We Are Ash Read online

  Brook was a separate problem now that he knew—really knew—what Ash was too. What if he changed his mind and did decide to tell someone in any position of authority? Would anyone even believe him? What if he helped Dolores track Ash down and then simply tried to capture her in some disintegration-proof way? What if he tried to hurt her? Dolores didn't get that vibe from Brook, but she didn't like how his eyes had greedily lit up every time Ash had performed some new reality-defying feat. Dolores supposed she might have to enlist his help anyway, if for no other reason than he had a car that seemed well-maintained and some financial resources at his disposal. She hated to use him that way, but she was willing to do anything to find Ash again.

  Snow-reflected early sunlight was beginning to creep into her window when Dolores's phone started to buzz incessantly. It took her a moment to realize that she was asleep on the couch in front of the fireplace. Her adrenaline shot through the roof as she saw it was Danny calling even though it wasn't even fully dawn yet. She fumbled with her phone and answered.

  “Danny? Are you okay?”

  “Oh thank Christ, Lorri. Are you okay?”

  “I asked you first. What the hell are you calling me at this hour for?”

  “She isn't there? She didn't come for you?”

  “What? What are you talking about? Who?”

  “The… the thing. The thing you call your roommate. It, she—they were here and I think she killed like, tons of animals and she roared at me like a bear and chased me and she grew fur and goddamnit… am I losing my mind Dolores? Have you been living with the thing that made me sick? Have you had it in your house this whole time?”

  “Whoa, whoa, slow down. Okay… so Ash came to visit you? What about dead animals?”

  Danny spent over an hour on the phone going through all the tiny details of his brief interaction with Ash. During the conversation, Dolores put him on speaker and hurriedly got dressed in warm clothes, texting Brook to gas up the Mystery Machine and get back to her place as soon as he could. He replied with a gif of Scooby and Shaggy spinning out while trying to run. The more difficult task was assuring Danny over and over and over that she was fine, eventually making him understand that she and a friend—a human friend—would be driving up to see the animal corpse explosion and that she would explain more then. For now, Danny needed to calm down.

  Thursday night had ticked over into Friday morning, and Dolores was supposed to go to both work and class. She hated to fuck up her very first semester of college, but she had an ominous feeling that things were spiraling out of control and would only get worse if she didn’t act. She needed to find Ash now. There could be no waiting for her to return. Either Ash had done this and was about to go on some kind of plague-spreading rampage, or she was out there alone, trying to figure it all out on her own. Given that Ash had difficulty with vocabulary, she’d probably need some squishy assistance.

  “She said—it said—right at the end, to make sure you knew that it would come back to you,” Danny said.

  “Ash said that? She said 'you'?”

  “No, no. However she phrased it was super weird, but that was the gist.”

  “Okay. Thanks. We'll be there late tonight barring terrible weather.”

  “Please be careful.”

  Within twenty minutes, Dolores found herself on an impromptu road trip with the happily babbling Brook. For him, it was delightfully delinquent to be skipping classes to save the world. Dolores let him feel like a hero on a quest, even though she felt nothing but guilt, gloom, and apprehension. She responded to Brook when he asked her something directly, but otherwise she just listened as he talked about himself or his family. Eventually discussion shifted to the need to start Googling around to see if any other areas had had an outbreak of Ash-fever recently. Dolores didn't like this new name—it seemed unjust if her friend had given up breathing into squishies.

  “What if it isn't her? What if the new cases aren't her? She's never done it like that before, never a cluster of people. It's always been one or two a day, but far apart, struck down individually.”

  “Maybe she's learning to do it more efficiently, or like you said, she did take a break, so maybe she wanted to catch up. Didn't you say she'd been off it for a couple weeks? Maybe she just has, I don't know, a quota. If she's an alien, it might be her job.”

  Dolores didn't answer. She had found a Google hit, this time from Fargo. Another seventeen people had been hit, this time at a party at the university there. Bizarrely, they were all young men too—not a single woman had been afflicted, though several said the room filled with a weird dust just before the bloody coughing had started. Dolores felt a little queasy, remembering Marisol's experience and how terrifying that had been to observe.

  She opened her mouth to tell Brook but then closed it. She didn't want to listen to him theorize about it the whole drive—she wanted to wait until they were with Danny and talk through things once, not over and over again. Dolores could hardly imagine Ash doing this without something prompting it. Even if this attack was brought on by their fight the night before, what about the original fifteen?

  “Some spring break, huh? Going where it's even colder and too flat to ski,” Brook said.

  “What? Oh, is next week spring break?”

  “No, but the week after. If we beg off this week, we have two solid weeks of sleuthing we can do. It can't take us longer than that, can it?”

  “To catch someone who can literally turn into smoke, and then disappear? Yeah, I'm sure that'll be quick and easy.”

  “Well you don't need to be such a pessimist.”

  “I prefer realist.”

  “Did you have any plans for spring break? I'm fine cancelling mine, I hadn't bought a plane ticket anyway, but I saw super cheap tickets to New Orleans so I'd been thinking about going down there.”

  “Uh, no, just extra shifts at Starbucks. Fun times.”

  “Seems like your surviving co-workers are pretty fun, right? It's not all bad?”

  “No, not all bad, but it's not like making Frappuccinos for eight hours a day, no matter the company, is that much fun. They call it work for a reason.”

  Brook was silent and Dolores regretted her sulky tone, but Brook didn't realize how good he had it. He didn’t have to work for his tuition. He got to do classes full time. Both his parents were alive. He was handsome. He could do unpaid internships. Still, she didn't need to be snappy with him.

  “I'm worried about her. Whether she did this or not, I'm scared. I feel responsible for her, you know?”

  “Why?”

  “She's my friend. My weird, bizarre, but loyal friend. If she did this, I feel that I'm somehow at fault. I'm definitely at fault for her leaving like that, for being so upset.”

  Brook didn't press her any further and they drove in silence for a long time. At a gas station in Wibaux they switched and Dolores drove while Brook dozed. She felt her phone buzz multiple times shortly after she'd taken the wheel, but snow was coming down steadily now—she didn’t want to risk getting distracted.

  Dolores had only been to Danny’s trailer once, and that had been enough. She found his company “town”, really a glorified mining camp, pretty depressing, even by her standards. Danny was at work when they arrived, but he'd hidden a key for them. Danny's trailer was barely furnished, with just a double mattress on the floor in his bedroom. The bathroom had a single spare roll of toilet paper, a bottle of cheap, off brand shampoo, a bar of Irish Spring, and a giant jug of Orange Goop with a pump. The living area had a ridiculously large TV, several gaming systems, and a very battered, fifth-hand couch that Dolores wanted to put a sheet on before sitting down it was so grimy looking. At least it was cleaner than the last time she’d visited.

  If the bathroom had seemed a little sad, the kitchen was tragic. Big Kirkland bottles of aspirin, ibuprofen, and acetaminophen were spread across the counter, and Dolores suddenly wondered what pain Danny had been hiding from her. In the fridge there was a loaf of bre
ad, a quart of milk, some cheese and cold cuts, a half-used jar of mayonnaise, mustard, and a case of PBR. There was one waxy red delicious apple on the counter.

  They’d eaten on the road, and Brook had insisted on buying Dolores’s meals. He said he felt bad about contributing to scaring Ash away, but Dolores thought it more likely that he was feeling guilty for having money when she did not. She normally wouldn’t accept this type of charity, but she didn't have the energy—or the cash—to fight him on it.

  “Well, I imagine there aren't a lot of grocery options ‘round these parts,” Brook said, surveying the kitchen.

  “Not so much.”

  “When will Danny be back?”

  “Dawn, probably. They work twelve hour shifts and he’s on nights this go around. I think it's six to six, but I can't remember exactly.”

  “Jeez, that sounds killer. You should go get some rest. I may crash in my car because that couch is… uh… well. I'll just—”

  “Oh come on, I won't attack you and I feel pretty confident you won't attack me. We can share the air mattress without it being weird, right?”

  “No, I mean, yes, of course we can, but I don't want to make you uncomfortable.”

  “Good, then no raping. That's my main rule. How about we just set aside any weirdness that normally arises from post-pubescent boys and girls sleeping in the same bed, and we just go sleep. Unless you think you can't stop yourself.”

  “No, no, I was trying to be a gentleman.”

  “Yeah, well, it's gentlemanly not to freeze to death in your car when you're on a quest with a lady, right?”

  “Okay, okay! I'll keep my clothes on.”

  “Sure, if that helps, whatever. But I'm beat, so I'm going to tuck in. Can I at least take my jeans off, or is that too weird for you?”

  “No, I mean yes. Please, sleep however you're used to sleeping.”

  “Not gonna go that far, but the bra and the jeans have to go. You can turn your back if you're going to be all Victorian about it.”

  She unhooked her bra and pulled it out through one sleeve, which he watched with wide eyes, and then she crawled under the covers and made herself as small as she could to leave him more room on the bed. Moments before she fell asleep, she felt the mattress shift dramatically as Brook climbed in on the other side.

  34 The Danny Joins The Gang

  Dolores woke up when Danny came home the next morning. She carefully got off the bed and slid her jeans and her sweatshirt on. Brook remained asleep as she crept out to greet her brother. He met her with a big shit-eating grin.

  “You get laid?”

  “Jesus, you ass. No, he wanted to go sleep in his car. I had to basically force him to sleep in there with me. He's got a boner for Ash anyway.”

  “She’s not even human!”

  “Doesn't seem to bother him.”

  “Well she freaks me out. I can't believe you've been living with her. Or it. Or whatever. Anyway, you wanna go out to the place she evaporated from now or wait until Prince Charming is up?”

  Brook answered for himself from the dim of the hallway. “He's up. He'll be ready as soon as he takes a piss.”

  Dolores turned just in time to see Brook's muscular, bare torso disappearing into the bathroom. Danny told her that he had to shower quickly too—his hands, forearms, and face were all black with an oily slime. Brook emerged from the bathroom and Danny ducked in.

  “You sleep okay?”

  “Yes, fine, thank you. You?”

  “Yeah, great, actually. I haven't slept that well in a while.”

  She was about to say something flirtatious that she would likely regret later when Danny came out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel.

  “There’s a decent diner in town. We can go grab some breakfast then head to where I found her.”

  Brook didn’t let his eyes stray from Dolores's, but she suddenly stood up and scampered back to the shower. She washed quickly and dressed before they all piled into Danny's truck in the cold morning air.

  “Dolores, you shoulda dried your hair, you'll catch a cold with all that wet on your head and neck and back. Are you trying to grow it longer than Colt's?”

  “Who's Colt?” Brook asked.

  “A friend of mine from high school. His hair is super long. Well, mostly—he shaves it underneath because it's also super thick. If he doesn't, then his man-bun gets out of control.”

  Danny snorted and looked Brook over, “Are you Dolores's 'friend' too?”

  “What's that mean? Of course I'm her friend.”

  Dolores shot Danny a look and he swallowed his laughter. They ate quickly at the diner and Dolores shared her findings about the attack in Fargo the day before. There had been another since that one—a whole banking board room had been taken down in Sioux Falls with a very similar profile. No women again, but this time two men died before they even made it to the hospital. The whole building was on lockdown and they were searching for a chemical explosive of some kind. Brook seemed as excited as a labrador that had flushed a good flock of ducks.

  “Brook, these people are dying, could you try to tamp down your joy?”

  “Yeah, but people were dying before and no one was paying attention. Now people will pay attention, right?”

  “If this is Ash, I just want her to stop, I don't want her to get caught or hurt or… or anything. I just want to fix the situation. Stop being giddy, it's weird.”

  Eventually they arrived at the base of the hill where Ash had left Danny behind. The landscape was horrifying—denuded and destroyed to seemingly no end, just barren wastelands, smoldering from whatever had happened. They all clambered out of the truck and Danny beckoned them.

  “Fuck, what is that smell? It's like Satan's sweaty butt-crack,” Brook said, holding his jacket sleeve over his nose.

  Danny spoke through his collar. “I'm not sure how it smelled before she got here, but it smells worse today. I think her handiwork has something to do with it.”

  They crested the small rise and saw the radiating circles of dead animals; woodchucks, martens, badgers, rats, voles, mule deer, a fox, and many more, including the moose that Danny had caught Ash in the act of killing. He walked them over to it and Dolores felt her mind itching, the way it itched at the beginning before she had ever known Ash. But this time it wasn't exactly a watched feeling. This new sensation was more akin to someone laying a wet eyeball on you and saying they’re keeping their eye on you. She shivered and whispered, “Ash couldn't have done this. She loves animals. She would never do this. Never.”

  Brook, to her surprise, nodded. “Yeah, she was super mad when I suggested she do her thing with a rabbit or a mouse. But maybe this is her showing us the error of our ways?”

  Dolores considered the unpleasant feeling. The horrific smell that was not just hundreds of corpses rotting, but something deeper, something more terrible than that, even. Had she pushed Ash to this? If so, then there might be no saving her.

  “We've got to catch her, and soon.”

  Dolores nodded, but she felt nothing but fear and a deep foreboding.

  35 The Other

  We followed the Other and its trail of blood-juice across the high plains and we know that it has come here to this large colony of squishies. While the squishies spread out just about everywhere we have been—creating their elaborate lairs in far-flung places—they mostly cluster in these enormous colonies, like the coral reefs we saw in the ocean. This reef, the Chicago, is filled with enormous numbers of the soft bipeds, and they are busier and more heedless than the bipeds that live in smaller reefs. They do not smell the horrible, decaying stink of the death of the Other's multitudes. We smell the smell everywhere, but we do not understand how it can function when all of them are dead; somehow it is still alive in a singularity, made of death.

  We were too slow, maybe too afraid, in the Fargo. When we were in the Sioux Falls, we found a place like the Fargo, a place filled with larval bipeds, but the Other chose mature squishies that time.
And now in the Chicago, there are so many places that the Other might take apart many squishies. After we saw the desecration of the animals near where we became we, we have been curious about how exactly it does it. We could not breathe into so many so quickly, even if it were Allowed. We find it even more perplexing because of its singular form.

  So we roam the Chicago with our snout to the wind and we run and run. We find a place that has warmer drapes and we slip into them and run away in a hurry to find the Other's decaying scent. We attract less attention now that we are not so bare and cold. Briefly a biped not-nice yells at us about the drapes but we easily outrun it; it is both exceptionally squishy and under-muscled for a mature creature. We run for a long time, exploring the many long lanes threading amongst the giant structures of the Chicago. We see more varieties of squishies than the smaller colonies have, just as in the ocean, the larger reefs have more diversity.

  In certain areas, there is not-nice yelling at us even though we are unsure what Not Allowed thing we have done to attract such attention. But we run. Whenever we do not understand what the squishies are on about, we run. They cannot catch us. But even though we run and run and run, we have not yet found the Other. We go toward the highest of the structures, the shelters for whole piles of squishies. Then we run along a giant lake, like an ocean with no salt, then along a river, and we loop around and around, spiraling in toward the center.

  Finally we can tell that the stink-making smell of the Other is close at hand.

  We admit that we are afraid. We are afraid, because we do not know what it is, not really. It is like us and yet not. We do not know what it will do when we find it. We wonder whether it will attack us, whether it will try to breathe into us, whether it even can breathe into us… but mostly we are afraid that it will find the Dolores inside us. Now that the scent is so overwhelming we fight not to wretch. We pause and push every last bit of the Dolores to the very deepest, most hidden part of our mind.