Devil's Wake: A Novel - Softcover

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Steven Barnes is an award-winning author of twenty-three novels, including the New York Times bestseller The Cestus Deception. Visit his website at LifeWrite.com.

Tananarive Due is an American Book Award and NAACP Image Award­–winning author, who was an executive producer on Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror for Shudder and teaches Afrofuturism and Black Horror at UCLA. She and her husband, science fiction author Steven Barnes, cowrote the graphic novel The Keeper and an episode for Season 2 of The Twilight Zone for Paramount Plus and Monkeypaw Productions. Due is the author of several novels and two short story collections, Ghost Summer: Stories and The Wishing Pool and Other Stories. She is also coauthor of a civil rights memoir, Freedom in the Family: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights (with her late mother, Patricia Stephens Due). Learn more at TananariveDue.com. 

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Devil’s Wake

ONE

August 12

3:23 p.m.

I-5 Freeway, Southern Washington State

—ongoing concerns over scattered reports of violent, perhaps drug-induced behavior in the Seattle area,” the newscaster’s voice boomed from the BMW’s Sony speakers, filling the car as trees and farmland zipped past on either side. “While yesterday’s bizarre rampages at a boarding school in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and a diet clinic in West Palm Beach, Florida, did involve some individuals who have received the Amsterdam flu inoculation, the CDC says there is no relationship, as the vaccine has been thoroughly tested. But as a cautionary measure, further vaccinations have been halted until the nature of this—”

“Do you hear that?” Kendra Brookings asked. “Flu shot’s making people crazy.”

“Kendra, don’t exaggerate,” her mother said, weary of the argument. Cassandra Brookings had the cheekbones and carriage that said “runway” even if she’d opted for owlish glasses and a family therapist’s credentials. “These are just rumors. There are always rumors about the unknown. Millions of people have taken the flu shot, and there have been reports of, what? A handful of cases that probably aren’t connected at all? These people were probably deeply disturbed from the beginning. Do you have a mental disorder we don’t know about?”

Parents are a mental disorder—does that count? Kendra thought. Grandpa Joe, her mother’s father, had always said Mom had a naive streak a mile long. Kendra figured her mom had moved to Washington State to be closer to her father’s cabin up near Centralia, but Mom would never admit it. Stubbornness ran in the family, and forcing Kendra to get a flu shot on her sixteenth birthday was a perfect example.

“I know you’re nervous, sweet pea.” Devon Brookings was a big man in his mid-forties, a college athlete who now enjoyed couches more than wind sprints. He and Cassandra ran a family therapy/life coach business that did very well, thank you, but he was totally chair-bound: his waistline was still solid, but expanding nicely.

Dad switched radio stations, trying to cheer her up. A staccato hip-hop rhythm boomed through the speakers. “Don’t be. Doc Thorpe has overseen thousands of vaccinations, and never had a problem. Not once. A few folks faint when they see the needle, but…” He winked into the rearview mirror. Smiling. This was Dad’s idea of a joke.

“You’re not funny,” Kendra said.

“Don’t look so sour. It’s not a big deal. We’re lucky to get this shot. I didn’t want to scare you, but there’s a study…”

“Yeah, yeah, I heard about that,” Kendra said. “In school, Mr. Kaplan had told us that 125,000 people might have died from the new flu in Asia and Europe. But it’s not happening here. Pizza, burgers, and fries might be saving our butts.” Kendra herself looked too much like a typical Disney Channel Sassy Black Teenager for her own comfort: short, cute, chipmunk cheeks, perfect teeth, and eyes as bright as stars.

“I think Burger King is responsible for those rumors,” Mom said. “I wouldn’t trust Mayor McCheese if I were you.”

“That’s McDonald’s,” Kendra said. Her mother was practically a vegan, and Dad’s cooking skills topped out at pan-fried SPAM, so mealtime was an adventure.

Kendra gave up on her pleas, settling for the view as the car crossed the Interstate Bridge into Portland over the Columbia River. Portland wasn’t L.A. even in its dreams, but it was cute, like a huge small town. Dad switched off the radio so they could hear the quiet. One thing the Pacific Northwest had over L.A. was raw beauty. All Kendra remembered of grasslands and mountains in L.A. was shades of thirsty brown.

“It still rains too much,” Kendra said to her window.

“Got that right,” Dad said. “The state flower is mildew.”

“But it makes everything look so alive,” Mom said. “Remember spring?”

The last thing we talked about on the way to Portland was how pretty it is in springtime, Kendra would write in her journal later. Spring was just another season in the world’s long list of wonders I was foolish enough to take for granted.

IF YOU HAVE FLU SYMPTOMS, PLEASE PROTECT OTHER PATIENTS BY WEARING A MASK. The sign was waiting inside the hospital’s electric double doors, beside a cardboard dispenser half full of blue paper face masks. Mom quickly whipped out three masks like they were tissues and passed them around.

“But we’re not sick,” Kendra said.

“That’s right,” Mom said. “Let’s keep it that way.”

“Haven’t you heard that hospitals are the perfect place to get sick?” Dad said. As if Portland General had been her idea. “If you ever hear the word ‘iatrogenic,’ you know you’ve been screwed.” Kendra hadn’t been to an emergency room since she was four, and she didn’t watch hospital shows, so she had no real knowledge as to how crowded and depressing ERs could be. It was a den of the unfortunate, people who were coughing, dazed, or bleeding. There were at least twenty people waiting, enough to fill all but four molded plastic seats.

While Dad checked them in at the front desk, Mom and Kendra found two chairs together in a corner of the waiting room, leaving Dad to fend for himself. To Kendra’s right, an old man was nodding to sleep, a glistening snail trail dribbling from one corner of his mouth; on her left, a five-year-old boy with a homemade bandage around his head whined softly to his mother. As soon as Kendra sat down, the kid coughed up a mouthful of vomit. Some of the buttermilky glop splattered the tip of Kendra’s sneaker. She stared at the orangish flecks, horrified.

“Are you kidding me?” Kendra whispered to her mom after the kid’s mother apologized, rushing her son off to the bathroom.

“Adjust,” Mom said. “Sometimes little kids have tummy trouble.”

Yeah, big kids too, Kendra thought, her throat pinching tight. Except for the dozing old man, everyone nearby stood up to move away from the stench, giving up their seats. Despite the smell, by the time the cleaning crew arrived, newcomers had swarmed the empty seats. Kendra swore she would never visit a hospital again.

When Dad joined them, he motioned them in close for a huddle, checking to make sure no one was listening. “Twenty minutes max—maybe thirty. Then we’re in.” He sounded like they were planning a bank heist. Kendra felt sorry for the patients who really needed doctors.

Kendra hadn’t noticed the mounted television set playing overhead until someone turned up the volume, and suddenly all eyes were on the screen. Los Angeles—LIVE, it said. On TV, a street full of shoppers and Armani-clad executive types were screaming and running.

There was some kind of commotion on a street lined with palm trees and Mercedes SUVs. People fleeing. A car was on fire in the middle of a street lined with boutique windows. Kendra’s heart slammed her chest. She knew that street!

“Oh my goodness!” Mom said, alarmed....