by James Bierce
After throwing the locater into the water, he walks down the pathway and onto the floating dock. "Is it me, or is that boat listing to one side?"
"It looks that way." The closer they get, the more clear it becomes that one side is sinking into the harbor more than the other. "You know, you shouldn't have thrown that thing into the water. It could have come in handy."
"I doubt it. The more time that goes by, the less accurate those things will become."
"Why is that?"
"Nobody is around to correct the satellites. They're moving off-course, that's why the GPS doesn't work anymore."
When they finally reach the boat, its obvious to both of them that its the same one that Jake set fire to in Neah Bay. The entire bow is charred and partially melted from the gasoline dumped onto it. They climb onto the back and enter the cabin, hoping that the off-kilter position is due to the supplies that Sean has on-board, and not just a leak in the bottom. Inside, they find a couple of bags filled with food and a first aid kit. A tote sitting right next to them has an assortment of medications and bottles of alcohol.
"He must've gone into one of the towns to get this stuff." Jake says as he reads the labels on the prescription bottles.
"I wonder how many of these people he killed..."
"These aren't regular prescription bottles, these are the bulk bottles that the pharmacies use."
Beth searches the cabinets in the small kitchenette, finding nothing of any value, then moves onto the bedroom in the bow. The bed is big enough to sleep two people, but one side of it is full of guns and ammunition. There must be at least a dozen rifles, and probably twice as many pistols.
"One thing you have to give him credit for, he's been busy."
Jake looks over her shoulder and sees the guns, then smiles for the first time in weeks. "I just checked the bilge, and its taking on water. We have to get all this shit into the shop before it sinks."
It takes them over an hour of walking back and forth between the boat and the barber shop, and another two hours working to barricade the door without making too much sound — but after they're done they have the small bathroom in the back of the shop almost completely filled with guns, ammo, medications and a variety of other supplies and food.
After pocketing a couple more of the pistols and one of the rifles, Jake follows Beth out of the room, then looks back at their newly found possessions. "We have to figure out a more permanent home for this stuff. Someplace without a wall of glass looking out onto the street."
Beth looks at her watch, then looks out the window to make sure the weather looks decent. "Its still early enough in the day to search the hospital. Maybe we'll find somewhere more secure inside."
"We need to get out of this city as quickly as possible."
"So what do you want to do?"
"We'll check out the hospital, then first thing tomorrow morning we'll try to find a truck or boat to get us out of here."
The street that leads to the hospital is uphill most of the way, passing by an endless number of rundown buildings that look as if they were abandoned and forgotten long before the viral outbreak. Aberdeen has always had a reputation for attracting the very worst that society has to offer, and the standing of its neighboring city of Hoquiam isn't much better. Whorehouses, illegal gambling and drugs all represent the foundation upon which both cities were built on. Although some might argue that logging and fishing have been the heart of the area's economy, the more sinful occupations have certainly proven to be much more resilient over time.
"It looks like a ghost town." remarks Beth, looking down a street lined with cars and knocked over garbage cans on the curb waiting to be picked up — but still no people anywhere, not even dogs or cats.
"If last night was any indication, I'm sure they're here somewhere. That's why we need to be someplace safe before sunset."
Beth looks to the west, where from this elevation she can see Hoquiam with more clarity. "That fire over there is spreading. Do you think it'll jump the river?"
"Probably." he responds, not bothering to look for himself.
As they approach the hospital, Jake guides them into a building across the street, and after searching it for people, he stands in the front window and watches the hospital entrance with binoculars for any sign of movement. Everything inside is dark, but the glass covered walls of the first floor seem to be intact.
"I wonder if that light has some kind of backup generator hooked up to it...?" Jake wonders aloud.
"Do you see anybody inside?"
"No, everything looks quiet."
"I thought there might be other people here that saw the light, just like us."
"You would think that, wouldn't you..."
Placing the binoculars back into his pocket, he exits the building and begins walking toward the hospital, Beth following closely behind him. When he reaches the front entrance, he looks inside closely and makes sure there's still no activity before trying to open the door. There's no activity to be seen, but the door is also securely locked.
"Should we break it down?" asks Beth.
"No, we might need it intact. Lets check around the other side for a window."
They start circling the building, looking for any possible way inside, and eventually end up finding a small office window that's been closed, but left unlocked. Jake shines his flashlight around the room, takes a pair of latex gloves out of his bag and slips them on, then opens the window and climbs through. The hallway outside the room is dark and quiet, with no sign of people anywhere. There's litter everywhere, similar to the police station in Dungeness, but with fewer papers and a hell of a lot more dried blood. The floors and walls have it smeared everywhere, most of it by hand from the looks of it.
"What the hell happened in here...? whispers Beth, trying not to step in any of it.
"Whatever it was, it happened a while ago."
"Do you think we should be here? Don't you think this blood is probably infected?"
"If its airborne, then we're already infected. Just don't touch anything without gloves on."
Jake continues down the hallway cautiously, his gun held in front of him ready to fire. When he finds the entrance, he unlocks the door, explaining to Beth that they might need a quick escape route. After searching the main lobby and various hallways without finding anything of use, they start searching the rooms one by one. In every one of them they find pretty much the same thing, a chaotic mess of supplies and linens being tossed around as if someone was looking for something. Some of the rooms have blood smeared just like the hallway, but throughout the entire search they never actually come across a body — not even a body part. The pharmacy looks ransacked just like every other room, but nothing seems to be missing. All of the bottles are still there, some of them on the floor, but all of them still have medicine inside. All of the doors leading to the stairs, however, are locked and barricaded somehow, making it impossible to open them — despite Jake's failed attempt at breaking them down.
Sitting in one of the waiting areas, as Jake looks over an emergency exit map of the hospital for any other ways to the upper floors, Beth stares out the window at an older house across the street. To her surprise, the front door opens slightly, then sways back and forth a few inches.
"Jake, someone just opened that door..."
He looks up from the exit plan and watches with her as the door continues to sway, then slowly it opens wider, and a young man emerges from the doorway and onto the porch. For a moment he just stands there, then he begins making his way down the steps and onto the sidewalk, his movements stiff just like the others they've seen.
"Why is he out so early?" Jake asks.
"Its those dark clouds rolling in — its like dusk out there."
He looks down the street, and sure enough, more people are outside wandering around the neighborhood.
"Fuck, we'll have to spend the night here I guess."
"To be honest, it won't really bother me sleeping in an a
ctual bed tonight. That concrete floor last night was horrible."
After looking around at the different rooms available, they decide to sleep in one of the cleaner patient rooms that's near the front entrance. It also has the added benefit of having two doors, minimizing their chances of being trapped. As night approaches, they carefully remove the blanket and sheet off the bed, then flip the mattress before climbing onto it to test it out, neither of them minding the small size.
"Is the front door still unlocked?" asks Beth, suddenly remembering it.
"Shit, I forgot about that. I'll be back in a minute." He gets out of bed and starts walking to the door.
"Shouldn't we both go?"
"No, it'll just take a sec."
After he leaves, Beth lies back down and closes her eyes, her mind racing too quickly to ever fall asleep. She thinks about Larry, and whether or not he survived the shooting the night before — and even if he did, whether or not she'll ever see him again. As much as she agrees with Jake that they need to leave the city in order to stay safe, she also knows that any chance of ever seeing Larry will also disappear if they do. Then, just as her mind begins to slip into sleep, she hears a noise coming from the hall. Thinking that its just Jake returning, she ignores it and lets her mind relax again — and then she hears something else, a scratching on the walls just outside of the room. It gets closer to the door, then passes over it before continuing down the hallway. She turns on the flashlight and listens carefully, then opens the door and shines the light down the corridor, a slight smell of smoke drifting down the hall coming in on a draft of cold air. Almost to the next room, a woman is walking away from her, dragging her nails down the wall as she stumbles forward. Then she stops and begins to slowly turn around toward Beth — but before she turns all the way around, Beth steps back inside and locks the door, expecting at any moment to hear the woman trying to open it.
Sitting alone in the dark, worried that her flashlight might be seen through the cracks around the door, she begins to hear sounds coming from all directions from inside the hospital, even on the floor above her.
It takes a few minutes for Larry to get onto his feet and steady himself, which makes Curtis seriously reconsider his decision to take him along to Aberdeen. The last thing he needs right now is to be slowed down by a stranger that may or may not be injured — or worse. After Larry gets up and starts moving, however, his pace quickly improves, and before long the two of them begin making good time down the highway.
They walk in silence for a while, both of them wishing the wind would change direction and blow the stench coming from the harbor someplace else. If there's one constant on the Pacific Northwest coast, however, its the endless flow of air that washes straight in off the Pacific, and today is certainly no exception.
"Were you headed to Aberdeen too?" Curtis finally asks, tired of listening to his own internal thoughts.
"Yeah, my sister and her husband are there."
Curtis still isn't sure if this guy knows the full magnitude of what's happened to the world around them. In truth, neither does he — but he knows enough not to get his hopes up that Aberdeen will be in one piece. "When was the last time you heard from them?"
"Last night."
Surprised at the answer, Curtis waits for more details, but none are given. Apparently his new travel companion isn't much of a talker. "I'm headed there to find my son."
"Has he been there long?"
"No, as far as I know he's still on the highway, on his way there. They could be right ahead of us."
"Is he with somebody else?"
"A young girl."
Larry can tell that they both have secrets they're not willing to share at the moment. Although he hasn't asked a word about it, he doesn't really want Curtis to know that the wound on his arm was from a gunshot, or that the man who pulled the trigger might be waiting for them farther on down the road. He can only imagine what the man walking next to him has been through, what hardships and agony he's endured over the past few months — every man, woman and child still alive probably have similar stories.
Curtis looks past the scattered and mangled corpses along the shore and out to the waters of the harbor beyond, where cormorants and seagulls are floating on the surface, their lives completely unaffected by the destruction and chaos that surrounds them.
"I used to love this view." Curtis says, still looking at the harbor. "I can't believe everything has changed so quickly. I keep expecting to see a plane in the air, or hear some message on the radio telling us to hang in there just a little longer."
"Yeah, but I wouldn't hold my breathe. The fact that we haven't even seen military aircraft isn't a good sign."
Larry notices a lumber ship sitting about halfway between them and Aberdeen on the other side of the water. He stops for a moment and takes out his binoculars, bringing the ship into focus.
"Do you see anything?" asks Curtis.
At first he sees nothing but an empty deck on top and peeling paint down the sides that's giving way to the inevitable decay of rust. Then something else catches his eye, a group of seagulls gathered near one of the doorways just outside of the crew quarters. They're picking at whatever is left of a skeleton, or several judging from the number of bones that appear to be scattered across the deck.
"Looks like everyone on-board is dead."
The road ahead of them begins to curve away from the harbor, a welcome circumstance considering the rotting filth that lines the shore — and shortly after that there's an overgrown mobile home park on the north side of the highway, bordering the water.
Curtis turns and begins walking down the gravel driveway of the park, with Larry following right behind him. "Let's see if we can find a car in here that runs."
Most of the parking spaces in front of the homes are occupied, which most likely means that the people who once lived here never left. After checking a few of the newer cars for keys, Curtis politely knocks on one of the doors and waits, then eventually kicks it in after receiving no response. Inside he finds a set of keys hanging on the wall of the entryway, and two corpses resting in the next room — both of them little more than dried skin stretched over skeletons. He finds the car under a carport beside the mobile home, but when he sticks the key into the ignition and tries to start it nothing happens, just like every other car he's come across north of Cohasset.
Larry bends down, noticing the lack of lights on the dash. "Pop the hood, let me take a look."
Curtis releases the hood latch, then waits as Larry enters a nearby shed — coming out only a few minutes later with a short piece of wire. He takes the wire and places it between the two terminals on the battery.
"The battery is shot."
"I've tried a few dozen cars along the road, but none of them would run either."
Just past the mobile home park, on the other side of a narrow stream that flows into the harbor, they come across a small town that looks as though it was mostly abandoned even before the virus struck. The only two businesses, a gas station and a general store, both appear neglected and empty. A few dozen houses are clustered together on the harbor side of the road, with only a swamp on the south side.
"I was hoping to make better time." Curtis says, looking back at the sun that's getting dangerously close to the horizon, and is now partially blocked by a dark bank of clouds coming in from the coast.
"If you need to go faster, I understand. I'll catch up eventually."
"No, its not you. I can't move any faster than this anyway."
"Well, we need to find someplace to sleep before it gets dark — before those things come out."
"I was gonna to ask you about that, but I couldn't figure out how to the bring it up. You've seen them too?"
"Yeah, we saw them in Port Angeles first, then again in Sequim and Neah Bay."
"I saw them in Westport."
"How many?"
"Its hard to say — dozens, maybe more."
"There were hundreds in Port A
ngeles, maybe more. I can't imagine what Aberdeen looks like at night."
Not wanting to think about what Larry just said, Curtis looks at each of the houses along the road, trying to decide which one might be the safest to spend the night in, and wondering if Ben and Amanda might already be inside one of them. "Did you have a preference for which house we stay in?"
"I think I'd rather stay in the store or gas station. Sleeping in the same house as a dead body isn't high on my list of things I'd like to do."
"Sounds good to me."
They look inside the buildings, and decide that the store looks the cleanest of the two. That, and the fact that it still has a bit of merchandise left on the shelves. Not wanting to break the front door down, they end up finding an unlocked window in the back of the building that's just big enough for Larry to squeeze through.
Besides the usual array of travel gadgets and air fresheners seen in most small town stores, the latter of which actually comes in handy to block the foul odor from the harbor, the only item they find that's edible is a travel-sized box of saltine crackers. Curtis opens the box up, then hands Larry one of the two small bags inside.
"They only expired four years ago." he tells him, reading the box as he pops one of the stale crackers in his mouth.
"Hey, I'm not complaining."
Curtis sits down on a stool behind the counter, then turns around and gazes through a window that looks out onto the harbor. He can just barely make out the outlines of the buildings across the water through the smoke and fog, which are getting thicker as the night closes in on them. "It doesn't seem real, does it?"
Larry stands beside him and looks in the direction of the bridge, which is almost completely obscured. "No, it doesn't."
"I thought it was horrible a few days ago when I thought that everyone was dead — but I think this is worse..."
"Did you live around here? You know, before...?"
"No, we lived in Portland. We came here to get away from everyone."