Devil’s Wake by Steven Barnes, Tananarive Due

windows at night and there was a trading station an easy drive away?
    “Everybody keeps harping on Longview” —the man on the radio said “Longview” as if it were a normal, everyday place; Kendra’s stomach tightened— “but that’s become another encouraging story. Contrary to rumors, there is a National Guard presence. There’ve been three airdrops of food and medicine. 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 quavered with joy.
    Grandpa Joe reached over to rub Kendra’s head. “See there?” he said. Kendra nodded, but she wasn’t happy to imagine a stranger sleeping in her bed. Maybe it was another family with a teenage girl. 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 sods, she’d said, the first time Kendra had heard the little round woman cuss. Actually, she hadn’t even known what sod meant until she looked it up, then felt a certain degree of admiration. Dog-Lady’s accent made cussing sound exotic.
    If she was right, dogs might be roaming through her 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 at Hiroshima.”
    “Yes,” the woman said.
    Kendra vaguely remembered studying Hiroshima in her historyclass, back when she was going to school. Would there be schools again too?
    “Call it apples and oranges, but put yourself in the place of an earthquake victim in Haiti. Or a Jew at Auschwitz. 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 south.

ELEVEN
    K endra sat straight up when she saw the man by the side of the road. She wadded up the tissue in her pocket so tightly that her fingernails bit into her 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 wind, Kendra guessed the backpack was heavy. It was the first time in weeks she’d seen anyone walking on this road. Her neck snapped back as Grandpa Joe sped up his truck.
    “Don’t you worry,” Grandpa Joe said. “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. Kendra craned her head to read the sign, which the man held high in the air. STILL HERE, the sign said. “He’ll be all right,” Grandpa Joe said, but Kendra 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 ahead. But the way he walked…
    Kendra kept watching while the man retreated behind them. She had to stop watching when she felt her stomach knot. She’d been holding her breath without knowing it. Her face was cold and sweating,both at once. “Was that one?” Kendra whispered. She hadn’t known she was going to say that either, just like when she asked for a Coke. Instead, she’d been thinking about the man’s sign. Still here.
    “Don’t know,” Grandpa Joe said. “It’s hard to tell. That’s why you never stop.” They listened to the radio, neither of them speaking again for the rest of the ride.
    Time