Kyle put his hand on her shoulder. It didn’t make her feel any better, but she appreciated the effort.
“Hughes,” Kyle said. “Go ahead and fire a shot. Just one.”
Hughes pointed the rifle at the sky. Annie plugged her ears with her fingers. Frank ducked just before Hughes squeezed the trigger.
The crack of the rifle echoed six or seven times off the sides of the buildings.
“That ought to get somebody’s attention,” Frank said and stood back upright.
It did.
The hotel sat a block back from the marina. Several of its windows were shattered. The front door was blackened by fire. Three human shapes shambled out of it. They didn’t run, didn’t yell, didn’t make noises of any kind.
Annie squinted. Were they regular people? Hughes pointed his rifle in their direction and aimed down the sights.
They didn’t look right, didn’t walk right. Annie knew that shamble. Knew it well. They were looking for food and hadn’t seen anything yet.
“Are they people?” Frank said.
“Don’t think so,” Hughes said.
“They look … odd,” Kyle said.
“How come they’re not running?” Frank said.
“I’m not sure they’ve seen us,” Kyle said.
“They’re not people,” Hughes said.
Annie bit her lip.
“I’ve never seen ’em so slow,” Frank said.
“That’s because they’re always chasing your ass,” Hughes said. “These haven’t seen us.”
“Yes, they have,” Parker said. He had come up from below. “They see us. They’re walking right toward us.”
They were, indeed, walking right toward the boat, down the hotel steps and toward the marina. But still they weren’t running, nor were they screaming. Annie knew why. They knew they couldn’t get to the boat.
They stepped onto the dock.
“Jesus, they’re coming right for us,” Frank said.
“They can’t get to us,” Annie said.
“How do you know?” Frank said.
“They aren’t running or screaming out to the others.”
“You think that’s why they scream?” Frank said. “They’re alerting the others?”
She nodded.
“How do you know that?” Frank said.
“I just do.”
“She’s right,” Kyle said. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? I mean, look at them. They’re just coming out onto the dock to check us out. Fascinating.”
The three figures lurched their way to the end of the dock and stopped. They stared across the water. At Annie.
She shuddered, but Kyle was right. It really was fascinating, as if she was looking at dangerous animals from a distance on a safari.
She was pretty sure two of the three on the dock were men. The third was smaller, perhaps a young woman or teenager. They were filthy and ragged. And twitchy. Annie remember that twitchiness. She didn’t know what caused it, but she remembered it. She might even be able to imitate it if she had to.
She couldn’t smell them from this distance, but they looked like they smelled bad. And they stood there at odd angles that didn’t look comfortable. They didn’t shift their weight or sit down. They just sort of stopped when they reached the end of the dock and stood in whatever position their bodies happened to be in when they ran out of boards.
They weren’t going to jump in. She wasn’t sure why, exactly, but she sensed she wouldn’t have jumped in either when she had been infected. They appeared to be unthinking, but they weren’t entirely. Their thoughts were deranged, but they did have thoughts. And they remembered certain things from before. She did, anyway, when she was infected. She’d remembered how basic physics worked. She wouldn’t have been able to use tools, but she would not have jumped off a building. She would, however, have run into a hail of bullets if someone had shot at her.
Kyle looked at them with a rapt expression on his face. He tilted his head ever so slightly as if he were a curious child. “They sure are strange, aren’t they?”
Yes, but Olympia wasn’t a zoo. She hadn’t come here to gawk. She came to look for Jenny.
“I’m going to call for my sister again,” she said.
“Right,” Kyle said. He had forgotten. “Hughes, can you spare one more round from your rifle?”
Annie heard something. It was the faintest possible sound, but it was there.
“Shh,” Hughes said.
Then she saw first one figure and then several emerging from the downtown area and heading toward the marina.
Feet. She was hearing the sound of feet. Hundreds of feet. Thousands of feet. They had awakened the city.
She yelled again as loud as she could.
“Jenny! Jennifer Starling!”
The sick ones at the end of the dock made grunting and snuffling noises.
“More coming,” Frank said. “Eight or nine of them from behind that crab restaurant.”
“We can’t stay here,” Hughes said and tensed up.
Hughes didn’t have to tell Annie that she wouldn’t find Jenny. She knew. And she wasn’t certain that none of the infected wouldn’t try to swim to the boat. If hundreds gathered on the marina and so much as one screamed and jumped in the water, they might all pour in after. That’s how they worked. Their screams didn’t only mean
I see prey
. Their screams also meant
Follow me
.
“Yeah, I think we better get outta here,” Frank said.
Annie nodded.
“I’m sorry, Annie,” Kyle said.
She was not going to protest. And she was not going to cry. But she was also not going to say, “It’s okay.”
Kyle raised the sails and turned the boat north. The skyline and shoreline faded into the background. And when the inlet curved to the east, the city vanished forever.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Parker felt impressed with Kyle for once. The dumb shit was actually pulling this off. They were on his mythical boat. They might even make it to his mythical island.
Parker never felt entirely comfortable on boats, but they sure beat the mainland these days. That was for damn sure. It wasn’t boats that made him nervous so much as the water. Being on the water was fine.
In
the water was not.
Swimming pools didn’t bother him, but lakes and rivers sure did. And the ocean—only a pack of those things freaked him out more than falling in the ocean. Human beings don’t belong where teeth-baring animals as big as couches live in murky depths where the bodies of the drowned sink to the untouchable bottom.
He’d have a panic attack if he fell overboard, so he stayed below deck, where he didn’t have to think much about it. He had his own bedroom down there. And the bathroom worked. The toilet flushed and water came out of the shower. Kyle said that wouldn’t last, but they had it for now. The kid deserved props.
Not that Parker would say so. But he’d dial back the insults and the aggression for a while, and he might keep them dialed back for good if this island business worked out.
He felt great below deck. It was warmer down there, for one thing. Even his trusted old army jacket couldn’t hold off the bite from the wind off the water.
For the first time in months Parker took long deep breaths and felt himself settle. What if he could spend the rest of his life like this? Wouldn’t that be something? He might be able to go back to being the old Parker, the one that wasn’t such a big hard-ass. The others might even decide that they like him or could at least tolerate him.
The possibilities were certainly interesting. He wasn’t sure how many islands Puget Sound had, but it was a lot. Dozens. Maybe even 100. Some had towns on them with houses, stores, restaurants, bars, and cafés. There were mountains and trees and beaches and vistas. People spent their whole lives in those towns. Parker doubted they were interested in having him as a permanent houseguest, but he knew there were plenty of extra houses. The San Juan Islands were vacation destinations. Rich people in Seattle owned weekend houses up there. Since almost everybody was dead, those houses were probably empty.
Then again, the islands might be incredibly crowded. Surely Kyle wasn’t the only one who thought to sail up there. What if instead of an idyllic retreat they found a vast refugee camp?
And if the islands were infected? Well, they couldn’t
all
be infected.
* * *
Hughes felt relieved when night fell. He did not want to look at Seattle as they sailed past it. The city must be in unspeakably ghastly condition by now. He imagined columns of smoke, toppled skyscrapers, and heaping mounts of dead bodies. Surely his imagination was worse than reality—after all, Olympia wasn’t that bad—but he didn’t want to know how hard his hometown had fallen.
His wife and son were buried there. Buried deep enough in the yard with a proper shovel where those things couldn’t get to them.
He hadn’t cried when he buried them. He knew he wouldn’t stop if he started, and the city was so dangerous by then that if he couldn’t stop, he wouldn’t survive.
So he felt relieved when night fell. He could think about something else for a while.
He sat on the deck. The air chilled him, especially when the wind picked up and punched into the sails, but the stars above looked like a Hubble telescope photograph. Hughes had never seen so many before. City lights used to drown most of them out, but there they were in all their billions and glory.
The others remained below deck, except Kyle, who manned the sails. The wind slacked off a bit after the sun went down, but moonlight lit the way, so Kyle kept the boat moving. He was eager to get to the islands and their new home.
Hughes thought he heard something, but he wasn’t sure. “You hear that?”
“Hear what?” Kyle said and cocked his head to the side.
“Shh.”
He wasn’t sure what he was hearing. It was some kind of low-pitched roar, faint, like ocean waves at a distance, just barely at the edge of his perception. Maybe if the wind stopped blowing and the boat stopped moving, he could figure out what it was.
“I don’t hear anything,” Kyle said.
“It’s far away,” Hughes said. “Not close to the boat.”
Hughes couldn’t see Kyle’s face. All he could see was the young man’s outline against a darkened backdrop of mountains and a shimmering ceiling of stars.
“Oh,” Kyle said. “I think I hear it now. Is that a plane? It can’t be.”
“It’s not mechanical,” Hughes said.
And then he knew what it was.
“Oh, sweet Jesus,” he said and felt the adrenaline starting.
“What?” Kyle said, alarmed. “What is that?”
“Stay away from the shore. Keep us as close to the center of the channel as you can.”
“What is it?” Kyle said, a little too loudly.
“Shh! Don’t say anything. Be very quiet.”
Kyle crouched next to him. “I’m dropping anchor and folding the sails if you don’t tell me what you think you’re hearing.”
“I could be wrong.”
“Tell me.”
“God, you’d better hope that I’m wrong. Go get the others.”
“Tell me what you think that is.”
Hughes swallowed hard. “We’re coming up on Tacoma, right? Isn’t it just up ahead?”
“Anderson Island is behind us on the left,” Kyle said, “so, yes, Tacoma is up ahead on the right.”
“Shh. Listen.”
The noise was a little bit louder now.
* * *
Kyle thought the sound was like the roar seashells made when he held them up to his ear, only higher-pitched. Hughes was being paranoid, but fear is contagious, so he went below deck to summon the others.
Parker and Frank were playing cards by flashlight at the dining table. Annie had crashed on the pullout.
“Guys,” Kyle said. “I need you all to come up here.”
“What’s up?” Frank said.
Annie moaned and rolled over.
Parker said nothing.
“Hughes and I are hearing a noise,” Kyle said. “We’re not sure what it is.”
Frank stood up.
Annie sat up.
Parker didn’t move.
“Come on,” Kyle said. “I need all of you up here. You too, Parker.”
The three of them stood and joined him and Hughes on the deck.
“Shh,” Hughes said.
Everybody was silent for a couple of moments. The noise wasn’t loud, but it was there.
“I don’t hear anything,” Annie whispered.
“I do,” Parker said.
“I do too,” Frank said.
How could Annie not hear it?
“Oh,” Annie said. “You mean that faraway sound. I thought you meant the boat was making some noises.”
“Shh,” Hughes said. “Listen and tell me what you think that is.”
Everyone shushed and kept quiet for a few minutes. The sound grew faintly louder as the boat sailed north. It sounded a little like a distant stadium roar.
“What is that?” Annie said. She sounded afraid.
“Good God,” Parker said. “Tacoma’s up ahead, right?”
“It is,” Kyle said.
“
How
many people live in Tacoma?” Parker said. “Or used to live in Tacoma?”
“Well,” Kyle said. “It’s part of Seattle metro, which has, or had, more than 3 million people.”
“So there must be thousands and thousands of those things running around,” Parker said. “That’s what we’re hearing. Thousands and thousands of them screaming at once.”
* * *
Kyle desperately wanted them to be wrong, but they weren’t, and it was obvious as they got nearer to the city. First they saw the dark shapes of houses on the hills rising above the shoreline, and then, after rounding Point Defiance Park, he could clearly see the dark outlines of cranes at the port and Tacoma’s blacked-out skyscrapers.
The noise was intense now. It sounded like the screaming horde outside their grocery store times 100 or even 1,000. And it no longer sounded like a distant stadium roar. It was as if Kyle were standing inside the stadium.
Somebody ought to drop a nuclear bomb on the city.
“What on earth are they
doing
?” Annie said.
“Hunting,” Hughes said. “Starving. Fighting each other. Eating each other. Who knows? But I’m sure as hell glad we’re not in the middle of that. I’d rather stick my head in a garbage disposal.”
Kyle had been a little concerned that his companions might want to stop at one of the nearer islands rather than continue to the San Juans. He didn’t want to because the islands of southern Puget Sound were too close to Seattle and Tacoma and far more likely to be infected or, in the best-case scenario, jam-packed with starving and violent survivors like Lane. The San Juans were farther away from the population centers and much harder to get to. None were connected to the mainland by bridges. They’d be safer there for sure.