by James Bierce
"This stretch of road always seems to take forever, even in a car," Rachel complains.
"At least there's no mud," Sarah replies.
Although the highway along the south side of the harbor curves with the natural contour of the shoreline, this particular stretch of road is long and straight, with no view of the water or any sign of civilization. Only a fallen-down, obsolete power line and Douglas Fir trees can be seen, along with a few stranded cars that have already been picked through the last time they were here.
"How far are we walking today?" Matt asks.
"All the way to South Aberdeen, another three or four hours probably."
With Curtis in the lead, the group almost reaches the next bend in the road when they see an object in the middle of the road ahead of them.
"Dad, there's something…" Ben says, pointing straight ahead.
"I know, I see it too," Curtis replies, still moving forward at the same speed.
As they get closer, and they can see the bright red color, and the clear image of a woman lying face-down on the pavement, Curtis finally slows down as they approach the scene, recognizing her as the woman that passed by them earlier. Her partner isn't obvious at first, but by the time they reach her, they also spot his body sprawled out beside the road, his body presumably beaten with an ax handle that's still lying next to him.
"Curtis, I don't want to look at this," Sarah says, seeing him standing still and examining the bodies from a distance.
"I know," he says, looking around at the surrounding trees, and a private gravel driveway only a hundred yards behind them. "But whoever did this is still around here, and they're not alone…" He points to the ground next to the man, and two sets of footprints can be seen in the mud — one is wearing shoes, and the other isn't.
CHAPTER 13
Aberdeen: March 30th
The sounds of gentle splashing water and moans of pain are the first things that Larry hears before opening his eyes to the dark basement around him. Eventually his sight adjusts to the dim light, and he finds himself lying on top of the old flooring and staring up at the large hole above him, his legs submerged in water from the knees down. Hearing the moaning once again, he looks to his left and sees one of the men that attacked him lying motionless in the water, his head still bleeding from the bullet hole. Next to him, however, is the second man, who's still alive and impaled on an old broken floorboard that's sticking straight into the air. He keeps clutching at everything around him, sending waves of the stinking, murky water across the room.
Larry pulls himself up onto the platform further, making sure that his legs are on a dry surface — then he begins looking around for an exit. From what he can see, the basement doesn't have any stairs, and only one door at the back of the building which he assumes leads to an exit. When he pulls his spare flashlight out of his pocket and looks around, he can see a faint movement of current in the water from that direction. The only clear pathway to the door leads right past the two men, and also requires walking through the flooded waters.
Very slowly, he lowers himself down into the water until it comes up to his chest, then limps along the cluttered pathway on a twisted ankle, stepping over objects that are scattered on the floor beneath him. He pushes the dead man out of the way as he passes by, and then tries to walk as far around the other man as possible, but just as he almost clears him, he feels a hand reach out and grab his coat.
"Let go!" he says sternly, but quietly, not wanting to attract any unwanted attention from outside.
"I'm sorry, I'm really sorry," the man says, letting go of him.
Larry rushes past him a few feet, clear out of his reach, then turns around. "You can speak?"
"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hurt anybody…"
"What's your name?" Larry asks, suddenly feeling some sympathy for the man. When he shines the light toward him, not only does he see the massive wound in his abdomen where the piece of wood is piercing him, but he also sees that his eyes are dark red, with deep purple patches on his neck and jaw. Hearing no answer from him, he turns around and makes it to the far wall, listening to the continued splashing behind him as he jerks the door open and lets a rush of rainwater into the basement — which nearly knocks him off of his feet. As he pulls himself onto the concrete stairs on the other side, he glances back at the man and sees the water quickly rising in the room, already close to submerging his head underneath it.
He can feel just how tired his legs are as he climbs the stairs to the top and steps out into the parking lot behind the pharmacy — but he's shocked when he looks around and discovers how dark the skies are. Panicked, he pulls his sleeve up and looks at his watch, which reads a few minutes past seven. With his head still foggy, he has a hard time figuring out just how long he's been stuck down there, but he knows for certain that it's been several hours — long enough to completely run out of daylight anyway. He searches for the radio in his pocket, afraid that he might have lost it for a moment — but it's still in the same place as before, and the lights still work when he turns it on and presses the talk button.
"Christine, Mike, are you there?" Waiting for an answer, he suddenly realizes that he can hear footsteps around him, mostly coming from the main street in front of the pharmacy. "Can anyone hear me? I ran into some trouble and got knocked out, but I'm on my way now — and I have the medication…" Still getting no response, he starts walking to the east, making it two blocks before he gets a clear view of the hospital above him. To his surprise, he doesn't see any lights on the sixth floor, or anywhere else for that matter. Fearing the worst, he begins jogging as quickly as his injured ankle will allow, heading north down the middle of the road where there's less debris and more visibility — but when he comes to the main intersection, where the highway joins the road, he sees another group of people coming toward him, splitting off into different directions as they come to the highway. As three of them approach him, he's forced to duck into a small building next to him, unsure of whether or not they noticed him.
He waits behind a large office desk for the people to pass by, seeing a large real estate poster on the wall in front of him, and a sign that says 'The Most Affordable Homes In Grays Harbor', with photographs of houses that are now almost certainly burned down and destroyed. This particular office though, as rundown as it is, appears to be mostly undamaged from the flames.
When the silence returns to the street outside, with no sign of activity in front of the office, Larry carefully peeks out at the neighborhood around him, and sees another intact building directly across from him — a bank from the looks of it. On the far corner of the intersection, between him and the hospital, he can still see several silhouettes standing beside a lamppost, as if waiting for a signal to cross the street. The more he looks around, the easier it is to spot movements throughout the city — movements that were impossible to see from the vantage point of the hospital. He's not sure if it's only here, or whether the same thing is happening everywhere, but the health of the infected seems to be getting worse overall. In Grayland he saw people that were talking and manipulating on a large scale, and on his way through Westport he saw more people active during the daylight hours — but all of them showed worsening signs of congestion and bruising.
All but Amanda, that is — she's the only one that they've come across that has actually improved over the course of the illness.
Taking in a deep breath first, Larry unlocks the door and reaches for the handle, then hears the familiar hiss coming from his radio.
"Larry, are you still there?"
Recognizing the voice as Christine, he immediately lets go of the handle and grabs the radio instead. "Christine? Yes, I'm here."
"Are you coming back soon? Mike is really anxious about those antibiotics…"
Larry presses the button on the radio to correct her, then pauses for a moment. "Yes, I have them. How are his symptoms?"
"His cough is getting worse."
He can hear the distress i
n her voice, which wouldn't be all that unusual considering the circumstances — but he can tell that something else is seriously wrong, Mike made it crystal clear to both of them that he needed insulin, not antibiotics. He personally saw dozens of large bottles of those on a shelf behind Mike's desk. "Okay, I'll be there as soon as I can. There's a lot of people walking around outside."
"Okay, just hurry, Mike said he needs you here as soon as possible."
"I'm heading out now, I'll see you soon."
Placing the radio back into his pocket, Larry opens the door and steps out onto the sidewalk, looking around carefully before quietly closing the door behind him. After only a few steps forward though, he hears the radio hissing again, the transmission filled with heavy static, and then a man's voice comes out of it. Larry quickly makes his way back to the office and closes the door behind him, but not before a woman from down the street notices him. Locking the door and watching her slowly come closer, he pulls the radio out again.
"Larry? Larry Goss?" says the static-filled voice.
"Yes, who is this?"
"It's Curtis Lockwood."
CHAPTER 14
South Aberdeen: March 30th
Crowded around Curtis and the radio, the rest of the Lockwood family and Rachel sit silently as they listen to Larry on the other end of the signal — all of them stunned to hear his voice again. They're sitting in a small living room, across the street from the harbor, and directly across the harbor from Aberdeen.
"Curtis, are you serious? Where the hell are you?"
"Across the harbor from Aberdeen — where are you?"
"I'm in Aberdeen, a few blocks south of the highway, directly south of the hospital."
"Is Beth with you?"
"No, I'm alone right now, but I'm on my way up to get a girl, Christine."
"Who is Mike?"
"That's a long story, Curtis. One I'll have to tell you about in person."
"Right, I understand… We should meet up tomorrow."
"Yeah, that'd be great. Listen, I have to go — it was really good to hear from you again though."
"Same here." Curtis says before putting down the radio and looking around at the others, still in disbelief.
"What happened to Beth?" Matt asks.
"I don't know, I'm sure he'll tell us tomorrow though." Hearing the radio again, Curtis picks it up and listens closely to the voice on the other end, and he can tell that it's the girl again, who's obviously further away from them judging from the amount of static on the line.
"…to wait for them, he doesn't want to…" the girl says, before cutting out.
"Curtis, are you still there?" Larry says.
"Yeah, I'm here. What's going on?" replies Curtis.
"Mike wants me to wait for you, that way the two of us can pick Christine up. I'm sorry to hear you're alone, it'd be great to have more company."
"Yeah, I hear you. Where should we meet?"
"Hang on a minute…"
"Curtis, what's going on?" Sarah asks, her voice suddenly filled with worry.
"I don't know, but something certainly doesn't sound right."
"You remember where you worked for an entire day after you finished school?" Larry says over the radio.
"Yeah, I do."
"Three blocks south of the highway. Everything is safe there."
"Got it. Be careful, Larry."
"Same to you."
"What does that mean?" Rachel asks.
"He wants to meet at a bank," Sarah answers. "Curtis worked at one a long time ago, and got fired after one shift."
"It wasn't that long ago," Curtis replies. "I think he means for all of us to go there, that's why he said it's safe there."
"Do you think it's this 'Mike' guy that's the problem?"
"I don't know, we'll have to wait and see." He looks over at Matt and Ben, who are both sitting on the couch and looking sleepy. "Okay, everybody needs to get some sleep — it's gonna be a long day tomorrow. I'll take the first watch."
"I'll join you," Sarah says to him, as the two boys head into the bedroom behind them.
"I guess that means Matt and I for the next watch?" Rachel asks.
"Do you mind?"
"No, not at all. I'll see you in a few hours."
They watch as Rachel walks into the same bedroom, then shuts the door behind her. The room suddenly becomes completely quiet, except for the occasional wind gust that moves the wind chimes somewhere outside.
"Is it me, or is Ben quieter than usual tonight?" Sarah whispers to Curtis.
"No, it's not you."
"And he barely ate anything at dinner..."
"It's just this place, it has us both unnerved."
"Aberdeen?"
"No, Ben escaped from Amanda here — from this house."
Sarah looks at him incredulously, raising her voice slightly. "Then why are we here?"
"Because it's the only house in the neighborhood with an intact front door."
Feeling wide-awake herself, Sarah watches as Curtis nods off in a recliner and finally falls asleep. She knows that he'll hate himself when he wakes up, but she's also worried about how little sleep he's gotten over the last couple of weeks. Everything that he's doing, including the morally questionable acts, has been to protect the family, no matter what the cost — and as much as she disagrees with some of it, ultimately she knows that he's doing it for the right reasons, or at least she hopes so anyway.
Hardly a thought crosses her mind lately that doesn't include living in the serenity of Olympia, where they suspect the virus had a nearly complete mortality rate. It's something that would normally be considered catastrophic, a worst-case scenario for humanity — but compared to the reality they're now faced with, a lack of survivors sounds like paradise. Just having enough time to prepare for the inevitable — the days when the canned goods and dry pasta finally go bad, and they run out of bottled water, medications, and batteries for their flashlights and radios. At some point in the near future, the conveniences of the modern world will begin to disappear, leaving them alone with no real knowledge of how to survive in the stone ages.
The food situation alone is a constant concern. She used to grow a small garden every summer when they lived in Oregon, but she bought seeds at the local supermarket, and never had to worry about collecting more seeds to replace them — she knew that she could simply buy new ones the following year. Hunting is always a possibility, especially since Larry seems to know a thing or two about butchering the animal once they're killed, but storing the meat without refrigeration is another problem they haven't tackled yet. Meat used to be either canned or cured with salt to preserve it, but one small mistake could end up killing the entire group by poisoning them with a bacteria they're no longer capable of eliminating.
The stress of everything is beginning to take its mental toll on Sarah. No matter how many problems they eventually have to face, none of them will be solved as long as they're constantly running for their lives — which is what makes this trip so vitally important.
As she looks out the front window, she can barely make out the skyline of Aberdeen in the darkness. She lived here for a few months when she was a teenager, staying with an aunt for the summer while her parents moved back east for the company her father worked for. Compared to the long, warm, sunny days of summer that she was used to in Portland, the cold, gray skies of Aberdeen seemed like a winter that would never end. The harbor brought in a constant flow of moisture into the streets, bringing fog and rain showers to the area on a regular basis, even as the weather forecasters on the radio bragged about the hot, dry weather in Tacoma, only eighty miles to the east.
As horrid as the climate was, there was still something about living on the harbor that appealed to her. It seemed to have a life of its own, entirely different from the rivers of Portland or the ocean at Cohassett Beach. She thinks back to those few months of her childhood fondly, choosing to remember Aberdeen as a coastal city with lots of character and atmosp
here, and not just the past reputation of prostitutes and serial killers that some like to associate it with.
Tonight, however, as she watches the moon cast a pale, white light over the city, it lies in ruin, decimated by the descendants of those who built it.
"Sarah, are you awake?" Rachel whispers from behind Sarah.
"Yeah, I'm awake — I'm just letting Curtis get some rest. What's wrong?"
Rachel sits down next to her, looking around at the neighborhood suspiciously. "Have you seen anybody out there?"
"No, not a soul."
Rachel points further down the road. "I'm just freaking out a little I guess — Bill was almost killed right down there. We'd crossed the bridge from Aberdeen, then we decided to check out some of the houses in Cosmopolis."
"Cosmopolis was pretty bad, huh?"
"It was like Grayland, only there were a lot more of them — it was like they…"
She stops in mid-sentence, as both of them notice the same orange glow coming from across the harbor. Another fire has started, this one coming from the eastern side of the city that was spared from the previous blaze. Within only moments, the fire spreads from a small, single location, to several larger ones — all of them on the other side of the Wishkah, along the highway to Olympia, which is where they planned to go tomorrow after joining Larry and Christine.
"That area was empty when we came through there before." Rachel says. "Or at least we thought it was."
"Is that the only way through?"
"No, there's another bridge north of there." Rachel stands up and takes another look around, still seeing no activity of any kind. "Okay, I'm headed to bed — for real this time. You're sure that you're okay out here by yourself?"
"Yeah, I'll be fine."
Hearing Curtis snoring from the other side of the room, Sarah gets up and walks through the house, scanning the perimeter of the property from the different windows. Everything appears to be quiet, and then she enters the second bedroom and peers into the east, where she can barely see the main bridge that heads into the city. Small bits of movement are visible through the fog, which she can only imagine are people heading toward the new fires.