Devil’s Wake (10 page)

Tire-tread calligraphy in hardened mud. Mike’s was a busy place. Damn greedy fool. Beside him, Joe felt the kid fidgeting in her seat, and he didn’t blame her. He had half a mind to turn around and start driving back toward home. The jerky would keep. He had enough gas to last him. He’d come back when things looked right again.

But dammit, he’d promised Kendra a Coke. It would help erase a slew of memories if he could bring a grin to the kid’s face today. Little Soldier’s grins were a miracle. Her little pouchy cheeks were the spitting image of Cass’s at her age.
Daddy,
she’d called him on the radio.
Daddy.

Don’t think about that don’t think don’t—
Joe leaned on his horn. He let it blow five seconds before he laid off. After a few seconds, the door to the store opened, and Mike stood there leaning against the doorjamb, a big ruddy white-haired Canuck with linebacker shoulders and a pigskin-size bulge above his belt. He was wearing an apron, like he always did, as if he ran a butcher shop instead of a gas station. Mike peered out at them and waved. “Come on in!” he called out.

Joe leaned out of the window. “Where the boys at?”

“They’re fine!” Mike said. Over the years, Joe had tried a dozen times to convince Mike he couldn’t hear worth a damn. No sense asking after the boys again until he got closer.

The wind skittered a few leaves along the ground between the truck and the door, and Joe watched their silent dance for a few sec
onds, considering. “I’m gonna go do this real quick, Kendra,” Joe finally said. “Stay in the truck.”

The kid didn’t say anything, but her eyes went dead, just like they did when he asked what had happened at the house in Longview. Joe cracked open his door. “I’ll only be a minute,” he said, trying to sound casual.

“D-Don’t leave me. Please, Grandpa Joe? Let me c-come.”

Well, I’ll be damned, Joe thought. This girl was talking up a storm today. Joe sighed, mulling it over. Pros and cons either way, he supposed. He reached under the seat and pulled out his Glock 9mm. He’d never liked automatics until maybe the mid-eighties, when somebody figured out how to keep them from jamming so damned often. He had a Mossberg shotgun in a rack behind the seat, but that might seem a little too hostile.

He’d give Kendra the sawed-off Remington 28-gauge. It had some kick, but the Little Soldier was used to it. He could trust Little Soldier not to fire into the ceiling. Or his back. Joe had seen to that. “How many shots?” Joe asked him, handing over the little birder. Kendra held up four fingers, like a toddler. So much for talking.

“If you’re coming with me, I damn well better know you can talk if there’s a reason to.” Joe sounded angrier than he’d intended. “Now… how many shots?”

“Four!”
That time, she’d nearly shouted it.

“Come on in,” Mike called from the doorway. “Got hot dogs!”

That was a first. Joe hadn’t seen a hot dog in months, and his mouth watered. Joe started to ask him again what the boys were up to, but Mike turned around and went inside.

“Stick close to me,” Joe told Kendra. “You’re my other pair of eyes. Anything looks funny, you point and speak up loud and clear. Anybody makes a move in your direction you don’t like,
shoot
him right through the nose. Hear?”

Kendra nodded.

“That means
anybody.
I don’t care if it’s Mike or his boys or Santa Claus or Sweet Baby Jesus. You understand me?”

Kendra nodded again, although she lowered her eyes sadly. “Like Mom said.”

“Damn right. Exactly like your mom said,” Joe told Kendra, squeezing the kid’s shoulder. For an instant, his chest burned so hot with grief that a heart attack might have seemed a mercy. The kid might have watched what happened to Cass. Cass might have turned into one of them before her eyes.

Joe thought of the pivoting, bloated freak he’d killed, the one in the plaid print dress, its red-clotted nostrils flaring as it caught his scent. His stomach clamped like a big sour fist. “Let’s go. Remember what I told you,” Joe said.

“Yes, sir.”

He’d leave the jerky alone, for now. He’d go inside and look around for himself.

Joe’s knee flared as his boot sank into soft mud just inside the gate.
Crap. He was a useless old man, and he had a Bouncing Betty fifty klicks south of the DMZ to blame for it. In those happy days in Southeast Asia… or French Indochina… or just “the ’Nam,” none of them had known that the
real
war was still forty years off—but coming fast—and he was going to need both knees for the real war, you dig? And he could use a real soldier at his side for this war, not a piss-pantied girl.

“Closer,” Joe said, and Kendra pulled up behind him, his shadow. When Joe pushed the glass door open, the salmon-shaped door chimes jangled merrily, like old times. Mike had vanished quick, because he wasn’t behind the counter. A small television set on the counter erupted with ancient, canned laughter from people who were either dead or no longer laughing.

“DOH!” Homer Simpson’s voice crowed. Mike was playing his DVD.

“Mike? Where’d you go?” Joe’s finger massaged his shotgun trigger as he peered behind the counter. Suddenly, there was a guffaw from the rear of the store, matching a new fit of laughter from the TV. He’d know that laugh blindfolded.

Mike was behind a broom, one of those school-custodian brooms with a wide brush, sweeping up and back, and large shards of glass clinked as he swept. Mike was laughing so hard his face and crown had turned pink. Joe saw what he was sweeping: the glass had been broken out of one of the refrigerated cases in back, which were now dark and empty. The others were still intact, plastered with Budweiser and Red Bull stickers, but the last door had broken clean off except for a few jagged pieces still standing upright, like a mountain range, close to the floor.

“Y’all had some trouble?” Joe asked.

“Nope,” Mike said, still laughing. He sounded congested, but otherwise all right. Mike kept a cold six months out of the year.

“Who broke your glass?”

“The boys are fine.” Suddenly, Mike laughed loudly again. “That Homer!” he said, and shook his head.

Kendra too was staring at the television set, mesmerized. From the look on her face, she could be witnessing the parting of the Red Sea. The kid must miss TV, all right.

“Got any Cokes, Mike?” Joe said.

Mike could hardly swallow back his laughter long enough to answer. He squatted down, sweeping the glass onto an orange dustpan. “We’ve got hot dogs! They’re—” Suddenly, Mike’s face changed. He dropped his broom, and it clattered to the floor as he cradled one of his hands close to his chest.
“Ow!”

“Careful there, old-timer,” Joe said. “Cut yourself?”

“Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!” Sounded like it might be bad, Joe realized.
He hoped this fool hadn’t messed around and cut himself somewhere he shouldn’t have. Mike sank from a squat to a sitting position, still cradling his hand. Joe couldn’t see any blood yet, but he hurried toward him.

“Well, don’t sit there whining over it.”

“Owowowowowow.” As Joe began to kneel down, Mike’s shoulder heaved upward into Joe’s midsection, driving the breath from him in a
woof!
and lifting him to his toes. For a moment Joe was too startled to react, the what-the-hell reaction stronger than reflex that had nearly cost him his life more than once. He was frozen by the sheer surprise of it, the impossibility that he’d been
talking
to Mike one second and—

Joe snatched clumsily at the Glock in his belt and fired at Mike’s throat. Missed. The second shot hit Mike in the shoulder, but not before Joe had lost what was left of his balance and crashed backward into the broken refrigerator door. Three things happened at once: his arm snapped against the case doorway as he fell backward, knocking the gun out of his hand before he could feel it fall; a knife of broken glass carved him from below as he fell, slicing into the back of his thigh with such a sudden wave of pain that he screamed; and Mike hiked up Joe’s pant leg and took hold of his calf in his teeth, gnawing at him like a dog with a beef rib.

Cursing, Joe kicked away at Mike’s head with the only leg that was still responding to his body’s commands. Still, Mike hung on. Somehow, even inside the fog of pain from his injury, Joe felt a chunk of his calf tearing, more hot pain. He was bit, that was certain.
He was bit.
Every alarm in his head and heart rang.

Dear sweet God, he was
bit.
He’d walked right up to Mike. They could make sounds—everybody said that—but this one had been
talking,
putting words together, acting like… acting like…

With a cry of agony, Joe pulled himself forward to leverage more of his weight and kicked at Mike’s head again. This time, he felt Mike’s
teeth withdraw. Another kick, and Joe’s hiking boot sank squarely into Mike’s face. Mike fell backward into the shelf of flashlights behind him.

“Kendra!”
Joe screamed. The shelves blocked his sight of the spot where his granddaughter had been standing. Pain from the torn calf muscle rippled through Joe, clouding thought. The pain shot up to his neck, liquid fire. Did the freaks have venom? Was that it? Mike didn’t lurch like the one on the road. He scrambled up again, untroubled by the blood spattering from his broken nose and teeth.

“I have hot dogs,” Mike said.

Joe reached back for the Glock, his injured thigh flaming while Mike’s face came at him, mouth gaping, crimson teeth glittering. Joe’s fingers brushed the automatic, but it skittered away from him, and now Mike would bite, and bite, and then go after the Little Soldier—

Mike’s nose and mouth exploded in a mist of pink tissue. The sound registered a moment later, deafening in the confined space, an explosion that sent Mike’s useless body toppling to the floor. Then, Joe saw Kendra just behind him, her little sawed-off birding rifle smoking, face pinched, hands shaking.

Holy God, Kendra had done it! The kid had hit her mark. Sucking wind, Joe dug among the old soapboxes for his Glock, and when he had a firm grip on it, he tried to pull himself up. The world whirled. He tumbled back down.

“Grandpa Joe!” Kendra said, and rushed to him. The girl’s grip was surprisingly strong, and Joe hugged her for support, straining to peer down at his leg. Maybe he was wrong about the bite. It was possible he was wrong.

“Let me look,” Joe said, trying to keep his voice calm. He peeled back his pant leg, grimacing at the blood binding the fabric to flesh. There it was, facing him in a semicircle of oozing slits. A bite. Not a deep one. But damn well deep enough. Freak juice was already shooting all through him. Damn, damn, damn.

Night seemed to come early, because for an instant Joe Davis’s fear blotted the room’s light. He was
bit.
And where were Mike’s three boys? Wouldn’t they all come running now, like the swarm over the hill he’d seen in the field?

“We’ve gotta get out of here, Little Soldier,” Joe said, and levered himself up to standing. Pain coiled and writhed inside him. “I mean now. Let’s go.”

His leg was leaking. The pain was terrible, a throb with every heartbeat. He found himself wishing he’d faint, and his terror at the thought snapped him to more alertness than he’d felt in weeks. He had to get Little Soldier to the truck. He had to keep Little Soldier safe. God only knew what would happen to a girl left on her own. If the freaks didn’t get her, the survivors would.

With each step, the back of his left thigh screamed bloody murder. He was leaning so hard on Little Soldier, the kid could hardly manage the door. Joe heard the tinkling above him, and then, impossibly, they were back outside. Joe saw the truck waiting just beyond the gate. His eyes swept the perimeter. No movement. No one. Where were those boys?

“Let’s go,” Joe panted. He patted his pocket, and the keys were there. “Faster.” Joe nearly fell three times, but each time he found the kid’s weight beneath him, keeping him on his feet. Joe’s heartbeat was in his ears, an ocean’s roar. “Jump in. Hurry.”

After the driver’s door was open, Little Soldier scooted into the car like a monkey. The hard leather made Joe whimper as his thigh slid across the seat, but suddenly, it all felt easy. Slam and lock the door. Get his hand to stop shaking enough to get the key in the ignition. Fire her up. Joe lurched the truck in reverse for thirty yards before he finally turned around. His right leg was numb up to his knee—
from that bite, oh sweet Lord
—but he was still flooring the pedal somehow, keeping the truck on the road instead of ramming it into a ditch.

Joe looked in his rearview mirror. At first he couldn’t see for the
dust, but there they were: Mike’s boys had come running in a ragged line, all of them straining as if they were in a race. Fast. They were too far back to catch up, but their fervor sent a bottomless fear through Joe’s stomach.

Mike’s boys looked like starving jackals stalking an antelope.

K
endra
could barely breathe. The air in the truck felt the way it might in outer space, if you were floating alone in the universe, a distant speck, too far in the sky to see.

“Grandpa Joe?” Kendra whispered.

Grandpa Joe’s face shone with sweat. He was chewing at his lip hard enough to draw blood. Grandpa Joe’s fingers gripped at the wheel, and the corners of his mouth turned upward in an imitation of a smile. “It’s gonna be all right,” he said, but it seemed that he was talking to himself more than to her. “It’ll be fine.”

Kendra stared at him, assessing. He seemed all right. But Dad had seemed fine too.

She and Mom had been all right for a while, living off the refrigerator, and then the pantry after the power went out. But Mom got bit by their neighbor Carolyn Stiller and had forced Kendra to hide in the cellar. Made her promise not to open the door, even for her. No matter what.
Not until you hear the danger word.

Kendra felt warm liquid on the seat beneath her and she gasped, thinking Grandpa Joe might be bleeding all over the seat. Instead, when she looked down, her jeans were dark and wet, almost black. It wasn’t blood. She’d peed herself, like a baby. Damn. She was losing it.