Domino Falls (16 page)

“Aren't you at your limit?” Terry said to the blonde.

She held up clean palms. “Thought I'd save myself for the right man.”

On another night, Kendra might have been more amused than annoyed. Instead, she imagined herself ordering Hipshot to attack Blondie:
Freak, Hippy! Freak!
Kendra thrust herself between them, a boldness she'd never had in her old life.

“You can have this one,” Kendra said, handing the woman her mug. “Bye.”

Kendra hadn't planned to narrow her eyes to homicidal slits, but the blond woman got the message. She took the mug and raised it in a toast to Terry. “Welcome to Threadville,” she said. “Let me know when you graduate from kindergarten.”

Then she walked away like a woman who expected men to watch her walk.

“Why'd you give that to her?” Terry said. “Do you know how much beer costs?”

“I should have thrown it at her.”

“Easy,” Terry said. “No competition here, Kendra.” Terry was gazing at her the way he had at the beach, then leaned forward and kissed her lightly. “Come with me while I hang out with the guys. Where's Sonia?”

Sonia better keep an eye on Piranha. Apparently, the Hungry Dog was more like the Horny Bitch. “In our room,” Kendra said. She didn't want to say that Sonia was choosing clothes for her visit to Wales's mansion. “She said she'd see him later.”

They both left it at that. Talking about Piranha and Sonia might be bad luck.

When they got back to the table, Terry pulled up a chair for her, and everyone scooted around to make room. Piranha leaned over to kiss her cheek. He didn't ask about Sonia.

“When I was growing up here, Domino Falls was just a wide
space in the road,” said the jokester, spiraling off into a history lesson. A Gold Shirt, Kendra realized when she saw his shirt hanging across his chair back. She'd heard the others call him Cliff. “Most of it owned by a Spanish mining family, made a little gold strike back about 1890. They bought some land, named it after a local waterfall that dried up in 1910, when they put in new irrigation. Just a few farms, then the fence manufacturer. Then twenty years ago Wales came in. No one knew who he was, except he had money. Lots of it. And Hollywood flash. He bought up most of the town after his movie came out.”

“How'd that sit with the town?” Piranha said. He was still wearing his shades; despite the new contacts, his eyes still bothered him.

“Didn't have much to say about it,” Cliff said. “He owned most of it by then. We thought he was strange and that his Threadies were wacko. But harmless, overall.”

“What about Freak Day?” Kendra said. “How'd it happen here?”

A hush fell over the table. Cliff's voice grew sober. “We'd heard the news bulletins. San Francisco, Oakland . . . rioting. Lot of traffic on the Five, but how could we believe those stories? It was like something out of a movie.” He sighed. “Then came Manny Cobb. Older guy. Retired dentist. Rotary Club president. Drove his car into a ditch, ran into town biting everyone he found. Another one came through an hour later, and then we were just flat crawling with them. Never thought I'd see anything like it.”

He picked up his mug for a swig, but it was empty. He barely seemed to notice. The mug was just a comfortable habit from before, like the bar.

“How'd you keep clear?” Terry said.

“I locked myself in the basement. Pissed in a bucket for a
week. The freak attack must have wiped out every town for fifty miles.”

“How'd you survive
after
the basement?” Piranha said.

“Not how,” Cliff said. “Who.”

Two other men at the table raised their empty mugs to clank them together.

“Wales,” Cliff and the men said in unison, and Cliff went on: “His estate. They'd been using it for parties . . . role-playing Threadie games. He had high, safe walls. Professional guards. Gates. And he had a school bus—like yours,” he said, nodding at Terry. “Mounted loudspeakers, took it out into the town. Gave cover to the survivors, got them out to the ranch. Took in half the town, maybe two hundred people—the half that survived. And then we took the town back, freak by freak.”

“What's the deal with you guys?” Piranha said. “The Gold Shirts?”

“Gold Shits,” one of the men murmured, and the other chuckled.

“I didn't hear that,” Cliff said. “Shirt's off.”

“Who do you work for?” Kendra said. “Wales or the town?”

“Depends on who you ask,” Cliff said. “But Wales pays me, not the so-called mayor. Wales runs the show here. That's the first thing you better figger out.”

Way ahead of you,
Kendra thought.

“Wales had these idiots he called the Threadie Irregulars. Got all amped up playing war games from his books. So when the world ended, they had contingency plans. They were ready. The ones that weren't total loonbags became the first Gold Shirts. The rest of us earned our way in. Most of the Threadies couldn't fight their way out of a bag of popcorn.”

The table laughed again.

The bar stirred with excitement, heads turning, and Kendra
glanced up to see the Twins saunter through the doorway, arm in arm in arm with Jackie, who walked between them, rolling her hips with every step. The Twins were a memorable sight in their matching bomber jackets. Darius spotted them right away, so they came to the table with Jackie in tow. Cynically, Kendra remembered that Jackie had latched onto the Twins as soon as they walked through the front gate. The blond skank could have learned a thing or two from Jackie. Kendra bet the Twins were learning quite a bit.

“They live and breathe!” Darius said, grinning. Piranha and Terry stood up to greet them with full hugs, like brothers after a long separation. Maybe they were.

But instead of listening to a humorous story Piranha was telling the Twins about a female runner chasing their truck, Kendra watched Jackie lean over Cliff on the other side of the table. Jackie's eyes glinted.

“Well?” she said.

Cliff shrugged. “Well what?”

They sounded like exes having a spat. Jackie pursed her lips and glared. Kendra had to read lips to understand them over the bar chatter.

“What do you expect me to do, Jax?” Cliff said.

“You said you'd ask around.”

“I did ask around, and nobody's heard anything. Just relax. Let Sam ask.”

Jackie made a hissing sound, her face getting red. “You know Sam's just glad to have his shirt. He's not gonna ask questions that'll—”

Cliff leaned closer to her. “. . . makes two of us. Don't do this now. You barely know that girl. Let me buy you a drink.”

“Beer won't fix a broken promise,” Jackie said. “I'm real disappointed, Cliff.”

“Well, you've got plenty of company to cheer you up.”

That pretty much killed conversation, and Kendra knew they were exes for sure. They stared each other down a moment longer before Jackie pulled away and pasted on a bright smile to return to the Twins. Whatever was bothering her, she'd yet to share it with Darius and Dean. With them, she was fun and games.

Kendra felt the same unease she'd felt watching Brownie at the dining hall. She
had
to find out what Jackie and the Gold Shirt had been arguing about.

Kendra followed Jackie into the bar's wood-paneled ladies' room. The two-stall bathroom was surprisingly clean even if the dark was forbidding. The candles near the sink didn't cast light into the stalls, but they had real toilet paper and, more important, actual working toilets.

Kendra forced herself to pee while Jackie stood in the mirror applying makeup. When Kendra washed her hands, Jackie was packing her eyeliner away, ready to go. “Aren't the Twins awesome?” Kendra said, reaching for conversation.

Jackie stared at her with an arched eyebrow, suspicious. “Yeah,” she said finally.

Jackie made a move toward the door, so Kendra blurted, “Do people go missing here a lot? Like Brownie's daughter?”

Jackie froze. Slowly, she turned around to look at Kendra, examining her. “What have you heard?” she said.

“Just . . . what you said at the table. You're looking for someone.”

“A newbie grew on me,” Jackie said. “Rianne. I haven't seen her in weeks.” It was too dark to interpret the look she saw across Jackie's face. “Wales calls them his ambassadors.”

“What kind of ambassadors?”

“Setting up agricultural trades. Weapon and equipment
trades. Spreading Threadie gospel. Wales has small planes, helicopters. He's recruiting people, some of them your age or a little older. Rianne decided to go for training, moved onto Wales's ranch. I haven't talked to her since.”

“What happened to Brownie's daughter?”

“Sissy? Same deal,” Jackie said. “She moved to the ranch to be an ambassador. Rianne kept saying she was gonna be a part of something special the last Friday of the month. Well, that's in a couple of days. I just wanted to talk to her and make sure she doesn't do anything stupid. Girls on the road? It's a bad idea.”

“My friend was invited to the ranch,” Kendra said. “We might go tomorrow.”

Jackie silenced a dripping faucet with a hard twist of her wrist. “Don't get lost there,” Jackie said. “And don't mention my name.” Her voice was ice.

No one wanted to piss off Wales.

“I won't,” Kendra said. “But if you want . . . I can try to ask about Rianne.”

“Wouldn't be smart,” Jackie said. “Asking the wrong questions will get you bounced back to the road. Maybe worse. My brother Sam's a Gold Shirt, but he's a good guy and he's told me stories. Be careful out there. Wales is running his own world.”

Kendra felt a shiver. She should convince Ursalina and Sonia to forget about going to the ranch. No way was
she
going to Threadville's ranch now.

No. Way.

“But if you can,” Jackie went on, her voice pained, “try to find out what's happening around here, maybe for your own good. Then get the hell out of there as fast as you can. And stay out.”

December 22

6:45 a.m.

T
erry
didn't expect good news, but he wasn't ready to give up. He was up early despite his aching arms from lugging scav bags. He'd pulled a thigh muscle during the mad dash from Walmart, so he walked at a slow pace with the others toward the garage. Hipshot trotted ahead, tongue lolling happily.

Despite the early hour, everyone had agreed to go, especially Kendra. She was ready to start up the Blue Beauty and ease on down the road.

Yeah, right.

The others wanted only to retrieve the food, flashlights, and blankets they'd left back in their unheated rooms. Sonia was walking beside Piranha, but they barely looked at each other. Terry had roomed with Piranha again last night. The Twins walked in the rear, and Kendra was interrogating them.

“. . . but she hasn't said
anything
?” Kendra said. “You've been hanging with her nonstop since we got here.”

“Maybe it's girl talk,” Darius said. “If she thought Threadville was such a bummer, she would have told us.”

“Maybe she's keeping her options open,” Kendra said.

Dean whistled a warning. “Play nice.”

“She wants allies,” Kendra said. “The more the merrier.”

Ursalina chuckled and lit a cigarette with a match that popped like a sparkler. “Kid's got it all figured out.”

Damn, Kendra was a pit bull. Terry scooped up an apple he spotted by the side of the road, only brown on a part of one side. He nibbled around the soft parts. It didn't feel like stealing since the fruit was rotting, but Terry kept an eye open for Gold Shirts. The apple was so good that Terry grabbed another one, and the others followed his lead. Fallen apples dotted the roadway, a reminder of how lucky they were. Food to spare!

Kendra sighed. “There are two girls missing—that we
know
of. They're
our
age. And Wales's movies are about weird stuff. Virgin sacrifice—”

“Oh, stop it,” Sonia snapped. “It's not as if a Threadhead OD'd on movies. That's
fantasy.
Come to Wales's ranch and check it out for yourself.”

Piranha threw an apple core at a tree trunk, smashing it. “Yeah, Kendra, and if you're worried about being sacrificed, Terry can give you some antivirginity insurance.”

Everyone except Sonia and Kendra laughed, and Terry's face burned. Kendra was probably embarrassed, so she walked ahead with Hipshot, arms crossed.

“She needs to lighten up,” Dean said. That was pretty funny, coming from him.

“I'll talk to her,” Terry said. At the same time he wondered:
And say what?
Kendra had probably expected him to jump to her defense, so she might be pissed at him too.

Terry caught Piranha's eye and gestured toward Sonia:
What's up?
Piranha shrugged, slowing his pace slightly, allowing Sonia to walk on with Ursalina.

“Whatever,” Piranha said. His eyes still looked irritated, but not nearly as bad. After a hard fight, Terry had convinced him to take out both contacts and let his eyes rest overnight. Piranha said the new contacts were heaven.

“Sonia and her new girlfriend want to hang out and play dress-up for Wales,” Piranha said. “Guess she's trading up. What about you and sister girl?”

Terry shrugged. He'd kissed Kendra good night at her door, but he'd kept it quick because of the staring eyes of other campers. “Time never seems right.”

“Won't hurt my feelings if you get a new roommate.”

Terry warmed himself with the idea of sharing a room with Kendra. Why not?

Trucks rumbled from behind them. Two scav crews were on their way to the city, crammed with six men each. Terry didn't see Cliff today or recognize the crews, but he and Piranha waved and called out good luck. The scavs waved back. The trucks blared music as they whizzed past. One of the newbies on the end looked scared to death.