Domino Falls (39 page)

“Don't let her go far!” Piranha said, still struggling with Hipshot.

“I'll get her,” Terry said.

The sleepers on the bus were awake now, peering out the window to understand the fuss. “What's going on?” Terry heard Sonia say, and Piranha explained it to her in a low, fatherly voice. Rounds of shock followed Terry as he ran for Kendra.

For a perverse moment, Kendra was running away from Terry as he chased her in the woods, exactly the way she might after he turned.
I won't let that happen,
he vowed.

“Kendra . . . stop!” he said, keeping his voice low. He followed the pale flash of her shirt, wishing he had a flashlight. She was running fast.

Then Kendra let out a surprised grunt, and dried pine needles rustled. She had tripped. “Are you okay?” Terry said, breathless. This time, she sank against him when he grabbed her, shivering with sobs.

“It can't be true,” she said. “It's not. You're wrong.”

“I felt the bite,” Terry said. “I've seen it. Look at how Hipshot's acting. I'm not sleepy yet, but . . . it's true, Kendra. If I let my guard down . . .”

Kendra seemed to sob in his arms for hours, but it probably wasn't more than a minute, maybe two, before flashlight beams swept the woods and Piranha and Ursalina found them, trailed by the Twins. A horrifying realization swept Terry: he'd
smelled
them coming before he saw their faces. Each of them
had a distinct scent, vivid. He could smell their fear, like acid in the air.

Ursalina's rifle was raised. Even Piranha had his hand close to his gun, ready to draw.

“Stop it!” Kendra said. “He's just Terry.”

“Terry . . . you good?” Piranha said.

“Still here,” Terry said.

Slowly, Ursalina lowered her rifle. “Let's get back to the bus,” she said.

She walked several paces behind them, as if Terry were a prisoner. The walk felt twice as long as it was. Terry kept one arm wrapped around Kendra, helping to steady her as she walked. Every few steps, she seemed to lose her balance, leaning on him.

While Hipshot still barked from inside the bus, the others waited in a semicircle, huddled close as they watched the party approach. Their eyes on him made Terry tired. Sonia's face glistened with tears as she stared at him, arms folded angrily.

“Sorry I didn't tell you all before,” Terry told the others, since they were waiting for him to speak. “You deserved to know. I just wanted to see you get to that plane, that's all. I know I can't go to Devil's Wake.”

Patiently, he answered their questions about how he was feeling while they stared at one another, uncertain. Then a sad, brooding silence followed, except for the barking.

“What happens now?” Myles said soberly, sticking close to his family.

Ursalina spoke up for the first time. “What happens now? Tick tock. That's all he's got. We leave him.”

The uncertain silence lasted too long. Kendra wrapped herself closer to him. “No way,” she said. “That's not going to happen.”

For the first time, Ursalina met Terry's eyes as if he were still human. “We'll give you a six-pack and a gun. Walk until you get somewhere you can sit and think things over.”

“No,” Dean said finally, making up his mind. “If he wants to come to the plane, why not? It won't be that far.”

“I'll stay awake tonight,” Terry said.

“That's only a few million people's last words,” Ursalina 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 Ursalina. “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.

Christmas Day

U
rsalina
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 felt only 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.

Ursalina 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.”

Ursalina 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. Ursalina 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 Ursalina 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 needed her. 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,” Ursalina 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.

The 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 his 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 Terry's 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 bodies 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.

Ursalina 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. Ursalina 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. Ursalina 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, Deirdre 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.