“So?” Frank said.
“So think about it. When was the last time you saw a food cupboard this empty?”
“I’ve never seen one this empty.”
“Neither have I,” Hughes said in a knowing tone. He had also figured it out.
“How much do you want to bet,” Kyle said, “that the shelves in this town’s only grocery store are also practically empty?”
“They left because they ran out of food,” Annie said.
“Exactly,” Kyle said.
“That means they had somewhere to go,” Annie said.
“Or they thought they did,” Hughes said.
“Where do you suppose they went?” Annie said.
“Friday Harbor,” Kyle said. “They must have gone to Friday Harbor.” He didn’t know that for sure, but it made sense.
“What’s Friday Harbor?” Hughes said.
“Biggest city on the San Juan Islands,” Kyle said. “It’s the seat of San Juan County. And it’s on a different island. You guys remember when the government tried to set up shelters and food-distribution centers?”
“Sure,” Hughes said.
“No, but okay,” Frank said.
“It didn’t last long,” Kyle said. “Only a couple of days, really, until the state’s trucking and distribution system collapsed along with everything else. At least one shelter and food-distribution center was supposed to be set up in each county. That means Friday Harbor for this area. The government couldn’t set one up for each tiny island, so everyone who lived here just went over there. They took the ferry. And they drove. That’s why there are no cars here.”
“Let’s go there!” Annie said.
“To the ferry terminal?” Kyle said.
“To Friday Harbor,” she said.
No, Kyle thought. That was not going to happen. Why on earth would she want to go there? “Best-case scenario is it’s full of thousands of refugees. We won’t have a house or even hotel rooms to sleep in.”
“We’d be sleeping outside,” Hughes said.
“We’d be sleeping outside,” Kyle said.
“But there will be food,” Frank said. “At the distribution center.”
“Frank,” Kyle said. “The distribution system collapsed. So did the ferry service. So did everything else. The people in Friday Harbor ran out of food a long time ago.”
“But there will be others,” Annie said.
“Others?” Kyle said.
“Other people,” she said.
“Of course,” Kyle said. “That’s the problem.”
But Annie said it like she wanted to find other people.
That would not do. No, it would not do at all.
* * *
Night fell early this time of year, so they contented themselves with cold vegetable soup for dinner and retired early. They needed rest and could explore the town in the morning when they could see.
Hughes took the couch, his rifle across his chest with his finger next to the trigger guard. His body was exhausted, but he couldn’t sleep. All he could do was stare upward toward the dark ceiling with his ears tuned to hypersensitivity like a rabbit’s.
He sensed the others were awake, too, even though no one was moving or talking. At last they had some peace, some privacy, some comfort, and the time and space to think their own thoughts.
Hughes wondered what the others were thinking and how they were feeling. They seemed to think they were safe. They were not.
* * *
Annie slept alone in what might have once been a child’s room but now looked like the spare room. Kyle and Frank shared the master bedroom and Hughes took the couch. He wanted to be near the front door in case anyone—or any
thing
—tried to come inside.
She felt better than she had in days, partly because she was safe now in a beautiful place, but also because her twisted—
hungry hungry predator
—thoughts had quieted down.
Annie didn’t know if her mind had settled because she was recovering or because she was temporarily free of the terror and violence that brought those feelings and thoughts to the fore. She hoped she’d never find out but doubted she’d be so lucky.
Maybe she’d be so lucky if she spent the rest of her days in Eastsound, but she didn’t want to, not even after sighing at its lovely serenity. If God came down from the heavens and told her she could never go home, that her parents were dead, that there was nothing left for her in South Carolina, then, yes, she’d happily live out her life here in Eastsound, but that wasn’t going to happen. She couldn’t know those things, really know them, without going home.
If Kyle was right, if the population of Eastsound had moved to Friday Harbor, then that’s where she’d go first. There had to be planes there if it was the capital of the islands. And somebody would know how to fly one.
She wanted Kyle to join her. Hell, she wanted all the others to join her, but she’d never convince them, especially not Kyle. His entire existence had revolved around Orcas Island from the moment she met him. Now that they were here, she couldn’t possibly pry him away. Not even if she gave him everything.
Could
she give him everything? Part of her wanted to. She caught herself twisting the ring on her finger while thinking about him sometimes. What was that about, anyway? It was just a plain silver ring she’d found in a mall.
But she also needed some distance, not just from Kyle, but from everyone else. She couldn’t let anyone see her back with her shirt off. Obviously she had been bitten, and she had been bitten recently. The wound hadn’t entirely healed yet. Maybe when it scars over, she could make up a story about how her sister bit her when they were children.
Her sister. Jenny was almost certainly gone. But her parents might not be. She wondered where they were. They could still be at the house. Or perhaps they fled to an island like she had. They could be on Hilton Head off the coast near Savannah or the Florida Keys or maybe one of the Outer Banks Islands up in North Carolina.
She sank into a sleep that felt like the deep sleep of the dead.
Then found herself barefoot and freezing on the dark streets of Eastsound. The clouds had cleared. A quarter moon illuminated the houses, the trees, and the water. Stars glistened like diamonds shattered with hammers.
She felt a terrible cloying hunger within her and the coppery taste of blood in her mouth.
Oh God. She’d turned again. The virus was back. It never went away. It was only beaten into remission like cancer.
She stepped toward the house. There were people inside. Food inside. Food to sate her terrible hunger. Food to sate her terrible hunger and rage.
Up the stairs toward the door. Was she dreaming or was this real? She had no control over her body, as if a primal alien intelligence manipulated her muscles.
Kyle was inside that house. She wouldn’t—would she?
She struggled to gain control, to turn her body around and go back down the steps, but it was futile. She crossed the porch and slapped the door as hard as she could with her palms. She screamed—a terrible scream of hunger and fury—and battered the door again with both palms. She’d wrench the lock if she could not break it down.
Her hair hung down in front of her face, but she did not push it away. It was fine where it was. She liked it where it was.
The door opened. Kyle stood there before her.
“Annie?” he said.
She lunged and bit into his face. He screamed and she screamed and she woke in bed gasping, in animal panic and terror, and it took everything she had not to open her throat up for real and send everyone rushing into her room and asking what on earth was wrong with terrible Annie.
She breathed. Her heart slowed.
No, she hadn’t turned. She was just dreaming again. And this dream wasn’t a memory.
But she turned onto her side and cried softly into her pillow, knowing that she would never again be the same.
* * *
Kyle hated sleeping in the same bed as Frank. He’d take the floor if the house weren’t so cold. Instead, he lay as close to the edge of the bed as he could.
He assumed Frank was doing the same. They did not want to touch each other, not out of some latent sense of homophobia—Kyle had gotten over that silliness right after high school—but because he wished he was sleeping with Annie. Frank’s very existence in the bed next to him was a rude and obnoxious reminder that he was not. If Kyle had his own bed, he could just forget it and get some sleep, but Frank kept fidgeting and pulling the blankets.
Neither of them could sleep, so Kyle figured they might as well talk. “So you can’t sleep either.”
“Not a wink,” Frank said. “The bed is okay, but I can’t turn my brain off.”
“What are you thinking about?”
“That everything is going to change again.”
“It’s all going to change for the better.”
“But how will we live? What will we eat?”
“We can fish. Grow food. Trap squirrels. Hunt deer. Raise cows.”
“Cows? Where on earth are we going to get cows?”
“There are some farms between here and the other towns. If the cows haven’t starved, and they probably haven’t, we can bring them closer to town.”
“How are we going to do that?” Frank said. “Who knows anything about cows?”
“I don’t know, Frank. We’ll figure it out. Humans have been raising cows for thousands of years. How hard could it be? Primitive people figured it out.”
“I suppose,” Frank said. After a long pause he added, “You really think we’ll be okay?”
“We are the luckiest people on earth,” Kyle said. He turned onto his side and quietly thought about Annie.
* * *
Parker woke to the sound of splashing water—a fish jumping in the inlet, perhaps, or one of his companions throwing a rock to get his attention.
He rose from bed feeling more refreshed and alive than he had for months. Today, he thought, is the first day of the new Parker.
Wisps of fog curled in the trees. The sea was flat as a pond. He heard water licking the sides of the boat and a chipmunk or squirrel running along a tree branch on shore. The idyllic village of Eastsound looked like a place where hobbits might live, a peaceful and beautiful retreat free of the death and destruction and mayhem wrecking the continent.
He felt several pounds lighter when he imagined his future self rising from a snug bed in one of the town’s little houses, tossing a log onto a crackling fire, and cooking up deer steaks for breakfast for himself and a faceless woman he hadn’t met yet.
The water was so calm he wasn’t even afraid to jump in. It would be cold—he knew that—but he could be ashore in thirty seconds or so, and then he’d be fine, albeit wet.
He stepped into the boat’s cramped bathroom and found a disposable razor and a can of shaving gel on the sink. Cool Ocean scent. Kyle’s. Frank and Hughes used Barbasol foam. Parker squirted some into his hand and sniffed. Contrary to the label, it smelled nothing at all like the ocean. The ocean smelled of salt spray, seaweed, and fish. This stuff just smelled like shaving gel.
His face looked like hell in the mirror. His beard was so long now it added ten years to his age and knocked at least another ten off his IQ. And it wasn’t just the beard that added ten years. His eyes were baggier than ever. Brand-new lines slashed his forehead. His companions also must have aged years in the last couple of months, though he could hardly imagine Kyle looking much less mature than he already did.
Inside the mini cabinet he found a pair of barber scissors and used them to trim away most of his beard. He did a messy job of it but didn’t care because he was going to take the rest of it off with a razor, but he looked like a deranged person with only random parts of his beard hacked away. He chuckled to himself when he imagined what his companions would think and say if he showed up on the island looking like that. They’d want to lock his ass up.
The tap water was cold, but he used it and the gel to get rid of the rest of his beard. The razor burned his skin and left tiny red bumps on his neck, but an old familiar face looked back at him in the mirror when he finished. The original Parker. The pre-apocalypse Parker. The Parker before he turned into a big raging asshole. The Parker none of his companions had ever seen. A new face to go with the new attitude. The instant they see him, he thought, they’ll know something has changed.
He climbed the steps onto the deck and heard a door open and close in the distance. Sound really carried nowadays. He still wasn’t used to it. Then he saw Annie heading down the street toward the shore with a bounce in her step. She seemed to have slept well and to feel as content as he did. She had a purple bath towel draped over her shoulders and carried what looked like a set of dry clothes.
“Good morning!” she said and waved as though they were old friends. Were they friends? Was it still not too late for him to redeem himself even in her eyes?
He waved back.
“I brought you a towel!” she said, “and some clean clothes. I think these should fit, but if not we can get you some more.”
“You’re very kind. Thank you.” And he meant it. How lovely it was to have friends.
The day was cloudy, but she shielded her eyes with her hand as she looked over the water at him. “Did you shave?”
“I did,” he said and smiled.
“You look different even from here! The water’s pretty cold, but you’ll warm up quick when you dry off. And you’ll feel better after a bath even if it’s in seawater.”
She was right, but not quite in the way that she thought. He’d feel better after his bath because he’d be out of the sea. He sat on the edge of the deck with his feet dangling over the side and thought, Just look at the shore. Don’t look down at the water. Look at the shore and it will be over in seconds.
But he couldn’t help looking down at the water. It was murky, full of algae or plankton or whatever it was that made the Northwest’s waters so dark. He was grateful for that. He knew the water was too deep for his feet to touch bottom, and he didn’t want to know just how deep. He was no safer in seven feet of water than in seven miles of water, of course. All that mattered is that he couldn’t stand on the bottom without drowning. If the water was eighty feet deep and clear, however, he’d be able to
see
that it’s eighty feet deep. And he’d freak.