“And then what?” Frank said.
Nobody replied.
Annie heard faint footsteps outside on the street, but they weren’t normal footsteps. They sounded like limping and scraping. She looked at the window. It was too small for a person to fit through, so the infected couldn’t get in. They’d have to come in through the door. But that also meant she couldn’t get out through that window. She and the others were trapped with only one exit.
The bathroom was a good place to be at the moment because they were invisible, but it would be the worst place to be if the house came under attack.
The window faced the side of the next house, not the street, and she thought about peeking out ever so carefully. She might be able to see some of the street and get an idea what was going on out there. But if she could see the street, the street could see her.
She took a few steps toward it, not intending to stand right in front of it, but to get close enough that she might be able to hear what’s going on out there. Parker grabbed her arm and shook his head.
“I just want to listen,” she whispered. “They won’t see me.”
The living-room floor was made of creaky old hardwood. The bathroom floor was tiled in white marble, so her steps made no sound.
She reached the window, ducked underneath it, cocked her head sideways so her right ear pointed upward, and heard a cough. Not a normal cough as if from a person with a seasonal cold, but a sickening wet rasp as if one of the infected was coughing up its own throat.
“Jesus,” Parker whispered.
Frank shushed him.
Everyone started when they heard a light tap on the door. Hughes.
“Come in,” Annie whispered and unlocked the door.
“Can’t,” Hughes whispered from somewhere near the floor. “They might see the door open. It’s visible from the street at just the right angle.”
Hughes must have crawled. He was awfully quiet about it because Annie didn’t hear him even though the hallway floor creaked. Hughes was good. It must have taken him a good couple of minutes.
“At least three or four dozen of them out there,” Hughes said. “Everybody just stay put and stay quiet and we’ll head back to the boat once they’ve moved on.”
Annie sat next to Kyle on the lip of the tub. Parker and Frank sat on the floor, Parker as far away from Kyle as he could get. The two wouldn’t look at each other.
Minutes passed. Annie exchanged concerned looks with everyone, but after a few more minutes she felt better. Feelings of terror gave way to fear, which gave way to dread. Then even the dread faded into boredom and torpor. The infected were still out there, but they had no idea anyone was inside the house.
Her body and mind could only sustain the feeling of fear for so long. Eventually, the human brain’s pharmacy ran out of adrenaline.
The infected were still out there. They were not moving on. She could hear them. It was as if on some basic level they knew they’d find more food in town than out on the road or in the forest. Or maybe, on another dim level, they recognized Eastsound as home and felt like they had nowhere to go.
The others had no idea what the infected were thinking, but Annie knew the answer was, not a lot. They don’t reason anything through. They just hunt down food and react to stimuli. When she was infected, she didn’t know her own name. She might have recognized her apartment, but she wasn’t even sure of that much.
She tried to imagine what she would have done in their place when the virus still had control of her body and mind, but with each day that passed she had a harder time remembering what it was like to be sick. At best, her memories of those events were like the memories of a dream that would dissipate like wisps of steam if she didn’t consciously try to hold onto them.
Another hour passed. Nobody moved. Nobody said anything. Nobody was relaxed—that was for sure—but they all had an easier time keeping calm. They were safe for now as long as they didn’t make any noise or try to go anywhere.
“What if,” Kyle finally said, “we try to imitate their movements and behavior? Pretend like we’re part of the pack?”
“That,” Parker said, “is the stupidest idea you’ve come up with yet. And that’s saying something.”
“We don’t look anything like them,” Hughes said.
“Only because they’re filthy,” Kyle said. “But they aren’t filthy when they first turn. The freshly turned ones don’t get attacked.”
“Man has a point,” Frank said.
“Think about it,” Kyle said. “Let’s say we took one of those things, somehow managed to give it a bath and put some fresh clothes on it, then took a picture of it while it was just standing there inert, when it wasn’t biting somebody’s face. If we showed that photograph to someone who didn’t know any better, would they be able to tell that they were looking at one of the infected?”
Hughes shook his head. “No. I don’t think so. But that doesn’t matter. Those things aren’t just standing around posing for pictures. They’re moving. And they move strangely. I don’t think you can imitate them. They recognize us just as easily as we recognize them.”
“They move as a herd,” Annie said. “We’d have to move with them. Go where they go. But right now they seem to be stalled. They’re just randomly milling around.”
“They’ll have to move on at some point,” Kyle said.
“Then all we have to do,” Annie said, “is go the opposite direction. We wait until they move on, then run to the boat.”
“And what if they stay out there all week?” Frank said.
“They won’t,” Kyle said.
“You don’t know that,” Frank said. “You have no idea what goes on in their … heads. They used to live in this town. Doesn’t seem like they’re going back to their own beds for the night, but they seem to remember this is where they belong.”
“But why are they here now all of a sudden?” Kyle said. “They weren’t here this afternoon. They weren’t here yesterday. They probably haven’t been here all week or even all month.”
“They heard my gunshot yesterday,” Hughes said on the other side of the door. “Just took them a while to get here. They didn’t know where the sound came from exactly. They only knew the direction.”
Annie felt herself sink. Hughes was probably right. It made sense.
“They looked tired,” Hughes said. “Like they’re dehydrated and hungry.”
Annie opened her mouth, then clamped it shut. For the briefest moment she forgot she wasn’t supposed to tell them she had been sick once herself. She wanted to say they knew to drink water when they found it, and that they also knew not to drink seawater. She remembered that much at least.
“The island has freshwater on it somewhere, right?” she whispered.
“There are five freshwater lakes on Orcas,” Kyle said. “That’s where we’ll get our own water.”
Parker looked incredulous. “In case you haven’t noticed,” he said, “the island is infected.”
“We’ll get some more ammunition and sweep it and clear it,” Kyle said.
“You are amazing,” Parker said. “Absolutely fucking amazing.”
“Those things are going to die, aren’t they?” Annie said. “When winter comes. I mean, what, they’re just going to sleep on the street out in the open? They’re going to do that in January?”
“Doesn’t really matter,” Frank said. “They could bust into some houses, but it’s no warmer in here than it is out there without a fire going.”
No one said anything else for a long, long time. The day slowly drained away. Nobody moved inside the house. Annie heard only an occasional grunting or scraping outside. Some of the infected were still out there. Eventually she noticed the light getting dimmer.
“Sun’s going down,” she whispered.
“Yeah,” Parker said. “We noticed.” She frowned at him, but he didn’t see her. He was looking at the window. She could tell he wanted to peek outside as much as she did.
Late evening faded to twilight. Annie heard a faint hissing outside the window and felt a squirt of adrenaline.
“What’s that?”
“Rain,” Kyle said.
Yes, the sound was just rain. Annie exhaled. She was still on edge. It was just barely raining outside. It sounded like little kisses on the leaves and the grass.
“Well that’s just great,” Parker said.
“Actually, it’s perfect,” Kyle said.
“You guys hear rain?” Hughes said from the other side of the door.
“Faintly,” Annie said. “It’s a light drizzle. It could stop any second.”
“If it picks up,” Kyle said, “those things might move on.”
“They might come in here,” Parker said.
“You should all hope it rains like a sonofabitch,” Hughes said. “Because that way they won’t hear us when we make a run for it.”
* * *
Parker knew he’d been right to sleep on the boat the first night. Goddamnit, if he’d stayed there just a couple more hours, he’d be fine right now.
The rain picked up. It was steady now, and loud. It drummed on the roof. The house was freezing inside. The autumn rains had finally arrived, and the Northwest had a short autumn. Winter, the rainiest time of the year in this part of the country, comes early and would be upon them in no time.
Parker consoled himself with the wonderful fact that most or all of the infected would die of exposure if not starvation. Homeless people used to live on the streets of Seattle and Portland during the winter. They were losers, for sure, but at least they had the sense to get out of the rain and sleep under a bridge wrapped in blankets. The infected, near as he could tell, were still out in the elements. They wouldn’t get hypothermic and die in the next couple of hours, but at least they hadn’t come in the house. Yet.
He could barely see a damn thing at this point. Even though the sun had gone down, there was still probably more light outside than in the bathroom. A few stray rays still bounced around in the atmosphere, but the darkness in the house was about to become absolute.
Hughes tapped on the door. “Coming in.” He couldn’t whisper anymore and expect to be heard over the downpour, so he spoke at regular volume.
Parker didn’t even see the door open. It was too dark. Which meant those things wouldn’t have seen it even if they were out there on the porch.
Maybe that’s exactly what they were doing. Gathering on the porch and pressing their faces and hands against the front glass. The windows were not boarded up. They could come right in if that’s what they wanted. How long until they got sick of the cold and the rain and some dimwitted switch flipped in their heads that made them remember, Oh yeah, houses. Houses are dry!
If a band of those things opened the front door and shambled on in, Parker wasn’t sure he’d hear them over the sound of the rain. They’d just be in the house.
As far as he knew, that had already happened.
Somebody should have brought back the night vision.
“You see anything?” Parker said to Hughes.
“They’re still out there,” Hughes said. “Wandering aimlessly. They don’t seem to mind getting rained on. Probably won’t be many left in the world this time next year. Not in this part of the world, anyway.”
“But this time this year,” Parker said, “we’re trapped on Kyle’s little island of horrors.”
“Now’s our best chance to get out of here,” Hughes said.
Heat bloomed in Parker’s chest. “And go where?”
“The boat,” Hughes said. “Where else?”
I’m not doing that, Parker thought. I am not. Doing that.
Not in the dark.
“They won’t see us,” Hughes said. “It’s raining so hard they won’t hear us, either, so we need to go before it stops.”
Now?
No.
Parker couldn’t do it. No way. Assuming he even made it down to the water before getting bitten, he couldn’t possibly jump in the sea and swim to the boat in the dark. He wouldn’t see it. He wouldn’t even see silhouettes. Not at night in a rainstorm. He might as well go out there blindfolded.
If he didn’t get bitten, he’d freeze or he’d drown.
That water was so cold, he’d sink to the bottom in minutes if he got lost. And it was raining so hard, he wasn’t sure he’d even be able to tell which way was up.
“Can’t,” he said.
“Yes, you can,” Annie said.
“No, really, I can’t.”
“Then stay here,” Kyle said. “The rest of us are going. And we need to go now.”
Jesus, they really were going to do it. Why in the hell didn’t they just wait in the house until morning? The house was only a couple hundred feet from the water. If they timed it right, they could probably make it. Hughes had his rifle and could shoot at least some of them. The others had crowbars and hammers.
“Let’s go in the morning,” Parker said, “when we can see where we’re going.”
“The whole point,” Hughes said, “is to go when we can’t see because they can’t see either. And with this rain coming down, they won’t hear us.”
“We should fan out when we hit the water,” Annie said. “First one to find the boat hollers out.”
“You people are crazy,” Parker said.
“Those things,” Hughes said, “could bust into this house any second.”
“The bathroom door has a lock,” Parker said. “They can’t get in. And they won’t even try if they don’t know we’re here.”
“What makes you sure they won’t figure out that we’re here?” Hughes said. “Or that they won’t come inside and just camp out there in the living room?”
“We go out there, we die,” Parker said.
“We stay in here, we die,” Hughes said.
“This is your fault, Kyle,” Parker said.
“My fault,” Kyle said.
“We should have checked the whole island before we got off that boat,” Parker said.
“Agreed,” Hughes said. “But it’s not Kyle’s fault. It’s my fault. I should have insisted.”
“It’s Kyle’s fault,” Parker said.
“You can all blame me later,” Kyle said, “after we’re safe.”
Parker noticed they’d raised their voices, not in anger but because the rain was coming down even harder. It sounded like a Pineapple Express coming ashore. The Pacific Northwest gets storms like that all the time in the autumn and winter. The weather forecasters called these storms atmospheric rivers, and that’s exactly what the storm sounded like—a river pouring onto the roof of the house. It was going to rain like that for hours. The sea must be boiling. The perfect place to drown in the dark.
“So here’s what we do,” Hughes said.
“Fuck,” Parker said.
“Stay here and die then,” Kyle said. “The hell do we care?”
“So here’s what we do,” Hughes said again. “We go out the front, and we go out quietly. We walk. We don’t run, we walk. And keep low. There might be just enough light in the sky that we’ll form silhouettes if we don’t stay low. Should only take us a minute or two to get to the water. It’s a straight shot, okay? That street goes directly down to the shore, so we won’t get lost if we stay on the pavement. If you’re spotted or grabbed, run. Don’t scream, don’t yell out to the others, just run. But do yell if you’re the first one to the boat. I don’t think our voices will carry as far as the beach from out there in this rain, but if so, who cares? We’ve got lights and guns on the boat.”
“I don’t have a weapon,” Parker said.
“You should have brought one,” Hughes said. “But you don’t need one.”
“The hell I don’t,” Parker said. “You all have weapons.”
“I’m not going to shoot in the dark,” Hughes said. “We’re not swinging crowbars in the dark, either. We’d take our own heads off.”
“Actually,” Annie said. “Maybe we should. One
of us should go out swinging ahead of the others to clear a path on the road.”
“You hit one of those things in the shoulder,” Hughes said, “and it’s going to scream. Then we’re well and truly fucked. And you might still hit one of us in the head. Too easy to get turned around and confused out there.”
“Please wait until morning,” Parker said. His voice sounded pathetic even to himself. The others knew how scared he was now, but he didn’t care.
“This will be over in five minutes,” Hughes said. “Two minutes to get to the water and three minutes to swim. The boat has a propane heater. We’ll warm up and we’ll be okay. Five minutes.”
Parker put his hand on his face and rubbed his eyes with his fingertips.
“Fine,” he said. “Okay.”
He didn’t say “okay” because he thought Hughes’ plan was sound. He said “okay” because he’d rather die with the others than all by himself.
This could go one of two ways. He’d either be torn up by teeth on the road or he’d panic and drown in the water. Toss a coin. One or the other.
And if he gets only partly ripped up by teeth, he’ll die twice. The first time from biting, the second from drowning.
* * *
Darkness filled the house so absolutely that Parker couldn’t tell if his eyes were open or closed except by feel. He groped his way out of the bathroom and into the hallway, poking Annie in the neck and elbowing Frank in the ear.
“Sorry,” he said.
Somebody banged into a wall.
Parker could navigate his own house well enough in the dark, “seeing” it in his memory. That, he figured, was how blind people got around, only they’d learned to “see” a much wider swath of the world than their own bedroom and hallway. But Parker did not know this house. Nor did he know the streets outside. He’d have to feel his way hundreds of feet to the water on a street full of predators. And if by God he made it that far, he’d have to “feel” his way to the boat.
Drowning or teeth? Which one was worse? Getting chewed up would hurt more, but sinking into a dark sea where his body would never be found, his lungs filling with burning saltwater, frightened him more than anything else in the world.
Resurrection: A Zombie Novel Page 21