by James Bierce
"Just shoot him, Larry…" Christine says, hiding behind him.
"How many of the others that we passed by are still alive? I don't wanna wake them all up." When they get to the end of the corridor, he motions for Christine to head left toward the supply room, but sees another silhouette about forty feet away from them, obscured by darkness where the lights are out on that end.
"Larry…"
"I know, I see them. The supply room is this side of them, see the sign on the wall?"
"What if they come closer?"
"I'll shoot them, but let's hope that doesn't happen, okay?"
While they've been stopped, the man following them has kept creeping forward, inching his way in their direction one painfully slow step at a time.
"Just keep moving, slow and steady," Larry tells her calmly. "We don't want them riled up."
Christine keeps her eye on the person down the hall, but they don't move a muscle until she opens the supply room door, and then she sees them glance behind themselves, where she can hear another door open somewhere in the darkness.
"Get inside, quick!" Larry says, nudging her through the doorway.
He locks the door behind them, then shines his light around at the unlit storeroom — a room that's already been trashed from the looks of it. Spilled medication bottles cover the floor, along with crushed tablets and capsules that have obviously been walked on repeatedly.
"How are we gonna find anything in this mess?" Christine complains.
"Just look for any clear bottles, I'm pretty sure that's what it's kept in."
He starts sifting through the clutter on one of the shelves, when he hears a knocking on the door next to him. Aiming the light at the window, he sees two faces looking in at them, the shirtless man, and another man that has a deep cut all the way down the right side of his face. It's severe enough that Larry is pretty sure that the eye is gone.
"Larry, I think I found them…"
In her hand is a broken bottle, with a label that says 'Human Insulin rDNA Suspension'. She points onto the floor, where there's several boxes, all of them smashed.
"Shit…" Larry says under his breath. He grabs the radio and pushes the button down, then looks back at the men outside the door, who are still glaring at them. "Mike, are you there?"
"Yeah, I'm here. Did you find any?"
"It's all smashed, there's nothing left down here. You'll probably hear a bunch of gunshots in a few minutes — it's just us getting out of here."
"Did you need any help?"
"I don't think so, just stay by the radio just in case."
"Okay, I will."
Placing the radio back in his pocket, he turns to Christine. "You have two .38 pistols on you, right?"
"Yeah, and four of those quick load things."
"You still have that little .32 I gave you?"
"Yeah, it's in my sock just like you showed me."
Larry can hear the fear in her voice, and as much as he regrets bringing her along, he also can't imagine leaving her alone upstairs. "Okay, you just stay behind me, and let me do all the shooting, okay?"
She simply nods, her jaw visibly trembling even in the dim light.
"And if for whatever reason you have to shoot somebody…?"
"I take them down with a body shot, then shoot them in the head — I've got it."
"Okay, good. Step back and cover your ears, this is gonna be really loud."
Larry takes in a deep breath, then aims his semi-automatic pistol at the head of the shirtless man, who doesn't even react to it. He fires one bullet directly into his forehead, then does the same to the other man, dropping both of them instantly. Figuring that Christine won't be able to hear him anyway, he points at her flashlight, then at the door, prompting her to provide him with light. Once she does, he opens the door and fires another round at the first woman he saw, and then shines his own light down the darkened hallway — but doesn't see anybody there.
"Can you hear me?" he yells.
"Yeah."
"Keep an eye behind us, we still don't know what came out of that other door."
They move more quickly this time, and then hear the door at the end of the corridor open again as they begin to turn the corner. Standing right in front of the staircase door is another man with gray hair, who's wearing a hospital gown and facing the stairs.
"Are the people behind us coming?" Larry asks.
"No, not yet."
He keeps moving, then stops about fifteen feet from the man, who's still facing away from him. Aiming his gun at the man's head, and feeling guilty about firing at someone who isn't posing an immediate threat to them, he pulls the trigger and kills the man — breaking the glass in the door in front of him at the same time. He opens the door and looks the staircase shaft over closely, then pulls Christine out of the corridor and locks the door. When he turns around and faces her, she's already sitting down on the steps and crying, her entire body shaking from the stress.
He sits down next to her and starts to put his arm around her shoulders, but he stops when he notices the bright red spots of blood that's now covering his arms and hands. "Listen, we're both still alive." He grabs the radio out of his pocket, intending to give Mike an update, then he puts it away again. "Why don't we just leave this place…"
"And go where?"
"We'll go back to the other side of the river and find a nice house. We didn't see a single infected asshole over there."
"This is the only place I've been able to sleep — I mean truly sleep."
"Mike wants my help tomorrow — are you okay being here alone?"
"I'll be fine, as long as I stay on the sixth floor."
CHAPTER 8
Grayland: March 29th
As peaceful, beautiful, and relaxing as the ocean appears in the evening, when the last rays of saturated sunlight are displayed over the water, the mornings can oftentimes be just the opposite. It's quite unusual for the coastline this far north to have anything resembling sunshine in the early hours of the day, and the overcast skies only add to the cold, gloomy look that the water takes on. There was a time when Curtis hated mornings like this, when the rain showers from the dark gray clouds overhead would start as a gentle misting, and then go on to last for the rest of the day.
This particular morning, however, is different.
It's not the weather that's changed, since the sky looks exactly the same as it normally does — but for the first few hours of nearly every day, most of the infected are nowhere to be found, giving his family their best and perhaps only shot at making it out of this place alive. Looking out at the beach in front of him, this morning appears to be no different.
With all of their supplies packed up, the family prepares for a long journey south, unsure of just how long it will take them to reach someplace safer than this. It's barely daybreak as Curtis leads them down the same path that he found a couple of days prior, winding through pine trees and tall grass that provide decent cover from the local residents. Although the wind is blowing in the trees above them, concealing the noise their footsteps make in the soft sand, they still walk in silence, all of them well-aware of the dangers that surround them.
As they pass behind a house, only a few doors down from where they left, Curtis stops and listens when he hears somebody struggling from beyond the solid board fence next to them. Motioning his family toward a small shed, the four of them move quickly down the trail, then up onto a mostly rotten wood porch that's covered with moss and algae, making it slippery to move over. He can hear a gate opening behind them as he pushes the door open and lets his wife and kids inside the dark building, then sees two men coming out of the enclosed yard and onto the trail.
"Curtis," Sarah whispers, pulling him next to her. "There's somebody in here with us."
Hearing something move in the far corner, he pulls the gun out of his pocket and then turns his flashlight on, hoping that the light doesn't attract too much attention from the outside — then steps in fr
ont of his family when he sees a woman covered in blood standing against the opposite wall, holding a knife that's shaking in her hands.
""Don't come any closer!" she screams at them.
"Keep your voice down," Curtis tells her, speaking in a volume barely more than a whisper. "There's two men outside, and they're sick."
"And you're not?" she responds, speaking much quieter now.
"No, none of us are." He hears footsteps outside, but when he turns around he discovers that there's no lock on the door, just a small rope attached to it that he grabs onto and wraps around a nearby hook on the wall. Ignoring the woman for now, he hands his flashlight to Sarah, then braces himself against the crudely made door made out of old boards, and watches as it almost falls to pieces when one of the men throws himself into it. By the third hit, one of the boards in the middle finally comes off, exposing the man's torso on the other side — but he apparently hasn't noticed it, because he continues his assault by slamming his forearm just beside the missing piece. Holding the door with his shoulder, Curtis takes a kitchen knife from one his bags and then thrusts it into the man's chest — but Curtis loses his grip on it as the guy pulls back, and the knife stays lodged inside of him.
Curtis starts to position himself in front of the door again to brace it, but before he gets his footing set, the second man kicks the door in and tears the hinges from the wall, sending his overweight body and what's left of the door directly on top of Curtis. He can feel the back of his head get slammed into the wooden planks of the floor as the man grabs him by the hair with both hands, violently yanking on his head as he tries to dislocate it from his spine — and then everything slowly begins to fade away, including the screams that seem to come from all around him.
"He'll be fine, honey, he just needs to rest for a few minutes, that's all…"
The voice sounds far away, scared, and slightly muffled, but Curtis recognizes it as his wife. When he opens his eyes and feels the splitting headache start to develop, he reaches up and taps Sarah on her knee.
"Oh, thank God…" she cries out, still trying to keep her voice as quiet as possible. "How do you feel?"
"I think the bastard hit me in the same place that Jake did." He sits up a little and looks around, but most of the building is too dark to see much of anything. "What happened to those guys?"
"You killed the first guy, and Rachel killed the other one."
"Who?"
Sarah motions for Rachel to come closer, and Curtis sees the woman that was hiding come into view and sheepishly wave to him.
"Do you think you can walk, babe?"
"I think so…" With a little help from both women, Curtis gets up onto his feet and then sits down on an old toolbox that's lying next to him. "Could you get me some painkillers? There's part of a bottle in my bag." He sees his sons both standing by the missing front door, each of them looking around at different parts of the rain-soaked forest outside. Feeling a nudge against his shoulder, he looks up at Sarah and sees her holding out two pills, but not the ones he was talking about. "I meant the hydrocodone…"
"I know you did, but these are gonna have to do for now — we need you alert for the rest of the day. Rachel said we have to get east of Westport by sundown."
"We're going south, Westport is north of here."
"We can't go south, Curtis — it's not safe down there." She picks up his bags and hands them to him, then grabs her own while Rachel does the same with hers. "Is it clear, Matt?"
"I think so, I don't see anybody."
"Okay, both of you grab your bags. Matt, just keep the gun where you can reach it, okay?"
"Maybe I should take it," Curtis says, staggering momentarily as he stands up and takes a few steps.
"No, he'll be fine. Just get your legs back under you."
The group, which now has five members, all step out onto the crumbling porch and into the wilderness again, their muscles feeling tired and sore from the constant stress and almost complete lack of sleep. None of them are looking forward to walking into Westport, not after the horrors they've already witnessed there — but the desolate wasteland of Olympia, which apparently suffered greatly from the virus according to Rachel, sounds peaceful and quiet compared to the towns along the coast, and the only way to get there is to pass through an area they know to be infected.
"We can't go through town, there's too many of them," Rachel tells them, as they walk down through the dunes and onto the beach where there's fewer houses that could be occupied.
"Well, we can't stay on the beach like this, we're sitting ducks," Sarah replies.
"We can take the old farm roads, but they're on the other side of town." Curtis says.
"I didn't see anything like that on the map," Rachel says, as she pulls out an old road map that's falling apart and glances over it.
"They're probably not on there — but they exists, I've been on them before."
"Are there houses on them?"
"Not very many, just a few farms."
"As long as we stay north of Grayland, it's fine with me."
Curtis' head is still throbbing, but the pain finally starts to subside by the time they turn and head up the beach access road. As they cut through the fire station parking lot and into a large field behind it, he notices Rachel's reluctance to look back at the trailer park or cranberry bog next to it — but chooses to say nothing. They know relatively little about her, but the fact that she's traveling alone in a town like this speaks volumes about what she's likely been through.
The yard that they're walking through runs right next to a cranberry bog, just like most of the properties on this side of town, although it looks as though this one hasn't been used in several years. As they get closer to the house, Sarah tells the boys not to look into the field or the small yard surrounding the home itself — but they do it anyway. The livestock that used to live here, which were probably either cows or horses judging from the size, are now lying in stacked up piles of bones that are scattered around the place — and the former residents, two adults and several children by the looks of it, are hanging from a large tree in the middle of the pasture. He tells himself that they were probably killed by the virus, and their bodies mutilated afterward by the lunatics in town, but he knows deep down that's not likely what happened.
Beth once told him a theory that Jake had come up with, one that sounded too dark and grim for him to believe at the time — but he's starting to wonder if it might actually be true. According to him, the only possible way that he could see a single organism wiping out an entire species, especially one as diverse as the human race, is for people to deliberately engineer one — a doomsday parasite built with the sole purpose of killing every man, woman and child on earth. The only thing he was unsure of was whether or not these infected survivors were part of the plan. They could be an unforeseen glitch, or they could be part of the overall design — to finish eliminating whatever remains of humanity.
Whether or not any of this conspiracy theory is true, it's hard not to think the worst of mankind when you see houses like this one ripped to pieces and spread across the land for no apparent reason, and children murdered and propped up like decorations. More than ever, Curtis is determined to stay away from any signs of people, and he hopes that walking through the forests and swamps on the eastern service road will provide them with as little contact as possible.
"Mom, my feet really hurt," Ben says, lagging behind the rest of them a bit. "Can we stop for a while?"
Sarah stops, along with the rest of the group, then she kneels down and takes Ben's right shoe off. "Is this one hurting?"
"Yeah, they both are."
She holds his shoe up for Curtis to see, showing him the holes developing in the sides, and the sole that's beginning to separate from the rest of it. "He needs new shoes."
"We'll probably find something in Aberdeen, if there's anything that hasn't burned up."
"Is that far?" Ben asks.
Sarah glares up at Cur
tis as she places another pair of socks over his existing ones, giving him more cushion.
"There's nothing I can do right here, it's not like we have a lot of choices available," he says to his wife. Once they begin walking again, he pats Ben on the shoulder and takes one of the bags from him, lightening the strain on his feet. "We should be there tomorrow — you're gonna have to tough it out until then, okay?"
"Okay, Dad."
"Have you guys walked very far before now?" Rachel asks.
"We took our first long one in September, and haven't really stopped since then."
"We left Olympia about the same time, but we stayed in a couple of places along the way."
"You and your husband?" Sarah asks her.
"And our son, Travis," she answers, getting choked up as she says his name.
"I'm sorry, Rachel, I really am."
Sarah looks back at Curtis and holds her hand up, motioning for him and the boys to back off and give them some privacy. "Listen, if you ever want to talk about it, I'm always here for you… Curtis and I still have a daughter in California, who we haven't heard from since the outbreak started."
"What's her name?"
"Annie — she was going to school down there. We just weren't able to get her home in time."
"My niece was about that age, she lived just north of Seattle with my sister — but they're both gone now too."
They both walk in silence for a while, looking out at the fog-covered cranberry bogs that span for miles to the south behind them — but they end only a short distance ahead of them, at the foot of some hills that are home to several massive windmills, a sight which looks entirely out of place to most people when they see them for the first time.
"I saw a girl that reminded me of my niece a few days ago," Rachel continues. "She even had the same snotty attitude."
"Was she sick?"
"No, she was healthy. She was with another couple in Grayland."
Sarah looks back at Curtis, wondering if he's heard any of this. "Do you remember their names?"