by James Bierce
Looking up into the sky, he can see that the sun is already moving into the west, dragging the darkness of night behind it — and with every passing mile his thoughts turn to hindsight and regret.
He should have never allowed his family to leave Cohasset, he knows that now. They were all blissfully ignorant only a few days ago, their greatest fear being that they were the only human beings left on earth — an idea that doesn't seem so bad when compared to the actual truth.
The shock, stress and exhaustion of the past few days has taken its toll, leaving Curtis in a dreamlike state of consciousness where nothing around him seems real. In some respects it feels like a nightmare — his wife and son somewhere behind him, trying to find their way back to a cabin that might not be as safe as they assumed it was. His other son is somewhere ahead of him, escorted by a young girl who is either severely infected or mentally ill, and perhaps both.
As he searches for a way to stop his mind from over-analyzing everything, something from out of the corner of his eye catches his attention. He sees something along the shore, something light-colored that's resting among the rocks only about fifty feet from the road. Jumping the guardrail, he carefully makes his way over the rocks, driftwood and garbage that litter the beach until he gets close enough to see the object.
Stacked on top of one another, and stretched out along the shore to the east as far as he can see, are the remains of people. There must be hundreds of them, maybe even thousands — of every age, race and level of decomposition imaginable. Most of them are practically skeletons, but a few look recent, some of them very recent.
He turns around and starts walking back to the road, his mind trying to block out the image and smells that are behind him — and then suddenly he stops, finding himself directly in front of a man that's sitting next to a large piece of driftwood, his eyes fixed on the harbor. Curtis places his hand in his coat, his fingers wrapped around the pistol he swiped from the store.
"Are you okay?" he asks.
No answer. The man just stares straight ahead. His clothes are soaking wet, and a life ring is still clutched in his right hand. At his feet is a large duffel bag that's zipped shut.
"Hey, are you okay?" he asks again, this time louder than before.
This time the man snaps out of his trance, gazing directly at Curtis with a bewildered look on his face.
"How long have you been out here?"
"I, I don't know..." the man says, still confused.
"Are you sick? Do you have the virus?"
"No, I'm not sick. I'm just tired."
Curtis considers leaving him behind. He's supposed to be finding his son before Amanda does something terrible, and so far all he's accomplished is offering his help to two strangers. On the other hand, whatever is waiting for him down the road might be easier with two people. Besides, other than being wet, the man doesn't look sick. "Do you have a name?"
"Yeah, Larry, Larry Gossman."
"Nice to meet you Larry, my name is Curtis Lockwood."
In the first few moments after waking up, before her eyes had fully adjusted to their surroundings, Sarah thought she was back home nestled comfortably in her own bed. Her bed in Portland that is, not the musty, worn-out mattress that occupies the cabin in Cohasset.
As the seconds pass, however, reality begins to seep in, until eventually the nightmare of the last twenty-four hours starts to truly sink in. One by one the memories creep into her consciousness — their trip to Westport, the terrifying night spent at the Regency Hotel, her son Ben disappearing without a trace, and then somehow she ended up here, sleeping on a couch that once belonged to a woman that she killed with her bare hands only hours before.
And then there's the pain... Clara's knife attack in the night has left her with a significant wound on her leg, an injury that despite taking painkillers earlier in the morning, continues to disrupt her sleep.
The house looks different than it did last night, no doubt partly due to the filtered sunlight that's coming through the curtains and illuminating every cluttered corner of the small living room. The nautical theme is more evident than ever, but only in the light of the day can Sarah see the true decrepit state that the house is in. Peeling wallpaper, cracked drywall, large water stains on the ceiling, and various-colored stains on the floor — some of which are Sarah's own blood from the attack. One thing that hasn't changed is the smell. A putrid, vile stench still hangs in the air — and with Clara's body still slumped in the corner of the room, the foul odor isn't likely to improve anytime soon.
"You're awake."
Sarah looks toward the kitchen, where she sees Matt standing in the doorway. "Barely. How long was I asleep?"
"About an hour." He walks into the room and sits down on the couch next to his mom, placing his head against her arm. "How does your leg feel?"
"Its really sore, but its not throbbing anymore. That must be a good sign."
"The people outside are gone, even the ones out front."
Her and Matt had decided the night before that they would take shifts keeping watch, but neither of them were really able to sleep with all the commotion. The man down the hall, while still a concern, had been quiet for most of the night — only occasionally trying to open the barricaded bedroom door. The people outside, however, were anything but silent. Every few minutes throughout the night, an endless parade of people attempted to come in through one of the doors or windows. Most of them simply wiggled the handle for a few seconds, or quickly tapped on the glass before moving on — but a few of them were more relentless. At least one woman stayed for most of the night, moving from one window to the next, never doing anything more than rubbing her hands across the glass panes. Sarah had an idea early on that they might be attracted to the candlelight emanating from the living room, but after extinguishing every last one of them, the drove of people kept coming in from both the beach and the highway. Eventually, as the first sign of light appeared from the east, the people began disappearing into the shadows, with only a handful still visible after daybreak.
"What about the guy down the hall?" Sarah asks. "Anything going on in there?"
"I haven't heard him for a while." He looks over at the wood stove against the wall, seeing only a small ember of charcoal still glowing through the soot-covered window in the door. "Should I put more wood in the stove?"
"No, the smoke might attract too much attention. Besides, it shouldn't get too cold in here tonight."
She shifts her position on the couch, trying to sit up straight as much as she can, and trying not to let on how much pain she's really in. While its true that the bleeding and throbbing has stopped, the sharp pains are worse than they were last night.
"Are you hungry?" she asks him, trying to distract herself from the discomfort.
"Not really."
"Well, you need to eat. Both of us do. Why don't you get a couple of energy bars from your bag..."
He gets up and crosses the room, digging through both of their bags, apparently looking for something, then he holds up a single bottle of water that's only about half full. "Mom, was there anymore water?"
"There should be, did you look in my bag?"
"Yeah, that's where I got this one."
"Bring them over, let me take a look."
It takes her all of about ten seconds to go through both bags thoroughly, only to find a couple of empty bottles rolling around in the bottom of each of them. Then she gets a sinking feeling in her stomach as she remembers what happened.
"Ben has the water, remember?"
"All of it?"
"Your dad might have some too."
"What're we gonna do?"
"You'll have to search the house. Clara had to be drinking something."
Having already searched the kitchen and bathroom the day before looking for bandages and pain killers for his mom, Matt starts looking for water or anything else that might be useful in the front room. The outside wall of the room faces east, toward the highway, and
the sun is still low enough in the sky to come directly through the windows on either side of the front door. For whatever reason, these windows have no curtains covering them, and the smeared mud on the outside of the glass look like some kind of primitive hand paintings.
The only place in the room to search for anything is the coat closet just inside the door, but all that he finds inside, besides coats and shoes, are totes filled with Halloween and Christmas decorations. In the laundry room he does find a dozen or so mason jars filled with what looks and smells like dirty water, but only pure desperation would ever allow him to entertain the idea of drinking it.
Finally, the only rooms left in the house are the two bedrooms, one of which is occupied by someone that Clara deemed so dangerous that she went through the trouble of fortifying the door. Entering the second bedroom, he looks in the closet first, finding nothing but clothes and old boxes. The dresser and nightstand next to the bed aren't much better, filled mostly with newspaper clippings and magazines — both of which can be used to start fires at the very least.
Turning around to leave the room, he sees something on the bed, the outline of a person under a large, tattered quilt. His legs begin to buckle a bit as he realizes there might have been another person living in the house this entire time without them knowing it. He walks backward as quietly as possible back to the closet, never taking his eyes off the bed, then reaches in and grabs a broom he remembers seeing only moments before. Then he stands next to the bed again, the broom in one hand and the revolver in the other — not completely sure of which one to use. He reaches the broom out, his hand shaking, and nudges the lump lightly with the end of the handle — but there's no response. After several attempts, each one harder and more aggressive than the last, he finally decides to use the broom to pull the covers down from their face — an act he regrets immediately.
To say the body is decomposed would be an understatement — it looks more like a mummy than anything, with the skin appearing dry and stretched.
He uses the broom to move the quilt back over their head, still unsure of whether its a man or a woman, then walks back into the kitchen to take a final inventory of food that's still left in the cupboards and pantry. In the middle of the floor there's a large pile of discarded wrappers and empty cans from food that Clara had already eaten, but after an exhaustive search, Matt discovers that she's nearly out of anything else that might be edible. He takes the half-dozen cans of fruits and vegetables, and the few boxes of dried pasta that are still left into the living room where his mom can examine them.
"That's it?" she asks.
"Yeah, except for whatever is in the fridge."
"Well, there's some water in the cans of fruit, but its not enough. We're gonna have to go outside and see if there's some rainwater we can collect."
"I can go by myself, you shouldn't be walking around that much."
Sarah knows that he's right, but she can't stand the idea of him out there by himself — especially considering the crowds of people wandering around outside the house only a short time ago. "Are you sure?"
"I'll be careful. Besides, I don't see anybody out there anyway."
He takes the empty water bottles from his bag and walks to the back door, then peers out the small window, carefully looking around the backyard for any signs of people — but everything seems to be quiet.
"The sun is out, it looks warm."
"Don't be too long, just find the water and get back. Okay?"
"Okay." He opens the door and steps through, and a welcome blast of fresh air comes blowing in around him. Then he turns around and faces his mom. "Oh, and there's another body in the other bedroom. I think they've been dead a long time."
Not wanting to hear an argument about whether or not he should be doing this alone, he shuts the door and disappears around the corner before she has a chance to respond.
From the back porch its impossible to see the ocean with the number of dunes that are in the way, but the pathway that runs in that direction looks worn and well-traveled. As Matt makes his way around the house, looking for any source of water that doesn't appear contaminated, he notices another pathway that leads south through a small stand of trees. Although he can't really see what's at the other end all that clearly, it appears to be some type of structure. After searching around Clara's house with no luck, he decides to walk down the path to find out where it leads. As soon as he discovers that the structure on the other end is actually another house, however, he takes the gun out of his pocket and aims it directly in front of him, wishing that his dad had showed him how to use it properly before they left the cabin.
He sneaks up on the house as stealthily as he can, hoping not to arouse any attention if the house turns out to be occupied — but the second he spots a rain barrel sitting underneath a gutter downspout, all of his fear and apprehension turns into excitement in an instant. He takes one of the bottles and dunks it into the barrel, then holds it up to the sunlight, admiring the clarity and cleanliness of the contents. He dips the next bottle into the water, then brings the full one to his mouth to take a drink, tasting a slight tinge of saltiness that he figures must have been brought in from the nearby ocean. As he screws the cap back on the bottle, he catches a glimpse of something out of the corner of his eye — something inside the house.
He screws the caps back onto both bottles, places them into his bag, then walks up to the window and looks inside. The house looks like a mess on the outside, with badly peeling paint and missing trim boards — but none of that can even begin to compare to the chaos that's on the inside. There's no flooring, no wallboard, wires and pipes are hanging from everywhere, garbage is strewn across the moldy and stain-marked sub-floor — and at the very far end of whatever room this is, a young man wearing an orange-colored stocking cap is staring at a bare wall, swaying back and forth as if listening to music. As strange as it all seems, especially after what he and his mom dealt with all night, the oddest part about the scene isn't the house or the bizarre rhythmically-challenged swaying — its the look on what he can see of his face that truly frightens Matt to his core. Its blank, absolutely void of any emotion or presence of mind. If not for the movement, he'd swear the man is already dead.
After a long, restless night of trying to sleep on a hard tiled floor, with the sound of rapid gunfire coming from somewhere nearby waking them up in the middle of the night, Beth and Jake decide to wait until the sun is fully up before venturing from behind the barber shop counter. When they do, they find themselves looking out over a scene of trash covered streets and burned out cars — and somewhere through the fog, a view of the tranquil waters of Grays Harbor in the background. As they open the door and walk out onto the sidewalk, the silence of the once-busy city is almost deafening. There's no sign of anybody, living or otherwise, and no sounds of cars or machinery of any kind. Only the screeching coming from the seagulls sitting on the docks, and the lapping of waves against the shore in front of them.
"Did you want to check out the hospital?" asks Beth. "See if that's where the light was coming from?"
He glances down to the shore, making sure their bags are still laying in the same spot they left them in. "Let's get our supplies inside first. They should be safe in there for now."
Jake looks to the west, toward the neighboring city of Hoquiam, where a massive cloud of black smoke is rising from a group of structures near the river that runs between the two cities. There should be sirens and flashing lights, or at least an alarm of some kind, but there's nothing.
"Jake, look..."
He turns around to see Beth pointing toward one of the docks only a block to the east. Tied to the end of the it is a single boat, identical to the one that Sean had been using to follow them.
"He's still alive..." she whispers, her voice full of fear.
Seeing what looks like a body on the sidewalk directly in front of the dock, Jake immediately recognizes that its wearing Sean's bulletproof vest. Despite the possibility tha
t it might be a trap, he decides to check it out anyway. "Stay here for a minute."
He pulls his gun out and moves cautiously toward the body, and when he gets to within about thirty feet of it, he can tell without question that its Sean. He can see his dark blue jacket underneath his vest, and the poorly hidden flask in his front pocket. A few feet away from him, lying in the street gutter and covered in blood, is his rifle. His pistol with an attached silencer is only inches from his hand. With his gun aimed directly at Sean's head, Jake kicks the pistol away from his reach, and then moves around to get a look at his face — or at least what's left of it. If not for a scar just below his hairline, even Jake would have a hard time recognizing him for certain. Someone, or multiple people, have beaten his body so severely that his face has been literally caved in. Chunks of flesh from his throat and limbs have been ripped off as well, and are lying on the sidewalk next to him. Noticing empty shell casings all over the sidewalk, Jake kneels down and picks up Sean's pistol and checks the clip. Just as he thought, its empty. Whatever happened here last night, Sean put up a hell of a fight, and lost. No other bodies are anywhere in sight.
"Is he dead?" asks Beth from across the street.
"Yeah, he's gone." He stands up again, then turns around and faces Sean's boat — which looks more or less in one piece. "Let's check his boat out. He might have some supplies we can use."
Beth joins him, purposely not looking in Sean's direction as she passes by — then bends down and picks something up off the pathway to the dock.
"What's this?"
Jake takes it from her, examining it. "Its a locater device. The son of a bitch must have been tracking us."