by James Bierce
Looking around the room, the only thing Curtis can see that might work is a cheaply-made wooden chair sitting by the window. On his way across the room, a hand reaches out and tugs on his shirt. His heart nearly jumps out of his chest until he recognizes the hand as his son's.
"Dad?" Matt whispers, still sitting on the bed with his brother.
"What is it, buddy?" replies Curtis, speaking in a voice as calm and relaxed as he can possibly muster.
"Can I turn on the flashlight?"
"Tell you what, why don't you get under the covers and turn the light on... That way nobody can see it."
"Okay. Who's out there?"
"I don't know, but I think they're really sick, and we need to keep away from them." Curtis lays his hand on Matt's shoulder, then looks back and forth between both boys. "Don't worry about it, your mom and I will figure it out."
He walks to the far wall and grabs hold of a chair, then on the way back glances out the window just as a flash of lightning illuminates the dunes in front of their room. Off in the distance, just barely in view from the hotel room, is an access road that leads to the beach. In the brief moment that everything was visible, Curtis could see what looked like dozens of people standing on the road, all of them staring in the same direction — toward the hotel. The sight catches him off-guard, and he nearly falls down as he backs away from the glass. After catching himself, he picks up the chair and carefully wedges it under the doorknob, his hands still shaking from the adrenaline.
"What did you see?" Sarah asks him.
"I saw people on the beach access road, dozens of them."
"What were they doing?"
"They're just standing around." He purposely leaves out the direction of their gaze, wishing that he didn't know about it either.
"Maybe they can help us. If we shine our flashlights out the window..." Sarah says, her voice understandably desperate.
Curtis interrupts her mid-sentence. "Why would people stand around in the middle of the road during a storm?" He waits for an answer, but gets none. "This place is a ghost town. We've been wandering around it all day and we haven't seen a single person, not even a sign that anyone is still alive, and they're taking midnight strolls? It doesn't add up."
"Maybe I should watch out the window, just in case..."
"I don't think that's a good idea."
"One of us needs to watch the window in case somebody comes along that can help us, and someone needs to stay by the door — and I'm not guarding the door by myself..."
"Fine, just don't give us away unless you know for sure they can be trusted." He holds his hand out, drawing a confused look from her.
"What...?" she asks.
"Give me your flashlight."
"What's wrong with yours?"
"If we signal, it should be unanimous."
"When did that policy start? Was it before or after you went downstairs to look around?" Not waiting for a response, she turns around and walks to the window, careful not to stand directly in front of it. Beside her is the bed, with a faint glow coming from underneath the covers.
It doesn't take long for the next streak of lightning to hit, bringing Sarah's attention back to the world outside. Although it was only visible for a split-second, she could still see people on the access road, but not all of them are standing still — several are now walking in her direction along the sidewalk.
Little by little her eyes adjust to the darkness outside, slowly turning everything into a greyscale landscape of pine trees, sidewalks and people. As the veil begins to lift, she becomes aware that the people on the road aren't the only ones out there. Standing on the sidewalk beside the hotel are two younger men that are soaked from head to toe, and looking directly at the room next to theirs, the room her kids were staying in just a short while ago. At first glance they look almost comatose, with mouths hanging wide-open and arms hanging to their sides like dead weights — but their eyes are different. There's a cold, heartless look to them, but also threatening and focused at the same time.
"Curtis..." she whispers, motioning for him to join her.
He moves up beside her, peering toward the road beyond. "What is it?" he asks.
"Look over there, at those men..."
She points toward the two people standing below them, just as their heads turn toward the street, almost in unison. Sarah and Curtis both look in the same direction and spot an older man about fifty feet away walking quickly down the sidewalk, making his way around others who are mostly just standing in place. He's wearing blue jeans and an unbuttoned work-shirt, exposing his bare chest to the wind and rain brought in by the storm. With a determined look on his face, and his mouth moving as if he were carrying on a conversation, he passes by an older woman who's slowly making her way down the sidewalk directly in front of the window. Just as he goes to pass her, she turns around and accidentally bumps into the man, stopping him in his tracks. He turns around with his back to the hotel, then swings what looks like a piece of driftwood at the woman's head. She falls to the ground immediately, but the man continues to smash the object onto her now-helpless body. As he straightens back up and turns around, Sarah spots a large pool of blood running down the sidewalk — coming from the old woman who now lies motionless on the ground in front of them.
Without thinking, Sarah lets out a loud gasp. She turns to Curtis, who's still staring at the scene with a look of horror on his face. Moving her gaze back out the window, she finds the two younger men below with their eyes fixed on hers. After sharing eye contact for a few seconds, she drops straight to the floor, trying not to scream or cry, and wishing she could simply wake up from the nightmare their lives have suddenly become. Just a couple of seconds later, Curtis joins her on the carpet.
"Those two men were looking right at me!" she says, her voice louder than she intended.
"Shh... The other guy looked up this way too. I think he saw me."
Her voice turns almost silent. "What are we gonna do? We have to get out of here!"
"I know..." He crawls over to the bed, pulling his upper body onto the mattress. "Matt, turn off the light for a minute."
"But..." comes the reply.
"Do it, right now." His voice is calm, but stern. After watching the light disappear, he rejoins Sarah.
"Do we have another gun?" she asks him.
"No, its back at the cabin."
"Maybe we could move to another room. Maybe across the..." Her sentence is cut-off by the sound of footsteps coming from down the hall, moving slowly in their direction.
Curtis stands up and rushes back to the door, careful not to make too much noise. As the steps get closer, he places his free hand just above the doorknob, then braces his feet against the floor, wishing that he'd put his shoes on while he had the chance.
He can hear them breathing as they reach the door to the room, and then the footsteps suddenly stop, and the sound of a deep, raspy breath is all that can be heard. Curtis looks behind him and sees Sarah standing at the foot of the bed, and their kids right behind her with scared expressions on their faces. Then without warning, the person in the hallway begins to pound on the door, screaming each time their fist makes contact.
Although frightening, the hits really aren't all that strong. They sound weakened, even desperate, and after only thirty seconds or so they stop altogether, along with the screaming. A moment later, the doorknob starts to jiggle, and Curtis almost reaches down to grab it out of instinct. He knows its locked though, and holding onto it would only prove to whoever is out there that someone is in the room. He decides its better to stay quiet and not make himself known for the time being.
After what seems like an eternity of heavy wheezing and throat clearing, the footsteps make their way farther down the hall and into a room that apparently wasn't locked.
Curtis turns around and lets out a sigh of relief, crumpling to the floor with his back to the door.
"We have to find a way out of here." says Sarah, sitting on the carpe
t beside him.
"From the looks of things, it doesn't look any safer outside..."
"So what are we supposed to do? The sun is gonna be up before we know it, and we can't hide in broad daylight." She stands up again and walks to the chair beside the bed, then opens her backpack and starts pulling out clothes. "We have to get back to the cabin before its too late."
"Why are you unpacking?"
"I'm putting on the darkest clothes I have, you should do the same."
"What the hell is wrong with these people? Its like the entire world has gone insane..." says Curtis. He's still sitting on the floor, wringing his hands nervously. His eyes are growing vacant as he falls deeper into thought.
"Curtis..." snaps Sarah. He comes back to reality once again, looking fatigued and beaten. "Stand up and go through your clothes..."
Without saying a word, Curtis gets to his feet and starts unpacking his clothes. "What about the kids? Their clothes are still in the other room..."
Sarah looks at the two of them sitting on the bed, their bodies shivering. "Are you guys cold?"
"No." says Matt.
"A little..." says Ben.
Sarah turns back to Curtis. "You're gonna have to go into their room and grab their things. They can't walk back home without shoes."
"That guy is right down the hall..."
"If he comes after you, shoot him. That's why you brought the gun isn't it?"
Finding out that the adjoining door had apparently locked itself when the boys came through it, Curtis steps out into the hallway and closes the door behind him, the first thing that catches his eyes are the blood-splattered markings on the outside of their door — all of them more or less the size of a fist. Looking down the hall toward the lobby he sees footprints of blood staggered across the floor, like they were left by a drunk. They continue past his room and disappear behind a door only a few rooms over. Judging from the amount of blood left behind, it appears that whoever is down the hall is badly injured — and barefoot.
Hearing the click of the lock behind him, Curtis keeps his flashlight as low as possible as he creeps down the hallway to the next room over. He watches the floorboards carefully, trying not to slip in the puddles of blood left on the floor, and feeling grateful that he's wearing his hiking boots once again.
When he reaches the door to their room he finds it wide-open, which he knows they didn't do. He walks in and closes the door partway, leaving only an inch or so still open, then spots the backpacks on the floor next to the bed. As he bends down to pick the packs up, he hears the sound of another door opening, right across the hallway from him. He quickly backs up and positions himself in a corner of the room behind the door, turning off his flashlight as he does.
He counts only five footsteps before hearing the hinges next to him squeak, and even in the darkness he can see the door moving as it swings into the room, followed closely by a shadowy figure that reeks of human filth and god only knows what else. Its a man, that much he can tell — but its not the same man he saw downstairs. There's almost nothing to this guy. His frame is tall, but extremely thin, with long arms that are hanging loosely at his side. When he reaches the bed he nearly falls into it face-first, then catches himself and sits down on the edge of it — facing directly toward Curtis.
Squeezing the gun in his hand just a little bit tighter, as if he's reminding himself its still there, Curtis lifts it up and points it at the man's head, waiting for him to make a move — but the man doesn't budge. He simply sits and stares ahead, either not seeing Curtis, or not caring. His breathing has gotten worse, and every strenuous breath he draws in gurgles as his lungs fill up with fluid. Its not long before the gasps become desperate and hard to listen to, forcing the man back to his feet as he tries to draw air in. He stumbles around the room, stretching his neck out and moaning loudly, then finally drops backward onto the floor on the other side of the room.
Curtis flips the flashlight back on and shines it on the man, who he can now see is shirtless and sprawled out on the carpet only ten feet in front of him. Although his body is still twitching slightly, Curtis is almost certain he's dead. He quickly places the gun back into his jacket pocket, then grabs the backpacks and shoes and heads out of the room, trying his best to hold his breath as he passes through the infected air left behind.
As Matt and Ben get changed on the other side of the room, Curtis and Sarah stand by the window and look out at the dark sidewalk that surrounds the hotel. The moonlight is beginning to break through the clouds overhead, blanketing the area once again in the blue-tinted glow of night — yet none of it seems to be penetrating the trees between the hotel and the dunes.
"I don't see anyone, do you?" asks Sarah.
"No, but that doesn't mean they're not out there. If they were on the other side of that seawall, I don't think we could see them." He points to a concrete wall that sits about one hundred feet from the hotel, almost completely hidden by the rolling dunes and pines.
"So what do we do?"
"We could try to make it home by walking along the beach, that would probably be the fastest way — but if anyone is out there we'll be sitting ducks."
"What about the highway? We could just go back the same way we came..."
"The highway has a million places to hide, for us and for them. I think the beach is our best bet."
"I'm ready." blurts out Matt, standing in the middle of the room with a fresh change of clothes on. He has his backpack slung over his right shoulder, nearly dragging him onto the floor from the weight of it — a sight that almost makes Curtis smile.
"I think we'll leave our packs behind." says Curtis.
"But all my stuff is in here..." argues Matt.
"Alright, you can take your packs, but only the essentials. If its not survival gear, it doesn't come with us. We don't want anything slowing us down."
As the kids tear apart their packs to sort through all of the unnecessary crap they decided to bring, Curtis sets two chairs in front of the window and takes a seat in one of them, then motions Sarah into the other.
"I take it we're not leaving right away...?" she asks.
"We should watch for a while, see if there's any pattern or timing we can take advantage of."
"We can't wait too long."
Looking at his watch... "We still have at least eight hours until full sun-up."
They watch the storm outside for several minutes, each of them haunted by the events of the last few days. Sarah can't decide if the last two hours have gone by quickly or not, it all seems like a blur from the moment she first heard footsteps on the floor above them. One thing she knows for sure is that her nerves are absolutely shot. She keeps hearing and seeing things that prove to be figments of her imagination, like movements in the corner of the room, or a faint thumping coming from a hallway she knows to be empty. Other things she can't be completely sure of though, like what appears to be shadows moving among the pine trees just beyond the wall, or the occasional glimmer of light coming from the direction of the beach. Curtis tells her that the latter is probably just phosphorescence from microbes in the ocean, a phenomenon that causes plankton to glow in the dark. For some reason these lights seem different though, and something in her gut tells her that the beach is crawling with whatever these people have become.
"Are you ready?" Curtis asks, startling her. "I don't see anything out there."
Although she has every symptom of anxiety and stress imaginable, Sarah tries her best to look strong when she turns to Curtis. "I'm ready." As they step away from the window, Sarah takes one last look at the beach, her mind still conflicted as to whether this is the right decision.
What she can't see, and what neither one of them have noticed all night, is a man standing beneath the sprawl of a spruce tree just inside the wall. He's been waiting patiently all night, watching their every movement, his sense of reason and rationality slipping away with every passing second.
Since leaving Neah Bay, the mood on the boat ha
s changed dramatically — partly from knowing that somewhere beyond the heavy rain and rolling waves is a man hell-bent on killing all of them, and partly because of the horrible effect that the ocean is having on their equilibriums. Beth has been out on the open sea before, but it was a lifetime ago when both her and Larry were small children. To this day she remembers vividly how violently ill she felt when the boat began to roll.
Jake has never been on the ocean, and after this trip he's beginning to doubt that he will again. With every mile they travel, his worries and fears of what still awaits them are starting to slip away, and sickness is taking their place. He begins to envy the dead, the fortunate souls who no longer have to experience the wretched symptoms of seasickness.
Other than feeling miserable, Jake was assigned a single task by Larry during their trip south — to keep the water in the bilge below the three bullet holes that Sean left in the side of their boat. Even with the help of two pumps, this one seemingly simple job has proven to be difficult. The hatch leading to the bilge area is barely big enough for an adult to squeeze through, especially one wearing a survival suit. Larry insisted they all wear one in case something went wrong. The stainless-steel ladder was an issue as well — despite having a roughened texture, the wet metal surface is still prone to slipping. He's been removing water for hours now, five gallons at a time, nauseous from both the rocking of the boat and the exhaustion that he feels — but he's also grateful that he hasn't heard any news from Beth concerning Sean.
Sitting next to her brother in the pilothouse, and staring at the water behind them through binoculars, Beth tries her best to carry out the only task she seems qualified for. She doesn't have the endurance or strength to carry buckets of water, and she certainly doesn't have the skill necessary to operate the boat — but she does have the ability to see what's coming after them, or at least that's the idea. Watching the ocean at night is both terrifying and beautiful. Most of the time all you can see of the waves is a thin silver outline at the crest, which seem to dance as the waves roll across the water — but between each of them is a black abyss, which only serves to remind you of just how cold and deadly the current really is.