Grayland

by James Bierce

  CHAPTER 12

  COHASSETT BEACH: DAY 4

  “It’s getting kinda cold out here…”

  The voice sounds calm and relaxed, and for a moment Curtis actually considers opening the door and inviting Jake inside — but then he remembers the carnage they saw along the road, and the slashed tires on their pickup, which was done before he even knew that Beth was gone. Instead, he motions for Sarah to close the curtains on the other side of the room, enveloping the cabin in almost complete darkness.

  “Jake, I don’t mean to be rude, but we’ve learned the hard way that you can’t trust anybody these days. You understand that, right?” He checks to make sure his semi-auto pistol is loaded, then watches as Sarah does the same with her revolver. “Jake, did you hear me?”

  “Yes, I heard you,” he finally replies, in a voice still filled with a smug sarcasm.

  “There’s a house right around the corner with a wood stove and some food. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s warm and dry.”

  “Thanks, but I think I’ll pass.”

  Sarah steps back away from the door, then motions for Curtis to follow her. “Is it me, or is he acting strange?” she whispers.

  “It’s not you, there’s definitely something odd about him. Why don’t you try to get Beth on the radio again…”

  “I already did, she’s not answering.”

  “I can hear you guys whispering in there!” Jake says loudly. “Are you sure that you got through to Beth?”

  “Yes, we talked to both of them, and they’ll be here as soon as they can,” Curtis responds in a friendly voice, trying his best to conceal his growing annoyance.

  “You wouldn’t mind passing that radio to me, would you? I’d like to talk to her myself.”

  Curtis looks up at Sarah, who’s nodding her head in agreement. “I’m sorry, Jake, but you’re gonna have to trust us.” Seeing the look of disapproval on his wife’s face, he leans in closely and whispers quietly in her ear. “We can’t open the door for this guy.”

  “We could leave it on the back porch,” she whispers back.

  “No, there’s something not right about this. Go sit with the boys, and don’t make any sound.”

  “What are you gonna do, shoot him?”

  “No, it probably wouldn’t do any good, he’s probably wearing Kevlar or something.”

  “Listen…” they hear from the other side of the door. “…you can’t stay in there forever, you don’t even have any food. Why don’t you open the door and invite me in, then let me talk to my wife?”

  Curtis can hear the calmness disappearing from Jake’s voice, and from his comment it seems clear that he’s been watching them for a while. His family had just finished packing all of their food and supplies into the pickup when Jake knocked on their door, and now all that’s left are a few stale crackers and a half empty bottle of water. Worse yet is the fact that Jake has access not only to their food, but also the guns and ammunition they’d managed to collect from the nearby houses. Waiting for Sarah to move out of the way, he aims his gun at the door, unsure if Jake is standing directly behind it. “If you’re trying to intimidate me, it’s not working.”

  He hears laughing from the other side of the door. “If I were trying to intimidate you, you’d know it. There’s nothing more I can do to convince you?”

  “After we’re gone, you can have the entire place to yourself — we’ll even leave the radio here.” He can hear someone leaning or pushing against the door, and for a brief moment he considers firing a shot through it to end the tension — but he’s also afraid of making too much noise with all of the people they’ve seen recently in the daylight.

  “Alright, so be it, I’ll be down the road a ways. Are you headed north or south?”

  “Why?”

  “I wouldn’t head north, there’s a good sized group of daywalkers coming this way from the harbor.”

  “Daywalkers?”

  “Whatever the hell you call them — those fuckers that move around during the day.”

  “How many are there?”

  “Several dozen, maybe a hundred. They’re probably a day away. Good luck.”

  “Yeah, you too.”

  Curtis listens for the sound of footsteps on the porch before peering out through the curtains, and when he does he only catches a brief glimpse of Jake’s face before he turns and begins walking down the driveway. He has an assault rifle slung over his shoulder, and at least one pistol holstered on his hip, but his clothes are filthy and covered with what Curtis can only assume is blood.

  “Is he gone?” Sarah asks.

  “Yeah, for now.”

  “He sounded okay there at the end, even helpful.”

  “He did, yeah, but he has blood all over him.” Curtis turns around and grabs a box that’s been sitting on the table. “We need to finish packing and get the hell out of here before it gets dark — or he comes back.”

  “We’re not waiting for Larry and Beth?”

  “No, we need to leave now before it’s too late.”

  Curtis opens the front door and looks down the winding driveway, seeing nothing but the salal bushes swaying in the wind. He hands the small box to Sarah, and then picks up the last remaining plastic tote off of the floor and carries it to the pickup outside.

  “Matt, why don’t you two get the gun in the woodshed.” Hearing no footsteps or movement behind him, Curtis looks and sees both boys on the porch, frozen with fear. “It’s okay, your mother and I will be right here.”

  Stepping off of the porch and onto the gravel below, Matt’s legs feel weak and wobbly, and he gets halfway across the driveway before realizing that Ben isn’t with him. When he finally looks back toward the cabin he sees him standing on the porch, staring down the driveway toward the road. To distract him, Matt reaches down and takes his hand, feeling the fear-induced tremors in his hand.

  “Come on, this is almost over.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “It is, you have to trust me. Dad will figure something out.”

  “He’s one of them.”

  Matt can see the pure terror in his brother’s eyes as they begin to walk across the driveway toward the woodshed. “What do you mean he’s one of them?”

  “That guy, he’s like Amanda. He’s crazy.”

  “Don’t worry, there’s four of us and only one of him.”

  Holding onto Ben’s hand, Matt looks up at the woodshed and sees something lying on the ground right in front of it. As they get closer, he can see that it’s someone’s feet sticking out from the doorway of the shed, their skin wrinkled and white. Ben immediately lets go of Matt’s hand and starts to back up.

  “Just wait here, I’ll get the gun…” Matt tells him. “Don’t move, okay?”

  Waiting for Ben’s nod of agreement, Matt approaches the shed carefully, hoping that whoever is lying there is already dead, and not leading him into some sort of a trap. When he rounds the corner and looks inside, he sees the naked body of an older woman who is very clearly deceased, her face beaten and bloodied beyond recognition — but Matt recognizes her anyway. Her messed up hair, pure white and full of tangles, gives her away. The family has seen her wandering the neighborhood to the north several times over the last month or so. She always kept her distance no matter what, making them question whether she was sick like all the others, or simply afraid of people and what they were capable of — and she always wore clothing, the same bluejeans and light jacket.

  Beside her, he can see drag marks leading from the body to the woods behind the shed — and in that same direction, only fifty feet away or so, he sees a glimpse of more pale skin sticking up from the ground.

  “Is that another one?”

  Startled, Matt turns his head and finds Ben standing next to him. “Ben, you should have waited like I told you.”

  “How many do you think there are?”

  “I don’t know.” He looks around for the gun, a .22 rifle that his father placed there just in case t
hey needed it — but after thoroughly searching the small building, he finally gives up and walks back outside. Taking a quick look at the driveway where his parents are still arraigning things in the pickup, Matt turns and starts to walk into the woods, with Ben pulling on his shirt as he walks by him.

  “Matt, we need to get back, we shouldn’t wander off.”

  “It’ll just take a minute….”

  Looking back at the cabin, making sure that his position is hidden from view by the shed and trees, Matt’s shoes crunch loudly over the needle-filled mulch of the forest floor. He can hear the sound of crows overhead, and the constant buzz of flies somewhere ahead of him. As he climbs a small incline in the ground, he realizes that the body part that he’s looking at is actually a bare foot, and it’s resting on the edge of a ravine that drops about twenty feet below. A small creek winds its way toward the ocean at the bottom, moving through a dense thicket of huckleberry and salal bushes. As beautiful as it could be, the place is also littered with bodies, haphazardly thrown into the gully like trash. He can’t tell how many there are, but he guesses at least a dozen, and probably more.

  “Do you think Jake did this?” Ben quietly asks behind him.

  “Dammit Ben, can’t you stay where I tell you?”

  “Do you think it was him?”

  “Who else would’ve done it?”

  “It could’ve been Amanda.”

  Matt looks back into the ravine, wondering how long the bodies have been there. Some of them look fresh, but others have obviously been there a while. It wasn’t Amanda that moved the body into the woodshed, that much he knows for sure, but it might have been her that killed them. Whoever it was, they’ve clearly been in the area for quite some time.

  “Somebody wanted us to find this,” Ben says.

  “I know,” responds Matt, who starts walking back to the shed.

  “If it’s Jake, we’re gonna have to kill him.”

  “I think we’re gonna have to kill him whether he did it or not.”

  When they reach the shed again, Curtis is standing beside the truck, motioning for them to come back.

  “What took you so long?”

  “The gun is gone, but we found something that…” Matt stops when he realizes that Curtis isn’t listening, but is staring toward the highway instead, where a man carrying a rifle is walking up the driveway.

  “Sarah, boys, get back in the cabin…” Curtis says, his voice stern.

  As Jake approaches them, Sarah places herself between him and the boys, then motions for them to back up. She notices that Curtis’ gun is in his hand and aimed at the ground, and suddenly remembers that she placed her own gun on the passenger seat of the truck while she was busy packing.

  When Jake gets to within about twenty feet of Curtis, he holds out a hand and smiles. “Hey, I think we got off on the wrong foot…”

  “I don’t think you really underst…” Curtis begins to say, then Jake takes his rifle from off of his shoulder and swings it hard into the side of Curtis’ head, knocking him out instantly.

  CHAPTER 13

  GRAYLAND: DAY 4

  “Are you hungry?” asks Beth, holding out a package of saltine crackers for Christine to take from her.

  Wrapped up in a blanket and huddled up next to her father, Christine shakes her head and looks back across the room at Larry, who is standing guard in front of the staircase door. She feels overwhelmed by everything — the concern over her dad’s health, her distrust of these two strangers that have invaded their hideout, and most of all, the clearly infected girl that they’ve stashed somewhere around the corner in the hallway behind Larry. She wants to believe they’re trustworthy and honest, just two decent people trying to survive in this new world — but her ability to trust is quickly diminishing, and with every person they come across, she becomes all the more convinced that her father is the only one she can truly count on.

  “How long have you two been staying here?” Beth asks, still trying to break the ice.

  “We just got here,” Christine replies curtly, gripping her gun tightly underneath the blanket. She can still hear the two men on the staircase, scratching at the lightweight wooden door.

  “Where from?”

  “Adna, near Chehalis.”

  “I like it down there. We’re from Hoodsport, do you know where that is?”

  “Yeah, I guess,” Christine says, suddenly distracted. She looks over at her father as he coughs slightly, hearing a rattling from deep down in his chest.

  “How long has he been sick, Christine?”

  “He isn’t sick, he was stabbed a couple of days ago.”

  “Do you want me to look at him?”

  “No — thanks though.” She jumps as the men on the stairs start pounding on the door, sending vibrations across the floor. Larry stands to the side and points his gun at it, as if the door is coming apart from the thrashing. “Are they coming through?” Christine asks him, her voice frightened.

  “No, I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure one of them still has a gun though.”

  “Don’t worry, we’ll take of them if they do come through,” Beth tells Christine calmly.

  Christine looks at her, seeing a kind face and warm eyes, and finds herself feeling safe for the first time in a long while. “I have a gun — I just thought you should know.”

  “I figured as much. That’s okay, so do I.”

  Christine looks at her, and counts at least three visible pistols. “Yeah, I kinda figured that out.” She slips the blanket off of her and wraps it tightly around her father, then sits down next to him again. “You walked all the way from Hoodsport?”

  “No, we had a boat. It went down in the harbor.”

  “Have you heard anything…” She trails off, not sure how to end the question.

  “From the outside world?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No, we haven’t. What about you?”

  She shakes her head. “My aunt lived in Seattle, and my dad talked to her just before the phones went dead — she said everyone was leaving.”

  “I have a feeling they didn’t get very far.”

  They hear the front door open again, and another set of footsteps begin climbing the staircase. Christine straightens up and cocks her pistol, then looks over at Beth, who still looks calm.

  “Have you noticed that people are walking around more in the daytime lately?” Beth asks.

  “Yeah, we’ve noticed that too. It used to be only on cloudy days.”

  Beth stands up and looks out the window, at a church parking lot that’s only dimly illuminated by the last remnants of dusk. She sees two more people rummaging through their stuff that’s been scattered around what’s left of their car. “So was Chehalis bad?”

  “Bad enough to get out.”

  “Did you see anything directly to the south?”

  “There’s a big fire down there, I wouldn’t go that way if I were you.”

  “Well, we were planning on heading that way after we get my husband.”

  “You won’t get very far, not in a car anyway — the road is washed out just a few miles from here.”

  “Thanks for the heads up.” Beth looks down the highway in both directions, barely able to make out the buildings down the street.

  She’s still curious as to why the town seems so empty. Besides the few people they’ve seen, there’s no sign of any activity in the area, recent or otherwise. In the other towns they’ve seen, the roads and sidewalks would’ve been swarming with activity by now.

  “Have you seen any other towns this empty?” Beth asks.

  “One — have you heard of a town called Pe Ell?”

  “Yeah, were there any cars?”

  “No, it looked like everyone left in a hurry.”

  “That’s the odd thing about this town — none of the cars seem to be missing.”

  Christine stands up, careful not to wake George up, then turns on a flashlight from her pocket and quietly walks across the f
loor until she can see Amanda, who’s sitting huddled up against a corner only a few feet from Larry. “What’s the story with the girl?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’s sick.”

  “She’s a little…”

  Christine cuts her off. “She’s sick, we both know she is. Is she your daughter?”

  “No, she isn’t my daughter — and yes, we think she might be sick.”

  “Then why do you have her?”

  “It’s complicated. We didn’t know what else to do with her.”

  “You have her tied up — is she dangerous?”

  “Yes, very.”

  The men on the staircase, at least three of them from Beth’s count, all start shouting and hitting the door, rattling the hinges and forcing Larry to back up further away from the hallway and into the room with Beth and Christine.

  “You should bring Amanda in here with us,” Beth tells him.

  He switches on his flashlight, then aims the beam at Amanda. “I can see her from here, she’s not going anywhere.”

  The screaming gets even more intense as the assault on the door becomes more aggressive, and as Larry notices the top hinge begin to pull out from the wall, he places his gun in his holster, then barricades the door with his body. Beth moves in behind him, quickly glancing down at a frightened Amanda before aiming her own gun at the door.

  “Don’t shoot unless you have to,” Christine says, whispering to Beth as she stands next to her. “You’ll just draw attention to us.”

  Beth notices that the young teen has a flashlight in her hand instead of a gun, but she doesn’t say anything to her — considering how much her hands are already shaking, the last thing she needs is a gun. The room is almost pitch black now except for the artificial lights coming from Larry and Christine, and the air fills with dust each time they slam their bodies against the door. She sees the doorknob shaking violently, and a hand suddenly appears from underneath, stretched out and reaching inside. Larry steps on it as hard as he can, nearly losing his balance in the process, but it has no effect — the hand, now partially caved in at the knuckles, continues to search desperately for something to grab hold of.