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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 more 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
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