When the oversized freak fell, he pinned two shamblers beneath him.
“Watch it!” Ursalina called over her shoulder. “Somebody almost clipped me.”
“Sor-ry,” Sonia singsonged, or Terry thought she did. His ears were numbed, overwhelmed by the ringing bell and the gunshots in close quarters. His entire world was muzzle flashes and blurred motion. Hippy barked and whined, intelligent enough to stay behind them.
Terry never heard Kendra scream, but he saw her light swinging wildly, so he looked toward her in time to realize that one of the caged freaks had caught her by the ankle. He saw her mouth wide open with anguished terror. Terry ran to Kendra, stomping on the freak’s wrist with all his strength, and felt bones snap.
“Go!” he told Kendra, his own voice muddy to his ears.
If Terry’s hearing hadn’t been impaired—if the light had been in place, if he hadn’t been so preoccupied with Kendra—he might have noticed the runner sooner.
The oncoming freak had a mane of curly red hair, and he must have lost his balance, because he was pitching ahead on all fours instead of standing upright. Terry saw him only when he rose to his full height after skirting the mass behind him, and by then they were already wrestling. Terry’s gun was trapped in his palm on the floor.
He’s too strong. Oh God, oh God, Terry thought, panic poisoning rational thought.
The freak was stronger, driven by something more than an individual’s will to survive. Bucking didn’t throw him, and the freak’s rancid teeth gnashed near Terry’s face, nearly touching the tip of his nose. Terry turned his head away and tried to roll far enough to free his gun.
Liquid pain swallowed Terry’s left shoulder blade. The pain was liberating, infused him with strength. With a frantic yell, Terry wrenched his other shoulder free to bring out his Glock and shoot the beast in the side of the head. The freak shuddered against him and fell still.
“Got him!” Terry called to reassure the others, especially poor Kendra, whose scream was so loud that it penetrated the din. “I’m okay!”
Piranha helped pull Terry to his feet, and Terry scrambled away from his attacker as if the dead freak might spring back to his feet.
“You good?” Piranha said, close to Terry’s face, searching his eyes for the truth. Terry saw him try to glance back toward his injured shoulder.
“I’m good!” With his adrenaline sizzling, Terry almost believed it. “Keep going!”
All three guns fired at the diminishing wave of freaks, and Piranha slammed heads with his bat until Terry was sure he would collapse from exhaustion. Every close call met a happy ending, and they stayed on their feet and fought their way forward.
By the time the last gun was empty, the moonlight on the other side of the tunnel was close enough to touch. Terry blinked away grateful tears, pulling Kendra close to him. He had just lived through a miracle worthy of its own unholy book.
Thank God, he thought. Nobody got bitten … but me.
Thirty-five
Myles and Deirdre looked as shaken as Kendra felt when their car met them at the tunnel exit and they drove their bumpy passage over a field of fallen freaks. Only a few stragglers were still making their way from the woods, too far to threaten them.
The journey to the rendezvous point was circuitous, since they had to avoid the main roads. During the drive, creeping through the high grass with headlights off—praying they wouldn’t run into freaks, patrols, or anyone who would try to stop them—the only sounds in the car were Rianne’s quiet crying and their chorus of tense breathing. The far-off sound of gunshots reminded them that the night wasn’t over for Wales and his men, who had more to worry about than a few escaped intruders.
They spoke only in whispers, when they spoke at all. Hipshot whined and shuddered, lying on Kendra’s feet, his eyes closed.
“Think some got into the ranch?” Sonia said.
“Maybe,” Ursalina said.
“Serve them right if they did,” Piranha said.
“But they won’t get to the town,” Sonia said.
“Naw,” Piranha said. “Too many fences.”
Kendra’s mind and body rang so violently from the night that she couldn’t think clearly, her thoughts besieged by horrible images from Threadrunner Ranch and the unspeakable tunnel. Her legs felt like they’d fallen asleep with no chance of waking up. She rested her head on Terry’s shoulder and dozed—his right shoulder, not his left shoulder. He’d hurt his left shoulder in the fall when the freak tackled him, and he woke her whenever he shifted against the car seat to try to get comfortable. He’d always had the same answer—he was okay—so she stopped asking.
It was four a.m. when they reached the abandoned cottage at the edge of Threadville where Jason was waiting, wide-awake, posted at the window. Myles had warned that they could stay only an hour before they lost the dark, but the cottage offered running water and a place to rest before they went to the road. The road always had its own surprises. Kendra wished they could put off the start of the trip.
But they couldn’t. Ursalina thought they shouldn’t stop at all—they should load into the Beauty and escape under the darkest possible sky—but she’d been outvoted. They had to pick up Jason, after all.
And they wanted to steal one last moment of peace.
Jason wasn’t waiting alone. Jackie was with him, dressed for travel, with hopeful eyes and a packed duffel bag at her feet. Aunt Stella wouldn’t have room for everyone, but Kendra was too weary to object. Undoubtedly, Jackie had skills. Whether they were marketable to a family audience was another question.
“This wasn’t the deal,” Ursalina said.
Darius shrugged. “Tough.”
“That’s Suquamish for ‘She’s coming with us.’ ” Dean said.
And that was pretty much that.
Deirdre lit a lantern and cradled Rianne on the floor, because the girl was crying like a toddler. Kendra waited for her turn in Deirdre’s lap, but Rianne would need a long time, probably longer than their stay, so Kendra hugged Hipshot instead. The dog was still shivering. His nose felt dry.
Sonia had hurt her hand in the rush to close a gate behind them, since it hadn’t been possible to kill all of the shamblers they passed on the way out of the tunnel. In the lamplight, Kendra saw that her hand was swollen two sizes too big. Ursalina was the closest they had to a medic, and Kendra noticed how long the soldier spent examining the injury, clearly looking for bite marks. Kendra didn’t relax until Ursalina shrugged and said it might be broken, wrapping it tight to set it. Sonia could see a doctor in Devil’s Wake.
Ursalina offered to look at Terry’s shoulder—the left shoulder he’d hurt in his fall, maybe crashing so hard against the floor—but Terry asked for a bathroom and said he’d be all right. “I’m okay,” Terry kept saying.
Kendra stood in his path when he turned the corner for the bathroom. She studied his eyes. “It doesn’t seem real,” she said. “Did we really make it out?”
He nodded. “We made it.” As if to prove it, he leaned over to kiss her lips lightly, and she held on when he tried to pull away, hoping for more. But he pressed her away, and so she let him go.
What had happened in the tunnel was some kind of victory, but she’d never won anything that felt so wrong.
But Terry was okay. She was okay. The Blue Beauty was waiting.
Soon, they would be back on the road. They would find a doctor.
They only had to make it to Devil’s Wake.
Mirrors don’t lie. That was something his mother used to say, and her words replayed in Terry’s mind as he held his shoulder close to his reflection in the cracked bathroom mirror. In the battery lamp’s light, the upper teeth indentations that had punctured his skin made it look like he’d been bitten by a wolf or a vampire.
I’m bit. The phrase rolled in his head, knocking away his mother’s faint memory. He was bit, just like Vern. Just like the freaks in those cages and the superfreak he had found with Kendra in Wales’s libr
ary. He was no different from any of those others now, because he was good and bit. Warm freak juice coursed beneath his skin like snake venom. He’d heard stories of people chopping off hands or arms to try to stop the infection, but he couldn’t chop off his back.
But it was a runner, he reminded himself. The freak juice didn’t work as fast from the runners, and besides, he only had to stay awake. People could stay awake for days at a time. At least he could stay awake long enough to help drive the bus, to get Kendra to her happily ever after. That was something to live for.
The bathroom door startled Terry so much when it opened that he knocked the lamp from the edge of the sink, but he caught it before it hit the rusted bathtub. His reflexes still worked, anyway.
He was afraid he would have to face Kendra, but it was Piranha. Almost as bad.
“That’s supposed to be locked,” Terry said.
“Wasn’t,” Piranha said. After Piranha closed the door behind him and checked the lock, Terry felt him staring at his shoulder. He hadn’t had time to hide it.
For a long time, neither of them said anything. Then Piranha drew in a long breath, seemed to hold it forever, and let it out in ragged bursts.
“Shit,” Piranha said.
“Yeah.”
“I’d blow your brains out, but we both know you ain’t got none,” Piranha said, and they both laughed, cutting their laughter short before it turned hot and bitter.
Silence again. The water dripping in the faucet was sometimes silent, sometimes as loud as a gunshot. Terry’s ears were still ringing from the tunnel, but the bite had made him forget the ringing for a while.
“What’s it feel like?” Piranha said, so quietly that Terry could barely hear him.
“Nothing much yet. A … tingling, I guess. Mostly around the bite, but it’s like … you can feel it swimming around. Just my back now. More later, I guess.”
Much more, of course. But Terry didn’t want to think about any part of later.
Piranha sighed again. “I thought I saw you get bit in there. Hoped like hell I was wrong.”
The bathroom was barely big enough for the two of them, and Terry felt claustrophobic in the small space. He was almost close enough to Piranha to read his mind from the way he breathed. Piranha had been his friend when he walked into the bathroom, but Terry didn’t know him now.
Piranha fished a small flashlight out of his pocket. “Turn around,” he said. It wasn’t a question.
He shined a glowing silver-white circle on Terry’s wound. What he saw made his breath hiss between his teeth. “Turn around,” he said, so Terry did. Next, he shined the light in his eyes. “Hold still,” he warned, so Terry tried not to blink.
“What are you looking for?” Terry asked.
“What the hell do you think?”
Piranha shined the light at Terry’s eyes, then away, and repeated the ritual.
“Do I need glasses, Doc?” Terry said.
Piranha didn’t look quite directly into his face, gazing sideways toward the ceiling as if he were invisible. “Ursalina told me that when freak juice works fast, the pupils are slow to dilate. You can see the eyes turning red right away.”
Terry’s heart pounded. He didn’t think he could take any more bad news, but he had to know. “Well?”
Piranha shrugged. “So far, so good. You’re still here.”
Terry’s heart bounded. “Then maybe—”
“Maybe nothing,” Piranha said. “Tick tock. Don’t lie to yourself, or to the others. You can’t come with us.”
“Says you?” Terry said.
Piranha met Terry’s eyes. “Take a car and a gun. Go drive somewhere far away. Lock the doors and shut the windows. Shoot yourself before you turn, or just sit there if you can’t. You might not be able to get out of a locked car. But some of you guys are smarter, so tie yourself in to be sure.”
You guys. The phrase kicked Terry so hard that he gave Piranha a hard shove.
Piranha shoved back, so hard that Terry toppled into the tub. His elbow pulsed with new pain. He scrambled back to his feet, embarrassed and hurt. For the first time since the bite, his sadness felt like dying. But he didn’t have time for tears.
“That’s all?” Terry said. “I’m one of them now?”
Piranha’s low voice shook. “What else are you? Are we supposed to sleep with one eye open? Wait for you to get your freak on?”
“I’ll stay awake,” Terry said. “I’ll drive the bus. I can get us there.”
Piranha laughed as if he meant it. “You think you’re the only person who ever said that?”
“Man, I’ll load up on caffeine, pills, whatever it takes. I just want to see Kendra make it to Devil’s Wake. Don’t tell me you don’t get that.”
“Yeah, I get it,” Piranha said. “But I’ve seen what sentiment buys, and I don’t feel like shopping. So when I put a bullet between your eyes, don’t act surprised.”
Terry calculated the trip: Long Beach was four hundred miles south. If the roads were clear, they could make it in eight hours. Even if the roads were a problem, they could find a way to make it in forty-eight hours. He’d stayed awake that long partying with friends in high school, and he could do it again.
That wouldn’t be the hardest part.
“Let me be the one to tell Kendra, okay?” Terry said. His voice cracked.
Piranha nodded. “Don’t wait too long.”
Terry caught Piranha’s reflection in the mirror, and the sorrow on his friend’s face made him wonder if any of them was strong enough. His hands shook.
“I know I can do this,” Terry said, “but if I’m wrong, I hope you meant what you said.”
“Guess we’ll both find out.”
Piranha’s façade cracked, and he gave Terry a one-armed hug—a short one—and he avoided Terry’s eyes.
When Piranha left the bathroom, Terry heard Sonia ask if everything was okay. He held his breath during Piranha’s long pause. “I’ll take care of it,” Piranha said finally. Terry thought Sonia or Kendra might knock on the door to check on them, but no one did.
Kendra looked like she was in shock already. How could he tell her this too? He cursed himself for kissing her. Didn’t freaks carry the infection in their saliva?
Terry’s heart pounded with something beyond fear.
He turned on the faucet and splashed his face with the frigid brown water.
One last time, he was ready to face the road.
Good-byes
Nothing lives long, only the earth and the mountains.
—Chief White Antelope, Southern Cheyenne, 1864
(death song shortly before being shot while bearing a white flag and an American flag)
Thirty-six
December 24
Nestled back inside the Blue Beauty, which was running without shuddering or coughing, Kendra slept as if she had found a mother’s womb. For six solid hours, following side roads east and then south on the deserted I-5, they drove without incident.
No road blockages. No pirates. Freaks often lurched through the countryside, but they were too distant to trouble them, so nothing jostled Kendra from her peace. She slept curled on her familiar seat behind Terry on the bus, propping her head on a mound of clean blankets. She had felt herself sinking as soon as she closed her eyes, and she slept without dreams.
When the mid-morning sun blazed through a cloud break and forced her to open her eyes, she didn’t recognize the row of huge steel grain storage bins the bus rolled past, or the sagging ranch fencing where ominously plump crows stared back at her along the road. She was free from Threadville.
Kendra’s spirits lifted in a way she’d forgotten was possible, a giddy burst that made her sit upright. They’d made it! A motorcycle engine buzzed beside the bus, and Darius’s shiny black helmet sped past her window. Jackie clung to Darius’s waist, her hair tangling with his as it flew behind her. Had one of the Twins finally won her, or was she still deciding?
She couldn’t see Terr
y’s eyes in the rearview mirror because of his sunglasses, but sitting behind him in the driver’s seat reminded her of her awed feeling of security after the last of her world collapsed. Home isn’t a place, she thought. Home is being close to the people who love you, even if you haven’t known them long.
Had she only dreamed that they all made it out of Wales’s tunnel of horrors?
The bus was crowded to capacity, between their supplies and the newcomers, a scene of unlikely calm. Sonia was sleeping two rows behind Kendra, her mouth gaping open with quiet snores as her cheek pressed against her window. Deirdre and Jason hunched over a book while Deirdre quizzed him on spelling words in a schoolmarm’s monotone, as if they conducted school on the run every day. In the seat across from his wife and son, Myles studied his maps while Rianne stared out her window, hugging herself, probably trying to forget. They had saved a family from a madman. Even Ursalina was sound asleep in her seat, no longer on guard.
Contentment and hope washed over Kendra in alternating waves.
The unease didn’t snake its way through the back of Kendra’s mind until she saw Piranha sitting in the seat across from her—wide-awake, his eyes intently on Terry with no sign of joy or liberation. The coldness in Piranha’s eyes puzzled her.
“Where are we?” Kendra said, but no one answered her. Terry didn’t turn around or glance at her reflection. Had Kendra missed an argument while she slept?
Their silence felt worse than battle scars. Hipshot, who had rarely been far from her and Terry during the drive to California, was lying on the floor in the rear, closer to Rianne, Myles, and Myles’s family. Hippy’s eyes seemed sad as he stared up toward Kendra.
Kendra made a kissing noise. “Come here, Hippy,” she called. Hipshot wagged his tail but didn’t move until she called him a second time. Even then, he walked slowly, his muzzle low to the ground. He had a slight limp he’d brought with him from the tunnel, so when he reached her, she examined his coat to make sure she hadn’t missed a more serious injury. He wasn’t bleeding anywhere, but …
“Hippy’s acting funny,” she said to Terry. “Think he got hurt?” Or infected? She didn’t want to say it. Hippy had bitten some of the freaks in the tunnel, but she’d never heard about animals reacting to freak juice the way humans did.
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