Devil’s Wake Read Free Page B

did a pretty decent job of sponging out the semicircle of nasty bite dimples. It was bleeding, but not rapidly. No arteries, then. “Damn it! Damn it,” Vern murmured, laying his head back against the seat. “I want to get back, clean this up, hit the sack. Then first thing, Molly’s a nurse. She can take care of me.” He closed his eyes. “I’m sleepy. Tired.” He closed his eyes.
    Piranha nudged him with his elbow. “You stay awake until Molly says it’s all right for you to sleep. Deal?”
    “Tomorrow. We got to get the fish back,” Vern moaned. “Damn.”
    Piranha and Terry exchanged a dubious glance. “I don’t know,but maybe you’ve got a little concussion or something,” Piranha said. “Have some coffee,” and offered him a drink from the thermos.
    “I’m scared,” Vern said quietly. “Something’s wrong. I feel it.”
    Vern drank coffee the whole way back, and Piranha kept him talking. They were listening to the radio, and the usual rants against socialist liberals were being interrupted by news broadcasts suggesting that while Pike Street had been terrible, there were at least ten other incidents across the city and south to SeaTac, involving at least twenty bug-nuts biters. It was suggested that anyone bitten should seek medical attention.
    Well, Terry supposed first thing in the morning would be good enough. And Vern said to see a doctor within the next couple of days, maybe get a tetanus shot. And after all, Molly was a nurse. All in all, heading back to Meadows sounded like a fine idea to Terry.
    He cursed to himself.
    Dammit! He’d forgotten the doughnuts.

FOUR
    7:35 p.m. Longview, Washington
    I have to write this down because Mr. Kaplan says writers should capture the moments in our lives, good and bad, and this is a day in history like 9/11, but worse, because it happened right in front of me.
    I’m writing this in my room. The door downstairs is locked but there is shooting outside. I smell smoke from houses only a few streets away. My hand is shaking so much I can barely write this, but I’m afraid NOT to write this because somebody has to. People are going crazy. At first we thought it was just in L.A., and then just in Portland, but on the news they’re saying it’s happening all over the country and nobody knows why.
    I had to stop and take a nap. They’re saying not to let bit people go to sleep, but I wasn’t bit. Hope it’s all right if I just curl up and let the world go away for a while. When I’m awake, I only cry or stare at the ceiling. No appetite, and Mom thinks if I keep writing I might not be so scared and depressed like the people on the radio talking about Portland General. Or maybe I should say Portland in general. The country in general.
    I’ll write about what happened at the hospital one day, but my hand starts shaking every time I think about it, so I’ll start with how we got the hell away from there.
    Mom had to drive because Dad hurt his ankle. The bite’s just a scratch, a nothing nick through his sock, but he said his foot felt like it was getting numb and he was sleepy, just like they’re saying on the radio. “You need a hospital, Dev,” Mom said. We just gave her a look, and almost laughed. Almost. We could only go home.
    On the road, people were driving like they were drunk, and the radio was babbling about how crankheads were biting people. Maybe twenty cases across Portland, and hundreds of cases across the country. I heard the word “terrorist” fifty times in thirty minutes. Somebody else said something about the flu shot. (Thank you, God, for saving me from that shot. I’m not a psychic, but I knew I shouldn’t get it.) The radio was all dueling doctors, this expert talking over that expert, and nobody sure of anything. Some guy with a southern accent said that it wasn’t the flu shot, blaming that yahanna mushroom diet. Bottles of the stuff had been found in the houses of lots of the biters. Yahanna was that mushroom that kills