Pain stabbed her chest when she thought of Grandpa Joe and his cabin, but she tried to turn her pain to strength the way Mom and Dad had always said. She could almost hear all three of them urging her on: Keep going, Kendra. Don’t stop. So Kendra went back on the road. She kept her Remington balanced across the handlebars, which made it hard to steer, but it was better than leaving her protection behind.
Traveling south by bike, she took access roads paralleling I-5, keeping her eyes peeled for rocks that could blow her tires. And people. Finally, she saw others: always at a distance, as eager to avoid her as she was to avoid them. At times, pumping the pedals, it felt as if she were totally alone in the world. Even more, it sometimes seemed that she was standing still, the rest of the world moving around her. The bike was a little rusty, so she couldn’t really make fast time, but she was grateful not to be walking.
For the first time in a long time, Kendra Brookings felt just a little bit in charge of her life.
She had just passed the big white WELCOME TO CENTRALIA poster when she noticed a pale smoke plume boiling up from the woods to her left. Distantly, she heard gunshots. A sixty-second pause. Then more shots.
Her heart thumping at her chest, Kendra walked her bike down off the road and biked west until she found a road traveling parallel to the I-5. Then she took that route south until the smoke, and the shooting, were behind her. So much for stopping in Centralia.
Damn, damn, damn…
Centralia no longer called to her. The southern road beckoned.
The Schwinn was a blessing. She was able to make excellent time, three or four times faster than she could possibly have traveled by foot. By the second night, a highway sign told her that she was within twenty-five miles of Longview. Her thighs and calves ached, and she pulled off the road to another house. Similar to last night’s shelter, this one was two stories high, and it looked deserted. But this house had no cars parked outside. And the door, this time, was locked. She knocked.
“Pizza!” she called.
She broke a kitchen window and climbed inside. As in the previous house, the power was dead. But unlike the previous house, she found a hand-cranked radio. Kendra spent fifteen minutes spinning the little handle and then tested the dial: mostly static, mixed in with a few scattered bursts of words, as if they were coming from far away, only available because of shifts in the clouds.
The kitchen wasn’t as well stocked, but she found tuna and stale crackers, which was, in Dog-Girl parlance, a “bleedin’ feast.”
Remembering the stench and the ant trail from the last house, Kendra decided not to go upstairs. Besides, trying to sleep in the former occupants’ beds would have felt like a violation. The sofa was soft leather, which was more than fine.
As Kendra was settling down for the night, she heard a noise from upstairs. Kendra grabbed her rifle and climbed up the steps, one at a time, more frightened than she had been since Grandpa Joe got bit, but somehow beyond her own emotions. Above them.
She wasn’t alone in the house! She should have checked upstairs first. ALWAYS check upstairs first! said a voice in her head. Grandpa Joe’s blessed voice.
A solid thump-crash, too big for a cat. A child? Bigger? Kendra’s heart raced.
She found her feet mounting the stairs, and to her surprise, she realized she had a battle plan: she would stay here, on the narrow part of the stairs, and shoot at them as they came at her from the front. Hopefully not from the rear.
When she got to the top, she froze. A rail-thin man in grimy sweats stood around the corner pointing a small black pistol at her. For a moment, all she saw was the gun’s tiny black muzzle, expecting it to breathe fire.
“You just made a mistake, missy,” the man said, his voice unsteady. “You leave that gun and get on out of here. We would have let you be, you just gone on in the morning. But now I have to be sure you won’t double back. Kill us in our sleep.”
His hand was shaking slightly. In the near dark, Kendra wondered if the gun was loaded, or even real at all. She could see the guy’s wife cowering behind him, her blond hair an unkempt nest. And behind her, an identically blond boy about six or seven. “Please,” Kendra begged. “I was going to leave. Just let me keep my rifle.”
“Drop it,” the man said, and extended the pistol a few inches. Behind him, the little boy pressed more tightly against his mother.
Kendra lowered the sawed-off rifle to the ground and backed down the stairs. Rage welled in her, appearing as tears. “Is it loaded, Sam?” she heard the woman say. She sounded like a kid on Christmas morning.
Kendra forgot her rage right away. The man could have hurt her, but he hadn’t. She could have lost her backpack and bike too.
All in all, she realized, she’d had a pretty good day.
The sun was setting by the time she reached Longview. Amid the steep, pitiless shadows, Longview was burning. Had burned. Was dead. From the freeway she and her parents had traveled so often, she could see the shell of the McDonald’s, and on the other side, a burned-out Taco Bell. The ruins of the mall. Rows of scorched, shattered houses and a blackened concrete pad where gas tanks had exploded. Must have been quite a bang, she thought.
What had happened to her mother’s body? Was Devon Brookings, or what remained of him, still alive? Was her father wandering in the ruins of Longview, biting others? Looking for her somehow?
Kendra pulled off the freeway, waiting until a faded red pickup truck with three armed men sitting in the bed in down coats and sunglasses pulled past on the road. Who were they? How could she tell the kind of people they might be? They went about some business in the shopping center and then pulled away an hour later, whooping. One of the men fired a shot into the air.
Idjit, Kendra thought in Grandpa Joe’s voice. If you can’t make bullets, don’t waste shots. Then he’d laugh. Same goes for whiskey. Somehow, she figured these clowns were more into drinking than reloading.
Kendra glided her bike over to the side and looked east, west, and north. Anyone watching? No. A few scraps of paper blowing across the parking lot. A dozen deserted cars were scattered across the lot in disarray, like toys awaiting the return of a giant rug rat. Kendra searched the cars one by one, keeping her expectations in check, and the fourth was unlocked. She opened it and looked inside with her heart pounding in her throat. It was a Toyota Corolla, looked to be about twenty years old. She searched around and then under the car—
And found a little black magnetic key box tucked beneath the car. Holding her breath, she took the keys out and slipped it into the ignition. Turned it with a click. Then a grinding sound, and the engine turned over. Oh God! Oh God! It was half exclamation, half grateful prayer. She panted, feeling a deep excitement she could barely remember experiencing. Closed the car door. Opened it again. Put the rear seat back and wedged the bicycle onto the seat. Kendra shucked the backpack, tossed it beside the bike, then climbed into the driver’s seat and pulled the car out of the lot.
She had a car! A car was a rolling palace. A four-wheeled fortress. She hadn’t known how to drive when she’d first gone to Grandpa Joe’s, hadn’t even had a learner’s permit because she’d been in no rush to grow up, but Grandpa Joe had made her practice with the truck. Despite a sickening wave of sadness and nostalgia, Kendra heard a strange giggling sound that almost made her turn to look over her shoulder… until she realized it was only her.
Kendra took a long look at the flickering lights from lanterns that made the Heights twinkle like an enchanted forest shimmering above a graveyard. She saw houses intact up on the ridge of hills overlooking the flatlands. Kendra had no idea what kind of politics had evolved. Was the city council still in charge? Was there still a mayor? She imagined that power still resided in the Heights, the hillside homes overlooking the mill. Who lived there now? Were they her old neighbors and teachers, or had strangers taken over the town? Maybe she could find shelter there.
No. She had never been invited to parties up in the Heights, never for a drive in the too-sh
iny Beemers and Lexuses their parents had bought them for sweet sixteens. And the idea of placing her life in their hands now made her flesh crawl. She had more than half a tank of gas, enough to get to Portland. She would keep driving.
Frontage roads. That was the thing to do. She would evade the ghosts of whatever towns remained between here and Vancouver. From there, to Portland, and hopefully, that National Guard armory.
If not that, something else. With her new sense of confidence and wheels grinding across the road, she felt as if she could do anything.
Thankfully, Longview’s streets weren’t stacked with cars and bodies. Kendra drove past the industrial districts, those smokestacks that no longer belched white, the waterway now clogged with logs that, in saner days, would have gone to the Weyerhaeuser mill to build houses and make cardboard boxes. Nothing moved. Interstate 5 stayed mostly clear too. Until she’d driven twelve miles down.
There, just as the skies were growing dark, Kendra’s headlights showcased an overturned truck that looked like an oil tanker blocking the road. Kendra’s heart danced with images of gas for life, until she realized it was a milk truck.
Don’t get greedy, girl.
She slowed and decided the embankment was gentle enough to steer around the truck, amazed at how easily she’d adapted to the challenge. Time was, she would have panicked at the blocked road, but she wasn’t the same person she’d been yesterday. Or even an hour ago. Kendra pulled off, steering toward the dirt on the driver’s side, her only clear passage.
Her tires had just left the asphalt when a man stepped out of the shadows. Kendra’s eyes focused on him sharply, showing her every detail in her car’s harsh light. He was a big man, with dirty, pale, densely freckled skin. A wild beard speckled white and black, with flecks of yellow trapped inside. When he grinned, his teeth looked like he’d scribbled on them with yellow crayon. He’d been living outside. His hands were behind his back as if she’d interrupted him while he was pacing, deep in thought.
Or maybe, just maybe, he was a freak.
Kendra remembered Grandpa Joe’s warning never to stop for hitchhikers, and she and the stranger had nothing to talk about. Without hesitating, she pressed her foot harder on the accelerator to make him think she would run him over rather than stop—and maybe she would. She didn’t know yet.
That was when he whipped up his shotgun. From four feet away, the barrel loomed as huge and dark as a railroad tunnel. He’d fire if she accelerated, and was too close to miss. Heart thundering, Kendra rolled to a stop. She felt her pulse drumming as her hands grasped the steering wheel, her heartbeat shaking her body.
Take your damned chances and drive over him! Kendra’s mind screamed.
But she didn’t. Instead, with her trembling hands raised high, she got out of the car. She hoped she wouldn’t lose more than the bicycle. Maybe he wouldn’t see her backpack.
“Heard the car from a mile off,” the man said. “Don’t see too many cars no more. And a pretty girl really ought not be out by herself. Get out—and bring your stuff. Everybody’s got stuff.”
Kendra’s legs barely obeyed her. She didn’t like the way he’d called her pretty. She wished she looked dirtier too. But maybe he wouldn’t hurt her if she did what he told her to do. After she shrugged on her backpack, he gestured her over sideways, toward the ditch.
That was when she saw the freak.
The infected man had come down from the I-5, almost directly in line with the car, as if he were purposely concealing himself. A narrow man in a piss-stained business suit, still wearing a tie askew. It walked like most freaks, as if suffering a slow-motion seizure. This was an older one, his face scabbed red. Grandpa Joe said the older, slower ones were slowly starving to death and would do a lot more than take a single bite.
Kendra moved around, backing away, so that the man with the gun was between her and the freak. Had bad luck turned to good luck so soon? The pirate’s attention was on her, so she just needed to keep his eyes occupied for another few seconds…
She summoned a warm-up exercise from a long-forgotten acting class. Kendra shimmied her hips slightly, as if she were about to do a private dance. She saw the way the pirate’s eyes widened, lips peeling back in a grin, exposing those nasty teeth again.
“That’s more like it, girl,” he said, his breathing heavy. “Show me the goods.”
Kendra slowly leaned over to rest her backpack on the ground, her eyes on the man with the gun. His eyes roamed over her, and he licked his lips as if she were a steak.
Over his shoulder, Kendra saw that the freak had halved the distance between them, within five yards, close enough for her to see how its eyes were foamed crimson with fungus. Which of them horrified her more?
The pirate still held the shotgun with one hand, but he tugged on his jeans to unsnap them with the other.
That’s it, you sick bastard. Keep your eyes on me.
But he must have heard something—or, more likely, smelled something. He wheeled around just in time to meet the freak face-to-face. Too late to run, barely time to scream. The pirate managed to get off a single shot before the freak grabbed him, and it went so wild that Kendra ducked. But not before she saw the freak’s teeth tear into his exposed neck.
Kendra ran, and as she did she saw that there were two more freaks… one staggering in from the west and one running from the north. The runner was dressed like a fry cook, his apron tattered and bloodstained, his eyes filled with red veins. A fast one! The older freak was a woman, thin now, but her clothes were so loose that Kendra guessed that she had once been plus-size. Skin hung in diseased folds on her face, and her eyes were clotted red. They were driving Kendra. Funneling her toward a kill zone.
They travel in packs. They lay traps. Even as she ran, Kendra struggled to comprehend.
No time to jump into the car or grab her backpack. No time to do anything but flee. She climbed up the side of the road, toward the rising bank of the I-5, the freak below her now, trying to claw toward her. She heard a shot and a scream from behind her. The scream went on so long that its gurgling echo scarcely seemed human.
Kendra’s world went gray, nearly white, as the fast freak’s hand clamped on her ankle, dragged her back down the incline a few feet while she kicked, expecting to feel the teeth pierce her skin at any moment. Kendra screamed like an animal. At last, a kick made contact. The freak lost its death grip and rolled away. Kendra clambered up to the road and ran.
She ran so wildly that she nearly lost her balance, flailing her arms as she crossed the I-5’s eight lanes to disappear down the other side—the steeper side she hadn’t been willing to chance with the car. Panting hard, she ventured a peek.
The thing appeared atop the far embankment and lurched like a drunk, trying to figure out which way she’d gone, and could not. It lost focus and staggered north.
Sobbing, Kendra curled into a ball behind a pine tree. She had lost everything. One piece at a time her fragile world had been dismantled, the pieces ripped from her hands. She had lost her backpack, her bicycle, her rifle, the car. Her mother. Her father. Her grandpa. Everything and everyone. How had she been deluded enough to feel anything remotely resembling joy just yesterday?
She’d been a fool to dream of living.
Might as well just stay here, curled up in the dark. Wait to die.
Then… she heard the engine. Just a groan at first, something that might almost have been mistaken for wind in the trees. Then a blue truck appeared on the I-5… no, a bus. Some kind of school bus, a wedge-shaped snowplow mounted on the front.
The bus slowed, pulled off along the road the way she had, its lights suddenly so bright that she could only see its hazy outline. Kendra hadn’t moved, was pinioned directly in its headlights.
Kendra felt no fear. No curiosity. In fact, nothing at all. Exhaustion and terror had congealed into a kind of quiet courage. She only held up one arm to shield her eyes from the bright light.
The bus stopped with a tremendo
us squeal of brakes and a smell of burned rubber. The door opened, and she was able to look in past the stairwell to the driver’s seat. The bus driver was just a boy, only a year or two older than she was.
He wasn’t dirty. He didn’t have a gun. He had an angel’s face with dark, curly hair and bright eyes. Behind him, she saw others on the bus: a pale girl with long black hair with a single streak of white. A narrow face, cradling a rifle in her sinewy arms. One guy standing next to her, tall, thick-chested, darker than Kendra, a toothpick in the corner of his mouth, and his lips curled in a lazy smile. A dog stood at the top of the stairwell, some kind of Lab mix, eyeing her suspiciously.
The driver’s eyes were wide, intelligent, and kind. So kind.
They were, he was, the most beautiful sight Kendra had ever seen.
He smiled at her. “Need a ride?”
FIFTEEN
Terry had to shake his head. The girl standing outside the Blue Beauty’s accordion door gazing up at them with wonder-filled eyes looked like a trapped rabbit. He hadn’t opened the door for a stranger since they’d left the campground—been tempted plenty, but always thought better of it. This time, he couldn’t resist. This girl was someone’s sister, or daughter. If he couldn’t reach Lisa, at least he might be able to help this girl.
The arrival of the Twins’ motorcycles behind them made her jump backward as if she’d changed her mind and decided to run. The Twins circled back around after doing their usual wide sweep. The girl only gaped as their shoulder-length hair flagged out like Apaches on mustangs instead of four-stroke engines.
“You bit?” Darius called to her. When the girl didn’t answer, Darius looked at Terry. “She looks bit.”
“Could be,” Dean said. He nodded at the girl. “Gotta ask you to strip.”
“Only way to be sure.” Darius grinned.
Sonia pushed up from behind Terry on the bus. “You guys suck. Leave her alone. Poor thing’s in shock.”
“Or she’s bit,” Darius muttered, his leer gone, a serious scowl in its place.
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