Domino Falls (ARC)

by Steven Barnes

  “That’s only a few million people’s last words,” Ursulina said.

  “I won’t be sleeping, so I’ll keep watch,” Terry said. “Me and Piranha.” Piranha nodded, agreeing. They bumped fists.

  “And me,” Kendra said quietly.

  “Me too,” Sonia said. “It’s not like any of us could sleep now.”

  “Don’t worry, I can sleep,” Darius said. He might not have been joking, but everyone laughed like they needed laughter to breathe.

  Everyone except Ursulina. “I know Terry’s our friend, but it’s Council time. We vote. Who thinks we should let him come?”

  In the end, no one voted to leave Terry, not even Corporal Cortez.

  Terry was so moved, he couldn’t say another word.

  Thirty-Seven

  Christmas Day

  Ursulina had promised them a long night, but it wasn’t nearly long enough. Their vigil to keep Terry awake and give Myles time to fix the Beauty seemed over as soon as Kendra blinked. After a few stories and thin laughter at nervous jokes, sunlight crept across the eastern mountains.

  Myles helped Kendra update Devil’s Wake with his battery-operated shortwave, and their window of arrival was clear. The operator identified an abandoned road near the airport where he could land and take off with ease. If they didn’t make any more stops, he said, they would arrive in plenty of time.

  “Anyone asking about us?” Kendra asked, trying to sound casual.

  “Stella’s asking plenty,” he said. “We got a call from Threadville, but I didn’t like the tone of voice… so I figgered you were none of their business.”

  If he was telling the truth, Wales probably suspected where they were going, but would someone tail them so far if they didn’t know for sure?

  It was as close to an all-clear as they could have hoped for, but Kendra only felt dread as she and Terry prepared to board the bus for what she knew would be their last time together. They would all make it to Devil’s Wake except Terry, and it wasn’t fair. Meeting a great-aunt she barely knew couldn’t begin to compensate for losing him.

  Ursulina examined Terry’s eyes with her flashlight.

  “You sure you’re good to ride?” she said.

  “I want to see Kendra safe,” Terry said. “All of you. It’s probably the only thing keeping me alive.”

  Ursulina snickered. “Screw that, cowboy—keep us alive,” she said. Unexpectedly, she wrapped her arms around Terry and hugged him tight.

  Kendra clung to Terry’s hand, trying not to notice how cool his skin was; his body temperature was dropping. He had stayed awake all night, but he wasn’t the same. She could see the poison’s work on the lines around his mouth and the hollow pockets under his eyes, already tinged red. Ursulina had missed it, but not her. His face was different.

  “When we get to the plane,” Kendra said, lingering in the bus doorway with him, “what happens after that?”

  Terry shrugged, sighing. “Hard to see that far ahead,” he said, “but Ursulina had a great idea about a six-pack and a gun.” Kendra cringed. “So you’d just kill yourself?” she said quietly. “Don’t you think I should?”

  Kendra shook her head. “No. Because as sick as Wales is, he discovered the secret, Terry. The freaks we see around us aren’t all there is. There’s a fifth level, after rooters. Remember?”

  “Yeah, we killed it,” Terry said.

  “He said if you go without fear”—Kendra struggled to remember everything Harry had said in Wales’s Collections Room—“you won’t be a monster. They weren’t supposed to be monsters. You can be something else. It just takes time, and … faith.”

  Terry looked unconvinced. Her words sounded small and pathetic, even to her.

  There was nothing left to say.

  They boarded the bus.

  Piranha drove, and an achingly tired Terry was glad to be free of the responsibility. If not for the cloud of gloom hanging over the bus and Hippy’s constant whining from where he was tied in the back, the drive to Devil’s Wake was perfect. Interstate 5, as Myles had been promised, was mostly clear. Once in a while, another vehicle passed going in the other direction, lights flashing, horn honking. Cheerful survivors.

  Corpses were ceremoniously strung from trees and gallows every few miles with not-so-friendly reminders spray-painted on signs: Pirates Will Be Hung. Not exactly law and order yet, Terry thought, but it was a start. Society was rebuilding.

  At least he was luckier than most people who’d been bitten— too many had been wrenched out of their lives in chaos, with no reason to believe that the chaos might end. At least he had lived long enough to see the world fighting back.

  By the time they passed Bakersfield, Terry was so tired that the world resembled one vast heat mirage. But just as before, Kendra always seemed to know. She literally sat with her arms around his neck, nudging and prodding, even pinching, until he felt alert again. He told her to move to her seat, afraid he might doze and bite her, but she always came back just when he started to think he would have to give up the wheel. He was having hot and cold spells, his body fighting the infection.

  North of Santa Clarita, a lone female hitchhiker approached who looked just like Lisa, and Terry’s heart jumped. But when he blinked and tried to see her again, she vanished like a heat mirage. Damn—a hallucination!

  “Don’t forget about Lisa,” Terry told Kendra. “Everything I told you.”

  “I won’t. I wrote it all down. I’ll find her. I’ll never give up.”

  Terry had thought about driving the bus into Los Angeles to find Lisa himself, but he fought the temptation. He wouldn’t make it. Or worse, he just might. No way was he going to shamble up to his sister’s doorstep and be the one to kill her.

  No, he had to kill himself first, as soon as the others were gone.

  But what about the other levels of freaks? Terry imagined the creature they had found with Kendra in Wales’s mansion, and shivered. No thanks.

  “How you doing?” Piranha said, standing over him. They were passing the burned and twisted remnants of an amusement park. Magic Mountain, the twenty-story, multicolored totem pole read. Someone had climbed all the way to the top and draped a sheet halfway across the sign reading Still Here. Were they? Was anyone? Burned industrial parks, shattered buildings, but cars pushed to the side of the roads. Someone still lived. Someone had cleared the roads.

  Were they being watched, even now?

  “Fine,” Terry said, clipped.

  “Really?” Without warning, Piranha slapped Terry’s face— hard. Terry saw spots and thought his nose might be bleeding.

  Kendra cried out in protest, but Terry’s vision looked twice as sharp when he blinked. He’d been sleepier than he realized.

  “Thanks, man,” Terry said.

  Piranha grinned. “I know you’d do it for me.”

  “Lean closer, and I’ll do it for you right now.”

  Piranha only laughed.

  “Next wake-up call’s on me,” Ursulina said. Everyone laughed. They had to laugh. There was nothing else left.

  Kendra tightened her grip around Terry’s neck, nestling her face against the back of his head. “I love you, Terry,” she whispered.

  Kendra’s grip was far from comfortable, but nothing could have felt better. He wouldn’t have asked her to let him go even if it meant he couldn’t breathe.

  Blue Beauty slid through the remnants of downtown Los Angeles, a maze of shattered skyscrapers and lurching freaks. Kendra pressed her face to the window, looking for any sign of living, thinking human beings. There … on the rooftop. Someone waving to them, making a semaphore of their thin and desperate arms. There … another Still Here sign flagging out of a window. The window was smashed, the shards smeared with some dried and dark red substance. Dark, like the infinite space behind his eyes.

  When they crossed to the Harbor Freeway south to the 405, they hit two knots of freaks camped in the roadway. They looked incuriously at the Beauty but began to wheel their b
odies in agitation when the faces of the occupants became clear. Piranha didn’t slow or stop, just ground them under the snowplow, his hands locked in a death grip on the wheel.

  Silence reigned on the Blue Beauty as they crossed the dead city. Hipshot didn’t bark, even when freaks passed within feet of their rolling fortress. He just laid his head between his paws on the seat and whined.

  The Spring Street exit took them to Cherry Avenue, and from there they saw the signs leading to Long Beach Municipal Airport. The sight of the chained cyclone fence was welcome. A hand-lettered sign read Danger: Chain Fence Behind You Every Time.

  Ursulina and the twins bounced down out of the Beauty, covering one another as Darius unwrapped a chain from the gate and swung the gate open. A freak lurched toward them, too slowly to be a threat, and their bus was in the airport and the fence latched again by the time the creature reached them. Ursulina didn’t fire as the thing clawed at them, stretched its arms through the fence, and moaned.

  She came closer to it. Female. About twenty-two. Black, in a blue Cal State Long Beach T-shirt with a McDonald’s badge clipped above a torn pocket. According to the badge, her name was Tanya. Great red splotches of fungus matted her lips, almost obscuring her eyes. She was saying something. Whispering. Ursulina came closer, lowered her rifle, turned her head, listening.

  Then walked away.

  “What did it say?” Dean asked as they climbed back on the bus.

  “ ‘Would you like fries with that?’ ”

  “Probably poli-sci,” he said.

  “There it is!” Darius said, pointing toward a clutch of low buildings. They could glimpse a narrow strip of black pavement beyond. Piranha waited until they were all on the bus, then rolled it over onto a patch of grass next to the runway.

  Dazed, a bit disbelieving that they had made it, they exited the bus.

  Kendra Brookings, Darius Phillips, Dean Kitsap, Sonia Petansu, Piranha Cawthone, Myles Bennett, Jason Bennett, Jackie Burchett, Rianne Carter, Dierdre Bennett. A dog named Hipshot.

  Survivors.

  And of course a guy named Terry Whittaker. No one important. Just the first beloved of a girl named Kendra. What exactly was he? What were they?

  They had no hope of carrying everything they’d brought, so everyone had gathered only their essentials and only what they could carry. Kendra had a duffel bag with fresh changes of clothes and her notebook, where she’d written her notes about Lisa—and where she planned to write about everything she had seen in Threadville.

  What Wales had done would not be a secret. The fifth-level freak would not be a secret.

  The rest they’d unpacked and stacked beside the bus, either for Devil’s Wake residents to pick up later or for other lucky survivors to find on their own. Dean and Darius stroked their parked bikes like they were living beings, cooing good-byes.

  Kendra and the others used belts, ropes, and scarves to secure Terry in his seat, all of them stone silent. They had run out of time for jokes and stories. They had run out of time, period.

  Kendra stood outside watching while, one by one, Terry’s friends from Camp Round Meadow stood beside him for private good-byes. Through the windshield, she saw each visitor share both smiles and tears. Even Hipshot stood on two legs in the bus doorway, staring curiously toward Terry. His last bark didn’t sound hostile at all.

  “I love you too, boy,” Terry said, waving through the glass. By the time it was Kendra’s turn, the plane looked close enough to touch, ready to land. Myles and Deirdre stood twenty yards down the road, waving it down.

  “You have everything you need?” Kendra said to Terry. “Food? Bottled water?”

  “Nine millimeter.” Terry avoided her eyes. The gun was on the dashboard. “I guess you know this already,” he said. “But … I love you, Kendra, that’s all. Before you, I never knew what that was like.”

  “Me neither,” she said. Regrets seared Kendra’s insides. Why hadn’t she made love to him when she had the chance? Condom or not? Why hadn’t she shown him how she felt?

  “Thanks for saving my life,” she said. “Again.” Even her gratitude burned. If she hadn’t been caught by that freak in the tunnel, Terry might not have been bitten. If she hadn’t insisted on rescuing Rianne …

  “Thanks for saving mine,” Terry said, “making life matter more.”

  She squeezed his hand, which felt burning hot now instead of cool. “Remember what I said, Terry. Maybe if you’re not afraid … If you find somewhere safe to root …”

  “There’s something good waiting for me on the other side?” he finished, gazing up at her with a sad smile. “Come on, Kendra. You don’t believe that.”

  Irritation surged within Kendra’s grief. Suddenly, she grabbed Terry’s face and kissed him. Either he was too tired to resist or he didn’t have the will, because he didn’t pull away from her the way he had in the cabin before they left. He tasted like their blended tears.

  “Hey,” Ursulina said, knocking on the driver’s side window.

  Her voice was muffled. “What the hell are you doing? It might be in his spit already!”

  Terry was startled, pulling away. Kendra’s heart pounded while Terry stared at her, wideeyed. He looked so stricken and worried, she was almost sorry she’d kissed him. But not quite.

  “Why?” Terry said, his voice a husk. “Why’d you do that, Kendra?”

  “Merry Christmas,” she whispered. “All I have to give you is faith.”

  Kendra held him, weeping, for as long as she could. She only left the Blue Beauty when her friends dragged her away.

  The pilot was annoyed about the number of passengers, but he allowed all of them to board—even Hipshot. Kendra barely noticed the haggling, only staring at the bus from her plane window, trying to catch a last glimpse of the only boy she had ever loved.

  Soon after the plane took off, the Blue Beauty began driving east while the plane veered west. She watched as long as she could, but she fogged her window.

  By the time she wiped the fog clean, Terry was gone.

  Acknowledgments

  TK

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Threadrunner Ranch

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Good-byes

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Acknowledgments