Devil’s Wake by Steven Barnes, Tananarive Due Page A

was, Joseph Earl Davis III, now forever known simply as Grandpa Joe, never would have driven past anyone on the road without giving them a chance to hop into the truck bed and ride out a few miles closer to wherever they were going. Heck, couple of months back he’d picked up a group of six college-age kids and driven them to Centralia when most folks were running over strangers without even honking their horns.
    But Joe hadn’t liked the look of that hitcher. Something about his walk. Or maybe times were just different. Christ as his witness, if Kendra hadn’t been in the car, Joe might have run that poor wanderer down where he walked. A stitch in time was worth a pound of cure. That was what it had come to in Joe Davis’s mind. Drastic measures, just like the president had said in his first Apocalypse Address. The president hadn’t said it plainly, but his meaning had been clear as the summer sky.
    ,the backward letters of the man’s sign said in the mirror, receding into a tiny, indistinct blur. Yeah, I’m still here too, Joe thought. And not picking up hitchhikers was one way he intended to stay here, thanks a bunch for asking.
    Freaks clustered in the cities, but there were plenty of them wandering through the countryside nowadays, actual packs. Thousands. Tens of thousands. Millions. He didn’t know. No one really did. Joe had seen his first three months ago, coming into Longview to rescue his granddaughter. His first, his fifth, and his tenth. He’d done what he had to do to save the girl and shut the memories away where only their tiniest tendrils could sneak into his dreams. Then he’d drunk enough to make the dreams blurry. A week later, he’d seen one closer to home, not three miles beyond the gated road—not three miles from the cabin! Its face was bloated blue-gray, and flies buzzed around the open sores clotted with that dark red scabby stuff growing under their skin. The thing could barely walk, but it had smelled him, swiveling in his direction like a weather vane. Joe still dreamed about that one every night. That one had chosen him. Joe left the freaks alone unless one came at him—that was safest if you were by yourself.
    He’d seen a poor guy shoot one down in a field, and then be slaughtered by a swarm attracted by the sound of the shot. Some of those biters could walk pretty fast. The new ones could still run, and they weren’t stupid, by God. But Joe had killed that one, the pivoting one that had chosen him. He’d kill it a dozen times again if he had the chance; it was a favor to both of them. That shambling mess had been somebody’s son, somebody’s husband, somebody’s father. People said freaks weren’t really dead—they didn’t climb out of graves like movie monsters—but they were as close to walking dead as Joe ever wanted to see. The red fungus was eating them from the inside out, and if they bit you, the freak stuff would start eating you too. You fell asleep, and you woke up different. The movies had that part right, anyway.
    As for the rest, nobody knew much. Most folks who met freaks up close and personal didn’t live long enough to carry tales. Whatever they were, freaks weren’t just a city problem anymore. They were everybody’s problem.
    Can you hold on, Dad? My neighbor’s knocking on the window. That’s what Cass had said the last time they’d spoken, then he hadn’t heard any more from his daughter for ten agonizing minutes. The next time he’d heard her voice, he’d barely recognized it, so calm it could be nothing but a mask over mortal terror. DADDY? Don’t talk, just listen. I’m so sorry. For everything. No time to say it all. They’re here. You need to come and get Kendra. Use the danger word. Do you hear me, Daddy? And… bring guns. Shoot anyone suspicious. I mean anyone, Daddy.
    Daddy, she’d called him. She hadn’t called him that since hell was a hatchet, and it was sure as hell a broadax now. That day, he’d woken up with alarm twisting