by James Bierce
"We need to come up with a plan."
"For getting back to the house?"
"No, for after that. We can't stay in the city — not with this many people wandering around. As soon as Larry and I get stronger, we have to move on again — and it can't be east."
"You saw the smoke?"
"Yeah, from the hospital. I don't know if that's Olympia or not, but that was a shitload of smoke on the horizon," Curtis says, taking a sip of water from a bottle that the old man had on him.
"I had an uncle that used to live out on the coast somewhere north of here — we used to visit him a couple of times a year in the summer," Rachel says.
"Was it Ocean Shores?"
"No, it wasn't that touristy. It was really quiet, or at least it was back then."
"Copalis?"
"Yeah, that was it. Have you ever been out there?"
"Just passing through, we usually stayed on the south side of the harbor when we'd come out here. We had a cabin just south of Westport," Curtis answers.
"Copalis is a pretty sparsely populated area — it wouldn't take much to clear it out."
"Clear it out?" Christine asks, her voice sounding indignant. "You mean kill everyone?"
"They're already dead, Christine, or they might as well be anyway."
Curtis watches Christine shake her head as she heads back into the darkness, hearing the squeaking springs of the couch as she throws herself into it. He agrees completely with Rachel, and understands why she feels that way after hearing about the way her son died — but he also doesn't want to force Christine into changing her own perspective. Sooner or later, the circumstances of life will likely change her mind as well — but until then, he doesn't see the harm in feeling some level of compassion for the infected, just as long as that sympathy doesn't interfere with the safety of the group.
"I think she's just tired," Rachel whispers, hearing a slight snoring coming from the other side of the room after only a couple of minutes.
"You know, there's nothing wrong with feeling the way that she does."
"I know there isn't, but there's too much at stake to worry about things like that."
"The infected here are weaker and slower than they are in Grayland — have you noticed that?"
"They're weaker everywhere compared to Grayland."
"If they're the same way in Copalis, it shouldn't take much to take care of them.
"All of them?"
"Like you said, they're dead already."
CHAPTER 27
Aberdeen: April 5th
Four nights have passed since the incident in the bank, and although Rachel and Christine managed to get Curtis back to the house safely, neither he or Larry have been physically capable of making the long trip west to Copalis — a destination that everyone agrees is probably their safest bet to avoid as many of the infected as possible. The only possible problem could be Hoquiam, a city that sits on the other side of the western bridges from Aberdeen, and is the only real way of reaching the beaches north of the harbor. From what both Curtis and Larry saw in the early days of the fire, it looked as though it originated in Hoquiam — and from the viewpoint of the waiting room at the hospital, the damage seemed to be even more severe than Aberdeen. Looks can be deceiving, however, and all of them are concerned that the infected could be in much greater numbers than what you can see from this side of the bridge — and worse yet, there's always the possibility that the people there might be similar to the vicious residents of Grayland.
The night before, both Curtis and Larry told the others that they would be ready to move out the following morning, and the timing couldn't be more perfect. With seven mouths to feed, their resources were quickly running low, and the variety of food that was found in the kitchen was proving to be less useful than they hoped it would be — with ancient, spoiled jars of meat and seafood sprinkled throughout the homemade stash of goods. After Sarah opened the first jar and caught wind of the rancid odor coming from the salmon inside, she immediately rounded up the other mason jars without dates written on them and threw them away. When she was done, the group was left with a few jars of pickled beets, a jar of pickled cucumbers, and several jars of almost tasteless applesauce that only Ben seems to enjoy eating. The only form of protein they have actually came from the house next door, where Rachel and Matt found a couple of boxes of dry pasta in an otherwise cleaned-out home. As appetizing as 'pickled beet and apple pasta' sounds, even those few ingredients are beginning to run out — and without a proper amount of protein, reaching the sandy shores of Ocean City or Copalis on foot might prove to be more difficult than they realize.
Aside from a few stray animals passing through the area, the neighborhood has been remarkably quiet — except for one person. Matt was the first to see him, standing on the far side of the parking lot and watching their house closely, with a long beard that hangs down to his stomach. After seeing him again, Larry stood on the front porch and took a couple of shots at him with the .30-06 rifle they took from the bank, but the man took cover before he could zero in on him, and he's maintained an even greater distance ever since.
"He's out there again," Matt says, watching out the front window as the first morning light illuminates the street enough to see the man standing several houses down from them.
"He's always out there," Christine replies from the chair next to him. "It's what the Watchers do — they watch."
"Do you think he'll follow us when we leave?"
"Yeah, he'll follow us — until we eventually kill him."
"Is Amanda a Watcher?" he asks, in almost a whisper.
"No, I don't think there's a name for whatever she is — but she's definitely not one of them."
"Are you guys about ready?" Curtis asks both of them, picking up a bag from the floor and swinging it over his shoulder.
"Yeah, we've been ready for a while."
"How is Ben's foot? I asked him and he just shrugged."
"I think it's okay — he doesn't wanna leave the house though, he's afraid of that guy out there."
"We'll keep an eye on him. If he gets too close, we'll take him out."
After you cross over one of the bridges in Hoquiam, there are two possible routes that lead to the beach. One of them is Highway 109, which runs along the northern side of Grays Harbor — and the other is Ocean Beach Road, which takes you further inland and to higher elevations than the other route. Either way they decide to go, the walk is still somewhere around twenty-five miles according to the map, which is a good eight or nine hours when members of your group are only halfway healed up from their injuries.
When they reach the bottom of the hill and turn toward the west, passing by the smoldering ruins of the county hospital, Curtis instinctively looks behind him to where he last saw Amanda — but this time he only sees an empty road and burned out cars, and a plume of smoke in the distance that's even bigger today than when he saw it from the roof of the hospital a few days prior.
"Stick to the sidewalks, everybody," Curtis says, waving the boys off of the asphalt roadway and onto the concrete pathway instead.
"Why?" Matt asks, stepping onto the curb next to his father.
"The road looks like it's caved in up ahead, and the concrete is reinforced," he answers, pointing up ahead where a few large sinkholes have developed in the middle of the street. "The fire must have burned something under the surface."
The farther west they walk, the more extensive the damage from the fire becomes, with most of the buildings completely burned to the ground as they approach the river that separates the two cities. They can see charred bones next to the highway, half buried beneath inches of fine ash that covers the ground. Crows and hawks are scattered through all of it, picking off the last bits of flesh before it rots away entirely. They can see other animal tracks as well, like raccoons, possum, dogs — and humans, all of them barefoot. The footprints left by the animals have virtually no straight lines at all, unlike what you would expect from a perso
n — they wander around in twists and turns with no rhyme or reason as to the pattern. Alongside of them, however, are what look like dozens of human prints, and any irregularity to the animal signs pale when compared to the chaos and randomness of the infected. From the shifting piles of ash that are constantly moving from the wind off the harbor, they can only assume that all of these were likely created sometime in the last several hours, otherwise any trace of them would've been destroyed by now.
"At least there's no child footprints," Sarah says, noticing that most of them head north, where there's still quite a few houses sitting against the hill with no apparent damage done to them.
"Like a little girl?" Larry asks.
"Something like that."
"Is this the north or south bridge we're coming up to?" Rachel asks from the front, stopping in her tracks as she looks straight ahead.
"The north — why?" Larry replies.
"I don't see it."
"Maybe we're not close enough to it."
"No, she's right," Curtis says. "That bridge is ugly enough to see a mile away." He turns to the left and looks downstream, where another narrower bridge should be sitting right next to them, near the harbor. "I don't see that one either."
At one time, either bridge could be easily concealed behind the commercial buildings and homes in the area — but there are no structures left, and the large concrete foundation of the southern bridge can still be seen rising into the air. The group walks down to the riverbank, where the slow-moving Hoquiam river ends its short run into the harbor — and they can see their first clear glimpse of the city of Hoquiam across it, although all that's left is the outline of foundations where its buildings once stood. The steel structure of the bridge is still protruding above the surface of the river, and they can look upstream and see that the same is true for the northern bridge as well.
"What do we do now?" Rachel asks.
"We swim or find a boat." Larry answers back, looking up and down the river for any sign of the latter.
"I don't know how to swim," Christine says.
"Then I guess we'll have to find a boat."
"There must be one upstream somewhere," Sarah says, as she begins walking on a road that heads north, against the flow of the river.
They continue along the stream, past the ruined northern bridge, until they come to a bend in the river where the expanse of civilization suddenly ends, leaving nothing but burned wilderness ahead of them. Down on the shore, where a small house and outbuildings once stood, they can see a wooden dock with two small boats tied to it. One of them is made out of fiberglass, and is slightly larger than the second one, with an outboard engine hanging off the back of it. The other is an aluminum row boat that's full of dents and scratches, but seems to be in good shape otherwise.
"I don't know if I really trust the engine on the fiberglass one, so I guess that means we'll probably be making two trips with the smaller one," Larry says, as he looks over both boats for any supplies that might have been left onboard.
"Do you see him, Matt?" Curtis asks, looking at his son.
"See who?" Sarah asks.
"Yeah, I saw him a minute ago," Matt answers him, pointing downstream in the direction of the last bridge. "He's behind that car over there."
"Are we still being followed?" Sarah asks Curtis.
"Apparently — I can't see shit over there," he replies, squinting as he looks south. "Has anybody ever seen these things swim?"
"Yeah, I have," Christine says. "As long as the water is calm, they don't have any trouble at all."
"Well, the engine is seized on the fiberglass one anyway, so I guess we're taking the row boat," Larry says. "Who's gonna be the first three to cross with me?"
"Sarah and the boys are," Curtis says quickly, sounding as if the topic isn't up for debate.
"We don't know what's on the other side," Sarah responds.
"Everything is burned on the other side — you can practically see the ocean," he replies, obviously exaggerating, but the other side is remarkably visible.
Sarah looks back down the road and sees some movement in the distance — then she sees a man running quickly from one car to another, his movements quick and agile. After watching him for a moment, she sees him move again, only this time with something else shadowing his every movement. "We're not gonna make it to the beach at this rate — we're gonna have to find someplace to stay the night before the sun goes down."
"We still have plenty of daylight left," Curtis says. "Once we get past this it'll go a lot faster."
"I know, but there's two of them following us now," she says, watching a second man follow behind the other. "The first safe place we find on the other side, we're staying the night."
After making both trips across the river, with each of them taking turns manning the oars across the high-flowing stream, they pull the boat up onto the shore on the western side and hide it beneath a pile of twisted metal roofing — the last remaining material of what used to be a home. Although they have no plans to ever return to the area, they also have no idea of whether the northern coast is better or worse than what they've seen elsewhere.
Shortly before they set off down the highway, headed toward the southern route that runs along the harbor, they could see the two men in the distance as they scrambled from one vehicle to the next, each of them pushing and shoving as they fought to stay hidden from sight. Although the entire group was anxious to separate themselves from the watchers, and knew that this was their greatest opportunity to do so, they couldn't help but watch as one of them brutally murdered the other, then tossed his body into the river before disappearing into the brush beside the riverbank. It wasn't the act itself that they found so captivating, it was the almost elegant way that he did it that fascinated them — as if his body were moving in fast-forward. His victim was fast, much more so than most of the infected, but clearly not fast enough to stop the beating that he endured.
The damage from the fire continues through most of Hoquiam, taking with it almost every home and commercial building clear to the high school on the far side of town. The devastation is immense, and despite keeping a close eye out for anything that might prove useful, the group leaves the city limits with only the few supplies they came with.
As they reach the wildlife sanctuary, where the harbor disappears behind a large section of tidal grasslands and muddy channels, the fatigue from walking begins to catch up with most of the group — especially after seeing no sign of their follower on the straight stretch of road to Hoquiam.
"I'm wearing down, guys," Larry says, wheezing as they climb a slight incline where the road turns north and away from the water.
"We're not even a third of the way there, Larry," Curtis tells him, although his own legs and back are beginning to seize up as well. "I figured we'd at least make it halfway before nightfall."
"What is that, another five miles? I don't think I can make it that far — not after all of that damn rowing."
Sarah ignores the comment about rowing and starts looking at the map for any possible residential areas nearby. She rowed most of the way across the river on the first trip over, but she also knows that she wasn't injured when she did it. "There's a place called Grays Harbor City just up the road — has anybody ever been there?"
"I've been by there plenty of times," Rachel says. "You can't really see much from the highway though."
"It's another mile or so up the road, do you think you can make it that far?" Sarah asks Larry.
"Yeah, I'll be fine — I'm just running out of air."
Nestled in amongst the trees, and only a stone's throw from the heavily bird-infested marshes of the harbor, Grays Harbor City turns out to be much smaller than the ambitious name implies. Consisting of several winding roads on both sides of the highway, the sprawling community is spread out through thick forests and around small creeks, where dozens of houses look untouched from the ravages of the past few months.
One house looks esp
ecially well cared for, with stone siding and vines growing neatly around the doors and windows of the first floor. It looks as though it was only abandoned a short while ago, and sits by itself in the middle of a large clearing, with a creek that runs across the driveway and underneath a small wooden bridge. The only real sign that it's been abandoned is the overgrown grass in the lawn, and the unpruned fruit trees along the highway.
"Matt, keep watching the road — we still don't know if that guy is following us," Curtis says, as they approach the front door with their weapons drawn. He reaches out and turns the handle, and the door swings open against the loud protests of the rusty hinges. "I'm not sure if unlocked is a good thing or not," he says, stepping inside and smelling the familiar scent of dampness. Although the inside of the home doesn't look quite as pristine as the outside, with small patches of mildew on some of the walls and ceiling — it still doesn't appear to be ransacked or damaged in any way, and it quickly becomes apparent that they're likely the first people to walk across the threshold since the outbreak began.
"This doesn't look half bad," Sarah tells Curtis, as they both walk into the kitchen and see containers of flour and sugar still sitting on the countertop.
"There must be two dozen doors and windows on this floor alone though. It's gonna be a bitch to watch every opening," Curtis replies. With Christine and the boys waiting in the living room, he sees Larry and Rachel coming down the stairs after searching the second floor. "Was anybody upstairs?"
"Nope," Larry answers. "There's just an empty master bedroom and an office up there."
"I think that's probably where we're spending the night, we can keep an eye on the staircase a lot easier than all of these windows."
"We did find this though," Rachel says, handing Curtis a handwritten note.
"What is it?" Curtis asks.
"A suicide note."
"And you didn't find a body?" Sarah asks.
"No, we didn't."