Grayland

by James Bierce

  Christine sits down in a chair just inside the front door, as Larry joins Beth behind the desk. Not at all interested in what’s happening, she turns around and watches the trees across the street bending hard from a sudden wind that seemingly came out of nowhere. She can also see a thick bank of dark clouds rolling in from the ocean in the distance.

  “Guys, there’s a really nasty looking storm headed this way,” Christine says, pointing out the window.

  Larry, ignoring Christine for the moment, looks behind the desk and studies the marks for himself — then places his hand on the doorknob and slowly turns it, filling the room with a loud creaking sound from the rusty hinges as the door opens and reveals a long, dark hallway on the other side.

  “Do you see anything?” Beth asks from behind him.

  “That’s an awful lot of bones behind the desk, don’t you think?”

  “It kinda seems like it’s…” She stops talking mid-sentence and listens to a tapping sound coming from down the hallway. She watches from behind Larry as he takes his flashlight out and shines it down the corridor. There’s more bones lining both sides, hundreds of them, leaving only a narrow pathway down the middle, and even that’s stained with filth. A vile, putrid stench hits both of them at the same time, and before Larry can manage to close the door again, he sees a dark silhouette on the other end of the hall, moving in their direction.

  “Christine, get out!” Beth yells, as she backs away from the door with her gun drawn. Her and Larry are only about halfway to the entrance when they hear Christine exit the building behind them, and then they hear the hallway door slowly open again, but they can’t see anything but darkness on the other side. Then a long, pale, emaciated arm appears in the dim light of the lobby, grabs the handle of the door, and slams it shut.

  Both of them stop for a moment, then Beth continues moving backward toward the front entrance. “What the hell was that?”

  “I don’t know, but I think we need to get the hell out of town.”

  CHAPTER 16

  COHASSETT BEACH: DAY 5

  A year ago, before the virus struck, and before her life had turned into a never-ending series of hardships and heartbreak, Sarah used to purposely ignore any of the stories that involved violence in the news. She knew that it took place, and that it was becoming far more common in the suburbs of Portland where she lived — but she still preferred to keep her head buried firmly in the sand, especially when it concerned children. She simply hated the idea of aggression.

  As the winter months passed by though, she found her own thoughts shifting toward a more violent course whenever the topic of the infected came up. The fact that she’d personally killed Clara Embree with her own bare hands, an act that would’ve horrified her in more peaceful times, has now forced her weakening conscience to view the infected as something less than human. Any sympathy that she felt for them at one time has since grown into a deep hatred for their very existence — and the more isolated her family finds themselves, the more intense the feelings become.

  In recent weeks, the only time she doesn’t think of them as something to eradicate is when she hears about the young children among them, which seems to be a rarity. Beth had mentioned seeing a few of them wandering around the streets of Sequim while they were there, and Curtis saw one in Westport mixed into the crowd as well — but other than Amanda, Sarah hadn’t seen an infected child until this very moment. The boy, maybe a year or two older than Amanda, is still sitting on the bathroom floor after climbing out of the bathtub and opening the door. For a moment the two of them stare at one another, but his eyes appear lifeless and glazed over, making Sarah wonder if he was perhaps blind — but as she raises her arm in the air, making no sound at all, he follows her every movement and then struggles to get to his feet.

  “Stay back, don’t come any closer!” Sarah yells, as she holds back tears and aims the gun at him. Backing up against the wall next to the window, she places the bed between her and the boy. Instead of walking around it he tries reaching over it, grabbing desperately at the blanket and pillows until he finally climbs on top of the mattress and begins crawling closer to her. She moves away from him toward the foot of the bed, then slips the gun into her pants pocket as she bends over to take a drawer out of the small dresser. When she turns around he’s still moving in her direction, and in the subdued light she can see in greater detail just how frail and sick the kid looks. She waits for him to get a bit closer, and then she lifts the drawer up and smashes it into the side of his head as hard as she can, instantly knocking him out. For a moment she just stands there, listening closely to whether or not he’s still breathing, and hearing nothing but the scratching at the window and the commotion in the next room — and then she sees the boy start to move again. She was hoping that she’d killed him, or at least injured him badly enough to give her time to escape — but when he opens his eyes and looks straight at her, she lets out a deep sigh and fights back tears, then she places a pillow tightly over his head. Almost immediately, she can feel him struggling against her, and when his hand reaches out and grabs her arm, she finally pulls out the revolver and fires a single shot into his head.

  For a brief time after the gunshot, the room goes completely silent, with no activity outside the window or in the front room — but it doesn’t last for long. Soon she hears the return of footsteps outside the door, but they seem to be moving further away, before disappearing altogether. After throwing a blanket over the kid’s body, Sarah watches him for a few seconds to make sure he’s actually dead, then walks to the door and quietly unlocks it. She takes a couple of deep breathes before slowly opening the door, revealing a chaotic mess in the next room — but no people in sight. Aiming the nearly empty gun at the front door, she moves cautiously across the floor and looks out the window at the entrance to the campgrounds, expecting to see crowds of people waiting for her — but instead sees only one person out by the road, staring back in her direction. As she starts to step through the open doorway though, an older man suddenly appears in her way, causing her to fall back onto the floor inside the cabin. He follows her inside just as she finds her way back onto her feet, then he lunges at her with both arms and trips on the crumpled up rug in front of the door. She hurries to get around him, keeping her back against the wall to maintain some distance, but he still manages to grab her leg as she passes by him. Firing her last remaining bullet into his chest, she finally breaks free from his grip — but then she hears something on the porch outside, dragging and stumbling across the old wooden planks.

  She aims the revolver at the door, hoping that the now-useless weapon might scare one of them into backing off, but it doesn’t work. As more of them move into the room, she steps back inside the bedroom and counts at least five people enter the cabin before she closes and locks the door once again — knowing that the only thing that protects her now is the flimsy piece of veneer in front of her.

  Standing with her back against the door, she feels the pounding fists and shoving from the people on the other side of it, then she remembers the odd floorboards that she spotted beneath the dresser earlier, and when she pushes it away with her foot, she sees a crudely made hatch door cut into the floor. Fearing that the bedroom door won’t hold together for much longer, she pushes the bed against it, then wedges the dresser between the bed and the far wall, hoping that it’ll keep the door in one piece long enough to get out.

  Hearing the wood cracking from around the door jam, she stands over the hatchway and pulls on the metal handle in the middle — but it won’t budge. Thinking that it’s probably just that the boards are swelled up, she puts all of her strength into it, and manages to tear the handle away from the wooden planks. She stands up straight again, trying to think of another way out — and then she hears something behind her break loose. Turning around, she sees that the door is now ripped halfway off of the hinges — and the people behind it are now trying to reach through the narrow opening and into the bedroom.


  Knowing that nightfall is quickly approaching, along with the fatal deadline that Jake gave her back at her family’s cabin, she collapses onto the floor in tears, too weak and distraught to fight any longer.

  CHAPTER 17

  GRAYLAND: DAY 5

  Larry follows Beth and Christine out of the fire station, then ties a half-shredded shirt from the pavement around the two handles of the double doors — a mostly worthless attempt at securing the entry, but he figures that it’s better than nothing at all. A strong gust of wind is blowing in from the beach, pelting the group with heavy rain and flying debris that was scattered across the parking lot and street out front. Not wanting to go back inside, the three of them look around for a moment, and then Larry begins walking back toward the trailer park.

  “Where are you going?” Beth asks him, yelling over the wind and falling rain.

  “We can’t stay out in this, we need to find shelter for a while. I’m gonna check out those trailers we saw earlier.”

  In the few minutes that it takes them to get across the parking lot, both their clothing and the bags they’re carrying are completely soaked. Larry climbs up onto the nearest covered porch and opens the sliding glass door, surprised to find it unlocked — then he takes a step back and peers through the glass to see if there’s anybody inside. Seeing nothing of interest, he opens the door further and steps inside, smelling the usual musty odor and dampness that virtually all of the houses have these days.

  “Nobody has been in here,” Beth says behind him, dropping her two bags on the wooden deck.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I meant nobody has ransacked the place — it looks untouched.”

  Still standing outside, Christine looks around closely before placing her foot over the threshold. Glancing to her left, she looks out to the north at the fire station and sees two shadows exit the front door and run around behind the building, and then several more that run across the street toward the sand dunes.

  “Larry, I just saw a bunch of people leave the fire house…”

  Beth and Larry hurry back from the house and stand next to Christine, but by the time they do the rain is falling hard enough to obscure the visibility in the distance.

  Beth does manage to catch a glimpse of one of them as they pass between a couple of neighboring trailers in the park, running faster than any of the infected she’s seen up until now. “I just saw one of them.”

  “We should get inside,” Larry says, stepping back into the moldy living room. After Beth comes in behind him, he looks out at Christine and finds her still standing in the same spot, looking around in every direction. “Christine! Come inside, it’s not safe out there!” When she doesn’t respond, he grabs her by the arm and pulls her in, sitting her down on a dusty couch on the other side of the room. He kneels down in front of her and expects to see tears in her eyes, but there aren’t any. Instead, he sees a look of pure terror on her face as she stares straight ahead, like she’s in some sort of a trance. “Beth, close all the blinds, we don’t need anybody watching us.”

  “Is she okay?”

  “She’ll be fine, she just got shook up.” As Beth closes the blinds, enveloping the room into near darkness, Larry sits down beside Christine and puts his arm around her. “Christine, are you still with us?”

  “There were so many of them…”

  Suddenly nervous, Larry glances up at Beth and sees the same expression of worry on her face. “How many did you see?”

  “I don’t know, there were too many,” she answers, as she suddenly breaks down in tears.

  As Beth peeks out through the blinds, Larry lets go of Christine and grabs one of their bags in front of him.

  “What are you looking for?” Beth asks.

  “I’m seeing how much ammo we have.”

  “We should have plenty, there’s at least a couple hundred rounds in each bag.”

  Seeing several boxes inside, he closes the bag again and leans back into the couch. “Do you see anything out there?”

  “No, just rain.”

  “There was a town like this when we came over the hills…” Christine says, completely out of the blue.

  “What do you mean, like this?” Larry asks.

  “Like nobody left, except no one was around either.”

  “Do you remember the name of the town?”

  “No. My dad didn’t like the looks of it — I guess it gave him the creeps, so we never looked around very much.”

  He sees Beth holding up two fingers, which he figures must be a signal that she’s spotted two people outside. Hoping Christine didn’t see it, he nudges her leg with his to get her attention. “Hey, you’ve never really talked about Chehalis very much… What was it like when you left?” he asks, trying to distract her from falling apart completely.

  She shrugs. “Same as most places I guess. Lots of the infected walking around at night, and a few of them during the day.”

  “Did you ever see anybody that wasn’t infected?”

  She stays silent for a moment. “Just our neighbor, David, and an older couple across the street from us that looked okay.”

  “And what happened to them?”

  “David came with us when we left, and was killed along the way.”

  “And what about the people across the street? Are they still alive?”

  “No, one of the daywalkers killed them.”

  “Daywalker?”

  “That’s what David called them — he said it was from a book or something. He said the ones that walked in the daylight were the most dangerous — they aren’t as dumb.”

  “How many of them have you seen?”

  “Seven.”

  “You counted them?” Beth asks.

  “You don’t really forget them.”

  “Yeah, I guess that’s probably true.”

  “Can I ask you a question?” Christine asks Beth.

  “Of course.”

  “Why were you trying to save one of them?”

  “You mean Amanda?” Seeing both Larry and Christine staring at her, Beth sits down in a chair next to the window and listens to the rain hitting the metal roof overhead, trying to come up with an answer that even she believes. “She’s a little girl, and I figured that it doesn’t matter how fucked up the world is, killing someone that age can never be the right thing to do.”

  “She’s not a little girl anymore.”

  “She’s twelve, and she’s sick.”

  “Somewhere out there, right now, she’s figuring out how to kill you, to kill all of us. Little girls don’t do that.”

  Instead of answering, Beth opens the blinds far enough to see through them again, and this time sees three people coming up the driveway from the road.

  “Larry, there’s three people coming this way — they all have bags.”

  He gets up from the couch and leans over next to his sister, and sees what looks like two men and a woman jogging up the driveway. They head straight toward the closest place to the highway, a house just a few doors down from their position, and then they disappear inside.

  “They didn’t look like they’re from the fire station…” Beth says.

  “No, they don’t even look sick, but they also have no idea how much danger they’re in.”

  “Larry, are you still up?” Beth whispers.

  “Yeah, what’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, I just wanted to talk. We haven’t really had a chance since we left the cabin.”

  Larry quietly gets up and makes sure that Christine is still asleep on the couch, but it’s impossible to tell whether she’s faking it or not. He figures that Beth wants to talk to him without Christine overhearing them, and given the circumstances, it’s probably not a bad idea. Although she’s already proven herself to be mentally and emotionally stronger than he was after his wife’s passing, he also knows that every person has their breaking point, and hers can’t be too far off. Beyond the stress of living in a post-apocalyptic world, she’s also the
last living member of her family. Larry still has his sister, Beth has not only him, but also apparently her husband, and the Lockwood family still have each other. Even Amanda, as lonely as her existence seems, was given the choice of having her family beside her as they struggled to live in this new world. Christine was never given that choice — her family and friends were taken from her one by one, and now all that’s left is her father’s naive promise of a better life, somewhere down the road.

  He stands next to Beth, who’s tightly clutching a pistol in her right hand as she stares out the window, and he listens as the rain still falls steadily onto the cheap tin roof overhead, filling the room with so much noise that it’s difficult to have a quiet conversation. Every couple of minutes the trailer shakes and groans from a gust of wind out of the west, and the constant, rhythmic sound of dripping water can be heard from a leak in the roof somewhere over them. Through the window, shrouded in the darkness, he can barely make out shadows moving around the dimly moonlit trailer park. At first he thinks they might be branches and debris flying across the parking lot from the wooded property across the street, but after watching them for a minute it becomes apparent that the shadows are actually people — and their numbers are growing.

  “How many do you think are out there?” Larry asks her.

  “I don’t know, there could be dozens — but that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about…”

  “Okay, what is it?”

  “We’ve always assumed that these infected assholes are dying, right?”

  “I guess so, yeah.”

  “And what if they’re not?”

  The same thought had occurred to Larry, in fact he’d already discussed it with Curtis shortly after they saw the first group of people walking in broad daylight. “Then we’re in more trouble than we thought.”