Kendrick stared at him, assessing: He seemed all right. He was sweating and bleeding, but he must be all right if he was driving the truck. You couldn’t drive if you were one of them, could you? Grandpa Joe was fine. He said he was.
Mom and Dad hadn’t been fine after a while, but they had warned him. They had told him they were getting sleepy, and they all knew getting sleepy right away meant you might not wake up. Or if you did, you’d be changed. They’d made him promise not to open the door to the safe room, even for them.
No matter what. Not until you hear the danger word.
Kendrick felt warm liquid on the seat beneath him, and he gasped, thinking Grandpa Joe might be bleeding all over the seat. Instead, when he looked down, Kendrick saw a clear puddle between his legs. His jeans were dark and wet, almost black. It wasn’t blood. He’d peed on himself, like a baby.
“Are you sleepy?” Kendrick said.
Grandpa Joe shook his head, but Kendrick thought he’d hesitated first, just a little. Grandpa Joe’s eyes were on the road half the time, on the rearview mirror the rest. “How long before your mom and dad got sleepy?”
Kendrick remembered Dad’s voice outside of the door, announcing the time: “It’s nine o’clock, Cass.” Worried it was getting late. Worried they should get far away from Kendrick and send for Grandpa Joe to come get him. Kendrick heard them talking outside the door plain as day; for once, they hadn’t tried to keep him from hearing.
“A few minutes,” Kendrick said softly. “Five. Or ten.”
Grandpa Joe went back to chewing his lip. “What happened?”
Kendrick didn’t know what happened. He’d been in bed when he heard Mom say their neighbor Mrs. Shane was knocking at the window. All he knew was that Dad came into his room, shouting and cradling his arm. Blood oozed from between Dad’s fingers. Dad pulled him out of bed, yanking Kendrick’s arm so hard that it popped, pulling him to his feet. In the living room, he’d seen Mom crouching far away, by the fireplace, sobbing with a red face. Mom’s shirt was bloody, too.
At first, Kendrick had thought Dad had hurt Mom, and now Dad was mad at him, too. Dad was punishing him by putting him in the safe room.
“They’re in the house, Kendrick. We’re bitten, both of us.”
After the door to the safe room was closed, for the first time Kendrick had heard somebody else’s footsteps. Then, that scream.
“They stayed for ten minutes, maybe. Not long. Then they said they had to leave. They were getting sleepy, and they were scared to come near me. Then they went away for a long time. For hours,” Kendrick told Grandpa Joe. “All of a sudden I heard Mom again. She was knocking on the door. She asked me where my math homework was. She said, ‘You were supposed to do your math homework.’”
Kendrick had never said the words before. Tears hurt his eyes.
“That was how you knew?” Grandpa Joe said.
Kendrick nodded. Snot dripped from his nose to the front of his jacket, but he didn’t move to wipe it away. Mom had said not to open the door until Grandpa Joe came and said the danger word. No matter what.
“Good boy, Kendrick,” Grandpa Joe said, his voice wavering. “Good boy.”
All this time, Joe had thought it was his imagination.
A gaggle of the freaks had been there in Cass’s front yard waiting for him, so he’d plowed most of them down with the truck so he could get to the door. That was the easy part. As soon as he got out, the ones still standing had surged. There’d been ten of them at least; an old man, a couple of teenage boys, the rest of them women, moving quick. He’d been squeezing off rounds at anything that moved.
“Daddy?”
Had he heard her voice before he’d fired? In the time since, he’d decided the voice was his imagination, because how could she have talked to him, said his name? He’d decided God had created her voice in his mind, a last chance to hear it to make up for the horror of the hole his Glock had just put in her forehead. “Daddy?”
It had been Cass, but it hadn’t been. Her blouse and mouth had been a bloody, dripping mess, and he’d seen stringy bits of flesh caught in her teeth, just like the other freaks. It hadn’t been Cass. Hadn’t been.
People said freaks could make noises. They walked and looked like us. The newer ones didn’t have the red shit showing beneath their skin, and they didn’t start to lose their motor skills for a couple of days-so they could run fast, the new ones. He’d known that. Everybody knew that.
But if freaks could talk, could recognize you…
Then we can’t win.
The thought was quiet in Joe’s mind, from a place that was already accepting it.
Ten minutes, Little Soldier had said. Maybe five.
Joe tried to bear down harder on the gas, and his leg felt like a wooden stump. Still, the speedometer climbed before it began shaking at ninety. He had to get Little Soldier as far as he could from Mike’s boys. Those boys might run all day and all night, from the way they’d looked. He had to get Little Soldier away…
Joe’s mouth was so dry it ached.
“We’re in trouble, Little Soldier,” Joe said.
Joe couldn’t bring himself to look at Kendrick, even though he wanted to so much he was nearly blinded by tears. “You know we’re in trouble, don’t you?” Joe said.
“Yes,” the boy said.
“We have to come up with a plan. Just like we did at your house that time.”
“A danger word?” Kendrick said.
Joe sighed. “A danger word won’t work this time.”
Again, Kendrick was silent.
“Don’t go back to the cabin,” Joe said, deciding that part. “It’s not safe.”
“But Mom and Dad might…”
This time Joe did gaze over at Kendrick. Unless it was imagination, the boy was already sitting as far from him as he could, against the door.
“That was a story I told you,” Joe said, cursing himself for the lie. “You know they’re not coming, Kendrick. You said yourself she wasn’t right. You could hear it. That means they got your father, too. She was out in the front yard, before I got inside. I had to shoot her, Little Soldier. I shot her in the head.”
Kendrick gazed at him wide-eyed, rage knotting his little face.
That’s it, Little Soldier. Get mad.
“I couldn’t tell you before. But I’m telling you now for a reason…”
Just that quick, the road ahead of Joe fogged, doubled. He snapped his head up, aware that he had just lost a moment of time, that his consciousness had flagged.
But he was still himself. Still himself, and that made the difference, right? He was still himself, and just maybe he would stay himself, and beat this damned thing.
If you could stay awake…
Then you might stay alive for another-what? Ten days? He’d heard about someone staying awake that long, maybe longer. Right now he didn’t know if he’d last the ten minutes. His eyes fought to close so hard that they trembled. There’ll be rest enough in the grave. Wasn’t that what Benjamin Franklin had said?
“Don’t you close your eyes, Daddy.” Cass’s voice. He snapped his head around, wondering where the voice had come from. He was seeing things: Cassie sat beside him with her pink lips and ringlets of tight brown hair. For a moment he couldn’t see Little Soldier, so solid she seemed. “You always talked tough this and tough that. Da Nang and Hanoi and a dozen places I couldn’t pronounce. And now the one damned time in your life that it matters, you’re going to sleep?” The accusation in her voice was crippling. “We trusted you, and you walked right into that store and got bitten because you were laughing at Archie Bunker? I trusted you, Daddy.”
Silence. Then: “I still trust you, Daddy.”
Suddenly, Joe felt wide awake again for the last time in his life.
“Listen to me. I can’t give you the truck,” Joe said. “I know we practiced driving, but you might make a mistake and hurt yourself. You’re better off on foot.”