Westport (Grays Harbor Series Book 1)

by James Bierce

  Of the three jobs on-board, Beth's is the worst when it comes to seasickness. Although the idea is to spot Sean's boat before he gets too close to them, she welcomes the times when she loses sight of the horizon — its only then that her mind forgets how much the boat is rising and falling on the swells of the water. In fact, the only thing that's keeping her from either throwing up or falling asleep is the constant barrage of thunder, lightning, and rain. The latter is coming down in massive sheets that wrap around the boat every couple of minutes, making Jake's job below that much more difficult.

  Beth turns to Larry, intending to say something to him — but she's forced to wait a few moments as the boat climbs over a roll and starts a rapid decent over the other side, making her feel as though her intestines are going to crawl up and out of her throat.

  "Have you ever been in weather like this?" she asks, yelling over the strained engines and crashing waves.

  "A few times, but never around here. I just hope to hell its not like this when we get to Astoria."

  "And what if it is...?"

  "Then we sit and wait. If you think you feel sick now, wait until we stop moving forward."

  She cringes at just the thought of it, then focuses her attention back through the binoculars.

  "What do you see? Anything?" asks Larry.

  "This is just a waste of time. If he were twenty feet behind us I don't think I could see him."

  Her field of vision is suddenly blocked by something, and when she looks up from the binoculars she finds Jake standing directly in front of her, soaked all the way to the bone.

  "We have to talk." he manages to force out, both breathless and exhausted from working himself to the breaking point.

  Larry turns around with a grim look on his face. "About what?"

  "I can't keep up with the water anymore. For every bucket that I take out there's at least two more that come in from up top."

  This is the worst-case scenario for Larry. He knows they can't make it all the way to Astoria as long as they're taking on water, and even if they did make it there, the boat would end up sinking shortly thereafter.

  "Did you close the hatch?" he asks Jake.

  "Yeah, its sealed."

  "How long do you think we have?"

  "Its hard to say. Maybe an hour, maybe a few hours — its already above the second hole."

  "What's the closest marina?" Beth asks Larry.

  "I'm not sure exactly where we're at... Probably Westport, but without any lights its hard to say."

  Jake steps between the two chairs and pulls the chart in front of him, dripping water all over the teak dash panel. The only light available comes from the gauges on the instrument panel, making it difficult to read the already worn-out charts. "That might not be a bad idea... We might be able to throw Sean off our track."

  "He followed us into Neah Bay, what stops him from following us there?" asks Beth.

  "We won't go into Westport, we'll go on into the bay — maybe to Aberdeen."

  "That's not a good idea." Larry says dismissively. "Do you have any idea what its like crossing over the bar at Westport?"

  "No, I don't." answers Jake.

  "Its not a lot different than Astoria. It'd be suicide in weather like this."

  "I don't really see what choice we have. Its either that or we take our chances sinking farther south, and that's only if Sean hasn't caught up to us in the meantime. Whatever decision we make, we have to assume he's right behind us."

  Larry stays silent for a moment, frustrated by the two horrible choices facing him. The opening to Grays Harbor is a thin, turbulent passage nestled between two towns — the fishing village of Westport to the south, and the tourist town of Ocean Shores to the north. Beyond that sits the harbor — a body of water fed by the Chehalis River, and lined with the once-industrious cities of Aberdeen and Hoquiam.

  "Jake, check the tide chart on Westport." Larry finally says.

  He fumbles through the booklet, trying to decipher the tide levels, and trying to remember exactly which day it was. "It looks like high tide is at 12:17AM."

  "What time is it now?"

  "11:32"

  "That doesn't give us much time." He takes another look at the GPS, which is tracking them at least fifty miles off-course. "I wish this fucking thing worked." Disgusted, he reaches up and turns it off, then turns the charts toward his seat, always keeping one hand firmly on the wheel. "If we're gonna do it, it has to be now. If we wait much longer we'll miss the window."

  "I say we go for it." says Jake, who then looks at his wife for her opinion. She simply nods at both of them.

  "Okay, go down and tie any essentials to the life rings, but don't put too much weight on each one. You can also use the cushions from the chairs and couch. Then tie everything together and leave the bundle on the deck."

  As Jake makes his way down the ladder, Beth starts to follow him.

  "Beth, not you. I need you up here with me."

  She turns around and sits down in the seat next to him again, wishing she were helping Jake do something that sounds productive. "What am I doing?"

  "See if you can spot the water tower, or any other building that might look familiar. They should be somewhere in front of us."

  Larry has a few lights turned on to find their way, but the only thing she can see are one or two waves in front of the boat before they move out of sight. Occasionally a flash of lightning illuminates the surface of the water, and even then the visibility is limited by the downpour of rain. Between strikes, the area they're heading into is a vast scene of nothingness, marked only by the spray of saltwater on their windshield as they're confronted by an endless assault of rollers.

  "Aren't the waves getting bigger?" she asks.

  "We're just at a different angle, I'm turning into the west. Things are gonna get a little hectic when we get closer to the harbor."

  Trying to stay focused on the horizon, and not on the swells directly in front of her, Beth decides to give up the binoculars and rely solely on her naked eyes instead. Then she sees it, a square-shaped outline that looks vaguely like a building.

  "I see something over there, to the left a little bit."

  Larry concentrates on the area she's pointing to, but he can't see whatever she's seeing. "What does it look like?"

  "Like apartment buildings."

  "Light colored?"

  "Yeah, I think so."

  "That's Ocean Shores, we need to be a little bit farther south to line ourselves up. Go tell Jake to hurry up — once we start on the approach it doesn't take long, especially with these tailwinds."

  Larry knew the odds were against them from the moment they decided to enter Grays Harbor. He told himself that they probably had a fifty-fifty chance of making it across the bar in one piece, but deep down he knew it was much worse than that. Before turning the boat toward the harbor he reminded himself that despite the terrible odds, it was actually their best chance — running farther south was completely out of the question in weather like this. Within a relatively short period of time the boat will sink, there's no doubt about that now, and having that happen on the open ocean seems like certain suicide. At least this way they would go out fighting.

  As 'Larry's Obsession' moves closer to the entrance of the harbor, objects begin to gradually appear in the distance — most of them looking like smudges in a poorly executed painting, bobbing up and down with every rise and fall of the boat. By the time they reach what Larry calls 'the point of no return', the objects reveal themselves as the darkened buildings of both Westport and Ocean Shores. Both towns look alarmingly close to Beth as they position themselves into the narrow channel of the waterway.

  Despite seeing dozens of cities and towns along the way that were covered in a veil of darkness, it still seems strange to Beth to see places she knows so well that now look so different — even if she'd never viewed them from the water before. Directly ahead of them, only fifteen or so miles to the east, the skies should be
lit by the largest coastal urban area in the Pacific Northwest — and now that they're finally on their way there, she's beginning to have second thoughts about traveling into an area that was once home to so many people. When the epidemic first started she wanted nothing to do with other people, aside from her husband and brother of course — but as the days turned into weeks, and the sickness changed into something that resembled the apocalypse, her feelings began to shift. She missed her morning walks through her old neighborhood, and her monthly trips to Seattle with the friends she once felt so close to. More than anything she wants to find a place untouched by all of this, a place where life continues as it did before — but with every passing day she's beginning to doubt that such a place actually exists, and based on the black skies in front of them, that place almost certainly isn't Aberdeen.

  Since there are only two chairs in the cramped pilothouse, Jake has managed to wedge himself into the corner beside Beth, his eyes shut tight against the constant assault from the weather outside. Occasionally he does open them for a moment or two, each time half-expecting to see Sean's boat closing in on them — but the view is always the same, a never-ending string of rolling waves that quickly overtake the boat, thrusting them upward with each pass.

  The current of the ocean runs east, toward the shore — but the river they're aiming for runs directly into the oncoming waves, causing larger-than-normal waves to appear in the inlet passage to the bay. Even in calm weather these rollers will outrun a boat, but during storms they run fast and violent, hitting the vessels with enough force to knock them sideways every time they hit. Worse yet, they come at you from behind with no pattern or regularity, forcing the pilot of the boat to make crucial life and death decisions with no warning whatsoever.

  Beth wants to close her eyes like Jake, to block out the stress and terror that she can't help but feel, but for some reason she can't look away, not even to see how Larry is handling it in the seat beside her. Every ten to fifteen seconds the next wave reaches them, lifting them nearly two stories before dropping them on the other side of the swell — the boat landing perpendicular to the current almost every time. Whichever way they do land, Larry has only a few seconds to right their position before the next roller comes in behind them. If they're hit from the side, the wave will simply wash right over them, taking the boat under the surface as it passes, and likely taking the lives of all three people on-board.

  As they reach the crest of one of the largest swells, Beth thinks she sees something up ahead, a shimmering on the water that looks out of place. Each time they're lifted up she tries to get a better look at what it is, but by the time her eyes find it they start dropping again. Finally, on the fourth roll, she recognizes what it is that she's looking at. Up ahead, probably a few hundred yards or so, the force of the river is creating large whirlpools on the surface of the water. While the swirls of water themselves probably don't pose much of a threat to them, the debris caught in the middle of them certainly does. They look like scattered piles of trash spread out across the passage.

  "Larry, do you see..." Beth says, pointing out the windshield.

  "I know, I can't worry about that right now..."

  "But..."

  "We'll deal with it when we get there." he says abruptly.

  The words of concern manage to wake Jake from his self-induced coma next to Beth, encouraging him to finally pull himself to his feet to see for himself what all the fuss is about. As he braces his feet against the floor and adjusts his eyes to the scene directly ahead, he finds that they're sitting on the very top of a roller, looking out at the darkness of Grays Harbor. The only thing standing in their way is a collection of driftwood, garbage and what looks like hundreds of human remains floating amongst the rest of the storm wreckage.

  "Do you..." Jake says, pointing out the windshield.

  "He sees it." responds Beth.

  Sarah thought that she knew what extreme fatigue felt like, but she was wrong. She'd given birth to three kids, the first of which took a day and a half to arrive — she'd run marathons, taken part in endurance obstacle courses, stayed up for days at a time while studying for exams... but none of those came close to how she felt at this moment. The aching muscles and heavy exhaustion were familiar, but there was something different, something wasn't right. It had nothing to do with the virus, she felt perfectly healthy in that sense — but her strength was beginning to slip away somehow. She was starting to give up.

  It started out feeling like apprehension, like something horrible was about to happen and she'd forgotten what it was. Then little by little everything around her began to feel hopeless, her family's efforts to survive futile. It was at that point that she realized just how low her resolve had sunk.

  It took every ounce of energy left in her body to get to her feet and walk toward the door to the hallway, but one look at her boys standing next to their father gave her the extra push she needed. The same line keeps running through her head, over and over... 'They have to make it, no matter what the cost'. Whether its the stress of the situation, or some primal form of maternal instinct, she begins feeling something inside of her change — a building determination and anger against the people waiting outside the hotel. She suddenly realizes that her sympathy for them is now gone, and some form of resentment and hatred was now taking its place.

  "Do you remember what the plan is?" Curtis asks Matt and Ben. Instead of an answer, the two of them simply nod. "Tell it to me then..."

  "We sneak out and run down the beach." answers Matt.

  "Which way?"

  "To the left."

  "And then...?"

  "We go back to the cabin and lock the door."

  Curtis almost laughs. The part about locking the door wasn't included in the plan, but it seems only logical. At least he's thinking ahead. "Right, we head to the cabin and we don't stop until we get there. Do you remember how to find our trail from the beach?"

  Ben pipes up this time. "We look for the anchor."

  "That's right, you find the anchor and then cross the highway."

  In reality, it isn't a real anchor that they're looking for, but rather a large piece of driftwood that looks somewhat similar to one from the right angle — if you squint just right, and maybe turn your head sideways. Regardless, each of them know exactly what it looks like, and it seemed the best landmark to use to find their way home.

  "Are you guys ready then?" asks Curtis.

  Another set of nods.

  "We're ready." replies Sarah.

  He holds up his hand as a signal for his family to stay back, then quietly opens the door and steps out into the hallway, glancing momentarily at the door down the hall where he watched a man choke to death only a short while ago. Confident that the coast is clear, he motions for Sarah and the two kids to join him.

  As Sarah steps out across the threshold, her first reaction is to shield Ben's eyes from the blood splattered all over the floor and walls, but she holds back instead, and allows him to take it all in. To her surprise, he carefully and casually steps over a pool of it in front of the door, then checks his shoes afterward to see if he got any on them.

  With his gun at his side, and his family walking only a few feet behind him, Curtis creeps slowly toward the stairs at the end of the hall, their footsteps filling the hotel with the sound of creaking floorboards. His hands are shaking so badly that he has a hard time holding onto his flashlight, and after about twenty feet he decides to place his gun in his pocket just to be safe.

  "Curtis..." Sarah whispers from behind.

  He turns around and sees her pointing at something on the floor, laying beside one of the pools of blood. When he gets closer he can see what it is, a detached human finger.

  "Is it from the guy you saw?" she asks.

  "I don't know, I didn't notice." He honestly hadn't noticed if the guy was missing a finger, but he knows for certain that this finger didn't belong to the man. Its small and slight, likely belonging to a woman or a chil
d. He gently tugs at Sarah's coat. "Let's keep moving."

  When he finally reaches the staircase, he motions for the others to stay back again — and after noticing that the area is already partially lit from the moonlight, he switches off his flashlight and peeks around the corner, then quickly pulls himself back into the hall.

  "Shit..." he mutters under his breath.

  "What did you see?" asks Sarah.

  "They're outside the front door." He waits a few seconds. "I think I can hear them..."

  Sure enough, Sarah can hear a faint rattling sound coming from the lobby below, as well as the sound of muffled voices. She moves up beside Curtis, then turns her own light off before glancing around the corner.

  Its hard to tell how many there are. There could be a half-dozen, or there could be a hundred, its impossible to say as dark as it is outside.

  "Is there another way out?" she asks Curtis.

  "I think I saw an exit in the kitchen."

  He peers around the corner again, watching them walk back and forth in front of the glass doors and windows, trying to figure out why they're acting the way that they do. Most of them are just wandering aimlessly, occasionally bumping into somebody else as if they had no idea they were there.

  "But we have to go through the lobby to get to the kitchen, right?" asks Sarah, breaking his concentration.

  "I wonder why they don't just break the windows...?"

  "I don't know... but we have to figure out a way back to the beach — after that we can think about everything else." responds Sarah, recognizing his lack of focus. "Curtis... are you listening to me...?"

  Instead of responding, Curtis waves his hand forward, then steps onto the middle platform of the staircase — his flashlight by his side, but still turned off. The boys follow behind him as Sarah takes the rear, all three of them staying two or three steps back.