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

door, even for her. No matter what. Not until you hear the danger word.
    Kendra felt warm liquid on the seat beneath her and she gasped, thinking Grandpa Joe might be bleeding all over the seat. Instead, when she looked down, her jeans were dark and wet, almost black. It wasn’t blood. She’d peed herself, like a baby. Damn. She was losing it.
    “Are you sleepy?” Kendra said. Grandpa Joe shook his head, butKendra thought he’d hesitated first.
    Grandpa Joe’s eyes were on the road half the time, on the rearview mirror the rest. “How long before your mom or dad got sleepy?”
    Kendra remembered her mom’s voice outside the door, announcing the time. It’s nine o’clock, Kendra. Worried it was getting late. Worried she should get far away from Kendra and send for Grandpa Joe to come get her.
    “A few minutes,” Kendra said softly. “Five. Or ten.”
    Grandpa Joe went back to chewing his lip. “What happened?”
    “We were… at the hospital.”
    For the first time, Kendra told Grandpa Joe about Portland General. How her father had been bitten. How they’d been lucky to get home, and heard the radio guy saying that sleepiness came just before the urge to attack, so bite victims shouldn’t sleep. Dad had fought yawning for a few hours, drinking cup after cup of coffee, but he’d finally panicked after a micronap. He had fled in the middle of the night, refused to go to sleep in the house, telling them to lock their doors. He’d slept in the car. And by morning, he was foaming at the back door, trying and trying to get in, eyes bloody.
    Kendra heard herself tell the story, but her voice sounded like someone else’s.
    “So… was it about… twelve hours?” Grandpa Joe said. He sounded hopeful.
    Kendra’s throat felt like a pinprick. She could barely breathe. “Something like that. I… guess. But…”
    “But what?”
    “It was different for…”
    Shadows wrestled across Grandpa Joe’s face. “Your mom?” His voice rumbled.
    Kendra nodded.
    Grandpa Joe sighed and cleared his throat, girding himself to hear the rest. “How was it different for Cass?” he whispered finally. Hisvoice broke on her name.
    Kendra glanced at the bloodied mess on her grandfather’s leg before she blinked away. “The bite was worse. Like yours. She got real sleepy real fast. It took less time.”
    This story would be harder, she realized. She hadn’t loved her mother more—she couldn’t have chosen one parent over the other at gunpoint. But Dad had left them so quickly, absorbed in the surreal fog of the first day of the crisis, that he didn’t seem truly gone. But she and Mom… They had weathered it together. Made plans together. They had listened for news of a cure, determined to find Dad and help him one day. For weeks, they had been the only part of the world that still felt right.
    “I was in bed,” Kendra said. “Mom poked her head in my room and said our neighbor was knocking on the window. Mrs. Stiller. Carolyn. Nice lady who wrote plays. They perform… performed them at the local theater. They even made a movie of one of her plays.”
    Grandpa Joe tried to smile. “Would I have seen it?”
    “I think it showed on cable. Her husband was an insurance agent. Had a sailboat, and took me out on it.” A pleasant, wistful memory, even though she’d been thwacked twice by a swinging boom.
    A nice man. Hardworking salesman, and a good husband, until he’d knocked on the door offering a variety of Whole Life beyond Prudential’s wildest dreams.
    “A lot of us had a buddy system, someone to go to for food. Or a generator. Or news. She was ours. Her husband helped put up the boards on our house. Mom said Carolyn looked upset, and I should stay in bed… I guess when Mom saw her out there, she…”
    “She wasn’t thinking,” Grandpa Joe finished. “She forgot.”
    Kendra nodded.
    Mom had come back shouting, clapping her hand to her left shoulder, blood oozing between her fingers. Kendra had thought she