Sometimes while hiking on weekends, he idly thought about giving up his cushy urban life to live off the land. It was a fantasy, of course. He’d never actually do it. But he did see the appeal. He had read Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild four times.
And now that’s exactly how he’d spend the rest of his life whether he liked it or not.
But he looked forward to it. The last thing he wanted was to die in some hideously shattered suburb of Olympia, but now he wouldn’t have to. He’d spend the rest of his days in what he always thought was the real world.
Nature would slowly but inexorably overtake every city, suburb, and town ever built until nothing but forest, desert, prairie, and jungle remained. That awful grocery store on that awful street in that awful town off the interstate would soon enough be swamped by grasses and trees and animals and possibly even new bodies of water. If Kyle lived long enough and the infected died off on the mainland, he could watch that process begin and even advance. Seattle was simply being reclaimed a little bit faster.
“How far do you think that fire will spread?” Parker asked no one in particular.
“I don’t see why it would stop,” Frank said, “until the rains come. What do you think started it?”
“Could be anything,” Parker said. “Lightning strike. Gas leak. Boiler explosion. Whatever it was, there’s nobody left to put it out.”
It had never occurred to Kyle before that fire departments didn’t only save people and houses. They saved whole cities from total destruction. Eventually, most cities on earth might burn to the ground. What a revelation. A glorious revelation.
With the old world in ashes, he and the other survivors could give birth to a new one.
* * *
Eastsound was a tourist town back in the day when there were still tourists. It was not even a town, technically, just an unincorporated community, but it looked like a town, it functioned like a town, and it was effectively the “capital” of Orcas Island, the largest and prettiest of the San Juans.
Romantic waterfront hotels, rental cottages, restaurants, cafés, and craft breweries were all on or within walking distance of the shore. The water is calm as a lake there even during winter storms because the open ocean is forty miles away, the enormous swells and crashing surf blocked by Canada’s Vancouver Island.
The San Juans are north of Puget Sound across the Strait of Juan de Fuca, which in some places formed the maritime boundary between the United States and Canada back when national borders had meaning. The only part of America northwest of Eastsound was Alaska. The community was as remote a place in the lower forty-eight as a person could get.
Kyle knew all this because he had been there before, first when one of his friends took him to Orcas on his boat and taught him to sail, and again when he brought an old girlfriend on the ferry for a romantic three-day weekend.
Orcas Island is shaped like a narrow-necked horseshoe, and Eastsound is right there in the neck. If you have your own boat, you can get there from the south by sailing ten miles up the inlet between the eastern and western arms of the island, though most tourists took a ferry, which deposited them ten miles south of town in the village of Orcas.
About 5,000 people lived on the island, roughly half of them in Eastsound and the others scattered in Orcas, Deer Harbor, and the little bits of “countryside” in the island’s interior.
The island’s residents were about to find themselves with new neighbors.
Perhaps Kyle and the others would be welcome and maybe they wouldn’t. If not, there was room to spread out. Most of the island was empty and covered with forest. They could vanish into the trees if they had to. If nothing else, they could live on the boat and anchor it off the island’s east coast, where nobody lived and where nobody would bother them.
Kyle loved the journey to Orcas. The route passes through a maze of waterways between forest-covered islands that rise like mountains out of the sea. The area looks and feels primordial when fog hangs in the trees and muffles all sound. Kyle had never seen such beauty anywhere else. The fire and ash of Seattle may as well be on the other side of the world.
They passed some lightly inhabited islands on the way—Center Island and Blakely on the right and Lopez on the left. These weren’t private islands, exactly, but they weren’t for tourism either. Kyle doubted the few souls who lived there would want any refugees from the mainland. Orcas was the obvious choice. It had more people, more houses, more supplies, more hotels, and more unoccupied second homes. It had a critical mass of year-round residents who knew how to farm, knew how to fix things, and—perhaps most important—knew a thing or two about medicine. Surely at least a few of those 5,000 residents went to medical school.
“We’re almost there,” he said as they entered the narrow waterway between the island’s two forested arms. “This is it. This is Orcas. The town of Eastsound is only ten miles north of here.”
“What do we say when we get there?” Frank said.
“We say hello.”
* * *
Kyle held his breath in anticipation when Eastsound came into view. He recognized the delightful little beachfront hotel where he’d once stayed with a girlfriend. He’d never forget that weekend, but that was thanks more to the charm of the island than the girl, since she broke up with him shortly after they got back to Portland.
Main Street ran four or five blocks along the waterfront. The town was hardly more than a village, but it was larger than it appeared from the water. Another street—which, if he remembered right, was called Beach Street, but he couldn’t be sure—ran north to south away from the water. It, too, had restaurants and bars on it and trim prewar wooden houses behind. None of the junky fast-food restaurants and big-box stores that marred that piece of crap town off the interstate existed anywhere on the island. Eastsound—all of Orcas, really—was postcard-perfect.
And it was intact.
“Wow,” Frank said.
“Well look at that,” Annie said.
“It looks so … normal,” Parker said.
Hughes stepped onto the deck from below with his rifle.
Eastsound wasn’t on fire. Eastsound wasn’t filled with a screaming horde. But as they slowly approached in the boat, Kyle didn’t see any people. He wasn’t expecting a welcome party, but someone should have seen the boat approach and headed down to the water to see who was coming. They’d been within eyeshot of the town for at least twenty minutes.
“Weird,” Kyle said.
“Mmm-hmm,” Parker said.
That man had an obnoxious tone even when he said nothing. He didn’t want to come here, but had he thought for even one second about how nice it will be to check into that hotel and sleep in a bed? Or better yet, in a house?
“What do we do?” Annie said. “Should we check out that hotel?”
“We need to wait,” Hughes said. “Kyle, drop anchor. We need to know what the hell’s going on in that town.”
“Apparently nothing’s going on,” Kyle said. “I don’t see or hear anybody.”
“Should we call out?” Annie said. “No one has seen us. It’s not like they’d be expecting a boat.”
“They wouldn’t expect a boat here,” Kyle said. “Most people take the ferry and drive in. The dock is ten miles away.”
“All right,” Hughes said. “We yell to get their attention.” Nobody objected. “Hello!” he shouted. His voice didn’t just carry. It thundered. “Hello! Anybody in town?”
Nothing stirred. Nobody emerged from one of the houses. No one parted curtains in any of the hotel rooms.
“Fire a shot in the air,” Parker said. “That’ll get their attention.”
“It looks like there’s nobody home,” Hughes said, “but we have to know for sure.”
“Maybe they’re off gathering food,” Frank said.
“And maybe they’re dead,” Parker said.
They weren’t dead. Kyle was certain of that. The plague hadn’t hit Eastsound. Everything looked fine.
There were no abandoned cars on the road, no broken windows, no scorch marks, no dead bodies, no reek of death wafting over the water, not a blade of grass out of place.
Frank ducked, Kyle squinted, and Annie plugged her ears when Hughes fired.
The entire island must have absorbed the shock wave from Hughes’ gunshot, but not a blade of grass so much as twitched.
“Maybe everyone left,” Annie said.
“Apparently,” Kyle said. “But why would they leave? This place is perfect.”
“Maybe they were rescued,” Frank said.
“Rescued from what?” Kyle said. “There’s nothing here.”
“You don’t know that,” Parker said.
“Look around,” Kyle said.
“You. Don’t. Know that.”
Kyle may not have known that for sure, but he knew it well enough. Nothing bad happened here. He didn’t know how and he didn’t know why, but Eastsound was empty.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Annie knew at once that she could get used to this place. She hadn’t even stepped off the boat yet, but this idyllic little village presented itself like a gift from the gods.
You can’t drive to Eastsound, nor can you swim there from the mainland. The infection wasn’t there, and with so few survivors left to spread it, how could it ever get there?
Even so, she couldn’t stay.
The chances that she might find her parents were much better than the odds of finding her sister. How she’d actually get to South Carolina was another matter entirely. When Kyle had said thousands of people lived on the island, she figured at least one or two of them would know how to fly a plane, but everyone seemed to have left. She was less concerned with why there were no people than the fact that there were no people. No people meant no plane ride.
She missed everything about the South, not just her parents. Mild winters; the riot of flowers in springtime; warm, humid summers; and the theatrical thunderstorms that never seemed to develop in the Northwest. She missed Southern food. Southern friendliness. She missed Southern trees that look almost junglelike next to the wintry evergreens of Washington and Oregon.
And she missed the accent. She didn’t have a Southern accent, nor did her sister, but plenty of people did, especially older people, and unlike most Americans in the North and the West, she never thought Southern accents made people sound stupid.
Her homesickness felt like a physical ache.
But at least for now she was safe. She could rest. Sleep. Recuperate. Wash. Massage the stress and terror out of her muscles and bones.
She sat on the deck again with her bare feet dangling over the side and looked longingly at the hotel. It was empty. That was clear, so that was where she’d sleep. They shouldn’t take over anyone’s house. The owners might come back at some point. She didn’t think the hotel owners would mind if they checked in without paying. What else were they supposed to do? Money was worthless now anyway.
Her toes were less than a foot above the water and she could see only a foot or so into the water. Anything could be down there, but she refused to pull her feet up. The cool air felt too good on her toes. She wished she could extend them into the water.
Hughes stood next to her with his rifle ready.
“How long should we wait before getting off?” she said.
“A couple more hours at least,” he said.
“Hours?”
“Hours.”
She heard footsteps behind them.
“I don’t know, Hughes.” It was Kyle. “If there was anything threatening in there, we’d know it by now.”
“Maybe nothing threatening in there,” he said and gestured toward the town with the stock of his rifle, “but you have no idea what is out there.”
Just about every visible inch of the island was covered with trees.
“I’m with Hughes,” Parker said. “We stay on the boat.”
Annie sighed a little. She understood why the others were nervous, but she wasn’t feeling it. Eastsound was the safest place she’d seen by far since the outbreak began.
She wondered what Kyle would say when she told him she wanted to leave.
* * *
Thick forest surrounded the town. If you headed in the right direction, you could walk through the trees in a straight line for hours before hitting water. And you could walk up. A mountain rose to the east. Kyle remembered driving to the top and seeing Canada’s Vancouver Island to the west, skyscraping Vancouver city far to the north; Bellingham, Washington, to the east; and the magnificent San Juan archipelago far below to the south. It must have taken an hour to drive up there from Eastsound. Walking would take a whole day.
So a horde of those things wouldn’t be up there. It took far too much time and effort to walk to the top, and there was nothing but fir cones to eat up there.
Theoretically another part of the island could be infected, perhaps the villages of Orcas or Deer Harbor, but Kyle was certain they’d be just as empty as Eastsound. If the infection had hit those towns, the residents would have fled to Eastsound. And there was no one in Eastsound.
Hughes was just being paranoid. Prudent, but paranoid.
“Let’s just give it another hour,” Kyle said.
“We give it four more at least,” Hughes said.
Kyle flinched. Four? Paradise was in view right in front of them, and Hughes wanted to stay on the boat another four hours? They had already been sitting there for at least two.
“I’m not even going in four,” Parker said. “I’m sleeping on the boat tonight.”
Kyle rolled his eyes. Parker wasn’t being prudent or paranoid. He was a drama queen with a beard and a belly who couldn’t admit that Kyle had saved his ass. Parker wouldn’t even be there if Kyle hadn’t practically forced him. He owed Kyle everything. Everyone on that boat owed Kyle everything.
If Parker wanted to sleep there, fine. The rest of them would spend the night in the hotel. And if Eastsound’s residents didn’t return after a week, they could move into one of the houses. Maybe they’d wait a month just to be decent, but that was it. Those houses would deteriorate if they weren’t maintained and lived in. If the owners come back in, say, a year, they’d be glad to discover someone had taken care of the property for them.
He wondered if there was any food left in the town grocery store. That would depend on how long the residents stayed after the plague struck. What if the shelves were empty? What if everyone’s cupboards were empty? If they weren’t empty already, they would be eventually.
Eastsound was luxurious, but their new lives would still be a challenge. They’d have to fish and farm and trap and hunt. They’d have to chop wood. They’d live like pioneers and homesteaders, though without hostile Indians and with better sofas and beds. By next year, enough of those things would likely starve to death on the mainland that Kyle and the others could pry solar panels off houses in Vancouver and Bellingham and install them in Eastsound. They would not live like royalty, but they’d have enough to be comfortable and enough adversity and hardship to make them appreciate those comforts far more than they did before the outbreak.
It was going to be great. Kyle could never have designed such a perfect life for himself in the old world.
And what about Annie? How much time would have to pass before they moved in together? He knew it would happen eventually, and he was pretty sure she knew it too. She wouldn’t live out her days by herself. Not at her age. She wasn’t going to shack up with Frank. The very idea was ludicrous. Parker? Not a chance. And Hughes? Hughes was a bodyguard, not a man to bare your soul to and cuddle up with in bed.
No, Annie would eventually move in with Kyle. Even if they did not fall in love—though love was a distinct possibility—they were an obvious pair.
He’d take his time and go slowly, for they had all the time in the world.
* * *
Hours passed in languid silence and Hughes began to think Kyle was right. No one was going to stumble out of a house and
wave hello if they sat on the boat another hour, nor would one of those things only now finally notice their presence.
The smart plan would be to sail around the island while making a whole lotta racket to see if anything moved in the trees, but more than three hours had passed since he fired his rifle and nothing had happened. Eastsound looked empty, sounded empty, and just as important, it felt empty. The town and its immediate environs were clear. And that hotel was sure looking comfortable. They could recon the island tomorrow. Nothing would bother them in the meantime.
“Let’s move ashore,” he said.
“You sure you’re okay with that?” Kyle said. Hughes could tell Kyle wasn’t actually interested if Hughes was okay with it. He was just being polite.
“I’m still not going,” Parker said.
Kyle huffed and said, “Christ, you’re impossible.”
“Parker,” Hughes said. “My man. I’m as cautious as you are.”
“No, you’re not,” Parker said.
“I’m as cautious as you are,” Hughes said again. “But now you’re just being stubborn. Come on. We’ll hole up in that hotel over there and be quiet.”
“You want my advice?” Parker said.
“Not really, no,” Kyle said.
Annie placed her hand on his arm.
“What’s your advice?” Hughes said.
“We stay on this boat for three days,” Parker said, “and make as much goddamn noise as we can. Then we get off if everything’s clear.”
Hughes understood where Parker was coming from. That would, indeed, be the safest possible way to proceed, especially if they sailed around the island once or twice just to be sure. But there is a point where caution becomes excessive, where fear turns into phobia, and Parker had crossed it.
Resurrection: A Zombie Novel Page 17
