Domino Falls (5 page)

“What do you think so far?” Terry said.

“If you're voted in and you decide to stay,” Myles said, “you won't need it. If you decide to go—or if they decide for you—I don't know . . . Maybe you can get thirty, fifty miles down the road. Maybe not. Miracle you got this far.”

Terry looked as if he'd been punched in the stomach. Had the man just told them they were trapped?

“She's a fighter,” Piranha said. “She can probably fly.”

“Uh-huh,” Myles said. He dropped the hood back down and slapped it. “Used to drive one of these. Drove a truck too,
till I lost my night vision. Now I just fix 'em. I'd get this thing running just for the fun of taking it on a test drive. A bus on stick! They don't make 'em like this anymore.”

“That's for sure,” Darius said. “Probably for a good reason.”

“Sir,” Ursalina said, “is there any reason we wouldn't
want
to stay?”

Myles seemed surprised by the question, hesitated. His eyes flickered to his wife. Kendra's heart jumped. She wished they could take this family aside privately.

“Domino Falls has been a godsend to a whole lot of folks,” Myles said evenly. “But staying's a decision you'll have to make for yourselves.”

He hadn't answered the question. Kendra glanced at Ursalina; she'd noticed too. Good news: if they could decide to stay, they could decide to leave, too.

Since there was no paperwork, the man outstretched his hand. “Like you heard, my name's Myles. Myles Bennett. My wife's Deirdre. That's our son, Jason.”

Deirdre smiled. “Call me Mom. Everyone does.”

Kendra nodded. The river of energy flowing from this woman brought Kendra within a hair of saying “Okay, Mom” before the words choked her throat.

They all shook hands, one by one, even Jason, who had a firm, well-trained pump. But Deirdre was staring at Kendra the way Jackie had eyes only for the Twins.

Suddenly, Kendra recognized the look on the woman's face. A memory seized her with so much vividness that she felt transported back to Longview, having dinner with her parents at the burger shack they had only visited once, when they first moved to town and hadn't known any better.

They'd run into a man at the restaurant with a big belly and an unkempt black beard, a stereotypical biker or long-haul
trucker type sitting alone with his cheeseburger. He'd stared at her family like they were a movie screen. Dad had started getting agitated, muttering under his breath, and Mom shushed him.

Then they'd all noticed that he wasn't staring at them all—only Kendra. He turned away when Kendra locked eyes with him, but she would peek back and find him looking again. It was the first time she'd thought her father might physically confront someone, a whole new side to Dad.

Then the biker had come to their table. Kendra had watched her father's hands tighten, seen him ready to rise to stand between his family and this mountainous stranger.

“Excuse me,” the stranger had said in a sad, polite voice at odds with his biker demeanor. “
The Karate Kid
?”

Kendra blinked. Her dad blinked. “What?”

“The shirt,” Mom said softly.

Kendra looked down. She'd forgotten that she was wearing her
Karate Kid
T-shirt, with the silhouette of little Jaden Smith throwing an impossibly high kick with perfect form and balance. She'd loved that movie. The shirt was faded now. It had once hung loose on her, and then it was almost too small.

“Love it,” Kendra said.

The big man had smiled but blinked, as if his eyes stung him. “I . . . uh . . . my son loved that movie too. He got into Red Dragon Tae Kwon Do after that, did nothing but kick things all day long. Well, sorry. He used to have that shirt. Loved that shirt. That's all.” He turned around and was gone before they'd had time to consider that he'd spoken of his son in the past tense.

That was what Deirdre's stare was like.

The woman who called herself Mom was staring at a ghost.

By the time Terry was stark naked and shivering, he wondered what he'd
traded away for entrance into Domino Falls. He hadn't been strip-searched since his arrest, and he'd sworn he would never stand still for another man's prodding again.

But here he was lined up with Piranha and the Twins while a physician and a swarm of guards in yellow shirts studied them—everywhere—for bite marks and hidden injuries. Terry hadn't realized that Dean's wrist had been cut by flying glass during the shoot-out, just as Piranha seemed surprised by the deep cut on Terry's shoulder, which bled fresh when he moved the wrong way.

Somehow, despite his adventure helping Terry clear the stalled bus from the road, Piranha didn't have a scratch on him. Lucky SOB. And that wasn't Piranha's only luck. They'd never been fully undressed in front of one another, and Terry and the Twins could barely keep from gawking at Piranha. Too Much Information.

“You may get dressed again,” the reedy man who'd identified himself as Dr. Meyer told Piranha.

The receiving room—a converted family room in the quarantine house—was too cold, and Dr. Meyer was examining Terry's cut shoulder as if he thought something would crawl out and bite him if he missed a single angle. Terry was shivering.

“You're infected,” Dr. Meyer pronounced to Terry, and guards reached for their guns. Red-faced, the doctor went on quickly. “I mean the cut's infected. It's clearly a cut, not a bite. You could probably use some antibiotics. You're lucky it's not worse.” Like all doctors, he spoke in chides.

“Yeah, well, the line at the free clinic was too long,” Terry said, winding his arm to stretch his sore shoulder. The injury throbbed and might spring another leak, but he'd barely had time to notice it.

The doctor patched up his injury, and Dean's, and they were allowed to dress. Dean looked more pissed about the strip search than Terry. The guys in yellow shirts never left them alone, but they had an ounce of privacy and distance while they dressed behind a curtain. Terry still smarted from the thorough search. At least he'd been promised a chance to shower.

“Maybe the worst is over,” Terry said.

“Better be,” Dean said. “Or I'm outta here.”

“Better not go without me,” Piranha said.

The quarantine house was an L-shaped ranch model with four bedrooms, a basement, and an attached garage. They would each get a separate room, they were told at the orientation in the kitchen—since if anyone was infected, it would be risky to bunk them together. In addition to their group, there was one other thin, bleary-eyed white guy in his fifties Terry never heard mutter a word. He looked like he'd passed Weirdo Manor quite a ways back, accelerating straight on into Crazy Town.

“This is a voluntary quarantine,” said the crew-cut guy in the yellow shirt who was in charge of the house. “Anyone who doesn't want to be here, you'll be escorted back to the perimeter. Those of us in these yellow shirts are part of Domino Falls's security details—we're called Gold Shirts, or just ‘sir' or ‘ma'am.' This is a community built on mutual respect. We work in partnership with D.F.'s Citizens Patrol. Some of us are assigned to monitor the quarantine houses—this is one of four. As you'll see, your windows are barred. That's for your protection. You can stay in the common areas like the kitchen and living room until dark. Watch a DVD, read a book. Once you're in the room for the night, your rooms will be locked until six a.m.”

Dean sighed loudly.
This just gets better and better,
Terry thought.

“The locks are freakproof,” Crew Cut continued. “Keys get lost, so we don't use 'em. Any human with a brain cell can open your door from the outside, but freaks can't figure 'em out. If you're not infected, you'll live through quarantine fine.”

“You see freaks here?” Piranha said. “Past the fences?”

“There's freaks everywhere,” he said. “Fences keep most of 'em out, but once in a blue moon, one gets in. This town smells like dinner to them.”

“Is there a Lisa Whittaker here?” Terry blurted suddenly. The question had been in the back of his mind since the checkpoint. Lisa probably hadn't come so far north from Los Angeles, but he had come a long way too. “She's my sister.”

“There's a lot of people here. I don't keep a roster,” he said. “Make it past quarantine . . . and you'll get your questions answered.” His tone was a thinly veiled
Shut up and let me do the talking
. He went on: “Chili's on the stove, so if you're hungry—”

Suddenly the quiet white guy pushed his way past Darius toward the front door, where a Gold Shirt was posted with his arms crossed. The stranger muttered under his breath.

“Help you, sir?” Crew Cut said. His voice rose. “Excuse me? Can I help you?”

The stranger was gaunt. He looked like he could use a meal, or two or three. His shoulders sagged inside too-big clothing he'd picked up who knew where, grimy enough to be his only clothes. “Take me back to my rig,” he said. “I'm hittin' the road.”

The Gold Shirts didn't look surprised. Crew Cut gestured, and the man at the door stepped aside to open the door and walk him out. Apparently people had walked out of orientation before.
But why walk now? Why not before the strip search?
Was he bitten or somehow infected? Could the doctor have missed it?

The stranger looked over his shoulder at the rest of them, as if in apology. “I spent six years in San Quentin. I ain't goin' back to prison,” he said. “No thanks.”

The locked rooms had been the final straw.

“He won't last out there,” Sonia whispered, saying what they were all thinking.

He was ushered out quickly, without any attempts to change his mind. Kendra looked like she wanted to say something to him, but the door was closed in a heartbeat.

Crew Cut shrugged. “Prison tats gave him away,” he said. “Probably never would've gotten past the Council, but he coulda had a couple days' harbor. Idiot. You got a record? Keep it to yourself.”

Terry's heart raced, and he fought not to glance at Piranha and Darius. Good thing the town couldn't just go to a computer and check them out. He hoped.

Kendra slipped her hand into Terry's, squeezing gently, sign language for
Relax.
He felt an impulse to pull away for reasons he didn't understand, something to do with the eyes of so many men he didn't know. But he held on, if only because somebody might think twice about bothering Kendra if he did. Sonia was standing close to Piranha too, and Crew Cut noted the pairings with a gleam in his eye Terry couldn't place.

“I see you kids like to play a little mix 'n' match,” Crew Cut said, and Terry suddenly realized what he'd seen in his eyes: mockery. None of them said anything, although Terry could practically feel the wave of irritation rolling through Kendra's hand.

Let's just get through the night,
Terry thought.

The chili was fresh, with what tasted like real ground beef, although there wasn't much meat. Terry and Piranha had at least three helpings apiece. Within five minutes, Terry's stomach
hurt. Ursalina went to a recliner in the corner, covered her face with an old magazine, and was snoring softly in ninety seconds. Darius tried firing up the DVD player, but even
The Hangover
was too hard to watch: a time capsule to the world they'd come from. Piranha turned it off without a word.

“How about
Threadrunner Apocalypse,
” Sonia said, waving a DVD over her head. “It's not bad. It's about—”

Piranha rolled his eyes. “Don't get her started,” he muttered, glancing toward the Gold Shirt watching a small TV in the kitchen.

“Nothing with the word
Apocalypse
in the title, please,” Kendra said, but Sonia had already inserted the disc, and the FBI was threatening them with fines or jail if they made copies or charged friends to watch. Sonia clicked ahead to the opening scene, which reminded Terry of
The Shining.
From above, a bright red sports car navigated a secluded mountain road. Seeing the road put a bad taste in Terry's mouth. The pass ahead of the car looked like the perfect hiding place for pirates.

Darius snatched the remote from Sonia, and the movie skipped ahead. A wild-eyed Joseph “Josey” Wales pushed a sheriff against the wall, holding him by the collar.
“What if it's
your
virgin daughter they take as their next offering?”
Wales growled on the screen, just before Darius clicked it off. Terry was glad for the quiet.

“Are you seriously a Threadie?” Dean whispered to Sonia.

“Man, she can quote whole speeches,” Piranha said.

Sonia made a face. “People make fun of what they don't understand. The movies might seem cheesy on the surface . . .”

“Might?” Piranha said.

“On the
surface
?” Darius said.

“. . . but they're really kind of deep. Don't you believe we all have a connection?”

“Do they have
Threadie versus Jason
?” Darius said.

Piranha snickered. “
The Hunt for Thread October
?”

Even Dean cracked a rare joke. “
Where Angels Fear to Thread
?”

Terry smothered a laugh, glanced nervously at the Gold Shirt in the kitchen. The more he tried to stop, the harder he laughed, until finally his ribs hurt. Terry and Piranha literally fell to the floor. Sonia threw the DVD case at Piranha, but that only made him howl harder.

Ursalina stirred, snapping her magazine to get their attention. She gestured toward the Gold Shirt in the kitchen, who was ignoring them . . . or seemed to be. “Use your brains. You think he's not listening to every word you say?”