Resurrection: A Zombie Novel, - [ereader manga .TXT] 📗

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.

“Come on!” Annie said. “I won’t lie, it really is cold, but you’ll sort of get used to it after a couple of seconds.”

Such a sweet kid, that Annie. She thought he was hesitating because of the cold.

He could strip down to his underwear and save his clothes from getting wet, but Annie might be offended if she saw him practically naked. And he did not want her seeing his paunch or his milky white legs that hadn’t seen sunlight for more than ten consecutive seconds since he was eight. He firmly believed no one should go around in public half-naked unless the sight of their half-naked selves made the world better. Parker had never measured up to that standard, and he especially didn’t measure up now.

So he removed his army jacket—no sense getting that wet—stripped off his socks, and jumped in.

The water literally took his breath away. His entire diaphragm froze. When he could finally breathe again, he did it by gasping.

No longer did he fear that he’d drown. He’d freeze to death first. He actually felt the heat leave his body and cold pour into his bones as though it were liquid.

The Alaskan current makes the Pacific Ocean so frigid in the Northwest that a person can lose strength and sink in just minutes. The Puget Sound waters are a little bit warmer since the current sweeps past them, but they’re still unspeakable. A life jacket will save you from drowning, but hypothermia will still kill you quickly.

Parker swam like he’d die. The only reason he didn’t panic was because Annie was standing there with his towel. He could not lose his shit in front of the girl.

When he neared the shore and the water got shallow, he stood up and ran the rest of the way. Water poured off him in sheets.

“Hey there,” Annie said. The corners of her eyes crinkled when she smiled at him. She had never looked at him that way before. It was as if she was seeing him for the first time. She handed him the towel and said, “You look ten years younger.”

“I feel ten years colder.” He wrapped the towel around his shivering shoulders and felt better at once.

“Come on. Let me show you the house. We have hot coffee.” They had hot coffee? “There’s a wood stove in the living room. Kyle put a few logs on and boiled some water in a pot. The coffee is instant, but it tastes better than Starbucks under the circumstances.”

Parker did not care for Starbucks. Pumpkin-spice lattes? Please. A regular latte was nice once in a while, but he wanted coffee-flavored coffee, not pumpkin.

“I’m sure it’s better than Starbucks,” he said and left it at that.

He placed his bare feet gingerly on the road and watched for tiny pieces of gravel. The ground actually felt a little bit warm. It had to be cold—clouds hid the sun and the air couldn’t be more than fifty degrees—but his feet were even colder from sea.

That icy water, he realized, added yet another layer of protection to the island. Even if those things did try to swim, they sure as hell wouldn’t be able to swim to the San Juans from the mainland. Nor would they be able to swim from one island to another. The cold would pull them down as quickly as it would him.

The house wasn’t far. Just a block off the main street. It looked like the perfect storybook cottage. Annie carried a set of dry clothes for him and led him up the stairs and through the front door.

He stepped across the threshold and dripped onto a scratched floor made of fir. Kyle sat on a faded brown couch, Frank in a billowy recliner. Both sipped from steaming mugs.

“Whoa,” Frank said.

Kyle looked startled when he saw Parker sans beard but didn’t say anything.

“Dude, you shaved,” Frank said.

“I did.”

“Nice of you to join us, my man,” Hughes said from the kitchen.

The kitchen. They had a kitchen! Oh, this was grand. Parker could get used to this.

He excused himself to one of the bedrooms so he could dry off and change. The clothes Annie found for him—a pair of blue jeans and a gray pullover sweatshirt that said “Iowa” on it—were a little too big, but that was fine. Better that than a little too small.

He emerged from the bedroom rubbing the towel through his hair.

“What’s for breakfast?” he said.

Nobody spoke.

“Oh,” Parker said. “There’s no food here.”

“We’ll check the other houses,” Hughes said. “This one’s empty. Frank, you’ll go with Kyle. Annie and Parker will stick with me.”

It was at that moment that he realized a new dynamic had shaped up. There was no longer any sort of leadership struggle between himself and Kyle. Parker had receded into the background while Hughes stepped up in his place. Parker just flat lost the argument about where to go and what to do. He had to admit that. He’d assert himself later, and he’d do it a little more delicately than he did before, but now it was time for him to stay back. No one would listen to a damn thing he had to say now, especially right after he’d exiled himself on the boat.

“Food was always going to be the big challenge here,” Kyle said, “if not right away, then eventually.”

Annie sat next to him on the couch. She held her coffee mug with both hands and blew onto it. Faint wisps of steam rose and dissipated.

“Worst-case scenario,” Kyle said, “is we go fishing. When was the last time any of you went fishing? It’ll be great.”

Annie looked off into space at nothing in particular. Parker couldn’t understand why, but he thought she looked sad.