Westport (Grays Harbor Series Book 1)

by James Bierce

  "Don't fucking move!" Sarah yells at him — but he keeps clumsily inching his way forward, trying to get around or over the couch that sits between them. As he reaches his right hand up in the direction of her gun, she fires a single shot into his chest, knocking him back a couple of steps — but after only a few seconds he looks down at the red-stained spot on his shirt, then smiles at her and begins to move forward once again. She fires another shot into his chest, and then another, but none of them seem to faze him in the slightest. Finally, as he reaches up once again and grabs for her gun, she pulls the trigger twice more before the gun runs out of ammo, hitting him once in the throat and once in the forehead. He immediately drops to the ground and begins to shake, blood pouring from the holes in his head in thick, streaming pulses.

  "Go lock the door." Sarah says, looking at Matt. For a moment he just stands there, his ears still ringing from the gunshots, and his mind numb from what he just witnessed. Then, as the ringing begins to fade away, he hears the light tapping of rain on the metal roof overhead, and his mother's voice beside him. "Matt, do what I said — before someone else comes in." As Matt heads to the front room, she looks over at Carl, who slumps back into his seat in disbelief at what just happened. "Carl, where are those keys?" He doesn't answer, he just stares at the body of Jacob on the floor. "Carl!"

  "What...?"

  "The car keys — we need them."

  "Right, the keys... They should be in the kitchen hanging on the wall beside the fridge." He watches as Sarah spreads a quilt over a part of the couch that's been soiled with blood. After she's done, she nearly collapses onto it, her face filled with pain.

  "Is it your leg?" he asks.

  "I'll live." She looks at the gun, then cleans a few spots of blood off of the barrel. "I'm out of ammo."

  "Do you have anymore?"

  "No, its all at the cabin. I wasn't even in favor of bringing it."

  "Well, its a good thing you did."

  Matt enters the room again, carefully stepping around Jacob's body and the mess that its left on the floor. After checking the back door and making sure that its secure, he sits next to his mom on the couch.

  "Should I clean this up?" he asks her.

  "No, we're not staying. We're going back to the cabin."

  "How? The road is blocked..."

  "Yeah, but the beach isn't." She props her legs up onto a small table, then carefully inspects the bandages to make sure none of them have come off or moved. "Did you happen to look outside to see if anybody was out there?"

  "Just a few out by the road."

  "Okay, hopefully they'll be gone by the time the sun comes up all the way."

  "It already is, its almost nine o' clock."

  She looks at her watch, and he's right, it reads 8:54am. "Why are they still out?"

  Matt shrugs. "Its still really dark out."

  Sarah looks at Carl, who's struggling to stay awake in his chair. "What do you think? Should we leave now, or wait until this afternoon?"

  He glances down at the floor, where the body of his neighbor is bleeding out onto the hardwood — and although he knows that his wife's body in sitting in the far corner of the room, he still can't bring himself to actually look at her. "I'm for leaving as soon as possible, if its alright with you..."

  As the front door closes behind them, and the fresh ocean air brushes across his face and fills his lungs, Carl is left with conflicted feelings about leaving his home. Its not just a house that he's walking away from, its everything that ever gave his life meaning. He knows that in all likelihood, every person that he's ever known is now gone, and with each of them it feels as though a small part of him has disappeared as well. Loneliness can't even begin to describe the way he feels at the moment.

  "Carl...?"

  He turns to Sarah, who's making her way down the steps. "Yes?"

  "Are you okay? You look a little lost."

  "No, I'm fine. Just haven't been outside for a while, that's all."

  "Do you want Matt to drive?"

  He looks over at Matt, who looks excited and scared at the same time. "No, I think I can drive."

  Sarah looks around for any other people that might possibly cause a problem, but the only ones she can see are still standing out on the road — their clothes and hair absolutely soaked from the heavy rainfall that's still coming down.

  Matt opens the rear driver's side door of the newer model sedan and starts to climb in.

  "You sit up front with Carl. I need room to stretch my leg out." Sarah tells him.

  At the end of the driveway, as Sarah climbs into the backseat and closes the door behind her, the two men that were out in the road begin to make their way toward the car. With Carl and Matt already inside, she decides not to point out the danger they might be in if the car doesn't start — figuring the pressure might get to Carl, causing him to do something stupid. As he fiddles with the keys, she reaches into her pocket and pulls out her pistol, opening the cylinder as quietly as possible — then she checks the inside of her other pocket and pulls out a single bullet that she's kept hidden, loading it into the gun and closing the cylinder.

  By the time Carl finds the right key, the two men are only about a car length behind them and closing in fast. He turns the key and the engine instantly roars to life. As he puts the transmission into reverse and presses his foot against the gas pedal, Sarah looks behind them as the car peels out on the gravel and runs over the two men.

  "Did you see those guys?" she asks.

  "I saw them."

  He places the car into drive once again, everyone bracing themselves as the tires make their way over the two men, then he steers the car onto an old dirt drive that runs alongside the house. Sarah can hear the tall uncut grass as it brushes against the muffler underneath them, and the constant chattering of wet sand being thrown from the tires once they reach the dunes. She feels a sense of relief for the first time in days as she sees the house finally disappear from sight.

  "How far is this place?" asks Carl.

  "You should be able to take the southern approach road — its only a couple of minutes north of there."

  She leans forward, seeing nothing but rain and fog ahead of them. Behind them she sees a faint glowing light coming from the top of one of the buildings in town, and the silhouettes of a few people far to the north.

  "Have you ever seen that light before?"

  Carl quickly looks in the mirror, then slows down slightly as the fog ahead of them becomes thick. "No, but it looks like its coming from the top of the coast guard station."

  Sarah looks up at the dashboard as he slows the car even further, and sees that he's only doing about ten miles per hour. The visibility ahead of them is virtually nonexistent. She looks out the side window to the east, where there should be houses lined up along the dunes, but all she can see are clouds of moisture and rain. Just as she starts to turn her head to the other side, something flashes by right outside of her window — something big.

  "Did you...?" she starts to ask. Then she sees it again, something that looked like a child passing only a few feet from the car. Gripping the gun in her hand, wishing it had more than a single bullet inside, she feels the car suddenly swerve toward the ocean as Carl attempts to miss a crowd of people walking down the beach. The car jumps and nearly stops as they run over a few of them, providing an opportunity for one man to slam his fists against the rear window.

  "You need to speed up!" she yells at Carl.

  "I can't see where I'm going!"

  He moves his way through the mass of people slowly, trying to keep the vehicle between the soft sands of the dunes, and the even more dangerous sands near the surf. The people outside look worse than they did in town, with deathly bluish-white skin and sunken faces that look as though they've already died. He takes a quick glance next to him, where he sees Matt staring straight ahead at the carnage outside. He'd hoped that the kid hadn't seen any of it. There's a reason these people are out here, why they've d
ecided to cluster together in the middle of a rainstorm on a beach so far from town — Carl had a feeling that they would be here. Littered across the sand, from the high-tide mark all the way to the surf is the wreckage from a container ship that ran aground nearly a month ago. Most of what's made it to the shore is whatever garbage that happened to be on the deck at the time — that and whatever is left of the crew members. Its the latter that interests the citizens of Cohasset and Westport, but not for charity or pity.

  "Don't look at it." Carl tells him as they pass by yet another body laying in the sand. A group of people are kneeling beside it, their hands and faces covered in blood.

  After they pass by the last remains of the crew, the people outside start to thin out, and then disappear altogether. Only a few moments later, the fog lifts and leaves only the rain and dark skies to obscure their view — and with Matt still hiding his face to the world outside, the rest of the trip to the access road goes smoothly.

  When they reach the highway and turn north again, only a few blocks from the cabin they now consider home, Sarah has a hard time believing that it's only been four days since they left — it seems like a lifetime ago. The pain and throbbing in her leg somehow seems to fade away into the back of her mind as they turn off of the highway and pull up behind the pickup truck that still sits in the same place they left it. She looks up at the chimney, hoping to see smoke billowing up from the fire in the wood stove — but everything looks exactly as it did when they left. Carl stops the car beside the truck and shuts it off, looking around them for any sign of activity.

  "You're kind of in the middle of nowhere here, aren't you?" he says, looking back at Sarah. "Still, we need to be careful."

  "Do you think Dad and Ben are inside?" Matt asks her.

  She stares at the front door, knowing that every second that passes by without the door opening means there's less of a chance her husband made it home. He certainly would have heard them drive up.

  After the initial shock and heartache of finding a cold and empty cabin, Sarah sits down in her chair and watches as a sliver of sunlight appears in the sky just as the sun moves below the horizon. Carl fell asleep shortly after they arrived, and Matt finally succumbed after tossing and turning for nearly two hours. Sarah could hear him sobbing quietly off and on through the evening, and was tempted to climb into bed with him to comfort him — but something inside of her resisted. She feels emotionally numb, as if nothing in world could possibly touch her — but she knows that its only temporary, she felt the same way the moment she realized she would never see her daughter again.

  For right now, all she can think about is keeping an eye out for anything suspicious that might be lurking around outside. Every branch that moves in the trees overhead, or wild animal that passes by the front porch — she wonders if it might be her husband and son, or possibly one of the sick bastards who drove them away from her. No matter what happens from this day forward, she's aware more than ever that their lives will never be the same — that the world as they once knew it, is gone.

  "Is she still out there?" Ben asks his father, who's staring out at the street through the grime covered semi-transparent glass of the front window.

  Curtis turns around and gives him a reassuring smile. "I don't see anything." He hopes the answer will ease his son's mind, even if its a lie. The truth is that Amanda has been hanging around the small community all day, moving from building to building, but always staying within sight of them. Now that the sun is beginning to descend into the west, however, more people have begun moving in from across the bridge — for what purpose he can't even begin to imagine. Their presence has sent Amanda into hiding once again, although he knows without a doubt that she's still keeping an eye on them.

  "Is it still raining?" asks the boy.

  "Yeah, its still coming down pretty good." He takes one final glance up and down the street, then walks away from the window and sits next to Ben. "How is your head feeling?"

  "It still hurts, but not as much."

  Curtis places his arm around his son and gives him a gentle squeeze, not knowing what else he can do. He feels helpless and alone, wishing that Sarah was here to help him figure out what to do.

  "Dad?"

  "Yeah?"

  "If they're not back by morning, are we still leaving?"

  Curtis hears the sound of unsteady footsteps in front of the store, their feet splashing loudly in the mud puddles of the parking spaces. Unfortunately its not the first time that its happened this evening. At any minute he knows the doorknob will begin to jiggle, and he'll hear the sound of someone's hands slamming against the glass panes of one the front windows as they attempt to get inside. "We'll wait as long as we can, but we're leaving tomorrow."

  "What about Amanda? Won't she follow us?"

  "She might try, but there's no reason to worry about her. She can't hurt us anymore." Another lie, but he can't figure out a good way to explain to his son that the little girl who saved both of their lives only a day before is now hunting them like wild animals.

  "Do you think she's like the others?"

  "What others?"

  "The sick people — is she sick like them?"

  "She's sick, but I don't know if she's like them."

  They both sit quietly for a few minutes, listening to the door handle start to rattle, and the door itself creaking under the stress of being pushed against. Ben's hands begin to shake slightly as Curtis looks up at the window and sees the glass steaming up from someone's breathe, their fingers making a slight squeaking sound as they drag them slowly across the pane. He looks down and notices Ben staring at them. "Don't look, just ignore them."

  "What if they get inside...?

  "They can't, everything is locked." He watches as Ben looks away, averting his eyes to the floor instead — but its obvious that his attention is still focused on whatever is happening outside. "Hey, do you remember those three big trees behind the cabin?"

  "Yeah."

  "What do you say we build a tree house in them when we get back?"

  "I guess." Ben responds, sounding a little less than enthusiastic.

  "I'm sure there's enough lumber laying around." He hears more footsteps out front, like several people are walking by the store. The door begins to rattle again, this time more forceful than before. "Maybe we can even spend the night in there sometime."

  "All of us?"

  "Sure, why not?" With the doorknob still shaking violently, some of the footsteps outside begin to make their way around the side of the building. Curtis can see dark shadows moving quickly across the windows that look out over the harbor, surrounding them on all sides.

  "How long are we gonna stay at the cabin?" asks Ben, who Curtis hopes is now oblivious to what's going on outside.

  "I don't know, we might be there for a while."

  "If we stay long enough..." He stops mid-sentence, listening closely to something.

  "Do you hear something?" The words fall out of Curtis' mouth just as a light thump comes from what sounds like the other side of the room.

  "There's someone in the other room..." whispers Ben.

  Curtis slides off of the table and onto the floor, then turns around and grabs Ben, placing him behind a nearby desk. "Don't move, and don't say anything." he whispers. He kneels down and aims his gun at the open doorway on the other side of the room that leads to the storage room. Remembering that the room has a back entrance to the store, he listens for the sounds of footsteps or door handles jiggling — but all he hears is the sound of his own heart thumping loudly in his chest. His mind races, trying to remember if he'd checked the lock on the back door earlier in the evening — and even if he had, was the door strong enough to keep one of them out.

  He hears the sound of very faint voices as they get closer to the room, their words too muffled to understand.

  "Curtis... Are you in here?" he hears softly from across the room.

  Turning his flashlight on, Curtis aims it toward the doo
rway, where he sees Larry standing in front of a woman that he assumes is Beth. They're both soaking wet, and visibly shaking despite the heavy raincoats they're wearing.

  "What happened out there?" Curtis asks Larry, who's sitting on the table beside his sister, both of them wrapped in a dirty blanket that Ben found hanging in the backroom.

  "We took Sean's boat... then tried to get back here..." Larry says, his voice shaking horribly. "It sank..."

  "How long were you out there?"

  "We weren't in the water that long, the boat went down right off the shore."

  Curtis turns the flashlight off, and then sits down on the desk across from them. "You guys should get some sleep, you'll need it for the walk tomorrow. I'll keep watch for the rest of the night."

  With Ben sound asleep on top of the store counter, Larry and Beth both lie down on the table and close their eyes. Beth, already exhausted from the complete lack of sleep the night before, goes out shortly after her head hits the table. Larry's mind, however, is too active to do anything but replay the nighttime images of Aberdeen after the smoke and fog cleared. At first, the only thing they paid attention to was the turbulent water in an otherwise calm marina, as dozens, or maybe even hundreds of people struggled helplessly against the frigid temperatures. Most of them drowned within minutes. As the scene grew quiet, and their boat drifted farther out into the dark harbor, their eyes were drawn to the streets leading up the hill toward downtown — a sight that he knows will haunt him forever.

  "Curtis?" he whispers.

  "Yeah?"

  "We can never go back to town, not even the smaller towns."

  "Why is that?"

  "I don't think the virus killed as many people as we thought. I think most of them survived it."

  "What do you think killed them?"

  "I don't think anything did — I think they're still alive."

  "You mean alive, but sick..."

  "They're worse than sick, Curtis. I don't think there's a word that describes what they are now." Somewhere off in the distance they see a flash of lightning, followed by the rumble of thunder across the sky. "The way its raining out there, you wouldn't think those fires would stand a chance."