Devil’s Wake

by Steven Barnes

  “Would freaks wait that long?” Kendra said.

  Ursalina gave a sour chuckle. “Why not? Nothing better to do.”

  Now the road was empty, as if to mock the fallen for their senseless deaths.

  “I wonder where the freaks went,” Kendra said, as soon as she noticed a smell wafting through the bus’s shattered windows. The pervasiveness of the thick scent reminded her of the vast oceans of cattle and steer manure along the I-5 corridor between Los Angeles and San Francisco, back when her parents drove her to the bay in summer. Back when she’d had to pinch her nose to block out the stench of so much death, so much rich, thick fecal stench. This wasn’t the same smell—it smelled rotten, all right, but more like fruit than flesh. Had acres of orange groves withered?

  Kendra tapped Terry’s elbow. She was relieved when he didn’t pull away. “You catch a whiff of that?” Kendra said.

  “Yeah,” Terry said, “I was just thinking—”

  Hipshot barked once, sharply. He stood up on two legs in one of the front windows, as if scenting a distant rabbit. Dean and Darius made their clicking code, readying their guns.

  Oh God, what now? Kendra thought. She was more weary than afraid.

  The smell wasn’t new to her—it was eerily familiar—although it was much more pronounced now, altered slightly. When Grandpa Joe had carried her out of her house in Longview, she’d noticed the odor on her street. The stench of freaks.

  Ursalina walked to the front of the bus, staring through the cracked windshield, but her handgun was still holstered. “Relax,” Ursalina said. “Must be a freakfield. Smells like a big one, too.”

  “A what?” Piranha said.

  Ursalina cast a rare smile, looking at them over her shoulder. “What happens to freaks when they can’t run anymore, if nobody puts a bullet in their head?”

  Blank silence on the bus. Hipshot whimpered; Kendra thought even the dog sounded confused.

  “You must not be hanging out with enough freaks,” she said, gesturing to the window. “Check it out.”

  Empty fields spread out on either side of them, neglected by growers who had fled or died. But up ahead…

  What was that? One of the fields was crowded with a dark mass Kendra couldn’t make out in the distance, but it seemed to take up acres.

  “If that’s a herd of cows, we’re having steak tonight,” Darius said.

  “Ain’t no cows, kid,” Ursalina said.

  Kendra’s heart was pounding before she knew what she was seeing, because everything about the mass—the gathering?—looked wrong to her. Piranha raised his binoculars and stared out of his window while Sonia crowded beside him to try to get a glimpse. Piranha’s mouth dropped open. “You have got to be kidding me…”

  Kendra squinted and made out a sole figure upright at the edge of the mass.

  A freak! They were all freaks in ragged, weatherworn clothes, enough to fill her yard in Longview and spill into the street. As many as they had faced at the armory!

  Gooseflesh crawled across Kendra’s arms and the back of her neck. If the herd of freaks saw them coming and broke into a run, could they block the road enough to slow them down? Even stop them cold?

  “Terry, go faster!” Kendra said, at the same time as Sonia let out a warning yell.

  Inexplicably, Ursalina was laughing. Kendra stared at her with disbelief.

  “Run from those guys?” Ursalina said. “Forget it. They’re planted. You could go out there and torch them with a flamethrower and they wouldn’t move. Speaking of flamethrowers, I wish I had one of those babies right now…” All joviality left Ursalina’s voice as she stared at the field of freaks standing shoulder to shoulder like cornstalks. Her face turned stormy with loathing.

  Kendra was horrified by the mass of freaks, but Ursalina was right: they weren’t moving, except to sway in the wind. As the bus rattled by, she could see a few of the freaks who were within yards of the road. Their faces were nearly unrecognizable as human, caked with… what? Something reddish, but more pink than the color of blood. It looked… fuzzy. Had these freaks chased the family up the tree?

  They all gaped. Terry swerved, bumping slightly onto the shoulder as he swiveled his head to keep staring as they passed. Hipshot barked only once as he stared out his window.

  Then, as if they’d just driven past a forest, the freaks behind them were gone.

  “What in the holy hell did we just see?” Piranha said.

  “That’s what happens after a few months,” Ursalina said. “They’re like windup toys that just… stop. They’re planted.”

  “I don’t get it,” Terry said. “Hippy hates freaks, even when one was his own master. Now there’s all those freaks out there, and… almost nothing.” As if to confirm the observation, Hippy wagged his tail when Kendra pet his head. The dog had already forgotten the field of freaks.

  “Dogs don’t care about planted freaks,” Ursalina said, shrugging. “Maybe they know they can’t hurt anybody. He could trot up and piss on their legs and they wouldn’t blink.”

  “What happens to them?” Dean asked.

  “They just… wither away, I guess.”

  Dean moved to the rear of the bus to take in the bizarre sight as long as he could, peering over the stacked boxes. “They smell different,” he said.

  “The smell is stronger,” Kendra said.

  “Not exactly lemony goodness,” Darius said.

  “Is that how they find each other?” Sonia said. “The smell?”

  Terry turned over his shoulder to look straight at Ursalina. “Teach us,” he said. “I want to know everything you know about freaks.”

  “Then I’m the right person,” Ursalina said. “Just call me a freakologist.”

  Over the next hour, with only a few stoic pauses when she was overcome by memories, Ursalina told them what she had learned after weeks at the Barracks.

  “If you took that diet mushroom and took the damned flu shot, you turn into a freak. That was why everything went to hell so fast. There were thousands of freaks, in every city, all over the country, and by the time anyone could figure out what was happening, there were millions. Hell, yahanna was popular in the military—helped desk warriors make weight, killed appetite on maneuvers. We were just screwed.

  “Anyway, once you’re a freak, you can pass it with a bite. Get bit by a freak, you go to sleep—everybody does, no exceptions, no matter what. The only question is, will it be fast or slow? A bad bite, if the freak juice hits a vein, you’ve got a couple of hours max. If it’s not so bad and you make it past the first two hours, hell, you might have three, four days if you overdose on caffeine. I knew a captain who stayed awake five days. But sooner or later everybody goes to sleep.”

  Kendra shivered, remembering how Grandpa Joe had been bitten at Mike’s and how Mike’s sons had chased their truck like madmen down the road. Grandpa Joe had turned fast; Dad had been slower, but not by much. Kendra realized that she and Ursalina might be the only two people on the bus who had seen someone they loved bitten by freaks. They hadn’t been squirreled away at a camp in the woods.

  Fingers shaking, Kendra dug her notebook out of her backpack to take notes. No doubt smart people in well-fortified crannies were studying the freak outbreak. Maybe one day she could learn what they had learned, even if it only made a difference to her.

  Ursalina went on: “Once you’re gone, you’re gone. You wake up mad as hell… and fast. Those are the runners. Man, you get a pack of runners after you, those SOBs will chase you for miles. Some of them can talk, a little. And they move in packs, so if you see one, bet your ass there’s a nest nearby.”

  “We’ve figured out that part pretty good,” Terry said quietly.

  “Then there’s the shamblers, right?” Darius said, moving closer. “Like out of the old Romero movies.”

  Piranha and Sonia scooted up to closer seats too, everyone gathering around Ursalina like it was story time. All they needed was popcorn.

  “Yeah,” Ursalin
a said grimly, “but don’t be fooled. They’re slow, but they’re vicious. They hang on like pit bulls. The runners take a quick bite and move on—at least you have time to say good-bye, hug your kid, eat a last meal, whatever. But when a shambler gets you, they don’t just bite you once—they’re hungry. Those are the ones that eat you. If you’re lucky, you bleed out and die. If you survive, you wish you hadn’t. I saw a chick fall asleep on her feet while she was kissing her boyfriend. One second she’s sobbing and crying, the next second…”

  Ursalina stopped, shaking her head. “I put a bullet in her head, but it was too late. That’s how fast it was. She bit his tongue off.”

  Stone silence. Kendra saw Sonia squeeze Piranha’s hand and gaze at him, as if to try to fathom how anything could make her behave that way.

  “They can go on like that for months. Shamblers wander, but they remember a good hunting ground, or places they used to go, so they come back again and again.

  “Then, something happens. Just when you’re like, ‘Dang, you’re not dead yet?’ you might find a few of them in the woods, or in the grass—just standing there. Those are the rooters. That red crap grows out of them, all over their faces, over their skin. We used to go out on rooter shoots, before we figured out it was a waste of bullets. They don’t come out of it, so they’re not the problem.” She paused, thoughtful. “I’ve never seen one come out, anyway.”

  “What’s the longest time you saw a rooter like that?” Kendra said, fascinated.

  Ursalina shrugged. “Maybe a month. There were six of them the medic kept out back just so we could see what would happen. We called it the Freak Garden. None of the other freaks mess with the rooters, not even the shamblers. Doc thought…” She stopped suddenly.

  “What?” Terry said, anxious.

  “Our medic thought once someone gets bitten, it’s like they’re hosting something. In their bodies, you know? The freak juice, the red crap, whatever it is, takes over because they’re… evolving. Doc was taking notes just like her”—Ursalina nodded toward Kendra—“studying it all the time, but we couldn’t find his notes after he got bit on a sweep in Portland. The jerks had Grandma in the basement and didn’t tell us. I guess they were afraid we’d shoot her, and they were right. She was a shambler when she got Doc, so… we never could ask where his notes were.” Ursalina’s voice wavered.

  “Did you have to shoot him too?” Dean said.

  Ursalina met his eyes squarely. “Yeah,” she said finally. “A good guy too. Like a brother to me. Saved more lives than I can count, and went out like a bitch. I don’t give a damn about the infection—if we all dropped dead, so be it. But being forced to shoot good people? Friends? Family? It’s not right. It’s straight-up evil.”

  They all murmured their agreement, but Kendra suspected that only Ursalina and maybe Dean really knew. Dean might have learned what evil was the way Grandpa Joe had learned when he’d seen Mom at the house.

  Kendra stared at her notebook to keep her thoughts quiet. “So that’s four stages,” she said. “Sleepers. Runners. Shamblers. Rooters.”

  “May be even more. Things we don’t know about. Haven’t seen,” Terry said. “Maybe the worst hasn’t even happened yet.”

  That idea brought more silence to the bus. A cold stone seemed to settle deep in Kendra’s stomach.

  She suddenly realized “Josey” Wales had been working himself into a radio frenzy in the background.

  “—and while man’s sins caught up with him, sex and violence and the illusion that love can be bought and sold like jujubes, the truth is that we are all connected in a web of threads, connecting our souls, and that there is nothing any of us can do, anywhere, to anyone, that will not one day return to haunt us. That is the curse, and the blessing, of our existence. We inherit the sins of our fathers, and curse grandchildren unborn with our lusts and depravity. But what you need to know is that there is salvation. Not in the sweet by-and-by, but here and now. That this terrible plague, visited up the world because some of us are so disconnected from our bodies that we needed mushrooms to sate our appetites—”

  “He seems pretty sure about that,” Kendra said behind him.

  “Yeah,” Terry said. “I’m betting that whatever is left of the CDC has bulletins all over the place. What do you know about yahanna mushrooms?”

  “Yahanna?” Kendra asked. Not a question, really. She didn’t have to search her mind very far. “ ’Bout two years ago was the first time I heard about it. An African mushroom, I think. I heard somebody found it in the Congo. I know it wasn’t formally imported—someone snuck a spore print in. I think. And grew it, and liked it and shared it. There were probably a million people using it before I heard of it, but I was just a kid.”

  “You’re still just a kid,” he teased.

  “Really?” Kendra said, and leaned closer to him. “Is that what you think? A kid?” She was breathing those last words into his ear, at a range close enough for him to feel the warmth of her breath.

  “You’re going to get me arrested,” he said.

  “There aren’t any more cops,” she said, her hand resting lightly along the top of his thigh. She was astonished at her own daring. Terry damn near ran the bus off the road.

  “Hey, guys?” Terry said, breaking the spell. “You won’t believe this…”

  Kendra was almost afraid to look through the windshield, and when she did, she wondered if she was only dreaming what she saw. A small billboard painted neatly with stenciled lettering stood on two wooden posts by the side of the road. It was a new sign, unlike any others they had seen on the freeway.

  OFFICIAL CHECKPOINT 2 MI. AHEAD. BE PREPARED TO STOP, it said.

  In each upper corner of the large sign was painted a California flag, with its red star and big brown bear. At the bottom of the sign, dead center, was an unmistakable six-pointed sheriff’s tin star, like something from a western.

  No pirates had painted that sign. Tears crept to Kendra’s eyes.

  One lone sign looked like civilization.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  An hour came and went with no sign of a checkpoint. They passed only stalled cars lining the roadway, so stripped that Terry didn’t bother stopping to search them. The gas tanks yawned wide open, already drained. Last to the party, he thought.

  He had been slightly nervous about the checkpoint but was disappointed when it never appeared. Had it been overrun? He’d imagined a string of towns thriving along the I-5, maybe something like army or police, someone to whom they could report the pirates and warn others.

  So far, nothing. They were as alone as those people trapped in the tree had been. In his mirror, Terry saw Kendra quickly wipe her eye. He tried to think of something comforting to say, but no words came to his mind.

  Terry was bone tired, but he drove on without stopping in case someone was tracking them to retaliate. Piranha’d said that the bus pirate had demanded the girls. Who knew what else they’d been after? It was time to start imagining the worst of anything and everything.

  “You okay?” Terry said softly to Kendra.

  She made a sound like a laugh, but there were tears close behind it.

  “Let’s get out the map,” Terry said. “Staying focused on what’s next helps.”

  Kendra sighed, but she pulled out the maps. With her consultation, Terry drove as far south as Yreka, only forty miles deep into California, and then cut west on a bendy, twisty road called the 96. They traveled through the Six Rivers National Forest area, which was deserted… mostly.

  A few houses were set way back from the road, and they could detect tiny wisps of smoke from a few chimneys. Twice they passed dirt roads with handmade signs: RESIDENTS ONLY. OUTSIDERS WILL BE SHOT ON SIGHT!!

  And he believed it. He also hoped that the people in those little walled-up townlets had found some peace and safety, had not been overrun by pirates or freaks. That thought gave him hope that they might find safety too.

  The signal from the Bay Area was stronger now
, the Reverend Wales inviting people with skills to come to their New World. It was played on a loop, rebroadcast, he supposed, by someone picking up a low-wattage AM signal.

  “And if I’d ever known where the world was going, I would have known, more than any instinct could have told me, that there was something special about those films, something that went beyond their B-movie aspirations…”

  Their AAA road map said it was about a hundred miles to a town called McKinleyville. They were losing daylight but making good progress. The road ahead had been plowed of cars.

  Kendra was sitting on the seat just behind him, as usual. She liked to hang close, and he didn’t mind. They didn’t talk much, but conversation was hard. Any talk about the past—movies, concerts, family—always led to long silences and a dull stomachache. Once the story had been told, it didn’t bear repeating.

  Ten miles outside of Yreka, a barricade appeared up ahead, brightly painted sawhorses protected by three men with shotguns.

  A spray-painted sign on the sawhorse read SLOW DOWN & STOP.

  The shotguns made it official.

  “What do we do?” Terry said.

  “Pretty self-explanatory, if you can read,” Ursalina said, walking to the front of the bus, swaying with the rocking as it slowed. “We back up, they might fire. Might be friendly. Probably as scared of us as we are of them.”

  The men wore work shirts and heavy jackets, damp with the cold rain. One of them walked forward as the others watched. Terry had no doubt at all that they were being observed from the sides. The men didn’t seem scared.

  “They look like pirates with a big sign,” Dean said. “To me.”

  Piranha stared out of the window while Sonia clung to his hand, a pistol in her lap. “Nobody do anything crazy,” Piranha said, probably talking to Sonia.

  Despite his misgivings, Terry slowed to a crawl and then stopped. The Blue Beauty’s engines growled like a bear chewing bones. Terry pulled even with the stout, bearded man in the lead position and opened his door. His hunter’s cap was brown camo. Unkempt salt-and-pepper curls fell in a tangle across his shoulders.