Ashes (4 page)

Her watch was an older-model Casio IronMan, the only watch she wore when she hiked because the watch was rugged and waterproof and cheap. She'd had it about ten years, maybe replaced the battery twice in that time. The watch had never failed her, or given her a millisecond of trouble.

Now, however, the gray screen was blank.

Had she fallen that hard? She inspected the watch, saw that the face had only the dings and scratches she remembered. No, she was sure the watch had been working just fine. In fact, she remembered checking the time.

Well … okay, so her watch had died. A coincidence.

Yes, but so had Jack, and something made those birds go nuts and those deer. Something had sizzled through her brain like an electric shock—no, more like lightning—so bad she'd nearly passed out. Only now she had her sense of smell back.

So … maybe not a coincidence.

Her fingers shook as she dug out her iPod. She thumbed it. Then she thumbed it again and then a third time, but the iPod stayed just as dead.

She tried her cell. Nothing. Not just no signal—she expected that out this far—but the cell wouldn't power up.

Neither did her radio. Changing the batteries did nothing. By the time she figured out that her two LED flashlights were also dead, leaving her with just a big Swiss Army clunker her father had bought about a million years ago, she was thoroughly freaked out.

One electronic gizmo crapping out was something that just happened.

Two was bad luck.

But
everything
?

Her gaze crawled to Ellie, and those iPod earbuds still dangling

around the kid's neck. “Ellie, is your iPod working?”

“No.” Ellie's silver eyes inched up grudgingly. “It got hot.”

“What?”

“It got
hot
.” Her tone suggested that Alex was clearly as deaf as she was a complete moron. “I was listening to it, and it got hot.”

“Hot.”

“Like it burned my hand, okay? And then it stopped working and—”

Alex interrupted. “Do you have a flashlight?”

“Of
course
.”

“Can I see it?”

Ellie got that pouty look again. “No.”

Alex knew not to push it. Then her gaze snagged on Ellie's wrist. “What time is it?”

“You've got a watch.”

Alex wanted to pitch the kid off the cliff. “Can you just tell me?”

Ellie heaved a deep sigh. “Nine and … eleven.”

Alex was confused, then thought maybe an eight-year-old kid might not know how to tell time, and she sure wasn't going to get into
that
. So, 9:11 would be 9:55, and that seemed right. Which meant that
Ellie's
watch … “Your watch still works?”

Ellie nearly sneered. “Of course. It's Mickey Mouse. It used to be my daddy's. I wind it every day like Grandpa taught me.”

A wind-up. So are we talking just the batteries? No, Dad's Swiss Army flashlight works. It's got to be something else.
Even with all that blood, she made out the watch on Jack's right wrist, but she was too far away to be certain. She didn't want to touch Jack again. Mina might not let her get close anyway. “Does your grandpa's watch still work?”

“I don't know. Why are you asking all these questions?”

“Ellie, could you check, please? I don't think Mina will let me—”

“I don't want to touch him,” Ellie blurted.

“Oh.” She understood that. “Well, can you hold Mina? I don't want her to freak out, but I have to check something.” For a moment, she thought Ellie might refuse, but then the girl's hand snaked around Mina's collar.

Alex slid forward, one eye on the dog, the other on Jack's watch. The Seiko's hour hand was locked on nine. The minute hand said it was three minutes after the hour, and the second sweep hand was notched between twenty and a hash mark—and it wasn't moving. Alex stared at that watch face so hard that if she'd been Cyclops, she could've burned a hole right through it. She stared so long, her eyes watered. But that second hand didn't budge.

Her watch and Jack's, the iPods, the radio, and her LEDs—all dead, and Jack … Her gaze drifted up to his face. Something he'd said was important:
I'm a tough old bird, all except my ticker.

Of
course.
Jack had a pacer. That was the only explanation for why Jack was dead and they weren't. She knew pacers had tiny computer chips that synchronized the heartbeat to what a body required at any given moment. Jack's pacer had shorted out and that's what killed him. But how? What could reach inside Jack's chest, fry his pacer, kill
all
their electronics—and grab
them
? They'd all felt it: Ellie, with her nosebleed and headache; the dog, which had yowled in pain; and the birds and the deer, which had all gone insane.

And
she
could smell again—things like blood and the tang of resin from the evergreens and her sweat. She smelled the dog, too: not just its fur but something nameless steaming from somewhere deep inside the animal.

Yet Ellie was back to normal, which for her seemed to be somewhere between whiny and nasty. The dog … well, who knew? It wasn't attacking her, at least. She threw a quick look into the sky, eyed a hawk floating by on an updraft and then, still higher, a trio of turkey vultures turning a slow, looping spiral. The birds seemed back to normal, too.

So, if her sense of smell didn't evaporate, then only
her
brain had altered in some way. Out of all of them, only she had changed.

But how? And was she done changing? Was that the end of it?

Or was this just the beginning?

The good news was that Ellie cooperated just long enough to dig out a blue rain poncho that Alex used to cover up Jack. The bad news was that Ellie decided she was done being helpful and Mina wouldn't let Alex anywhere near Jack's pack. Every time she got close, the dog's teeth showed, and finally, Alex gave it up. They'd just have to leave whatever food and water Jack had. That was okay. Ellie could have most of her food. If she could get the kid to lay down some distance, they wouldn't be on the trail more than two days. Three, if they were really unlucky. She'd get by.

As she broke down her tent, she again flirted with the idea of going back to her car. With the electronics on the fritz, would her car start? She knew as much about cars as she did Chinese—like,
nothing
—but most cars had complex electronics, and a computer chip or two. So maybe not.

She buckled her lumbar pack around her waist. The pack was heavier than usual because, along with her emergency survival gear, she'd also wedged a black, soft-sided case she hadn't unzipped for nearly three years, since the week after her parents died. The case was weighty, almost twelve pounds, and was sort of hers and sort of not. Aunt Hannah had never made the contents a secret; had told Alex she should feel free to look inside any time she wanted.
It might do you some good
was how her aunt put it, though she never explained what that good might be and Alex sure didn't know.

There were memories in this case. At first, they'd been memories too painful to want to think about, much less remember. For the first year, she'd had no control over those memories at all. The triggers could be almost anything: a snatch of song, the sudden warble of a police cruiser, a stranger with hair so exactly like her mother's that the sight stole her breath. Every memory brought pain that was sharp and sudden and so fierce it was like someone had slipped a knife between her ribs and given a good twist. Then, as the monster grew and her sense of smell died, the triggers seemed fewer and her memories harder to get at, as if she were trying to recover files from a corrupted hard drive. In a way, she'd been okay with that. What she never told Aunt Hannah was that, sometimes, having a monster squatting in her brain—eating away at her memories, crunching them to dust—had been, almost, a relief. Her brain wasn't exactly hers anymore, but at least her thoughts weren't out of control.

It also occurred to her now that she'd stolen the case from her aunt for nothing. No way she'd reach Mirror Point now. Her reasons for coming to the Waucamaw to begin with had just gone up in those proverbial flames.

Which was pretty ironic, considering what was in the case.

“I'm leaving now,” Alex said. “I think you better come with me.”

“No. I hate you.”

Yeah, yeah.
“Okay, listen: I'm taking the shorter trail, the one I showed you on the map that goes straight down into the valley. When you decide to come—”

“I'm never coming.”

“Don't forget your pack, and don't forget to strap on Mina's pack …”

Ellie stoppered her ears. “I'm not listening to you.”

“… because I don't have dog food. If you could go through your grandpa's pack and bring along some—”

“La-la-la-la,” Ellie sang. “La-la-la-la.”

“—some more food and water for us, that would be good, too.” Honestly, she didn't want the kid or her dog to come along, but Ellie was only eight. Alex didn't even remember what it was like to
be
that young.

Slipping her father's Glock from her pack, she slotted in a full magazine, pulled back on the slide, and jacked a round into the chamber. A standard Glock didn't have an external safety. It was one of the reasons her cop dad had liked the weapon. Just point and shoot. When she'd inherited the gun, though, she'd installed a cross-trigger safety. No really good reason—this was well before the monster sent up smoke signals—but maybe her subconscious was on the ball even then. Considering how often she and the Glock had gotten cozy in her aunt's basement, the time it took to jab that little button and release the keeper bar probably accounted for why she was still ticking. A millisecond was just long enough for a person to change her mind.

Now, after double-checking the safety, she reseated the gun, then clipped the paddle holster to her right hip.

Ellie had stopped singing. “Why are you wearing that?”

Because Jack's dead and our electronics are toast and I smell you, Ellie. I smell blood. I smell the dog.
“You can never be too careful.”

“Whose is it?”

“My dad's. Mine, now.”

“My grandpa says guns kill people.”

She wasn't going there. “Don't wait too long. It gets dark fast.”

“So go.” Ellie screwed in her earbuds. “I don't care.”

She wanted to point out that the iPod was dead but thought that was mean. “You will if you're caught on the mountain in the dark.”

“I'm not coming.”

“I'll see you later.”

“No, you won't.”

“Okay then.” She set off and didn't look back. But she felt Ellie's eyes for a long time just the same.

The trail was much worse than she'd imagined. The drop was steep, slippery with dead birds, scaly rock, and soft, splintery gray limestone. Centuries of erosion from rain and snowmelt had left the mountain scored with steep chutes and funnels where debris—loose rock, fallen trees—emptied before being swept down into the valley. After an hour, her thighs and knees were screaming; her face was oily with sweat, her mouth gummy, and her shirt glued to her shoulder blades. Stopping for a water break, she stripped down to her sweatshirt, tying her parka to her pack, then dragged off her cap to let the air's cold fingers glide over her scalp. Tugging free one of two Nalgene bottles from her fanny pack, she splashed water onto her face, sucking in a breath against the chill. The water was a luxury. Normally, she'd conserve, but there was a stream where she planned to camp overnight, and she had a good filter with a seventy-ounce capacity, so she could afford to splurge. She'd need the extra water, too. After the stream, there wouldn't be any more opportunities to replenish her supply until she intersected the river fifteen miles on, and then nothing until she hit the station.

From habit, she held her water bottle in her right hand, the one that didn't shake. Now she paused, and then—before she could chicken out—she shifted the bottle, grabbing it with her left with all the force she could muster.

Her left hand was rocksteady. No shakes. She'd built up muscle mass the last few months with all that lifting, but that had done nothing for her shakes. Now, though, the shakes were gone, and she felt stronger. Powerful. Like she could grab hold and
really
hang on.

This is so crazy.
She was still freaked out, but her getting
better
didn't jibe with her idea of what happened when a person died. Or—wait—did it? Weren't there stories about how people came out of comas just long enough to say good-bye? Like the brain was on its last legs and kind of let go all at once, all the juices flowing so that everything clicked one last time? Well, maybe she ought to enjoy this for as long as she could.

She brought the bottle to her nose. She still didn't trust her sense of smell; kept expecting it to vanish. But the water had a scent that was clean and very cold, and she had another of those flashbulb moments: her dad hoisting her onto his shoulders, his strong hands wrapped around her ankles as he waded into Lake Superior, singing,
Old Dan and I, with throats burned dry, and souls that cry for water … cool, clear water.

She let the water roll over her tongue and moaned, savoring the taste of every molecule, every wonderful atom, every precious particle of memory.

She thought,
Well, at least it's wet
.

And that made her cry a little bit more, because her dad always said that, too.

She looked back up the way she'd come, swept her eyes first left and then, slowly, right. A wink of sun dazzle caught her attention. Was that Ellie? Had she been wearing a frame? No, Ellie's Hello Kitty pack had been very small. Probably just room enough for some clothes, her toothbrush. Maybe a book, though, honestly, Ellie didn't strike her as the bookish sort. With Ellie, they were talking Nintendo DS, and it would be a brick just like the kid's iPod. A moment later, Alex saw that the dazzle had resolved to glare bouncing off rock. No Ellie.

She sighed. What had happened? She'd turned the morning over in her mind a dozen times. She ought to be able to figure this out. God knows, she had the time. Physics wasn't her thing, but she'd gotten an A in bio and she knew that the brain—most of the body, for that matter—effectively ran on electricity.

So, this morning, her brain had gone haywire. The electronics—anything that was solid-state—got toasted, as had the deer, the birds, the dog. The birds were really important, too—something about the way they navigated … Magnetic?

Now, her hand didn't shake. She was stronger. After that bolt of white-hot pain, her headache—always a low growl—was gone. Her memories were starting to pop to life again because her sense of smell had returned, and, with it, her sense of taste.

Only it wasn't just regular smell, was it? She'd had time to think about this, rewinding to that moment she'd approached Mina and how Mina had looked: teeth bared, ears flat. Going by looks alone, you'd think that Mina had been angry.

But then there'd been that weirdly feral stink, and the word that popped to the front of her brain now was
fear.
She'd smelled the dog—and how the dog
felt
. Mina had been scared to death.

And what about Ellie? There'd been the ammonia reek of urine and the coppery stink of blood—and another sourer scent, riding just beneath. That cross between morning breath and curdled milk—was that the odor of Ellie's fear?

So what did all that have to do with anything? How did it fit?

After another few seconds, she gave it up. All she had were a bunch of facts, a few theories, and much bigger problems—like getting the hell off this mountain and down to water before dusk.

How much daylight did she have left anyway? She threw a critical eye at the sun. There was a way you could tell time if you knew true north, but damned if she remembered how at the moment. Something else about time was important, too. What? She nudged the feeling the way she used to worry a loose tooth when she was a little kid, hoping to make the tooth pop out of its socket. Something really important about time …

The faint scent of char whisked up from the valley. A fire? No, something was wrong with that smell. Not wood being burned, but something artificial, almost sweet. She knew that smell. What was it?

There was a flicker of movement out of the corner of her left eye. Something above her. She flicked a quick peek back up the mountain, and then her gaze sharpened on a flash of pink.

Finally.

The best thing was to slow down, take another water break soon, let the kid close the gap without tipping her to the fact that Alex was actually waiting. Better Ellie should think this was her idea.

After another half hour, give or take, Alex had slowed to a baby crawl, but Ellie was close. Alex could hear the slip and slide of the kid's boots on all that scree. From the sound, she thought the kid was going a little too fast. A slithery stream of tiny rocks trickled down the slope to her left with a sound like the chatter of seashells sucked and dragged by a retreating wave. Veering into the chute, the rocks picked up speed and sluiced in a rush down the mountain. That was bad. If the kid made a misstep and slipped, she'd pick up speed pretty fast, get herself banged up for sure.

Time for a water break. With a casual, practiced shrug, Alex unseated her pack, then slung it to the ground in front of her boots. Tugging a water bottle from her fanny pack, she uncapped it, tipped the bottle to her mouth, and let her eyes crawl back up the mountain.

Still a good fifty yards above Alex, Ellie was coming down fast. The space between them was clotted with brush and gnarly pines jutting at weird angles. Alex could see much more clearly now where debris from higher up the slope funneled toward the chute which was now on her right as she faced into the mountain. This part of the trail wound in a rough, looping curlicue back and forth and well away from the chute, so safe enough. But Ellie was taking shortcuts, shaving off corners and sending down a continual shower of debris.

And the kid was alone.

Unbelievable. It was one thing for Alex to back off—she liked all her fingers, thanks—but what kind of kid left her
dog
? “Hey, take it easy,” she called, annoyed. “I'll wait.”

She was too far away to see Ellie's face, but Alex heard the scowl. “I'm fine,” Ellie shot back. “I'm not tired.”

“That's not what I'm worried about. You're kicking up a lot of rocks, and in case you haven't noticed,
I'm
below you. I'd like to avoid getting brained, thanks.”

Ellie said nothing. If anything, she went faster. Alex turned aside with a snort. Man oh man. Still clutching her water bottle in her left hand, she fished up her pack in a one-handed grab and hefted it onto her right shoulder. This kid was really cruising for a bruis—

The shots were sharp, sudden, and utterly unmistakable:
pop-pop-pop-pop-pop!

Gunshots? Someone was
shooting
? Her mind blanked and then she was crouching down fast, her frantic eyes scouring the valley. More shots—different, crisper, bigger—and she thought,
Rifle.
What the
hell
?

Ellie was so close, she heard the girl's airy gasp of alarm and then the slither-crunch of Ellie's boots sliding over rock. Alex saw the girl sway, arms windmilling, her boots stuttering back on the mountain. Alex ducked as a spray of rocks rained down around her head and shoulders. “Ellie,” she called, “don't fight it. Sit
down
, sit—”

Too late. Ellie's center of gravity, already precarious, shifted.

“No!” Without thinking, Alex straightened—exactly the wrong move. Her water bottle flew from her hand, the water spraying in a wide corona, and then the bottle ricocheted off stone and out of sight. Balanced only on the hump of her shoulder, her unsecured pack caromed down her right arm like a luger on sheer ice and shot off her wrist.
No, no!
She made a wild snatching grab—another wrong move that pulled her out of the fall line and did no good anyway. Hurtling down the slope, the pack tumbled end over end, following the natural lie of the funnel before sliding into the chute. There it picked up speed, dragging an avalanche of loose stones in its wake before bouncing out of sight.

Gone.

She just had time to think,
Oh shit.
But that was all because she was off-balance, too, shifting on the mountain, swaying as her boots skidded and slipped on loose rock. With a wild shriek, she threw herself into the slope, her scrabbling fingers sliding over rock. Sharp stone sliced her fingers, cut into her palms. She thumped heavily to her butt, left leg crimped, nearly horizontal, like the blade of a jackknife she couldn't quite close. Her knee bellowed with sudden pain, but she stopped falling.

A scream. Alex's eyes jerked up in time to see Ellie's left boot kick up and away from the mountain, an exaggerated slapstick version of slipping on a banana peel. Still screaming, Ellie tumbled onto her side, sliding directly for the chute.

“Ellie!” Alex shouted. “Roll over, Ellie! Roll onto your stomach, roll over!” She thought the girl tried; saw the girl's parka bunched in pink pillows as friction drove the material up the girl's chest. Ellie slowed, but she did not stop.

Move, move, move!
Alex's boots slid over loose rock as she sidestepped to her right. The chute was forty, fifty feet farther on, but there was a scrub pine corkscrewing out of the mountain only twenty feet away; she could grab that. Ellie would have to slide past before she reached the chute, and if Alex got there in time …

A slurry of dirt and scree skittered down the slope, breaking over Alex's head. She heard the rattle of more rocks as they slalomed into the funnel; saw a spray of them slam and then pinball against bigger rocks and into thin air. Ellie was turtled on her back now, arms nearly vertical as the pack rode up the girl's shoulders.

Kicking the toes of her boots into the mountain, Alex dug in with her knees, then hooked on to the pine with her left hand. Her hand screamed as the bark's scales knifed into her already bloodied palm. “Ellie!” she shouted. “Over here! Give me your hand, give me your
hand
!”

She surged for the girl, and then Ellie's hand clamped around her wrist. There was a mighty jerk that nearly tore Alex's shoulder out of its socket, and
would've
pulled her off and sent them both crashing toward the chute if the slope had been any steeper.

Ellie slid, slowed … and stopped falling.

Gulping, Alex closed her eyes. Over the boom of her heart, she heard Ellie crying and shouting: “I
told
you this was a stupid idea!”