“No matter what,” Mom had said.
Kendrick kept watching while the man retreated behind them. He had to stop watching when he felt nausea pitch in his stomach. He’d been holding his breath without knowing it. His face was cold and sweating, both at once.
“Was that one?” Kendrick whispered.
He hadn’t known he was going to say that either, just like when he’d asked for a Coke. Instead, he’d been thinking about the man’s sign. STILL HERE.
“Don’t know,” Grandpa Joe said. “It’s hard to tell. That’s why you never stop.”
They listened to the radio, neither of them speaking again for the rest of the ride.
Time was, Joseph Earl Davis III never would have driven past anyone on the road without giving them a chance to hop into the bed and ride out a few miles closer to wherever they were going. Hell, he’d picked up a group of six college-age kids and driven them to the Centralia compound back in April.
But Joe hadn’t liked the look of that hitcher. Something about his walk. Or, maybe times were just different. If Kendrick hadn’t been in the car, Jesus as his witness, Joe might have run that poor wanderer down where he walked. An ounce of prevention. That was what it had come to in Joe Davis’s mind. Drastic measures. You just never knew; that was the thing.
EREH LLITS, the man’s sign said in the mirror, receding into a tiny, unreadable blur.
Yeah, I’m still here, too, Joe thought. And not picking up hitchhikers was one way he intended to stay here, thanks a bunch for asking.
Freaks clustered in the cities, but there were plenty of them wandering through the countryside nowadays, actual packs. Thousands, maybe. Joe had seen his first six months ago, coming into Longview to rescue his grandson. His first, his fifth, and his tenth. He’d done what he had to do to save the boy, then shut the memories away where they couldn’t sneak into his dreams. Then drank enough to make the dreams blurry.
A week later, he’d seen one closer to home, not three miles beyond the gated road, not five miles from the cabin. Its face was bloated blue-gray, and flies buzzed around the open sores clotted with that dark red scabby shit that grew under their skin. The thing could barely walk, but it had smelled him, swiveling in his direction like a scarecrow on a pivot.
Joe still dreamed about that one every night. That one had chosen him.
Joe left the freaks alone unless one came at him—that was safest if you were by yourself. He’d seen a poor guy shoot one down in a field, and then a swarm came from over a hill. Some of those fuckers could walk pretty fast, could run, and they weren’t stupid, by God.
But Joe had killed that one, the pivoting one that had chosen him. He’d kill it a dozen times again if he had the chance; it was a favor to both of them. That shambling mess had been somebody’s son, somebody’s husband, somebody’s father. People said freaks weren’t really dead—they didn’t climb out of graves like movie monsters—but they were as close to walking dead as Joe ever wanted to see. Something was eating them from the inside out, and if they bit you, the freak shit would start eating you, too. You fell asleep, and you woke up different.
The movies had that part right, anyway.
As for the rest, nobody knew much. People who met freaks up close and personal didn’t live long enough to write reports about them. Whatever they were, freaks weren’t just a city problem anymore. They were everybody’s problem.
“Can you hold on, Dad? My neighbor’s knocking on the window.”
That’s what Cass had said the last time they’d spoken, then he hadn’t heard any more from his daughter for ten agonizing minutes. The next time he’d heard her voice, he’d barely recognized it, so calm it could be nothing but a mask over mortal terror. “DADDY? Don’t talk—just listen. I’m so sorry. For everything. No time to say it all. They’re here. You need to come and get Kendrick. Use the danger word. Do you hear me, Daddy? And…bring guns. Shoot anyone suspicious. I mean anyone, Daddy.”
“Daddy,” she’d called him. She hadn’t called him that in years.
That day he’d woken up with alarm twisting his gut for no particular reason. That was why he’d raised Cassidy on the shortwave two hours earlier than he usually did, and she’d sounded irritated that he’d called before she was up. “My neighbor’s knocking on the window.”
Joe had prayed he wouldn’t find what he knew would be waiting in Longview. He’d known what might happen to Cass, Devon, and Kendrick the moment he’d found them letting neighbors use the shortwave and drink their water like they’d been elected the Rescue Committee. They couldn’t even name one of the women in their house. That was Cass and Devon for you. Acting like naive fools, and he’d told them as much.