Grayland

by James Bierce

  Easing up on the knife, Amanda places it on the rough-cut floorboards once again, but still keeps it in her grip. “You should get some sleep before the sun comes up — we have a long walk tomorrow.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Back to Westport, to find Ben.” She grabs Christine’s hand, squeezing it with an amazing amount of strength, then gently runs the blade across the top of it, watching as a small, thin line of blood falls onto the floorboards below. “Don’t even think about leaving. If you try, I’ll kill you — slowly.”

  After her hand is released, Christine manages to climb to her feet again, then finds some loose, moldy hay in the corner of the loft. She lies down on it, trying to place as much pressure onto her new wound as possible, and begins watching Amanda from the safety of darkness. Whether she’s feeling physically stronger or not, the girl is deteriorating, both emotionally and mentally. She closes her eyes, trying her best to block out the painful cries coming from the next building over, and the painful throbbing from her own hand — and then she hears Amanda’s voice, speaking so softly part of the time that it’s hard to understand what she’s saying. Still not able to comprehend all of what’s she’s talking about, she does manage to hear her ask Ben a question, and the soft voice replies with an answer. The girl is speaking as both of them, with Ben’s voice comforting and encouraging her. Christine opens her eyes just a little, wondering if she should just pretend to be asleep, or make a run for it while Amanda’s back is turned to her. As her eyes adjust to the darkness again, however, she sees her still sitting in the same spot, only now she’s facing Christine, still speaking in the same soft, soothing voice.

  CHAPTER 23

  GRAYLAND: DAY 6

  In the last few days before his wife died, Larry could feel his own will to live growing weaker as Jennifer slowly slipped away from him. Sitting at her bedside day after day was like torture, listening to her struggle for every breath as the sickness quickly took over her body. In the darkest hours of his despair, he seriously considered committing suicide after she was gone — he even hoped that he would catch the virus from her, saving himself from having to live without her.

  When they were first married, back when their future plans seemed more like a reality than a dream, time seemed to pass by effortlessly, without any of the worries or anxiety that normally only plague the older generations. They knew that they had time to make mistakes and shirk responsibilities, youth had given them that opportunity — but as the years passed by, with none of those ambitious dreams coming true, that same carefree spirit and exuberance for life had begun to resemble laziness, which is something that Larry learned to embrace with an almost passionate enthusiasm. Whether any of this ever bothered Jennifer or not, Larry will never know, since she never pestered him or complained the entire time they were married — even during the months when their income was non-existent. As he cared for her in those final days, there was a part of him, buried beneath the grief and heartache, that felt guilty for missing out on the experiences that were now an impossibility, for both her and himself — the world just wasn’t going to be the same without her. As deep as his depression was, which seemed insurmountable at the time, he told himself that he couldn’t leave this world until Beth was safe. Looking back on it though, he knows there was a more selfish reason why he didn’t follow through with killing himself — he simply didn’t want to die.

  After seeing so much death and violence over the last six months, and the anxiety of being hunted by Sean for days on end, Larry thought he knew what true fear was — but he was wrong. The scene that Beth and himself are watching through the windows of the local elementary school are beyond horrific, so much so that Beth is now facing the empty chalk board on the wall behind them instead. The people, whether native to Grayland or not, have taken over the town, and are now hunting anything and everything that moves. An unorganized horde of individuals is now scattered across the area, capturing the few infected people still around, but also dogs, cats, and even a wild rabbit that was unlucky enough to be caught by one of them. The smaller prey are usually eaten or mutilated immediately, but the people are always dragged alive toward the bogs, which is gratefully out of sight from the school.

  “I don’t know how you can keep watching that,” Beth says, lying down on a table in the corner of the classroom, out of sight from the windows.

  “I know, I don’t know why I’m watching either.”

  “Yes you do, you’re hoping to see Christine out there. I think it’s great, I just don’t know how you can handle seeing that stuff.”

  “I can’t imagine that she’s still alive — not after tonight.”

  “Whether she is or not, you’re not gonna be able to do anything about it, even if you do spot her. It’s just too dangerous.” She can barely see the outline of his body in the other corner of the room, sitting in the shadows next to a wall of windows that face the town. “The sun is gonna be up soon — you should get some rest before daylight.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You can’t be, you’ve been up for two days. Do it for me, okay?” She sees him stand up and move to the hardwood floor, groaning as he eases down on the hard surface. Relieved that he listened to her, she closes her eyes and starts to drift off, then hears the sound of several gunshots somewhere outside. Seeing Larry already standing up again, she jumps off of the table and joins him. “Do you see where it’s coming from?”

  “Over there, the house we just came from,” he says, pointing to the house in the trailer park, which is only a short distance away. A man and woman are exiting the home, each with pistols in their hands. The man is firing his, apparently at random targets around the town, but the woman is simply walking behind him. “Those are our guns, from the bags that we left in there.”

  When both of the man’s guns are finally out of ammunition, he turns around and tries to grab one from the woman, but instead of giving in, she backs up and takes a swing at him.

  “Give me the fucking gun!” they can hear the man screaming as he dodges her attacks.

  Larry and Beth look at each other, surprised to hear him actually speaking coherently. The woman says something back, which is too quiet to understand, and then tries to duck as the man picks up something from the ground and hits her with it. She falls to the ground instantly, and he climbs on top of her and continues to pummel her with whatever the object is, then takes one of the guns from her hand and aims it directly at her head. Beth looks away before the sound of the gunshot is heard, and then makes her way back to the table as the shots continue — stopping only when the gun is obviously empty.

  “He’s done, he’s dragging her back to…”

  “I don’t want to know,” Beth interrupts. “I can’t take it anymore.”

  Larry pulls a chair out from one of the desks and sits down, laying his head down on the hard surface of the desk. “These are even more uncomfortable than I remember.” Lifting his head up again, he starts going through the two bags they managed to take with them, laying everything out to take inventory. “We have to decide what to do next.”

  “I thought that was pretty obvious. We wait until the sun comes up, then get the hell out of here — back to the cabin.”

  “What about Christine?”

  She lets out a long sigh, but it sounds more like a groan. “I have a husband to get back to, and the longer we stay in this town, the more likely we’re going to die here. Besides, she already knows where the cabin is, if she’s still alive she’ll find us.”

  In some cold, inhumane corner of Larry’s brain, he knows that she’s right, but the thought of leaving a grieving teenager alone in this town makes him sick to his stomach. He knows deep down that it’s something that will haunt him for the rest of his life.

  “Do you agree?” Beth asks.

  “No, I don’t… but I guess that doesn’t matter, does it?”

  “No, I guess it doesn’t.”

  Larry looks at the inventory in fr
ont of him, dismayed at what little they have left. Counting what they already have on their person, they now have six guns between them, one rifle and five pistols. The real problem is ammunition and food, since most of it was apparently in the other bags. Despite their intention of splitting everything equally between the bags, preparing for an occasion just like this one, somehow in the chaos and confusion their supplies ended up concentrated — leaving them with a few dozen extra rounds for two of the guns, and barely enough food for another day.

  “We need more food,” he tells her.

  “I can make it to Cohassett without food — we don’t need anymore than what we have.”

  “What we have is an energy bar and some crackers, it’s not enough.” He waits a moment for a reaction, but she just lies there, staring at the ceiling. “I’m gonna find the cafeteria — it might still have some food, or something else we can use.”

  “Like what, bullets?” She watches him pack everything back into the bags, then turn around and walk away, toward the door to the main hallway. “Hey, you can’t just leave me alone…”

  “I guess you’d better hurry up then. Don’t forget your bag.”

  Turning on a flashlight, Larry aims it down the trash-filled hallway, where piles of debris are shoved up against the lockers that line the corridor. The debris itself is a strange mixture of things — from household items like small furniture and kitchen utensils, to clothing, car parts, and even an old recliner sitting upside down next to the water fountains. It’s all filthy, with old, rotten leaves and dirt mixed into the mess.

  “We could probably use some batteries for the flashlights too,” Larry says, noticing that the beam is becoming weaker.

  “This place might not be as secure as we thought. They’ve obviously been in here, look at all this garbage…”

  Larry stops and shines his light at the floor, then uses his foot to clear away some of the trash.

  “I see a sign that says the cafeteria is two doors down,” Beth says.

  “Look at this…” He reaches into a pile of clothing and pulls out a shotgun, then checks to see if it’s loaded. The barrel is covered in something that looks like dried blood.

  “Anything in it?”

  He closes it back up, examining the markings on the side. “No, it’s empty. It’s a twelve gauge, semi-auto though, it could come in handy.”

  “It looks like someone was beat to death with it, the barrel might not even be straight.”

  Ignoring her, he holds onto the gun and continues down the hallway, stopping in front of the double doors of the cafeteria. He looks through the windows of the door first as she steps back and takes her gun out, then he quietly pushes one of the doors open and just stands there.

  “Why aren’t you going in?” Beth asks him.

  “It smells in there.”

  “Smells like what?”

  “Death.” Holding his hand over his nose, he enters the room slowly, carefully looking everything over with the light. There’s bones everywhere, along with more piles of clothing and other personal belongings. The floor under his feet is sticky and stained red from the blood covering it, some of it rather recent by the looks of it. There’s flies too, lots of them, creating a loud buzzing sound toward the other side of the room — and a constant dripping sound coming from the area in the back.

  “Man, you weren’t kidding about the smell…”

  He looks behind and sees Beth tiptoeing across the floor, still holding her gun in her hand.

  “Just watch where you point that thing, I really don’t wanna get shot again,” Larry says.

  “Maybe we should use my flashlight for a while, we really shouldn’t run either of them completely down.”

  “Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.”

  He pulls out his pistol after she turns her light on, watching as her light fills the room with a bright glow, illuminating everything in a crisp white color that seems to only accentuate the darkened blood and filth throughout the space. Along the walls, stacked at least six feet in the air, are over a dozen piles of human bodies, all of them in various stages of decomposition — from bones to freshly killed. She shines the light onto the floor and sees a stream of blood running from several of the piles to a drain in the middle of the floor, and more corpses spread out on the cafeteria counter on the opposite wall.

  “We need to get out of here, Larry…” Beth says, backing up toward the open door that they just came through.

  “Shh…” Larry hushes her, grabbing her by the wrist that’s holding the flashlight and aiming it down to the floor.

  Beth listens closely to the silence, then shuts the light off. “Did you hear something?” she whispers.

  “I thought I heard a…” He stops mid-sentence, hearing the sound of creaking hinges from a door somewhere in the kitchen ahead. They both crouch to the floor when another door opens and floods the room with daylight — and they watch from the shadows as two men come through the doorway, dragging something behind them. When they pick it up and set it down onto the counter, Larry and Beth can both see that it’s the naked body of a woman. Larry’s heart starts beating rapidly at the thought that it might be Christine, but when they flip her over and expose her face, he can plainly see that the woman is much older. Feeling a tap on his shoulder, he looks behind and sees Beth backing out of the room, careful not to touch the floor with anything but her shoes. He does the same, but realizes once he starts moving that he accidentally set his bag down in the grime when he dropped to the floor. As he exits the room and follows Beth back down the hallway toward the classroom, he can hear the sound of crashing and yelling coming from the kitchen — and then footsteps. He stops and drops the bag, getting both his gun and his flashlight ready as he peers into the darkness. The footsteps, slow and heavy, get louder as they approach the door, and then it suddenly slams shut. Larry turns his head, and can just make out Beth’s silhouette facing him about ten feet away — when he hears the door slowly opening again, and a low, raspy laugh as someone steps into the hallway and begins walking toward them.

  CHAPTER 24

  COHASSETT BEACH: DAY 6

  Sarah looks out the window toward the highway, where the sky is beginning to brighten from the rising sun in the east, but she’s still unable to see any signs of people through the thick fog that’s rolling in over the dunes behind her. Aside from the much welcomed light outside though, the wind and rain continue to pelt the small house, even more than yesterday it seems. The night inside the house was silent for the most part, with only a brief moment of commotion coming from the front porch as one of the infected tried unsuccessfully to open the door — but there was absolutely no sign of Jake, either on the highway or the perimeter road in back of the house. Hearing the rumbling stomachs of the boys behind her, she turns around and faces Curtis, who looks exhausted and defeated, but he’s still wide-awake.

  “Did you get any sleep?” Sarah whispers.

  “I think I got a few minutes.”

  “If you wanna watch the road, I’m gonna search the house for anything else that’s edible.”

  He stands up painfully, hearing and feeling his joints cracking as they protest any further activity. His legs feel like dead weights after the stress of last night, not to mention being tied up for so long — but he manages to make it to the chair next to Sarah, his eyes still adjusting to the washed out color of gray mist outside the window. When she stands up and grabs her side, wincing in pain, Curtis stops her and lifts up her sweatshirt, revealing a large bruise just above her hip. “Did he do that to you?”

  “No, I got it in the cabin, trying to get that trap door open.”

  “What happened when I was knocked out? We haven’t really talked about it. Did he hurt you?”

  She stays silent for a moment, wishing that the last two days could be forgotten entirely. “There was some pushing and shoving, but it was mostly just threats and intimidation. The worst part of it was leaving you guys.” She leans in close, whispe
ring as quietly as possible. “Matt was so scared that he wet himself, I felt horrible for him.”

  “What about Ben?”

  “He didn’t really react, not until I started to leave.”

  “Well, he’s been through a lot lately — I’m just sorry I couldn’t be there for you…”

  “You couldn’t have done anything anyway. We’re alive, that’s all that matters.” She pulls away from him and walks to the door, then turns around. “If I don’t find any food, we should really think about moving once this fog clears.”

  “We should be able to find something around here. I don’t think we ever searched any of these houses.”

  “That doesn’t mean that somebody else didn’t.”

  “Like Amanda?”

  “Or Jake… We know that he’s been around for a while.”

  The house outside of the bedroom is still fairly dark, with cheap, fake mahogany paneling darkening the walls and ceiling, and curtains over most of the windows. After opening the curtains in the living room to let more light in, she discovers that the glass is covered with so much dust and mildew that it would be nearly impossible for anyone to see them from the outside. Unfortunately, the illumination does little to improve the looks of the room, with trash and clutter obscuring much of the worn-out and stained carpet beneath it. When she walks into the kitchen, which is only marginally cleaner, she sees boxes of belongings packed up and left on the table and counter, some of them only partially full. She checks each of the boxes, dumping the contents onto the floor and sifting through everything, but the only food she finds is a can of powdered cocoa mix shoved deep into the corner of one of the cupboards. Not caring to even check the expiration date, she slips it into her bag and walks into the next room — pausing for a moment when she smells the air inside, a horrible mixture of perfume and foulness. The moment she enters, she knows there’s something different about it, aside from the odor. The room is clean and tidy, with toys and dolls lined up perfectly on the shelves along the far wall. Lying on the bed, still wrapped tightly in a pink-colored blanket that seems much too large for the mattress, is a small skeleton that looks to be a few years younger than Ben. On the nightstand next to it is an empty glass and pill bottles, and a bag of potato chips leaned against the lamp.