Devil’s Wake (11 page)

“Are you sleepy?” Kendra said. Grandpa Joe shook his head, but
Kendra thought he’d hesitated first.

Grandpa Joe’s eyes were on the road half the time, on the rearview mirror the rest. “How long before your mom or dad got sleepy?”

Kendra remembered her mom’s voice outside the door, announcing the time.
It’s nine o’clock, Kendra.
Worried it was getting late. Worried she should get far away from Kendra and send for Grandpa Joe to come get her.

“A few minutes,” Kendra said softly. “Five. Or ten.”

Grandpa Joe went back to chewing his lip. “What happened?”

“We were… at the hospital.”

For the first time, Kendra told Grandpa Joe about Portland General. How her father had been bitten. How they’d been lucky to get home, and heard the radio guy saying that sleepiness came just before the urge to attack, so bite victims shouldn’t sleep. Dad had fought yawning for a few hours, drinking cup after cup of coffee, but he’d finally panicked after a micronap. He had fled in the middle of the night, refused to go to sleep in the house, telling them to lock their doors. He’d slept in the car. And by morning, he was foaming at the back door, trying and trying to get in, eyes bloody.

Kendra heard herself tell the story, but her voice sounded like someone else’s.

“So… was it about… twelve hours?” Grandpa Joe said. He sounded hopeful.

Kendra’s throat felt like a pinprick. She could barely breathe. “Something like that. I… guess. But…”

“But what?”

“It was different for…”

Shadows wrestled across Grandpa Joe’s face. “Your mom?” His voice rumbled.

Kendra nodded.

Grandpa Joe sighed and cleared his throat, girding himself to hear the rest. “How was it different for Cass?” he whispered finally. His
voice broke on her name.

Kendra glanced at the bloodied mess on her grandfather’s leg before she blinked away. “The bite was worse. Like yours. She got real sleepy real fast. It took less time.”

This story would be harder, she realized. She hadn’t loved her mother more—she couldn’t have chosen one parent over the other at gunpoint. But Dad had left them so quickly, absorbed in the surreal fog of the first day of the crisis, that he didn’t seem truly gone. But she and Mom… They had weathered it together. Made plans together. They had listened for news of a cure, determined to find Dad and help him one day. For weeks, they had been the only part of the world that still felt right.

“I was in bed,” Kendra said. “Mom poked her head in my room and said our neighbor was knocking on the window. Mrs. Stiller. Carolyn. Nice lady who wrote plays. They perform…
performed
them at the local theater. They even made a movie of one of her plays.”

Grandpa Joe tried to smile. “Would I have seen it?”

“I think it showed on cable. Her husband was an insurance agent. Had a sailboat, and took me out on it.” A pleasant, wistful memory, even though she’d been thwacked twice by a swinging boom.

A nice man. Hardworking salesman, and a good husband, until he’d knocked on the door offering a variety of Whole Life beyond Prudential’s wildest dreams.

“A lot of us had a buddy system, someone to go to for food. Or a generator. Or news. She was ours. Her husband helped put up the boards on our house. Mom said Carolyn looked upset, and I should stay in bed… I guess when Mom saw her out there, she…”

“She wasn’t thinking,” Grandpa Joe finished. “She forgot.”

Kendra nodded.

Mom had come back shouting, clapping her hand to her left shoulder, blood oozing between her fingers. Kendra had thought she was dreaming—
willed
herself to be dreaming—but Mom had pulled her out of bed, yanking her arm and pulling her to her feet. Kendra had cried the whole way to the basement.
I’m bit, Kendra. You can’t trust me anymore. Don’t open this door until you hear the danger word.

“Mom stayed outside the basement door for ten minutes, maybe. Not long. She said she”—Kendra swallowed hard, forcing the words out—“she was so sleepy she could barely… stand up. She was scared to be near me, so she went away. Four or five hours. Then I heard her voice again, and she was knocking on the door. I was so… relieved.” Kendra sobbed, trying to catch her breath.

“But it wasn’t her?” Grandpa Joe said gently.

Kendra’s eyes went to Grandpa Joe’s bleeding wound again, and her limbs shook as if she wore no clothes. Her damp jeans felt frozen. “She said, ‘Where’s your math homework? You were supposed to do your homework.’ ”

“That’s how you knew,” Grandpa Joe said, whispering again.

Kendra nodded. “There was no more school.” Her nostrils leaked, but she didn’t move to wipe her nose. “I didn’t open the door.”

Grandpa Joe nodded, considering the story. Struggling with it.

His hand came toward her knee, but the sudden movement made her flinch. Even after she relaxed, reminding herself it was too soon, her hand rested near the door latch. With a heartbroken smile Grandpa Joe pulled his hand back.

“Good girl, Kendra.” Grandpa Joe’s voice wavered. “Good girl.”

All this time, Joe had thought it was his imagination.

A gaggle of the freaks had been waiting for him in Cass’s front
yard. He’d plowed most of them down with the truck so he could get to the door. That was the easy part. As soon as he got out, the ones still standing had surged. There’d been ten of them at least; an old man, a couple of teenage boys, the rest of them women, moving quick. He’d been squeezing off rounds at anything that moved.
Daddy?

Had he heard her voice before he’d fired? In the time since, he’d decided the voice was his imagination, because how
could
she have talked to him, said his name? He’d decided God had created her voice in his mind, a last chance to hear it to make up for the horror his Glock had made of the back of her head.
Daddy?
It had been Cass, but it hadn’t been. Her blouse and mouth had been a mess, and he’d seen stringy bits of nastiness caught in her teeth, just like the other freaks. It hadn’t been Cass. It hadn’t been.

People said freaks could make noises. Walked and looked like us. The newer ones didn’t have the red stuff showing beneath their skin, and they didn’t start to lose their motor skills for a couple of days, so the new ones could run fast. He’d known that. Everybody knew that. But if freaks could talk, could recognize you…

Then we can’t win.
The thought was quiet in Joe’s mind, from a place that was already accepting it.

Cass had only lasted ten minutes, Little Soldier had said. Half of them already gone, maybe more than half. Joe tried to bear down harder on the gas, and his leg felt like a wooden stump. Still, the speedometer climbed to ninety before the truck began to shiver. He had to get Little Soldier as far as he could from Mike’s boys. He had to get Little Soldier away…

Joe’s mouth was so dry it ached.

“We’re in trouble, Kendra,” Joe said. He couldn’t bring himself to look at her, even though he wanted to so much he was nearly blinded by tears. “You know we’re in trouble.”

“Yes,” the girl said.

“Don’t go back to the cabin,” Joe said, deciding that part. “It’s not
safe.”

“But Mom might…” This time, Joe did gaze over at Kendra. The girl was sitting as far from him as she could, against the door. He’d gotten so used to Kendra waiting for her parents to come that he’d sometimes felt himself waiting too.

“That was a story I told you,” Joe said, cursing himself for the lie. “You know they’re not coming, Kendra. You said yourself she wasn’t right. You could hear it. She was out in the front yard, before I got inside. I had to shoot her, Little Soldier. I shot her between the eyes.”

Kendra gazed at him wide-eyed, rage knotting her face.

That’s it, Little Soldier. Get mad.

“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 Simp
sons?
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…