by James Bierce
When he comes to, the world feels like its slowly spinning, and his eyesight is slightly out of focus. Eventually things begin to clear up, and he realizes that he's facing the sky. Then something else comes into view, a person. At first he doesn't recognize her, and then he notices the dress, its white fabric now tinged in red. Amanda kneels down beside him, stroking his hair and smiling. He tries to open his mouth, but he's too weak.
"Shh, don't try to speak. It'll be over soon." Amanda whispers in his ear. Sitting up, she unfolds the kitchen knife, then holds it against his throat. "Don't worry Papa, I'll be fine."
Even in darkness, passing over the Astoria bridge is an impressive sight. With the tidal waters of the Pacific Ocean moving underneath, it spans some four miles over the mouth of the massive Columbia River, anchored by the town of Astoria on the Oregon side, and the ghostly remains of a once prosperous fishing community on the Washington side, where today only the wooden pilings of the canneries and docks can be seen.
Tonight the air is exceptionally clear, and the lights spread over the hills of Astoria to the south cast a golden shimmer on the water below, broken only by the unusually long line of ships heading west for the Pacific.
As beautiful as it is, Curtis Lockwood notices none of it. His thoughts are focused on the strange events that are currently unfolding around him, and whether his life would ever again return to normal. He was leaving Oregon, and although he doesn't realize it yet, this would be the last time he would ever see his home state.
His wife, Sarah, is sitting beside him in the passenger seat. In the light of the midnight moon overhead he can't tell if she's awake or asleep, they'd barely spoken since they left Portland over two hours ago. In the backseat of the pickup are their two sons, Matt and Ben, aged twelve and ten — both sound asleep as well. Annie, their daughter, is in California attending college. For two days they'd tried desperately to bring her home for the trip, but air travel had been suspended, and all traffic in and out of Oregon would be shut down in only a matter of hours. Despite the pleas from his wife, Curtis had made the decision to take the family to the Washington coast without Annie — a decision that would ultimately haunt him for the remainder of his life.
This trip wasn't a vacation. It was a desperate move by a desperate man trying to protect what was left of his family — and he wasn't alone. In the past few weeks the population of Portland had declined by more than two-thirds. Cars were lined up for miles in every direction out of town, most heading for the wooded hills both east and west of the metropolis. Most had simply left with no warning or reason. Truth be told, no explanation was necessary — they were all running from the same thing. They were running from a virus.
This particular virus wasn't a normal flu or cold, although it acted just like one during the first few days of infection. Soon after, it began to show it's differences. Death came quickly for most, but for others the illness lingered on, torturing its victims with the hope of recovery — a recovery that would never come. Curtis knew little else about it, few people probably did. Their world had been turned upside down in only a matter of weeks. Stores were closed, gas stations were running out of fuel, it was even rumored that hospitals were turning away patients that showed signs of the sickness. It was a world unrecognizable from the one they knew only a month before — a world where a simple conversation or greeting could send someone to an early grave. It was a world Curtis no longer wanted to be part of.
Sarah's argument for staying was actually a legitimate one. Not only did she want to stay someplace their daughter could find them, but their neighbors had already left, making them the only residents within a four block radius. Staying made sense, he couldn't deny that — but it also made him feel uneasy. He'd become afraid of other people. Afraid that others might be infected, and afraid they might be looters or rapists looking to take advantage of his family's unquestionable vulnerability. He knew he had to take his family someplace safe, a place where the passage of time and the unrelenting pressures of society didn't exist. In only a few short hours they would be there, safe and hidden, and miles away from the rest of civilization. They would simply disappear for a while, deep in the woods of the coastal mountains of Washington.
At least that was the plan.
Things have a strange way of working out — sometimes for good, and sometimes not.
After thirty minutes of driving their truck and small utility trailer up and down the same roads, Curtis is glad to see that his family is still sound asleep and unable to witness just how lost he'd become. Even though he'd been here dozens of times as a kid, and several times as an adult, he'd never driven here at night before — and certainly never like this. On his third trip down a road he was certain was wrong, he finally finds it. Its a small, narrow driveway that used to be topped with gravel and lined with rhododendrons — but today its overgrown with ten years worth of blackberries and salal, the first of which is already showing signs of autumn drawing near, even if it is only the middle of September. Now that its directly in front of him, illuminated by the headlights of his truck, he's almost sorry he's come. Its a cabin, of sorts. Most would call it a shack. Nestled into the woods less than a mile from the Pacific Ocean, it was once a treasured possession in his family for three generations — and he's hoping it could be again.
He glances over at his wife, who still seems to be asleep — and at his kids in the backseat, who have been out since they left the outskirts of Portland. His first instinct is to get out and check the place over, and maybe dredge up some old childhood memories of the place, but he's afraid that opening the truck door would probably just wake everybody up. Instead, he closes his eyes and tries to relax, hoping for a few hours of rest before morning comes. Who knows, the place might look better in the light.
"Shh, you're going to wake up your Dad..."
Curtis had woken up to that same sentence more times than he cared to remember. Looking out the windshield, he sees Sarah and the two boys sitting on a half-rotten picnic table in front of the cabin — a cabin that looks even worse in the daylight as it turns out. As he stumbles his way to the table, still fighting the sleep from his eyes, he hears something that brings a sudden clarity to his mind — the sound of crashing waves echoing through the trees. If not for a stand of ancient Douglas Fir, he could probably see the surf from here. It wasn't just the sound though, it was also the smell. The salty, rich organic smell of saltwater, mixed with the sweet aroma of rotting fir needles and wet moss from under the canopy of trees. It was a smell only encountered in the coastal forests of the Pacific Northwest.
As the crow flies they actually weren't that far from the ocean, but walking the twisting roads and pathways through the forest and sand dunes was a different story. For just a moment, he was transported back in time, to a childhood that didn't seem so distant now that he was here.
"I was starting to wonder if you'd get up..." says Sarah, with a smile on her face.
"What time is it?" he asks.
"Almost noon."
"How long have you been up?"
"Since about seven. I thought you could use the rest"
He sits down across from her, facing the cabin he was hoping would be their home for the time being.
"Have you been inside?" he asks, pointing to the cabin.
"Yeah. I'm not sleeping in there, neither are the boys."
"That bad, huh?"
"Go see for yourself."
She doesn't want to be difficult, but she also doesn't know quite how to respond. None of this was her idea. Not the sudden midnight trip to Cohasset, not crossing a bridge that was scheduled to close right behind them, and certainly not the cabin.
Curtis stands up without saying a word and strolls toward the cabin. Ben quickly follows behind him, a bright smile in his eyes.
Sarah grabs his arm as he passes by. "Ben, not so fast."
"He's fine." says Curtis.
She looks at Curtis, not convinced, then back at Ben. "Don't touch anything."<
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"I won't Mom."
As they approach the front door, Curtis starts a mental checklist of repairs and maintenance that need to be done if they're going to stay here. It doesn't take him very long to realize that writing it down might be a good idea.
To call the cabin rustic would be a severe understatement. It was pieced together from scraps of wood that Curtis' grandfather had found around town. Some of it he'd actually found on the beach, the last remnants of a shipwreck according to his father. Now it looks as though the ship had wrecked on the clearing in front of them.
As he opens the rough and splintered front door, its hinges shrieking loudly in protest, he realizes that he can't really blame Sarah for being upset with the situation. He'd practically forced the three of them to move to a falling-down shack when they had a perfectly nice house in the suburbs of Portland. There's no possible way they could have stayed though, not after what happened.
"Did you used to live here?" asks Ben.
Curtis smiles. "No, we just stayed here on vacations."
"Did it look like this?"
"No, it didn't. It looked nothing like this..."
It had been a decade since he'd laid eyes on it, and nearly another decade since he'd spent the night inside. When he was fifteen his father had died in a car accident, hit head-on by a drunk driver on his way home from work. His death devastated Curtis' mother, who overdosed on prescription drugs only a few months later, a mixture of sleeping pills and painkillers. Whether it was an accidental overdose or not nobody knows for sure, but the details made little difference to Curtis. His parents were both gone, and with their passing his childhood abruptly ended within the span of a single season. With the death of his father, the cabin became the property of his Uncle Brian, his dad's older brother — and so too did the custody of Curtis. The trips to Cohasset were few and far between after that. Uncle Brian never really cared much for the place, and Curtis was only reminded of better days when his family was still together. For reasons he's never fully understood, the absence of his parents seemed stronger than their presence when they were alive. A lesson he learned only after they were gone.
"What is this?"
Curtis snaps out of his daydream to find Ben holding a small oil lamp covered in dust. "That's a lamp, and you're not supposed to touch anything, remember?"
"Where does it plug in?"
"It doesn't, there's no electricity here."
"Not even TV?"
Curtis smiles. "I guess you'll have to figure out something else to do."
"So are we going to sleep in here?"
"That's the plan. It needs some work though."
Ben looks around at the room they're standing in, but this time through the eyes of someone who might actually live here. Seeing past the dust, cobwebs and animal waste was proving hard for him — despite his normally endless enthusiasm.
"What do you say, do you think we can we make this a home?" asks Curtis.
"Nope."
"That's the spirit. You sound like your mom."
Seasons change slowly at the beaches of the Pacific Northwest — in truth almost everything does. The cold maritime flow is a constant presence in the air, producing a climate that never gets especially warm — yet never becomes bitterly cold either. It carries with it a dampness that permeates everything it comes into contact with. The people who call the area home find the feeling both comforting and uncomfortable at the same time, a strange mixture that even they can't explain. Its the same feeling you experience on a rainy afternoon, relaxing in front of a fireplace or wood stove, enjoying life despite the retched weather outside. Its nostalgic somehow. At the beach that happens nearly every day, regardless of the season.
For Sarah and her two sons, living on the coast was becoming unbearable — and they'd only been here a day and a half. They'd slept through the first night without a problem, but the truck was still relatively warm by the time they woke up. The second night wasn't passing as smoothly. The boys were sleeping in the front seats with the backs reclined as far as they would go, while Curtis and Sarah decided to try an air mattress in the pickup bed under the canopy. They left the window between the cab and the bed open, unsure of whether it might hurt or help the temperatures in either compartment.
"Can't we start the truck for a few minutes?" whispers Sarah.
"We'll run out of gas."
"We're going to freeze if we don't."
A dim blue light suddenly appears, the glow coming from Curtis' watch next to his pillow. "Its only fifty-two in here, it just feels colder."
It wasn't just the temperature that bothered Sarah, it was the noise — or lack thereof. She was used to camping — she'd spent half of her childhood camping, but this wasn't anything like that. There were no crickets, no owls, no crackling of the campfire, no sudden gusts of wind to break the silence. Instead, the wind blew at an almost constant speed, which somehow made it disappear from your senses. She was left with a silence so complete that she could hear her own heartbeats, something that was growing more distracting by the minute. The only solace she felt was when the fog horn in Westport sounded. It was startling, but it was at least something.
She whispers into his ear again, this time so quietly that he has a hard time understanding. "We need to talk about what's going on."
"Can it wait until morning?"
"No."
An awkward silence suddenly fills the space. Curtis didn't really want to talk about it, he didn't even want to think about it. One of the advantages of staying in a place as remote as this was not facing the problem head-on. Apparently she felt differently.
"What did you want to talk about?"
"How long did you plan on us staying here?"
"I guess until things settle down."
"And how will we know when that happens?"
"We'll listen to the radio."
"They've been repeating the same news for a couple of days. I'm not sure we'll learn much."
"That's a pretty good sign that there's still a problem."
A gentle rain begins falling on the canopy above them, cutting through the deafening silence in an almost hypnotic way. Outside the tinted windows Sarah can see the leaves and branches of the maple trees swaying in the wind, and the tops of the evergreens rocking back and forth in a rhythmic motion, all of it illuminated by the moonlight that's somehow found its way through the clouds. It was beautiful, but dreary at the same time. Maybe if she were seeing it under different circumstances she wouldn't feel this way. She was tired, but not sleepy — drained of all energy by stress and fear.
"What did Annie say earlier?" Curtis whispers.
"She's sleeping at a friend's house. Becky I think her name was."
"She's staying inside?"
"That's what she said."
Annie was staying at a friend's house, that much was true. What she didn't tell Curtis was that Annie was also complaining that the school was shut-down and its classes canceled. She suspected that their daughter wasn't being as careful as she should be. She didn't want to worry Curtis though, he had enough on his mind without stressing over things he had no control over. That's what this trip was really about, feeling in control of something. She'd watched him glued to the TV for days on end without eating or sleeping. He watched intently as cars passed by in front of their house — some of them slowing down according to him, although she never noticed it herself.
"So I take it we're not going into town for supplies?" she asks.
"The trailer has enough food for several weeks if we're careful."
She knew trying to convince him to go home was a waste of time. For one thing, they couldn't go back now even if they wanted to — the bridge closed soon after they crossed it. Now that they were here, she'd have to learn to make the most of it.
"What are your plans for the cabin?" she asks, trying to sound hopeful and upbeat.
"Honestly, its in worse shape than I thought. It might be best just to burn most of what's in there �
�� anything that can't be cleaned anyway."
"It might be quicker to burn the entire thing down."
"Its just been neglected. You'll be surprised what it looks like when its fixed up."
They lie in silence again, staring into almost complete darkness — both of them with minds too active to go to sleep, like kids during a sleepover after their parents have turned off the lights.
"Isn't it strange that there's this killer virus that we're all afraid of, and we don't even know anyone that's had it." asks Sarah.
"Rob and Marie got it."
"Rob from work?"
"Yeah."
Curtis had worked with Rob for years. Over time they'd become friends too, although Sarah had probably only had two or three meaningful conversations with him during that time. His wife, Marie, was a different story. She considered her a close friend, and an ally with her against the power-hungry supermoms on the school activities board. They had a boy and girl only a few months younger than Matt and Ben.
"Are they alright?" asks Sarah.
He doesn't say anything, and wonders if telling her was the right thing to do.
"Curtis...?"
"They died a few days ago."
"They what?"
She sits up in bed and turns on a flashlight she had lying beside her, flooding the area with light. Curtis grabs it from her and turns it off. "You're gonna wake up the kids. Lie back down."
Instead of lying back down, she reaches for the handle on the canopy and opens it, then climbs out into the fog that's now rolling through the trees from the ocean below them. Still holding onto the flashlight, Curtis follows her, closing the latch behind him.