Chris asked. “Wouldn’t you want your best guys on point?” “Well, not if you want them to stay your best guys. This is like the
Mongol hordes.” Tom could see men now, too, to the extreme right
and left, broader in the chest and clad in what looked like soft gray
and white winter camouflage. From the occasional wink of metal, he
knew the men were armed, and some, he thought, might be carrying
bulkier munitions; he just couldn’t tell what yet. “Let the grunts take
the bullets.”
“Our grandkids as cannon fodder.” Jarvis was silent a moment.
“Spooky, the way they move, how quiet they are.” Another brief
silence. “How’s he controlling them?”
“Don’t have a clue,” Tom said, still straining to pick up Finn and
failing. Until sunrise or the riders were closer, Finn—probably all in
black on that gelding—would be virtually invisible. Instead, he trained
his binoculars beyond, sweeping the distant knolls and flatlands. “Maybe he gets into their heads.” Chris’s ragged voice was hushed.
“You said he has to be giving them something because of their eyes.
What if they can hear his thoughts?”
“I can sort of buy that with the altered ones.” Tom slowly panned
right to left. The night was starting to unravel and gray, and he shifted
his gaze slightly off-center the way he might if trying to glimpse a
distant galaxy. God, please, make them be there. “But that doesn’t explain
the others . . .” He stopped as he spied an orange flicker in the middle
distance. “Got ’em. West, near the tree line. There’s a stream there,
still iced up in parts, but flowing pretty good now. That’s where I
would put my camp.” He looked over at Chris. “Good a time as any
to send Pru and your guys. They can be there pretty fast.” Nodding, Chris tugged out his radio just as Jarvis said, “Tom, you
see those guys breaking off from the main body?”
“Yeah, I do.” Four men on horseback were storming past the
advance line of Changed. Still too dim for him to make out well, but
“And what about all those other Chuckies?” Cindi asked.
“They’re at least four miles away. Most are on foot. Plenty of time.”
“Well, the white Chuckies have horses,” Jasper said, and then, as if in afterthought: “Of course, if you kill Finn, the network kind of falls apart and they might not work so well. The signal intensity will degrade for sure.”
“What? What do you—,” Alex began, but then Cindi interrupted, “So we keep running is what you’re saying.” The younger girl’s lips were quivering now. “You’re just leaving us.”
mo ns ters Alex felt a twang of impatience. “Oh, for God’s sake, yes, you run. You’re not three years old. Step up to take care of yourselves, because, right now, there’s no one else. Even if I stayed, I am one person. I’m not that much older than you and I’ve got . . .” She bit back the possible words—cancer, a monster—before any could jump out of her mouth. God, Alex, calm down; she’s just a kid. Closing her eyes, she took a steadying breath, then looked down at the teary-eyed girl. “I’m sorry, Cindi. Maybe Tom would stay. That doesn’t make him right and me wrong. It makes us different. I wish . . .” She pushed back the sudden choke. “I wish he was alive so we could argue about it. But don’t think this is easy, or that I’m not scared to death.”