Terry was nervous, despite having had steady girlfriends since he was fifteen—until juvie, anyway. His first girlfriend, Loretta, had only been a novelty, a senior when he was a sophomore. He thought he’d loved Gwen for real, until she banged half the basketball team and turned love to loathing. Then he’d practiced all of Gwen’s evil on his last girlfriend, Paige, who had finally gotten the hint after he stopped answering her calls and texts. After a month.
Not the greatest track record, maybe, but he was no stranger to girls.
So why did Kendra make him feel like he’d never kissed a girl before? Or like her brown eyes could see everything he’d ever thought or done? Why did her cheekbones remind him of a wood carving? How did such a compact body hold curves that filled her jeans in a way Loretta, Gwen, and Paige could only have dreamed about?
Kendra was like no other girl he’d known, and so smart she was almost scary. Knowing that she’d been on the bus seat behind him all that time, relying on him to stay awake and keep them safe, might have been the single most important reason the Blue Beauty had made it to Threadville.
Now if only he could make Kendra happy here, so she wouldn’t get kicked out with her wild stories. Or get him kicked out, because he couldn’t let her go back on the road without him. Kendra seriously needed to get … distracted. That was what Dean had been trying to tell him on the way to the mechanic’s house.
“Okay,” he said, opening the door.
“It’s safe now?”
“You tell me,” he said.
Damn, why was his heart whirring so loudly? He watched her face as she walked into the candle-bright room, waiting for her reaction.
The smiling curve of her lips was a jolt of pure lightning.
Kendra had never looked so beautiful.
“You did this … for me?” Kendra said. The most any other boy had ever done for her was Taylor’s wilting carnation corsage. And he’d stuck her with the pin.
But Terry had already done so much more.
Terry closed the door and stood behind her, wrapping his arms around her. They swayed together like they were rocking at sea, sharing silent music. She stared at their reflection in the bureau’s cracked mirror, so many contrasts; he was tall and broad-shouldered, she was short and narrow. Suntan against naturally dark skin. What a curious, fascinating sight they were. Hipshot settled down on the floor, bored.
“Remember that night on the beach? Our first kiss?” Terry whispered, nudging closer to her.
Kendra’s heart seemed to stop. He was aroused, and he didn’t care if she knew. His fever infected her. “I’ve thought about that night a lot. When I said … I mean, I hope you didn’t think …” He fumbled for words.
Kendra’s cheeks flared hot. “No, it’s my fault. I hope I wasn’t …”
When neither of them could form a sentence, they laughed at how ridiculous they were. Some of her nervousness evaporated as she remembered the moonlight across the ocean.
She turned around to drape her arms across his shoulders, keeping a few inches between them. “That night on the beach, I thought it was the end of the world,” she said. “It would never get better.”
“And now Domino Falls has changed your mind?”
“It’s amazing,” she admitted. “It’s proof that we are still here. But I’m worried about my friends. I think Devil’s Wake would be safer, and I’m not sure you’d go with me. But it’s not the end of the world. Not tonight.”
“Devil’s Wake? Never say never, Kendra,” Terry said, resting his chin atop her head. Few people ever touched her hair, and Kendra nearly flinched from him. She felt self-conscious in a dozen ways. At the same time, she couldn’t pull herself an inch away from him, as if he might vanish if she did. “I’m not going to forget about Lisa—ever.” Terry’s words vibrated through her scalp. “Just not right now. You know what it’s like on the road. We need to rest. Make plans.”
“What would make you go?” she said.
“Like, right now?” he said. “Something big. Our lives at risk—because that’s what we’d be facing out there.”
Kendra drew in a deep breath. “What if I told you … I feel something like that? That whatever’s going on here beneath the surface puts us all in danger?”
Terry stared at her as if he wanted to read her mind, trying to see through her eyes. “I’d say you need to make your case. Starting with me.”
“And you’ll listen?”
“Sure. What do I have to lose? I might learn something I need to know.”
Kendra grinned at him. Terry’s ability to make her feel better surprised her again. Then her grin withered. She would have to find language for what she’d felt at the ranch. She hadn’t smelled or seen or heard anything. How could you explain the presence of … a void?
She would have to spend more time with the Threadies to collect information for Terry. “What if we find out something awful … but the others won’t believe us? Or they don’t care?” she said.
Kendra didn’t like seeing Ursalina’s point, but unless someone was taking potshots at them, why was it any of their business? On the outside, nobody held a meeting if you got shot. Nobody noticed. Outside, death wasn’t remarkable.
“Then we’d go,” Terry said. “Just you and me.”
“And Hipshot,” Kendra said. Hearing his name, Hipshot jumped up and came to her side with a bright doggie grin, tail wagging. He basked in them while they stroked Hippy’s coat. When their fingers touched, Kendra felt jolts of static electricity.
“Hipshot for sure,” Terry said. For half a second, Kendra enjoyed an image of setting off with Terry on the road in a well-armored SUV, with Hippy panting through the backseat window. She froze the image, before anything ugly could reach it.
“I have something for you,” he said, and fished in his pocket, bringing out a plastic bag with a Seiko lady’s digital watch in it. Couldn’t have cost more than fifty bucks in the old world, but as he buckled it onto her wrist she felt like a princess.
Their lips met, his mouth salty from popcorn. Their kiss started just inside the doorway and ended on the closest bed, where they lay wrapped around each other. Kendra had never been on a bed with a boy.
“I’m a virgin,” Kendra said. She hadn’t planned to drop it so plainly, but it fell out, the barest whisper.
Terry’s eyes dimmed. He tried to catch himself, but she saw it. He was silent far too long, and Kendra wished she hadn’t told him. Just when they had time together, she’d said the one thing that might push Terry away. Suddenly, her skin felt uncomfortable and itchy.
Then he kissed her again, deeper this time. He smiled, their lips still brushing. “Then this is my lucky night.”
She sighed, melting. Terry eased her back onto the bed, and his hands touched her in ways she had never let a boy touch her. Not in the front seat of the Toyota, not beneath the bleachers. She was losing control of thought. If someone had asked her to multiply single digits for millions, she couldn’t have gotten a dime.
Now it was a single hand that teased and tormented her. He was doing something else with the other hand.
She studied the ceiling of the room. So, this was where it would happen, and how, and with whom. One of life’s urgent, simple questions answered at last.
“A moment,” he whispered, and turned away from her. Foil or plastic crinkled. Suddenly, he was still. He cursed under his breath.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I … it’s …” His voice sounded absurd, almost like that of child who has dropped an ice-cream cone on the floor. “It’s busted.”
“What?”
“The …” His voice dropped. “The condom. I only had the one. Traded my triple-As for it. The pack was a little old and crinkled, but I thought … ah, shit!”
He looked back at her, so woebegone that she suddenly burped laughter. After a moment, he broke out guffawing as well, and they were holding each other, and kissing gently, and then laughing like fools again.
“No,” he said. “It’s not.”
“You’re disappointed?” she asked.
“Of course.”
“But not trying to talk me into anything.”
“This isn’t the time or place to have any kids. I want it to be right.”
She kissed him again, smiling with infinite mischief. “It will be.”
He held her to his chest. There were so many things he could have said. Requested. Done. But holding her right now, just the two of them still in their clothes with the ruined foil packet crumpled on the floor, somehow seemed the best, most romantic, and most appropriate thing of all.
She listened to his heartbeat through his shirt.
Is this love? she asked. If not, how much better could love possibly be?
Twenty
Sonia let Chris lead her by hand to the rocky ledge, his gold shirt folded ceremoniously across his arm, and she saw his grim face replaced by an easy smile. He’d told her he’d been a newbie until he won a spot on the Gold Shirts two months before, after passing a quiz on Wales and “The Unification Philosophy of Threadism.”
We’re woven of threads joined by threads. To sense this is to tap the true power within—
Threadwise, Chris was in another league.
The moonlight was bright enough to show the craggy hillside to the east and fields north and south, all of it draped in fences. Occasionally, in the distance, the fence sparked with a faint, sudden glow. Chris gave her his binoculars. Shadowy figures congregated beyond the fences in the hills. Sparks popped like fireworks. It was too dark to see how many, but the foothills teemed with freaks. Maybe hundreds!
We feel safe, but they’re right out there waiting, she reminded herself.
Sonia drew closer to Chris and couldn’t help contrasting his thin, hairless arms to Piranha’s thicker ones. “Are you sure they can’t get in?”
“Between the fences, patrols, and barricade?” Chris said. “Not in this life. But there’s no such thing as shooting them all. I’ve tried.”
“What barricade? Where?”
“Protecting the tunnels,” he said. He kept his voice low. “In and out of the ranch. Wales has a whole system of tunnels, built on the old mine system. Had it for years. He was always ready.”
“It’s like he knew.”
“He did know,” Chris said, certain.
They were on a perch behind the Threadies’ permanent camp, a ranch house within view of the mansion’s front gates, a quarter mile back from the main house, ringed by small tents. Wales had made it easy for his fans to be near him, and they had enjoyed his apparently endless hospitality even before the world had ended. The Threadie camp was more like a commune, a miniature village. No one had separate fires like they did at the Motel 6; the fires and food were shared by everyone. Most people were smiling.
“I expected more survivors to be nuts,” Sonia said as they walked the camp. “Completely babbling-out-of-their-minds crazy. Barking and howling at the moon.”
Chris laughed. “Plenty of those, but they don’t get past the checkpoint.”
“I wonder what happens to them outside.”
“Same thing that happens to everybody,” Chris said.
But there were other settlements, so Threadville wasn’t the only safe place. Sonia wondered if her family had made it to a settlement like Threadville, or if they were still living in their basement. Had they survived? Those thoughts cramped her stomach.
Just when Sonia was about to ask, Chris told her his story.
He’d lived with his parents and two younger brothers in San Jose. Their family had escaped infection when the neighborhood shelter at the high school was overrun. His father found them a car, and they had been on the road a full day before pirates blew out their tires. Chris had only survived by pretending to be dead, silent through the worst. He remembered the broadcasts and headed for Threadville, his only chance.
Chris’s eyes ran with tears, but his voice remained a monotone.
They’d just met earlier that day, but she felt as if she could tell him anything. Everything. So she told him about the stealing, the judge, and the camp. About Terry, Piranha, and the Twins. And Kendra and Ursalina. She told him how, together, they had survived the pirates.
“You’re lucky,” he said. “You could fight back. We couldn’t do a damn thing.”
“I’m really sorry,” she said.
He shrugged as if his family’s terror was a bad day that could escape his mind. “Guess now we’ve learned what’s underneath people.”
“It’s not underneath all of us,” she said. “Not like those pirates.”
“But too many. Way too many.” He shook his head, his eyes suddenly fierce. “I’m not the same anymore. That’s for sure.”
He walked her to a bonfire that had drawn at least a dozen Threadies, and a round of backslapping began as they made room for Sonia and Chris at the fire. “They’re proud I got my Gold Shirt,” he told her privately. “I used to be one of them, ya know?”
The pride in his voice made Sonia smile to herself.
“Yeah, he used to be a mortal, and now he’s just a god in Gold,” a chubby boy laughed. He introduced himself as Moe, and his haircut reminded Sonia of his namesake from the Three Stooges. His BETTER THREAD THAN DEAD T-shirt was faded nearly beyond recognition, pulled tightly over his stomach. His face was a riot of acne.
One by one, they introduced themselves. They were like everyone she’d ever met at a ThreadieCon or Norwescon science fiction convention: bookish, gently weird, welcoming. Maybe some of them would have been considered geeks at their schools—okay, most of them—but the schools were gone. Survival of the geekiest.
They were passing around a small piece of wrinkled tinfoil, and each person grabbed a small brown item between their fingers, popping one into their mouths. When the foil came to Sonia, she stared at a wrinkled ball of something unappetizing.
“What’s this?”
“Yahanna,” Moe said. “Mushrooms. One’s plenty.”
Ice water flooded Sonia’s veins, and she nearly dropped the foil. “What? The mushroom that caused the Freak Day?”
The circle erupted into protests. “No way!” said Manny, a wiry Latino man in his twenties. “It’s propaganda. That damn flu shot caused the outbreak. Either that, or the poisons big pharma added to the diet pill. We grow these from spores. The real deal. Wales says it’s good for the mind.”
Don’t do it. Kendra’s voice was suddenly so vivid that Sonia thought she must be standing over her. Sonia considered passing the foil along, but the eyes of the others were watching her, waiting. Was this a rite of initiation?
“But what … happens?” Sonia said.
“Clears your thoughts,” Moe said. “Lays everything out simple. Oh, and you won’t be hungry all day tomorrow.”
“Or the next day,” someone muttered.
They laughed—a few of them too hard, sounding stoned. No thanks, Sonia thought she heard herself say, but instead she placed a small strip of a mushroom on her tongue. Slightly smoky taste, but not unpleasant. She swallowed it without chewing.
The circle applauded her. “Welcome to a whole new world!” Moe said.
Sonia passed the foil to Chris, but he shook his head and passed it along. “Gotta work in the morning. Can’t spend the next eight hours daydreaming.”
“Eight hours?” If Chris wouldn’t take the mushroom, why had she?
“It’s not like that,” Manny said. “For me, it’s more like six. Won’t kick in for a half hour, so relax. It’s a real smooth ride.”
Chris tried to hold Sonia’s hand, but she politely found ways to pull away and busy her hand whenever she could. She liked Chris, but she wasn’t ready to stake out a new guy when she could still feel Piranha’s hand in hers. Besides, she had to choose carefully. Sonia remembered the twinkle in Wales’s eyes. She might never be Wales’s official girlfriend, but she could be
one of his ambassadors. The next time she went to the mansion, who knew what might happen?
The group was playing a strange role-playing game with twenty-sided dice (“It’s an interpretation of a game from fifteenth-century Japan,” Moe explained), just like they were at a never-ending party at a ThreadieCon.
“You all live here?” Sonia said, surveying the tents outside of the house.
Moe rolled the dice and made his move. “Yeah, everyone who works at the ranch is either a Threadie or a Gold Shirt. Most of us stay here. Convenience, protection … plus, it’s way more fun than town.”
The group groaned. “That’s for sure,” said a half-pretty girl who’d introduced herself as Cindy Lou. With orange pigtails despite being at least sixteen, she reminded Sonia of Pippi Longstocking. “You’ve seen town. Gloom and doom. Backstabbing and gossip. Everybody spying on everybody else.” Cindy Lou looked sideways at Sonia. “We might have room for another Threadie.”
Moe snorted softly. “Wales would like her. He likes ’em skinny.”
Sonia tried to hide the surge of excitement she felt. “And he pretty much gets anything he wants?”
Cindy Lou laughed. “What do you think? The whole town is alive because of him. What he did. What he built. He’s a great man.”
“Yes, he is,” Sonia said, hoping she had proper enthusiasm in her voice. “A hero.”
Chris’s voice dropped a confidential octave, and he reached for her hand again. “You don’t get it. There’s so much more. I’ll tell you for a kiss.”
“Go fish,” Sonia said, playing coy. “Just tell me.”
Chris sighed, although he didn’t look mad. “He sees things. He saw all this coming, and wrote about it. Didn’t realize even what he was writing. I think maybe we all saw a little of it, and that’s why the movies were so popular.”
“But without the spaceships,” Sonia reminded him.
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