Devil’s Wake (6 page)

“And when we find the keys?” Terry said. “Then what?”

He almost said
if
instead of
when.
He hoped he hadn’t handed the keys to Molly after all, that they wouldn’t need to search Vern’s house or Molly’s clothes. They’d already been back to his bedroom once in search of a gun, and Terry never wanted to see that room, or the inside of the Palace, ever again.

“Then we have options,” Piranha said, and left it at that.

Terry closed his eyes in a silent prayer as he reached under his bed for the plastic Hefty bag where he stashed his dirty clothes. His throat nearly squeezed shut when his jeans didn’t jingle and his two front pockets were empty… but he felt a lump in the back pocket.

Two keys on Vern’s VFW key ring. The van had less than half a tank of gas left, if he remembered right, but it was better than nothing.

Piranha held out his hand for the keys, but Terry hesitated.

“The van belongs to everybody,” Terry said.

“Damn right,” Piranha said. “And everybody includes me.”

“Why do you want the keys?” Terry tried to keep anger or challenge out of his voice, because things were working fine while he and Piranha were buddies, but nothing would work if they weren’t.

“I’ll drive down to the road, go down a couple miles, check things out. See if I can catch a cell signal.” He lowered his eyes. “Call my stepdad.”

“If the landlines aren’t working, what makes you think your cell will? I bet all the towers are jammed.”

“Gotta try,” Piranha said. “Maybe I can get my e-mail, send a note, update my Facebook status. Right?” Piranha’s palm lay outstretched. He seemed to be waiting patiently, but Terry saw his fingers tremble. If Piranha had to ask for the keys again, he wouldn’t ask nicely. He might not ask at all.

“Then what?” Terry said.

Piranha licked his lips. His dark eyes fixed on Terry’s, a clear signal that he was tolerating his last question. He spoke slowly. “Then I come back here, tell you guys what I saw, what my stepdad said, and we all decide what to do. Maybe before the Twins go. Give them something to think about. While we’re still all together.”

Terry considered Piranha’s plan, but only for a second or two. He dropped the keys in Piranha’s palm, and Piranha closed his fingers around them like a gold nugget.

They both breathed out slowly, glad they still trusted each other. Hoping trust would last.

“If I’m not back in two hours,” Piranha said, “you know shit’s gone south.”

Terry nodded soberly. In two hours, the late summer sun would just be starting to dim, readying for a new night. A problem for Piranha was a problem for all of them.

“Get gas if you can,” Terry said.

They’d been crouching by the bunk, but they both straightened and stood upright. Terry’s father had once told him he would know the day he became a man in his bones, and it had nothing to do with turning eighteen. Terry suddenly missed his dad fiercely.

“Anybody you want me to call for you?” Piranha said.

Terry’s mother had moved to Tucson to live with the meth cooker she’d met in rehab, but Terry had dropped his cell phone in the pool a week ago, so he didn’t have her number. Terry would have gnawed off his left arm to call Lisa in L.A., but Aunt Jessie had unlisted her number, dammit. Thinking about Lisa and the footage he’d seen from Southern California made Terry’s stomach turn, so he forced himself not to worry. Lisa was fine. End of story. Like Piranha had said, L.A. was a big place. In L.A., people locked their doors.

“Nah,” Terry said. “I’m good.”

“If Vern gets quiet, cross your
t
’s before you go in,” Piranha said. “And don’t let Sonia do anything stupid.”

“I’ll watch out for Sonia,” Terry promised. “You’ve got two hours, man.”

They bumped fists to seal the contract. Terry thought, and not for the first time, how much better life would have been if he’d had a brother.

Well, hell. Looked like he had one now.

During the longest two hours of Terry’s life, Vern never got quiet.
The constant pounding on the freezer door gave him such a headache that he screamed
“Shut the hell up!”
and thumped the door with his bat. The impact hurt his elbows, and barely made a dent.
Inside, Vern emitted an outraged cry and only pounded harder.

“Not very smart,” Sonia said from the doorway, her arms folded. She drifted in and out of the icehouse, keeping Terry company while she cooked what she could from the pantry and fridge for dinner. Anything in the freezer would have to wait. “That door’s our friend. Save the psycho for a rainy day.”

A rainy day.
One of Jolly Molly’s favorite lines. In the Northwest, it seemed most days were rainy days.

Terry didn’t have to ask Sonia if Piranha was back. He wasn’t; Terry could tell by the way she was gnawing her lip, playing with the unlit clove cigarette in her fingers. She’d made Terry promise not to let her smoke another cigarette until dark, since she was afraid she would run out. She had only a pack left besides the half-pack of Djarums in her pocket.

A motorcycle’s revving outside made Terry’s heart race. He looked at his watch: it was eight-thirty. Piranha was five minutes late with the van. The Twins had promised to wait for him, but they were getting anxious.

After listening to the news all day, he hadn’t thought the situation could get any worse, but it just had. “Dammit,” he said.

Sonia shrugged. “Dean’s worried. His family doesn’t have a landline, and the cell towers are down.”

Terry went to the doorway, handing the bat to Sonia. “Stay here with Vern. We shouldn’t split up.”

Sonia took the bat with a sour chuckle. “Like they’d listen. The Twins only care about the Twins.”

Darius and Dean had already gassed their bikes, and both wore backpacks and leather jackets. Darius was riding in a lazy circle around Dean, stirring a thin dust cloud while Dean strapped his leather travel bag shut. Dean took off his sunglasses and straightened when he saw Terry, but Darius never acknowledged him, revving his engine.

“What the hell, man?” Terry said. “What about Vern?”

“You’ve seen the news.” Dean shrugged. “What about him?”

“What are you taking with you? What’s in the bags?” Terry said.

“Don’t sweat me, Terry,” Dean said. “We left plenty.”

“You should probably take more.”

Darius laughed from his bike. “Quit trying to stall us.”

“It’s almost dark,” Dean said.

“Exactly!” Terry said. “Why not wait ’til tomorrow?”

“If your mom wasn’t a crackhead, would you wait?” Dean said. “We already waited too long. My sisters need me.”

At the word “crackhead,” the world went red. Terry’s legs tensed, ready to leap at one of the Twins, either of them, both of them… until he heard the approach of a new engine, heavier than the bike. Darius’s bike fell still as he rested on one foot, and they stared toward the dirt driveway, waiting for a vehicle to appear from beyond the stand of Douglas firs. Sonia hung back, watching from the icehouse doorway, as they all shared a thought:
What if it isn’t Piranha?

But it was.

Piranha was alone in the van. Instead of driving up to them, Vern’s van bumped over the scattered firewood at the edge of the driveway as Piranha swung around to park at an odd angle fifteen yards back, blocking the driveway as if to pen them in.

As they trotted up to him for a report, Piranha opened the van’s side door, where he had stored a red gas can and a box of supplies, including what looked like a scarred laptop. Terry and the Twins grinned when they saw the stash, but Piranha’s face had forgotten smiling. Even Sonia’s full-body hug didn’t bring a glimmer to his dull eyes.

“What’d you see?” Terry said.

“Nothing good,” Piranha said, with a long gaze at the Twins.

“Did your phone work?” Sonia said.

Piranha shook his head, his face clouding more. “Dinner ready?
I’m starving.”

Like the rest of them, the Twins were dying for details of Piranha’s recon mission. All talk of driving off ceased as Sonia heaped pasta on paper plates, and they waited for Piranha to start talking. The news played at its usual low volume while they heard the distant thunder at the freezer door.

Wham… wham… wham…

No one was guarding Vern anymore, and Terry realized it didn’t matter. Guard duty had only been their attempt to have order and control, something they could do. Vern wasn’t going anywhere.

One of the items in Piranha’s box was a warm bottle of merlot, so they shared the wine at dinner, although there was nothing festive about it. Terry figured he would need six bottles like it before he felt anything remotely resembling a decent buzz. Instead, the wine made him so tired that he wanted to crawl under the table and pass out.

“More of a weed guy myself,” Darius said, pouring his glass. “But whatever.”

Other than that, the box was full of geek stuff. The laptop, wires, adapters. Terry remembered the Professor from
Gilligan’s Island
building radios out of coconuts.

“Does this thing work?” Sonia said, opening the laptop.

Piranha grunted, shoveling a forkful of pasta into his mouth. “Battery’s dead, but it fires up when you plug her in. Too bad we don’t have Wi-Fi.”

Terry pulled out a spool of phone line. “Dial-up?”

“Better than nothing,” Piranha said. “Maybe we can get e-mail.”

“And Facebook!” Sonia said, looking rapturous, as if maybe her friends were busy poking each other and posting YouTube videos.

“Don’t suppose you found anything useful, like more ammunition?” Dean said.

Piranha shook his head, the brooding silence falling over him again.

“Where’d you get this stuff?” Terry said finally. “A yard sale?” He could have asked sooner, but he’d been afraid of the answer.

“Know that little lake house about five miles out?” Piranha said. “By the road?”

The table went silent. Nothing but Vern’s
bang bang bang.

“Friendly people, huh?” Terry said finally.

“Wouldn’t know,” Piranha said. “Nobody home. Windows dark all summer, same Toyota sitting in the driveway. Couldn’t hot-wire it, but I got the gas.” He took a sip of wine from a paper cup and sloshed it around in his mouth before swallowing.

“Don’t send a boy to do a man’s job.” Darius had boasted that he could hot-wire any car more than ten years old. That skill might come in handy later. “But good job with the gas.”

“You
broke
into
their house?” Sonia said, midway between impressed and shocked. Terry was tempted to remind her that she proudly referred to herself as the Vanisher, since she’d been such a great shoplifter.

Piranha concentrated on his wine.

“How’s the road look?” Dean said.

“Toxic,” Piranha said. “I only drove out a couple miles to try to get a signal, save gas. Saw smoke. I got close enough to see it was a car, but I turned the hell around when I heard the gunshots. Wasn’t Cujos doing the shooting and burning. I’ve got news for you: the Cujos aren’t the biggest problem.” He turned to Dean and Darius. “You guys wanna go riding on your little toy bikes? Do what you want. But the rifle and shotguns stay here.”

When no one said anything, Piranha stood up, grabbing the wine bottle by the neck. It was three-quarters empty, maybe a glass left. “You guys good?”

They all eyed the wine, but mumbled that they’d had enough. With his free hand, Piranha grabbed his box of geek supplies and headed for the desk by the TV, where there was a phone line. Considering
how often the phone signal was busy, Terry didn’t think he’d have much luck finding the Internet. But if anyone could, it was Piranha.

“He’s right,” Terry said, his voice steady, loud enough for the big guy to hear. “We’ve all got people we’re scared about and want to help. I’ve got a baby sister I’m thinking about all the time, but we need to hole up here and wait it out. Right now, we’re the only people we can trust. We’ve got enough food for weeks, if it comes to that.” Months, actually, if the food in the freezer was intact, but he didn’t say it. He couldn’t imagine living for months in this bad dream. “When it’s time to go, we’ll know it. But we’ll do better together than any of us would do alone.”

Terry wasn’t used to making speeches, but he sounded convincing, at least to his own ear. He saw a spark in Sonia’s eyes. Maybe a tear.

But the Twins left the table without a word, heading to the door. When the bikes’ engines fired up outside, Sonia gave Terry a
Well? DO something
look. Terry glanced toward Piranha, but he didn’t look up from his stolen laptop.

Screw it. They’d tried. Why was it his problem, anyway? Terry stirred his pasta, mad at the Twins for being stupid, mad at Sonia for her expectations, mad that he felt somehow responsible.

Then the engines cut off. The Twins came back inside to sit at the table. Darius sopped up the last of his spaghetti sauce with a slice of bread from their dwindling loaf.

“Getting dark,” Dean said.

Later, Terry would see that they’d parked their bikes in the shed.

Piranha worked nearly all night trying to rig an Internet connection,
plagued by busy signals. The few times he got past the
beep-beep-beep,
the connection refused to take. He drew on patience he didn’t know he had, numbing himself. He’d hoped the wine would
drown the hot snakes writhing deep in his belly or the stitch he’d had in his side since they locked Vern in the freezer. But nothing had changed when the bottle was empty. He was still stuck in hell.

Piranha’s AME church life had died with his mother, even on Christmas, since he’d told his stepfather he didn’t believe in God. Piranha’s excuse wasn’t exactly true: he believed in God, but he was so pissed off that he’d stopped speaking to him, and he didn’t see a reason to visit his house. God had lost his visiting privileges.

Piranha’s anger was still there, but it felt petty now that he was stuck in hell without a plan. Piranha had been telling himself
be cool
all day, but his cool was wearing thin, especially since he’d seen the smoke and the gunshots. News footage was one thing, but he was out here alone, the only brother for miles. He didn’t have a gun, not that he knew how to use one. He had a girl to protect.