Resurrection: A Zombie Novel, - [ereader manga .TXT] 📗
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“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.
Hughes tapped on the door. “Coming in.” He couldn’t whisper anymore and expect to be heard over the downpour, so he spoke at regular volume.
Parker didn’t even see the door open. It was too dark. Which meant those things wouldn’t have seen it even if they were out there on the porch.
Maybe that’s exactly what they were doing. Gathering on the porch and pressing their faces and hands against the front glass. The windows were not boarded up. They could come right in if that’s what they wanted. How long until they got sick of the cold and the rain and some dimwitted switch flipped in their heads that made them remember, Oh yeah, houses. Houses are dry!
If a band of those things opened the front door and shambled on in, Parker wasn’t sure he’d hear them over the sound of the rain. They’d just be in the house.
As far as he knew, that had already happened.
Somebody should have brought back the night vision.
“You see anything?” Parker said to Hughes.
“They’re still out there,” Hughes said. “Wandering aimlessly. They don’t seem to mind getting rained on. Probably won’t be many left in the world this time next year. Not in this part of the world, anyway.”
“But this time this year,” Parker said, “we’re trapped on Kyle’s little island of horrors.”
“Now’s our best chance to get out of here,” Hughes said.
Heat bloomed in Parker’s chest. “And go where?”
“The boat,” Hughes said. “Where else?”
I’m not doing that, Parker thought. I am not. Doing that.
Not in the dark.
“They won’t see us,” Hughes said. “It’s raining so hard they won’t hear us, either, so we need to go before it stops.”
Now?
No.
Parker couldn’t do it. No way. Assuming he even made it down to the water before getting bitten, he couldn’t possibly jump in the sea and swim to the boat in the dark. He wouldn’t see it. He wouldn’t even see silhouettes. Not at night in a rainstorm. He might as well go out there blindfolded.
If he didn’t get bitten, he’d freeze or he’d drown.
That water was so cold, he’d sink to the bottom in minutes if he got lost. And it was raining so hard, he wasn’t sure he’d even be able to tell which way was up.
“Can’t,” he said.
“Yes, you can,” Annie said.
“No, really, I can’t.”
“Then stay here,” Kyle said. “The rest of us are going. And we need to go now.”
Jesus, they really were going to do it. Why in the hell didn’t they just wait in the house until morning? The house was only a couple hundred feet from the water. If they timed it right, they could probably make it. Hughes had his rifle and could shoot at least some of them. The others had crowbars and hammers.
“Let’s go in the morning,” Parker said, “when we can see where we’re going.”
“The whole point,” Hughes said, “is to go when we can’t see because they can’t see either. And with this rain coming down, they won’t hear us.”
“We should fan out when we hit the water,” Annie said. “First one to find the boat hollers out.”
“You people are crazy,” Parker said.
“Those things,” Hughes said, “could bust into this house any second.”
“The bathroom door has a lock,” Parker said. “They can’t get in. And they won’t even try if they don’t know we’re here.”
“What makes you sure they won’t figure out that we’re here?” Hughes said. “Or that they won’t come inside and just camp out there in
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