Ashes and Dust (9 page)

19

The feeling of even, flat macadam beneath her feet was a welcome change from the crumbling, dry surface of another world. In part because it was familiar, but also because it meant that the town of Refuge wouldn’t be going anywhere without her. Not that their trip into another world had been all sunshine and roses. Refuge now had seven fewer residents, all of whom died horribly, some at the hands of one of their own.

Well, not really one of their own, but a Griffin Butler nonetheless. She kept telling herself that he wasn’t the same man. It wasn’t the same world, after all, but they had the same eyes. The same deadly skills. Given the right circumstances, could the Griffin she knew become that man? That savage?

She didn’t want to think it was possible, but she’d also begun to have an ‘anything is possible’ outlook on life, though for her, that ‘anything’ typically sucked.

With the patchwork lizard skin wrapped around herself and Dodge, they walked back to the Phantom. She noted Dodge’s quiet sadness. He hadn’t said a word since returning to their pie-shaped reality. Then she realized why.

“Who was she?” Frost asked. “Really?”

“Her name was Jillian Howard,” Dodge said.

“Were you two...?”

“As much as everyone in this town would love a good pastor scandal, I’m afraid that’s not the case. If it was, do you think I’d be dumb enough to have dinner with her at the Brick House? In front of Walter? Which might as well be on a stage in the center of town?”

Frost allowed a small grin. “Good point.”

“She was...” He shook his head. “She was a battered woman. I was helping her leave her husband, but not for an affair. I was trying to get her someplace safe. If not for all this—” He motioned at the world behind them, crawling with lizards. “—I would have brought her to Sheriff Rule. Her husband was a real devil. You should have seen her scars... I promised I would help her. That I would keep her safe. And now...”

Frost understood. They had all thought the worst of Dodge for his secrecy, but he’d been keeping secrets for all the right reasons. She was about to apologize when she heard the distant bong of the church bell.

They stopped beside the truck and looked toward town, which they couldn’t see through the miles of tall pines.

“Never thought I’d be so glad to hear that sound,” she said. “No offense.”

Dodge chuckled. “I never liked it, either.”

She turned toward him, disbelief in her eyes.

“Public speaking is one of my greatest fears,” he said. “For years, that bell has been an alarm clock for my nervous diarrhea.”

Frost laughed hard. “But you’re a pastor!”

“The Lord prepares some of us for service better than others.”

She put a hand on his shoulder. “Well, from where I’m standing, you’ve been doing just—”

A scratching sound brought her eyes to the road. One of the lizards came peeling around the corner, its claws scratching over the pavement as it frantically scrambled toward them. Dodge started to move, but Frost held him in place. “Just don’t move.”

The creature sped past them with a burst of speed. It hit the incline at the edge of town and shot up the slope.

“It looked...afraid,” Dodge said.

Bong
.

They looked at each other, sharing a common realization. These creatures had been here when this world’s Refuge had disappeared, church bell and all. And while not smart, they could have been trained to run from the sound.
Pavlov’s Lizards
.

The woods around them shook with life. Branches broke. Trees shook. The sound of approaching scratching on the pavement grew louder. A lot louder.

Dodge lifted the skin. “I don’t think this is going to be enough.”

Frost nodded and opened the pickup truck’s door. They jumped in and slammed the door shut just as the first lizard scrambled past.
It must be moving close to ninety miles per hour
, Frost thought.
If the world outside Refuge hadn’t been full of all those jagged stones, we wouldn’t have made it fifty feet.

The truck shook as a wave of lizards rushed past. They climbed over each other, leaping and bounding. For nearly a minute, the creatures continued past, racing out into the foreign world. They couldn’t see more than their small stretch of road, but the noise in the woods told her the mass exodus could be happening all around town.
If there were this many here, how many made it to town?

For a moment, she worried about Griffin, but then she remembered this world’s savage Griffin. If that man could survive in this world, her Griffin could too. But at what cost?

The air around them shimmered.

The distant bell grew frantic, turning into one long, high pitched tone.

The last of the lizards shot past, an injured leg slowing it down. When it reached the town border, it leaped.

The rocky incline disappeared, replaced by a flat, grassy plain.

The back half of the lizard fell to the pavement, still twitching.

Frost got out of the truck. She walked back to the edge of town, stopping in front of the carcass.

“What are you doing?” Dodge called after her.

“It doesn’t belong here,” she said, and kicked the half-a-corpse into the grass, which was short and tight, like a neatly trimmed football turf, only this stuff didn’t look cut. It looked uniform. Almost like a moss. But nothing exploded or tried to eat them when the lizard body flopped over.

She took a deep breath. This new world even smelled like grass.

And then, not grass.

After a second long breath through her nose, she turned and hurried back to the truck. “I smell smoke.”

Epilogue

“Where is she?” Griffin asked a second time.

“I’m not entirely sure,” Huck said. “That lady, Sally Field… She went apeshit nutso. Took off running. Frost and some of the boys went after her.”

“Which way did they go?”

“South, I think,” Huck said. “But they coulda gone anywhere since I seen ’em last.”

South didn’t lead too many places other than out of town, and Griffin hadn’t seen any sign of them on his way back from Ellison’s house. “I need a car,” Griffin announced to the group gathered in front of the police station. His first order of business had been to organize crews to check on and fight fires. Luckily, many of the men in the three remaining defense crews had been volunteer firefighters at some point. There wasn’t a fire truck in town, but the hardware store and Soucey’s both carried extinguishers. Now he stood among the remaining, shell-shocked locals.

“I’ve got one,” Cash said, motioning to a brown sedan that looked like it had seen better days...in the 1980s. But it was car.

Before Griffin could accept his offer and demand that Avalon, Radar and Lisa stay inside the station, the roar of an approaching vehicle drew his attention to the south side of town. As the truck—Jimmy’s Phantom—grew closer, he saw Frost behind the wheel and Dodge seated next to her. He felt a mixture of relief and fear. He turned to Huck. “How many people went with her?”

The old man was frowning. “Six more besides the Pastor.”

“Shit.” He stepped out of the group of people and waved the vehicle down. Frost pulled the truck over in front of the station. When Griffin approached, Dodge got out. Their eyes met. He’d never seen the pastor look so defeated. Afraid, angry or hopeful, sure, but the man looked wounded. Haunted.

“If you need me,” Dodge said. “I’ll be in the church.” He started across and down the street, eyes on the pavement.

Griffin hurried to the truck as Frost stepped out. When he reached out for her and she flinched away, he knew something bad had happened. But it wasn’t the fire-breathing lizards. It was something else. She looked...afraid...of
him
.

He withdrew his hand. “What happened?”

She just shook her head, arms crossed.

“Is everyone—”

“Dead,” she said. “All of them. Even Jillian.”

“Who?”

She pointed toward the retreating pastor with her thumb. “Sally Field. Her real name was Jillian. She was an abused woman Dodge was helping.”

Griffin shook his head. He felt horrible that the woman had died, but also for doubting the pastor’s intentions with her.

“But...” She looked him in the eyes. “It wasn’t just the lizards hunting us.”

Griffin hadn’t seen anything else in town, but if Frost and the others had been beyond the border... “What was it?”

“Who,” she said. “
Who
was it?” She leaned into the vehicle and pulled out a foot-long, silver baton. She then took his hand and positioned it so his thumb was on top. “Hold this.” She held out the baton.

He took it. “I don’t understand. What is—” The baton sprang to life, rapidly expanding into a five foot long, double ended javelin. “The hell? How—”

“Dodge and I both tried to open it,” she said. “But I’m pretty sure it only works for you.”

“For...” He looked in her eyes again. Saw the fear. “Oh my God, it was me?”

“Not you,” she said. “Not really. But, yes. This world had a Refuge. Had a you, and a me. But from what I could see, you were the only one left alive, living among those things.”

Cash stepped up behind Griffin and said, “You should have seen the way this guy handled those assholes. He was a savage.”

Frost seemed to notice Griffin’s torso for the first time, her eyes widening at the sight of lizard gore and his own blood. The fear crept back into her eyes until Cash added, “Those kids wouldn’t have made it without you, man.”

With that, Cash was off to reconnect with the other still living townspeople.

“It wasn’t me,” Griffin said. “Whatever happened in that world... I’m not him. I never will be.”

Frost nodded, snapped out of her fear and lifted Griffin’s shirt. “How did this happen?”

“Hugged a giant lizard,” Griffin said, and he was glad to see Frost smile. “Helena... What happened to the other me? Did you...”

“Almost,” she said. “One of the lizards bit his arm. Burned it pretty good. He stabbed it in the head and took off running.”

Griffin looked down at his own arm, where an arc of small puncture wounds revealed he’d nearly met a similar fate. He held it up for Frost to see.

She traced her fingers around the wounds. Despite the stinging, her touch felt electric. “Do you think there’s hope for us? We lose more people with every shift.
Everyone
is dying.”

Griffin wanted to give her a positive answer. He was desperate, too. The sound of a parking car pulled his eyes up, and he found his answer. “Not everyone.” He pointed to the car. The passenger’s side door opened and Carol Herman got out.

Winslow let out a shout of joy, burst from the gathered crowd and embraced his wife, weeping loudly, uncaring about who witnessed his unabashed adoration. Carol squeezed him back, burying her face in his shoulder.

Kyle Gardner got out of the driver’s side looking a little bewildered. When he saw Griffin and Frost, he approached. “Geez. What’d we miss?”

“Fire-breathing Gila monsters,” Griffin said.

“Shit...” Kyle said with a smile, but then glanced at Frost and saw her still sad eyes. “It was bad?”

Griffin stepped aside, allowing Kyle a view of the gore-covered park and the still smoldering monster truck.

Kyle paled. “Are we any closer to finding an answer?”

“Actually,” Griffin said, searching the crowd for Jennifer Turkette. But she was nowhere to be seen. “We don’t have a clue.”

“That might not necessarily be true,” Frost said.

When Griffin turned to her, she was holding up a document safe with a hole in it—a hole that matched the size of the spear still in his hand. He handed the spear to Kyle. It shrank back to a baton the moment Kyle wrapped his hand around it, causing him to flinch and drop the weapon to the ground. He picked it up, inspecting the strange weapon. “Where did this come from?”

“Same place as the safe,” Frost said. She motioned toward the south with her head. “Out there.”

Griffin took the safe and turned it around. “Have you opened it yet?” Frost shook her head. “Not yet, but flip it over.”

Griffin turned the safe around. The initials N.F. were engraved in the smooth, slightly scorched surface. Nelson Florider. “Renford Ellison.” He turned and struck out at a brisk pace.

“Where are you going?” Frost asked, keeping pace.

“Hardware store,” Griffin answered, and held up the safe. “It’s time to get some answers.”

Kyle caught up with them. “What if the safe is empty?”

“Then I’m going to tear this town apart until I find what I need to know.”

“What...do you need to know?” Kyle asked.

Griffin glanced at the doctor, his voice grim. “Everything. Every God-damned thing.”

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