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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.”
Rage melted from Kendrick’s face, replaced by bewilderment and the terror of an infant left naked in a snowdrift. Kendrick’s lips quivered violently.
“No, Grandpa Joe. You can stay awake,” he whispered.
“Grab that backpack behind your seat-it’s got a compass, bottled water, jerky, and a flashlight. It’s heavy, but you’ll need it. And take your Remington. There’s more ammo for it under your seat. Put the ammo in the backpack. Do it now.”
Kendrick sobbed, reaching out to squeeze Joe’s arm. “P-please, Grandpa Joe…”
“Stop that goddamned crying!” Joe roared, and the shock of his voice silenced the boy. Kendrick yanked his hand away, sliding back toward his door again. The poor kid must think he’d crossed over.
Joe took a deep breath. Another wave of dizziness came, and his chin rocked downward. The car swerved slightly before he could pull his head back up. Joe’s pain was easing, and he felt stoned, as if he were on acid. He hadn’t driven far enough yet. They were still too close to Mike’s boys. So much to say…
Joe kept his voice as even as he could. “There were only two people who could put up a better fight than me, and that was your mom and dad. They couldn’t do it, not even for you. That tells me I can’t, either. Understand?”
His tears miraculously stanched, Kendrick nodded.
READ REVELATIONS, a billboard fifty yards ahead advised in red letters. Beside the billboard, the road forked into another highway. Thank Jesus.
The words flew from his mouth, nearly breathless. “I’ll pull off when we get to that sign, at the crossroads. When the truck stops, run. Hear me? Fast as you can. No matter what you hear…don’t turn around. Don’t stop. It’s twenty miles to Centralia, straight south. There’s National Guard there, and caravans. Tell them you want to go to Devil’s Wake. That’s where I’d go. When you’re ru
“Yes, sir,” Kendrick said in a sad voice, yet still eager to be commanded.
The truck took control of itself, no longer confined to its lane or the road, and it bumped wildly as it drove down the embankment. Joe’s leg was too numb to keep pressing the accelerator, so the truck gradually lost speed, rocking to a stop, nose down, its headlights lost in weeds. Feeling in his arms was nearly gone now, too.
“I love you, Grandpa Joe,” he heard his grandson say. Or thought he did.
“Love you, too, Little Soldier.”
Still here. Still here.
“Now, go. Go.”
Joe heard Kendrick’s car door open and slam before he could finish.
He turned his head to watch Kendrick, to make sure he was doing as he’d been told. Kendrick had the backpack and his gun as he stumbled away from the truck, ru
With trembling fingers, Joe opened the glove compartment, digging out his snub-nose.38, his favorite gun. He rested the cold metal between his lips, past his teeth. He was breathing hard, sucking at the air, and he didn’t know if it was the toxin or his nerves working him. He looked for Kendrick again, but he couldn’t see him at this angle.
Now. Do it now.
It seemed that he heard his own voice whispering in his ear.
I can win. I can win. I saved my whole fucking squad. I can beat this thing…
Joe sat in the truck feeling alternating waves of heat and cold washing through him. As long as he could stay awake…
He heard the voice of old Mrs. Reed, his sixth-grade English teacher; saw the faces of Little Bob and Eddie Kevner, who’d been standing beside him when the bouncing Betty blew. Then he saw Cassie in her wedding dress, giving him a secret gaze, as if to ask if it was all right before she pledged her final vows at the altar.
Then in the midst of the images, some he didn’t recognize.
Something red, drifting through a trackless cosmos. Alive, yet not alive. Intelligent but unaware. He’d been with them all along, those drifting spore-strands gravitating toward a blue-green planet with water and soil…filtering through the atmosphere…rest…home…grow…
A crow’s mournful caw awakened Joe, but not as much of him as had slipped into sleep. His vision was tinged red. His world, his heart, was tinged red. What remained of Joe knew that it was in him, awakening, using his own mind against him, dazzling him with its visions while it took control of his motor nerves.
He wanted to tear, to rend. Not killing. Not eating. Not yet. There was something more urgent, a new voice he had never heard before. Must bite.
Panicked, he gave his hand an urgent command: Pull the trigger.
But he couldn’t. He’d come this close and couldn’t. Too many parts of him no longer wanted to die. The new parts of him only wanted to live. To grow. To spread.
Still Joe struggled against himself, even as he knew struggle was doomed. Little Soldier. Must protect Little Soldier. Must…
Must…
Must find boy.
Kendrick had been ru
Grandpa Joe had been hunched over the steering wheel, eyes open so wide that the effort had changed the way his face looked. Kendrick thought he’d never seen such a hopeless, helpless look on anyone’s face. If he had been able to see Mom and Dad from the safe room, that was how they would have looked, too.