Free Devil’s Wake by Steven Barnes, Tananarive Due Page B

her jacket pockets. Some wadded-up toilet paper from the safe room in Longview was still in there, a souvenirfrom her house. Kendra clung to the wad, squeezing her hand into a fist.
    “We do this right, we’ll be back in less than an hour,” Grandpa Joe said. He spit, as if the cigarette had come apart in his mouth. “Forty-five minutes.”
    Forty-five minutes. That wasn’t bad. Forty-five minutes, then they’d be back.
    Kendra stared at the cabin in the rearview mirror until the trees hid it from her sight.
    As usual, the road was empty. Grandpa Joe’s rutted dirt road spilled onto the highway after a half mile, and they jounced past darkened, abandoned houses. Kendra saw three stray dogs trot out of the open door of a pink two-story house on the corner. They looked well fed. She’d never seen that door open before, and she wondered whose dogs they were. And what they’d been eating.
    Suddenly, Kendra wished she’d stayed back at Dog-Girl’s. Dog-Girl was from England and Kendra couldn’t always understand her, but she liked being behind that high, strong fence. She liked Ringo and Prince Edward and Lady Di, the old lady’s pit bulls. She tried not to think about Windsor and Muppet and… she’d forgotten the names. The ones that were gone now. Maybe Dog-Girl had given them away.
    They passed tree farms, with all the trees growing the same size, identical, and Kendra enjoyed watching their trunks pass in a blur. She was glad to be away from the empty houses.
    “Get me a station,” Grandpa Joe said. The radio was Kendra’s job. The radio hissed and squealed up and down the FM dial, so Kendra tried AM next. Grandpa Joe’s truck radio wasn’t good for anything. The multiband at the cabin was better. A man’s voice came right away, a shout so loud it was like screaming.
    “… this isn’t one of my damned movies, not some rancid Hollywood concoction, although they sat back and let it happen, made it happen with their filth and violence, demeaning life and extolling death…”
    Joseph Wales, broadcasting from someplace down San Francisco way, picked up and rebroadcast by some local wildcat station. She’d liked him better when he was making movies.
    “Turn that bull crap off,” Grandpa Joe snapped. Kendra hurried to turn the knob, and the voice was gone. “Don’t you believe a word of that, you hear me? That’s b-u-double-l bull crap. Things are bad now, but they’ll get better once we get a fix on this thing. Anything can be beat, believe you me. I ain’t givin’ up, and neither should you. That’s givin’-up talk.”
    The next voices were a man and a woman who sounded so peaceful that Kendra wondered what they were smoking.
    “… mobilization at the Vancouver Barracks. That’s from the commander of the Washington National Guard. So you see,” the man said, “there are orchestrated efforts. There has been progress in the effort to reclaim Portland and even more in points north. The Barracks are secure, and running survivors to the islands twice a week. Look at Rainier. Look at Astoria. In California, you have Domino Falls… and even Devil’s Wake.”
    Grandpa grunted in happy surprise, grinning. “Devil’s Wake! Your dad’s aunt Stella runs the library there, ’less she retired. She nabbed me a Paul Laurence Dunbar original edition, 1903. Bet Devil’s Wake made out fine, an island like that.”
    “As long as you stay away from the large urban centers, there are dozens of pockets where people are safe and life is going on.”
    “Oh, yes,” the woman said. “Of course there are.”
    “There’s a learning curve. That’s what people don’t understand.”
    “Absolutely.” The woman sounded medicated.
    “Amen!” Grandpa Joe slapped his steering wheel. “Devil’s Wake! That’s somewhere we could go, Kendra. If we stored enough gas…”
    Kendra didn’t like the idea of going anywhere, island or not. Why should they move, when they never heard fingers scrabbling against their