Devil’s Wake

by Steven Barnes

  As fall stretched on, they finally caught an emergency radio broadcast from a man whose voice sounded like sugarcoated panic. He congratulated anyone listening for holding out, and advised them to report to the Seattle National Guard armory.

  “Power in numbers!” he preached. “We can rebuild, but we need your help!”

  It was the first time anyone had offered a solution.

  By then, the rains had started up again, night fell sooner, and all of them were long past ready for a change… even if they were afraid to go.

  Dean suggested a Council meeting the way his ancestors had made important decisions, so they built a rousing campfire and sat in a circle around flames that painted their faces golden orange. The cons, eloquently argued by Sonia and Dean, were obvious: The Outside was a hellhole. What if they got ambushed? Rape and murder were rampant, unchecked by authorities. What if they could never find another secluded place to hide from the chaos?

  Piranha and Darius were equally passionate about the pros: They couldn’t hide forever. They were bound to get raided eventually, and it was better to leave before they exhausted their food. They could take the old school bus in the shed and bring enough supplies to barter and survive. And they had to find more guns, or they were done.

  On that last point, no one could argue.

  Terry suggested that they put off the final vote until morning, so they could all think it over in the quiet of the dark.

  Fate decided for them: by morning, scattered reports on the radio hinted that the fledgling Seattle encampment had been overrun by freaks.

  Terry tried to feel disappointment just to feel something, but he didn’t feel anything. He’d always suspected the Seattle National Guard armory would be a version of Dorothy’s Oz—a whole lot of hype that boiled down to doing it your own damned self. Still, he searched Vern’s house until he found the keys to the Blue Beauty, the Blue Bird Vision school bus, in a kitchen drawer and started driving the big monster, warming up the engine to keep the battery alive, navigating past the trees to learn the hang of the steering. He hoped he would never need to drive the Blue Beauty if it mattered, but he figured he’d better turn the engine over every few days, just to keep it honest.

  A week later, the power sputtered off. Vern’s generator wasn’t powerful enough to run the fridge, much less the freezer. The frozen food began to rot. That left the cans: mostly tuna, salty veggies, and SpaghettiOs.

  By early December the days were short, the sky misted, and the rain was ice water. Winter was coming, and with it the possibility of being snowed in. The threat of winter finally convinced them to take another vote—to try to reach Portland, Oregon, this time, about six hours’ drive south under normal conditions. The newest Oz. In Portland, the emergency broadcast promised, there was a functioning compound protected by National Guardsmen.

  They didn’t need a campfire Council this time. As soon as they heard about the possibilities in Portland, they knew they had no choice. No one argued against it.

  They spent a day fitting the snowplow to the front of the Blue Beauty, stocked it with their remaining food, water, and gas, and planned to pull out at first light. Hipshot didn’t sleep with them that night, as if he knew what was up.

  At dawn, it took a while to find the pooch. He had hunkered down on the Stoffers’ shallow grave behind the house, soaked and shaking. Despite their whistles, clapping, and cooing, Hipshot wouldn’t budge.

  “Leave him,” Darius said. “Just another mouth to feed.”

  “No way,” Sonia said. “At least he’s some protection.”

  “Protection how?” Darius said. “Where was he when Vern jumped us?”

  “Under my bed,” Piranha said. “Whimpering.” Sonia gave Hipshot a sour look, as if she felt betrayed. Piranha and Sonia sometimes went off alone, but he usually didn’t sleep in her bunk, even without Vern to keep them apart. They had all been sharing the main bunkhouse.

  “But he can sniff out freaks,” Terry reminded them. “He smelled it on Vern from the minute we brought him back. Before Vern went all Cujo.”

  They decided to bring Hipshot whether he wanted to go or not.

  But they didn’t have to force him. Hippy rose unsteadily to his feet, shook the mud and rain from his shaggy black coat, and climbed slowly into the bus.

  The dog’s head hung as if he had failed his humans.

  The Days of Monsters

  Be careful when you fight monsters, lest you become one.

  —FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

  TEN

  December 15

  Jellyfish. That’s what they look like at first, wispy reddish tendrils floating in blackness. A few at first, but then a nest of them waft down in the dark with a reddish glow, like dawn, growing brighter as they drift like snowfall.

  They are everywhere now, like a spider’s web. No, not jellyfish.

  Red threads.

  Some of the threads fall close to her. As she watches, the threads wriggle and unite, weaving themselves to form mass, shape. Something tall stands over her. The shape looks like a glowing man, his features obscured in the reddish light.

  She looks closer, trying to see him. He seems familiar.

  She knows him… doesn’t she?

  The face that stares back at her isn’t human.

  Another nightmare.

  Kendra didn’t remember the dream yet, although she knew she would soon. For now, she felt its remnants: a racing heart, damp palms and armpits. Her dreams seemed to have a faint smell, like rotting citrus, hanging just beyond the tip of her nose.

  “Bad dreams again?” a sleep-roughened voice said.

  When Kendra opened her eyes, Grandpa Joe was standing over her bed. Mom used to say that guardian angels watched over you while you slept, and Grandpa Joe looked like he and his shotgun might have been guarding her all night. Kendra didn’t believe in guardian angels anymore, but she was glad she could believe in Grandpa Joe. His beard covered his dark chin like a coat of fresh snow.

  “Could be worse,” Kendra thought. Her dreams weren’t as bad as her life, anyway.

  Most mornings, Kendra opened her eyes to only strangeness: dark, heavy curtains; wooden planks for walls; a brownish-gray stuffed owl mounted near the window with glassy black eyes that seemed to twitch in the reflected sunset. A rough pine bed.

  And that smell everywhere, like the smell in Mom and Dad’s closet. Cedar, Grandpa Joe told her. Grandpa Joe’s big hard hands had made the whole cabin of it, one board and beam at a time. For the last two months, this had been her room, but it still wasn’t, really. Her Death Note DVDs and makeup case full of fruit-flavored lip gloss weren’t here. Her Justin Timberlake and Kobe Bryant posters weren’t on the walls. This was her bed, but it wasn’t her room.

  “Up and at ’em, Little Soldier,” Grandpa Joe said, using the nickname Mom had never liked. Grandpa was dressed in his hickory shirt and blue jeans, the same clothes he wore every day. He leaned on his rifle like a cane, so his left knee must be hurting him like it always did in the mornings. He’d hurt it long ago, in 1967, in a place called Dak To.

  “I’m going trading down to Mike’s,” he said. “You can come if you want, or I can leave you with the Dog-Girl. Up to you. Either way, it’s time to get out of bed, sleepyhead.”

  Dog-Girl, the lady who lived in a house on a hill by herself fifteen minutes’ walk west, was their closest neighbor. Once upon a time she’d had six pit bulls that paraded up and down her fence. In the last month that number had dropped to three. Grandpa Joe said meat was getting scarce. Hard to keep six dogs fed, even if you needed them. The dogs wagged their tails when Kendra came up to the fence because Dog-Girl had introduced her to them, but Grandpa Joe said those dogs could tear a man’s arms off. Don’t you ever stick your hand in there, Grandpa Joe always said. Just because a dog grins don’t make him friendly. Especially when he’s hungry.

  “Can I have a Coke?” Kendra said, surprised to hear her own voice again, so much smaller than Grandpa Joe’s.
She hadn’t planned to say anything today, but she wanted the Coke so bad she could almost taste the fizz. An exotic treasure.

  “If Mike’s got one, you’ll get one. For damn sure.” Grandpa Joe’s grin widened until Kendra could see the hole where his tooth used to be: his straw hole, Grandpa Joe called it. He mussed Kendra’s hair with his big palm. “Good girl, Kendra. You keep it up. I knew your tongue was in there somewhere. You start using it, or you’ll forget how. Hear me? You start talking again, and I’ll whip you up a lumberjack breakfast, like before.”

  It would be good to eat one of Grandpa Joe’s famous belly-busters again, piled nearly to the ceiling: a bowl of fluffy eggs, a stack of pancakes, a plate full of bacon and sausage, and buttermilk biscuits made from scratch. Grandpa Joe had learned to cook in the army. But whenever Kendra thought about talking, her stomach filled up like a balloon and she thought she would puke. Some things couldn’t be said out loud, and some things shouldn’t. There was more to talking than most people thought. A whole lot more.

  Kendra’s eye went to the bandage on Grandpa Joe’s left arm, just below his elbow, where the tip peeked out at the edge of his shirtsleeve. Grandpa Joe had said he’d hurt himself chopping wood yesterday. Kendra’s heart had turned into a rock when she’d seen a spot of blood on the bandage. She hadn’t seen blood in a long time. She couldn’t see any blood now, but Kendra still felt worried. Mom said Grandpa Joe didn’t heal as fast as other people because of his diabetes…

  That stung. That thought of her mother… and then of her father… ripped open the scabs protecting the ugly memories. Dad. The bitten foot growing hot and swollen with infection, Dad running from the house, afraid to be with his wife and daughter because of the radio reports.

  Mom, trying to pretend she wasn’t worried sick about Dad. Then she’d tried to help Carolyn Stiller, their next-door neighbor, a nice old local playwright… and discovered that the old lady scratching at the window was infected too. But too late. Too late. Mom in shock, shoulder bandaged, knowing what was coming. All the people on the radio said that if you were bitten, it was the end. No cure, one hundred percent infection. Mom had gotten a shortwave message to Grandpa, and then tried to hold on until Grandpa could drive down and get her. Mom had locked Kendra in the basement for never-ending hours, sobbing, “Bolt the door tight. Stay here, Kendra, and don’t open the door until you hear Grandpa’s ‘danger word’—NO MATTER WHAT.”

  She made her swear to Jesus, which was a very big deal. Kendra had been afraid to move or breathe. She’d heard other footsteps in the house, the awful sound of crashing and breaking. A single terrible scream. It could have been her mother. Or maybe it was someone else completely. She didn’t know.

  Followed by silence; for one hour, two, three. Then, the hardest part. The worst part. Show me your math homework, Kendra.

  The danger word was the special, secret word she and Grandpa Joe had picked. He’d insisted on it. Grandpa Joe had made a special trip in his truck to tell them something bad could happen to them, and he had a list of reasons how and why. Mom didn’t like Grandpa Joe’s yelling much, but she’d listened. So Kendra and Grandpa Joe had made up a danger word nobody else knew in the world, not even Mom. And she had to wait to hear the danger word, Mom said. No matter what. She’d heard Grandpa’s truck. Footsteps, and then Grandpa had said the right thing, and Kendra opened the door. Mom was nowhere in sight, and Kendra had wanted to search for her.

  Grandpa had dragged Kendra from the house, kicking. Had she seen her mother one last time, peeking out between the boarded-up front windows, waving to them as Grandpa sped away? Was that a shadow, or a shadowed, lost face? She might never know. Grandpa would never talk about it. Was Mom still… alive? Was Dad? Were any of those blood-eyed things alive, really? And could she even think about it and not go insane? All she had now was Grandpa, a man she’d barely had time to know. And if anything happened to him… The idea made Kendra’s chest seize up, stanching her breath.

  She couldn’t let herself think about being alone, or she might suffocate.

  “That six-point we brought down will bring a good haul at Mike’s. We’ll trade jerky for gas. Don’t like to be low on gas,” Grandpa said. His foot slid a little on the braided rug as he turned to leave the room, and Kendra thought she heard him hiss with pain. “Maybe we can find that Coke for you. Whaddya say, Little Soldier?”

  Kendra couldn’t make any words come out of her mouth this time, but at least she was smiling, and smiling felt good. For once, they had something to smile about. Three days ago, a buck had come to drink from the creek. Through the kitchen window, Kendra had seen something move in the brush—antlers, it turned out—and Grandpa Joe grabbed his rifle when Kendra motioned. Before the shot exploded, Kendra had seen the buck look up, and Kendra thought, It knows. The buck’s black eyes reminded her of Dad’s when he had listened to the news on the radio in the basement, hunched over the desk with a headset. Trapped.

  Dad and Mom would be surprised at how good Kendra was with a rifle now. She could center punch an empty SPAM can from twenty yards. She’d played with shooting on Left 4 Dead and Call of Duty, but Grandpa Joe had taught her how to shoot for real, a little every day. Grandpa Joe had a room full of guns and ammunition—the back shed he kept locked—so they never ran low on bullets.

  Kendra supposed she would have to shoot a deer one day soon. Or an elk. Or something else. The time would come, Grandpa Joe said, when she would have to squeeze that trigger whether she wanted to or not. You may have to kill to survive, Kendra, he said. You’re sixteen, a grown woman, so you need to be sure you can protect yourself.

  Before the Bad Times, Grandpa Joe used to ask Mom and Dad if he could teach Kendra how to hunt during summer vacation, and they’d said no. Dad didn’t like Grandpa Joe much, maybe because Grandpa Joe always said what he thought, and he was Mom’s father, not his. And Mom didn’t go much easier on him, always telling Grandpa Joe no, no matter what he asked. No, you can’t keep her longer than a couple of weeks in the summer. No, you can’t teach her how to shoot. No, you can’t take her hunting. Now there was no one to say no. No one except Grandpa Joe, unless somehow Mom had survived. And somehow came for her. It was possible. Almost anything could happen, in a world like this had become. Anything…

  The tears were coming. She had to change her thoughts, or curl up and cry.

  Show me your math homework, Kendra.

  By the time Kendra dressed, Grandpa was outside loading the truck, a beat-up navy blue Chevy with so many scratches it looked like it had lost a fight with a tractor. Kendra heard a thud as he dropped a large sack of wrapped deer jerky in the truck bed. Grandpa Joe had taught her how to mix up the secret jerky recipe he hadn’t even given Mom: soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce, fresh garlic cloves, dried pepper, onion powder, a pinch of wasabi. He’d made sure Kendra was paying attention while strips of deer meat soaked in that tangy mess for two days, and then spent twelve hours in the slow-cook oven. Grandpa Joe had also made her watch as he cut the deer open and its guts flopped to the ground, all gray and glistening. Watch, girl. Don’t turn away. Don’t be scared to look at something for what it is.

  Grandpa Joe’s deer jerky was almost as good as the lumberjack breakfast, and Kendra’s mouth used to water for it. Not anymore. His jerky loaded, Grandpa Joe leaned against the truck, lighting a brown cigarette. Kendra was sure that smoking wasn’t a good idea for an old man who spent a half hour hacking up his lungs every morning.

  “Ready?”

  Kendra nodded. Her hands shook a little every time she got in the truck, so she hid them in her jacket pockets. Some wadded-up toilet paper from the safe room in Longview was still in there, a souvenir from her house. Kendra clung to the wad, squeezing her hand into a fist.

  “We do this right, we’ll be back in less than an hour,” Grandpa Joe said. He spit, as if the cigarette had come apart in his mouth. “Forty-five minutes.”

  Forty-five minutes. That wasn’t bad. Forty-five minutes, t
hen they’d be back.

  Kendra stared at the cabin in the rearview mirror until the trees hid it from her sight.

  As usual, the road was empty. Grandpa Joe’s rutted dirt road spilled onto the highway after a half mile, and they jounced past darkened, abandoned houses. Kendra saw three stray dogs trot out of the open door of a pink two-story house on the corner. They looked well fed. She’d never seen that door open before, and she wondered whose dogs they were. And what they’d been eating.

  Suddenly, Kendra wished she’d stayed back at Dog-Girl’s. Dog-Girl was from England and Kendra couldn’t always understand her, but she liked being behind that high, strong fence. She liked Ringo and Prince Edward and Lady Di, the old lady’s pit bulls. She tried not to think about Windsor and Muppet and… she’d forgotten the names. The ones that were gone now. Maybe Dog-Girl had given them away.

  They passed tree farms, with all the trees growing the same size, identical, and Kendra enjoyed watching their trunks pass in a blur. She was glad to be away from the empty houses.

  “Get me a station,” Grandpa Joe said. The radio was Kendra’s job. The radio hissed and squealed up and down the FM dial, so Kendra tried AM next. Grandpa Joe’s truck radio wasn’t good for anything. The multiband at the cabin was better. A man’s voice came right away, a shout so loud it was like screaming.

  “… this isn’t one of my damned movies, not some rancid Hollywood concoction, although they sat back and let it happen, made it happen with their filth and violence, demeaning life and extolling death…”

  Joseph Wales, broadcasting from someplace down San Francisco way, picked up and rebroadcast by some local wildcat station. She’d liked him better when he was making movies.

  “Turn that bull crap off,” Grandpa Joe snapped. Kendra 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 bull crap. 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.”