Resurrection: A Zombie Novel by - (ready player one ebook .TXT) 📕

It took almost as long to get there in the boat.

There wasn’t much to see up close at first. Just some trees, a few scattered houses, and what looked like a park. The government buildings were still a ways off in the distance. She shuddered when she saw the dome of the capitol building. Such a grand piece of architecture. The most important decisions in Washington State had been made there for more than 100 years. Now it would slowly give way to wind, rain, and ruin. Even the governor was probably dead.

The inlet was narrow, just a half-mile wide at the most, but that still left plenty of clearance between themselves and the mainland. If any of the infected spotted the boat, they’d have to swim a good quarter-mile before even trying to board. They’d either get shot or whacked long before they succeeded.

Hughes stood watch on the deck with his rifle in his hands and squinted at the landscape like he was mad at it. Frank helped Kyle with the sails. Parker remained below.

Soon the port came into clear view. It was absolutely silent and still. She saw no movement of any kind, heard no traffic or heavy machinery operating. She sensed that nothing but fish, birds, insects, and small animals lived in any direction. Just beyond the port was Olympia’s downtown. She sensed no life or movement coming from that direction, either. God, was Seattle like this too? It must be.

Only Seattle was bigger.

Much bigger. It must be swarming with the infected.

“Do you see anything?” Frank said to Hughes.

“Nothing,” Hughes said, almost like he was disappointed.

“There must be a ton of those things in there somewhere,” Frank said.

Annie twisted her face. Those things. She hated that term. They were people, human beings. Sick human beings, yes, but human beings all the same. They weren’t demons. They weren’t aliens. They had an alien-like pathogen in their system, but it could be beaten. Some people recovered. She had recovered. She couldn’t be the only one. There’s always some percentage of the population that’s immune to even the worst kinds of viruses. Jenny could be immune too.

But what, realistically, were the odds that her sister hadn’t been killed and that Annie would find her? Practically zero. She knew that. But she had to try, and she’d be forever grateful to Kyle for bringing her here.

The inlet narrowed considerably after they sailed past the port. Downtown was straight ahead. So was the end of Puget Sound. They were just a few hundred feet from the shore and couldn’t sail any farther south if they wanted to.

Kyle lowered the sails and stopped offshore from a hotel and marina. “This is as far as we go. We’re not dropping anchor because we may need to leave in a hurry.”

Annie was shocked to see that the docks straight ahead were crowded with boats. Hadn’t anyone fled by water? Did the infected take over the city that fast? No way would she find her sister.

Nothing stirred. The city was as silent as the deepest wilderness. Seeing a shattered little town off the interstate was one thing, but seeing a major city—and a state capital at that—in such a condition was something else.

She tasted acid in her mouth. She’d been kidding herself. Not about Jenny. She never actually thought she’d find Jenny. She’d been kidding herself about South Carolina. The East Coast couldn’t survive if the West Coast was this desolate. The plague was an unstoppable planetwide biological hurricane.

“Jesus,” Frank said.

“Yeah,” Kyle said.

“Well,” Annie said, “at least my voice is going to carry. I’m going to shout her name now. You ready?”

Hughes nodded. He was ready. And he was ready with his rifle.

“Can those things swim?” Frank said.

“No idea,” Hughes said, “but I don’t see why not. Question is, will they?”

“Okay,” Annie said. “I’m going to call her.”

But she was all of a sudden reluctant. The earth was so hauntingly quiet that her voice would carry for miles. Hundreds—no, thousands—of infected were going to hear her. The city was quiet, but it couldn’t be empty.

She cupped her mouth with her hands, faced the government buildings, and shouted the name of her sister.

“Jenny! Jenny Starling! It’s Annie!”

At first she heard nothing but water lapping the sides of the boat followed by a faint and distant echo, but then there was something else. She wasn’t sure she actually heard anything. It was like the city’s eyelids twitched open.

“Anybody hear anything?” Kyle said.

“I thought I heard something,” Frank said, “but I don’t know.”

“If your sister can hear you calling,” Hughes said, “you’ll hear her answer.”

Annie wasn’t sure about that. “What if she’s trapped somewhere? Maybe she can’t call out.”

Kyle put his hand on her shoulder. It didn’t make her feel any better, but she appreciated the effort.

“Hughes,” Kyle said. “Go ahead and fire a shot. Just one.”

Hughes pointed the rifle at the sky. Annie plugged her ears with her fingers. Frank ducked just before Hughes squeezed the trigger.

The crack of the rifle echoed six or seven times off the sides of the buildings.

“That ought to get somebody’s attention,” Frank said and stood back upright.

It did.

The hotel sat a block back from the marina. Several of its windows were shattered. The front door was blackened by fire. Three human shapes shambled out of it. They didn’t run, didn’t yell, didn’t make noises of any kind.

Annie squinted. Were they regular people? Hughes pointed his rifle in their direction and aimed down the sights.

They didn’t look right, didn’t walk right. Annie knew that shamble. Knew it well. They were looking for food and hadn’t seen anything yet.

“Are they people?” Frank said.

“Don’t think so,” Hughes said.

“They look … odd,” Kyle said.

“How come they’re not running?” Frank said.

“I’m not sure they’ve seen us,” Kyle said.

“They’re not people,” Hughes said.

Annie bit her lip.

“I’ve never seen ’em so slow,” Frank said.

“That’s because they’re always chasing your ass,” Hughes said. “These haven’t seen us.”

“Yes, they have,” Parker said. He had come up from below. “They see us. They’re walking right toward us.”

They were, indeed, walking right toward the boat, down the hotel steps and toward the marina. But still they weren’t running, nor were they screaming. Annie knew why. They knew they couldn’t get to the boat.

They stepped onto the dock.

“Jesus, they’re coming right for us,” Frank said.

“They can’t get to us,” Annie said.

“How do you know?” Frank said.

“They aren’t running or screaming out to the others.”

“You think that’s why they scream?” Frank said. “They’re alerting the others?”

She nodded.

“How do you know that?” Frank said.

“I just do.”

“She’s right,” Kyle said. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? I mean, look at them. They’re just coming out onto the dock to check us out. Fascinating.”

The three figures lurched their way to the end of the dock and stopped. They stared across the water. At Annie.

She shuddered, but Kyle was right. It really was fascinating, as if she was looking at dangerous animals from a distance on a safari.

She was pretty sure two of the three on the dock were men. The third was smaller, perhaps a young woman or teenager. They were filthy and ragged. And twitchy. Annie remember that twitchiness. She didn’t know what caused it, but she remembered it. She might even be able to imitate it if she had to.

She couldn’t smell them from this distance, but they looked like they smelled bad. And they stood there at odd angles that didn’t look comfortable. They didn’t shift their weight or sit down. They just sort of stopped when they reached the end of the dock and stood in whatever position their bodies happened to be in when they ran out of boards.

They weren’t going to jump in. She wasn’t sure why, exactly, but she sensed she wouldn’t have jumped in either when she had been infected. They appeared to be unthinking, but they weren’t entirely. Their thoughts were deranged, but they did have thoughts. And they remembered certain things from before. She did, anyway, when she was infected. She’d remembered how basic physics worked. She wouldn’t have been able to use tools, but she would not have jumped off a building. She would, however, have run into a hail of bullets if someone had shot at her.

Kyle looked at them with a rapt expression on his face. He tilted his head ever so slightly as if he were a curious child. “They sure are strange, aren’t they?”

Yes, but Olympia wasn’t a zoo. She hadn’t come here to gawk. She came to look for Jenny.

“I’m going to call for my sister again,” she said.

“Right,” Kyle said. He had forgotten. “Hughes, can you spare one more round from your rifle?”

Annie heard something. It was the faintest possible sound, but it was there.

“Shh,” Hughes said.

Then she saw first one figure and then several emerging from the downtown area and heading toward the marina.

Feet. She was hearing the sound of feet.