“I couldn’t tell you before. But I’m telling you now for a reason…”
Just that quick, the road ahead of Joe fogged, doubled. He snapped his head up, aware that he had just lost a moment of time, that his consciousness had flagged.
But he was still himself. Still himself, and that made the difference. Just maybe he would stay himself and beat this damned thing.
If you could stay awake for the first few hours…
Then he might stay Joe for another, what? Ten days? He’d heard about someone staying awake that long, maybe longer. Right now, he didn’t know if he’d last the ten minutes. His eyelids felt as heavy as tombstones. There’ll be rest enough in the grave. Wasn’t that what Benjamin Franklin had said?
“Don’t you close your eyes, Daddy.” Cass’s voice. He snapped his head around, wondering where the voice had come from. He was seeing things: Cassie sat beside him with her pink lips and ringlets of tight brown hair. For a moment he couldn’t see his Little Soldier, so solid Cassie seemed. “You always talked tough this and tough that. Da Nang and Hanoi and a dozen places I couldn’t pronounce. And now the one damned time in your life that it matters, you’re going to sleep?” The accusation in her voice was crippling. “We trusted you, and you walked right into that store and got bitten because you were laughing at The Simpsons? I trusted you, Daddy.”
Silence. Then: “I still trust you, Daddy.”
He swerved the wheel, too late. His mind had been fogged by confusion and voices, and he missed the motorcycle lying on its side, hidden by a stalled car in the inside lane. Joe yelled “Hang on!” as the truck slewed sideways, the rear wheels going sharply right, off the edge of the road. Something bumped sharply, cracked under the engine. He looked over at Kendra, who was braced with her feet against the glove compartment. Her eyes were wide, mouth open, breathing quick.
“Grandpa Joe?” He turned the key, and all he heard was a click. Joe’s hands were shaking, sweating. Where was he? How had he gotten here? He felt a terrible itching sensation at the base of his jaw. With sudden, blinding clarity, Grandpa Joe realized what was happening to him. And for the last time in his life, Joe felt wide awake.
“Listen to me: you have to go,” Joe said.
“Where? Where will we go?”
“Not us. You.”
Shock melted from Kendra’s face, replaced by the bewilderment and terror of an infant left naked in a snowdrift. Kendra’s lips quivered. “No, Grandpa Joe. I can’t. Not alone. I can’t. You can stay awake,” she whispered.
“Grab that backpack behind your seat—it’s got a compass, bottled water, jerky, and a flashlight. It’s heavy, but you’ll need it. And take your Remington. There’s more ammo for it under your seat. Put the shells in the backpack. Do it now.”
Kendra sobbed, reaching out to squeeze his arm. “P-please, Grandpa Joe…”
“Stop that damned crying!” Joe roared. Kendra yanked her hand away, sliding back toward her door again. The poor kid must think he’d already crossed over.
Joe took a deep breath. Another wave of dizziness washed over him, and his chin rocked downward. Joe’s pain was easing. He felt stoned, like he was smoking some of that mind-busting Cambodian the little bicycle peddlers used to sell the troops in ’Nam. He hadn’t driven far enough before killing the truck. They were still too close to Mike’s boys. So much to say…
Joe kept his voice as even as he could. “There were only two people who could possibly love you more than me, and they couldn’t fight it, not even for you. That tells me I can’t either. Understand?”
Kendra nodded.
READ REVELATION, a billboard fifty yards ahead advised in red letters. Beside the billboard, the road forked into another highway. Thank Jesus.
“Get up to that road. Run. Hear me? Fast as you can. No matter what you hear… don’t turn around. Don’t stop. It’s twenty miles to Centralia, straight south. There’s National Guard there, and air drops.” He was starting to struggle for words, struggling for breath. “Caravans. Tell them you want to go to Portland. That’s where I’d go.”
“What about that place… Devil’s Wake? The radio said it was safe. You said I had an aunt there.”
“Your daddy’s aunt. But that’s California, sweetheart. That’s a world away.” He closed his eyes, and said dreamily, “A world away.”
His eyes snapped open again, and he licked his lips with the tip of his tongue, almost as if tasting them for the first time. “When you’re running, stay near the roads, but keep out of sight. If anyone comes before you get to Centralia, hide. If they see you, tell ’em you’ll shoot, and then do it. You hear me? Do it! And don’t go to sleep, Kendra. Don’t let anybody surprise you.”
“Yes, sir,” Kendra said in a sad voice, eager to be commanded.
Joe’s leg was numb. He wouldn’t have been able to keep driving anyway. Feeling in his arms was nearly gone now too.
“I love you, Grandpa Joe,” he heard his granddaughter say. Or thought he did.
“Love you too, Little Soldier. You’re the best granddaughter anyone ever had.” Still here. Still here.
“Now, go. Go.”
Joe heard Kendra’s car door open and slam. He turned his head to watch her, to make sure she was doing as she’d been told. Kendra had the backpack and her rifle as she stumbled away from the truck, running in the embankment that was alongside the road. The girl glanced back over her shoulder, saw Joe wave her on, and then disappeared into the roadside brush.
With trembling fingers, Joe opened the glove compartment, digging out his snub-nosed .38. He rested the cold metal between his lips, then eased it past his teeth. He was breathing hard, sucking at the air, and he didn’t know if it was the toxin or his nerves working him. He looked for Kendra again, but at this angle couldn’t see her.
Now. Do it now.
It seemed that he heard his own voice whispering in his ear. I can win. I can win. I saved my whole goddamn squad when the gooks hit the bridge. I can beat this thing…
Joe sat in the truck, feeling alternating waves of heat and cold washing through him. As long as he could stay awake…
Joe heard the voice of old Mrs. Reed, his sixth-grade English teacher; saw the faces of Sergeant Bob and Private Eddie Kevner, who’d been standing beside him when the Bouncing Betty blew. Then he saw Cassie in her wedding dress, giving him a secret gaze, as if to ask if it was all right before she pledged her final vows at the altar. Then in the midst of the images, some he didn’t recognize. Something red, drifting through a trackless cosmos. Alive, yet inanimate. Intelligent but unaware.
He’d been with them all along, those drifting spore-strands drawn toward a blue-green planet with water and soil… floating through the atmosphere… rest… root… grow…
A crow’s mournful caws awakened Joe, but not as much of him as had slipped into sleep. His vision was tinged red. His world, his heart, was tinged red. What remained of Joe knew that it was in him, awakening, using his own mind against him, dazzling him with its visions while it took control. He wanted to tear, to rend. Not killing. Not eating. Not yet. There was something more urgent, a new voice he had never heard before. Must bite.
Panicked, he gave his hand an urgent command: pull the trigger.
But he couldn’t. He’d come this close and couldn’t do it. Too many parts of him no longer wanted to die. The new parts of him only wanted to live. To grow. To spread. Still, Joe struggled against himself, even as he knew struggle was doomed.
Little Soldier. Must protect Little Soldier. Must…
Must…
Must bite girl.
THIRTEEN
For ten minutes Kendra had been running and sobbing, never far from stumbling, before her thoughts woke up again. Her legs and belly ached. She had to slow down because she couldn’t see for her tears.
Grandpa Joe had been hunched over the steering wheel, eyes open so wide that the effort had changed the way his face looked. Kendra thought she’d never seen such a hopeless, he
lpless expression in her entire life. If she had been able to see Mom from the safe room, that was how she would have looked too.
She’d been stupid to think Grandpa Joe could keep her safe. He was just an old man who lived in the woods.
Kendra ran, her legs burning and throat scalding. She could see the road above her, but she ran in the embankment like Grandpa Joe had told her, out of sight. For an endless time Kendra ran, despite burning legs and scalded throat, struggling to stay true to Grandpa Joe’s directions. South. Stay south. Centralia. National Guard. Portland. Then she remembered the words she had heard on the radio. Devil’s Wake. California. Safe.
By the time exhaustion claimed Kendra, the sky had darkened, and she was so tired she had lost any assurance of placing her feet without disaster. The trees, once an explosion of green, had been bleached gray and black by twilight. They were a place of trackless, unknowable danger. Every sound and shadow seemed to call to her. Trembling so badly she could hardly move, Kendra crawled past a wall of ferns into a culvert, clutching the little sawed-off Remington to her chest.
Once she sat, her sadness felt worse, like a heavy quilt over her. She sobbed so hard she could no longer sit up straight, curling herself into a ball on the soft soil. Small leaves and debris pasted themselves to the tears and mucous sliming her face. One sob sounded more like a wail, so loud it startled her.
Grandpa Joe had lied. Mom had been dead all along. He’d shot her in the head, like Old Yeller. He’d said it like it hardly mattered to him.
Kendra heard snapping twigs, and the back of her neck turned ice-cold. Footsteps. Running fast.
Kendra’s sobs vanished. She sat straight up, propping her shotgun across her bent knee, aiming, finger ready on the trigger. A small black spider crawled on her wrist—one with a bloated egg sac, about to give birth to a hundred babies like in Charlotte’s Web—but she made no move to crush it: there had been enough death. Kendra sat primed, trying to silence her clotted nose by breathing through her mouth.
Waiting.
Maybe it was that hitchhiker with the sign, she thought. But it didn’t matter who it was. Hide. That was what Grandpa Joe had said.
The footsteps slowed, although they were so close that Kendra guessed her pursuer couldn’t be more than a few feet away. No longer running, as if he knew where Kendra was. As if he’d been close behind her all along, and now that he’d found her, he wasn’t in a hurry anymore.
“I have a gun! I’ll shoot!” Kendra called out, and this voice was very different from the one she’d used to ask Grandpa Joe for a Coke. Not a little girl’s voice. It was a voice that meant what it said.
Silence. The movement had stopped.
That was when Grandpa Joe said the danger word. The word he’d used at the cellar door to let her know she was safe.
Kendra’s finger loosened against the trigger. Her limbs gave way, and her body began to shake. The woods melted away, and she remembered wearing this same jacket in the safe room, waiting. Waiting for Grandpa Joe.
There had never been a gunshot from Grandpa Joe’s truck. Kendra had expected to hear the gunshot as soon as she ran off, dreading it. Grandpa Joe always did what needed to be done. Kendra should have heard a gunshot.
“Go back!” Kendra said. Although her voice was not so sure this time, she cocked the Remington’s handgrip, just like she’d been taught.
Kendra waited. She’d tried not to hope—and then hoped fervently—that her scare had worked. The instant Kendra’s hope reached its peak, a shadow moved against the ferns above her, closer.
Grandpa Joe’s watery voice spoke again. Their danger word. The word that was their secret, that meant safety, and hope.
“Breakfast,” said Grandpa Joe. “Breakfast.”
FOURTEEN
Kendra ran until her legs hurt and the shambling thing that had once been her grandfather was far behind her. He’d been running faster than she’d ever seen him move, as if the pain in his joints was gone or irrelevant, but there was still little chance he could outrun her. Kendra ran until her chest flamed, until she could barely take another step without the shakes, then hid in a stand of trees until darkness fell. Hadn’t Grandpa Joe once said he thought one had smelled him? She prayed he was wrong.
She shivered through the night, unable to sleep. Soon after sunrise she ate a handful of the precious jerky and began to walk south along the I-5, the sawed-off Remington crooked in her arm. The road never left her sight, but she tried to provide herself cover when she could, listening for the sound of car engines that didn’t come, at first.
She had a vague plan to try to reach Portland. Even Longview might have help, if only she knew where to look. Hadn’t the radio said something about the Heights in the hills? That would be the rich kids’ houses, built by the original mill owners lording it over the mill workers, who lived down near the river. And now it was the last stronghold in Freak Central? Great.
Abandoned cars dotted Interstate 5, their doors left yawning open. Most of them in the middle of the lane, not even pulled to the side. One car, a small green Honda Civic, was upside down, its windshield shattered. Kendra found suitcases or duffel bags in some of the cars, but scavenged no food except a strawberry Zone bar. She ate half and folded the rest neatly in its silver package, stuffed deep into her pocket. Later, the protein bar and a little jerky would be her dinner. A feast.
Twice, cars passed her on the road, but she heard them coming from far away. She remembered what her grandfather had said, and hid until they had passed. Freaks weren’t the only ones on a killing spree. Human beings were hunters or hunted now, with few in between. Besides, would she trust the motives of anyone who wanted to give a teenage girl a ride? Yeah, right. A ride into a very special episode of Criminal Minds. Dog-Girl had warned her that young girls were being trafficked Outside, which meant anywhere that wasn’t hidden away. Now that she was stuck Outside, mistakes weren’t a luxury.
As night began to fall, she took a chance and headed through an overgrown cabbage patch toward a farmhouse. The two-story wood-frame colonial seemed abandoned despite the shiny pickup truck tucked into the carport, but she couldn’t be sure. Nothing was sure anymore. The door was unlocked, partly ajar, as if the owners were entertaining guests. Yeah, guests who just dropped in for dinner.
“Hello?” she said in a helium-squeak of a voice. It might be safer to sound like a little girl than a sixteen-year-old. People weren’t afraid of little girls, and they tried to protect them, not hurt them. At least, that was the way it used to be.
No one answered. Kendra ventured inside, locking the door behind her. She also checked the windows, which were all unbroken and had working locks. Good. After a stop in the bathroom, which was full of bowls with fragrant potpourri and soap that smelled like medicine, Kendra entered the kitchen with an empty bladder and a clean face and hands. Feeling clean was a gift. She even washed the jeans she’d soiled.
The kitchen was food paradise, as if someone had prepared for her. Cans were stacked on the counter: franks and beans, peas, SpaghettiOs! Armed with a can opener, Fools make feasts, and wise men eat them, as Grandpa Joe use to say.
Kendra was feeling wise.
After she’d eaten, she realized how tired she was. The Itis, Grandpa Joe had always called his drowsiness after a big meal. Could she find a bed too?
Upstairs, looking for a bedroom, Kendra detected an acrid, oily stench wafting from beneath the nearest closed doorway. She was tempted to open the door and see for herself, but saw an ant trail, little black specks coming and going under the door. Kendra backed away. Her imagination was more than enough.
She went back downstairs. Once on the couch she pulled her journal out of her backpack and wrote down everything she could think about the previous day. Today, Grandpa Joe drove to Mike’s to sell deer jerky, she began. As she wrote, it felt like she was telling a story about someone else, not a terrible thing that had happened to her. Kendra didn’t cry, or couldn’t, as she wrote.
Writing helped, emptying out her head. Kendra fell deeply asleep, her pen still in her hand.
December 16
In the morning Kendra searched the house, discovering canned peaches and evaporated milk in the pantry. A little water pressure remained, which made her wonder if somewhere, perhaps, someone was trying to put the world back together.
She wished she could stay at the house and claim it. It was so tempting! But staying would mean cleaning up the body, or bodies, and the house was too close to the interstate. If the occupants hadn’t died in a freak attack or suicide pact, they’d likely been overrun by the pirates. In some ways, the pirates were worse than the freaks. There was no such thing as rest, no such thing as safety. Grandpa Joe had said to get to Portland.
So Kendra carried what she could and slipped out through the back door, extra careful as she passed the windows. Kendra tried to make sure that no one… either human or freak… shambling through the fields or passing on the dirt road could glimpse her. In the back of the house, she finally found something that justified her shaky faith in the world: an aged Schwinn three-speed bicycle. When she first saw the bicycle’s black paint, she thought her imagination had created it. But it was still there after she blinked.
Giddy with glee, she checked the tires. A bit squidgy, but five minutes’ searching found a compact hand pump, and two minutes of pumping made the tires taut as drums. She climbed aboard. The brakes and handling were decent, not great, but now she could hope to make better time, perhaps reach Centralia by nightfall. Kendra packed her backpack with food—saltines and nuts, not heavy cans, thank you very much. She also found an empty Gatorade bottle and filled it with the water dribbling from the faucet.
As an afterthought, she found a fleece jacket in the coat closet and tied it around her waist. She might need another jacket. At the very least, the jacket would give her something to trade. Even if she’d had cash, it was meaningless now. Trade was everything. She had learned that from Grandpa Joe.
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