Grayland

by James Bierce

  “It’s empty, everyone is dead.”

  “Dead, or sick?”

  “Dead,” Rachel replies. “We didn’t see people walking around until we got to McCleary, and it took us a while to figure out there was something wrong with ‘em. Do you have any idea what the hell is going on here?”

  “I was gonna ask you the same thing.”

  “Are they sick or what?”

  “I’m pretty sure they’re sick, but they’re not like any of the ones we’ve ever seen. We found hundreds of bones in the fire station next door.”

  “Hundreds? Who are they from?”

  “The former residents of Grayland would be my guess.”

  “Where are you headed?” Bill asks Larry.

  “We have a place up by Westport, although I’m not sure we’re staying there for long. After that, I’m not really sure. How about you guys?”

  “We’re not really headed any place in particular, we’re just trying to find someplace better.”

  “Olympia sounds better than this,” Christine says softly.

  “Like I said, everyone there is dead,” Rachel responds.

  “Dead is better than this, trust me.”

  Nearly an hour has passed, and although they’ve seen some movement in the gathering crowd outside, so far none of the infected have made any attempt at entering the house. Despite their curiosity of what other people have witnessed or learned, both groups have fallen into silence — mostly due to sleep deprivation. Travis seems to be the only one capable of getting any meaningful sleep, and he’s also the only one that hasn’t talked the entire time they’ve been together.

  “So I take it the cars don’t work in Olympia either?” Larry asks, finally breaking the silence.

  “Some do, but the roads are all blocked just outside of town, so driving was kind of out of the question,” Bill responds.

  “Yeah, we haven’t found many that run around here either, it’s weird.”

  “Well, I think that was kind of the point.”

  “The point of what?”

  “The EMP…”

  Seeing the confused looks on Larry and Beth’s faces, Rachel chimes in. “You guys didn’t hear about the detonation?”

  “No…” Beth answers.. “You mean like a nuclear detonation?”

  “No, hundreds of nuclear detonations, spread across the country,” Bill says excitedly, searching his backpack and pulling out a piece of paper, which he then hands to Beth. It’s a hand-written note, mostly filled with illegible scribblings.

  “I’m sorry, what is this?” Beth asks.

  “It’s a loose translation of their message.”

  “Whose message?”

  “They sent it out on TV and radio right before everything went dark — it was on every station.”

  Beth looks at Larry, who looks as lost as she is. They listened to the radio quite a bit in those early days, but there were periods of time when they turned everything off to hide from Sean, who was still looking for them in the waters of the straights.

  “They said that they were setting off a series of high-altitude explosions that were designed to cripple the power grid,” Bill continues. “They were hoping to slow down the advance of the virus by limiting transportation, or something like that.”

  “That worked out well, didn’t it?” Larry adds sarcastically.

  “We saw the flashes from our house,” Rachel says. “It lit the sky up that entire night.”

  “We saw them too…” Christine says. “…David and my dad and me. The sky looked like it was on fire for hours — it was kind of pretty in a way.”

  “And that’s when the power went out?”

  “Ours went out a couple of days before, but that’s when the radios went dead.”

  Larry stands up and stretches, then looks out the window behind the couch. “Is there a working bathroom in here?”

  “We’ve been using the bathtub,” Bill answers.

  “That’ll work I guess.”

  After watching Larry head down the hall, Beth turns to Bill, who is still gripping his rifle with both hands. “How are you guys set for ammunition?”

  “It’s fully loaded, thirty rounds I think.”

  “How much else do you have?”

  He glances at Rachel, then back at Beth. “Just the thirty rounds, and the one gun. We haven’t really needed anything more.”

  “Oh.” Beth is stunned, and a little speechless. “Well, I guess we have plenty to spare.”

  Larry walks back into the room with a strange look on his face, then he sits down next to Beth again.

  “What’s wrong?” Beth asks him.

  “I saw her,” he says quietly.

  “You saw Amanda? Where?”

  “Under the carport next door.”

  “What was she doing?”

  “Just standing there, looking this way.”

  “Wait, who is Amanda?” Bill asks.

  Beth stands up, then motions for Christine to do the same. “I’ll let Larry explain, Christine and I are gonna use the bathroom, before any of those people decide to make a move.” Walking down the hallway, Beth turns on a small flashlight once they’re away from the candles, but holds it down low to the floor where it doesn’t attract too much attention outside. She can tell the first door on the left is the bathroom right away, not only because of the bright white linoleum on the floor, but also because of the horrific smell coming from it. After hesitating at first, she enters the room while Christine stands outside and waits her turn.

  “Those people out there might kill Amanda, right?” Christine asks.

  “They could, yeah.”

  “But you don’t think they will…”

  “Honestly, no, I don’t think so. She survived in Westport for months, and I’m not sure it was much better than this.” She drops her pants and squats down over the edge of the tub, not even daring to look inside. “That boy out there is kind of cute…” she says, trying to lighten the mood.

  “I’m not interested.”

  “In boys, or in general?”

  “In general.”

  “Why? There’s not exactly a lot of boys to choose from at the moment…”

  Christine looks down the hallway at the living room, where the family with no apparent last name is sitting. “He’ll be dead soon, like everyone else.”

  CHAPTER 21

  COHASSETT BEACH: DAY 5

  Sarah stiffens up as she feels the cold hands hold onto her tightly from behind. She wants to scream, or fight back — but she knows that Jake is on the other side of the building, and he’ll kill both of them if she makes a sound. When they start to drag her feet backward and into the darkness, she lets out a small moan.

  “Shh, it’s Curtis…”

  Sarah feels the hand covering her mouth slowly move away, as she’s pulled into a covered lean-to attached to the cabin — an area almost overflowing with stacked plastic chairs and tables. Wedging themselves between the cluttered mess and the wall, still partially exposed to the alleyway between the cabins, they watch as Jake’s flashlight beam continues to search the area.

  “Where are the kids?” she whispers quietly.

  “They’re locked in an old car down the perimeter road. They’re safe.”

  They can hear Jake’s footsteps as he walks slowly through the soaked grass, the steps becoming louder as he closes in on them. He turns the corner and stops, then shines his light down the alley near their location, just past their hiding spot. It takes a minute for them to realize what he’s looking at, and then they spot someone in his beam, the same man that was watching Sarah so intently earlier that night. The man walks closer to Jake with his arms folded neatly behind his back, with a slight smile on his face as he stares straight ahead. Then he stops and looks right at Sarah, his smile suddenly disappearing. As he looks back toward Jake again, they hear a loud gunshot, and the man stumbles to the ground, gripping his chest where the bullet hit. The light stays on the man for a few more moments, w
aiting for the last signs of life to slip away from him — and then it fades away again, along with the sound of the footsteps.

  “We have to get out of here,” Curtis says, as he peers around the corner, seeing nothing but darkness down the alley. Taking Sarah’s hand, he steps over the man’s body and moves into the pouring rain. He leads her north, staying close to the dark shadows surrounding the cabins and other outbuildings, and away from Jake’s continuing search. Eventually they find a hole in the chain link fence, next to a dead body that looks freshly killed. On the other side of the fence there’s a pathway that winds through the dunes toward Westport. When they reach the top of one of the dunes, Sarah’s leg finally gives out, and Curtis has to hold her up to keep her from falling.

  “Sit down for a minute, take a breather,” Curtis says.

  “How much further is it?”

  “It’s not too far, but you need to rest…”

  Curtis eases her down to the wet, sandy ground, then sits down next to her. The rain has lessened to a light mist again, but the wind is still howling through the trees behind them. Off in the distance, they can still see Jake’s light searching the campgrounds, going frantically from one cabin to the next.

  “He’ll find our footprints in the sand eventually…” Sarah comments.

  “We’ll be long gone by then. Besides, he’s not thinking straight anyway, he’s sick.”

  “I feel terrible for Beth — she must be so excited.”

  “It might not make any difference.”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “They should have made it back already, and Grayland isn’t that far away. I think something happened.” He looks back to the southeast, where their home used to be, but there’s nothing but darkness there now. “The cabin is gone — Jake burned it to the ground, along with the truck.” He looks at her face, trying to see her reaction, and questioning whether he should have told her so soon — but she just keeps looking at the campground, looking just as tired and defeated as before.

  “We should go, I don’t want the boys alone,” she says, standing up and continuing on the path. Further down the trail she can see the beach in the distance, the water invisible in this weather aside from the occasional whitecap reflecting in the faint moonlight. A year ago you would’ve seen lights from the fishing boats offshore, moving up and down in the swells as they worked through the night — but tonight there’s nothing but the shadowy movements of people on the shoreline, looking through the remnants of shipwrecks on the beach.

  “I didn’t think there’d be this many people still around,” Curtis says, glancing back at the campground, where the flashlight beam has now disappeared.

  “Is that the car?” Sarah asks, pointing to an old 1971 Buick Estate station wagon that’s sitting just off the pathway next to a rundown single-wide mobile home.

  “Yeah, that’s it.”

  When they get closer, Sarah can see the outline of two heads looking out through the rear windshield at them — one of them holding a massive pistol in his hands.

  Off of the pathway and back onto the perimeter road, the Lockwoods walk down the middle of the road toward town, looking every house over closely to find one suitable for the night.

  “We need to find one with the doors closed,” Curtis says, stopping in front of an old craftsman house that looks pretty much like all of the others on the street. “Maybe we can find one that hasn’t been torn to pieces.”

  “It just needs to be someplace dry for the night, other than that I don’t care what it looks like,” Sarah replies.

  Curtis looks down at Matt, who’s still carrying the pistol he found in the car. The .50 caliber semi-automatic looks ridiculous in his small hands. “Matt, let me see the gun for a bit.”

  His hands are shaking as he holds it out for his father to take. “Why? It’s out of ammo, like you said.”

  “I know, but nobody else knows that.” After taking the gun, Curtis leads them up the sidewalk and past an open garage door, with no sign of any car inside. “They must’ve left with everyone else.” He climbs the steps and onto the porch, then looks through the yellow textured glass next to the door, seeing a cluttered mess of junk on the inside. Somehow though, he gets the impression that it’s always looked that way. He tries the doorknob, but it’s locked — then he looks around for a hidden spare, and finds two of them under the mat. “You gotta love small towns.”

  Sarah stays outside with the boys, as Curtis searches the house room by room. After finding no people inside, they all huddle together in the dark in the master bedroom, protected by two securely locked doors and insulated curtains on the window.

  Curtis sits on the edge of the bed with the others, then sets a plastic bag down beside Ben. “I found them in the pantry, they’re soda crackers I think.” He hears a rustling sound as the boys tear the bag open. “They’re probably stale as hell, but they’re edible.”

  “They’re stale, but they’re okay,” Ben says.

  “I smell bleach,” Sarah says, covering her nose and mouth to mask the strong scent.

  “Yeah, I thought that I’d wash up in a mud puddle out back, and I found a bottle of bleach by the back door — sorry.”

  “Well, I guess you smell better than you did before.” She gets up and limps to the other side of the room, then sits down in a chair next to the window.

  “Is your leg still bothering you?”

  “Yeah, I did too much walking on it today. I don’t think it’s ever gonna be the same after that crazy bitch stabbed me.”

  “Her name was Clara Embree,” Matt informs her.

  “I really didn’t need to know that Matt. I’d rather forget that she ever existed.”

  “So, any idea what we do next?” Curtis asks her.

  “As soon as the sun comes up we need to search this place for anything useful, especially clothes and food.”

  “And weapons…”

  “Right — preferably one with ammunition though.”

  Curtis joins Sarah by the window, parting the curtains slightly to see out onto the dimly lit highway. “We can’t move north, we know what’s in Westport — and we can’t go east into Aberdeen, it’s even worse than Westport.”

  “It might not be a bad idea to stay low for a while, at least until Jake stops looking for us. If we can find enough food to keep us over a few weeks we should be okay.”

  “There’s a school down the street.”

  “Somehow I don’t think we’ll find much for guns and food there,” she says.

  “No, but we can take whatever we find there, and it does have heavy doors that lock securely.” He looks up at her, as she stares at something out the window. “What are you looking at?”

  “There’s a guy across the street.”

  Curtis looks closely, but doesn’t see anything but garbage strewn across the neighboring lawn. Despite the close proximity to the ocean, this neighborhood wasn’t exactly neat and tidy before the outbreak, and now it’s also covered with debris that’s blown in from the beach — mostly wreckage from a couple of nearby container ships that ran aground a month earlier. “Where? I don’t see anybody.”

  “They just went back in the house on the right, the dark one.”

  He watches the front door, which is partway open already, and sees someone coming out again, except this time they’re backing up through the doorway. When they emerge into the moonlight, he can see that they’re dragging a body down the sidewalk and onto the driveway — then they sit down next to it, slumped over as if they’re exhausted. “Do you think he’s infected, or one of us?”

  “I think he’s infected. He was stumbling around when I saw him go inside.”

  Curtis sees the man moving again, this time slumping further onto the body. At first he thinks the guy might have passed out, but it then it becomes obvious what he’s doing. Curtis looks at Sarah, feeling guilty somehow for watching it, but he’s surprised to see her continuing to stare. “You realize what he’s doing, righ
t?”

  “Larry and Beth told us that they saw cannibalism on the peninsula, I figured they were probably doing the same thing here.”

  Looking back at the scene, Curtis sees two more people approaching. When they get close to the body, however, the man already there stands up and swings his fists at them, driving them away.

  “We can’t let the kids grow up seeing this,” Sarah says. “These aren’t even people anymore, they’re just animals.”

  “We’ll find someplace safe, somewhere normal.”

  Sarah laughs, more from being tired than amused. “Curtis, there’s no place normal anymore. That stuff in the truck was the last trace of our normal lives, and now it’s all gone.”

  He can hear her start to cry, and then she pulls the curtains together, closing the outside world from their existence once again.

  “Every picture we had of Annie was in that truck…”

  “I know, I’m sorry.” He stands up, then pulls Sarah to her feet. “Come on, let’s get some sleep. Tomorrow is gonna be a long day.”

  With all four of them huddled together on the old, musty queen-sized mattress, Curtis lies awake and stares at the ceiling, unable to stop his mind from racing. Only a few days ago, it seemed like everything was coming together. They had plenty of food and clean water, extra people to help with gathering supplies and defending their home — and most importantly, hope that things could actually be better someday. Tonight though, as he listens to the savagery outside, and the rumbling stomachs of his wife and kids next to him, none of that hope seems to exist anymore.

  CHAPTER 22

  GRAYLAND: DAY 5

  Christine wakes up to a crashing sound, then calls out for her father as soon as she recognizes it as someone hitting the doors and windows of the house.

  “Shh, it’s okay Christine, but we need to get out of here,” Beth whispers into her ear.

  Sitting up on the couch, she turns around and hears someone slamming their fists against the window behind her, screaming obscenities at them as the blows become harder and harder.