“I’ve seen you act with incredible bravery,” Hughes said to Parker. “Just two days ago you chased an armed man down in the street, killed dozens of those things single-handedly, and set your own house on fire. Stepping onto the beach after all that is nothing.”
“I had to do those things,” Parker said. “But I don’t have to rush off this boat. We have comfortable beds and enough food for days. But I hear what you’re saying, so I’ll join you tomorrow if you’re all still okay.”
So, Hughes thought, the island is Parker’s coal mine and the rest of us are his canaries. But, hey, whatever. Let him isolate himself if that’s what he wants. Better that than dragging him ashore if he’s going to be a pain in everyone’s ass. Hughes doubted he was the only one who could use a break. Maybe the man would finally settle down after sitting on the boat all alone for a while.
“I’m not the boss of you,” Hughes said. “None of us are the boss of you. None of us are the bosses of anyone. So stay here then if that’s what you want. We’ll be a couple hundred feet away in that hotel over there, and we’ll take beachfront rooms. We’ll hear if you yell, and vice versa.”
Parker’s face softened. Hughes stuck out his open palm for a handshake. Parker took it and shook it. “Okay,” Parker said. “Good luck. Come back here the minute you see or hear something creepy.”
Hughes smiled. Those two might get along fine if the island worked out as advertised.
But he wasn’t counting on it. Something was bound to go wrong. There was a damn good reason that town was empty. He didn’t know how and he didn’t know why, but checking out the island in person was the only way to find out.
* * *
They anchored the boat 200 feet out and swam in. The water was so cold that Kyle’s lungs briefly seized up, but Hughes insisted it was far better to be cold and wet for a spell than bring the boat onto the beach where it would not be secure.
They left the handguns, but Hughes brought the M4 rifle and held it over his head and swam with one hand to keep it dry. Kyle and Annie brought crowbars. Frank brought his hammer. And that was it. They weren’t relocating to the island just yet. This was a recon mission.
Kyle shivered and dripped on the shore and tried to hug himself warm. He had forgotten how rocky the beach was. Soft sand is created by pounding ocean waves, but the water around the San Juans behaved more like a lake, aside from the tides. The silence of the sea made them safer since crashing waves would conceal threatening noises.
“I need to go inside,” Annie said through chattering teeth. Her waterlogged clothes sagged off her shivering body. “The hotel will have towels.”
Kyle shivered too. Frank shivered. Even Hughes, with all his insulating bulk, shivered a little.
“Agreed,” Kyle said. “Our clothes will still be wet, but we can dry off and warm up before we have to put them back on.”
“We’ll get dry clothes in some of the houses,” Hughes said.
“We leave the houses alone,” Kyle said. “They belong to someone. We should at least wait until we’re certain they aren’t coming back. There should be a clothing store on the next street.”
They crossed Main Street and followed a handpainted wooden sign in front of the hotel that said “Office.” The office was dark, and Kyle had to cup his hands over the glass to see inside, but it did not look abandoned. It just looked like it was closed for the day.
He pushed and pulled the door handle. It was locked, so he knocked. He knew no one would answer, but it felt like the right thing to do.
“Hello!” he said. “Anyone in there?”
“Just break the glass,” Hughes said.
Kyle hadn’t felt averse to breaking and entering for more than a month. The very concept of breaking and entering meant nothing anymore on the mainland, but Eastsound was different. It still looked respectable.
He felt like a criminal, but he whacked the glass with his crowbar. The shattering was extraordinary. It gave him one jolt of adrenaline and another of fear. Surely that sound could be heard from a mile away.
“You guys okay?” Parker called from the boat. He was hundreds of feet away, but with no wind, no rain, no surf, and no traffic, his voice carried like he was standing right there.
“Just bustin’ into the office,” Frank said. He didn’t yell it, he just said it, and of course Parker could hear him. For a second Kyle was surprised that Parker showed concern for their well-being, but only for a second. Parker was concerned about his own ass. Anything that threatened them threatened him even if it threatened him less.
Kyle reached through the broken glass, unlocked the door, and stepped into the office. It was just as cold inside as out. The heat had been off for a long time. He could see well enough in the gloom to step behind the counter and grab four room keys.
“Just grab one,” Hughes said. “We should stick to one room,” Hughes said.
“I need to take off my clothes,” Annie said, still shivering.
Kyle handed her a key, kept one for himself, and returned two to the desk. “You take 17. We’ll be next door in 18.”
“We should get ourselves a raft,” Frank said, “so we don’t have to freeze our asses off like this every time we go to and from the boat.”
“The hell are we going to find a raft?” Hughes said.
“I’ll make one out of shoestrings and twigs,” Annie said, “if I don’t have to do this again.”
“There’s a dock down the shore a ways,” Kyle said. “We can tie the boat there when we know for sure the island is safe.”
“It’s not safe,” Hughes said.
Annie stopped shivering for a moment. “What do you mean?”
“This place looks perfect, right?” Hughes said.
Like heaven, Kyle thought. A city on a hill at the end of the world.
“But it’s empty,” Hughes said. “Why would a place this nice be empty? People here ran away from something.”
“From what?” Kyle said. “There’s nothing here.”
“I don’t know,” Hughes said. “But Annie girl, you’re coming into room 18 with us. You can dry off and warm up in the bathroom. Nobody should be alone on this island.”
* * *
Annie locked herself in the bathroom, hung her wet clothes in the shower, wrapped herself in a towel, and sat on the floor. The room had no window so she couldn’t see anything, but she didn’t care. She felt warm and safe and comfortable. The floor was cold, but the towel kept the chill out of her shoulders and core. It also covered the bite mark on the back of her shoulder. She’d need to make damn sure nobody saw that. The three men on the other side of the door might only keep her safe as long as they didn’t know her little dark secret.
But safe from what? She had a hard time believing the islanders ran away from disaster. What disaster? There had to be a benign explanation. Of if they did run from something, whatever it was had moved on.
“The light’s weird here, isn’t it?” Frank said on the other side of the door. She couldn’t see him—she couldn’t see anything—but she could hear him just fine.
“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 any
one’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 mo
re 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.
Resurrection: A Zombie Novel Page 18
