Westport (Grays Harbor Series Book 1)

by James Bierce

  "Let's go, we don't have much time." he tells Beth.

  As they both climb down the ladder, Jake can tell from the look on Beth's face that the news isn't good.

  "We're leaving." Larry tells him.

  Jake doesn't need to hear anything else. He bends over and grips the tangled mess of netting, supplies and safety rings in his hands, lifting one end of the heap over the side of the boat. Larry and Beth grab the other end, and the three of them slowly lower the supplies into the water, careful not to let go of them just yet. "Beth, go ahead and jump in." Larry tells her.

  As she makes her way onto the side of the boat and slips into the frigid water below, Larry and Jake drop the supplies all the way overboard. Only seconds later, as Beth swims for the brightly colored safety rings in front of her, Jake jumps in and starts to make his way toward her. When she reaches the closest ring, she loops her arm through it, afraid of letting go of everything in the world that they still possess. She looks up and sees Larry standing on the side of the boat, trying to tie an extra life preserver around his waist — then she hears a loud crack from somewhere in the distance, and she watches as Larry's body falls into the ice-cold water below, leaving behind a trail of blood streaming down the side of the boat.

  "Larry!" she screams at the top of her lungs. As she starts to scream again, Jake grabs her from behind, covering her mouth with one hand, while using his other to control her struggling body.

  "Shh, we don't want him hearing us..."

  She forces herself to settle down once again, as her nerves begin to go numb from the shock of the near-freezing water of the harbor. As Jake watches for Sean's boat to appear somewhere through the mist, Beth looks in the other direction, hoping for a sign that Larry is still alive. All she can see, however, is their own boat disappearing into the fog, like some sort of ghost ship fading away into the darkness.

  "Duck down." Jake whispers.

  They both lower their heads into the water as Sean's flashlight scans the area above them. When it finally goes away, they reemerge again, seeing just a glimpse of Sean's boat following 'Larry's Obsession' farther upstream in the direction of the Chehalis River.

  "Come on, we need to get to shore..." says Jake.

  "What about Larry?"

  "Beth, he's dead. You saw the blood..."

  "We have to find him!" she cries out, her voice quivering from the cold.

  "We need to get out of the water before we freeze to death."

  He searches through the bags tied to the tangle, finding two backpacks that he removes and ties to his arm instead. Then he turns around and faces the shore, surprised to see the outline of downtown Aberdeen from where they're at. It looks unreal, like a drawing sketched by a madman — a dark gray silhouette of buildings and streets that are barely visible, and a single light, barely visible on the hill behind the town.

  Matt can hear the thumping even clearer now than before, sounding as though its coming from a room halfway down the corridor in front of him. There's no rhythm to it whatsoever, its just a random bump, followed by a faint scratching noise that sends chills up his spine — like fingernails slowly making their way down a chalkboard. As he takes a step into the hall toward it, he hears his mother from the other room speaking to him.

  "Wait, come here." she whispers, barely loud enough for him to hear.

  He had a feeling she wouldn't approve of him going to check it out alone. She still thinks of him as a kid, her baby boy, but he feels different now — more mature. As much as the last few days seem like a blur in his mind, the years preceding them seem even more distant, almost as if the memories of his childhood had happened to someone else.

  As he makes his way back into the living room, fully intending to argue with her over whether or not he was ready for something like this, he's surprised to see her holding the gun out for him to take.

  "You might need this..." she tells him. "But be careful."

  Matt reaches out and takes the gun from her, placing it at his side like his father had shown him. "I will."

  As she watches him turn around and walk away, she whispers... "Don't use it unless you have to, and hurry up."

  Matt nods at her, then rounds the corner and enters the hallway, mindful to keep his unsteady finger off of the trigger of the revolver. With his hands shaking, he turns on the flashlight, instantly questioning whether that was a good idea or not, but he decides to leave it on anyway.

  There are only three doors in the short and narrow space, one on the end and one on each side. The noises are coming from the one on the left, and he can tell immediately that something doesn't look right, the door looks different somehow. When he reaches the middle of the hall it becomes obvious what it is — someone has crudely nailed a fence board to either side of the opening, then tied a rope between the board and the doorknob, creating a primitive but effective barricade. As he approaches the door, a floorboard under his foot creaks, alerting his presence to whatever is on the other side. Now, in addition to pounding and scratching against the hollow-cored door, they begin to frantically twist the knob, pulling it against the rope in a futile attempt to escape.

  Their breathing sounds slightly labored, but not raspy like the other people in town, and he can hear them speaking faintly — words that are almost loud enough to make out, but not quite. The voice sounds deep and masculine.

  Matt carefully backs up, not wanting to arouse too much attention from whoever they are, then he heads back into the living room again, where his mom is busy tying the old woman up with a white cord. She has her sitting in the chair, her wrists fastened to the arm cushions, and the back of the chair bound to an antique dresser in the corner of the room just in case she tries tipping forward. She also has a long scarf wrapped around the woman's mouth, blocking most of her face.

  "You found something?" Matt asks her.

  "Telephone cord." she replies, holding up the end of it, where the phone is still attached.

  "Will it hold her?"

  "If it doesn't, we'll shoot her."

  She finishes the knot, then scoots across the floor on her butt and leans back against the couch, admiring her handiwork.

  "What'd you find down the hall?" she asks.

  "I think its a guy, he's locked in one of the rooms."

  "Can he get out?"

  "I don't think so."

  Sarah grabs the couch behind her and pulls herself up onto the cushions, wincing in pain from the cuts on her leg and arm. Matt rushes to help her, but almost passes out when he sees the blood start to flow again.

  "You didn't happen to see a bathroom did you?" she asks him.

  "I think there's one across the hall from the uh... the guy."

  "Good, go see if they have a first aid kit. I'll keep an eye on her." she says, pointing to the gagged and tied-up elderly owner of house. If the circumstances were any different, the scene would look absolutely horrible.

  Matt returns in only a few minutes, carrying in his hands an entire drawer full of medical supplies, including gauze, tape, scissors, bandages — and best of all, painkillers. While his mom tends to her wounds, Matt sits down in front of their hostess and stares at her, noticing in particular the open laceration on top of her head.

  "Do you think she'll die?" he asks his mom.

  "She might, I hit her pretty hard."

  Matt had already noticed the lack of compassion in his mom's voice when discussing the woman. He can't really blame her though, he doesn't necessarily feel anything for the woman either, especially after what she tried to do to them.

  "Do you think Dad will find Ben?" he asks her.

  Sarah stops unwinding the gauze, finding it hard to answer the question. She wants to break down and cry every time she thinks about either one of them, but she knows she can't allow herself that privilege, not yet anyway. Besides, Matt deserves an answer, even if its not a good one.

  "I don't know sweety. I know he'll try his best."

  She goes back to wrapping her leg whil
e Matt sits in silence, still glaring at the woman intently. Then he turns around and looks up at Sarah.

  "Dad said that everyone in town was probably dead... but they aren't, are they?"

  "No, they're not."

  "I wish they were dead..."

  "So do I."

  She cringes as she hears the words escape her lips, and part of her feels as though she should be scolding him for saying something so incredibly ruthless — but he's right, everything would've been perfectly fine if the rest of the residents in town had been killed in the plague. Instead, what they've turned into is something unnatural, something entirely evil.

  "Mom, she's waking up."

  Sarah looks up from her bandaging to see the woman starting to squirm in the chair, frantically shaking her head from side to side in an attempt to free herself from the crude blindfold that covers her face. When her soft moaning grows louder though, and her arms begin twisting in an attempt to free herself from the wire shackles, Sarah takes the gun from Matt and hands him the scissors.

  "Cut the scarf off, it might calm her down — but keep your gloves on, and be careful. You don't need to catch whatever she has."

  The woman's body goes still the moment Matt touches her head, and the panicked moaning slows down to a whimper. As he begins cutting through the fabric, trying not to nick her oily and knotted hair, the woman starts to whisper quietly — words that Matt can clearly hear at this distance, but can't understand. It sounds like another language.

  After he takes the scarf off and tosses it on the floor beside her, he moves her hair from in front of her eyes, revealing a kind and gentle face underneath. She smiles at him, and then at Sarah as Matt moves back to the couch next to his mom.

  "It happened to me too, didn't it?" the woman asks in a hoarse voice, her smile turning into a look of concern.

  "What do you mean?" Sarah replies, thinking the woman has clearly lost her mind.

  "I was really hoping that it wouldn't..." she responds, barely loud enough for Sarah to hear.

  "What exactly do you think happened?"

  "Would the two of you like something to eat? I have some canned peaches in the cupboard... They're wonderful." And the kind smile returns.

  "Do you have a name?" Sarah asks her, purposely ignoring the question. The woman has either gone completely mad, or she's more diabolical than Sarah realized. She's beginning to think it might be both.

  "Oh, I'm sorry, where are my manners? My name is Clara Embree. And yours is...?"

  "Sarah, and this is my son Matt."

  Matt gives a sheepish wave, feeling embarrassed for having done it.

  "Its very nice to meet you Matt." she says, sounding very sincere.

  "Is this your house?" asks Sarah.

  "It was built by my father just before the war. I still like to think of it as his."

  Sarah looks down at the painkillers in the drawer beside her, wishing that she could take some of them to ease her discomfort — but she can't afford to lose control of her senses, not until they're back at the cabin anyway.

  "Do you know what happened in town?" she asks Clara.

  The warm smile and sparkle in Clara's eyes disappear as she contemplates her answer.

  "No, not really. We didn't go into town much after everyone started getting sick. We couldn't risk coming down with it ourselves, not at our age." She looks away, then lowers her head, a look of shame washing over her face. "After a few days, people started coming to our door, asking for help, or wanting us to take their children in before it was too late, but we couldn't..."

  "I'm sorry, that must have been difficult..."

  "Some of them were neighbors that we've known for years."

  "Did the people in town disappear quickly after that, or did it take a while?"

  Clara lifts her head again, looking directly at Sarah, tears running down her cheeks. "Disappear? They never disappeared..." The woman cocks her head to one side, looking at Sarah with a look of suspicion. "You really don't understand what's happened, do you?"

  Sarah wants to respond, but she doesn't know quite what to say. The woman is right, they really don't know what's happened, not beyond the few shreds of evidence they've picked up over the past forty-eight hours anyway.

  "We're all going to die — all of us, one by one." Clara continues in a calm, soothing voice. "We thought we were immune too, my husband and I, but he came down with it weeks after we isolated ourselves."

  "Is that your husband in the bedroom down the hall?" Sarah asks.

  She nods. "A couple of weeks ago Carl tried to... force himself on me." Her words become quick and defensive. "He's not like that, he never has been. Its the disease, it makes you do things, terrible things... evil things..."

  "So you locked him up? By yourself?"

  "Fear can make you do incredible things, Sarah, even an old woman like me..."

  The comment and its tone sound more like a threat than an answer, and as Sarah sits there, staring at the woman's stern demeanor, she starts to wonder if the woman has been feeding her husband or giving him water all this time — although in all honesty she really doesn't care enough to ask.

  The room and all of the memories that it contains are sad to look at, even if you don't recognize any of the people or experiences. Judging from the photographs on the walls, this woman was probably a loving wife and mother at one time, and Carl a perfect husband and father. They both built a life here on the edge of the ocean, a life which has now been shattered and destroyed.

  None of those things matter today though — they can both rot where they sit as far as Sarah is concerned. They've become carriers of the plague, a scourge to the rest of humanity, and the sooner they're gone the better off her family will be.

  "When did you realize you were sick yourself?" Sarah asks her, only half-interested.

  Clara grins slightly, the evil glint appearing in her eyes once again. "I wasn't aware I am..."

  With his eyes burning and his lungs desperate for fresh air, Curtis takes a quick look around the garage, hoping that Amanda's warning was just a lie — and that the only thing in the garage of concern was the overwhelming smell of gasoline. After waiting only a few seconds, however, he knew it was no bluff — he can hear someone else in the building with him.

  Although the room is poorly lit after he dropped his flashlight, he can see oil stains and trash completely covering the floor. It has a ceiling that extends all the way to the roof, but the back of the building is broken into two floors, the top floor being only accessible from a rickety wooden staircase barely visible in the far right corner. Whoever is in here with him sounds like they're behind the door at the top of those stairs. He can hear their footsteps, slow and heavy, and always moving. He can't really tell how many there might be, but it sounds like there could be several of them.

  Crouching down, he feels around for his light, his hands blindly searching the greasy concrete floor — and then suddenly he stops. He can feel skin, human skin — someone's face and neck. Its ice cold to the touch.

  His first and only thought is Ben, and whether or not Amanda is playing some sort of a sick game with him.

  Knowing that the flashlight rolled in that direction, he carefully runs his hands around the edge of the body, and finds the light resting against their arm. To his surprise, when he presses the button it actually comes on, its beam aimed squarely at the face in front of him. Its the body of an older man, probably in his seventies. Most of his clothes have been ripped off and thrown to his side, revealing a corpse covered in dark bruises and bloody abrasions. He also has bite marks on his face and arms. Whoever this man was, and whatever was done to him, they took their time doing it — dead bodies don't bruise.

  Curtis stands up and turns his attention back to the door he entered through, which despite its weathered look seems to be quite sturdy. As he searches it more carefully he spots a knothole, and looking through it he can see Amanda walking casually away from him and into a building across the str
eet. He wants more than anything to scream at her, to demand that she unlock the door — but he knows it wouldn't do him any good. There's obviously something wrong with her, and it may have nothing to do with the virus.

  Instead, he decides to find his own way out, and that means searching the entire building — with the exception of upstairs of course. The front of the room is lined with grungy windows, which unfortunately have thick steel bars covering them. Underneath one of them is a cluttered workbench covered with a variety of different tools and scraps of metal, which Curtis decides is probably his best bet for finding something that can pry open the door. After carefully weaving his way through the garbage and spilled chemicals on the floor, he reaches the workbench just in time to hear something from behind him, from the direction of the stairs.

  A click, like a door opening, followed by the creaking sound of rusty hinges.

  Without even glancing back he turns off his light and crouches down behind two 55-gallon drums that sit only a few feet away. Then he waits, trying not to move, his legs burning intensely from all the abuse they've taken recently. For a moment he considers dropping to his knees, and then changes his mind when he hears the first footsteps coming down the staircase. A few seconds later he can hear another set, and then another. After that he loses count. Then suddenly they stop, and the only sound left in the room is heavy breathing.

  After waiting a couple of minutes with no activity, Curtis peers around the drums and through the darkness to find what appears to be five people standing at the bottom of the stairs.

  He looks around on the floor, hoping to find something he can use as a weapon, but all he can see are empty plastic jugs and soiled shop rags. Then finally he spots something — resting on the edge of the workbench is a large wrench, just within reach. Keeping as low to the floor as possible, he extends one hand out and grips the handle, trying not to let it drag across the surface of the bench. The weight of it, however, is more than he imagined — and just as he begins to lift it, the wrench tumbles to the concrete floor and lands with a hard crash, the sound echoing loudly throughout the room.