Grayland

by James Bierce

  “How many are there?”

  “We don’t know, but they’re at every opening.”

  “They’re not at the back door,” Bill corrects her.

  “You don’t think it’s strange that they’ve covered every door and window with a crowd of people, and they just happened to forget the back door? It’s a trap, they want us to go through there.”

  They hear glass breaking in the back bedroom, and then vibrations in the floor as someone crashes around behind the door. Bill aims his gun down the hallway, his hands shaking so badly that Larry can hear the rifle rattling — then he notices that Bill’s finger isn’t even on the trigger.

  “Beth, see if you can find an opening into the attic.”

  She shines her flashlight around on the ceiling, searching the kitchen and living room first, and then she spots a small two-foot-wide opening in the hallway — just outside of the bedroom door where all the commotion is coming from. “Larry, it’s right there.”

  Aiming his pistol at the door, he starts inching closer to the hallway. “Bill, drop your gun, I don’t want you shooting me by mistake.” After hesitating for a moment, Bill finally lowers his rifle, and Larry steps into the hallway and reaches up to grab the loop hanging from the door. When he does though, the floor creaks a little under his weight, and the person in the bedroom starts pounding against the door, then rattling the unlocked knob. Just as Larry grabs the handle to keep it from turning, he hears a gunshot from behind him, and then nothing but a loud ringing in his ears as he realizes that Bill fired his gun through the door.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Larry screams at him.

  “They’re gonna get out!”

  “You could’ve killed me!” Holding onto the door knob with one hand, he reaches up and grabs the loop on the ceiling, then pulls it down to lower the stairs that lead to the attic. “Beth, can you help with the stairs?”

  “Are you sure you can hold the door closed?” she asks, as she unfolds the staircase and feels the cold draft coming from the attic space above.

  “They’re barely twisting it,” he tells her quietly. “It’s more noise than anything.” He loosens his grip on the knob, and then lets go of it briefly to see if they’re actually trying to open the door — but as he suspected, they’re barely turning the handle, and simply trying to make as much noise as possible. “Beth, Christine, take a couple of guns out of the bags and put ‘em in your pockets, then load the bags into the attic. We might have to make a run for it.”

  After taking two extra revolvers out of the bag, and a few boxes of ammo, Beth carries one of the bags into the attic, and when she turns around to grab another one from Christine, she sees Bill grabbing one of them and then backing up toward the back door. “Bill, what’re you doing?”

  “I’m not going up there. I’m not walking past that door…”

  “You can’t go out that back door… Like Larry said, it’s a trap.”

  “Come on baby, let’s go,” Bill says, pulling on Rachel’s arm.

  Beth hands the bag in her hands back to Christine, then aims her gun at Bill. She can see the fear and indecisiveness in Rachel’s eyes, but Travis only looks tired, like he has all night — in fact, he still hasn’t said a single word the entire time they’ve been together. “Bill, drop the bag, you’re not stealing our shit!”

  “Let him have it, we won’t be able to carry it on the run anyway,” Larry tells her.

  “Thank you, we won’t forget it,” Rachel says, backing up toward the back door with Bill.

  “You’re gonna die out there, Rachel — all three of you,” Beth says.

  Bill points his gun at Beth for only a second, his body full of nervous twitches, then he opens the back door and looks around quickly before pulling Rachel out the door with him. Travis follows, not bothering to close the door behind him.

  “Come on, we have to go!” Larry yells, watching Christine hand another bag to Beth. When she turns around to pick another one up, Larry sees a middle-aged man standing in the open doorway, holding an iron pipe in one hand, and a coil of heavy rope in the other. “Christine, forget the other bags, get into the attic, now!”

  Beth, who was already halfway up the ladder, pulls herself all the way up, then reaches down and helps Christine. Larry lets go of the door knob and grabs a third bag before climbing the stairs himself, and sees the bedroom door open just as he makes it to the top. The person who comes out, a boy who’s probably only barely a teenager, starts crawling up the stairs at a frantic pace, losing his footing repeatedly as he slips on the dusty steps. Larry sits down on the ceiling joist to steady himself, then takes his gun out of the holster and shoots the boy in the head — dropping his lifeless body onto the carpeted floor below. He carefully climbs down a few steps, looking down into the room for the other man, but he doesn’t see any sign of him. Holstering the gun again, he reaches down and folds the stairs back up, then carries the cord back up to the top and pulls the entire mechanism into place again — filling the attic space with near complete darkness.

  “Okay, now what?” Beth asks.

  “We need to get to the outside access panel — or wait until morning, whichever doesn’t get us killed I guess.” He turns on a flashlight, then uses his pocketknife to cut the pull cord from the stairs to prevent anyone below from opening the hatch. “Watch your step up here, we need to move a quietly as possible.”

  Over most of the attic, the only place that you can safely place any weight is on the ceiling joists, which have insulation installed between them. Running from the stairs to the far wall on the east side of the house, however, is a thin line of plywood that leads to what looks like another doorway in the wall. Beth is leading the way, crawling across the cold, dusty boards, and dragging a bag that’s filled with guns, food and medical supplies. When she reaches the doorway, she can hear screams coming from outside, and a voice that sounds like someone pleading for help. She turns around and looks at Larry, who shakes his head and shrugs.

  “We have to keep moving, sis, they were warned.”

  She opens the door, which sits about twelve feet off the ground with no way to get down, then spots a group of people walking away from the house below her. “These people don’t move like the others.” she whispers. “They’re not uncoordinated at all, or stupid by the looks of it.”

  “Is it clear under you?”

  Beth leans over and stares down at the gravel parking area below, seeing nobody in any direction. “It looks okay, yeah. I think they’re off chasing Bill and his family.”

  “Well, at least he’s useful for something.” Larry picks up his bag, which is filled with the same general assortment of supplies as the others, then swings it over for Beth to take. When he does though, he hits the corner of the bag against one of the trusses and sends dust flying through the air. Worse yet, several bats take flight and start fluttering around the attic, one of them landing on Christine’s jacket sleeve. Panicking, she begins slapping at the rodent, and ends up falling backward onto the insulation.

  “Don’t move…” Larry tells her calmly. “Just reach out and take my hand, okay?”

  She slowly reaches out for him, but she’s still too far away. As she leans forward to get closer, she hears a dull cracking sound, and the next thing she knows she’s sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor, facing an open back door and a group of people staring at her from across the parking area.

  “Christine, just stay put, I’ll come get you,” Larry says from above.

  She stands up and reaches for her gun, but it’s not there — neither of them are.

  “Larry, is my gun up there?”

  “I don’t see it anywhere. Here, take mine…”

  “No, it must be down here somewhere.” She looks around the room at the broken pieces of drywall and insulation, then she hears the sound of crunching gravel coming from outside. Turning to the door again, she sees a crowd of men and women moving closer — one of them carrying a rifle that looks suspici
ously similar to Bill’s.

  “Over here…” comes a whisper from behind her.

  Christine back away from the door, then turns her head, seeing a shadow standing in the front door. “Beth?”

  “Follow me, they’re getting closer.”

  With the people getting closer, she runs out the door and into the rain without hesitating, then looks around for Beth. After seeing movement around the front corner of the house, she follows and ends up running to the trailer next door, hiding behind a car that’s sitting under the carport. She looks around again, peering out into the trailer park for any sign of Beth or Larry, and then she hears breathing coming from behind her.

  “Don’t go out there, they’ll see you.”

  Christine recognizes the voice, and it’s not Beth. She slowly squats down and looks back, and sees Amanda sitting behind her, calmly watching the scene in front of them.

  “We can’t stay here for long,” Amanda tells her. “They’re hunting you.”

  “They’re hunting you too.”

  “They don’t even know I’m here.”

  Something about the girl sends a chill up Christine’s spine, and she wonders for a moment whether she’s safer here or out there with the hunters.

  “Where should we go?”

  “There’s a big barn on the other side of the cranberry bogs. I used to come here with my mother when they’d harvest the crop.”

  “Is it safe?”

  “It’s safer than here.”

  Christine can see several of the hunters coming out of the front door of the house, then spreading out in different directions. One of them, a young woman wearing filthy, torn clothes and no shoes, is paying close attention to the ground, and it suddenly occurs to Christine that she must be looking for footprints. She noticed that Amanda was running on the gravel and concrete sidewalks when they made their way here, but in her panicked state she accidentally ran across the sparsely green lawn.

  “Stay still, and don’t make a sound,” Amanda whispers.

  The woman kneels down and looks closely at what’s undoubtedly a footprint in the mud, then lifts her head up and stares at the carport, as if she’s looking directly at Christine. Feeling her whole body shaking, she reaches into her pocket and takes out the knife that her dad gave her the day they left home, then unfolds the three-inch blade and holds it at her side. She turns her head to see if Amanda has armed herself with anything, but to her surprise, there’s nobody there. Her heart starts to race as she looks around frantically for her, but there’s no sign of her anywhere — and the woman looking for them is starting to move closer. Through the rain and darkness, she spots two people running toward the highway, staying low and each carrying a bag. She knows immediately that it’s Larry and Beth, but she’s afraid to scream for help, not knowing how many other people are nearby, or whether they could actually hear her through the storm anyway. As they disappear from sight, she stands up and faces the woman in front of her. From the expression on her face, Christine is certain that the woman sees her, there’s an evil grin plastered on it as she holds her arms straight out.

  It’s not until she gets to within about twenty feet that she can hear the woman wheezing, which is the first indication they’ve seen that these people are actually infected like all of the others. The woman laughs when Christine points her knife at her, and then her expression turns serious, even painful — and a second later she slowly slumps to the ground, and Amanda appears standing behind her, holding a bloody hunting knife in her hand. Christine looks at her own knife, which is shaking violently in her hands, then carefully folds it back up and puts it in her pocket.

  “Come on, the others are following Larry and Beth,” Amanda says.

  Still crippled with fear, Christine forces herself to move, following Amanda across the trailer park to a pathway that heads east toward the bogs. When they reach a thicket of underbrush beside them, Amanda pulls her inside of it, snagging her skin with blackberry thorns and stinging nettles. She reaches down to free her coat from one of the vines, and Amanda holds her arm still — pointing at a small wooden bridge down the path that crosses over the cranberry bog to a farm on the other side. At first she thinks that Amanda must be pointing out the barn that they’re trying to reach, which she can see on the other side of the bridge — but then she spots two men heading toward them on their side of the bog, both of them dragging a body through the mud. When they reach the edge of the water, they both drop the body on the ground and then begin removing the person’s clothes.

  “They’re still alive, I can see them moving,” Christine whispers.

  “It’s one of the scourge.”

  “The scourge?”

  “It’s what my dad called the people dying from the virus — he said they were the scourge of humanity.”

  After one of the men walks away, leaving the other to finish undressing the person, they return in only a few minutes carrying an ax. Christine looks away as he raises the ax over his head, but she can still hear the blunt sound of it hitting something, and the scream that follows. She looks up at Amanda, who’s still staring at them, her mood seemingly unaffected by the brutality of the scene. Finally, after the third swing, the cries suddenly stop, leaving only the sound of the blade and subtle splashing of water — and then nothing.

  “Come on, they’re leaving,” Amanda says, pulling Christine’s hand as they emerge from the brush and back into the open.

  Still heading toward the barn, Christine stares straight ahead as they cross over the bridge and past the spot where the person was butchered. Even then, however, something still catches her attention further out in the water. A bright yellow shirt is floating on the surface, surrounded by every color imaginable. She stops halfway across the bridge, looking over the side at the flooded cranberry bog below, and sees countless articles of clothing beneath the surface, stretching out as far as she can see in the darkness of night.

  “Hurry up…”

  Christine sees Amanda motioning for her to follow, then watches as the young girl runs to the front of the barn and pulls the massive sliding door open, then disappears inside. As she steps off of the bridge and heads to the barn herself, she hears the sound of screaming coming from her right, near a cluster of smaller buildings. The instant she hears it, she knows exactly what it is, and exactly who it’s coming from, but she also knows there’s nothing she can do for Bill. As she waits and listens for any sign of Rachel or Travis, Amanda suddenly yanks her arm and pulls her inside the barn, then closes the door behind her.

  “Amanda?” she whispers quietly, seeing nothing but darkness around her.

  “I’m right next to you — don’t move.”

  She hears the strike of a match, and then sees a small candle burning, illuminating Amanda’s pale, gaunt face as she moves through a maze of farm equipment that’s been stored in the wide main aisle in front of them. Trying to keep up and close to the faint light of the candle, Christine follows her up a steep and narrow staircase that leads to the hayloft. She has a feeling that Amanda has been here before, and much more recently than she’s letting on.

  “Do you know where you’re going?” she asks the girl, who sits down in front of a small opening in the side of the loft. It looks out over most of the town, although you can’t see much of anything in the darkness. “How did you find this place?”

  “There’s about thirty of them I think, maybe more.”

  “Who? Those people?”

  “The hunters.”

  Christine sits down close to Amanda, trying not to make her uncomfortable by looking directly at her. She’s still mindful that she has a a rather large knife in her hand, and that she clearly knows how to use it. From this high up she can see the tops of the dunes in the distance, lit up by the bright sand in the partially obscured moonlight, and a few people walking around on the highway and side streets throughout the town — but most of them that are visible are gathered around one place, a metal building that’s only a stone’
s throw from the barn they’re hiding in, the same building that Bill’s screams are coming from. Every now and then, one of them enters the building, and she can hear the horrible cries for help even more distinctly than before. None of them, however, ever come out.

  “Have you ever seen anything like these people?” she asks Amanda.

  “There were a few hunters in Westport for a while, but they didn’t last long.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “I killed one of them, Curtis killed another, and the other killed himself.”

  “He committed suicide?”

  “He poured gasoline all over himself, then set it on fire. He was a nice man before the virus.”

  “You knew him? That must’ve been difficult.”

  “He ran the cafe down the street from our house — we used to go there every Sunday after church.”

  Feeling cold again now that they’re not running, Christine covers her head with the hood of her coat, trying to protect her ears from the bitter cold air in the loft. She has no idea what time it is, but she knows that sunrise can’t be that far off — a glow is already showing in the sky to the east. For some reason, whether it’s a severe lack of sleep, or a strange sense of security from her new traveling companion — she suddenly feels more at ease around Amanda. She looks at her closely, studying her face and hands, which are the only parts of her that are actually visible, and sees almost no signs of sickness other than being a little pale and emaciated. She looks hungry, and cold, but she doesn’t look like the other infected people that she’s seen. “You look better than when I saw you last — healthier somehow.”

  “I’m feeling a little better, I’m not as sore as I was.”

  “So did you really only have allergies, or was that just a story?”

  She looks up at Christine with a deranged, homicidal stare — then places the tip of her knife against Christine’s side. “You ask a lot of questions.”

  “I know, I’m sorry.” Frozen with fear, she can feel the blade piercing into her skin. “Please, don’t hurt me. I didn’t mean anything by it.”