Jo Treggiari - Ashes, Ashes

“Del!” Sammy shouted. He ran toward her. No one stopped him. He reached her, put his arm around her shoulders, and helped her up.

Uttering a wild scream, Dr. Lessing sprang at him. Her fingers were hooked like claws, her hair streamed over her shoulders. She looked nothing like the calm, composed person who had greeted them hours earlier. Her forward motion threw Sammy off balance and Del was knocked backward. Sammy’s boots skidded on the polished floor. His legs gave way and he hit the ground hard. The billhook dropped from his hand and skittered across the floor out of reach. He rolled away, arms wrapped around his stomach.

Del was tearing at her sweatshirt pouch. She pulled her slingshot free, fitted a smooth pebble into the socket, and extended her arm. She tracked Dr. Lessing as the woman attacked Sammy again with a flurry of blows. Lucy could see the frown of concentration on her face. But Dr. Lessing and Sammy were struggling together, a jumble of arms and legs, and Del couldn’t risk hitting Sammy instead.

The doctor’s breath came in loud gasps. Sammy tried to protect himself, but Dr. Lessing struck out wildly with the length of her forearm. The savage blow rocked his head to the side. The mask was ripped loose and skidded across the floor. Lucy could hear the murmurs as the Sweepers caught sight of his charred face and flaming eyes, the trickle of blood seeping from a wound on his forehead.

In an instant, Simmons tackled the doctor, pinning her arms behind her body, and dragged her away from Sammy. She struggled, then abruptly went limp. He held her wrists in his broad hands.

Lucy forced herself to move toward her friends. The marble floor stretched ahead of her. Her attention was fixed on the drops of blood, some of which had fallen onto the polished stone of the stairs. She wondered if it was Sammy’s or Del’s. How badly were they hurt? Dr. Lessing was sprawled, half sitting, on the floor, with Mrs. Reynolds and Simmons bent over her. She seemed really out of it. And the Sweepers. What were they waiting for ? she wondered.

Suddenly Aidan gripped her arm so hard it hurt, and she heard a pop pop pop , and they were plunged into darkness.

“Del shot the lights out with her slingshot,” Aidan whispered. He was so close, his breath tickled her ear. “Get up against the wall. She’s going to lay down covering fire.” Before Lucy had time to ask what that was, something hard whizzed past, inches from her face. She couldn’t see it, but she felt the movement of air, and she heard a yelp of pain from someone behind her.

Lucy remembered the small, neat holes Del had made in the rabbits. The speed with which she’d killed four of them. The girl was lethal. She squinted, but the dark was absolute. They could feel their way along the wall, but in what direction?

Aidan pressed her against the wall, shielding her with his body. He whistled, a low warbling sound that was barely audible over the yells of pain and the sharp sounds of impact as stone after stone hit helmet, walls, and, most often it seemed, human flesh. Simmons bellowed orders, but from what Lucy could tell, no one was listening. Someone ran by. She felt clothing brush against her arm.

A second later, Aidan’s signal was answered by another whistle. This one more like a trill. “Keep left,” Aidan murmured. “Move!”

Lucy could barely see, but Aidan was pushing her into a run toward a deeper darkness, away from the ruckus. She thought they were heading for the short hallway she’d glimpsed before. She stumbled on, and just ahead she could hear Del and Sammy and the kids. One of the little ones was weeping. Small, feeble cries, like he didn’t have the strength to bawl. She ran into a solid body and stifled a gasp. Felt the drape of a cloak— Sammy —and heard the sound of him fumbling with a doorknob.

“Locked,” he said.

Del’s low voice came from farther up the hallway. “This one, too.”

They moved as quickly as they could through the darkness. Lucy shuffled her feet, expecting irrationally to fall into a hole at any moment.

And then, a little way past where the corridor made an acute turn, there was a recessed light, and she could see again. She looked back in the direction of the foyer. “They’ll be on us in a heartbeat,” Aidan said.

“Mrs. Reynolds said the outer doors would all be locked,” she said. “Or they’ll be rooms with no exit.”

“There’s a door to the basement somewhere here,” Del said. “I remember it from before. Here.” She threw it open and groped for the light switch. A bare bulb was set in the sloped ceiling. Old wooden stairs led steeply down, releasing the eye-watering smell of must and mold.

“We’re going down there?” Lucy said. She couldn’t help thinking of all those old slasher flicks. What was the foremost rule? Don’t go into the cellar….

“No choice, right?” Del said.

Lucy reluctantly agreed.

“There’s always a way out of a basement,” Sammy said. “A window or a coal chute or storm doors—something most people don’t think about it.” He started going down the narrow steps.

Lucy put out her hand and grabbed hold of his cloak. She looked at the scared kids clinging to Del’s fingers and put her lips to his ear so they couldn’t hear her. “Aren’t the dogs down there?”

She could hear whining, excited yaps. The barks echoed wildly.

“Yeah, I guess—but like Del said, no choice.”

Still Lucy hesitated. They didn’t know what to expect. It could be a dead end, and they had no way of protecting themselves except for her knife, Aidan’s hammer, and Del’s slingshot. Aidan pushed urgently against her back. “Hate to tell you, but the Sweepers are coming.”

And now she heard hoarse shouts and the scuffling of boots on the hard floors.

She hurried onto the stairs, grabbing a wooden railing, which bent under her weight. Behind her, Aidan pulled the door closed.

“Lock?” Del asked.

“Bolt, but one good kick will break it,” he said.

On the first step down, Lucy slipped. The railing pulled away from the wall with a screech of nails. Del’s hand shot out and gripped her elbow, saving her from a nasty spill. As soon as Lucy had regained her footing, the girl released her arm.

“Thanks,” Lucy said.

“Don’t mention it.” She held one kid firmly by the wrist. Lucy thought it was the girl, but she couldn’t be sure. The other one stumbled ahead with his arms outstretched. Both of them wore baggy gray pajamas and slippers. Both badly needed their hair washed. So much for the hot baths Dr. Lessing mentioned , she thought.

The stairs were steep but short. They found themselves in a large, concrete-floored space. Thick drifts of dust lay on the floor, tracked over by countless footprints. Steel-encased wiring stretched out in a lattice across the low ceilings, as did rusty pipes as thick as Lucy’s arm. She could hear the trickle of water pumped down from the cistern. Pink insulation puffed out of crumbling plaster board like masses of cotton candy. Stacks of soggy boxes lined the water-stained walls. It smelled of damp and mushrooms, and overwhelmingly of animals: mouse droppings, but also the close, thick smell of many dogs kept inside, the tang of urine and dander and fur.

Numerous corridors led off in different directions, each poorly lit and dusty. Lucy tried to orient herself, but she’d lost her sense of direction. She thought she could pinpoint where the dogs were kenneled, even though the echoing barks confused her.

“Any idea what’s down here?” Sammy asked Del. He’d lifted the little girl onto his back. She clung to him, her hair straggling in her face. Her eyelids drooped.

Del shook her head. “Besides canned goods and bulk food items? The dogs. A bunch of old boxes. Stuff left over from before the plague, I guess.”