Grayland
Page 1
Contents
Title Page
Prologue
Chapter 1: Cohassett
Chapter 2: Cohassett
Chapter 3: Menlo
Chapter 4: Cohassett
Chapter 5: Menlo
Chapter 6: Highway 105
Chapter 7: Cohassett
Chapter 8: Grayland
Chapter 9: Grayland
Chapter 10: Cohassett
Chapter 11: Grayland
Chapter 12: Cohassett
Chapter 13: Grayland
Chapter 14: Cohassett
Chapter 15: Grayland
Chapter 16: Cohassett
Chapter 17: Grayland
Chapter 18: Cohassett
Chapter 19: Cohassett
Chapter 20: Grayland
Chapter 21: Cohassett
Chapter 22: Grayland
Chapter 23: Grayland
Chapter 24: Cohassett
Chapter 25: Grayland
Chapter 26: Grayland
Chapter 27: Cohassett
Chapter 28: Grayland
Chapter 29: Cohassett
Chapter 30: Highway 105
Chapter 31: Cohassett
Acknowledgments
This book is a work of fiction. Any names, places, events or characters are from the author’s imagination or fictitious in nature, and any resemblance to real places, events, businesses or people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
©2018 by James Bierce. All rights reserved.
jamesbierce.com
This product may not be reproduced, stored or transmitted without written permission from the publisher.
Published by Grays Harbor Publishing.
graysharborpublishing.com
Cover design by Clayton Swim.
Grayland (Grays Harbor Series: Book 2) First Edition
PROLOGUE
WESTPORT
According to the calender on the kitchen wall, which she marks at the beginning of every day, the date is Monday, September 24th, and it was exactly one week ago that twelve-year-old Amanda Williams murdered both her father and step-mother. Over the next couple of days, she watched from their house as the entire town evacuated to the south, where word was spreading that emergency shelters had been setup in both South Bend and Raymond — neither of which were showing any signs of being infected with the virus. After everyone was gone, and the beaches surrounding the city became quiet for the first time in over a century, Amanda decided to take a walk down the street to the beach access road, passing by the darkened lighthouse that towers above the sand dunes in the Westhaven State Park. She misses seeing the light, the glow of which she could often see from her bedroom window — but even the silhouette of the obsolete lighthouse wasn’t enough to distract her from the perfect evening along the beach. There were no tourists or parents, no children screaming, no dogs barking as they ran through the surf — it was only her and the sliver of moonlight overhead. For the first time in her rather short life, she finally felt happy.
That feeling lasted for a single night, and her world changed forever when she went for a walk the following evening.
The first time that she saw someone else in town was right down the road from her house, a woman that was sitting on a bench in front of the town drugstore. At first she didn’t think much of it, but after walking down to the beach it began to bother her — an invader in her otherwise pure oasis of solitude. She decided to get rid of the woman on her way back, an easy kill by the looks of her — but after searching for over an hour, with no trace of the woman anywhere, she turned around and faced the street that led back to her house, and that was the first time that she saw them.
Staring back at her, with eyes that somehow looked dead and menacing at the same time, was a crowd of dozens of people — all of them slowly moving in her direction.
Although she managed to make it back to the house that night, it was also the last time she was able to wander into the streets after sundown. Her once perfect existence had been taken over by the infected souls that never left the town.
With the sun just barely under the horizon, Amanda can already hear the sound of someone moving outside of her bedroom window. Huddled in the corner of her closet, with her knife held tightly in her hand, she tries to cough as quietly as possible to clear her congested throat, fearing what might happen if someone were to find her. She can see them walking around after dark, often wandering with no obvious purpose or direction, and becoming more violent as each day passes. For days now she’s been living like this — alone, hungry, and afraid, hiding in a house once occupied by the family that she murdered. The fact that it was her own family doesn’t usually bother her, but on nights like this, when the streets are alive with the creatures that now occupy Westport, she finds herself missing them. While she doesn’t necessarily regret killing any of them, she does miss the companionship and security that her father provided.
She hears a faint scratching at her window, followed by a voice whose tone seems calm and soothing — ‘The Whisperer’ she calls him. Amanda has learned the hard way not to listen to him, no matter how pitiful or reassuring he may sound. Soon, after ignoring him for too long, he’ll grow impatient and desperate, and the gentle voice that only wants to come inside will turn into a vicious rage. She’s never once seen him this close to the house at such an early hour. Normally he keeps his distance until much later into the night, when the light is dim, and the cold, damp air moves in through the streets from the ocean to the west.
As she tries to force herself to sleep, a feeling of terror suddenly comes over her as she remembers the candle burning in the living room. Although the people in town seem to be scared of daylight, they’re strangely attracted to the lights at night — even to the subtle flicker of candlelight. She feels relatively safe behind the locked doors of her home, especially inside of the closet that she now sleeps in, but she also knows that if enough of them come to the window and see her moving around, they might be able to break through. With the knife held tightly in her hand, she carefully reaches out and pushes the closet door open, then slowly crawls out onto the floor beside her bed. She knows that he can't see her yet, but when she moves away from the bed and toward the door he might see movement through the semi-transparent curtains that cover the glass. Peeking around the bedpost, she glances up at the window, frightened that she'll see his grotesque face — or even worse, he might see her. To her relief though, only the quivering flame from the candlelight on her bedroom wall is visible.
After hurrying through the doorway and into the hall, she lies down on the hardwood floor and whispers underneath a door across from her bedroom… “Aaron, don’t worry, I’ll put it out before they see us…”
Her brother, Aaron, who was the only member of the Williams family to survive the massacre (besides Amanda, of course), had inadvertently locked himself in the basement of the house while hiding from her, in the mistaken belief that their father would be able to stop her. For the next several days, Amanda could hear him plead with her to let him out — but as his fists pounding against the door became weaker, and his once dominating voice shriveled to a gasping whisper, she stopped hearing from him altogether. Her routine, however, remains the same. After she finds herself something to eat, she slides a small amount of food under the door for him. After that, and until it’s time for bed, she talks to him for hours, telling him all about the changes in the neighborhood — and the people that they once knew that are now dead, some of them by her own hands. As she turns and faces the burning candle, she stops and listens to the silence emanating from the basement below, feeling the cold, musty air blow across the floor from under the door.
“Aaron, are you there?”
Hearing no response, she crawls quickly into th
e living room, heading straight to the coffee table where the candle is lit. The room seems different after dark, more tranquil somehow — she rarely ever sees it this way. Ordinarily she spends every hour of darkness locked away in her own personal fortress of clothes, dolls, and her stepmother's butcher knife. In the nearly dark room in front of her though, she can no longer see the seemingly empty town outside the windows, or the blood splattered in the entryway, or her father's mangled body lying just outside the antique glass-paned front door where she left him. What she can see is her breath from the dry, cold air inside the house, which only gets worse as the brisk autumn winds move into the region.
She’s angry with herself for leaving the candle burning, angry that she kept one lit in the first place. The skies the day before, however, were almost black, leaving the house dark in the middle of the afternoon.
Still on her stomach, trembling with fear and afraid that they might see her through the windows, she slowly reaches up for the candlestick.
Then she hears a familiar sound.
The doorknob on the front door starts rattling, ever so slightly. She quickly grabs hold of the candlestick and extinguishes the flame. Now surrounded by complete darkness, she waits for the sound outside to stop before she turns around to go back into her room, but it’s soon replaced with yet another sound. This one is coming from another direction — from the kitchen behind her.
When it happens a second time, she lets out a quiet whimper as she finally realizes that it’s coming from inside the house.
She waits on the floor, gripping the candlestick in one hand, and the knife in the other. The house is entirely dark, and silent aside from the graceless footsteps on the front porch. Then she hears it again, the sound of shuffling feet across the tile floor.
They’re still in the kitchen.
She’s frozen with fear, but somehow manages to slide her body against the front of the couch. She can only hear one of them, but however this one got in, others could soon follow. They'd been inside the house only once before, and it nearly ended tragically. She knows that the only chance she has is to somehow lure them out, and that means forcing her fear-paralyzed body to stand up and face whatever is in the next room. As quietly as possible, she stands up in front of the couch and listens to them. The steps are short, slow and uncoordinated. Wherever they’re going, they don't seem to be in any hurry.
The only other door into the house is at the end of the hallway, and that leads her right past the kitchen. As she makes her way across the living room she can hear them breathing — a deep, rattling, congested wheeze that sounds painful. She can smell them too. They all give off what could only be described as every human stench imaginable. The smell stops her in her tracks, and for a moment she has to hold her breath and back up a few steps to keep from gagging — but then she covers her nose and mouth in the crook of her arm, and manages to start moving again. Feeling something at her feet, she realizes that it’s the transition between the hardwood in the living room and the carpet in the hallway.
That means the kitchen, and the intruder, is right next to her.
She waits once again for any signs of movement. For all she knows they’re directly in front of her, waiting for her to walk right into them — but when she stops to hear where they are, she can only hear the labored breathing a few feet to her right. As she steps onto the carpet, the weight of her frail frame causes the ancient floorboards underneath to creak, and from the next room she hears a frantic moan cry out. Loud footsteps are coming toward her, followed by the crashing of frying pans landing on the tile floor. Amanda quickly steps back onto the hardwood and back into the living room, the footsteps following right behind her, slowed only by the constant dragging of their feet. She doesn't want to run back to the couch in the middle of the room, afraid she might trip on something, so instead, she turns to her left and stands against the wall just inside the room. She closes her eyes, trying not to scream, with every muscle in her body clenched in fear.
Only seconds later the footsteps are right next to her — but they hurry past her and into the room beyond. She hears a stumble coming from the direction of the couch, then a horrible, sickly scream as they scramble to get up. Without hesitating, she opens her eyes, useless as they are in the dark room, then runs down the hallway toward the back door. When she reaches it, she’s surprised to find that it’s still locked.
This wasn't how they got in.
She turns around and faces the hallway again, the sound of the footsteps once again coming closer, along with the now desperate gasps for air. With her hands trembling, she drops the candlestick and feels the door for the deadbolt and handle. The footsteps are getting closer as she finally manages to open the door and make her way out onto the porch that surrounds the house — then she turns around and grabs the door handle, slamming it shut as she catches just a glimpse of the person chasing her. Only seconds later she can hear a loud thump against the closed door, and then a scratching sound as she sees a pale hand against the surface of the small glass window beside it.
Turning around, she can barely see the outlines of the craftsman-styled homes of downtown Westport from the faint sliver of moonlight overhead, giving everything a subdued blue tint that looks almost dreamlike. Tonight the town looks completely different than it had a year ago. The streets are dark, and so are the windows of the now empty homes and businesses. There’s no traffic, no loud music coming from the neighbor's house, and no sounds from the harbor only a short walk from her house.
She looks around frantically at the dark buildings and streets, her bare feet now feeling numb against the cold wood decking of the porch, and her face burning from the icy winds coming off of the ocean. She doesn't know where to go, she hasn’t been out at night since the people emerged from the shadows. Sometimes at night, while she was trying to fall asleep through the noise and chaos outside, she thought about where she would go if something like this happened — in fact her brother used to obsess over it after the news of the virus broke. He said their safest bet was the apartment above the Peterson Bar & Grill. It had a reputation for prostitutes and illegal liquor during prohibition, but it turned into a family restaurant in recent years. The owner had boarded up the staircase to the second story years ago, and the only way inside was now up a rusty fire escape in the alley out back. The only problem was getting there — it’s on the other side of town.
She makes her way down the steps carefully, wishing that she'd slept with her shoes on as she reaches the landing at the bottom. Her bare feet were already feeling the effects of the rough planks on the porch, but the sidewalk leading to the street is sharp gravel. Hoping to save her feet, she jumps off of the landing and into a mud puddle in the lawn, splashing mud on her already filthy dress.
Immediately after landing she hears a loud crack, and then the creaking of the front door. She ducks into the bushes beside the porch and waits, and for a moment she can only hear the loud breathing — and then the groaning of the wooden steps leading to the sidewalk as they begin to move. For the first time she can see that it’s a younger man, probably in his late teens or twenties. He stumbles down the graveled walkway, barely keeping his balance as he heads away from her hiding spot. He doesn't have any pants on, or shoes for that matter — the only thing that he’s wearing is a soiled white t-shirt and boxer shorts. He's also drenched in sweat, with pale, clammy skin that’s covered with bruises and scratches. At the end of her sidewalk he stops and looks around, making Amanda nervous that she might be seen if she hangs around for too long. One thing that she's learned is that the infected people she’s seen in the past aren’t completely stupid, some shred of intelligence has managed to stay intact. She tries to move silently behind the bushes, toward the alley that runs next to her house. If she can get there she can make her way to Forrest Street, which is only a couple of blocks away, and from there it’s a straight shot to the restaurant.
Crawling on her hands and knees through the pine needle mulch of h
er stepmother's flower bed, which is the only place that's still completely hidden from the moonlight, she looks up and sees the man walking across the lawn, his hands reaching out toward her, and his blank eyes fixed on hers. She jumps out of the flower bed and starts running, hoping that she doesn't draw attention to herself from the other people in town.
Just as she enters the alley, with her pursuer only twenty feet behind her, she finds herself staring at another man ahead of her. He's standing, rather calmly, on the other end of the alley. She glances back at the young man chasing her, who has now blocked off the narrow space she's trapped in, then he stops when he sees the second man. Amanda looks ahead at this new guy, noticing a faint smile appearing on his face. He's wearing what looks like a brown suit, but it’s ragged and stained, with holes ripped in the knees and elbows. Apart from the tattered outfit, the man looks rather distinguished until he opens his mouth to speak, and absolutely nothing comes out. He tries it again, this time with some effort, but it’s obvious that there’s something wrong with him. He stops trying, then simply smiles at her, a wide evil grin that sends shivers down her spine, then very slowly he moves forward, his footsteps far more coordinated than the first man. She backs up slightly and looks around for a way out, and sees that the neighboring house has a crawlspace opening, but she's afraid of getting caught under the house with no other way out. She clenches her knife, glad that she had the wherewithal to hold onto it. She'd used it before, but her victims were caught off-guard and never had the chance to fight back. This time, she turns around to face the weaker opponent, the one who can barely walk, or even breathe.
She walks slowly and deliberately toward the man who forced her out of her home. Her face is blank, and any fear or desperation she had a moment ago has disappeared. The man just stands there as she plunges the knife into his stomach, leaving his t-shirt and her dress both soaked in his blood. As he crumples to the ground, his hands reach out at her, but she quickly backs away and glances behind her. The second man is walking toward her with his arms reaching out warmly, as if he means to give her a hug, his footsteps faster than before. She takes off running in the direction of her front door, figuring that if she can outrun him she might be able to get back into the house — but as she rounds the corner and makes it to the bottom of the steps she notices that the door doesn't look right. Then she realizes that the hinges have been partly snapped off, and the door is no longer functional. Not knowing where else to go, she runs around the other end of the house and continues making her way toward the restaurant.