Adaptive Instinct (Survival Instinct) (68 page)

“To the left,” River decided.  Some sort of higher power, likely the alcohol, was drawing him in that direction.  He rationalized that surely it would have drawn Quin that way as well.

After pushing through a door and taking three steps, River stopped.  Quin may have been drawn in that direction, sure, but he was with other people. 
Surely, those other people weren’t on the same wavelength as Quin and himself.  They would have gone the other way and bullied Quin into going that way as well.  River turned 180 degrees and began walking in the other direction.

As he passed by the parking garage, he thought about going in and stealing a car.  He could drive right by Quin and the others though, so it was best he stay on foot.

“Funny,” River muttered to himself.  “Whenever I leave somewhere drunk, the zombies disappear.  I should be drunk more often.”

Zombies did eventually show up.  River was forced to run several times.  His pursuers were fairly slow most of the time, and he was able to outrun them.  If he couldn’t outrun them, he just had to hide.  They weren’t very bright and would just zoom past him, their feet slapping against the pavement, screams tearing out of their throats.

River had the feeling of being drawn somewhere.  The zombies would cause him to go off course, but then something in his gut would tell him which way to go from there.  He had never openly believed in a higher power, but he wasn’t against such a notion.  It was possible that some being, somewhere, wanted him to find Quin.  So he walked through the city, weaving around cars, street signs, and buildings.

After hours of
walking, it began to get dark.  River couldn’t keep going.  He was tired, hungry, and, above all, thirsty.  He needed to find a place that could satisfy all three problems as well as provide safety.

Offices were no
good; there was no telling if he’d be able to find any food or water.  The convenience stores, fast food joints, and restaurants all looked like they had been broken into, which was not a sign of a safe haven.  Department stores wouldn’t have nutrition in them either, likewise banks.  Where could he go?

River came across a high-rise apartment building and knew he had found the place he’d been looking for.  Although the glass doors on the main floor had been shattered, he was going to risk it.  The broken glass crunched under his shoes as he entered the gloom.  Not far into the main entrance was a dead body sprawled across the floor.  River approached it cautiously, not sure if it was going to spring up and try to bite his face off or not.  When he got closer, he could see in the dim light coming through the windows that this corpse could never bite anything ever again.  The reason for that was because the head was completely missing.  Surprisingly little blood was pooled around the neck, suggesting it had been removed after death, but where it had gone from there was a total mystery.  River couldn’t see any indication of where it had gotten to, or how.  What he did see, was that the remaining torso belonged to the building’s superintendent, and attached to the dead man’s belt was a large set of keys and a flashlight.  Relieving these items from the corpse and testing the flashlight batteries, River hunted for the stairwell.

Whatever power was leading him, God, gut, luck, or subconscious, it was doing one hell of a job.

The first floor
that River tried had some heavy objects pressed up against the door on the other side.  When he rattled the handle, something moved in the dark beyond the little window.  It rushed at River, leaping up onto the barricade and smashing face first into the reinforced glass.  River decided to find another floor.

When he entered the next hallway of his choosing, he did so slowly.  The beam of his flashlight darted this way and that around the hall, illuminating all corners.  Nothing appeared amiss.  Still, the darkness left behind when the light moved away was spooky.  River approached the closest door, not wanting to journey away from the stairs.  He knocked upon the metal surface that made up the door.  From the floor above came a heavy thump, but no sounds came from inside the apartment.  Having no other way to determine how safe it was, River started going through the superintendent’s keys.  He figured one of them must be a skeleton key that could open the apartment door.

He eventually found the right one, snapping open the lock, and pushing the slab of metal inward.  Only a little bit of light from the sun still lit the sky, so River kept his flashlight with him as he searched the apartment.  The kitchen and living room were decorated in a hodgepodge manner, suggesting the occupant couldn’t afford style and most of the furniture was likely hand-me-downs.  River’s own furniture had looked like that in his first apartment.  When he went down the hall, his nose was assaulted by a vicious smell.  He covered his face with the collar of his shirt, for the first time noticing how much his body stank.  Wasn’t as bad as the pungent odour coming from the bathroom though.

River pushed on the bathroom door, his ears greeted by the sounds of many buzzing flies.  The light located the toilet first, which was clean, and then the sink.  When it fell upon the bathtub, the source of the smell and the flies was revealed.  A young man in his twenties sat in the tub, his head blown open by the double barrel shotgun in his lap.  River walked up to the tub, trying to ignore the flies and his revulsion.  He grabbed the shotgun and pulled it out of the dead boy’s hands.  It came away with a suction sound as tacky blood had been sealing the gun to its owner.  When it popped free, the boy’s head fell forward.  A glob that must have been the remains of his brain fell out of it, with a few maggots crawling around inside.

Gun in hand, River ran out of the bathroom.  He made straight for the balcony and got there just in time to heave his limited stomach contents over the railing.  The alcohol, which was really the only thing in there, burned his throat on its way up.  Even after it was discharged, he continued to dry heave for a while.

Once done, River collapsed onto the cement floor of the balcony.  He cracked open the shotgun and pulled out the two shells inside.  One of them had been used for the kid’s suicide, but not the other one.  River put that one back inside and snapped the long gun closed again.  Looking at his hands, he saw that the boy’s blood had transferred from the gun to them.  Wiping his hands on his shirt, he got up and headed back into the apartment.

In the kitchen, he found things in the fridge that smelled nearly as badly as the bathroom.  He also found a few water bottles, and some canned stuff.  After using one of the bottles to wash his hands and the gun, he drank the others and refilled his stomach with canned food.

From the floor above came another loud crash.  Whoever, or whatever, was up there, wasn’t very co-ordinated.

River grabbed the mattress off a futon that had been used as a couch, and dragged it out onto the balcony.  It was warm and silent out there, with much fresher air than inside.  The city was dark all around him, looking more like the canyon system of an alien landscape than the marvels of human engineering.  Somewhere in the far distance, an unnatural light was shining.  River didn’t have a direct line of sight to it, however, so he couldn’t tell if it was a flashlight, a candle, or a generator running something more powerful.  All he knew was that someone was likely still alive out there.

After relieving his bladder over the side of the balcony, River
lay down on the mattress and fell asleep.

***

He woke up earlier than he had in a long time.  Of course, he had also fallen asleep a lot earlier than was normal, but that was beside the point.  He awoke with the sun, ready to start a new day looking for Quin.  First, to rehydrate.

There were some warm beers in the fridge to which River helped himself.  He also ate a few more cans of whatever for breakfast.  He located a backpack near the door and loaded up the remaining water bottles and some food.  The shotgun was also placed in the bag; it had only the one shot so he’d have to use it sparingly.  Without shame, River raided the kid’s closet and dresser, finding himself a set of clothes that fit and were cleaner than his own.  He changed into them, and grabbed a few more to shove into his bag, just in case he wanted to change again later.  With a slightly alcoholic buzz going, River headed out the door.  The thing upstairs moaned out a goodbye.

Down in the main entrance, he put his flashlight in the backpack and dropped the keys on the floor.  It took a moment for him to realize that something was different about the main entrance: the headless dead body was missing.  A body without a head couldn’t become a zombie, so where the hell did it go?  That was a mystery which River had no interest in solving as he made his way back out through the broken glass.

Out in the city again, River continued his lonesome journey.

He thought about the old days a lot, back when Gathers Moss was whole and proper.  He thought about when Mitch was still alive, his son Zach not even born yet.  He missed Mitch, and wondered what he would have thought about this whole outbreak thing.  Mitch would have had River’s back the whole time.  He would have agreed with the funeral pyre for Gregory, and that April needed to be dealt with.  If Mitch had been around, they probably wouldn’t have run into Robin and April, and Greg would never have been shot.  Mitch had been a lot more straight-laced than the other guys, not that he was an angel or anything.  He had done drugs with them, ended up in the hospital for excessive drinking more than once, and spent far more time in the company of easy women than the average man.  Despite all this, he had a better head on his shoulders than the rest of the band.  Quin and River may have been the best known, but Mitch had basically run everything.  He was always the one dealing with their manager, keeping a rein on the man, and dealing with problems.  If ever an issue arose between band members, and many had, Mitch was the one to solve them.

The day passed slowly.  River walked and walked.  He also ran a few times when he had to.  When he got hungry, he found a place to stop and eat.  When his legs got tired, he found a place where he could sit down and rest.  He was heading for the edge of the city, that he knew, but in what direction he had no idea.  River had never learned to tell the points of a compass, so he didn’t bother to hunt one out.  He did, however, hunt for drugs and liquor whenever he stopped.  He wasn’t always lucky, yet anything that could numb his mind he was grateful for.

When the sun started to sink again, River began hunting for a new place to spend the night.  He was out of the core of the city, so there weren’t as many high-rises and condos.  Apartment buildings were still scattered about, but he wasn’t sure if he wanted to go into another one.  One of the thoughts he had been trying to dull was the image of the boy in the tub.  Stumbling across another one of those might destroy River’s mind.  He also kept thinking about the headless body that had disappeared.

Thanks to stopping in a few shops and stores as he walked, River’s backpack had enough food and water in it to last him through the night.  Not having to worry about his hiding place having sustenance, meant a lot more options presented themselves.  He had just decided on sleeping in a car with heavily tinted windows, when he spotted something he thought would be much safer.

Not far from River, a large, metal dumpster lay curiously on its side in the middle of the road.  The lids now hung from the top edge to the street.  River walked up to the dumpster and pulled up one of the lids, shining his flashlight inside.  Although a few scraps remained, the dumpster was virtually empty.  The garbage truck River had passed a block previously probably had something to do with that.

Lifting the lid higher, River stepped inside the dumpster,
and then let it close behind him.  The dumpster smelled, yet not as badly as he imagined it would.  No worse than the smell of rot, that was clinging to the rest of the city.  He clicked off his flashlight and saw that he was mostly sealed in, just a little bit of light came in where one of the lids didn’t quite align with the now-bottom edge of the dumpster.

Completely hidden from view, surrounded by metal, and in a place that was likely to be overlooked by everyone else, River curled around his backpack in a corner.  He was asleep in moments.  Whatever emotional traumas he may be sustaining, or had already sustained, they certainly didn’t affect his sleep.

***

When River awoke the next day, he felt something moving on him.  Several somethings, like dead hands exploring his body.  The light from the crack was bright with a freshly risen sun, but there wasn’t nearly enough of it to see by.  River clicked on his flashlight, rising to his feet as best he could.  Rats!  There were rats hanging off of him!

River threw himself into the dumpster lid, knocking himself over.  He rolled into the bottom of the lid, lifting it up and getting out at the same time.  Most of the rats had fallen off because of the rolling, but when he leapt to his feet, a few still hung on.  He batted at their bodies with his flashlight, as they clung and scampered over his new clothes.  One by one, they fell or jumped off him, running back into the dumpster through the gap in the lid.

River continued to hit at himself after the rats were gone, swearing there were more of them.  When he finally understood that he had removed all the vermin, he started checking himself over for injury.  Despite a bunch of new holes in his clothes, he couldn’t see or feel any bite marks.  Some of his exposed skin had tiny scratches from tiny nails, but nothing that broke through.  He couldn’t find anywhere he might be bleeding.