“
Shh
,” Hughes whispered. “Shut your ass up. They’re right outside.”
Hughes could hear them shuffling up the street now. They didn’t walk the same as regular people. They ran more or less the same as regular people, but they staggered when they walked as if they were drunk. The herd outside seemed to have no particular destination in mind. They just stumbled into town as if they had nowhere better to go.
They probably wouldn’t try to get into the house without a reason, so as long as everyone stayed down and kept quiet, everything should be fine. As long as none of them shambled onto the porch and peered in the window. The glare and the mesh wouldn’t work so well from that close.
The bathroom down the hall had only one small window, and since bathrooms are private, the window was high enough off the ground outside that no one—and no
thing
—could see in without standing on a stepladder or something.
“You all get into the bathroom,” Hughes whispered, “and lock the door. Don’t walk. Crawl. And do it quietly. Crawl slowly. Sound really carries.”
“You staying here?” Frank said.
Hughes nodded.
“But—” Kyle said.
“Just go,” Hughes said. “Now. And be
quiet
.”
They went. He stayed. And he peeked ever so carefully through the mesh over the windowsill.
As many as three dozen filthy, tattered, and diseased human forms dragged their feet at quarter-speed up the street. Their eyes seemed not to focus on anything in particular, as if they were looking through, over, or past things rather than at things. War veterans called it the thousand-yard stare.
They didn’t look like that at all when something caught their attention. Then they looked
focused
.
Five-thousand people lived on the island, but they couldn’t all have turned. Most were probably dead, their bodies consumed, their bones scattered somewhere back near the ferry terminal—the plague’s likely insertion point on the island.
Eastsound’s population must have driven there to wait for a boat to take them to Friday Harbor as Kyle had said. But something went wrong. Maybe they waited for a boat that never came, or the boat showed up with a bunch of the infected on board.
And they must have heard Hughes’ gunshot the first morning and headed back in the direction of town. But if that was the case, why did it take them so long to show up? Maybe they heard the sound but didn’t know exactly where it came from, so they just started ambling about in that general direction. He should have thought of that. Damn, he should have thought of that.
The herd turned left off Main Street and headed right toward the house. Hughes fought the urge to duck. They wouldn’t be able to make out the details of his face through the mesh, but they might see sudden movement. If they attacked the house, they’d be inside in seconds. And there would be nowhere to run but out the back door.
Hughes and the others might make it out. They could run for the water. The shore was only 200 or so feet away. How long did it take to run 200 feet? Thirty seconds? The horde would come after them, but they’d get away if they had a fifteen-second head start.
But the herd was between the house and the water. And they just kept coming, more and more of them now. Another two dozen came into view from the west. The nearest ones were less than 100 feet away and coming straight toward him.
* * *
Annie heard two things: her own heartbeat in her ears and the heavy breathing of four panicked people. One tiny window at head level let only a small amount of heavy gray light in, but she didn’t dare stand anywhere near it. Neither did Kyle, Parker, or Frank.
Kyle sat on the edge of the claw-foot tub with his face in his hands. Frank sat splayed out, stunned, on the floor. Parker stood near the sink and flexed his fingers like he wanted to strangle the infected to death in the street. She leaned with her ear against the door leading into the hallway, straining to hear even the tiniest sound.
“I can’t believe it,” Kyle said. She felt a fresh rush of panic.
Be quiet already.
“If you don’t shut up right now,” Parker whispered in a voice that sounded like hissing, “I’m going to beat you to death.”
Annie placed her hand on Parker’s shoulder.
“What do we do?” Frank whispered.
Nobody said anything for a few moments. Finally, Parker said quietly, “Let them pass. They obviously don’t know we’re here.”
“And then what?” Frank said.
Nobody replied.
Annie heard faint footsteps outside on the street, but they weren’t normal footsteps. They sounded like limping and scraping. She looked at the window. It was too small for a person to fit through, so the infected couldn’t get in. They’d have to come in through the door. But that also meant she couldn’t get out through that window. She and the others were trapped with only one exit.
The bathroom was a good place to be at the moment because they were invisible, but it would be the worst place to be if the house came under attack.
The window faced the side of the next house, not the street, and she thought about peeking out ever so carefully. She might be able to see some of the street and get an idea what was going on out there. But if she could see the street, the street could see her.
She took a few steps toward it, not intending to stand right in front of it, but to get close enough that she might be able to hear what’s going on out there. Parker grabbed her arm and shook his head.
“I just want to listen,” she whispered. “They won’t see me.”
The living-room floor was made of creaky old hardwood. The bathroom floor was tiled in white marble, so her steps made no sound.
She reached the window, ducked underneath it, cocked her head sideways so her right ear pointed upward, and heard a cough. Not a normal cough as if from a person with a seasonal cold, but a sickening wet rasp as if one of the infected was coughing up its own throat.
“Jesus,” Parker whispered.
Frank shushed him.
Everyone started when they heard a light tap on the door. Hughes.
“Come in,” Annie whispered and unlocked the door.
“Can’t,” Hughes whispered from somewhere near the floor. “They might see the door open. It’s visible from the street at just the right angle.”
Hughes must have crawled. He was awfully quiet about it because Annie didn’t hear him even though the hallway floor creaked. Hughes was good. It must have taken him a good couple of minutes.
“At least three or four dozen of them out there,” Hughes said. “Everybody just stay put and stay quiet and we’ll head back to the boat once they’ve moved on.”
Annie sat next to Kyle on the lip of the tub. Parker and Frank sat on the floor, Parker as far away from Kyle as he could get. The two wouldn’t look at each other.
Minutes passed. Annie exchanged concerned looks with everyone, but after a few more minutes she felt better. Feelings of terror gave way to fear, which gave way to dread. Then even the dread faded into boredom and torpor. The infected were still out there, but they had no idea anyone was inside the house.
Her body and mind could only sustain the feeling of fear for so long. Eventually, the human brain’s pharmacy ran out of adrenaline.
The infected were still out there. They were not moving on. She could hear them. It was as if on some basic level they knew they’d find more food in town than out on the road or in the forest. Or maybe, on another dim level, they recognized Eastsound as home and felt like they had nowhere to go.
The others had no idea what the infected were thinking, but Annie knew the answer was, not a lot. They don’t reason anything through. They just hunt down food and react to stimuli. When she was infected, she didn’t know her own name. She might have recognized her apartment, but she wasn’t even sure of that much.
She tried to imagine what she would have done in their place when the virus still had control of her body and mind, but with each day that passed she had a harder time remembering what it was like to be sick. At best, her memories of those events were like the memories of a dream that would dissipate like wisps of steam if she didn’t consciously try to hold onto them.
Another hour passed. Nobody moved. Nobody said anything. Nobody was relaxed—that was for sure—but they all had an easier time keeping calm. They were safe for now as long as they didn’t make any noise or try to go anywhere.
“What if,” Kyle finally said, “we try to imitate their movements and behavior? Pretend like we’re part of the pack?”
“That,” Parker said, “is the stupidest idea you’ve come up with yet. And that’s saying something.”
“We don’t look anything like them,” Hughes said.
“Only because they’re filthy,” Kyle said. “But they aren’t filthy when they first turn. The freshly turned ones don’t get attacked.”
“Man has a point,” Frank said.
“Think about it,” Kyle said. “Let’s say we took one of those things, somehow managed to give it a bath and put some fresh clothes on it, then took a picture of it while it was just standing there inert, when it wasn’t biting somebody’s face. If we showed that photograph to someone who didn’t know any better, would they be able to tell that they were looking at one of the infected?”
Hughes shook his head. “No. I don’t think so. But that doesn’t matter. Those things aren’t just standing around posing for pictures. They’re moving. And they move strangely. I don’t think you can imitate them. They recognize us just as easily as we recognize them.”
“They move as a herd,” Annie said. “We’d have to move with them. Go where they go. But right now they seem to be stalled. They’re just randomly milling around.”
“They’ll have to move on at some point,” Kyle said.
“Then all we have to do,” Annie said, “is go the opposite direction. We wait until they move on, then run to the boat.”
“And what if they stay out there all week?” Frank said.
“They won’t,” Kyle said.
“You don’t know that,” Frank said. “You have no idea what goes on in their … heads. They used to live in this town. Doesn’t seem like they’re going back to their own beds for the night, but they seem to remember this is where they belong.”
“But why are they here
now
all of a sudden?” Kyle said. “They weren’t here this afternoon. They weren’t here yesterday. They probably haven’t been here all week or even all month.”
“They heard my gunshot yesterday,” Hughes said on the other side of the door. “Just took them a while to get here. They didn’t know where the sound came from exactly. They only knew the direction.”
Annie felt herself sink. Hughes was probably right. It made sense.
“They looked tired,” Hughes said. “Like they’re dehydrated and hungry.”
Annie opened her mouth, then clamped it shut. For the briefest moment she forgot she wasn’t supposed to tell them she had been sick once herself. She wanted to say they knew to drink water when they found it, and that they also knew not to drink seawater. She remembered that much at least.
“The island has freshwater on it somewhere, right?” she whispered.
“There are five freshwater lakes on Orcas,” Kyle said. “That’s where we’ll get our own water.”
Parker looked incredulous. “In case you haven’t noticed,” he said, “the island is
infected
.”
“We’ll get some more ammunition and sweep it and clear it,” Kyle said.
“You are amazing,” Parker said. “Absolutely fucking amazing.”
“Those things are going to die, aren’t they?” Annie said. “When winter comes. I mean, what, they’re just going to sleep on the street out in the open? They’re going to do that in January?”
“Doesn’t really matter,” Frank said. “They could bust into some houses, but it’s no warmer in here than it is out there without a fire going.”
No one said anything else for a long, long time. The day slowly drained away. Nobody moved inside the house. Annie heard only an occasional grunting or scraping outside. Some of the infected were still out there. Eventually she noticed the light getting dimmer.
“Sun’s going down,” she whispered.
“Yeah,” Parker said. “We
noticed
.” She frowned at him, but he didn’t see her. He was looking at the window. She could tell he wanted to peek outside as much as she did.
Late evening faded to twilight. Annie heard a faint hissing outside the window and felt a squirt of adrenaline.
“What’s that?”
“Rain,” Kyle said.
Yes, the sound was just rain. Annie exhaled. She was still on edge. It was just barely raining outside. It sounded like little kisses on the leaves and the grass.
“Well that’s just great,” Parker said.
“Actually, it’s perfect,” Kyle said.
“You guys hear rain?” Hughes said from the other side of the door.
“Faintly,” Annie said. “It’s a light drizzle. It could stop any second.”
“If it picks up,” Kyle said, “those things might move on.”
“They might come in
here
,” Parker said.
“You should all hope it rains like a sonofabitch,” Hughes said. “Because that way they won’t hear us when we make a run for it.”
* * *
Parker knew he’d been right to sleep on the boat the first night. Goddamnit, if he’d stayed there just a couple more hours, he’d be fine right now.
The rain picked up. It was steady now, and loud. It drummed on the roof. The house was freezing inside. The autumn rains had finally arrived, and the Northwest had a short autumn. Winter, the rainiest time of the year in this part of the country, comes early and would be upon them in no time.
Parker consoled himself with the wonderful fact that most or all of the infected would die of exposure if not starvation. Homeless people used to live on the streets of Seattle and Portland during the winter. They were losers, for sure, but at least they had the sense to get out of the rain and sleep under a bridge wrapped in blankets. The infected, near as he could tell, were still out in the elements. They wouldn’t get hypothermic and die in the next couple of hours, but at least they hadn’t come in the house. Yet.
He could barely see a damn thing at this point. Even though the sun had gone down, there was still probably more light outside than in the bathroom. A few stray rays still bounced around in the atmosphere, but the darkness in the house was about to become absolute.