“I’m not mad. I’m not gonna try to tell you what to do. But this is a big place, that’s all. There’s gonna be nice people, and people who can’t spell ‘nice.’ So if somebody does anything you don’t like, don’t forget you’re not here alone.” His throat felt like sandpaper, but he forced the words out.
Bingo. Sonia’s face softened into a girlish smile, her armor gone. “Thanks, P. I couldn’t stand thinking you’d be mad. I want us to always be friends.”
Friends. The word kicked him. She slowed her pace to give Piranha a quick peck on the lips, and she slipped her hand into his. Her fingertips were freezing cold, so he squeezed as they walked, trying to keep her warm. Remembering the shape of her thin fingers. Pressing the pad of his thumb against her firm fingernails, one by one.
Most people were leaving the dining hall when they arrived, not going in. Families. Couples. Groups of traders. People walked close and kept their eyes alert, but everybody gave cordial nods or smiled. Good to see you had taken on a new meaning: Thank you for not trying to bite me.
The Twins were walking out of the dining hall with Jackie as they walked in. Darius gave him a thumbs-up sign when he saw him holding Sonia’s hand, and Piranha’s face went hot. He didn’t feel like explaining that he was only Sonia’s buddy now, so he winked a lie. When Sonia slipped her hand free to get her food tray, Piranha was glad. The bread was long gone, but the room still smelled like garlic butter.
Ursalina sat by herself smoking at a table in a far corner. Apparently, clean air recommendations had relaxed since Freak Day. She guessed nobody expected to live long enough to worry about secondhand smoke. They joined her there.
Within five minutes, Terry and Kendra had found them too, breathless from rushing as they set their plates of spaghetti on the table. They hadn’t been alone long, but the brightness in Kendra’s eyes was evidence that it had been long enough to do more than talk.
“You feeling better?” Ursalina said to Kendra, patting her hand. Kendra nodded.
“She’s fine,” Terry said. Piranha thought that if he’d hovered over Sonia the way Terry did over Kendra, she might still be his, Wales or no Wales.
“She felt a little sick at the mansion,” Ursalina said.
Sonia gave Kendra a scornful look, as if she’d insulted Wales. Piranha hoped Wales would be good for Sonia, or he and Wales would have an ugly future together.
“She’s got a hell of an imagination, all right,” Sonia said. “Or she’s just crazy.”
“All right,” Terry said. Always the mediator.
Kendra stared at her food as she ate, ignoring Sonia. They might all need new sleeping arrangements soon.
“What did you think of Wales’s place?” Terry asked Ursalina.
“Seemed all right,” Ursalina said. “A little creepy culty, but nothing to wet your pants over.” She sounded like she was scolding both Kendra and Sonia.
“And you couldn’t feel it?” Kendra said suddenly. “It felt like that freakfield we drove past in the bus. How could you miss it?”
“I didn’t smell any freaks,” Ursalina said, probably for the dozenth time.
Kendra’s voice dipped low. “That’s why the sign on the van said no dogs! He doesn’t want us to know.”
“You are out of your mind,” Sonia said. “What do you think, he’s got a secret freak factory? Maybe he’s the one who started it all, right?” Her voice cracked.
The people at the table stopped eating to stare. Sonia, Terry, and the rest fell silent on cue. Two women in black dresses at the table were Threadies for sure. Two Gold Shirts joined the neighboring table, and Piranha recognized them as the guys who had been waiting for Sonia by the road. They never glanced toward Piranha, but they sat close to him. They knew he was there. Jerks.
But so what? Everyone said being a scav was the fastest way to get approved, if he didn’t blow the politics. Ursalina was figuring out the politics in her way, Sonia in hers, and he would figure out the politics too. He was good at games.
Piranha moved to sit next to Terry, although it was hard to watch the way Terry leaned forward to lap up Kendra’s every word, or the way she kept flicking strands of hair from his shoulders. He tried to feel happy for them, but he couldn’t find anything except a pain like he’d swallowed a hot stone.
“Anybody else want some water?” Piranha said.
He wasn’t that thirsty, but it was hard to resist the coolers and tin cups in the back of the room, free to anyone. Water was nothing to take for granted. Piranha gulped down two cups of the cold water just because he could.
He took his time getting back to the table, studying Wales’s strange paintings on the wall. Webs and nets and constellations connecting all the stars in the sky into alien geometries. When a group of women he remembered from the Hungry Dog beckoned him to their table, he flirted politely even though all of them looked too old, or too everything, to keep his attention.
Piranha didn’t glance at Sonia the rest of the night.
Eighteen
On the street, Kendra noted a few strings of Christmas bulbs strung here and there and was shocked to remember that the twenty-fifth was only days away. Apparently, despite the end of the world, ’twas the season.
Only one sign was lighted in bright white neon: THREADIE THEATER. The entrance to the alley beside the sign was crammed with a gathering crowd. When people congregate, we warm ourselves in each other like firelight, Kendra thought. She planned to write in her journal later.
“Awesome!” Sonia said. “I heard they show movies once a week. Like a drive-in, except nobody drives. And free popcorn!”
“Think I’ll pass,” Piranha said. He bumped shoulders with Terry, ready to go.
“Headed to the room?” Terry said. Piranha only shrugged, walking on.
“Hey, P? Wait up,” Terry said, and ran to speak to Piranha privately.
Kendra tried to overhear them, but she could only watch as they rounded the corner. She thought she knew what was on Terry’s mind, and it made her heart race. Suddenly her palms were sticky.
Ursalina glanced back at Piranha, as if to follow. Then she looked in the direction of the Hungry Dog a block away, weighing her options. Kendra could hear the piano’s sour version of Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock and Roll.”
“So tired, but so wired,” Ursalina said.
“Should Piranha walk alone?” Kendra said, trying to prod Ursalina home. If she could coax Sonia to go home too, she might be alone with Terry. Besides, the Gold Shirt at the table next to theirs had been staring daggers at Piranha.
“That kid needs no bodyguard,” Ursalina said.
“Let’s give him some space,” Terry said.
“Can we all stay and watch the movie?” Sonia said.
The word we grated in Kendra’s ear, but the more time she spent around Threadies, the more she would learn. She felt safer on an open street in Threadville than she had in the seclusion of the ranch.
Besides, Kendra heard corn popping. The sound and smell reminded her of the last movie she’d seen with her parents. She couldn’t name which movie, but she remembered sitting between them, nestled in their warmth. The popcorn’s smell was a tunnel through time.
Kendra looked up at Terry. “Could be good times,” she said.
Terry rubbed her shoulders. “Finally! Let’s have some fun.”
The only thing Kendra really wanted, she realized, was for Terry to rub her shoulders … and maybe work downward from there.
Many people had brought blankets to the surprisingly lush grassy field between two old brick buildings that were boarded up like mummies. A blinding light from a third-floor window projected a giant white box on a sheet draped from the building across the alley. In Threadville’s darkness, the box looked as crisp as a TV screen.
The light from the screen was bright enough to show that the grass was crowded with residents, many of them with their children chasing one another and squealing. Although the grass still had room, the back wall was
crowded with scavs and other men and women talking, laughing, drinking, and enjoying the screen’s light. There were a lot of Threadies, shiny-faced young women and Gold Shirts sharing blankets with their families in the grass, mostly in the front. But there were townies too, and several newbies.
Newbies were easy to spot. They were the ones staring up at the white movie screen with gaping jaws, or tears in their eyes, remembering their last time at a movie. The ones with fresh bruises. It’s easy to dazzle people who are already in shock, Kendra thought, another line for her journal. And she would know, wouldn’t she?
“Here,” Terry said to Kendra, spreading his jacket out on the grass.
“What about you, Terry?” she said. “It’s getting cold.”
But Sonia joined in when Terry insisted, so Kendra sat on his warm jacket and enjoyed the smell of him. They all huddled close as Threadville’s masses crowded around them.
“I’ll get us popcorn,” Terry said. The line to the old-fashioned popcorn carts in the back was twenty deep, maybe more.
“Grab me a Coke Slurpee and some Twizzlers!” Ursalina called, and strangers around them laughed.
“Butter on mine!” Sonia called.
Kendra was glad to giggle with her. The day at the ranch had erected a wall of mistrust between Kendra and Sonia, as if she and Sonia were breaking up too. Kendra didn’t feel the uncomfortable knot anymore. She hoped it wouldn’t come back.
“Can we stay friends … no matter what?” Kendra said.
Sonia wrapped her arm around Kendra. “When that psycho pirate on the snowmobile was firing at me, you held on tight and pulled me into that bus, Kendra. You saved my life. We’re not friends—we’re family.”
“Back at you,” Kendra said. “So don’t just vanish on us.”
“I’m not vanishing anywhere,” Sonia said. “You know Terry, P, Darius, and Dean are brothers to me.” Her voice cracked.
“I know,” Kendra said quietly.
“But I have to follow my bliss,” Sonia said. “You and Terry have to follow yours. Life starts right here, right now.”
Ursalina chuckled. “No such thing as no regrets,” she said. “But good luck.”
Before Terry got back with the popcorn, the Gold Shirt who had been glaring at Piranha showed up with a friendly smile. He looked about nineteen, and Kendra remembered him as one of the guys outside of the ranch fence, maybe a newbie like them. Maybe his glares at Piranha were only childish jealousy.
And now he had no reason to be jealous. After all, he had won.
“Everybody, this is Chris,” Sonia said, as if he’d been her date all along.
Chris nodded politely, shaking their hands one by one.
“Me and the guys have a blanket closer to the front,” Chris said to Sonia.
“Ooh … sounds great! Thanks.” Sonia grabbed Kendra’s hand. “Want to come?”
Kendra’s heart surged as she realized part of her did want to go. She wanted answers just like Sonia, even if she was asking different questions. She wanted to dive into Threadville and find the truth.
“No, I’ll stay with Terry,” Kendra said.
Sonia giggled. “Oh, right—duh. You guys be good.” She wagged a finger at Kendra, drunk on her excitement. She knew Kendra was watching her walk away, so she turned to give her another reassuring wave before she vanished into the sea of strangers.
“Yeah, good luck with that,” Ursalina said after Sonia was gone.
When the movie studio’s logo appeared on the screen, the crowd hooted and cheered. The searchlights and trumpet fanfare were tokens of a civilization’s man-made wonders. Kendra cheered with the rest, feeling the world shift into place.
Then the movie started: a bird’s-eye view of a bright red sports car racing along a winding mountain road. Instantly, the movie’s spell was broken.
Threadrunner Apocalypse! She hadn’t been to the movies since the freaks, and they were showing the same one she’d just tried to watch on DVD? Was that a coincidence? Or was that the only movie that got any play in Threadville?
Kendra smelled the fresh popcorn before she saw Terry. He nestled close behind her. “Sorry it took so long. I kept staring at people. Everybody looks like Lisa tonight.”
“You’ll find her.”
“One day.” His warm breath skipped across her neck. “Where’s Sonia?”
“Making friends,” Ursalina said. She nodded toward the front rows.
“Guess that’s no surprise,” Terry said. “Same as Darius and Dean.”
Kendra vaguely remembered a gatekeeper or one of the Gold Shirts saying that groups liked to stay together in Threadville—at first. The night felt sad, suddenly.
“ ’Scuse me?” a woman’s voice whispered. She was in her forties, and heavy for a survivor. People who couldn’t run fast enough had died first. “Are you Ursalina?”
Ursalina nodded, wary. The woman had come in close, too fast for comfort.
The woman beckoned someone. “My nephew’s been talking about you all day.”
Jaxon, the redhead from day care, came bounding to them, his left arm’s stump hidden in his jacket. Day care was a safe space, but no one would advertise a child’s disability.
“That’s her!” Jaxon said, not quite a whisper.
“Quiet,” the woman said. Then to Ursalina: “Would you like to join us? We can’t hold them all at once, and they like to sit in somebody’s lap. We can’t trust just anyone. But if we get too noisy, they’ll make us go.”
She pointed to a group about fifteen yards parallel to theirs, four women trying to control a group of at least twelve children, all of them under the age of seven. The children were arguing over popcorn, eliciting soft hisses of Shhhhh behind them. Kendra didn’t recognize all the faces, so some of them weren’t in the day care. Half the children were mesmerized by the movie screen, but the other half weren’t.
“Sure, of course,” Ursalina said, quickly on her feet.
“I’ll come too,” Kendra said.
“No way,” Ursalina said. “Stay here. Let him help you work it all out.”
Just like that, impossibly, Kendra and Terry were alone. At a movie.
Kendra felt a floating sensation, but it filled her with wonder, not fear. Suddenly she was leaning back against Terry, a sturdy tree trunk, and she was rising and falling with his breaths. Her fingertips and toes tingled.
And the popcorn! It rang with flavor, not bland like the food in the dining hall seemed in comparison. Salt must be like gold again, but someone had spared no expense.
This might be the most perfect moment in my life, Kendra thought with a distant, faraway voice that wasn’t quite hers. Tears came to her eyes in a wave of guilt. How could she feel that way? And even if it were true, what would the next tragedy be?
A tragedy could come tonight.
Could come tomorrow.
Terry squeezed her hand, as if he could feel her anxieties pulling her away. She hid from her thoughts by staring at the movie screen.
The movie had already progressed beyond the brief viewing she’d had at the quarantine house. Wales had appeared—barrel chest and square jaw, unsoftened by too many years and too many beers. He looked like a hero, even if his acting might have embarrassed David Hasselhoff. He gestured a lot, reminding Kendra of a silent film star, as he made desperate attempts to convince a small-town sheriff that aliens had contaminated the cornfields with eggs like spider sacs. “They’ll take us from the inside out,” said the giant Wales on the movie screen. “Make us forget who we were.” A few in the audience gasped, seeing how prescient the movie had been.
Terry grinned. “I’m just glad we’re finally on a real date.”
He was right: they had a movie screen, a tub of tasty popcorn, and body heat to keep them warm.
“So … is this a date?”
He winced. “Oh, wait. Never mind. You’re one of those proper girls. I’d have to put on a suit, meet your parents …” He realized what he was saying. “Oh, damn
, I’m sorry.” He sounded so aghast that Kendra felt sorry for him.
Kendra tried to smile. “That’s all right. Dad would have liked you. But I’m a little out of practice. This is my first date in a while.”
Her first and only “boyfriend” in junior high had been in name only most of the time, except for necking sessions in his Toyota. Her disastrous eighth-grade dance with Taylor Pinkney probably shouldn’t count as a date, but it was better than saying she’d never had one. When Kendra remembered the Pinkneys, she couldn’t help wondering how they had died. Who had gotten infected first? Who had bitten whom?
She stared at Ursalina and the other women playing with the children, wondering again how people could bring babies into this world clotted with pirates and freaks.
When Terry leaned close to kiss her, the movie screen and the world disappeared. Kendra floated above time and memory, somewhere new. They might have only kissed for thirty seconds, but to Kendra it lasted all night.
“By the way,” Terry said, more breath than voice. “Piranha’s working it out so he’s gonna get his own room.”
Kendra didn’t know what to say at first. She felt frozen. “Too bad about him and Sonia,” she finally said, heart racing.
Terry squeezed her hand. His skin broiled her. “Yeah. Too bad.”
Nineteen
When Terry opened the door and peeked into his room, he expected to find Piranha on the bed with an excuse about how Marv wouldn’t give him his own space on such short notice. But Piranha’s stuff was gone. He’d left the tiny battery lamp on the nightstand on, and his blanket was pulled up and tucked beneath his mattress like an army cot. He’d tried to leave the room looking nice for Terry.
I owe you, man, Terry thought. Again.
Hipshot waited by the door, tail wagging. The world’s best dog. Terry rubbed the mutt’s chin and smiled. He and Kendra were sharing custody of Hippy, who lived between their rooms.
“Is it safe?” Kendra asked behind Terry, teasing.
Gazing at the drab room, Terry had a sudden inspiration. “Yeah. One second.”
He closed the door behind him and rushed to fling open the nightstand drawer. Perfect! Piranha had left his stash of candles. Candles were against regs, but girls thought they were romantic. While Hippy trotted behind him, he lit one on the nightstand, one on the dresser, and one on the bathroom counter. He hoped Marv wouldn’t make a late-night room check or see the glowing contraband, since there was no mistaking candlelight.
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