Devil’s Wake (15 page)

The kids’ dog, whose name was Hipshot, lay on his side in the center aisle, almost inviting someone to step on him. The mutt slept with his head very near her dangling hand. As soon as Hipshot had accepted Kendra, the others had too. She owed him. Darius and Dean were curled up on seats opposite each other in the third row; she didn’t trust them yet, and didn’t think she would, no matter what Sonia said. Behind them, Piranha and Sonia were curled up together against a stack of boxes that filled the back of the Blue Beauty. Both asleep, snoring softly.

Sonia wasn’t stupid, Kendra mused cynically; she’d landed her insurance policy. Kendra almost felt envious, wishing she’d found Piranha first. He looked strong, sounded smart.
But what would you have to do to keep him?
Kendra thought. She was a virgin, and she’d never known the secret to rocking a guy’s world. Good for Sonia, then.

Kendra’s eyes stopped on Terry. She could just see him from where she lay curled on his seat, just make out his tousled hair. He had a way of looking at her that got on her nerves, some combination of pity and amusement, but her irritation was a revelation. At least it was a feeling, and she hadn’t allowed herself feelings since everything had gone wrong in Longview a lifetime ago.

She felt… hopeful.

I think I’m okay for now, Grandpa Joe.
She tried not to see the terrible stranger with the red, hungry eyes. Instead, she imagined Grandpa Joe standing over his stove, scrambling a pan of eggs.
Breakfast.

Kendra’s heart stuttered, then peace came again. She rolled over and went back to sleep.

The next time Kendra opened her eyes, the morning was upon
them, as Dad used to say. Daylight filtered hazily through the ev
ergreens, giving the site Terry had chosen a dreamlike luster. Three abandoned cars were parked in the spaces, one empty sixteen-wheeler with a Foster Farms logo emblazoned on the side, parked sideways across several spaces. She tried not to imagine the driver slewing into the rest stop with something hanging on to the driver’s side door from the outside.

An unexpected scent made Kendra sit bolt upright. Bacon? Eggs? It was almost as if visualizing Grandpa Joe could bring him back to life, just as Mom and Dad had claimed.

A face appeared in the bus’s stairwell, the big bright-eyed brother they called Piranha. He reminded Kendra of her uncle Willie, only without the raucous laughter. She didn’t let herself wonder where Willie was. “Wake up, Little Miss Thang,” he said, his smile wide. “Powdered eggs, canned bacon, Kool-Aid. Let the wild rumpus begin.”

Kendra’s back was as stiff as a plank, but Piranha’s enthusiasm was contagious. She checked her bundle of belongings and tucked them away under her seat. Everyone else was already off the bus. Her new companions had let her sleep in.

Kendra’s mouth tasted like she’d gargled with pond scum, and she had an almost overwhelming urge to comb her hair before anyone else saw her. She figured that if she could survive what she’d been through, a morning of disarray wouldn’t kill her. Without a toothbrush, maybe her breath would be bad enough to drive the freaks and pirates away.

Outside, the others were busy with breakfast. Darius, or perhaps Dean (she couldn’t tell the difference between them yet), walked the outer edge of the circle, holding a rifle. He would walk a bit, then pause, rest perhaps, and then continue walking, scanning slowly left and right. He never really stopped looking out for anyone, or anything. Once, distantly, she heard the burr of a gasoline engine. Other than that, nothing. The quiet was eerie. Surreal.

“Where is everyone?” Kendra said.

“A lot are dead, I figure,” Piranha said, as if it were a casual conversation about unimportant things. “Lots of the ones left went to camps. Must be some little towns, places the locals know about that are easier to fortify. They aren’t gonna wave flags for us, that’s for damned sure. They’re keeping their profile way low.”

One of the Twins laughed. Kendra noticed a pale vertical line through his right eyebrow; soon she would learn that his name was Darius, and the scar was a souvenir from a skateboarding accident. “I can see it, right?” He waved a shirt above his head. “ ‘Hey, here we are! Come take a bite or kill us to steal our crap.’ ”

Still laughing, he shoveled eggs into his mouth.

Sonia handed Kendra her plate. Sonia’s goth black hair was brushed into a ponytail, and her mouth didn’t reek, so she was grooming herself somehow. Kendra made a note to get a girlfriend’s guide later.

“Here,” Sonia said. “It’s rotten, but there’s plenty of it.”

“Plenty and good are the same to me,” Kendra said, and Sonia pounded her fist.

Kendra took the plate and sat, not knowing whether to sit farther away from them or closer, not knowing what the rules were, desperate not to violate one unwittingly. She avoided all eye contact with Piranha so she wouldn’t give Sonia even an imaginary reason to get jealous. What if one wrong move got her voted off the bus?

The eggs were lumpy, with a few coarse nuggets where the water hadn’t soaked into the dehydrated powder before heating. The consistency of bad oatmeal, perhaps, but the taste was glorious. Kendra hadn’t known how hungry she was until she realized she was scooping the food into her mouth from the plate. The bacon was even better, even though
it wasn’t bacon at all, but strips of fried SPAM. She decided that SPAM was her all-time favorite meat, that if pigs knew how delicious they were, they’d all turn cannibal. Having an armed guard nearby made the meal go down more smoothly.

“More, please?”

“Coming up,” Terry said. He was having fun playing cook, dishing out scoops of steaming eggs while Sonia sliced and fried the SPAM over the other half of the fire. Kendra realized they hadn’t merely found a barbecue pit; they’d dug the hole, filled it with wood, built their campfire. “How long have you been doing this?” she asked.

“Few months,” Terry said. “All summer we were teaching kids how to survive in the woods. Came in handy.”

“What happened at the camp?” she said.

They all exchanged looks, and Kendra almost told them to forget the question.

But Terry sighed. “Real nice couple ran the camp, Vern and Molly Stoffer…”

They told their stories, and listened to hers. About Portland General. And her parents. Grandpa Joe was too fresh, but she told a little about him too. The others mentioned family members they hadn’t heard from, or didn’t know how to reach. Everyone had a story, except the Twins.

Then none of them felt like talking anymore.

Kendra nearly jumped when Sonia unexpectedly gave her a hug. “You poor thing,” she said. “Can’t believe you were out there by yourself.”

“It’s not just me,” Kendra said, not wanting them to think she felt sorry for herself. “Something bad happened to everybody.” Sonia’s hug lingered, and Kendra wanted to pull away before she started crying. But she didn’t.

“Once you’re on our bus, you’re not just ‘everybody,’ ” Sonia said.

Kendra noticed Terry staring at them, almost as if he wanted to
hug her too.

But cuddle time was over.

“Freak,” Darius called in a low, calm voice from the parking lot.

Kendra wasn’t sure she’d heard him right, until the others instantly dropped their plates, came to attention, and formed a circle around her. Their circle shifted to a horseshoe as they all scanned the parking lot, assessing the danger.

A single freak limped toward them. Grandpa had listened to every rumor or radio report, studying freak evolution like a zoologist. As a result, she knew that freaks started out fast—the runners, the most dangerous kind—but slowed down as days and weeks passed. This one might have been a couple of months old, lurching like a gauze-wrapped mummy. Its clothes were a shambles, but once upon a time they might have been overalls and a white checkered shirt. His head was big, and it looked as if birds had pecked on his right ear, now hanging halfway down his cheek. One eye socket was empty, but the other glared brightly.

“Coming straight for us,” Darius said.

“Mine,” Dean said, and leveled his rifle.

He was an excellent shot. The freak’s head snapped back, and its feet went out from under him it as if it had slipped on ice. Brains sprayed around its head in a brownish-red nimbus. It kicked its feet a few times, and then was still. The Twins high-fived each other, cackling as if he’d bull’s-eyed at the county fair.

“Let’s not celebrate yet,” Piranha said.

Terry agreed, dousing out the fire with a waiting bucket. “Where there’s one…”

“… there’s a gaggle,” Sonia finished. Despite her tough-girl act, Kendra noticed that Sonia never seemed to stray far from Piranha’s shadow.

“What now?” Kendra said, her heart racing. She expected to see an army of freaks come charging from the woods.

Terry spread a road map on the ground, tracing it with his finger. “Let’s see… We’re here, twenty miles north of Vancouver. And we’re heading… here. On Northwest Eleventh Avenue.”

“How do we get there?” Darius said. Kendra realized that even when the Twins talked, they never stopped scanning their surroundings. Sonia and Piranha were gathering supplies to cart back into the bus. They all knew their jobs.

“Down the Five to what looks like the Columbia River,” Terry said. “We’ll cross into Oregon. I hope. Then another… I don’t know. Five miles? And from there to maybe Southwest Alder Street.”

A loud squeal and squawk from the bus startled Kendra. Someone fiddling with the radio, she realized.
Keep it calm, girl. They’ve got it handled.

“Anything?” Terry called to the bus.

“Still static, mostly,” Sonia said. “That crazy preacher. Not much else.”

“Looks clear,” Piranha said in a basso voice, and the group laughed with an inside joke Kendra didn’t understand. Terry explained that Piranha liked to imitate Vin Diesel from the movie
Pitch Black
; Diesel had said everything “looked clear” right before all hell broke loose. The explanation didn’t help Kendra feel like laughing.

“The rest of breakfast is to go,” Terry said.

“No thanks,” Kendra said. “I just lost my appetite.”

“Hey, don’t miss my chef’s special,” Terry said, grinning as he folded up his map. “Scrambled brains. With lead on the side.”

More laughter. The Twins high-fived again.

Kendra felt herself trying to smile, but she fought it. How could she smile when her knees still felt weak from the sight of the shambling freak?

“You need serious help,” Kendra told Terry.

Terry started to climb into the bus, then turned and looked at her over his shoulder. “That’s the same thing my shrink said,” he told her,
sounding shocked. Then he winked.

The wink did it. Kendra smiled at Terry after all.

But she didn’t smile for long. As the twins were unhooking their bikes, they heard the distant sound of a motorcycle engine with a bad muffler.

Everyone crowded the bus windows, watching the driveway from the interstate.

The engine grew closer and closer… and then faded away. Relief passed among them.

In five minutes, they were on the road.

C
old
December rain droplets spattered against the windshield, fogging their vision. They passed farmland, a dairy perhaps, and fields filled with weeds and dead crops. Nowhere was there a human being to be seen, although occasionally a freak listed in a field, like a drunk leaning into a high wind. Not moving, perhaps conserving energy. When they drove past, occasionally the things turned to watch.

Darius and Dean rode their motorcycles around and around the bus, scanning for trouble but also amusing themselves by weaving between stalled cars, making Kendra’s heart jump every time they nearly collided. After a particularly harrowing near miss, they reached across the road to slap gloved palms.

Kendra sat near the front of the bus, near Terry, and she noticed that the gas tank was alarmingly low: a quarter of a tank! How had they traveled from upstate without any working gas stations? Memories of the gas pumps at Mike’s made her shiver.

They had only been on the road fifteen minutes when Terry stopped at a clutch of abandoned cars blocking the lanes. The Twins had beaten them, circling the knot of cars. They waved to Terry. Kendra hoped that meant there were no freaks. And no pirates. The big bus squealed as it lurched to stillness, almost in protest. For a moment, no one moved or spoke.

“Gas ’n’ go,” Terry finally said. “Road also needs clearing. Careful, everybody. Let’s not hang out here all day.” The guy who’d joked about scrambled brains was gone.

Instructions given, Terry opened the bus doors.

Outside, Terry cradled the shotgun as the Twins examined the cars. Piranha stepped down too, revolver tight in his grip. Sonia carried the rifle. Kendra felt small and useless beside her outside the bus, as good as naked.

While Kendra watched, the others pried open gas tanks, hoses ready to siphon into red gas cans. Half the cars had stopped because they had run out of gas—the other half, who knew?

Two cars looked as if they had simply smacked together, and Kendra approached them slowly. The driver’s side of the white Toyota was splashed with dried blood crawling with flies.

But the cars were empty.

What had happened here? Had one or both drivers been infected?

“Keys!” Darius called, and tried to start the engine of an SUV blocking their passage. A grinding protest, followed by clicks. “Battery’s dead,” he said.

“Can you get the brake off?” Piranha said.

“Yeah, but we flip,” Darius said. “Heads, you push. Tails, I steer.”

Kendra felt the mood easing now that they were in the road and hadn’t been ambushed. Not yet, anyway. But Kendra kept her eyes on the tree line, watching for anything that stirred. More than once, she was fooled by wind massaging the leaves.

At least one of them was always holding a gun on watch while the others pushed cars off the road. Kendra gathered enough nerve to open the door of a black PT Cruiser and look inside; the car reminded her of a miniature hearse.

Inside, she found children’s clothes, a little red shirt, and blue striped pants. A sippy cup with a red conical cap, festooned with tiny tooth marks. “What happened here?” she asked again, aloud this
time. Had Junior been bitten at the mall by a weird kid, and maybe fallen asleep in the backseat before they could get him to the doctor? Had he clawed his way out of his safety seat and attacked Mommy as she chatted on the cell phone, or Daddy as he drove? Was the family still wandering the roadway together?