Adaptive Instinct (Survival Instinct) (57 page)

Robin began to tire, but she couldn’t stop; the zombie still squirmed beneath her.  Again and
again, she brought down the trophy, until finally the brain was exposed.  Flipping the trophy around, Robin drove the little gold-plated golfer on top into the gap.  After shoving hard, the zombie jerked, then fell still.

Once Robin realized it was dead, she scrambled back into the office.  She could feel drops of blood on her face and see it on her hands.  When she searched it earlier, Robin had found a gym bag in the office and went to it now.  Inside were running shoes, workout clothes, a small towel, and a bottle of water.  Using the towel and water bottle, Robin began to clean herself up.  She was careful with the water, making sure none of it got into her eyes or mouth.

With her arms feeling as if they were going to fall off, Robin crawled into the kneehole of the desk.  There, she curled up into the fetal position and cried.

***

Several hours had passed by the time Robin returned to the group.  The sun was setting, casting long shadows down the street below.  She went over to her sleeping bag and sat on it.

“Run into any trouble?” was the only question she was asked, and she was thankful for that.

“One.  But I took care of it.”  She looked around the space and noticed April’s absence.

“She’s up one floor if that’s what you’re wondering.”  Doyle answered her unasked question as he sat on the floor next to her.  “She told us everything.  We decided to wait awhile and see what happens.  Her leg is tied to some piping we found, and someone with a weapon is always watching over her.  If she turns, we’ll take her out, but only if and when.”

Robin nodded.

“You can go see her if you want, but no one will make you.”

“I don’t want to see her.”  Robin wanted to remember her as the girl she talked with through the night on a pair of mattresses in a department store, not as the girl tied to a pipe and waiting to die.  “I want to find River.”

“Quin does too.  We agreed to send a team in the morning, once the sun is up.  A handful of us feel bad about leaving him behind.  I mean, even if he was totally insane, he’s still a living being, right?”

Robin nodded again.  She had come to the same conclusion.

“For now, I suggest you get some sleep.”

She obeyed, lying down on half of the sleeping bag.  Doyle went to another part of the room while Quin wandered over.  He placed Splatter next to Robin, and the little kitten purred loudly, curling up against her neck.

“Mind if I sleep on the other half of the sleeping bag?” Quin asked.  “I’ll try not to roll or snore or anything.”

“Go for it.”

Quin lay down next to her, his back facing hers without touching it.  Robin was exhausted from everything that had happened and fell asleep almost the moment her eyes closed.

***

The next day, a team consisting of Quin, Doyle, one other male, and one female, set out to look for River.  Robin was told to stay behind.  Although she had wanted to go, she didn’t argue.  She didn’t want to lead, didn’t want to be responsible for anything.  She was happy to follow orders.

All day long, she played with Splatter and talked to Elizabeth.  Elizabeth told her about everything she had seen and heard since the outbreak.  Robin didn’t ask questions or share her own stories, but Elizabeth seemed totally fine with that.  The two of them were the only ones who didn’t have to guard April at some point.  Robin did ask Cynthia to tell April why she wasn’t going up to see her, though.  When Cynthia came back, she said that April understood.

Robin also constantly looked out the window throughout the day, spying on the streets through a gap in the cubicle walls.  Most of the time she saw nothing, or the occasional zombie.  Sometimes there would even be a group of zombies moving past.  Robin was looking for those who had gone to find River, however, so these did not interest her.

“If everything suddenly went back to normal, what do you think you would do?” Elizabeth asked out of the blue.

“Huh?”  Robin had been looking out the window again and wasn’t sure she had caught the question right.

“If the world spontaneously fixed itself, what would you do first?  I would take a shower,” Elizabeth told her.

Robin mulled over the question, unsure of what she would actually do.  A shower did sound nice, but she would also want to call her brother and tell him that she loved him.  She also wanted to go up to her mother, take the bottle out of her hand, and pour the contents down the sink.  “Eat a cheeseburger,” she answered before she even knew she was going to say it.  “A big, juicy one, with fresh cut fries on the side, and a chocolate milkshake to drink.”

“I’d go with a steak,” Cynthia added.  She had been part of their conversation for the last little while.

“Didn’t you once mention you were a vegetarian?”  Elizabeth laughed.

“Fuck the animals; it’s every species for themselves until all this shit gets sorted out.”

Elizabeth and Cynthia both started laughing.  Robin smiled, perhaps about to laugh herself, but then she caught movement outside the window.  It wasn’t a zombie this time, but the SUV that the searchers had taken.  She watched it park next to the van and its occupants disembark.  River wasn’t among them.

Robin waited impatiently by the door for them to get there and tell her whether he was missing or dead.

“We couldn’t find him,” Doyle broke the news only a second after walking through the door.  “The room was empty.  We searched as much of the hotel as we could, but if he was there, he didn’t answer our calls.”

“Did you search the surrounding area?”

“We did, but not a lot.  A bunch of zombies started closing in.  There was no sign of him.  He could have gone anywhere; the city is a big place.  There’s no way to find out where he went.  We’ll keep an eye out for him, but we can’t spend all our time looking.”

Robin nodded.  She had known that this would be a possibility, and even that it was the most likely one.  She had really hoped for something better, especially with what was going on with April, but she could live with this.  At least they had tried to find him, right?

Quin walked over to a desk chair and collapsed into it.  Robin walked over to him and took his hand in hers.

“You all right?”

“Not really.”

“Will you be all right?”

“Possibly.  In time, maybe.”  He squeezed her hand.  Robin squeezed back.

The rest of the day was slow.  A few teams went out to search for food, water, and weaponry, but neither Robin nor Quin ever went with them.  Quin went upstairs once to visit April and tell her how the search for River had gone.

When nightfall came, they slept on the sleeping bag the same way they had the night before, except this time, Quin had pressed his back against Robin’s.  The contact wasn’t unpleasant.

***

It was really early in the morning, perhaps three or four, when Robin was shaken awake.  She looked up to meet the eyes of Doyle.  The light from the flashlight made them hard to read.

“It’s happened.  She’s gone.”

Robin didn’t understand his words at first.  It took a moment for her to compute.  April.  He was talking about April.  April had turned, and now she was dead.

Robin began to cry.  Beside her, she could feel Quin’s body shaking as he cried his own, silent tears.  Robin almost wished she could find him some sort of drug, like cocaine, to let him escape this awful nightmare.  She almost wished she could find some for herself.  Almost.

***

“I’m going up to the roof to see if I can get a better signal,” Doyle spoke about the walkie-talkie in his hand.

“Do you want anyone to come with you?”  The canary girl asked.

“Only if you want to.  It’s quite the hike up there.  I might not even go all the way to the roof, but at least a higher floor.”

“I’ll come,” Robin volunteered.

She, Doyle, and three others, including the canary, left their hideout and began climbing.  Robin deliberately avoided looking at the door to the floor above theirs: the one with April’s dead body.

Before the sun had even risen, the walkie-talkie had begun to pick up a signal.  They couldn’t make out anything, but it sounded like voices.  They were hoping that by getting up higher in the building, the signal would come in clearer.

Every three floors the group exited the stairwell and went over to the windows.  It wasn’t until they had gone up twelve exhausting floors that they could make out words.

“We’re preparing everyone now,” a gruff male voice said.

“How long until you’re on the move?” a vastly different male voice spoke.

“Minutes,” voice one responded.

“We’ll prepare everyone here to receive you,” a female voice said.

“When are you guys moving out, Leighton?” voice one asked.

“We’re still waiting.  The truck hasn’t been found yet, but we have people looking.”  Voice two was being called Leighton, which suggested the speakers weren’t all in the city.

“If the timeline is as short as you say it is, you may have to abandon that truck,” the female suggested.

“It’s a possibility.  We’d have to sacrifice a lot of gear, but there’s no way I’m leaving anyone here behind.  You’re sure you guys are okay over there at Pearson?” Leighton asked.

“Yeah.  We’ve checked and rechecked.  We don’t have to worry about any radiation problems for at least another five days.  Guess our workers were braver than yours.”  The female, Pearson, laughed, apparently making a joke.

“Or at least more forward-thinking,” voice one added.  “Well, we’re heading out.  It may take us all day to get to Pearson because of the stalled cars on the road.  Leighton, I suggest that if your truck and people aren’t found by eighteen-hundred hours, you cram as many people into what you got and get the hell out of there.”

“Will do.”

“Wait!” Doyle shouted into the walkie-talkie as he pressed the button on the side.  “Who is this?  Where are you?”

“-od luck, Leighton,” voice one had continued talking.  “Pearson, we’ll hopefully see you guys sometime between noon and sundown depending on the traffic.”

“Just don’t get lost.  Remember, we’re nestled in the corner of the 401 and 427.”

“We got a map.”

“Good luck to you too, Pummel,” Leighton said.  It seemed that nobody had heard Doyle.

Doyle pressed the button again, speaking frantically, trying to hail them.  Every time he let go of the button, they would catch a snippet of the trio’s closing remarks, but none of them made any indication of hearing Doyle.  Finally, they got nothing but silence.

“So there are at least three other groups out there,” one of their party said brightly.

“What was that one saying about radiation?” the canary worried.

“I don’t know,” Doyle shook his head, “but I can guess that it’s not good.  The word ‘radiation’ is never good.”

“Whatever it is, they think something is going to happen really soon,” Robin added.  “Apparently that Pearson woman is in a safe place and the other two groups are going to meet with her.”

“Too bad we don’t know where she is.  Maybe then we could go too,” the woman Robin didn’t have a name for sighed.

“Maybe we do know.”  Doyle suddenly headed for the stairs.

Confused, Robin, the canary, and the two others got up and followed him.  He hurried down the steps, grabbing the inside railing at the landings and swinging himself around to the next set of steps.  He practically jumped down the stairs.

Doyle reached their fifth floor sanctuary before everyone else.  By the time Robin and the others caught up, he had already dug through one of their bags and pulled out a book containing maps of Ontario.  Everyone looked on, baffled, as he flipped through the book.

“Ha!” he cried out in triumph.

Robin had to squirm her way through the group of people who had gathered all around.

“Check it out.”  Doyle held out the book so that those who were upstairs with him could see it.  Robin picked out that it was a map of Toronto, but didn’t know why Doyle would flip to it.

The canary understood and smiled broadly.  “Of course!”

“What?” Robin finally asked.

“Here.”  Doyle pointed to part of the map.

Robin looked closely and saw that a space was labelled as the Toronto Pearson International Airport.  Right next to the airport was a thick east/west highway line marked 401, and another north/south highway marked 427.  It was hard to believe that it could just be a coincidence.

Since not everyone had heard the radio conversation, Doyle repeated the basic meat of it.  When he brought up that radiation was mentioned, a shudder went through the group.

“There’s a nuclear waste storage facility outside of town,” one of the men in the group said.  “Might it have something to do with that?”

“Very likely,” Doyle nodded.  “I think we should head to this airport, maybe even try to catch up with these other people on the way.  What does everyone else think?”

There was some muttering as the group talked it over.  There was concern about the long travel.  In the city, most of them had a general idea of where they were at all times, but if they left, that would change.