Aberdeen

by James Bierce

  "It isn't Larry…" she says softly, trying hard not to scream in pain.

  "Who the hell is it? One of those people from downstairs?"

  Christine looks up at him, bleeding from both of her lips and onto her shirt. "She's gonna kill us."

  He slaps the tape back onto her mouth, causing her to scream out in pain, then backs up until he can see down the hall with the flashlight. There's only one other way between the two areas, and that's through the offices on the far side of the waiting area. Grabbing one of the loose chairs along the back wall, he wedges the back of it underneath the doorknob to the office area, then tries unsuccessfully to force the door open. Certain that nobody can get through behind him, he takes another quick look around the room and then stands at the entrance to the hallway, facing the dozen rooms in front of him, all of which have open doors again. Hearing something move directly behind him, he turns around in a hurry and fires his gun twice, shattering one of the windows and sending a gust of cold, wet wind into the waiting area. He turns around again, shaking with fear, and begins walking toward the first set of rooms, which are right across the hall from each other. Listening first for any hint of movement, which is difficult with the noise of air rushing in behind him, he stands back and shines the light into the room on the right, seeing only an empty examination bed and cabinets.

  From the moment he shot the window, he could instantly feel the draft of cold air against his body, moving easily through the thin layer of clothing he has on — but as he starts to turn around, he suddenly feels a warmth running down his lower back and down his legs, like a stream of hot water from a shower. He stands still for a moment, then begins to feel a dull pain in his back, radiating around to his sides and the back of his knees. He grabs onto the frame of the doorway and nearly catches himself before falling onto the floor, dropping his flashlight and gun in the process.

  Christine listens intently to the sounds of struggle behind her, trembling with fear as tears fall down her face and onto the fresh wounds covering her lips — the saltwater burning as it soaks up the blood and drips onto her shirt and lap. She can hear whispering, and cries of agony as someone begs for their life — and then after an extended period of silence, she hears a single gunshot echo throughout the floor. For a moment she listens to the wind howling to her left through the broken window, and watches as the gusts of wind move the trees that surround the hospital violently back and forth.

  She nearly screams out in terror when she finally sees the silhouette of someone standing next to her, and the image of a young girl, covered in fresh blood, as she leans down and stares Christine in the face.

  "Don't worry, Christine," Amanda says soothingly. "It's only me…"

  CHAPTER 12

  East of Cohassett: March 30th

  By daybreak, after a sleepless night of watching the caravan of people travel from Westport to Grayland, Curtis looks out across the flat farmlands to the south of the house, and sees absolutely no sign of anyone — only the massive billows of smoke rising into the sky from the fires that remain.

  He's tempted to stay another night, leery of moving through an area so filled with infected people with only a few bullets for protection. With supplies running low, however, and with so few houses in the vicinity to gather food from, all three adults decide that moving on is probably in their best interest. South Aberdeen is only a few hours away, perhaps a little longer with Ben's sore feet, and the houses there are both plentiful and void of people compared to the coastal communities.

  "Are we going back to the highway?" Rachel asks Curtis, as all five of them sit down for a meal of dry cereal and a single can of cold tomato soup.

  "No, we'll stick to this road until we get to the bridge — it's probably safer."

  "I was thinking that the highway has plenty of places to hide…"

  "Yeah, and plenty of places for them to hide too."

  "Were they from Westport?" Matt asks.

  "I think so, they must have been following the fires."

  "Or they were from Cosmopolis," Rachel adds. "If that's the case, there could be more where we're headed."

  "You came through there, didn't you?" Sarah asks her.

  "We went there, figuring it might be a good place to stay for a while."

  "I take it you were wrong about that?"

  "It was overrun with those things. None of us got any sleep there, with all the screaming and people trying to break into the house all night."

  "So, if those people last night were coming from Cosmopolis, we'll be walking right into them — is there any way around?"

  "No," Curtis answers. "Just miles of swampland."

  "What about Westport, just for a while?" Rachel asks.

  "Westport is out of the question."

  "It could be practically empty now…"

  "We're not going to Westport," Curtis says adamantly. "We've been there twice already, and it almost killed us both times."

  There's a few tense moments of silence as the group eats their breakfast and contemplates the direction they'll be going, all of them well aware of the potentially deadly consequences if they make the wrong decision.

  Sarah stands up and places her bowl onto the counter, which seems like an odd act of civility given the circumstances, but anything else would seem strangely rude somehow. "We can't be certain where those people were from, so I'm for sticking to the original plan and heading toward Olympia."

  The others all look at Rachel, since she seems to be the only one arguing otherwise. She looks back at each of them, seeing the determination in their eyes, then she continues to eat. "I just don't want to get caught in the middle of them, that's all," she says.

  "We won't, we'll be careful." Curtis tells her.

  Just north of the farmhouse, the landscape along the road quickly turns from the man-made pastures and cranberry bogs of eastern Grayland, to the edge of the saltwater marshlands of the Elk River estuary — a pristine natural wetland that stretches for miles to the east, and empties into the harbor at the nearby crossing of Laidlow and Bay City.

  Wearing raincoats and plastic garbage bags from the farmhouse they were staying at, the group walks in the tall grass alongside the dirt road, which is little more than a muddy drainage ditch when it's pouring down rain. They can see footprints everywhere in the mud, many of them barefoot, and some that were either crawling or falling down based on the multiple sets of hand prints as well. At times, when the wind shifts direction and starts blowing directly north, the smoke becomes so thick that it's difficult to breathe or see very far ahead of them — and even after it passes it leaves a lingering stinging in their eyes and throats.

  Sarah, who's holding Ben's hand as he suffers through each painful step forward, slows down just enough to walk beside Rachel. "You know, we really don't know all that much about each other…"

  "Like what?"

  "I don't know — jobs, hobbies, whatever."

  Rachel smiles slightly, for the first time in quite a while. "I was an accountant, which is a rather useless skill set it turns out. What about you?"

  "I was taking a break from work when the virus hit, trying to focus on raising the boys."

  "It seems like you did a pretty good job, they both seem like good kids," Rachel replies, smiling at Ben, who politely smiles back.

  "Did you pay much attention to the virus? I mean in the early days…"

  "Not really — I think Bill did though. He was glued to the television, listening to all those news anchors repeat themselves over and over again. I started paying closer attention when the school district sent a letter home with Travis, telling us that classes had been canceled until further notice. That's when I knew it was serious, that the virus was already here."

  "I can't believe how quickly it spread when it got here," Sarah says, before noticing that Curtis and Matt have stopped walking, and are now staring straight ahead. As they join them, Curtis points up the road where something is sticking up out of the mud, and two mor
e objects are next to it in the swamp. "What is it?"

  "I don't know, but they're moving," Curtis replies.

  They start walking again, but more slowly, watching all around them just in case it's a trap of some kind. Sarah lets out a gasp when they get close enough to discover that they're stragglers from the night before, hopelessly stuck in deep mud and now freezing to death in the rain and wind. The one in the middle of the road is an old woman, who's covered in dark purple bruises and is nothing but skin and bones. The other two, who are off to the side, appear to be dead already.

  "What should we do with her?" Sarah asks.

  "We don't do anything, it looks like the mud is handling everything," Curtis responds.

  Sarah looks into the woman's eyes, which are bloodshot and staring back at her. She backs up as the woman reaches for her with her one free arm and grasps at the air, her blue-tinged lips trying to say something as she struggles to move in the thick mud.

  "She looks close to dead already," Rachel says coldly. "We certainly can't save her, and if we shoot her we'll attract too much attention. Let's just keep moving."

  Rachel walks away, with the two boys following closely behind her. Curtis grabs Sarah's hand and holds it gently, then begins to pull her down the road with him — but she rips her hand away from him and looks back at the woman, breaking down in tears.

  "Hon, we have to keep moving — it's not safe out here, especially in this weather," Curtis pleads with her.

  She looks at him briefly, wondering where his compassion has gone, or whether he ever had any to begin with — then she marches past him and walks several paces behind Rachel and the boys.

  "If things were different," Curtis starts to say, before Sarah raises her hand up and cuts him off.

  "Things are definitely different, I get that Curtis — but I'm not discussing it with you, so save it." Her tone is blunt and bordering on rude, which is exactly the way that she meant it. She's more angry with the situation than Curtis or Rachel, but she's also disappointed in their reaction to it. Sick or not, the woman that they're leaving behind is suffering, and in a perfect or even halfway decent world, they would at least try to figure out how to help her, or ease her pain. Instead, the attitudes of her husband and children are to do nothing, and leave her to rot in a pit of mud in the pouring down rain. The children she can forgive, since their minds are clearly capable of adapting more quickly than adults, but she feels that Curtis should know better, and should be setting an example for how the boys should act in the future — if there is one.

  For the next hour, they walk in complete silence, every one of them exhausted and sore from the constant walking — not to mention the stress and anxiety. By the time they cross the flooded marshes of the river delta, passing by even more trapped people along the way, Ben's feet are slowing their speed down to almost a crawl.

  Sarah, noticing that he's both slowing down and beginning to walk strangely, stops him and takes off his shoes again. "Curtis, look at his feet — he can't go any further. Not like this…"

  Curtis kneels down and pats Ben on the knee, then looks down and cringes, seeing blisters and bruises covering both feet, and blood on the socks that he just put on this morning. "I'll carry him on my shoulders," he says to Sarah, then faces Ben. "Is that okay with you, buddy?" he asks, seeing Ben nod in return.

  "You're as tired as the rest of us, how far will you get?" Sarah asks him.

  "Laidlow is just up the highway, we'll find a wheelbarrow or something to use. The road is paved the rest of the way to Olympia."

  "Hey guys, look at this…" Rachel says, pointing down to the ground beside of the highway.

  The others don't even need to get closer to see what she's talking about. A path has clearly been worn down beside the highway, leaving the same crowded footprints in the mud that they've been seeing for miles now — all of them leading back to Westport, and not the direction that they're headed in.

  "Come on, let's get going before there's more of them," Curtis says, as he bends down and picks Ben up, placing him on his shoulders. "We should be able to make it to Aberdeen by dark."

  They reach the small community of Laidlow in only a few short minutes — a cluster of a dozen or so houses, half of them on the harbor side, and the other half along the river. The only one that's close to the highway sits by itself next to the bridge, and they can see an open door and broken out windows as soon as they approach it.

  "Did you search this when you and Larry came by here?" Sarah asks Curtis, watching him set Ben down onto the front lawn and look around at the outbuildings for anything useful.

  "No, we didn't really search a lot of houses."

  "I was inside," Ben says softly.

  "You were inside this house, sweety?" Sarah asks him.

  "I was hungry, so we stopped for a few minutes. Amanda doesn't really eat much."

  "Was there any food inside?"

  "Just a couple of old candy bars, but I ate those."

  Curtis looks closer at the place, half expecting Amanda herself to come bursting through the door with a knife in her hand. Even seeing a place that she's been to sends chills up his spine. "Come on, let's go inside for a few minutes while I look around for a cart or something. We can at least dry ourselves off."

  The inside of the house smells like all of the others they've been to — damp, moldy, and full of decay. Sarah finds a more or less clean set of towels in the master bathroom, and some dry clothes that more or less fit everyone but Curtis in the closet. While Curtis looks around outside, Rachel searches the kitchen for any food that was left behind — but Ben was right, the cupboards and pantry have been cleaned out of anything non-perishable. Even the boxes of dry pasta, which normally have a long shelf life, have been lost to rodents and who knows what else, all of them having full access through the open front door. From the window in the living room you're only a stone's throw away from the dark, cold waters of the harbor, which is mostly obscured by fog.

  "Is it wrong that even a dump like this seems appealing?" Rachel asks Sarah, who's standing at the window that looks over the harbor.

  "No, I was kind of thinking the same thing."

  "It's so quiet here, it's almost eerie."

  Sarah suddenly feels Rachel's hand on her forearm, then she points down the road toward Westport, where a man and woman are walking in their direction. "I have to find Curtis, he's still outside somewhere," Sarah says in a panic — then she turns around and sees him standing behind them.

  "I'm right here," he whispers. "I heard them coming down the road."

  "Are they sick?" Sarah asks, as all three of them crouch down and watch from the window. "They're walking normal."

  "I don't know, it's hard to say. They were talking to each other, but I couldn't really hear well enough to tell if it was gibberish."

  With the boys sitting in the back of the room, completely out of sight from what's happening on the road, the adults can see the couple approach the driveway and stop for a moment, looking over the house carefully before moving on again. They stop for a few minutes across the street, pointing at a drifting boat that's run aground about fifty feet or so from the shore. Privately, they all wonder why one of the infected would even find something like that interesting, since it's barely worth noting even to them — but after they turn around and head back to the road, the man reaches down and takes the woman's hand to help her through the tall grass and weeds in the ditch, and they know without a doubt that both of them are probably healthy. Eventually they pass out of sight entirely, headed for either Aberdeen or Cosmopolis — one of them a burned out ruin, and the other crawling with the infected.

  "Do you think we should have said something to them?" Rachel asks. "They probably have no idea where they're going."

  "No, but we still can't trust them," Curtis replies. "Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between the healthy and the sick."

  "Well, they're holding hands for one thing…"

  "Have you eve
r come across…" Curtis stops and turns toward the boys. "Matt, what did Jake call those people that act differently?"

  "Daywalkers," Matt answers.

  "Right, daywalkers." Curtis turns back and faces Rachel. "Have you ever run into someone that seemed perfectly normal at first, and then tries to kill you?"

  "No, I haven't," she says, finding the question somewhat unnerving.

  "You're lucky — we've met two of them. They can act and talk perfectly normal when they want to, but they're completely unhinged."

  "Three," Matt says, correcting him. "Mom and I met another one at a beach house — an old woman."

  "Right, I forgot about her. We can't trust anybody, not until everything settles down."

  "So do we stay here for the night?" Sarah asks, seeing the sun dropping into the west.

  "No," Curtis responds. "We'll give them some space, then we'll follow. We don't have much food left, and we need to find someplace we can stay at for a while so Ben can rest up."

  "Did you find anything outside?"

  "Yeah, there's one of those big plastic garden carts around on the side."

  "It looks like the rain is letting up some." Rachel says, as a few rays of sunlight can be seen shining through the clouds over the water.

  "Enjoy it while it lasts," Curtis says. "I think it rains on the harbor even more than the beach."

  After waiting for almost an hour, the group begins walking down the road once again — this time with Curtis pushing the cart with both Ben and most of their supplies loaded into it. While it's not exactly beautiful weather, the rain seems to have stopped for the time being, making the walk less miserable and time-consuming.