Devil’s Wake by Steven Barnes

Book Preface

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.