Adaptive Instinct (Survival Instinct) (46 page)

Orson walked up to the regular-sized ones and pushed the call button.  It lit up,
and then quickly went dark again.  Orson frowned and tried again.

“They shut them down.”  Nicky pointed to the little window above the elevators.  Every time Orson pressed the call button, the letters ‘Err’ showed up in red.  “I know how to get in, don’t worry.”

She led the men over to the massive service elevator.  Looking through the gates, Nicky could see that it was currently several floors down.  It would do.

This time when Orson pressed the call button, he was met with a buzzer sound.

“It’s shut down too,” she informed him.  “We have to use a ladder.”

“I’ll go first.  You follow,” Orson ordered her.  “Hank, you okay coming down last?”

“I’ll be fine, just direct me to it.”  Hank had his head cocked to one side as if listening to something.  Nicky couldn’t hear anything over her own heartbeat.

She opened the gates and pointed out the service ladder to Orson.

“That’s a long way down,” he said, not quite able to keep the fear out of his voice.  “But at least there are lights.”

The service elevator had only limited lighting in it due to it being a cage, so a lot of lights had been built into the sides of the shaft.  Orson got on the ladder and began
moving down.

With her wrists still handcuffed, Nicky carefully placed herself on the ladder.

“You try anything, and I’ll pull you off and let you fall,” Orson warned her.

Nicky wasn’t going to try anything; she needed her concentration for climbing. 
Besides, it would be pointless.

With careful instruction from Nicky, Hank managed to get onto the ladder above her.  She almost warned him not to look down,
and then almost burst out laughing at how stupid that would have been.

Climbing down that ladder felt like climbing down into hell.

***

Orson reached the top of the service elevator and jumped onto it with a loud bang.  When he looked back at Nicky, he looked very pleased with himself and with what he had accomplished so far.  When Nicky was close enough, Orson grabbed her off the ladder and tossed her across the top of the elevator.  She tripped over some of the many cable jacks and fell, badly twisting her ankle.  She cried out as pain shot all the way up her leg.

“What was that?”  Hank’s voice had a sharp edge to it.  The man was on high alert.

“The bitch fell over.”  Orson reached for Hank and helped the older man off the ladder.

While Nicky hobbled over to the service hatch, Orson guided Hank around and over all the cable jacks.  Because the elevator was so vast, it needed many synchronised cables to lift and lower it.  Orson pulled on the lever, which opened the hatch.  He shoved Nicky through the opening without warning.

As she fell, her elbows banged into the sides, and her chin off the edge.  All her facial wounds flared with an angry, red
-pain at the shock.  She just managed to grip the lip in time to slow her fall, or else her legs would surely have broken from the drop.  Still, even lowering herself to her full length before dropping, caused bolts of pain to lance up from her ankle when she hit the floor.  Tears sprang to her eyes as she rolled to one side, whimpers escaping her despite her mind’s protests to such weakness.

Orson hit the elevator floor next to her with a clang.  He didn’t get hurt at all.  Hank didn’t either, thanks in part to Orson half catching him when he dropped.  Nicky managed to get upright, standing on her good leg.  Hank was hyper alert now
, more so than he was at the top of the elevator shaft.  His head turned this way and that, in sharp, jerking movements.  Orson didn’t share his fear and swaggered over to the doors.

“Are you on your feet?” Hank whispered to Nicky.

“Yes,” she whispered back and nodded out of habit.

“Is what I think, beyond those doors?”

“Yes,” she spoke even quieter.  When she had made the deal, Nicky knew what had happened to this place.  Internal fighting had led to a group of the upper management fleeing the premise.  Nobody knew how many got out, because they hadn’t heard from the escapees yet.  All they knew was that they had been found out mid-escape, and plan Zed had been put into effect.

All the exits were shut down, and all the internal doors were opened.  Even the ones that held back their test subjects.

***

Orson slid open the gate and grabbed hold of the outer doors.  They were easy to pry open.  If he had looked back at Nicky and Hank just then, maybe he wouldn’t have done it, but he hadn’t.

The doors opened into the bright halls of the White Box.  Although there were no people, everything looked the same as it always had.  Nothing appeared amiss.  Orson left the cage elevator with the walk of a confidant man.  Nicky watched him look left, and then look right.  To the right, his expression quickly fell.

“YOU BITCH!” he had time to scream, right before the zombie pounced on him. 

With white lab coats flapping out behind them like strange wings, a dozen zombies swarmed around Orson.  The man screamed, firing the rifle erratically, but getting only body shots.  They began to tear at him.

“If I toss you, do you think you can reach the opening?”  Hank could barely be heard over Orson’s cries and the zombies’ frenzied attacks.

“I don’t know if you’re that strong.”  Nicky looked at the man she had thought of as evil.  Maybe he wasn’t evil, just not good.

“For this I am.”  He took off his large sunglasses and directed his face to her as though looking her right in the eyes.  His eyes were milky and useless, but they still had life in them.  Nicky could read
honesty in those eyes, and a humbleness that was extremely unsettling.  “Hurry.  Before they spot us.”

Nicky placed her hands on Hank’s shoulders, and he looped his fingers together into a stirrup.  Nicky placed her good foot on them, wincing as weight was put on her bad ankle.

Hank shouted at the top of his lungs, using everything he had to raise Nicky up into the air.  For a blind man, he had perfect aim.  The top of Nicky’s head and her upraised arms passed through the opening.  Before she could fall back down, she slammed her hands into the mesh grid, gripping tightly with her fingers.  Her left middle finger, and right pinky and index all got popped out from her effort, but she held on with a scream.

“If you see my wife or kids,” Hank called up.  Orson’s screams had stopped, and the zombies would soon be on Hank.  “Tell them…  Tell them anything they’ll believe.”

Crying from pain, fear, and Hank’s sacrifice, Nicky hauled her battered body up onto the top of the elevator.  She turned around, thinking that maybe Hank could climb the mesh sides, but the moment she spotted his upturned face, he was buried beneath a swarm.  There were far more than a dozen now.  A single gunshot came from the pile.  Nicky cried out again, possibly from fright, but she couldn’t actually identify the emotion it was coming from.

A zombie, whose legs appeared to have been crushed, began crawling up the mesh wall.  Its dead eyes were locked on the opening and Nicky.

Nicky pulled away from the hatch, toward the ladder.  She couldn’t close the hatch behind her because she would need help from someone on the inside to do that.  With her body screaming at her from all points, she hobbled for the ladder.

***

Climbing was agony.  Her fingers were disjointed, her ankle swollen and throbbing in time with her face, her elbows were battered, and her wrists were still cuffed and sore.  Up she climbed though, spurred on by the need to survive.  She had come here planning to die, but now there was a glimmer of hope.  Perhaps she could make it.

Never looking at the top, not wanting to see how high above her the edge was, Nicky climbed.  Below her, the zombie with the crushed legs pursued her up the ladder.  He had been Nicky’s leader when they got transferred here from Texas.  His name was Bloomberg.  She recognized him despite the fact that half his face was gone.

The ladder was never-ending, just on and on, up and up.  One step at a time, just one horrible, terrible, agonizing step at a time.  Nicky wouldn’t even look down now.  She didn’t want to see Bloomberg’s horrible face looking up at her.  Hands, foot, foot, hands, foot, foot.  Just keep climbing.

Nicky’s hands suddenly reached the upper edge of the ladder.  The top of the climb.  As she began to raise her head to look up, Bloomberg latched his hand around her bad ankle like the Jaws-of-life.  She shrieked at the pain that exploded from the sudden pressure.

Bloomberg pulled; his two arms stronger than Nicky’s entire, ruined body.  Together, they began to fall back into nothingness.

19:

Bryce Christopherson – Days 14-17

Bryce didn’t like sleeping in the tent.  It was scary and uncomfortable.  There was one small tent in which Bryce, Larson, Becky, and Bryce’s mom had to sleep.  The ground was lumpy through the sleeping bag, Larson snored, Becky would wake up crying twice a night, and Bryce’s mom was coughing a lot.  That was the worst: the coughing.

Bryce had asked his mom several times if she was okay, and she had always said she was, but Bryce knew better.  He had heard his mom and
Uncle Jeffery talking, and he remembered him mentioning that she was sick.

When they had left the White Box, it had been raining.  Bundled up in their ponchos, they had run off into the woods.  Bryce’s mom had said that they were supposed to meet up with other people.  They wandered through the dark and the storm for hours until Bryce’s mom admitted she was lost.  The storm had disoriented her.  They never reached the cave where they were supposed to meet the others.

As quickly as they could, they set up the tent.  That night, nobody bothered with the sleeping bags; they were too wet, and there wasn’t enough room to take off their soaking clothes.  Bryce and Larson huddled next to Maggie for warmth.  Bryce had slept that night, though not much and not deeply.  The constant drumming on the canvas kept him awake and the cracking of the lightning made him jump every time.  Becky had been let out of her carrier, but she clung to their mother, terrified of the new place and the loud sounds.

The storm died down by morning, and they packed up the tent before the sun completely rose.  Bryce’s mom led them in circles, trying to find the cave at which they were supposed to meet.  Wherever it was, they didn’t find it.

“Who are we supposed to be meeting?” Bryce asked.  The ground was mushy, making walking extra tiring.

“Other members of the family,” his mom answered distractedly.

“My dad?” Larson prompted.

“Yeah.  Yeah, your dad.”  Although she said this, she sounded like she wasn’t really listening to them or even herself.  Most of her energy was being spent looking all around them.

Becky, who was walking on her own, was having a blast.  She liked to jump in the muddy puddles and stomp on the moss.  Bryce had to keep grabbing her hand to keep her from running off.

Maggie was acting like Bryce’s mom.  She kept her head up, ears pricked, and nose constantly sniffing at the wind.  Bryce’s mom held her leash, and
she would follow her when she would pull in a particular direction.  It worried Bryce; dogs weren’t supposed to lead.

Eventually,
Bryce’s mom gave up on the cave.

“We’re going south,” she told them as she pulled out a compass.  “Everyone will meet us there.”

When Bryce asked, she said she wasn’t sure how a compass worked.  When Bryce then asked if he could see it, his mom said no, and not to ask so many questions.  As they walked, Bryce and Larson fell back just far enough so that Bryce’s mom couldn’t hear their whispering.

Larson started by saying, “Your mom’s acting strange.”

“I know.”

“And where’s my dad?”

“At the cave, I guess.”

“Do you think he’ll head south?”

“Of course he will.  Why wouldn’t he?”

“I just have a bad feeling is all.  Like, you know, when you have to recite something in front of the class, and your stomach gets all flip-floppy?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s what my stomach feels like right now.”

“My stomach is hungry.  We didn’t get breakfast.  What time is it?”

“I don’t know.  My dad made me leave my watch behind.”

“I had to leave mine behind too.”

“What are you boys talking about?”  Bryce’s mom suddenly looked back over her shoulder.  For a moment, there was a wild and frightened look in her eyes.  There was something else
too; something that Bryce came to believe was the sickness.

“I’m hungry,” Bryce told her.

“We’ll eat in a little while; we have to go farther before we stop.”

“Jus!  Jus!”  Becky grabbed the hem of Bryce’s poncho and started tugging.  She recognized the word hungry.  “Jus!”

“Becky wants some juice, Mom,” Bryce informed her.

“In a while.  When we stop.”  That wasn’t like Bryce’s mom at all.  She was usually very pleased whenever Becky wanted something to eat or drink and was always ready to feed her.  Bryce too.  If he mentioned he was hungry, and dinner wasn’t going to be ready in the next ten minutes, she would find a snack for him, even if it
were just a cookie or something.