Domino Falls (ARC)

by Steven Barnes

  Instead of answering, he said, “Where’s your sidearm?”

  “I … don’t have my own yet.”

  “Get one. Keep moving.”

  Kendra didn’t like his bossy manner, but she didn’t argue. She made a kissing sound for Hipshot, and they kept a steady pace toward the building on the corner. The Gold Shirt didn’t say anything else, but his horse walked a slow pace just behind her. Once she had made it to the front door, the Gold Shirt rode away. Kendra had been happy for his protection, but she was glad when he was gone.

  The Hungry Dog was on the far end of Main Street, a corner bar left over from old times. Aside from the wood planks nailed up where picture windows had been, the bar probably looked the same, an old-fashioned English pub with a faded crest over the door. Well-fed stray dogs loitered in the doorway and just outside. Hipshot had learned to keep his curiosity to himself, so he stood stoically while four other dogs sniffed him. When he got annoyed and nipped at a German shepherd mix, the other pooches left him alone.

  Thank goodness. Kendra had enough trouble with human politics.

  Even with Hipshot trotting at her side, Kendra knew she shouldn’t be out alone at night. But the returning scavs at the dining hall had reported that Terry and Piranha were probably at the bar, a rite of initiation.

  The Twins and Jackie were off having their own adventure, and all Sonia and Ursulina wanted to do was plot about how to ingratiate themselves to Wales and Threadville. Sonia had been eager to sift through the clothes she’d acquired that day, trying to find a way to look cute. Did she care that Piranha was half blind?

  Without Terry, Kendra felt alone again. The intensity of the loneliness surprised her, a heavy cloak that had robbed the taste of food from her mouth. She didn’t know how to tell if it was love or just mourning, but she needed to be with Terry, even if it meant walking at night to a bar full of rowdy strangers.

  No Credit was spray-painted on the wood outside the door. No Cash, Either. 2 Drink Limit.

  The bar was loud enough to be heard for blocks, spewing off-key, off-beat music. With one guy playing the upright piano, a woman strumming an acoustic guitar, a teenage boy on fiddle, and a long-haired person of ambiguous gender pounding the drum kit, Kendra almost recognized the music. Between songs, the crowd clapped and cheered like they were at a U2 concert. The intro to “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” was so bad that Kendra was afraid to hear the rest.

  A burly dude in a fleeced denim jacket waited just inside the doorway. Bouncer. It was hard to see his face; the only light inside was from candles and lanterns, so all she saw was a bushy beard. He looked like a pirate, except he didn’t stink.

  “Uhm … Can I come in?” Kendra said. “I’m looking for …”

  He waved her inside. “You’re older’n fourteen,” he said. “Old enough to work, old enough to drink. Hell, you might not live to twenty-one.” His voice and face were way too jovial, but he wasn’t joking.

  “Ain’t all she’s old enough for!” a nearby man called, and his table laughed. Kendra refused to look in his direction. She was glad she’d worn her heavy jacket to dinner, and tried to shrink inside it.

  “Keep Lassie leashed,” the bouncer said.

  Keep your customers leashed, Kendra thought, clinging tightly to Hipshot. There were more dogs inside, sniffing at tables or sleeping across the walkways. Only a few of the dogs were leashed close to their masters; the others seemed like regular customers.

  In Domino Falls, dogs were truly man’s best friend.

  She’d almost given up on finding Terry when she heard a familiar laugh from a group of men huddled at a small round table near the dartboard.

  “So I said, ‘You gonna shoot her or kiss her?’ ” one of the men finished, and the table of men laughed in unison, nearly falling over in their hysterics. Terry and Piranha were laughing harder than the rest. Someone patted Piranha on the back.

  There was no room at the table for her, so Kendra hesitated. Terry and Piranha were bonding with the guys they worked with. Would Terry want to see her now?

  The answer came when Hipshot barked. Terry looked over at her, and his face broke into a grin. He climbed over Piranha and the man at the end of the table as he came to her. He leaned down to peck her lips, like they were an old married couple.

  “What are you doing here?” he said, still grinning, breathless. His face was ruddy. “This place is kinda rough.”

  “Tell me about it. But I wanted to see how your scavenging went.”

  “She just grazed me,” Terry said, turning over his shoulder to share a private joke. Scav humor. The table laughed again. Terry steered Kendra toward the bar counter, tugging at his pocket. “Oh! Let me get you a drink.”

  For a moment, Kendra expected Terry to pull out his wallet, maybe an ATM card. Instead, he pulled out a two-pack of AA batteries. He winked at her. “These are like gold bars. You’ll need to get stamped. Two-drink limit. Some kind of town law. If you want a buzz, there’s vendors with warm beer and weed out back.”

  Kendra didn’t need any buzz other than seeing Terry in one piece, still here, but Terry had reached the shiny bar. Kendra saw eyes hanging on the pack of batteries, which he was holding high enough for everyone to see. Was Terry limping slightly?

  “Gimme one for the young lady, Louie!” Terry called. “Keep the change!”

  Patrons in the crowded bar grinned, but Kendra noticed steel in some of the smiles. Showing off wasn’t a good idea in front of people who had lost everything.

  A foaming mug slid to him across the bar right away. Terry grabbed it for her. An unsmiling bartender absently stamped her palm with a red Smiley face.

  “Cold beer!” Terry said, still amazed by the sight. “Whooo-hooooo!”

  “You can have it,” she said, but he might not have heard her. She’d never seen Terry so wired, and she didn’t think it was from the alcohol, even if he’d had more than one drink. She held the mug but didn’t sip from it.

  “Was it scary?” Kendra said.

  Terry nodded and puffed his cheeks full of air.

  “What about Piranha?”

  “He got new contacts. Wearing ’em now.”

  “You going back out?”

  “Not if I can help it,” Terry said. He moved closer to her ear, and in the glow of a candle on the bar counter, she saw his troubled eyes. “No respect for the dead,” he said.

  Ugh. Terry and Piranha had been scavenging corpses, not just dodging freaks. He must have showered a long time, or she would have smelled the day on him.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and nuzzled his cheek.

  “I’d love a cold beer,” said a woman who sidled up to Terry. She was maybe in her late twenties and model thin, as tall as Terry. Her face and hair seemed plain, but she’d chosen her jeans and tight-fitting turtleneck with care. Her blond hair floated on a cloud of perfume. Kendra’s stomach soured at the way she pinched Terry’s bicep.

  At least a dozen other women were at the bar too, and several were gazing at Terry. Kendra hadn’t wondered how Terry looked to other women, but suddenly his wavy brown hair and broad shoulders made him a target. Not to mention his double-As.

  “Aren’t you at your limit?” Terry said to the blond.

  She held up clean palms. “Thought I’d save myself for the right man.”

  On another night, Kendra might have been more amused than annoyed. Instead, she imagined herself ordering Hipshot to attack Blondie: Freak, Hippy! Freak! Kendra thrust herself between them, a boldness she’d never had in her old life.

  “You can have this one,” Kendra said, handing the woman her mug. “Bye.”

  Kendra hadn’t planned to narrow her eyes to homicidal slits, but the blond woman got the message. She took the mug and raised it in a toast to Terry. “Welcome to Threadville,” she said. “Let me know when you graduate from kindergarten.”

  Then she walked away like a woman who expected men to watch her walk.

  “Why’d you give that to he
r?” Terry said. “Do you know how much beer costs?”

  “I should have thrown it at her.”

  “Easy,” Terry said. “No competition here, Kendra.” Terry was gazing at her the way he had at the beach, then leaned forward and kissed her lightly. “Come with me while I hang out with the guys. Where’s Sonia?”

  Sonia better keep an eye on Piranha. Apparently, the Hungry Dog was more like the Horny Bitch. “In our room,” Kendra said. She didn’t want to say that Sonia was choosing clothes for her visit to Wales’s mansion. “She said she’d see him later.”

  They both left it at that. Talking about Piranha and Sonia might be bad luck.

  When they got back to the table, Terry pulled up a chair for her, and everyone scooted around to make room. Piranha leaned over to kiss her cheek. He didn’t ask about Sonia.

  “When I was growing up here, Domino Falls was just a wide space in the road,” said the jokester, spiraling off into a history lesson. A Gold Shirt, Kendra realized when she saw his shirt hanging across his chair back. She’d heard the others call him Cliff. “Most of it owned by a Spanish mining family, made a little gold strike back about 1890. They bought some land, named it after a local waterfall that dried up in 1910, when they put in new irrigation. Just a few farms, then the fence manufacturer. Then twenty years ago Wales came in. No one knew who he was, except he had money. Lots of it. And Hollywood flash. He bought up most of the town after his movie came out.”

  “How’d that sit with the town?” Piranha said. He was still wearing his shades; despite the new contacts, his eyes still bothered him.

  “Didn’t have much to say about it,” Cliff said. “He owned most of it by then. We thought he was strange and that his Threadies were whacko. But harmless, overall.”

  “What about Freak Day?” Kendra said. “How’d it happen here?”

  A hush fell over the table. Cliff’s voice grew sober. “We’d heard the news bulletins. San Francisco, Oakland … rioting. Lot of traffic on the Five, but how could we believe those stories? It was like something out of a movie.” He sighed. “Then came Manny Cobb. Older guy. Retired dentist. Rotary Club president. Drove his car into a ditch, ran into town biting everyone he found. Another one came through an hour later, and then we were just flat crawling with them. Never thought I’d see anything like it.”

  He picked up his mug for a swig, but it was empty. He barely seemed to notice. The mug was just a comfortable habit from before, like the bar.

  “How’d you keep clear?” Terry said.

  “I locked myself in the basement. Pissed in a bucket for a week. The freak attack must have wiped out every town for fifty miles.”

  “How’d you survive after the basement?” Piranha said.

  “Not how,” Cliff said. “Who.”

  Two other men at the table raised their empty mugs to clank them together.

  “Wales,” Cliff and the men said in unison, and Cliff went on: “His estate. They’d been using it for parties … role-playing Threadie games. He had high, safe walls. Professional guards. Gates. And he had a school bus—like yours,” he said, nodding at Terry. “Mounted loudspeakers, took it out into the town. Gave cover to the survivors, got them out to the ranch. Took in half the town, maybe two hundred people—the half that survived. And then we took the town back, freak by freak.”

  “What’s the deal with you guys?” Piranha said. “The Gold Shirts?”

  “Gold Shits,” one of the men murmured, and the other chuckled.

  “I didn’t hear that,” Cliff said. “Shirt’s off.”

  “Who do you work for?” Kendra said. “Wales or the town?”

  “Depends on who you ask,” Cliff said. “But Wales pays me, not the so-called mayor. Wales runs the show here. That’s the first thing you better figger out.”

  Way ahead of you, Kendra thought.

  “Wales had these idiots he called the Threadie Irregulars. Got all amped up playing war games from his books. So when the world ended, they had contingency plans. They were ready. The ones that weren’t total loonbags became the first Gold Shirts. The rest of us earned our way in. Most of the Threadies couldn’t fight their way out of a bag of popcorn.”

  The table laughed again.

  The bar stirred with excitement, heads turning, so Kendra glanced up to see the Twins saunter through the doorway, arm in arm in arm with Jackie, who walked between them, rolling her hips with every step. The Twins were a memorable sight in their matching bomber jackets. Darius spotted them right away, so they came to the table with Jackie in tow. Cynically, Kendra remembered that Jackie had latched onto the Twins as soon as they walked through the front gate. The blond skank could have learned a thing or two from Jackie. She bet the Twins were learning quite a bit.

  “They live and breathe!” Darius said, grinning. Piranha and Terry stood up to greet them with full hugs, like brothers after a long separation. Maybe they were.

  But instead of listening to a humorous story Piranha was telling the Twins about a female runner chasing their truck, Kendra watched Jackie lean over Cliff on the other side of the table. Jackie’s eyes glinted.

  “Well?” she said.

  Cliff shrugged. “Well what?”

  They sounded like exes having a spat. Jackie pursed her lips and glared. Kendra had to read lips to understand them over the bar chatter.

  “What do you expect me to do, Jax?” Cliff said.

  “You said you’d ask around.”

  “I did ask around, and nobody’s heard anything. Just relax. Let Sam ask.”

  Jackie made a hissing sound, her face getting red. “You know Sam’s just glad to have his shirt. He’s not gonna ask questions that’ll—”

  Cliff leaned closer to her. “… makes two of us. Don’t do this now. You barely know that girl. Let me buy you a drink.”

  “Beer won’t fix a broken promise,” Jackie said. “I’m real disappointed, Cliff.”

  “Well, you’ve got plenty of company to cheer you up.”

  That pretty much killed conversation, and Kendra knew they were exes for sure. They stared each other down a moment longer before Jackie pulled away and pasted on a bright smile to return to the Twins. Whatever was bothering her, she’d yet to share it with Darius and Dean. With them, she was fun and games.

  Kendra felt the same unease she’d felt watching Brownie at the dining hall. She had to find out what Jackie and the Gold Shirt had been arguing about.

  Kendra followed Jackie into the bar’s wood-paneled ladies’ room. The two-stall bathroom was surprisingly clean even if the dark was forbidding. The candles near the sink didn’t cast light into the stalls, but they had real toilet paper and, more important, actual working toilets.

  Kendra forced herself to pee while Jackie stood in the mirror applying makeup. When Kendra washed her hands, Jackie was packing her eyeliner away, ready to go. “Aren’t the Twins awesome?” Kendra said, reaching for conversation.

  Jackie stared at her with an arched eyebrow, suspicious. “Yeah,” she said finally.

  Jackie made a move toward the door, so Kendra blurted, “Do people go missing here a lot? Like Brownie’s daughter?”

  Jackie froze. Slowly, she turned around to look at Kendra, examining her. “What have you heard?” she said.

  “Just … what you said at the table. You’re looking for someone.”

  “A newbie grew on me,” Jackie said. “Rianne. I haven’t seen her in weeks.” It was too dark to interpret the look she saw across Jackie’s face. “Wales calls them his ambassadors.”

  “What kind of ambassadors?”

  “Setting up agricultural trades. Weapon and equipment trades. Spreading Threadie gospel. Wales has small planes, helicopters. He’s recruiting people, some of them your age or a little older. Rianne decided to go for training, moved onto Wales’s ranch. I haven’t talked to her since.”

  “What happened to Brownie’s daughter?”

  “Sissy? Same deal,” Jackie said. “She moved to the ranch to be an a
mbassador. Rianne kept saying she was gonna be a part of something special the last Friday of the month. Well, that’s in a couple of days. I just wanted to talk to her and make sure she doesn’t do anything stupid. Girls on the road? It’s a bad idea.”

  “My friend was invited to the ranch,” Kendra said. “We might go tomorrow.”

  Jackie silenced a dripping faucet with a hard twist of her wrist. “Don’t get lost there,” Jackie said. “And don’t mention my name.” Her voice was ice.

  No one wanted to piss off Wales.

  “I won’t,” Kendra said. “But if you want … I can try to ask about Rianne.”

  “Wouldn’t be smart,” Jackie said. “Asking the wrong questions will get you bounced back to the road. Maybe worse. My brother Sam’s a Gold Shirt, but he’s a good guy and he’s told me stories. Be careful out there. Wales is running his own world.”

  Kendra felt a shiver. She should convince Ursulina and Sonia to forget about going to the ranch. No way was she going to Threadville’s ranch now.

  No. Way.

  “But if you can,” Jackie went on, her voice pained, “try to find out what’s happening around here, maybe for your own good. Then get the hell out of there as fast as you can. And stay out.”

  Fifteen

  December 22 6:45 a.m.

  Terry didn’t expect good news, but he wasn’t ready to give up. He was up early despite his aching arms from lugging scav bags. He’d pulled a thigh muscle during the mad dash from Walmart, so he walked at a slow pace with the others toward the garage. Hipshot trotted ahead, tongue lolling happily.

  Despite the early hour, everyone had agreed to go, especially Kendra. She was ready to start up the Blue Beauty and ease on down the road.

  Yeah, right.

  The others only wanted to retrieve the food, flashlights, and blankets they’d left back in their unheated rooms. Sonia was walking beside Piranha, but they barely looked at each other. Terry had roomed with Piranha again last night. The Twins walked in the rear, and Kendra was interrogating them.

  “… but she hasn’t said anything?” Kendra said. “You’ve been hanging with her nonstop since we got here.”

  “Maybe it’s girl talk,” Darius said. “If she thought Threadville was such a bummer, she would have told us.”