Domino Falls (3 page)

They followed him. First they passed a play set that looked almost new: swings and a small slide. Next to that, a tree house with both wood-slat ladders nailed into a bare-limbed apricot tree, and a knotted rope that looked an inch and a half thick, now swaying in the breeze. All of it looked like it might have been constructed since Freak Day.

Past the tree, Kendra finally saw the stranger's family. Three of them sat at a large red cedar picnic table that had been draped with a gaily-colored tablecloth; two small girls and a woman with frizzy yellow hair. “One . . . two . . .
three
 . . .” the girls were saying in piping unison, and dissolving into giggles. “One . . . two . . .
three
 . . .”

The others didn't see their approach because their backs were to them, all of them wearing identical birthday hats, oblivious to the world around them. A small evergreen beside the table was strung with tinsel and candy canes, and topped with a silver
star. The table was piled with gaudily wrapped boxes and what looked like mailing tubes.

How had this family created an oasis when everything else was gone? The girls were laughing and eating cake with their fingers, not waiting for their father to cut it.

Kendra was close enough to Terry to hear him draw a startled breath. “I don't know if I want to laugh or cry,” he whispered to her. Kendra wanted to do both. Her hand sought his, their fingers twining together. Everything seemed so . . . normal. As if the devastation that had touched the rest of the world hadn't quite penetrated here.

But not quite. What was it? Suddenly, Kendra knew, and felt a chill: Why were they celebrating outside the house? The December air was cold, and only the father was wearing a jacket. The others were barely dressed, practically in rags. What the—

The sudden sound of Hipshot's urgent barking made Kendra jump, startled. The dog had followed them after all, standing between them and the picnic table.

“I knew it . . .” Ursalina said, taking a step back. If not for the tremor in her voice, she'd have sounded triumphant.

Now that she was only twenty feet from the table, Kendra was close enough to see the cords wound around the family's feet.

Dean swung his rifle up. “What the hell is going on?”

“Just a party,” the little man said, and when he turned, he seemed too bright, too happy. Why hadn't they seen it? “Every day, we have a party. Can't wait for Christmas.”

Their kids and the mother turned toward them, their private party disturbed. Their eyes were reddish, their faces threaded with tiny vines, like rogue veins, growing where no veins should grow. All three tried to lunge to their feet, but they were held in place by cables fastened to their waists. They hissed and
thrashed, but the girls made laughing sounds. “One . . . two . . .
three
 . . .” they said in unison, twins even now.

The girls might have been pretty once, but no more. Their round cheeks and matted blond hair were ghoulish. Kendra stood behind Terry, who had pulled out his Browning 9mm. Sometimes freaks could talk! After the way she'd lost Grandpa Joe, Kendra didn't think she could ever forget it, but those girls had fooled her. What if one of them had been too close?

Everyone who'd brought a gun had it trained on a member of this bizarre family. Terry's was on the stranger. “What do you want from us?” Terry said, raising his voice to be heard over Hipshot's ferocious growling and barking. “Why'd you bring us back here?”

“The girls were born on Christmas Day,” the man said. Now Kendra could hear his pain, grief, shock. “We've always celebrated all month, so they wouldn't feel cheated. Can you help me give them their present? I know it's what they'd want.”

Terry backed up a step, and Kendra gladly retreated with him. Piranha cursed, and they formed an instinctive half-circle to protect themselves, ready to fire and flee. His family was straining at the end of their ropes now, mouths stretched wide, yearning, fingers questing.

“What present?” Terry said, his voice unsteady. “Man, you're crazy. You can't help them. Let us make sure you're not bit, and you can come with us. Leave them here.”

The man shook his head, insistent. “I need you to help me give them their present,” he said, and his voice broke. “I can't do it. Can't you see? Look at them! Listen to my girls laughing! They sound exactly the same. I want to, but . . . I can't.”

Those might have been his sanest words yet, Kendra realized. Her throat swelled with grief for a family she'd never known.

“Let's get the hell out of here,” Sonia said, tugging on Piranha.

But Piranha didn't move. He was staring at Terry. And Ursalina. For the first time Kendra could remember, they didn't have a plan. They didn't know what to do.

“She's right,” Kendra said. “Let's go. We shouldn't have stopped.”

Terry shook his head, taking another step back. “I'm sorry,” he told the pleading man. “We can't help you.”

But Kendra's eyes were drawn to Ursalina, who was gazing at the kids with curled lips and dead eyes. Then Ursalina looked toward Dean, and their eyes locked with a spark of communication. A pair of barely perceptible nods between them, in a secret tongue only they seemed to know.

Ursalina, after all, had fought in a war when her National Guard had fallen to an army of freaks. And Dean's war had followed him to his dreams; the war he'd fought at home.

“I can do it,” Dean said.

Ursalina nodded. “Yeah. We can handle this.”

Dean looked at Darius, who shook his head. All jokes were far from Darius's face. “Not me, bro,” Darius said. “I'm going back to my bike.”

“Go on,” Dean said, nodding. “You and the others wait for us.”

“Sir?” Terry said gently to the man. “Step around front with us, please. You don't want to be here right now.”

Kendra dared to hope that if she made it back to the bus fast enough and covered her ears, she could pretend she'd never seen the bizarre Christmas scene in the backyard. But she never had the chance.

The stranger didn't come toward Terry. Instead, he rushed to the picnic table, toward his wife and children, his arms wide to embrace them. All Kendra saw was the ecstatic grin on his
face. “I'm sorry, Melissa,” he said. “I'm sorry, Caitlin and Cathy. Merry Christmas, angels. Happy birthday!”

For an instant, Kendra thought they were only trying to hug him too; they were all wrapped in an iron embrace, a tangle of frantic limbs.

But Kendra closed her eyes when she saw their teeth.

By the time the gunshots finally came from Ursalina and Dean, she had been praying for the sound of death.

F
or
two miles, they drove along a body of water labeled the Domino Falls Reservoir. Then, just as the map said, they were entering the town itself; a hand-painted sign read
WELCOME TO THREADVILLE
.

Terry's hope surged, pushing aside the recent, toxic memories. Was it actually possible that this was a real town? Mostly dry, brown farmland spread out on either side of them, not much visible from the road. And everything was fenced in, a triple barrier. Strings of barbed wire gleamed like silver spiderwebs in the sunlight. Terry thought the fencing was great, as long as it wasn't a cage.

“Guess we better like it here,” Piranha said.

They passed a large white pickup truck parked between the barbed rows, and six hard-faced men busy burning freaks off the fence with flamethrowers that resembled back-mounted insecticide sprayers. Terry kept the Beauty moving so he wouldn't press his luck, but he couldn't help slowing down to
watch the freaks slowly twisting in the concertina wire. One was almost cocooned, his labors ensnaring him more deeply in the razored strands. The three men spoke to one another without cheer.

From the bus, they all watched the flames like kids hypnotized by fireworks. The freaks twitched and twisted, the motions mild at first and then frenzied as the fire climbed their bodies and finally enshrouded them.

“
That's
what I'm talking about,” Piranha muttered.

The freaks moaned loudly, more in confusion than pain. Terry doubted that freaks could feel pain the way humans did; they ignored their injuries too readily during a chase. But they seemed to know when they were dying. He could
hear
that they knew it. A . . . sadness? As if they were apologizing to someone or something for not fulfilling their proper function. A flesh-creeping sound. Then they were twitching, smoking marionettes.

Behind him, the others whooped and high-fived.

“Yep—I like it here,” Piranha said. “It's got a real homey feel.”

“Hallelujah,” Ursalina said.

Terry caught Kendra's eyes in the mirror just as she was looking for his. They both knew there was nothing joyful about burning flesh, infected or not.

He wasn't about to shed any tears, but still . . .

Hell, that could be
his
body burning up there. Any of theirs. Any of them could.

The men backed away from the fence, and one of them turned around and saw the Blue Beauty. Terry slowed their vehicle to a crawl to demonstrate peaceful intentions. He waved to them, his expression sober. Ursalina gave them a thumbs-up through the window, but they didn't return it. Kendra waved at the men,
then Darius and Dean on their bikes. No one seemed surprised to see newcomers or the condition of their bus. As if they were part of an official procession, they continued down the road.

Further on, at least two hundred people were crowded on both sides of the asphalt, ragged tents clumped around cook fires. Heads turned to watch the arrival of their bus. A couple of dogs yapped, racing to snap at their rear bumper. A man who looked at least eighty leaned on a twisted makeshift crutch as he scooped a cup of water out of a rusty barrel. He glared at Terry as they rumbled past. Would any of them be allowed inside?

A man in a bright yellow shirt waved them on, and Terry was relieved. The camp was better than nothing, but he'd expected more—and he definitely wanted to camp inside the fences, not outside. Terry kept driving.

They passed two barbed-wire gates, guarded by three-man rifle teams. The guards were polite but firm, all of them decked out in identical black jeans and golden shirts buttoned to their collars. There were no grins or “How can I help yous,” and Terry figured there would be no “Have a nice day” when they were through.

They had finally reached the outskirts of Domino Falls . . . the place people called Threadville.

Beyond the fence, a rusting metal office desk was shadowed by a rippling
canopy. The man at the desk was wrinkled and sun-beaten, probably at least seventy, with short-cropped white hair. The purple tattoo on his tautly muscled bicep read
ONLY THE STRONG SURVIVE,
and his eyes were like a marine sniper's. He wore a bright copper shirt, almost the color of gold.

Dean and Darius were drawing a crowd. Four guys in the
same bright yellow button-down shirts circled the Twins with sawed-off shotguns resting across their shoulders. Three of the men wore cowboy hats, which gave the picture an unpleasant light. The Twins sat astride their bikes with their jet-black hair and a long history written all over their faces, ignoring the men in the yellow shirts.
Never seen Native Americans before?

A busty redhead in a tattered denim jacket stared holes through the Twins, caressing the butt of a Magnum worn in a sun-cracked leather holster slung low on her ample hips.

Other men in yellow shirts waited in the distance, all of them wearing guns in holsters, some carrying rifles or shotguns—they stood by the fences or lined the road farther beyond the checkpoint on the way to town. Kendra wondered who they were, what the yellow shirts meant. Kendra's father had loved talking about mob mentality, and that prison experiment at Stanford where the students who were given authority over their classmates morphed into Nazis. Why should this be any different?

Hipshot bounded out of the bus, heading for the nearest shrub to raise his leg. Without a vote or a conversation, Terry became their official spokesman. The old guy at the gate asked rapid-fire questions.

“Your business?”

“Trade and shelter,” Terry said. “We've been on the road for—”

The gatekeeper didn't wait for the rest. “Anybody else on that bus?”

Terry shook his head. “Just us.”

The old guy gestured, and one of the men in the yellow shirts went to the open bus door and climbed inside without an invitation. They saw him walk up and down the aisles. He
emerged a moment later, climbing out with a curt nod toward the gatekeeper. The old guy was satisfied.

“You have trade?” the old guy said. “Skills?”

“We're willing to work. Whatever it takes. We have food and some tools.”

“Can any of you shoot?”

“Hell, yeah,” Piranha said, and they all chimed in. Kendra knew more about shooting than she'd ever imagined.

“Weapons?” the man said.

“We have rifles, pistols, and ammunition,” Terry said.

“What else you carrying on this wreck?”

Kendra bristled. The Blue Beauty might be a wreck, but she was
their
wreck.

“Canned and dried food, mostly,” Terry said. “MREs. A couple drops of gas.”

If Terry had won the old guy over, it didn't show in the Grim Reaper set of his jaw. He scanned them one by one, his gaze lingering on their eyes.

“Anyone bit?” he said. “Scratched? Broken skin? You look tired, son.” His eyes had come back to Terry, resting there.

“I've been driving a bus ten days straight, and you can see we got shot all to hell . . . so yeah, I'm tired.”

“We're all tired,” Ursalina said, impatient.

The guy shot her a
Was I talking to you?
look that curled her lips, but she shut up.