by James Bierce
As Jake and Beth step out of the icy waters of the harbor, dragging their supplies onto the rocky shore beside them, they both stand silent and take in the view of Aberdeen, a city that was once the heart of Grays Harbor. Tonight, the streets are dark and empty, with only a few parked cars scattered here and there. The docks just to the north of them, which are usually filled with both ships and smaller boats, looks mostly deserted as well.
The city looks like its been through a war, with broken windows in almost every building they can see, even on the higher floors. Trash is being blown around in the street just ahead of them, carried by a stiff wind that whistles overhead as it passes by the buildings. They can smell something burning too, very faint, but they can't tell exactly what it might be. Only a few blocks are visible with any kind of clarity — beyond that the thick fog moving in from the harbor obscures the view.
"We need to find some shelter. We'll have to leave everything but our packs behind for now." Jake tells Beth, handing her one of the backpacks he'd tied to his arm earlier.
"What if somebody finds our stuff?"
He points to the east, where they can just barely make out a glimmer of light rising over the horizon. "The sun will be up soon, and we've never seen them out in the daylight. We'll come back and get everything in the morning." He points to a small three-story building across the street. It has a sign out front indicating that its a barber shop. "Let's check that place out..."
As they walk across the empty roadway, the wind blows against their wet clothing and tired legs, leaving Beth feeling more exhausted than she's ever felt in her life. Her feet have gone numb, along with her hands and face — and she's finding it difficult to remember the last time she'd slept.
"Did you see that light on top of the hill?" she asks Jake.
"Yeah, any idea what that was?"
"It looked like it was coming from the hospital. You don't think its open do you...?"
"I don't know, we'll have to check it out tomorrow."
Just before they reach the entrance to the building, both of them stop and turn their heads down the street. There's a scraping sound coming from just around the corner, and its getting louder.
"Quick, get inside!" Jake whispers to Beth.
Jake is the first one to the entrance, which fortunately is already opened just a crack. After pulling his wife through, he closes the door quietly and then locks it — both of them standing off to the side, barely hidden from view, but still able to see the sidewalk on the other side of the door.
The sound becomes louder with every passing second, until at last they see a man walking past the building, his movements stiff and slow. Following right behind him are two others, a man and a woman. The man in the back is dragging a long piece of tangled netting from his foot, and several aluminum cans have been caught in the mess. Once they pass by, Curtis taps Beth on the shoulder, then points to a large counter that's near the back wall of the shop — one that's completely out of view from the floor to ceiling windows in the front.
After removing their wet survival suits, they both sit down behind the wooden counter, leaning against one another, shivering from the cold that's run clear to their bones.
"Sean is still out there..." Beth says quietly.
Jake doesn't say anything at first, then finally answers... "I think we have more serious things to worry about right now."
"What could be more serious than that?"
"We need to get out of the city, find someplace without so many people — a place where we can rest for a while."
"After we check out the hospital. We have to do that first..." she says sleepily, the words barely making it out of her mouth.
"You need to get some sleep, I'll take first watch."
As his wife sleeps beside him on the hard tiled floor, Jake pulls his pistol from its holster and holds it in his hand, listening as more people walk by in front of the shop. This time they sound like they're headed in the other direction, and in a hurry. Although his mind is too tired and numb to feel much of anything besides fear, he knows that tomorrow, and probably for the rest of his life, his heart will be filled with guilt and regret. Although he can never let on to Beth — he saw the bullet hit Larry, and he saw him shortly after he landed in the water. The round hit him in the upper arm, not necessarily a fatal wound. Whether or not he's still alive he can't be certain, but he could still see him struggling in the wake of Sean's boat as he pulled Beth away from the area. He tries telling himself that he made a tactical decision, that it was necessary to leave Larry behind in order to save the lives of Beth and himself — but the guilt he's beginning to feel tells a different story. He was scared, pure and simple — and it grows worse with every person that passes by.
Walking through the overgrown forest just to the east of town, Curtis knows he's likely losing precious time catching up to Amanda — but he can't risk being seen by people on the highway. He's almost certain that Amanda has taken the same route, having already found a fresh pair of shoe prints in the mud that matched hers only about ten minutes ago. The fact that he didn't see any other footprints alongside of hers was unsettling to say the least.
He has to be careful as he makes his way around bogs and downed trees, he can't do anything that draws attention to his whereabouts — either from Amanda or anyone else. From time to time he catches a glimpse of the coastal highway, its pavement still filled with abandoned cars and the supplies they carried that never proved to be useful to their passengers. Shadows of people are visible too, moving back and forth against the filtered moonlight. Mostly though, its quiet, eerily quiet. Besides the occasional owl, or gust of wind in the trees overhead, only the rushing sound of the ocean in the distance can be heard. To the east, he can see the first sign of daylight making its way through the needles of fir and spruce.
Its nearly thirty miles from here to Aberdeen, a long stretch of road for a frail girl to walk without slowing down considerably, especially in conditions like this. Although the rain has tapered off to only a light shower for the time being, the wind still continues to blow in from the west — and last he saw, Amanda wasn't exactly dressed for the elements. With any luck, he'll catch up to them within the hour — which will give plenty of time for himself and Ben to make their way back to the cabin sometime in the afternoon, even if he has to carry him. Amanda, and what to do with her, is his biggest problem — one that he really doesn't want to think about.
Its taken Amanda and Ben over an hour before they finally reach the highway interchange that leads to Aberdeen, both of them soaked to the bone and covered in mud. Ben's feet are killing him as he steps onto the pavement, and he feels fortunate that Amanda insisted that she carry both his backpack and her knife. Without her, he's sure that he wouldn't have survived the night.
"We have to walk on the road from now on." Amanda informs him.
"What about the scourge?" Ben responds.
'Scourge' is a term that Amanda came up with to identify the infected, a name she remembers her father using shortly after the outbreak began. She's not completely sure what it means, but she liked the sound of it.
"The sun is coming up. They won't be out for the rest of the day."
"Why not?"
"You ask a lot of questions, don't you?" she says, smiling.
He turns red from embarrassment, reminding himself not to talk so much.
Amanda begins walking again, glancing through the car windows as she passes by, which are becoming few and far between this far outside of town. "My mom will know what to do when we get there, you'll see."
"And then we'll find my family, right?"
"Right."
Ben feels inside of his pocket, running his fingers across the knife that Matt handed him the night before. He pulls it out of his pocket, then holds it out to show Amanda. "Look at this..." he says proudly, but when he looks up at her, he notices that she's no longer walking, and instead is simply standing in the middle of the road.
"Amanda, ar
e you okay?" He places the knife back in his pocket, then faces the girl. She looks as though she's in a daze, her eyes blank, her mouth hanging half-open. "Amanda!" he cries, shaking her slightly. With that, she snaps out of it.
"What?" she asks, confused.
"You did it again."
She smiles at him, then begins walking again. "I'm sorry, I must've gotten distracted." She holds out her hand, inviting Ben to do the same, and the two hold hands as they make their way toward the sunrise. "Did you ask me something before?" she asks.
Ben looks up at her, noticing that her eyes look different somehow, like they belong to someone else. "Nah, it wasn't important."
Curtis had hoped to catch up to Amanda somewhere along the highway shortly after sunrise, but looking up at the deserted road ahead of him, he had a horrible feeling that she might actually be gaining ground on him. He still had no idea whether Ben was with her or not, but shortly after reaching the paved highway he begins seeing clues along the way that tell him that she isn't alone. For one, oftentimes there are now two sets of footprints visible alongside the road, both of them small enough to belong to children. He also found two candy bar wrappers and two empty cans of soda, all of which had been recently consumed.
After being half delirious the night before from both hypothermia and pure exhaustion, the temperature has greatly improved today, and the rain that fell throughout the night has been replaced with sun breaks and only the occasional sprinkle. The exhaustion, however, is still there, and its getting worse with every mile that he travels. The aching feet and sore leg muscles from the hike the day before were bad enough, but the lack of sleep over the past few days is beginning to take a toll on his concentration and alertness.
The cars are scarce along this part of the highway, a stretch that's mostly lined with muddy bogs and thickly overgrown evergreen forests covered in long hanging gray moss, the last of which is kept alive by a year-round supply of fog coming off of the harbor. The smell coming from the bogs is strong — a putrid mixture of rotting vegetation and stale saltwater. When he does come across a vehicle, he takes a few minutes to look it over, hoping to find one that still runs — but so far none of them do.
Just a little after noon he comes to an old general store that sits only a few feet from the highway. The name on the sign says 'Diller's Market'. Curtis remembers stopping at the store every time he came to the beach with his parents, back when John Diller still owned the place. In recent years its remained a store, its new owners changing little or nothing about the place — even the name. Curtis takes a quick walk around the outside of the building, taking time to check out the few cars sitting in the parking lot, then walks in through the open door in the back. The place smells moldy and wet, and the stench of spoiled food and rotten bait have permeated virtually everything inside, including the county road maps that Curtis slips into his pocket. He also comes across a couple of breakfast bars and a bag of potato chips behind the counter, along with an insulated winter coat that's about four sizes too big. While the shelves in the main market are almost completely empty, in the next room he finds floor to ceiling wire shelving filled with canned goods and boxes of dried food — enough to feed his family for a few months if they were careful. Lying on the floor in the middle of the room, however, are two bodies, a man and a woman — both of them badly decomposed.
His first thought is to take off the coat, fearful that it might be contaminated with whatever killed the two people in front of him. Then he sees the gun. Sitting next to what's left of the man's outstretched arm is a semi-auto pistol, dried blood still splattered on the side of it, and a gaping hole in the temple of both individuals. Whether dying from the virus, or fearful over what's happened to the world around them, these people obviously felt that their life as they knew it was over.
As Curtis reaches out for a container of sanitation wipes sitting on the shelf, he hears a noise from the room behind him — like the closing of a car door. Hurrying, he opens up the wipes and cleans off the gun laying on the floor, then takes another and disinfects his new coat the best he can. He pops the clip out of the gun and looks closely at it, still eleven bullets left.
When he walks back into the store itself, he spots an older man outside in the parking lot, siphoning gasoline out of a car. Curtis stands off to the side and watches the man, letting the shadows hide him from sight. The guy goes quickly from one car to the next, searching the inside of each one of them before moving on. Finally, once he's done with the last one, he looks over at the store and begins walking to the front door. He lays down the can of gas and pulls out a gun before reaching for the doorknob. Knowing already that the front door is locked, Curtis stands still with his own gun aimed at the doorway. The man jiggles the lock, at first carefully, and then more forceful. Just as he prepares to break the window out with his elbow, Curtis yells out at him.
"I wouldn't do that!"
The man stops, startled — then he looks in through the window to see who spoke to him. "Who's in there?" he asks.
"You got your gas, now move on..."
"Listen, I don't mean any harm, I'm just hungry." the man claims, placing his gun back into his side holster.
Curtis wants to believe him — but desperate people, even healthy ones, can be dangerous and unpredictable in times of despair. "Which direction did you come from?"
"Johns River, to the east."
"You didn't happen to see anyone else on the road did you?"
"I'm afraid not, are you looking for someone?"
Curtis places his gun into his pocket, then unlocks and opens the door before moving back out of the way again. When the man steps through and he gets a good look at him, he knows he has to be at least eighty years old — maybe more.
"Did you walk all the way from Johns River?" Curtis asks him.
"Its not far, just a few miles down the road." the man replies, moving farther into the room.
"Where're you headed?"
"Westport, I have a son that lives there. I haven't been able to contact him for weeks."
"I just came from there, I'm afraid its overrun."
"Overrun with what?"
Its clear to Curtis that this guy has no idea what's going on, but he doesn't have the time or energy to explain everything to him. "Is it just you out here?"
The expression on the man's face changes somewhat, and a look of sadness suddenly appears in his eyes. Whatever it is, he looks away for a moment, toward the empty street out front. "Yeah, something like that." When he looks back at Curtis, it seems as though he wants to say something else, but nothing actually comes out. Whatever the guy has been through, it obviously hasn't been easy.
"Have you heard any news from outside the harbor?" Curtis asks.
The old man reaches into his pocket and pulls out a half rusty flask, then takes a swig. "No, not for a while. You...?"
"No, nothing."
He holds the flask out to Curtis, offering him a drink, but Curtis only shakes his head in response — wondering to himself if this guy is the least bit worried about the virus. The man takes another drink before putting it back in his pocket, then walks behind the counter and takes a seat on a rickety stool that sits in front of the cash register, looking around the room at the nearly empty shelves.
"Not much left, is there?"
"There's food in the back room, along with a few supplies."
"Good to hear, the pantry is getting a little bare back at the house."
"I saw you siphoning gas out front, do you have a car?"
"Sort of, it doesn't run. So far I haven't found one that does."
"I've noticed the same thing. The batteries all seem to be dead."
"Yep, that's what I've run across too."
Curtis can tell the man is tired, maybe even more than he is. "Listen, I'm gonna be coming back through here in a day or two — why don't you rest up here for a while, and I'll check on you when I get back...
"No, I'll be fine. I'm just gonna rest my leg
s for a while."
Curtis approaches the counter, and without thinking holds out his hand for the man to shake — a strange custom considering the risk of contamination. The man smiles, then reaches his own hand out and shakes.
"My name is Curtis by the way..."
"Nice to meet you Curtis, my name is Peter."
Curtis begins to leave, then turns around. "Stay away from any of the cities, Peter, especially Westport."
Peter nods, then asks... "Can I ask where you're headed?"
"Aberdeen. Have you heard anything from there lately?"
"No, but my place overlooks the harbor, so I look right across at it — its a ghost town. Maybe you should follow your own advice..."
Curtis makes his way down the road toward Aberdeen, and as he glances back at the gas station he sees Peter walking in the opposite direction, toward Westport. As tired and drained as he is, he still can't help but feel sorry for the man. Maybe he should have warned him more forcefully, let him know what actually lurks in the shadows of Westport when the sun goes down — but in the end he decides to say nothing at all. Every passing minute places his own son in greater jeopardy from Amanda, and right now there's nothing more important than returning him safely to their home in Cohasset. He can only hope that Sarah and Matt have managed to find their way back.
Continuing his journey east, it takes him about thirty minutes to reach the southern shore of Grays Harbor, where the highway finally leaves the bog-infested forests and begins paralleling the coastline. The views of both Aberdeen and Hoquiam across the water are breathtaking. The snow-capped peaks of the Coastal Range rise up behind the two cities, dwarfed only by the much larger Olympic Mountains farther in the background. In other circumstances Curtis would appreciate the sights, and would wish that his wife were here to witness it herself. All he really notices this time, however, are the multiple plumes of black smoke scattered around the cityscape, with both small and large fires burning throughout the area. He keeps walking, at first keeping an eye on the towns, hoping that he spots some form of normalcy on the other side of the harbor. After a while he stops watching altogether though, and a disturbing realization begins to finally sink in — whatever has happened, it seems to be everywhere.