by James Bierce
“Is your arm okay?” Sarah asks, as she tries to get his coat off.
“I don’t know, it hurts like hell.”
She examines the sleeve closely as she slips it off of him, seeing marks in the fabric, but no holes. His skin, already marked from being tied up in their cabin, has some nasty bruising appearing on the surface of the skin — but to her relief, there are no punctures visible. “It looks okay, he didn’t actually get his teeth into you.”
Curtis can feel his heart racing and breathing becoming rapid as the stress begins to sink in, “I thought he was gonna kill us…”
“He didn’t though, and we’re all still okay… Just sit here for a minute and calm down.” She kneels down in front of him, waiting for his breathing to settle down before standing up again. “I’m gonna check on the kids, okay?” Seeing him nod back, she walks out of the room and finds the boys standing on the couch, both of them looking into the kitchen. Wedged in the pet door, with one arm and a head stuck, is a young girl that can’t be any older than about ten.
“She can’t move,” Ben tells her. “She tried to back out a minute ago, but she couldn’t.”
Sarah pulls a chair out from the table and places it several feet away from the girl, then sits down and stares at her. “Can you speak?”
“I don’t think she can — but she cried when she got stuck,” Matt says.
“Do you have a name?” Sarah continues. The girl looks up at her with tears in her eyes, then attempts to free herself again by wriggling her body, but it doesn’t do any good. She settles down and rests her head on the floor, then starts whimpering as she makes eye contact again.
“What’s going on?” Curtis asks, coming in from the bedroom and standing behind her.
“This girl tried to climb through the pet door, and I’m trying to figure out if she’s sick.”
“Of course she’s sick, just look at her…”
“I don’t see any symptoms — aside from the fact that she won’t talk.”
“Her skin is dark around the eyes.”
“And her hands are blue…” Matt adds.
Curtis picks up a broom from the laundry room, then stands over her.
“Don’t hurt her!” Sarah yells.
“I’m not gonna hurt her.” He lowers the handle down next to her face, then moves it to within only a couple of inches. In an instant, the girl stretches her neck out and tries to bite the broom handle, then lets out a blood-curdling scream when Curtis drops it and backs away. He feels a nudge against his side, and looks over to see Sarah handing him a blanket.
“Throw it over her, I don’t wanna have to look at her.”
CHAPTER 28
GRAYLAND: DAY 6
Nestled in the shadows of a covered porch, curled up in the fetal position with tears running down her face, Christine listens to shot after shot as Jake fires his gun at the school across the parking lot. She knows who he’s shooting at, and that he’s aware of it as well, but for the life of her she can’t figure out why he’s doing it. She watched him fire the first bullet, and could tell from the reaction on his face that he missed his target. Whether it was Larry or Beth that he was aiming at she didn’t know, but the desperate determination in his eyes as he kept firing was the most terrifying thing she’s ever witnessed. After that, she sat down on the floor and placed her hands over her ears, trying to drown out the senseless violence in front of her.
“Hey!”
She feels something kick her leg, and looks up to find Jake staring at her.
“Get ready to move, they’re probably headed to the other side of the building.”
She closes her eyes again and begins to cry, her mind overwhelmed with emotions — then she feels another kick, this time much harder than before.
“Hey, look at me!”
She lifts her head up, and then finally opens her eyes after being kicked once more. His gun is aimed directly at her now, the barrel so close to her skin that she can feel the heat coming from it. “Why are you doing this?” she asks tearfully, as she pulls herself to her feet.
He takes his aim away from her, then gestures toward the door. “Come on, they’re gonna get away if we don’t move now.”
“Beth loves you so much…”
He stops and turns around, pushing her against the wall — then he grabs his jacket sleeve and pulls it up, exposing a gruesome wound on his arm that looks gangrenous. “Do you see this?” he says maniacally, his voice rapid and angry. “I got this last fall, killing a doctor that saved my life.” She tries to look away from it, and he grabs her head and shoves her even closer. “Ask me why I killed him…”
Feeling nauseous from the odor, she forces herself to speak. “Why…?”
“Because he was already dead, just like all the others. None of us were meant to live through this, not me, or you, or Beth or Larry.”
“Beth is alive, and so is Larry…” she cries out.
“The entire world is dying, Christine. We’ve been stripped of our souls while we await our final judgment, and I’m the executioner.”
Christine can see the insanity raging in his eyes, and the breathing that gets worse the more excited he becomes. Part of her was hoping that Jake was simply having a nervous breakdown, which would be completely understandable considering everything that he’s been through — but his behavior and symptoms are exactly the same as David’s were, right before he tried to kill both her and George.
He turns around and looks back at the school through the scope on his rifle, and for a moment Christine considers reaching for her gun to shoot him — but just as her hand begins to move into her pocket, he takes hold of her arm and pushes her out the door in front of him.
“Head southwest, that way…” he orders her, pointing toward the front of the school.
She steps down into the muddy ground that sits between the trailer park and the school, then begins walking slowly through the ankle-high puddles of water.
“Hurry up!” Jake yells at her, kicking her in the butt and sending her face-first into the water. He reaches down as he walks by and grabs her by the collar, lifting her onto her feet again. “If you’re no use to me, I’ll end you right now — understand?”
Already cold from the pouring rain and wind, Christine shivers as she tries to stay ahead of him. In the distance to her right, she can see someone walking south along the highway, limping badly as they fight to stay upright in the strong winds. She wants to scream for help, or somehow get their attention as Jake continues to push her from behind — but in this one instance, his delusional beliefs are more true than not. These people aren’t dead, but they might as well be.
When they come around the corner of the building, they see another entrance to the school about two hundred feet away — this one with the door propped open with a concrete block. Seeing no movement yet, Jake stands under the cover of the eaves and forces Christine to sit down on the pavement in front of him, then he aims his rifle over her head toward the door.
“I used to work at a prison, did Beth tell you that?” he asks, his voice strangely calm and relaxed.
“Yeah, I think she told me about it.”
“We had this one inmate who shot up a school when he was a teen — and we got him when he turned eighteen. The idiot drove his own fucking car to the front of the school, parked right in front of the camera, then opened fire. Guess what day it was?”
“I don’t know.”
“Saturday.” He starts laughing, then coughs so hard that he almost loses his balance. “The stupid bastard had it pretty rough on the inside though. Two weeks after landing in our unit, someone shanked him in the shower.”
“They killed him?”
“No, I think he actually lived long enough to die from the virus, just like everyone else. How is that for karma?”
“Jake, please think about what you’re doing…” she cries, breaking down in tears again.
He ignores her, choosing to focus his attention on whatever comes
out of the doorway instead. He’s spent the last four months obsessing over this exact moment, seeing the situation play out in his head every time he closes his eyes at night.
She can hear commotion in the school behind her, but she can also see the same crippled man she saw earlier, still limping down the highway. When the guy sees her as well, he stands in the middle of the road and watches her for a moment, then begins stumbling toward them slowly, dragging his left foot across the asphalt parking lot.
“There’s a guy walking this way…” she says, pointing toward the highway.
“Is he close?”
“He just left the highway…”
“Then shut up and let me concentrate, he’ll have to wait his turn.”
Without even glancing back at the door, she can tell that Beth is about to come walking through it — and Jake knows it too. When her voice can be heard from somewhere inside, sounding frantic and scared, Christine watches as he holds his breath and stares through the rifle scope. She looks back at the door and sees Beth emerge, then struggles to her feet and pulls the revolver out of her pocket.
“Jake, I’ll shoot if you don’t drop your gun — I mean it!” she screams, pointing the gun at his body as her hands shake violently. He lets out a sigh and smiles, then slowly drops his aim to the ground. “Drop the gun, then kick it to me!”
Almost in slow motion, he gently lays the rifle on the pavement, then looks up at her with a slight smirk on his face. “We’re full of surprises, aren’t we?”
“Jake, is that you?” Beth yells out, dropping her bag and running toward them. When she sees the gun in Christine’s hands though, she stops and pulls her own pistol out, then motions for Larry to stay back.
“Beth, stay away from him, he’s trying to kill you…” Christine tells her.
“That’s not true, hon, she’s crazy,” Jake argues.
Beth raises her pistol and aims it at the teen, then starts walking carefully toward Jake. “Drop your gun, sweety, he’s not hurting anyone, okay?”
“You have to kill him, he’s sick!” she yells back, her voice becoming hysterical with fear.
“Christine, drop your gun and move away from him, I won’t ask you again,” Beth says more forcefully than before, moving between the girl and Jake. “I’m gonna put a bullet in your head if you don’t do what I say, do you understand?”
Her entire body trembling, Christine bends down and sets the revolver onto the asphalt, then stands up just in time to see Jake holding a handgun to the back of Beth’s head. A split second later she feels the spray of blood as Beth falls to the ground, her body hitting the pavement only a few feet in front of her. Christine crouches down to pick her gun up again, but then collapses instead as the sound of more gunfire fills the air. When it finally ends, and the only thing she can hear is the sound of her own sobbing, she lifts her head up and sees three bodies lying on the ground. Jake is right beside Beth’s body, still gasping for breath as his lungs fill up with blood. Larry is a short distance away, perhaps ten feet — moaning loudly as he clutches his left leg.
“Larry…?” Her voice is shaky and weak as she grabs her gun and stands up.
“Is he dead?” Larry answers back.
“Almost — he’s still breathing a little bit.”
“I need you to shoot him in the head, okay?”
“I… I don’t…”
“Christine, don’t think about it, just aim it at his head and pull the trigger.”
She passes by Beth, trying not to look at her, then stands over Jake — kicking the pistol next to him out of his reach. He’s staring directly at her, his eyes looking kind and full of remorse as he tries to extend his hand out to her.
“Take a deep breath and relax, you’re doing him a favor,” Larry says, as he tries to lean against the brick wall of the school behind him.
She closes her eyes, trying to remember what her father had said about moments like this, where you might be forced to do something that you despise. Without thinking about anything at all, she opens her eyes again and pulls the trigger, shooting him in the forehead twice. Remembering the man that was approaching from the highway, she turns around and finds him just staring back at her. When his feet begin to move again, she fires a round at him, missing wildly — then she fires her two remaining shots, but those miss as well. She bends down and picks up Jake’s gun, wiping the blood from the handle and taking her time to carefully aim it. The next two shots hit the guy, knocking him to the ground and out of harm’s way. She looks around at the rest of the town, expecting to see crowds of people coming out of the shadows and fog — but the town looks empty once again, and the only sign of life that she can see is Larry’s bedraggled body trying desperately to sit up.
“Can I get some help?” he asks her.
She helps to lift him up, then examines his leg as he winces in pain. “Were you shot?”
“I don’t think so. I fell back and landed on my hip — I might have broken something.”
“We need to find someplace to hide for the night, before those people show up again.”
“I’ll find someplace, don’t worry about me — but you have to get out of town before it’s too late.”
“I’m not leaving you…”
“We’re gonna die if we both stay here. At least you might stand a chance on the road if you leave now.”
“What about you?”
“I’ll have to take my chances.” He points at his bag that’s still lying on the ground where he dropped it. “Hand me my bag, I’ll give you some supplies to take with you.”
She sets the bag at his feet, then unzips all of the compartments. “Where should I go?”
He takes a smaller bag that was inside and starts loading it with pistols, ammunition, food, water and medicine, saving almost none of the latter three for himself. “Just follow the beach to Cohassett, then take the highway to Olympia. That family said that everyone there was dead, and right now that sounds like a pretty good place to be. Whatever you do, don’t walk into Westport — and try to stay as far away from Cosmopolis as possible, that jackass that brought his wife and son here told me that it was overrun.” He hands the small bag to her, then pops two painkillers into his mouth as he rests his head against the wall behind him. “If you happen to come across a family named the Lockwoods, see if you can stay with them — they’re good people.”
“That’s what you said about Jake…”
“I know, and there’s a pretty good chance that Jake already killed all of them, but they’re still your best chance at staying alive.”
She stands up and looks at the sun, guessing that it must be just after noon. “Larry, if I…”
“I’ll catch up if I can,” he interrupts. “You’d better get going.” She hesitates at first, but then turns around and starts walking away. “Hey, Christine!” he hollers out.
“Yeah?”
“Did you ever see any sign of Amanda?”
“Yeah, she found me.”
“What happened to her?”
“She was killed, by those people.”
She turns again and heads back to the highway, walking north through the wind and rain that’s still beating down around her. When she gets to the last house along the road, she looks back at the town, seeing the same abandoned and desolate scene that she saw when they first arrived. Ahead of her, there’s a sign alongside the road. ‘Westport: 6 Miles, Aberdeen: 23 Miles, Olympia: 72 Miles’
She shudders at the thought of traveling that kind of distance — especially alone. Her father, David, Larry, Beth — everyone in her life had protected her for months, making sure that she was never in any serious danger. Even Amanda, in her own twisted way, had saved her more than once over the last couple of days.
The dark road that lies ahead only adds to the loneliness — but the true feeling of despair is really only felt when she reaches a small, winding driveway that leads into the woods, where she can see the remnants of a smoldering cabin that’s nestle
d amongst the trees.
CHAPTER 29
COHASSETT BEACH: DAY 7
As old as it is, Curtis doesn’t really have any memories of this neighborhood as a child. He remembers riding past the old farm houses on their way to town, and how it seemed strange to see cows and horses right across the street from the ocean — but whatever it looked like all those years ago, he’s quite certain that it looked nothing like it does today. Peering out through cracks in the plywood barricades that cover the windows, he’s noticing a sudden and drastic change in the behavior of the infected, one that’s making him leery of walking among them — even in the daylight.
When they first ventured into Westport, nearly five months ago now, most of the people were actually relatively harmless. They mostly wandered aimlessly around town, apparently oblivious to the fact that you even existed, and only a few of them showed any hint of hostility or even intelligence. Today, however, the same people that used to stumble around without a shred of coordination seem to be regaining much of their strength and agility. As their physical abilities improve though, their mental stability appears to be permanently damaged. Last night the neighborhood was filled with the sounds of screaming and pleas for help as Curtis watched the mayhem taking place in front of their temporary home. People were being assaulted and murdered at a frenetic pace, their bodies tossed aside when they were done as if they were killed by animals.
Inside the mobile home, things were finally calm for the time being. While they had a few visitors during the night, they’re almost positive that none of them knew of the family’s existence. The young girl in the kitchen disappeared early in the morning, while Matt was standing guard. He said the girl began to struggle and cry out, and then someone ripped her out of the pet door that she was trapped in, then dragged her across the yard and into the woods behind the property. As much as the thought of it bothered all of them though, none of them actually miss her presence.