It was as close to home as he would ever come, and it was likely to stay that way. Soon after the incident at the hospital, he heard other calls over the police band, including ones he couldn't quite believe. One officer reported that he had shot his partner at the hospital. Another one said something about zombies, and at that point, Rhodri felt the small, squeezing claws of panic in his chest. What the hell was going on out there?
As he sat on his couch, listening to the calls begin to pour in, he looked over at his kitchen and did a quick inventory in his mind. He had food. He always did a run and stocked up at the beginning of the month. He didn't like to go into town that often. He valued the environment, and his old pickup truck guzzled gas the way a sailor guzzled alcohol after making it back to land, so he kept his trips to once a month. He had lived so long above the ocean that he thought he might like the sea more than actual people. It was the middle of June… but if he waited until the end of the month to go get food and the whole thing didn't blow over, he might very well find a situation where there was no food left on the shelves, especially if whatever was happening continued to move as fast as it had in the last hour or so.
When the dispatchers started panicking, saying they needed to get home over the radio, that's when Rhodri knew it was serious. They were abandoning their posts. He had climbed the steps to the top of the lighthouse. It was a beautiful day. He remembered it clearly. It was the type of day that made Oregon beaches famous. The sun shone down; puffy, white clouds raced along under the sky. The temperature was a balmy seventy degrees. The day seemed perfect. He could almost catch a whiff of elephant ears on the breeze.
But then he spun around and looked toward the highway. A line of cars stretched to the limits of his sight. SUVs, semi-trucks, locals and tourists trying to escape, they were all there, locked bumper to bumper. There was no way out or around. All they could do was wait.
He saw shapes running amongst the cars. And then he heard the gunshots, and then the screams. Somewhere in the north of town, a fire had started, inky black smoke crawling into the sky where it hung like a celestial bruise.
Rhodri climbed down from the top of the lighthouse. Something was going on out there, something bad. He walked over to his bookshelf and stared at the titles: zombie books, row after row of zombie books. There was something about the end of the world that had always fascinated him. Could this be it? Could this be the zombie apocalypse? He had shaken his head and called himself an idiot. Zombies weren't real. Then he heard the crackle over the police radio. "If anyone's still listening, shoot them in the head! They go down if you shoot them in the head!" The officer sounded panicked, scared.
He had stood for a moment longer, his mind spinning at a million-miles-an-hour until he thought his brains might actually pour out of his ears. Then he ran to the corner of his living area and pulled the station's ancient revolver from the antique desk. The desk had been there for as long as he had been working there; the revolver had been there even longer. You never knew when a drunk townie would try to break into the lighthouse for a good time. He checked the revolver, spinning the cylinder and making sure there were still rounds in it. In the back of the drawer, he found a disintegrating cardboard box with twenty rounds rolling around inside. The box crumbled in his hands it was so old. He put on his windbreaker and dumped the spare bullets in his pocket.
Rhodri left his truck sitting in the parking spot at the base of the lighthouse. It was loud, conspicuous, and worse, the road to the lighthouse led to the highway. He wouldn't be able to get through that mess of gridlock, not if some of those shadows were things that could only be killed by being shot in the head. On top of that, if he had to retreat, he would be bringing them back to the lighthouse, where he would then be surrounded. Better to be safe than sorry. The phrase was never truer.
It was two in the afternoon by the time he reached the beach, climbing down the hidden trail he had created over the years, the path covered by scrub brush and grass. It was a steep descent that brought him into a shallow, concealed cove. Visitors never came this far south. After climbing a few rocks and a brief wade through a waist-deep tidepool, he found himself standing on the most southerly of Seaside's beaches.
To the north, the beaches ran for a mile. If any of those tourists had been smart enough or knew the place well enough, they could have taken their SUVs on the beach and hightailed it up the coast to the next town, which was located a mile or two to the north. The town was smaller, barely able to be called a town. Maybe the highway wasn't clogged up there.
He ran quickly, the ocean breeze pushing him toward the row of hotels, townhomes, and mansions that lined the ocean shore. He chose the easiest path into Seaside, a nice level stretch of sand suitable for running. He saw no one on the beach during all of
