“The color is a bit strange,” Kyle said, “but it doesn’t mean anything. It’s just something to do with the clouds.”
The light in the sky had looked a bit odd, now that she thought about it. It took on an odd fluorescence similar to the light in a meat locker or Walmart. But Kyle was right. It didn’t mean anything. Frank was just a little on edge. They were all a little on edge, especially Parker.
She dreaded the thought of getting dressed again. She’d freeze the minute she put her wet clothes back on.
She stood up, wrapped the towel around her body—taking care to ensure that her bite mark was covered—and opened the door. Kyle, Hughes, and Frank were drying off in the next room. None had any clothes on.
“Sorry!” she said and went back into the bathroom, leaving the door ajar so they could talk.
“Kyle,” she said, “I understand what you’re saying about not breaking into anyone’s house, but we need some dry clothes and we don’t have time to look for a store. We’re going to get hypothermia walking around in wet clothes. And what if we got attacked right now?”
“We’re not going to be attacked,” Kyle said.
Hughes and Frank said nothing.
“Look at us,” she said, “freezing our bare asses off. This is ridiculous.”
“She’s right,” Frank said. “I’m still freezing my ass off even now that it’s dry.”
“I agree,” Hughes said. “Like it or not, we need to bust into somebody’s house.”
* * *
Hughes did wonder if he was being a little bit paranoid. He’d tried to talk Parker down earlier, and now he played that same talk back to himself.
What’s fear, anyway? It’s not the same thing as terror. He felt terror when those things rushed at him. It’s the body’s response to a visible threat.
Years ago he figured it out. The fact that you’re afraid of something is proof that it’s not actually happening. If a man points a gun at you, the only reason you’re afraid of getting shot is because he hasn’t shot at you. If he was shooting at you, you’d be afraid of getting hit. And if you did get hit, you’d be afraid of bleeding out. And if you had bled out, you’d already be dead.
Fear is about what
might
happen next, which means it might not.
So Hughes thought it through logically. None of those things were in town. Nor were they out in the trees adjacent to town. A different part of the island might be infected, but if those things were close enough to threaten him and the others, they would have heard his rifle shot earlier even if they were too far away to see the boat or hear talking and splashing.
Nor were the townsfolk lying in wait to ambush anybody. That would make no kind of sense.
So why couldn’t he relax? Something in the air? In the sky? He couldn’t help but imagine someone—or something—watching them from behind drawn curtains. It was his mind and body’s evolutionary response to being hunted before we invented the technology that made us apex predators. But he didn’t see or hear so much as a squirrel.
He put on his sopping-wet clothes, felt his body temperature drop a little again, and took the others out onto the street.
The light in the sky still looked strange and weirdly fluorescent. He’d seen light like this in the past, usually before one of the Northwest’s rare summer thunderstorms. The weather was finally going to change then, and most likely dramatically.
The street was silent. He could actually hear the boat rising and falling on tiny waves way out in the water.
Something else was wrong with the town, but he hadn’t yet figured out what. It was right there at the edge of his mind, but he hadn’t quite grasped it. That was the reason he couldn’t relax.
“This way,” Kyle said and pointed to a street off to the left, “will take us to the center of town.”
So they went that way. And as soon as they rounded the corner, Hughes figured out what was bugging him.
The street continued in a straight line as far as he could see. And there were no cars on it. None. Not even parked cars.
Annie noticed it too. “Whoa. Where are the cars?”
“See,” Kyle said. “I told you. Everyone left. They left in their cars.”
“The hell’d they go?” Hughes said. “This is an island.”
“There are two smaller towns down the road,” Kyle said. “They could have gone to one of those.”
“The whole town?” Annie said. “Why would people from the big town evacuate to a small town?”
“Right. But the ferry terminal is ten miles south of here, so they didn’t just leave town. They left the island.”
“Why on earth would they do that?” Annie said.
“I don’t
know
,” Kyle snapped.
Kyle and Annie obviously liked each other. Everybody could see that, but now Hughes felt the tension between them. Not his problem. He just wanted some dry clothes and some time to work out this puzzle.
“Sorry,” Kyle said.
Annie said nothing.
“I’m freezing and agitated,” Kyle said. “I’ve been dreaming about this place for months, and now that we’re finally here, you guys are all freaking out. It’s actually perfect that nobody’s here. The residents might have run us off otherwise. They might’ve even shot at us.”
“I’d feel better if I knew why they left,” Annie said. “But you’re right. This is the best place we could be.”
Hmm, Hughes thought. We’ll see about that.
* * *
Let’s try that house,” Kyle said and pointed to a trim wooden Craftsman behind a café. The lawn was overgrown, but otherwise the home looked lovingly cared for. The porch spanned the whole front of the house and even wrapped partway around the south side. Two comfortable-looking rocking chairs sat near the front door with a dainty wooden table between them. The porch was practically an outdoor living room. You could see the water from there. Kyle imagined moving in with Annie.
“No breaking in,” he said. “Let’s first try the doors and the windows. If it’s all locked up tight, we’ll go to the next one.” He didn’t want busted windows in the house he hoped to be sharing with Annie.
“Just break a window if it’s locked,” Annie said. “I’m freezing and need some dry clothes right now.”
“The house won’t be usable,” Kyle said.
“There are plenty of others!” she said and shivered.
Kyle sank a little inside, but he didn’t argue. He walked up the wooden steps and heard, and felt, the sickening squish of his sopping-wet socks. After finding dry clothes, he’d need to find a plastic bag to put them in so they wouldn’t also get wet when he swam back to the boat. They had all kinds of supplies on the boat, but no plastic bags.
He tried the handle, but it was locked, so he knocked. “Hello!” he said. “Anyone home?”
“Step back,” Hughes said. “I’ll kick it in.”
“Just a minute. Let me try the windows.”
Kyle headed back to the sidewalk. He walked around the north side of the house and into the back, where a bedroom window slid open. “Got it!”
The window was only five feet off the ground, so he climbed inside easily enough.
He saw at once that the house belonged to old people. A country-style bedspread and a pair of reading glasses next to an antique lamp on the bedside table gave it away.
The house smelled of must and rotting garbage. At least that’s what he hoped it was. He doubted anything had died in there. The smell was faint. It didn’t smell like a dead rat or dog or cat or—God forbid—a person. It just smelled a little like the owners had neglected to take out the trash one last time before they left town.
He made his way to the faded living room and opened the front door.
“It’s all good,” he said. “Smells a little so we should open the windows, but otherwise everything seems to be fine.”
Hughes stepped inside and scanned the front room. “You two wait outside. I’m gonna check the place out.”
“It’s fine,” Kyle said.
He’d know if someone was in there. The presence of even silent and hiding humans was strangely detectable. At least he’d always imagined that was the case. Empty houses have a feel, and this one felt empty, like his condo always felt when he returned home from a three-day weekend in the mountains. He heard no sound, sensed no living vibrations, nothing.
Hughes checked the bedrooms as Kyle stepped into the dining room and saw two neat place settings at the table. In the kitchen, the sink and counters were spotless. The people who owned this place were either neat freaks or they cleaned up on their way out so they wouldn’t come home to a mess.
“Clear!” Hughes said from the hallway.
“It does smell slightly in here,” Annie said. She and Frank were still in the living room.
“It’s getting dark, guys,” Frank said. “Maybe we should stay here instead of at the hotel. There’s more room and more stuff we can use. We can open the windows to air the place out for a bit. It’s not like it’s gonna get any colder in here if we open ’em.”
“And there’s a kitchen,” Kyle said.
“And more than one exit,” Hughes said as he returned from the bedrooms.
Kyle stepped into the kitchen. There was, indeed, a back door in the mudroom behind the kitchen just as Hughes knew there would be. Two exits were great in an emergency, but that also meant the house had two entrances. It would be easier to escape but harder to defend. If it came to that. But Kyle knew it wouldn’t.
He opened one of the cabinets and saw a neat stack of plates and bowls. Inside another cabinet were drinking glasses and coffee mugs.
Frank opened the drawer under the microwave. “Flashlight,” he said and pressed a button on its neck. A yellow beam placed a blotchy circle of light on the refrigerator.
“Can I see that for a sec?” Kyle said.
Frank handed it over.
The thing didn’t weigh much and the light wasn’t powerful. It looked like the kind of flashlight that sometimes went dark and had to be shaken. But it worked.
Kyle opened a third kitchen cabinet. And when he pointed the flashlight inside, he knew at once why everyone on the island had left.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Twilight settled over the water and chilled the air. Soon Parker would have to go below deck.
The light had been strange that evening. A slight bluish hue washed over everything and bathed the island and inlet with a surreality that he’d found unnerving. It wasn’t a portent or anything, but it didn’t make him feel any better.
He did, however, feel a bit better when nothing happened after the others went ashore. The town really was empty. The people were gone. Those
things
were gone if they were ever even there. He had overreacted when he refused to go with them, and now he felt more alone than he ever had in his life.
The light continued to wane. Twilight faded to dusk. He could see the dark outlines of houses and trees, but the details had faded to black. The boat bounced and rocked as tiny waves kissed the sides. All was silent. His fear settled in the gloaming and went down with the light. If night wasn’t falling, he’d be tempted to swim ashore.
But only tempted. He didn’t dare tell the others, but he refused to swim in the ocean. The only reason he didn’t refuse to swim in this inlet was because it wasn’t really the ocean. It was filled with seawater, sure, but it looked like a lake. He’d do his best to pretend it
was
a lake and try to act fearless when it came time to jump in.
He was not going to do it in the dark, though. Not a chance. Swimming in the dark when he couldn’t see land might be even more terrifying than swimming in the open ocean. But if nothing dramatic happened that night, he’d join his friends in the morning and pray they did not see the fear on his face.
His friends. He actually thought of them as his friends now. Before they were simply companions. And they were annoying companions. Necessary, but annoying, especially Kyle. But Kyle had done good with this island. There was no getting around it now. Sailing up to Orcas was brilliant.
It could have gone another way. The island could have been infected, crowded, or hostile, but instead it was empty. The universe had finally taken mercy and provided a respite for him and his friends.
One of his friends was a woman. Their little group was made up of five, but only one was female. She might as well be the last woman on earth. Has Annie stopped to think about the implications of that?
Parker knew he had no chance with her. Kyle was her age and seemed more her style, especially now that he’d scored so big with this island. They wouldn’t share Annie. She’d never go for it. Nor would they fight for her. They certainly were not going to rape her. At least Parker wouldn’t. That was for damn sure. Hughes would take his head off. Hell, Parker would take somebody’s head off for raping a woman.
There had to be other survivors. More people could show up any second. More probably would show up eventually. It just made sense. There had to be thousands of boats in the Puget Sound area, and there were dozens of islands. He imagined a micro-civilization of hardscrabble survivalists arising in the Pacific Northwest’s archipelago and slowly, gingerly, moving back to the mainland once those things had died off.
They had to die off eventually. For God’s sake, they’d been reduced to mindless psychotics. They had no civilization. They couldn’t build things or grow things. They could only destroy things until they themselves were destroyed or killed off by starvation, bullets, hammers, and weather.
He felt lonely on the boat, but he’d still feel lonely even if he was onshore with the others. He’d isolated himself with his atrocious behavior. That had to change. The others might even forget he’d been a jerk if he could be nice for a while. After a couple of weeks they could chalk it up to stress under pressure. That was understandable and forgivable. Wasn’t it?
* * *
Kyle knew why everyone left the island. “Look.” He stepped back from the cabinet while keeping the flashlight pointed inside. The others peered in. “It’s practically empty.”
Inside was a half-bag of rice, three cans of vegetable soup, half a packet of instant oatmeal, and that was it.