“Show me your math homework, Kendrick.”
The danger word was the special word he and Grandpa Joe had picked because Grandpa Joe had insisted on it. Grandpa Joe had made a special trip in his truck to tell them something bad could happen to them, and he had a list of reasons how and why. Dad didn’t like Grandpa Joe’s yelling much, but he’d listened. So Kendrick and Grandpa Joe had made up a danger word nobody else in the world knew, not even Mom and Dad.
And he had to wait to hear the danger word, Mom said.
No matter what.
By the time Kendrick dressed, Grandpa was already outside loading the truck, a beat-up navy blue Chevy. Kendrick heard a thud as he dropped a large sack of wrapped jerky in the bed.
Grandpa Joe had taught him how to mix up the secret jerky recipe he hadn’t even given Mom: soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce, fresh garlic cloves, dried pepper, onion powder. He’d made sure Kendrick was paying attention while strips of deer meat soaked in that tangy mess for two days and then spent twelve hours in the slow-cook oven. Grandpa Joe had also made him watch as he cut the deer open and its guts flopped to the ground, all gray and glistening. “Watch, boy. Don’t turn away. Don’t be scared to look at something for what it is.”
Grandpa Joe’s deer jerky was almost as good as the lumberjack breakfast, and Kendrick’s mouth used to water for it. Not anymore.
His jerky loaded, Grandpa Joe leaned against the truck, lighting a brown cigarette. Kendrick thought he shouldn’t be smoking.
“Ready?”
Kendrick nodded. His hands shook a little every time he got in the truck, so he hid his hands in his jacket pockets. Some wadded-up toilet paper from the safe room in Longview was still in there, a souvenir. Kendrick clung to the wad, squeezing his 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.
Kendrick stared at the cabin in the rearview mirror until the trees hid it from his sight.
The road was empty, as usual. Grandpa Joe’s rutted dirt road spilled onto the highway after a half-mile, and they jounced past darkened, abandoned houses. Kendrick saw three stray dogs trot out of the open door of a pink two-story house on the corner. He’d never seen that door open before, and he wondered whose dogs they were. He wondered what they’d been eating.
Suddenly, Kendrick wished he’d stayed back at Dog-Girl’s. She was from England and he couldn’t always understand her, but he liked being behind her fence. He liked Popeye and Ranger and Lady Di, her dogs. He tried not to think about the ones that were gone now. Maybe she’d given them away.
They passed tree farms, with all the trees growing the same size, identical, and Kendrick enjoyed watching their trunks pass in a blur. He was glad to be away from the empty houses.
“Get me a station,” Grandpa Joe said.
The radio was Kendrick’s job. Unlike Dad, Grandpa Joe never kept the radio a secret.
The radio hissed and squealed up and down the FM dial, so Kendrick tried AM next. Grandpa Joe’s truck radio wasn’t good for anything. The shortwave at the cabin was better.
A man’s voice came right away, a shout so loud it was like screaming.
“…and in those days shall men seek death and shall not find it…and shall desire to die and death shall flee from them…”
“Turn that bullshit off,” Grandpa Joe snapped. Kendrick 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 bullshit. 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 Kendrick wondered where they were. What calm places were left? “…mobilization at the Vancouver Armory. 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 Armory is secure, and running survivors to the islands twice a week. Look at Rainier. Look at Devil’s Wake. 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 absurdly cheerful.
“Everybody keeps harping on Longview…” The man said “Longview” as if it were a normal, everyday place. Kendrick’s stomach tightened when he heard it. “…but that’s become another encouraging story. Contrary to rumors, there is a National Guard presence. There are limited food supplies. There’s a gated community in the hills housing over four hundred. Remember, safety in numbers. Any man, woman, or teenager who’s willing to enlist is guaranteed safe lodging. Fences are going up, roads barricaded. We’re getting this under control. That’s a far cry from what we were hearing even five, six weeks ago.”
“Night and day,” the cheerful woman said. Her voice trembled with happiness.
Grandpa Joe reached over to rub Kendrick’s head. “See there?” he said.
Kendrick nodded, but he wasn’t happy to imagine that a stranger might be in his bed. Maybe it was another family with a little boy. Or twins.
But probably not. Dog-Girl said the National Guard was long gone and nobody knew where to find them. “Bunch of useless bloody shit-heads,” she’d said-the first time he’d heard the little round woman cuss. Her accent made cussing sound exotic. If she was right, dogs might be roaming through his house, too, looking for something to eat.
“…There’s talk that a Bay Area power plant is up again. It’s still an unconfirmed rumor, and I’m not trying to wave some magic wand here, but I’m just making the point-and I’ve tried to make it before-that life probably felt a lot like this in Hiroshima.”
“Yes,” the woman said. From her voice, Hiroshima was somewhere very important.
“Call it apples and oranges, but put yourself in the place of a villager in Rwanda. Or an Auschwitz survivor. There had to be some days that felt exactly the way we feel when we hear these stories from Seattle and Portland, and when we’ve talked to the survivors…”
Just ahead, along the middle of the road, a man was walking.
Kendrick sat straight up when he saw him, balling up the tissue wad in his pocket so tightly that he felt his fingernails bite into his skin. The walking man was tall and broad-shouldered, wearing a brick-red backpack. He lurched along unsteadily. From the way he bent forward, as if bracing into a gale, Kendrick guessed the backpack was heavy.
He hadn’t ever seen anyone walking on this road.
“Don’t you worry,” Grandpa Joe said. Kendrick’s neck snapped back as Grandpa Joe speeded up his truck. “We ain’t stoppin’.”
The man let out a mournful cry as they passed, waving a cardboard sign. He had a long, bushy beard, and as they passed, his eyes looked wide and wild. Kendrick craned his head to read the sign, which the man held high in the air: STILL HERE, the sign read.
“He’ll be all right,” Grandpa Joe said, but Kendrick didn’t think so. No one was supposed to go on the roads alone, especially without a car. Maybe the man had a gun, and maybe they would need another man with a gun. Maybe the man had been trying to warn them something bad was waiting for them ahead.
But the way he walked…
“No matter what,” Mom had said.
Kendrick kept watching while the man retreated behind them. He had to stop watching when he felt nausea pitch in his stomach. He’d been holding his breath without knowing it. His face was cold and sweating, both at once.