement was gagging. Her mind was clouding. She was going to lose it; God, she was losing it . . . Break it, do something, do anything, but do it now.