Ghost Summer, Stories

by Tananarive Due

  The radio hissed and squealed up and down the FM dial, so Kendrick tried AM next. Grandpa Joe’s truck radio wasn’t good for anything. The shortwave at the cabin was better.

  A man’s voice came right away, a shout so loud it was like screaming.

  “ . . . AND IN THOSE DAYS SHALL MEN SEEK DEATH AND SHALL NOT FIND IT . . . AND SHALL DESIRE TO DIE AND DEATH SHALL FLEE FROM THEM . . . ”

  “Turn that bullshit off,” Grandpa Joe snapped. Kendrick hurried to turn the knob, and the voice was gone. “Don’t you believe a word of that, you hear me? That’s B-U-Double-L-bullshit. Things are bad now, but they’ll get better once we get a fix on this thing. Anything can be beat, believe you me. I ain’t givin’ up, and neither should you. That’s givin’-up talk.”

  The next voices were a man and a woman who sounded so peaceful that Kendrick wondered where they were. What calm places were left?

  “ . . . mobilization at the Vancouver Armory. That’s from the commander of the Washington National Guard. So you see,” the man said, “there are orchestrated efforts. There has been progress in the effort to reclaim Portland and even more in points north. The Armory is secure, and running survivors to the islands twice a week. Look at Rainier. Look at Devil’s Wake. As long as you stay away from the large urban centers, there are dozens of pockets where people are safe and life is going on.”

  “Oh, yes,” the woman said. “Of course there are.”

  “There’s a learning curve. That’s what people don’t understand.”

  “Absolutely.” The woman sounded absurdly cheerful.

  “Everybody keeps harping on Longview . . . ”—The man said Longview as if it were a normal, everyday place. Kendrick’s stomach tightened when he heard it.—“ . . . but that’s become another encouraging story. Contrary to rumors, there is a National Guard presence. There are limited food supplies. There’s a gated community in the hills housing over four hundred. Remember safety in numbers. Any man, woman or teenager who’s willing to enlist is guaranteed safe lodging. Fences are going up, roads barricaded. We’re getting this under control. That’s a far cry from what we were hearing even five, six weeks ago.”

  “Night and day,” the cheerful woman said. Her voice trembled with happiness.

  Grandpa Joe reached over to rub Kendrick’s head. “See there?” he said.

  Kendrick nodded, but he wasn’t happy to imagine that a stranger might be in his bed. Maybe it was another family with a little boy. Or twins.

  But probably not. Dog-Girl said the National Guard was long gone and nobody knew where to find them. Bunch of useless bloody shitheads, she’d said, the first time he’d heard the little round woman cuss. Her accent made cussing sound exotic. If she was right, dogs might be roaming through his house, too, looking for something to eat.

  “ . . . There’s talk that a Bay Area power plant is up again. It’s still an unconfirmed rumor, and I’m not trying to try to wave some magic wand here, but I’m just making the point—and I’ve tried to make it before—that life probably felt a lot like this in Hiroshima.”

  “Yes,” the woman said. From her voice, Hiroshima was somewhere very important.

  “Call it apples and oranges, but put yourself in the place of a villager in Rwanda. Or an Auschwitz survivor. There had to be some days that felt exactly the way we feel when we hear these stories from Seattle and Portland, and when we’ve talked to the survivors . . . ”

  Just ahead, along the middle of the road, a man was walking ahead of them.

  Kendrick sat straight up when he saw him, balling up the tissue wad in his pocket so tightly that he felt his fingernails bite into his skin. The walking man was tall and broad-shouldered, wearing a brick-red backpack. He lurched along unsteadily. From the way he bent forward, as if bracing into a gale, Kendrick guessed the backpack was heavy.

  He hadn’t ever seen anyone walking on this road.

  “Don’t you worry,” Grandpa Joe said. Kendrick’s neck snapped back as Grandpa Joe sped up his truck. “We ain’t stoppin’.”

  The man let out a mournful cry as they passed, waving a cardboard sign. He had a long, bushy beard, and as they passed his eyes looked wide and wild. Kendrick craned his head to read the sign, which the man held high in the air: STILL HERE, the sign said.

  “He’ll be all right,” Grandpa Joe said, but Kendrick didn’t think so. No one was supposed to go on the roads alone, especially without a car. Maybe the man had a gun, and maybe they would need another man with a gun. Maybe the man had been trying to warn them something bad was waiting for them ahead.

  But the way he walked . . .

  No matter what, Mom said.

  Kendrick kept watching while the man retreated behind them. He had to stop watching when he felt nausea pitch in his stomach. He’d been holding his breath without knowing it. His face was cold and sweating, both at once.

  “Was that one?” Kendrick whispered.

  He hadn’t known he was going to say that either, just like when he asked for a Coke. Instead, he’d been thinking about the man’s sign. Still here.

  “Don’t know,” Grandpa Joe said. “It’s hard to tell. That’s why you never stop.”

  They listened to the radio, neither of them speaking again for the rest of the ride.

  Time was, Joseph Earl Davis III never would have driven past anyone on the road without giving them a chance to hop into the bed and ride out a few miles closer to wherever they were going. Hell, he’d picked up a group of six college-age kids and driven them to the Centralia compound back in April.

  But Joe hadn’t liked the look of that hitcher. Something about his walk. Or, maybe times were just different. If Kendrick hadn’t been in the car, Jesus as his witness, Joe might have run that poor wanderer down where he walked. An ounce of prevention. That was what it had come to, in Joe Davis’s mind. Drastic measures. You just never knew, that was the thing.

  EREH LLITS, the man’s sign said in the mirror, receding into a tiny, unreadable blur.

  Yeah, I’m still here too, Joe thought. And not picking up hitchhikers was one way he intended to stay here, thanks a bunch for asking.

  Freaks clustered in the cities, but there were plenty of them wandering through the countryside nowadays, actual packs. Thousands, maybe. Joe had seen his first six months ago, coming into Longview to rescue his grandson. His first, his fifth, and his tenth. He’d done what he had to do to save the boy, then shut the memories away where they couldn’t sneak into his dreams. Then drank enough to make the dreams blurry.

  A week later, he’d seen one closer to home, not three miles beyond the gated road, not five miles from the cabin. Its face was bloated blue-gray, and flies buzzed around the open sores clotted with that dark red scabby shit that grew under their skin. The thing could barely walk, but it had smelled him, swiveling in his direction like a scarecrow on a pivot.

  Joe still dreamed about that one every night. That one had chosen him.

  Joe left the freaks alone unless one came at him—that was safest if you were by yourself. He’d seen a poor guy shoot one down in a field, and then a swarm came from over a hill. Some of those fuckers could walk pretty fast, could run, and they weren’t stupid, by God.

  But Joe had killed that one, the pivoting one that had chosen him. He’d kill it a dozen times again if he had the chance; it was a favor to both of them. That shambling mess had been somebody’s son, somebody’s husband, somebody’s father. People said freaks weren’t really dead—they didn’t climb out of graves like movie monsters—but they were as close to walking dead as Joe ever wanted to see. Something was eating them from the inside out, and if they bit you, the freak shit would start eating you, too. You fell asleep, and you woke up different.

  The movies had that part right, anyway.

  As for the rest, nobody knew much. People who met freaks up close and personal didn’t live long enough to write reports about them. Whatever they were, freaks weren’t just a city problem anymore. They were everybody’s problem.r />
  Can you hold on, Dad? My neighbor’s knocking on the window.

  That’s what Cass had said the last time they’d spoken, then he hadn’t heard any more from his daughter for ten agonizing minutes. The next time he’d heard her voice, he’d barely recognized it, so calm it could be nothing but a mask over mortal terror. DADDY? Don’t talk—just listen. I’m so sorry. For everything. No time to say it all. They’re here. You need to come and get Kendrick. Use the danger word. Do you hear me, Daddy? And . . . bring guns. Shoot anyone suspicious. I mean anyone, Daddy.

  Daddy, she’d called him. She hadn’t called him that in years.

  That day, he’d woken up with alarm twisting his gut for no particular reason. That was why he’d raised Cassidy on the shortwave two hours earlier than he usually did, and she’d sounded irritated he’d called before she was up. My neighbor’s knocking on the window.

  Joe had prayed he wouldn’t find what he knew would be waiting in Longview. He’d known what might happen to Cass, Devon, and Kendrick the moment he’d found them letting neighbors use the shortwave and drink their water like they’d been elected to the Rescue Committee. They couldn’t even name one of the women in their house. That was Cass and Devon for you. Acting like naïve fools, and he’d told them as much.

  Still, even though he’d tried to make himself expect the worst, he couldn’t, really. If he ever dwelled on that day, he might lose his mind . . . and then what would happen to Kendrick?

  Any time Joe brought up that day, the kid’s eyes whiffed out like a dead pilot light. It had taken Kendrick hours to finally open that reinforced door and let him in, even though Joe had used the danger word again and again. And Kendrick had spoken hardly a word since.

  Little Soldier was doing all right today. Good. He’d need to be tougher, fast. The kid had regressed from nine to five or six, just when Joe needed him to be as old as he could get.

  As Joe drove beyond the old tree farms, the countryside opened up on either side; fields on his left, a range of hills on his right. There’d been a cattle farm out here once, but the cattle was gone. Wasn’t much else out here, and there never had been.

  Except for Mike’s. Nowadays, Mike’s was the only thing left anyone recognized.

  Mike’s was a gas station off exit 46 with Porta-Potties out back and a few shelves inside crammed with things people wanted: flour, canned foods, cereal, powdered milk, lanterns, flashlights, batteries, first aid supplies, and bottled water. And gas, of course. How he kept getting this shit, Joe had no idea. If I told you that, I’d be out of business, bro, Mike had told him when Joe asked, barking a laugh at him.

  Last time he’d driven out here, Joe had asked Mike why he’d stayed behind when so many others were gone. Why not move somewhere less isolated? Even then, almost a full month ago, folks had been clumping up in Longview, barricading the school, jail and hospital. Had to be safer, if you could buy your way in. Being white helped too. They said it didn’t, but Joe Davis knew it did. Always had, always would. Things like that just went underground for a time, that’s all. Times like these the ugly stuff festered and exploded back topside.

  Mike wasn’t quite as old as Joe—sixty-three to Joe’s more cumbersome seventy-one—but Joe thought he was foolhardy to keep the place open. Sure, all the stockpiling and bartering had made Mike a rich man, but was gasoline and Rice-A-Roni worth the risk? I don’t run, Joe. Guess I’m hard-headed. That was all he’d said.

  Joe had known Mike since he first built his cedar cabin in 1989, after retiring from his berth as supply sergeant at Fort McArthur. Mike had just moved down from Alberta, and they’d talked movies, then jazz. They’d discovered a mutual love of Duke Ellington and old sitcoms. Mike had always been one of his few friends around here. Now, he was the only one.

  Joe didn’t know whether to hope his friend would still be there or to pray he was gone. Better for him to be gone, Joe thought. One day, he and the kid would have to move on too, plain and simple. That day was coming soon. That day had probably come and gone twice over.

  Joe saw a glint of the aluminum fencing posted around Mike’s as he came around the bend, the end of the S on the road. Although it looked more like a prison camp, Mike’s was an oasis, a tiny squat store and a row of gas pumps surrounded by a wire fence a man and a half tall. The fence was electrified at night: Joe had seen at least one barbecued body to prove it, and everyone had walked around the corpse as if it wasn’t there. With gas getting scant, Mike tended to trust the razor wire more, using the generator less these days.

  Mike’s three boys, who’d never proved to be much good at anything else, had come in handy for keeping order. They’d had two or three gunfights there, Mike had said, because strangers with guns thought they could go anywhere they pleased and take anything they wanted.

  Today, the gate was hanging open. He’d never come to Mike’s when there wasn’t someone standing at the gate. All three of Mike’s boys were usually there with their greasy hair and pale fleshy bellies bulging through their too-tight T-shirts. No one today.

  Something was wrong.

  “Shit,” Joe said aloud, before he remembered he didn’t want to scare the kid. He pinched Kendrick’s chin between his forefinger and thumb, and his grandson peered up at him, resigned, the expression he always wore these days. “Let’s just sit here a minute, okay?”

  Little Soldier nodded. He was a good kid.

  Joe coasted the truck to a stop outside of the gate. While it idled, he tried to see what he could. The pumps stood silent and still on their concrete islands, like two men with their hands in their pockets. There was a light on inside, a super-white fluorescent glow through the picture windows painted with the words GAS, FOOD in red. He could make out a few shelves from where he was parked, but he didn’t see anyone inside. The air pulsed with the steady burr of Mike’s generator, still working.

  At least it didn’t look like anyone had rammed or cut the gate. The chain looked intact, so it had been unlocked. If there’d been trouble here, it had come with an invitation. Nothing would have made those boys open that gate otherwise. Maybe Mike and his boys had believed all that happy-talk on the radio, ditched their place and moved to Longview. The idea made Joe feel so relieved that he forgot the ache in his knee.

  And leave the generator on? Bullshit.

  Tire-tracks drew patterns in hardened mud. Mike’s was a busy place. Damn greedy fool.

  Beside him, Joe felt the kid fidgeting in his seat, and Joe didn’t blame him. He had more than half a mind to turn around and start driving back toward home. The jerky would keep. He had enough gas to last him. He’d come back when things looked right again.

  But he’d promised the kid a Coke. That was the only thing. And it would help erase a slew of memories if he could bring a grin to the kid’s face today. Little Soldier’s grins were a miracle. His little chipmunk cheeks were the spitting image of Cass’s at his age.

  Daddy, she’d called him on the radio. Daddy.

  Don’t think about that don’t think don’t—

  Joe leaned on his horn. He let it blow five seconds before he laid off.

  After a few seconds, the door to the store opened, and Mike stood there leaning against the doorjamb, a big ruddy white-haired Canuck with linebacker shoulders and a pigskin-sized bulge above his belt. He was wearing an apron, like he always did, as if he ran a butcher shop instead of a gas station. Mike peered out at them and waved. “Come on in!” he called out.

  Joe leaned out of the window. “Where the boys at?” he called back.

  “They’re fine!” Mike said. Over the years, Joe had tried a dozen times to convince Mike he couldn’t hear worth shit. No sense asking after the boys again until he got closer.

  The wind skittered a few leaves along the ground between the truck and the door, and Joe watched their silent dance for a few seconds, considering. “I’m gonna go do this real quick, Kendrick,” Joe finally said. “Stay in the truck.”

  The kid didn’t say anything,
but Joe saw the terror freeze his face. The kid’s eyes went dead just like they did when he asked what had happened at the house in Longview.

  Joe cracked open his door. “I’ll only be a minute,” he said, trying to sound casual.

  “D-don’t leave me. Please, Grandpa Joe? Let me c-come.”

  Well, I’ll be damned, Joe thought. This kid was talking up a storm today.

  Joe sighed, mulling it over. Pros and cons either way, he supposed. He reached under the seat and pulled out his Glock 9mm. He’d never liked automatics until maybe the mid-80s, when somebody figured out how to keep them from jamming so damned often. He had a Mossberg shotgun in a rack behind the seat, but that might seem a little too hostile. He’d give Kendrick the Remington 28-gauge. It had some kick, but the Little Soldier was used to it. He could trust Little Soldier not to fire into the ceiling. Or his back. Joe had seen to that.

  “How many shots?” Joe asked him, handing over the little birder.

  Kendrick held up four stubby fingers, like a toddler. So much for talking.

  “If you’re coming with me, I damn well better know you can talk if there’s a reason to.” Joe sounded angrier than he’d intended. “Now . . . how many shots?”

  “Four!” That time, he’d nearly shouted it.

  “Come on in,” Mike called from the doorway. “I’ve got hot dogs today!”

  That was a first. Joe hadn’t seen a hot dog in nearly a year, and his mouth watered. Joe started to ask him again what the boys were up to, but Mike turned around and went inside.

  “Stick close to me,” Joe told Kendrick. “You’re my other pair of eyes. Anything looks funny, you point and speak up loud and clear. Anybody makes a move in your direction you don’t like, shoot. Hear?”

  Kendrick nodded.

  “That means anybody. I don’t care if it’s Mike or his boys or Santa Claus or anybody else. You understand me?”

  Kendrick nodded again, although he lowered his eyes sadly. “Like Mom said.”

  “Damn right. Exactly like your mom said,” Joe told Kendrick, squeezing the kid’s shoulder. For an instant, his chest burned so hot with grief that he knew a heart attack couldn’t feel any worse. The kid might have watched what happened to Cass. Cass might have turned into one of them before his eyes.