Free Monsters: The Ashes Trilogy by [email protected] Page B

left but a drippy red socket.
    Because there was something in there.
Yeah. For real . In his skull. This red . . . scuttling behind his eyeballs, spidering over the soft pink cheese of his brain. He thought maybe it
had crawled in through an ear. Or boogered up his nose. He wasn’t
sure. But he felt it all right. Sucker was growing.
He tried getting rid of it. Once, he used his shirt. He remembered
only snatches: slowly strangling from his own weight; the raw pain of
it; that wild, frantic moment when his vision blacked as he ran out of
air and his lungs imploded; the knot so taut the noose sawed his skin
like a length of fine piano wire. Another ten, fifteen seconds, he’d
have cut through his carotids.
So, they took his clothes. Nowadays, he wallowed, naked as a
baby, in his own filth, because they took his crap bucket, too. His
fault, but taking the shot was worth it. The raw, primal satisfaction of
drenching Lang—that traitor— with rank piss and runny shit . . . Oh
Jesus, that was good.
But those bells were killing him. They were so damned loud .
When he could think about it, Peter suspected the water. Good delivery system. When those first few muted clangs started up, Peter tried
rationing himself. Just a swallow here and there, until his tongue
was so thick it clung to the roof of his mouth and breathing got too
hard. Eventually, Peter drank because he had to, and then the bells
just bellowed . Shrieking at Finn—JESUS, GOD, WOULD YOU TURN
THESE DAMN THINGS OFF?—only earned him cryptic mumbo
jumbo: Don’t you find it fascinating, boy-o, that the people who call on God
the most believe in God the least?
In quieter, more rational moments, Peter understood how tempting it was to see Finn as a crazy, broken-down old Vietnam vet turned
militia leader: a creepily intelligent and sadistic son of a bitch with a
bug up his ass about Rule; a guy who’d arranged an ambush seven
weeks ago so he could take out his frustrations on Peter first. If that
were the only truth, then Finn’s conclusions, his methods and experiments, would be much easier to dismiss.
But Peter had gone to college. Hadn’t graduated for . . . reasons,
ones that had to do with eyes in stone and orange water . And Penny.
And Simon. And that damn boat. He didn’t talk about any of that,
not about college or the accident. Not even Chris knew. No point. But
Peter had studied genetic rescue and evolution and endangered species. Once upon a time, he’d had big ideas and grand dreams, too. He
was going to save the world. So, sometimes, Peter really understood
where Finn was coming from. There was a ruthless logic to Finn’s
madness that a true Darwinian might find very appealing.
Then, again: bong-bong-BONG.
Peter wasn’t exactly sane.
“So, when?” Simon pestered. “You’re just sitting on your ass.”
    This was the literal truth. “It’s a little more complicated than
that,” Peter said, still trying to hold it together, keep it down. “Just
give it a rest, Simon. Okay?”
    “Who the hell’s he talking to?” That was the new guard, a jowly
oldster with a hound-dog face and jug handles for ears in a standard,
olive-drab uniform. Sidearm on his right hip, expandable baton in
a cross-draw, slide side-break scabbard on the left. Jug Ears and the
other duty guard were behind a plain wooden desk squared before a
deep hearth in which a fire crackled, all the way down at the other
end of the prison house.
    A voice Peter recognized: “Beats the hell out of me.” The second
guard, Lang— Traitor , Simon hissed, tear out his throat, pop his eyes, eat
’em like grapes —yawned hugely, stretched. “He’s always going on like
that.”
    Now, those guards had to be fifty, sixty feet away, and yet Peter
heard all this, loud and clear, and despite the bells. He’d become like
this bat, see, picking up sounds : the sssss as the residual water on a
fresh log hissed and evaporated, the CREE-cree of Lang’s