Devil’s Wake (19 page)

The soldier held tightly to her rifle near the back, in the seat Kendra had chosen at first. Her finger hovered close to the trigger, eyeing them all so suspiciously that none of them dared get too close.
Kendra hoped she wouldn’t start shooting in a fog of grief and rage. The soldier was brown-skinned, with a slight Asian caste to her face, as if she had Mayan blood. Her hair was cut quite short, and it occurred to Kendra that in other circumstances the girl would have been thought beautiful. A gold-on-green eagle insignia graced the right shoulder of her khaki shirt.

Her tear-smeared face was anything but beautiful now. Like the rest of them, she was far too young. No older than twenty-one, eyes already red-rimmed with grief. Piranha was studying the woman from where he sat across from her, his brow furrowed while Sonia stroked his cheek. Piranha had put his machete aside and had his finger on his trigger too.

By the time the clear stretch ended, the soldier was drying her eyes with the heels of her hands, as if trying to push her tears back. The Blue Beauty had slowed to about five miles an hour, weaving between cars, pushing a Harley-Davidson out of the way. There was a body trapped beneath the motorcycle, but Kendra barely noticed it. Crows flew up, squawking with indignation. Hipshot’s bark fogged a cracked window as the birds circled and landed again behind them, undisturbed.

“It was Mickey’s idea,” the soldier finally said.

“What was Mickey’s idea?” Piranha said.

“Joining you,” she said bitterly. The girl had the trace of a Hispanic accent. She refused to look any of them in the eye. There was a defiant tilt to her face, a strength to her jaw that fit the uniform. But then there was something else, hiding deeper within, something very feminine held almost at arm’s length, as if softness were a snare. “We were safe, hiding in Admin.”

“You were in there when we were?” Piranha asked, skeptically.

“We heard you tromping around, yeah,” she said, a spark of malice in her voice. “Surprised we didn’t hear you screaming and dying too.”

Silence, for a few moments. No one asked the obvious question:
Why didn’t you talk to us?

“Then Mickey says, ‘We should go with them. Let’s be with people.’”

“We could have used some help,” Piranha said, not sounding sympathetic. “Why didn’t you come out sooner?”

The soldier laughed, a short, ugly sound. “That’s what Mickey wanted. We didn’t know who you were. What you wanted. I said we were doing fine, we didn’t need you. We had food, shelter, weapons. Everything we needed, and we gave up all of it,
all
of it, because Mickey wanted to be with people.” She bit off the last words, spit them out. Then a hint of something ineffably sad peeked through the cracks in her armor. “No. Mickey wanted
me
to be with people. So we grabbed as much ammunition as we could and ran out.”

Piranha opened her khaki backpack, his eyes opening wide as he hauled out a rectangular box. “Nine millimeter,” he said. “Jackpot.”

“So…” Sonia said gently, “you were the ones who stacked up the bodies.”

The soldier didn’t answer, but she didn’t have to. The bus fell into silence again.

Had Mickey been like a brother to her? A soul mate? Kendra wondered, but didn’t ask.

Terry drove down the Five, toward a dead Portland. Gray tongues of smoke wafted across the city. They crossed a bridge high above a neighborhood, and below someone had spelled out a sign with white rocks on one of the rooftops:
help us
.

Piranha had craned over to stare down as well. “Don’t even think about it,” he said to Terry. Piranha caught Kendra’s gaze but looked away. The big guy hadn’t wanted to stop for her, and he hadn’t wanted to stop for the soldier either.

Terry nodded, not changing his course. In the mirror, his eyes didn’t blink.

They had no idea if there was even anything or anyone alive down
there anymore, and they’d weathered enough risks for a day.

The bridges were clotted with stalled cars. The snowplow growled as it ground them out of the way.

Then, a stretch of blessedly clear road.

Kendra looked out of the window as they drove past an overgrown forest of freeway landscaping. Something poked out of a clump of grass beside the road. Kendra recognized human bones, gleaming and white, draped by a mass that might have been shredded clothing. Had there been more than one mass? A larger and smaller mass? A mother and child?

Kendra remembered her dad talking about the discovery of Lucy, the oldest hominid remains, in Tanzania. Lucy’s bones had been found beside another, smaller, body. Anthropologists had been ecstatic to find such complete specimens. They theorized Lucy had been clinging to her child’s hand when a volcano erupted, burying them both in ash. Had the excited anthropologists given any thought to the raw terror engulfing Lucy and her offspring as the boiling cloud approached?

Kendra had to look away from the shapeless mass at the side of the road as the bus crept along. Would anyone be left to find them when they were gone?

“We didn’t know it was just a bunch of kids,” the soldier said to her reflection in her window, asking herself for forgiveness. “We were safe, and now Mickey’s dead.”

She paused, batting away a stray tear. “Please, God, let Mickey be dead.”

When memories threatened to overrun Terry, he focused on the
lanes, the obstacles, the dashboard radio, the Twins on their solemnly lined-up motorcycles, rolling along as if leading a funeral procession. The road silenced the day’s ringing in his head.

There were fewer cars on the I-5 south of Portland. Maybe a long-gone sign had diverted traffic elsewhere. Maybe someone had dragged cars off the road, salvaging them for parts or gas. No way to know.

The clear lanes were both good and bad: progress was faster, but when it was time to get gas, they would have to open twenty different cars to get enough to fill their tanks. Near the cities, fewer cars were likely to have gas. So Terry and his merry band weren’t the only ones playing gas ’n’ go. And where there were people, there would be predators.

“What’s your name?” Sonia asked the soldier.

“Cortez,” she said quietly. “Corporal Ursalina Cortez, National Guard Hundred and Fourth.”

Her voice was so flat, she might have been ready to follow with her serial number.

Terry didn’t know Kendra’s surname, he realized, but it felt silly to ask such a basic question after what they’d been through. Piranha came up behind Terry. It was almost dark now, and they had just reached a sign that said EUGENE, OREGON.

“Whatchu think, man?” Piranha said.

Terry was glad Piranha hadn’t come with any touchy-feely
How they hangin’, dog?
He didn’t want to be reminded of how he’d lost his cool at the armory. He’d almost gotten them killed. Amazing that Piranha still trusted him.

“I think we got no radio. Nothing local. Just the guy down in the Bay.” He’d been searching the radio for three hours, and only “Reverend Wales” kept coming up. “You know this guy?”

The radio crackled.
“—and even if the world is falling apart at
the seams. Even if there is nothing left, know that the powers that really created the world, peopled the world, the truth that I was barely able to tell in my movies, can still watch over us, help us. Guide us. If you are willing to trust, there is safety. If you can reach Domino Falls in Mill Valley, California, there is safety—”

“Oh yeah. The movie guy,” Piranha said. “That’s the best we’ve got?”

“Best we’ve got,” Terry said.

According to Sonia, Wales had made a name for himself back in the seventies with a movie called
Space Threads
that Terry only knew about because it had become a cult hit like
Rocky Horror Picture Show,
with a hugely hyped remake in the 1990s. There had also been a short-lived TV and comic book series. Terry had known super geeks at school who went to Threadie conventions and watched the movies like a religion. He’d cozied up to a Threadie girl a couple of years back, and sat through the original and remake back-to-back in the hopes of getting laid. No luck. All he’d gotten for his sacrifice was a little clumsy tongue and a play-by-play on a 2009 science fiction convention in the Seattle-Tacoma area called SeaTac ThreadieCon. No thanks.

According to Sonia (who apparently had a minor reputation as a Con Goddess back in the days such things existed), Wales had made a buttload of money and had bought a big spread north of San Francisco, town called Domino Falls. Apparently, he had survived Freak Day as well.

It figured a Hollywood hack had jumped on the radio. Anyone with a generator and an antenna could be a bandit radio king. Too bad most of them were crackpots, from what Terry had heard: end-of-the-world rants or alleged “government” bulletins, although nobody could
prove there was any real government at all.

Safety seemed to rest in small, dispersed, defensible communities. But every time they heard of one functioning, it wasn’t long before a frantic radio reported that one asshole had concealed a bitten brother or daughter, leading to the inevitable frightened, garbled reports, gunfire, screams… and then silence.

“I’ve been hearing the guy since Vern’s,” Terry told Piranha. “Their little nut-town has survived for months. Threadville, whatever he calls it. People are rebroadcasting his stuff. Hell, I think they’re growing.”

Piranha hung his head, sighing. “Threadies?” Piranha said. “I don’t know, man. But I’ll tell you what: I’m tired. We can drive around in Blue Beauty and keep siphoning gas off dead folks, but we’re going to run out of luck, you know?”

Terry nodded. They had almost run out of luck a few hours ago.

“You wanna’ do a Council?” Terry said. His voice was hoarse with the realization of how badly he’d let his friends down.

If not for Kendra… where would they be now?

“Yeah,” Piranha said. “But first let’s camp and break out those MREs.”

The bus crept on in fits and starts, hugging the edge of the road
for nearly a mile and pushing yet another car out of the way, but within an hour, and before the sun touched the western horizon, the Twins puttered back with news of a defensible camping spot up ahead.

Their chosen shelter was the blackened hulk of a burned-out gas station. The sign on the pole promised fresh coffee and gas for $3.30 a gallon, but the storage tanks had exploded, leaving twisted metal husks instead of pumps. The main minimart was shattered and looted, but a small white outlying building was still intact.

The outlier must have been a combination home and office connected to the gas station, a small cottage. Deserted now. No bodies. No stench. Terry wondered where the owners had gone, grateful they hadn’t left evidence of their nightmare behind. The main area was like a studio apartment: a two-burner kitchenette, dinette set for four, a sofa, recliner, and dead TV. The fridge and shelves were empty, but who cared? The fireplace worked and a pile of wood waited. Heat and light. Home sweet home.

Kendra was more alert now, seemed to be tracking better, carried her pistol at the ready. Good. Terry liked that. She wasn’t as frail and vulnerable as he had feared. And strangely, because she seemed stronger, he was more careful to keep her in his peripheral vision the way Piranha watched out for Sonia.

If Kendra was going to be around for a while, well, that changed things.

Ursalina, on the other hand, worried him. With such a challenging drive, he’d hardly had a moment to wonder about her until they camped. She came inside with them but moved to the farthest corner, taking the recliner, her legs under her, still clinging to her gun like she expected them all to go Cujo on her. She was dressed like a soldier, but the girl was unraveling. Maybe it wasn’t fair, but she wasn’t what he had hoped for in a soldier, jumping at loud noises. If she collapsed into herself the way he had at the Barracks, they might all pay the price.

He’d nearly died back there. Kendra had pulled him out of a hole he hadn’t even realized he’d fallen into. Somehow, most of Terry’s thoughts came back to Kendra.

He found himself watching Kendra’s fingers, her mouth. Her lips. Enjoying the sound of her voice. For the first time, he noticed the little line on the corner of her mouth, angling up into her cheek, a faint scar of some kind. Had she gotten it on her bike? Climbing a tree?

How old was the girl? Maybe sixteen? She might have been nine
when she got the scar, and he found himself wondering what kind of kid she had been.

Damn! He didn’t want to wonder about her like that. He loved Piranha like a brother, but he had a
real
half brother in Phoenix who was probably shuffling and moaning by now, and he couldn’t afford to care about Donovan either. Or his waste of a mother. He cared more about Lisa, but he knew she was lost to him, at least for now. If he could live with that, he could keep his mind off Kendra.

Except that he couldn’t. And he couldn’t help noticing that the Twins were noticing her too, even if Kendra seemed oblivious to all of them. Sonia had volunteered for first watch, so Kendra had been designated cook on their first night with the MREs. All she needed was a quick lesson from Piranha on how to use the self-heating pouches—pour water inside a chemical packet, slip the entrée inside the heated bag, and the food was hot right away. Soldiers always groused about chow, but it smelled pretty damned good, and at least there was variety.

They opened their packets, announcing their bounty like Christmas gifts: Scalloped potatoes with ham. Chicken with black beans and rice. Beef stew. Cheese tortellini. They argued over packets of military-grade M&M’s and oatmeal cookies.

Terry took a bite of a cracker, but it tasted like a wood chip. He wasn’t hungry. Ursalina wasn’t eating either.

Piranha sat beside Terry on the sofa and spoke in a low voice, almost whispering. “Ursalina’s a hottie, huh? What a waste.”

“What do you care?” Terry said. “You’re with Sonia. Besides, she’s torn up over losing that guy Mickey.”

Piranha squinted. “You’re shittin’ me, right?” He snorted and slapped Terry’s shoulder. “You didn’t get a good look?”