The trail became steeper as it wound its way toward the top of the cliff on the left.
“We’re going to be okay,” Kyle said as they walked.
“All we’re doing here,” Parker said, “is delaying the inevitable.”
“Man, can’t you stop being yourself for even five minutes? If we’re safe now, we can be safe in the future.”
“Doesn’t matter if we’re safe here because we’ll die if we stay. You said so yourself. We’ll starve to death. We can’t grow any food. There’s no farmland on this island.”
“There are no farms in Alaska, either, but that’s where you said you wanted to go.”
“Farms or not, people live off the land up in Alaska.”
“People live off the land here.”
“No, they don’t. The people who lived here loaded up on supplies from Seattle. This island is not a self-contained system.”
Kyle stopped and turned around. He looked like a glowing cyborg with that night-vision thing on his eye. “We’re not going to stay on this island. We’re going back to Orcas.”
“The hell we are.”
“We’ll sweep it and clear it and start new lives there. We’ll plant crops and build irrigation ditches and raid the mainland for solar power. We’ll cut trees for firewood and sleep in beds and raise chickens and barbecue deer steaks and eat apples and cheese for dessert.”
“Good God, listen to yourself. Apples and cheese? Are you fucking kidding me?”
“Apples grow here, you know. And cows live on that island. It can’t be that hard to figure out how to make cheese. We can hit a library on the mainland and bring back books that teach us how to do all that stuff.”
They weren’t far from the cliff edge. He’d missed it coming down when all he had was a flashlight, but he could see it now with the night vision. There it was, yawning over the beach below and the bright green sea beyond.
Parker started walking again. Toward the cliff. Kyle followed.
“What I want to know, Kyle” Parker said, “is why you think you get to make these decisions for everyone. Nobody appointed you captain. Every decision you’ve made since I met you has been a disaster.”
“We’ll vote,” Kyle said. “And you’ll lose. You can go to Alaska by yourself if you want. No one will stop you because no one will miss you.”
Parker stopped in his tracks. Kyle stopped too.
“Excuse me?” Parker said. He flushed with heat and anger. And shame. Anger because Kyle had said it, and shame because he knew Kyle was right.
“You’re welcome to stay, but no one will mind if you go. You treat everybody like shit. It should be obvious even to you that everyone hates you.”
“Annie doesn’t hate me.”
“Of course she does, Parker.”
And with that Kyle turned back around and started walking again.
Parker didn’t plan what happened next. He had no idea he was going to do it until he was already halfway through doing it. And once he was halfway through doing it, it was too late to stop.
He reached behind Kyle and ripped the night-vision monocle off his head.
“Hey!” Kyle said.
Then he grabbed Kyle by the shoulders, planted a boot in the small of his back, and shoved him straight forward with all the might in his leg toward the edge of the cliff.
Kyle sprawled face-first into the grass, but he didn’t go over. He flipped onto his back and looked toward Parker, but he couldn’t see without his night vision. It was lying on the path. Parker could see the panic on Kyle’s face as his blind eyes darted around. Kyle instinctively crab-walked backward a step before remembering that the cliff was somewhere behind him. It was, in fact, less than twelve inches behind him.
Parker couldn’t believe what he’d just done. Some part of his brain misfired. Or the lizard part of his brain, the id part of his brain, the part of himself that had evolved on the African Savannah to deal with predators, prey, and survival, had just come uncorked. It spasmed. It erupted. But just for a second.
Like the one and only time he hit his wife Holly.
Jesus, he had actually tried to kill Kyle. Tried and failed.
“Shit, Kyle, I’m sorry.” He reached out his hand to help the poor bastard up, but Kyle couldn’t see.
“Heeeeeelp!” Kyle screamed. It was a horrible scream. A terrified scream. Even the horde across the water on Orcas Island must have heard him.
“Parker’s trying to kill me!”
“No, Kyle—”
“Help!” Kyle screamed again, his face flushed with raw animal panic. He didn’t even hear Parker’s apology. He thought Parker was about to kick him over the edge.
“Wait,” Parker said and took a step back.
“Help me!”
“Kyle, it’s okay. I didn’t mean it.”
The front door of the guesthouse banged open. Parker saw flashlight beams like green searchlights sweeping across the grass.
“Kyle!” Hughes said. “We’re coming!”
“Parker is trying to kill me!”
“Wait,” Parker said, panic rising in his chest. “Jesus, Kyle.”
“Kyle!” Annie screamed.
“Down here!” Kyle said. “Help me!”
There was nothing Parker could do. Nothing but wait for the others and apologize and surrender.
He heard three pairs of boots running on gravel, followed by the
ca-crunch
of Hughes’ pump-action Mossberg.
* * *
Kyle lay on his back, the rim of oblivion somewhere behind him and a crazed Parker somewhere in the dark out in front of him.
The bastard actually tried to throw him over the edge.
Kyle couldn’t see anything without the night vision, but he’d kick and punch and scratch and lunge and even bite the sonofabitch if only he could figure out where he was.
Flashlight beams swept down the hill. Annie called out his name.
“Down here!” he shouted. “Help me!”
Hughes, Annie, and Frank arrived within seconds. Parker was keeping his distance. He couldn’t try throwing Kyle over the cliff again. Not if he didn’t want witnesses.
Annie was breathless. “Kyle!”
“What’s going on?” Frank said.
Kyle couldn’t see the look on Hughes’ face, but he could tell by the man’s posture and general bearing that he was gearing up to break Parker in half.
“He ripped off my night vision and tried to throw me over the cliff.”
Annie gasped and looked at Parker, who was moaning and covering his face with his hands.
“That true?” Hughes said and pointed his shotgun toward Parker.
“Get him away from me,” Kyle said. “Take him somewhere and shoot him.”
Annie gasped again.
“Now hang on a second,” Frank said.
“Parker!” Hughes said and pressed the barrel of the shotgun at the side of Parker’s head.
Parker looked up and panicked. “I can explain.”
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Hughes said and grabbed the asshole by his shirt collar.
“No, wait!” Parker said.
Annie stepped toward Kyle. He squinted at the brightness of her flashlight, though it only seemed bright in one eye, the eye that remained adjusted to the dark while he wore the night vision. She recoiled when she saw how close he was to the edge.
“Did you or did you not try to throw Kyle over that cliff?” Hughes said.
“I—”
“It’s a yes-or-no question.”
Annie sat next to Kyle, though farther away from the cliff’s edge, and put her hand on his knee.
“We were walking up the path,” Kyle said, his breathing and heart rate beginning to slow. “And we got in an argument. He ripped my night vision off and tried to kick me over. Damn near succeeded too.”
Parker stood on the path and winced at the flashlights in his face. He still had the night-vision monocle over his left eye. He looked like a creepy robot-person in a bad science-fiction movie.
“All this time,” Kyle said, “we were worried about getting attacked by looters or the homeowner or another pack of those things. But the biggest danger of all was right here beside us. He’s worse than Lane. Lane never
actually
tried to kill any of us.”
Annie stood and helped Kyle up. He didn’t need help—he wasn’t hurt—but he took her hand anyway. He’d wanted to take her hand since he met her.
“We need to get rid of him,” Kyle said.
“Please,” Parker said. “Kyle, I’m sorry.”
Kyle wouldn’t look at him. It would only make doing what had to be done that much more difficult. He felt an enormous swell of an emotion he wasn’t familiar with. This was something new, something he realized now that he should have felt a long time ago.
Iron had entered his veins. Iron and ice. It felt exhilarating and right. No more fucking around. “Take him to the edge of the cliff and shoot him.”
“Agreed,” Hughes said and grabbed Parker again by his shirt.
“Wait,” Annie said. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
PART THREE – ONE OF THOSE THINGS
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Hughes killed the boat engine when he and Frank made it halfway up Orcas Island’s main inlet. They’d need to row by hand the rest of the way so those things wouldn’t hear.
“This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Frank said.
“It could work,” Hughes said. “We won’t know until we try. And we have to try because this could change everything.”
* * *
They’d taken Parker upstairs in the main house and left him in a sealed room. The gag-inducing stench from the corpse downstairs had seeped into the walls. Kyle and Frank boarded up the windows from the outside and Hughes screwed some kind of lock onto the door from the hallway, most likely a sliding bolt from one of the bathrooms.
Not that any of that was remotely necessary. They’d tied him to a chair, his ankles bound together with rope, his wrists cinched tight with a second rope, his waist strapped to the back of the chair with a third, and his arms yoked to his ankles with yet a fourth. Parker could hardly breathe, couldn’t look up, and if they didn’t let him go or at least loosen him soon, his back would give out.
What were they going to
do
with him?
The others seemed to be at an impasse. Kyle and Hughes were prepared to shoot him and throw him over the cliff before Annie took them aside out of earshot. Parker had no idea what she said, but it startled them and bought Parker some kind of reprieve.
“Guys!” he shouted. “Please! Can you loosen these ropes? Just a little?” He doubted anybody could hear him. They didn’t want to. That’s why they left him tied him up in the other house.
He still couldn’t believe what he’d done. And he wasn’t just horrified that he failed and got caught. He’d be no less despondent had he succeeded. The only person he’d ever killed was Roland, and he did that to save himself and the others.
How many people sentenced to life in prison for murder were little different from him? Psychologically normal until one day they slipped and changed everything forever in a matter of seconds. Maybe everyone had it in them to kill under the right (or wrong) circumstances. Just look at those
things
. Even a Buddhist monk would turn into a cannibalistic predator if that virus got into his system.
On the other hand, maybe Parker wasn’t psychologically normal. Perhaps he’d had a murderous personality all along that just hadn’t been triggered yet.
He deserved to be punished. They had the right to put him in jail, so to speak, at least for a while. But they didn’t have to restrain him like Hannibal Lecter.
They must be planning to let him go at some point, though. Why tie him up and stick him in a room if they were still going to shoot him?
But Parker didn’t know what he didn’t know. The only reason they hadn’t killed him was because Annie took the others aside. She hadn’t taken them aside to object. She took them aside and said something so shocking it brought Kyle right down on his ass.
What did she
say
?
“Guys!” he shouted. “Please! Somebody talk to me!”
Nobody answered. Nobody came.
* * *
Annie sat on the brown leather couch in the guesthouse. She could see her breath and felt the cold seeping into her backside and legs right through her clothes. Hughes and Frank hadn’t returned yet from Eastsound. Kyle sat in a recliner on the opposite side of the room. He seemed a little afraid of her now. She couldn’t blame him.
“How long do you think they’ll be gone?” Annie said.
“Depends on if the town is still overrun,” Kyle said. “If those things have cleared out, they should be back this evening.”
“They aren’t
things
,” Annie said. “They’re people. With a virus. And viruses can be cured. How can you still not understand that?”
Kyle would never look at her the same way again now that he knew.
Maybe
he’d look at the infected ones differently. Eventually. He should.
But for now he looked pensive, still processing what she’d told him. Hughes and Frank were shocked too, but Kyle seemed more disturbed than the others. He had a thing for her. That was obvious. But now he wouldn’t stand or sit anywhere near her, as if she could transmit the virus by breathing on him.
“You don’t know that it’s curable,” he said. “Maybe it is. Maybe it’s even preventable. Or maybe you are just really damn lucky.”
* * *
Eastsound looked clear from the water. Hughes saw nothing moving in any direction. The town appeared as empty as it had been a few days earlier. Those things must have moved on.
He and Frank rowed ashore as silently as possible. This time they were better armed and better equipped. They had enough ammunition to take down a medium-size herd. They also had night vision in case they got pinned down again.
Hughes considered waiting for nightfall before hitting the beach. He and Frank would have the advantage this time since they could see in the dark. But the town really did seem to be clear, so they pulled the rowboat onto the rocky shore and set out.
They started with the pharmacy, where Hughes easily found what he needed, then hit the sporting-goods store. Hughes wasn’t entirely sure what he was looking for in there, but he’d know what he needed as soon as he saw it.