Devil’s Wake

by Steven Barnes

  TWENTY-FOUR

  The wind hit Piranha like flecks of frozen sandpaper. His eyes, which were already dry, stung in the snow.

  But dry snow made him less likely to lose his footing in a spray of slush. He was wearing a heavy pea jacket liberated from Vern Stoffer’s closet. He was glad the man had been a hunter. Piranha stepped down from the bus well onto the pavement and paused, listening while he shielded his face. On the crest of the Siskiyou Mountains, the wind bit through his jacket like a freak gnawing at his flesh.

  “Ow,” Sonia said.

  “Ow is right,” Ursalina said. “Let’s finish and get back on the bus.” Ursalina’s gaze was everywhere, and nowhere. Roving constantly, fixing for a moment on a snow-covered lump, and then moving on to another. There: the shadow of a tree. There: a car covered with snow, only a single window exposed. Darkness within. Was there motion?

  The stalled bus was a Goliath Tours special. With a bus that big, no chains, it was perfectly reasonable that it had slid across the road, crashed into the car…

  Except that there wasn’t enough damage to the car. The two vehicles were linked too carefully, leaning into each other, blocking the road.

  The southbound lane of the freeway was on the west side of a divide, the north lane a hundred yards east, across a ravine. Piranha looked toward it, ruefully. Was it less crowded? Would it make any sense to back all the way down the mountain and try the northbound lane? Should he make the suggestion to Terry?

  “I’m going in,” Piranha said instead. “Watch my six.”

  “Got it,” Ursalina said, and her voice gave him confidence. Ursalina had training, not just good intentions. “Watch yourself. Check the seats.”

  The bus’s door was a standard accordion. It was closed, but Piranha doubted it was locked. He wiped snow from the glass and peered in. No one in the driver’s seat. And as far as he could see, no one in the bus, dead or alive.

  “Crowbar,” he said, and Sonia handed over their standard equipment for road clearing. He twisted the flat edge in the doorjamb. The door sighed and then opened enough for him to get his fingers in. He set his feet and pulled.

  It opened. Piranha climbed up and shone his flashlight back into the passenger section. Nothing. The bus was empty except for blankets and a few empty boxes. Piranha poked at the large mound of blankets on the floor behind the driver’s seat.

  “They must have gotten out on foot,” Piranha said.

  “What about the brake?” Sonia called up.

  He looked. He didn’t know buses like Terry, but beneath the steering wheel a long-handled red emergency brake was yanked tight. “Yeah. Someone set it. I’m taking it off, and then we can get the hell out of here.” He pulled up and then eased it down. “Tell Terry I’m putting her in neutral. I can steer if he pushes.”

  “Okay.”

  Footsteps as Sonia ran back to the Blue Beauty. Piranha peered to look for Ursalina, but he didn’t see her and hadn’t heard her go anywhere. She was checking out the bus, no doubt. Or seeing if she could start the car.

  Piranha sat. The cab’s air was chilly, the metal cold to the touch. The seat, on the other hand, was just a little… warm.

  Damn.

  “Don’t move.” The voice was quiet enough to be imaginary, and very close. Male. Piranha felt pressure at the small of his back. The gun fit through the gap in the driver’s seat, some kind of hole; someone was hiding in the blankets behind him. “Keep your mouth shut. We just want a little food. A little food isn’t worth dying over.”

  The man sounded reasonable. Maybe he was hungry. Hungry and reasonable.

  Yeah, right. They just want food. Not the bus. Not the guns, gas, or girls.

  Piranha glanced up at the mirror, but the stranger was out of his view behind his seat. “What do you want me to do?” Piranha said, barely moving his lips.

  “I like that question, son, because that’s the question people ask when they want to live.” The stranger had a shark’s voice, seductive enough to convince a shipwrecked sailor to surrender his raft. “You’re going to tell the one with the pretty dark hair to step on up into the bus.”

  Piranha’s back stiffened. Was he talking about Sonia or Ursalina? Did it matter?

  “Do it.” The voice was more anxious, losing patience. Piranha looked to his left, out the open door. Sonia was already on her way back, her dark hair whipping across her cheek. Her earlobes were red in the cold. I need you to keep me warm, she always said.

  Piranha felt the pressure of the gun against his back and smelled the whisperer’s sour breath as he raised his voice. “I’m counting to three, and if you don’t call the girl over here, I’ll blow your spine out of your black ass.”

  Despite the cold, a trickle of sweat wound its way down Piranha’s back.

  Dive for the door? Take a chance the guy was bluffing, or wouldn’t be quick enough on the trigger? He might fire and miss.

  But if you get shot for real—shot ANYWHERE—we’ve got no doctor.

  Piranha stared out of the bus’s windshield. He only saw the flurries of snow, but more gun-toting pirates could be out there. He and his friends might have walked away alive if they’d only been asked to give up bus, weapons, and food. Walk for two hours south, and they’d be out of the snow and into California.

  “One…”

  The one with the pretty dark hair. On the radio, guys on pirate stations promised weapons, food, gas, you name it, for young females. Three girls were treasure. But how could he live with himself if he gave up even one of them, especially Sonia?

  Piranha sighed, his hands tight on the steering wheel. His legs were tired and stiff from the cold and sitting still. A burst of fear blossomed in his gut, new and strong and terrible. Maybe Ursalina had been right: there was no way for all of them to survive.

  “Two…”

  So this was how he would die…

  “Sonia… RUN!” Piranha shouted, at the same time he moved to duck.

  Piranha heard the shot before he felt it, a sting of pain that was oddly nonlocalized. In his face. I’ve been shot in the back. Why do I feel it in my face—

  A scream came from behind him. Piranha whipped his head around in time to see a rat-faced, red-haired man with sunken cheeks sliding down against the left wall of the bus, blood seeping from between splayed fingers pressed against his chest.

  Ursalina! She must have been watching as quietly as a cat. Through the spiderweb’s cracks in the windshield, Piranha saw the soldier drop into a shooter’s one-kneed crouch, firing at the freeway’s western bank. Snow exploded.

  Piranha touched his face, expecting to find a mangled mess… but he was all right. The broken windshield had scattered glass shards across his face. His eyes blinked furiously as he panicked, thinking he’d lost one of his last two contact lenses, but he kept calm enough to gently brush the glass away. His eyes itched like hell, but he tested both; some of the edges were fuzzy because his contacts were old, but he could see.

  If he was blinded, he was dead. This was an ambush.

  Bullets cracked and whistled from both sides, but Piranha dove to get out of the bus, rolling into the snow while he held his gun clear. He was breathing through his mouth; air was suddenly hard to come by. The gunfire was muffled. Piranha shook his head to clear his ears of snow, trying to orient himself.

  Where were Sonia and Ursalina now? Where were the shooters?

  Piranha turned and studied the snowbank to his right, west of the road. Through the drifting snow he could make out a parked car, covered in a foot and a half of white. The car was of medium size, a Ford Taurus or something, and the top of its snow-crusted window was a slightly different shade of white. As if someone had rolled the window down just an inch or two, and then stuck a flap of white cloth over the slit.

  And something on the ground, between the tree and the car. With a narrow shadow to guide his vision, he saw a lump… with a hole in it… and something black, like a pipe, just sticking out a little bit. Hunting bli
nd, his uncle in Georgia would have called it. Trying to pincer them.

  Bullets kicked up powder on all sides of Piranha. He had no clear targets. He couldn’t see Ursalina or Sonia, or where they were shooting, and he was under heavy fire from people who could see him fine.

  Piranha leaped back into the stalled tour bus, keeping his head low. A ping across the bus’s nose missed him as he ducked inside. He gasped for air.

  Separated.

  Freaks would be easier, he thought. Freaks couldn’t pin you with gunfire.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The side window behind Kendra erupted, showering her with icy glass.

  She’d always thought the roadblock looked phony. It was a little too neat, a little… staged. It didn’t capture the wild I’ve-got-an-infected-hitchhiker-in-the-backseat-let-me-the-hell-out-of-here turmoil she saw in most of the other cars. Or even one of the Oh-my-God-I’m-sleepy… let-me-just-pull-over-and-get-a-nap-and-then-I’ll-be-fine cars tumbled at the breakdown lanes. Why hadn’t she said something?

  “Get down!” Dean yelled.

  Kendra threw herself to the floor of the bus hard enough to slam the breath from her lungs. A second shot, and then a third. She scuttled back along the aisle until her feet were pressed against one of the dried food boxes. Hipshot stood over her, barking like mad at the sharp, ugly snaps of the rifle. She was afraid he might jump up on the seat, so she wrapped her arms around him and held him down.

  Above her, the Twins fired through opposite windows. Terry was still in the driver’s seat, his eyes trained on the windshield. The bus’s engine growled, idling.

  “Easy on the ammo!” Terry yelled. “Don’t shoot what you can’t see.” He opened the bus’s door, yelled toward the tour bus up ahead. “Piranha!”

  But Kendra was sure Piranha couldn’t hear him over the gunshots.

  “We gotta move,” Terry said. “We can’t sit here and—”

  A glass explosion.

  Terry cried out Ugh with a bewildered look on his face. He clapped at his chest like a mosquito had bitten him. Terry had been shot!

  Kendra immediately saw all the ways it could end: tumbling down the ravine in a tangle of limbs, trapped in flames, marched out one by one, rendered naked in the snow. She vowed that nothing could surprise her, and nothing short of death would destroy her. And if she didn’t survive, at least she’d met people who had made her want to try.

  Kendra had no more room for fear.

  She scrambled toward Terry, keeping low, ignoring the pinch of broken glass across her knees and elbows.

  Terry fell from his seat, nearly on top of her. He smelled like blood.

  “Hold still,” Kendra said. “Let me see it.”

  Carefully, she peeled away the bloodstained shirt to try to see how badly he was hurt. She blinked with relief when she saw his chest was clear, and the bleeding was from his shoulder. Their faces were so close that their heads bumped.

  “Am I shot?” Terry said.

  A large sliver of glass was caught in the wound in the meat of his shoulder, and she yanked. Terry let out a strangled yell, but she didn’t think any had broken off.

  “Glass got you,” Kendra said. “Not a gun.”

  Terry examined himself, looking shocked and relieved. “Damn, I don’t ever wanna get shot.”

  “Too bad,” Darius said. “Might’ve been your lucky day.”

  Ursalina had just saved Sonia’s life—not once but twice. She’d shot the man behind Piranha, then she’d pulled Sonia up against the Blue Beauty when the gunshots started, slamming her hard against the tire. Ursalina had pointed silently, telling her to hide beneath the bus.

  Then Ursalina was gone. Sonia had seen Piranha’s feet when he jumped out of the tour bus, before he scrambled back for cover. At least Piranha’s safe…

  But where was Ursalina?

  Sonia’s eyes were sweeping the snowdrifts in search of Ursalina when something sharpened to focus in the shadows: a snow-covered car was hidden beneath a grave-shaped mound of white. And a rifle poked a few inches out of that mound. God, she could see it so clearly now, even before the blip of light from the rifle’s bore.

  A sound like a ball-peen hammer thumped Blue Beauty’s side.

  An answering shot came from inside the bus, but the distant rifle didn’t move. Waiting again. Sonia couldn’t see anything but the rifleman’s gun, but she tried to visualize where he’d hidden his body, estimating his size and length in the snow. Center of mass.

  Why was it taking her so long to pull the trigger? She’d wanted to shoot Ursalina over nothing, and now she was having trouble shooting a pirate? A slaver?

  But she was drenched from crawling in snow, and she was shaking, her breath ragged. Sonia’s finger curled around the trigger and squeezed. She was so numb, she barely felt it when the trigger broke and the stock of her rifle bucked against her shoulder.

  The snow across from her shuddered, rose up a few inches like someone breaking the top of an undercooked biscuit, and then sank down again. The rifle barrel wobbled, and then aimed up at the sky, almost as if someone was lying across the stock.

  She’d gotten him.

  Sonia waited for horror or excitement. Her mind was empty, but her fingers were shaking, electrified. Eager to keep shooting.

  “Good shot!” Dean called from the window above her.

  Sonia took a deep breath, exhaled, and looked for another target. No time to celebrate. A vivid sound caught her ear in the wind.

  Unless it was her imagination…

  “Snowcats!” Terry said.

  Death sounded like the burr of snowmobiles, and Ursalina Cortez hated the cold.

  Her family tree had roots in Miami, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic, so cold wasn’t in her DNA. That was the first thing she’d told Mickey when she moved to Washington: Next time, we’re living somewhere sunny and hot. When Ursalina Cortez had left the tropics, the order of the universe had been destroyed. Instead of dying on her beloved planet Earth, the sunny one she knew, she was stranded here in this frozen hell.

  With snowmobiles.

  Suddenly, Ursalina wanted to talk to God, although believing in God enraged her. If God gets the glory, who gets the blame? God was on an Old Testament rampage, and Ursalina was on the wrong side of history. God must be a man after all; no woman, no mother, could behave like this. And God was clearly pissed off, that was clear—there were too many reasons to choose from, so she’d stopped trying to guess months ago.

  But it was time to make peace and try to bargain.

  You gotta admit, I did pretty right by you. I almost never took your name in vain like Abuela said, even when you deserved it BIG-TIME. I lit candles. I thanked you for Mickey. I thanked you for bringing that baby girl into my world when I didn’t know I wanted a kid, how much I needed one. You saw all this was coming, you were setting me up just to lose everything, and you let me thank you anyway.

  Her prayer was turning angry. Ursalina had avoided praying because she always ended up cussing out God, and she didn’t want to dig any deeper into hell.

  Ursalina crawled away from the stalled car, the snow high enough that she was wading chest-deep. But her adrenaline burned away the cold. She was caught closer to the driver’s side of the Blue Beauty, away from the door. Her best bet was to get under the Beauty with Sonia.

  Soon, their bus would be dead to them. If the shooters got bored, they would start aiming for the gas tank.

  The kid had to get the bus moving.

  Ursalina’s prayer went on: We’ve had our ups and downs, so I hope you appreciate the significance of me crawling to you on bended knee. I would cross myself if I could take my finger off this trigger. I’m asking you for just one thing and you will never hear from me again.

  Do.

  Not.

  Let.

  Me.

  Die.

  In.

  This.

  Goddamn.

  Snow.

  Snowmobiles were bearing clo
ser, coming from north. And south. Two, maybe three. And there were two or three shooters hidden in the snow. Terrible odds.

  On the ridge, Ursalina saw a flicker: shadow, light, shadow. Running.

  A shot, from somewhere to her left, spanged against the Beauty, fifteen yards from her. This was a heavier caliber, military grade, and something inside their transport hissed. Another shot, and the snow a foot from Ursalina’s shoulder exploded.

  But Ursalina had decided not to die running like Mickey. She knelt like a statue, training her eye where she’d seen the shadow, ignoring the approaching engines bringing death of a different variety. The Twins and Sonia would have their hands full with the snowmobiles, and one hidden sniper could kill them all.

  Another shot kicked the snow, eight inches right. Ursalina felt a brief flash of fear, rolling a foot to the right… and lost her aperture. Dammit! Another shot, and this one sparking off a rock under the snow. She took a chance, rolled back to the left.

  There.

  Ursalina squeezed the trigger, twice. A scream, a thud of a falling body, and—

  A shot answered from behind her, close enough to flick snow into her hair. Ursalina cursed, curled into a ball, and rolled to the right until she was on her feet. She stumbled for a few inelegant steps, nearly pitching forward into the snow, before she made it to the cavern beneath the tour bus. She was running the wrong way.

  And she’d missed the door.

  “You okay?” the kid, Piranha, called down.

  Ursalina banged twice against the undercarriage with her rifle stock. “Make sure this is in neutral. Steer right.”

  “I’m ready when he’s ready,” Piranha said.

  “When are you gonna jump out?”

  “First chance I get after he’s clear,” Piranha said.

  She didn’t mention that Terry might knock the second bus over too far or block Piranha in. It might work, it might not. Ursalina wanted to see the kids make it, but she wouldn’t live long enough to ride with them. She wouldn’t know them long enough to memorize their names. Names were a waste of time.

  The night baby Sharlene died, Ursalina had forgotten how to pray. After what happened to Mickey—what HAPPENED to Mickey, you mean how freaks bit off pieces of her until there was nothing left, at least you HOPE that’s what happened—Ursalina’s head was a blizzard of curses. She shouldn’t have tried to pray. No wonder she’d blasphemed when she tried even a small request.