Domino Falls (23 page)

A whine came from beside her bed, and Hipshot's muzzle appeared. Kendra wrapped her arm around his neck.

“I'm okay, boy,” she said. “I'm okay.” After she'd said it a half-dozen times, she finally believed it.

She was at the motel. Safe.

A figure was curled beside her on the bed, and she almost reached out to touch Terry when she remembered that she wasn't in Terry's room. She had decided to go bunk with the girls, to make sure Sonia found her way back. Ursalina was snoring in the next bed, so it was Sonia in bed beside her. The Con Goddess had made it home after all.

Kendra gazed at the digital watch Terry had given her: four a.m. At least Sonia had made it safely back from her adventures with the Gold Shirts. She hadn't disappeared into Wales's mansion like the other missing girls. Yet.

Kendra was about to rest her head on her pillow when she heard soft crying beside her. “Sonia?” Kendra said, touching her shoulder. “What happened?”

Sonia's only answer was a sob.

December 23

At dawn, they had their first Council since the quarantine house. Ursalina
had
hunted down Dean and Darius and brought them too, all of them crowded into the girls' room. The sun wasn't quite up, so they looked ghostly in the light from two fluorescent battery lamps.

Terry felt nauseous from Sonia's story. He'd asked her to keep her voice down a dozen times while she told them what she'd seen at the ranch. “Remember,” Terry reminded them again. “The walls are thin.”

“You're sure the guy's dead?” Piranha said.

“I know what dead looks like,” Sonia said.

They looked at each other, trying to see what the others were thinking. Terry combed his hair away from his face slowly, his habit since he was a kid when he needed to think. His mind
raced with possibilities, none of them good. He could feel Kendra staring at him, but he didn't look at her.

“Makes you wonder how often people get shot around here,” Terry said.

Sonia sighed, wiping tears from her face. “Chris swore he'd never heard about anybody shot at the mansion,” she said.

“Chris?” Piranha said pointedly.

Silence chilled the room until Sonia went on, ignoring Piranha's question. “He said there are shootings in town, but it's the usual stuff—domestic disturbances, arguments. They have a Citizens Patrol and people get expelled. Never anything involving Wales.”

“It involves Wales now,” Kendra said.

Darius looked at Kendra. “We asked Jackie about Rianne, and yeah, she's not happy about it. But she didn't want to come to this meeting. Her advice: Don't make waves.”

“Did we invite her?” Sonia said. “Did we ask for her advice?”

“A man is dead,” Kendra said.

“Who isn't dead these days?” Darius said.

Ursalina moved to the front of the room. “I was just thinking the same thing as Darius.” She angled for lead position, so Terry stepped aside to make room for her. “So what if a couple of grown women are in there with Wales, or a drunk guy shows up at Wales's gate? That's our business? Why?”

“They
shot
him, Ursalina,” Kendra said, angry.

“I listened to Sonia's story like my life depended on it,” Ursalina said. “She said a weapon-wielding man got shot when he tried to break through the gate. Are you kidding me? That's way more courtesy than we got in my neighborhood. Don't make him a martyr. Get the whole story.”

Terry hated to admit it, but he wished he'd said it first. Were his feelings for Kendra muddling his thinking? Kendra's
eyes begged Terry to back her up, but Terry looked away. “Ursalina's right,” he said. “Sonia saw a guy shot in front of her—that's hard. But we don't know enough to say what's going on.” Kendra's look was scathing, a look that said she would deal with him later. Or not.

“I know you won't believe me,” Kendra said, looking away from him. “But we need to find a way to leave here. This affects all of us. It's not just about Brownie.”

Terry sighed. He didn't want to challenge Kendra, but what were his choices? “Kendra, I respect your instincts, you're smart as hell, but all you've said is you have a feeling. That's not enough to start talking about leaving the best place left in the whole world. And going back out there, where the world has gone to shit.” His voice shook at the end. Terry heard an imaginary gunshot, this one at close range. He nearly flinched.

“I'm not going anywhere,” Ursalina said.
“Punto.”

“Me neither,” Piranha said. “I'll push my luck getting rich as a scav. I'm through with running, hunted down by pirates and biters.”

“And the Beauty's gone,” Terry said. “I'd feel naked out there without her. Worst-case scenario, say one of
us
had been shot last night. What would we do now? Steal cars? Go on foot and leave most of the supplies? We're stuck here—for now. So why don't we concentrate on figuring out what happened?”

“I'll tell you what happened,” Sonia said. “I saw a man shot to death because he wanted to talk to his daughter. I thought I'd painted a clear picture.”

Piranha turned to Sonia. “You said his own daughter said it was his fault.”

The look Sonia gave Piranha made Kendra's earlier glare seem tame. “Chuck, think about it: He's her father. Her family.
She's not affected by that? The guy's bleeding to death right there, and she practically cussed him out.”

“Some of them have it coming, Sonia,” Terry said. He couldn't help the poison in his voice. He hadn't thought about his stepfather in a long time, but the rage was still fresh. “We don't know that family. My neighbors never knew what was going on in my house. Once that door closes . . .” He shrugged.

“She wasn't acting normal,” Sonia said. “It was like she was brainwashed.”

Ursalina laughed. “Now it's brainwashing? Are you kidding?”

“Use your imagination,” Kendra said. “Everybody's in shock after the freaks, and this guy acts like he's a god. You've never heard of Stockholm syndrome? Deprogramming? Wales was a crowd-pleaser before Freak Day. Now he's got his own kingdom.”

“Easy, Dr. Freud,” Ursalina said. “I'm still waiting for the reason I'm even having this conversation.”

“Knock knock,” Dean said. It sounded like the setup of a joke, but he wasn't smiling. They all went silent, waiting.

“Who's there?” Darius said.

“I'm So Glad.”

“I'm So Glad who?”

“I'm So Glad nobody's taken a bite out of me today.” Dean's deadpan delivery couldn't be called a punch line. He stared straight at Kendra with blank eyes.

Ursalina sniggered, pounding Dean's fist.

“Anyway,” Darius said, “the general feeling over here? Ignorance is bliss.”

“But you're not ignorant,” Sonia said. “Did I tell you the way his daughter acted? She didn't care at all. He was just roadkill. That's just wrong.”

“Spare me the morality lecture,” Darius said. “Maybe there's more to the story?”

“There always is,” Piranha said.

“Could be some stupid politics that are none of our business,” Ursalina said. “Half of them want to worship the sun, the rest want to worship the moon. I don't care. My only politics are food, a bed, and my rifle.”

They thought they had it all figured out. Kendra looked as if she was about to hit someone or she might cry. The shooting sounded like a bad situation, but Kendra and Sonia wouldn't win the others with emotion or moral outrage. What was worth giving up their belongings and risking everything to go back on the road?

“If Terry had been the one who'd seen it, you'd take his word,” Sonia said.

Terry groaned. This argument felt like a slowly breaking bone. When it was over, something would have changed between them all. “That's not true,” Terry said.

“Sure it's true,” Sonia said. “All of you would. We'd be halfway to gone.”

“You sound halfway to gone,” Piranha said. “What are you on, Sonia?”

Sonia's face snapped away from Piranha when he asked her; he'd struck a nerve. Terry had thought maybe he'd imagined it, but Sonia seemed a step behind her usual self, like part of her was sleepwalking. If she'd been out doing some kind of drugs with the Threadies, how could they trust her judgment?

“What, Sonia?” Kendra said quietly.

“They gave me a mushroom, that's all,” Sonia said. “That doesn't change anything. I know what I saw.”

“What kind of mushroom?” Ursalina said, although she already knew. She stepped away from Sonia, as if making a
mental note not to let her out of her sight. “Better not be that yahanna all these Threadies are into.”

“Hope to hell you haven't had a flu shot,” Darius said. The room had grown a little colder.

“I haven't!” she said, embarrassed and just a little scared, as if just then understanding the implications.

“Hell, girl,” Piranha said. “You know the routine. Mushroom plus flu shot equals freak. Have you ever had a flu shot?”

“Five years ago!” she said, voice breaking.

“You'd better hope that's long enough,” Terry said.

“Different strain too,” Piranha said. “Every flu shot is different. Avian flu would be different antibodies, different proteins.”

Sonia seemed to relax a little. A little.

“Did anyone see you there?” Kendra said.

“I was with a friend,” Sonia said, and faltered, glancing at Piranha. “Chris is a Gold Shirt. He's the only one who knew I was there. I played it cool with him. I asked him some questions, but I'm not stupid.”

“You sure you can trust this . . . friend?” Piranha said.

“I trust him,” she said. “He likes me. He seemed really shocked—”

When someone knocked on the door, they all jumped and stepped away from each other as if to hide what they'd been talking about.

Marv was at the door. He glanced at them one by one.

“Take it you've heard what happened at the ranch,” he said.

Sonia gave them a triumphant look:
See?

“We heard,” Kendra said, staring too hard. Sonia avoided Marv's gaze, wiping her face, glancing at the floor. Terry hoped Marv wouldn't notice how upset she was.

“Yeah, a longtimer here got shot and killed,” Marv said. “Real sad business. Town meeting in two hours.”

“What's going on?” Terry said, voice low. “Anything we should know about?”

Marv shrugged. “I wasn't there, but I'd say it's about a man who drank too much since he had to put down his son and his wife when they turned.”

Then Marv excused himself, dewy-eyed, and was gone.

Ursalina grinned, her point made. “That never happened in my neighborhood either. They're coming to us to explain?”

“He could be spying on us,” Kendra said.

“I don't know if he's spying, but he just lied,” Sonia said. “Brownie wasn't drunk. That's not how it happened.”

“He said he wasn't there,” Darius said. “Get the mushroom out of your ears.”

“Anyway,” Terry said, “they're having a meeting to air it out.”

“And we're not going to miss it,” Kendra said.

The dining hall was packed shoulder to shoulder. People must have
gathered early, Kendra guessed. Sorrow hung across their anxious faces; even the children seemed to know not to stir or make too much noise, recognizing how fragile their world was. Anything that threatened the peace was a threat to them all.

The meeting began as a memorial service to Brownie, and Kendra felt like a spy at his funeral, an uninvited guest. A man dressed in farming clothes climbed to the stage to take the microphone. Formal dress seemed to have died on Freak Day. Jeans, sweatshirts, and sneakers ruled. The man was nervous before the crowd, barely raising his eyes to the audience as he spoke.

“Nobody here didn't know Brian ‘Brownie' Browne. A lot
of us have stood with him at the fences, and a few of us knew him back before we needed the fences. A lot of us knew what happened that night at Brownie's place, and what he had to do. We know Sissy was all he had left to hold on to. And the last thing we know is this: Brownie was a good man.”

Townspeople murmured and hummed with recognition.

“It's gonna be hard to swallow whatever happened at the ranch last night. So in the end, it's only what we believe. But a good man was forced to do something back at his house, to his own blood, that nobody in this room wants to even think about.”

A sudden movement caught Kendra's eye: Dean was flicking away a tear. She had never heard him talk about his family, but Dean might know exactly what Brownie had been through. Suddenly, the memories of her father's loveless eyes and her mother's screams gouged Kendra's chest.

“What that does to a man,” the speaker finished, “none of us can judge.”

The room was stone silent as they remembered Brownie's horrors and their own. In the back, a woman sobbed as if she'd been holding her breath.

“So I'm here to celebrate the life of a good man. A generous man. A good husband. A good father. No matter what you hear about what happened last night, nothing can take that away.” His voice choked off at the end. As he climbed down the steps from the stage, most people clapped loudly. But a few hissed. Were they hissing at Brian Browne? At the story to come?

Instinct made Kendra reach for Terry's hand, and she was glad she was beside him. She was watching her future unfold.

The mayor took the stage next. He stared down at the microphone a moment, transforming himself from the bumbling, solicitous mayor to a man standing as tall as the power and poise of his office. The proceeding veered from memorial to trial.

“Last night, Brownie went to Wales's home with his hunting rifle and tried to shoot his way in,” Van Peebles said. “That's the cold, hard truth of it.”