Adaptive Instinct (Survival Instinct) (74 page)

Then, her eyes widened, and she died.

Attempts were made to revive Angela, but all attempts were unsuccessful.  Her family was informed, while a little over a mile away, Tom tried to “run into” Taylor before she got to her next class.  However, she was swept up in a group of laughing girls and Tom felt too shy to try and talk to her under those circumstances.

While Tom was telling his tale of woe to his friends Dez, and Steve Newkirk at the Terrace Food Court, Angela was transferred to the Pathology Lab for further tests.

The two pathologists attending her wore gloves and facemasks, but those were no help when she suddenly sat up on the table and tore out their throats.

Similar scenes were being played out in hospitals, hotels and airports across the country, and on planes bound for all corners of the globe…

***

Tom’s big break came when he chanced on Taylor sitting in the quad, reading a book on Elizabethan England.

He almost passed her by.  The sun was shining on her hair, and there was a slight smile on her lips.  She looked radiant, almost ethereal to him, and he waxed poetic for a moment, thinking her like some Elfin maid from Tolkien.

Guess that makes me a troll, he thought.

He could almost hear what Dez and Newkirk would say.  Why was he so freaking hard on himself?  And he loved stories about ordinary people finding their courage and winning the day – was he going to be a coward in his own life?

Was he?

“History?” he asked her.

She looked at him, not quite recognizing him.

“I’m in your art history class,” he said.

Recognition dawned on her face, and then she smiled.  “No, I just like the period.  I’m supposed to write a short historical drama for my film class, and I was thinking of something about Elizabeth.” 

At this point, he would normally choke, nerves preventing him from carrying on the simplest conversation.  However, he had seen something in Kerckhoff Hall that was actually relevant.

“Did you know that there’s a display of Elizabethan costumes and props in Kerckhoff?”

She shook her head.  “I don’t get to South Campus much.”

“It’s tied in with that series ‘The Tudors’, on Showtime? Apparently, some grad students were involved somehow.”

She nodded, and he sensed his window was closing.  He had to act, to be decisive.

“You know, I was thinking of going there, now.”

“Were you?” she asked, teasingly.

“Yeah, and I was thinking you might want to check it out, maybe get some coffee? Kerckhoff has a pretty cool coffeehouse.”

She smiled and nodded.  Taylor gathered up her books and they made their way south.  En route, he saw Dez, who grinned and gave him a surreptitious “thumbs up.”

Tom was so happy he didn’t even hear the sirens.

It was an exceptionally beautiful day on campus, not too hot, the sky dotted with a few wisps of clouds.  People lingered on the path or rushed to class.  As usual, the university was a hive of motion and conversation.

Tom only had eyes for Taylor.

He loved the way the sunlight shone on red highlights in her auburn hair, how the faint breeze brought her scent to him, some pleasing mélange of shampoo, soap, and perfume.  She looked over at him and smiled, and his heart quickened.

If this was love, it felt spectacular.

Bruin Walk sloped downward toward Kerckhoff Hall and the Student Union building.  Their destination was a large room of display cases and vitrines of artifacts, then the coffeehouse on the second floor.

As they moved down toward Kerckhoff, a swell of agitated people swarmed past them.  Taylor was almost knocked down and Tom pulled her to the shoulder of the walk.

There were screams now, screams of horror that were obviously authentic – this was no prank.

As the panicked students ran past them, Tom could see from what they were fleeing.

Several students lay on the ground, savaged and bloodied.  Tom thought for the briefest of moments that some pack of feral dogs had invaded the campus, until he saw a spindly girl in a bathrobe bite into the face of a convulsing campus cop.  The spindly girl came away with his nose and upper lip, and chewed on it as she looked up…

… and fixed on Tom and Taylor.

He saw that people who must have been students were biting, clawing, and feeding on others.  Screams of the victims were answered with guttural moans, and the awful sounds of flesh being ripped and torn, chewed and gulped.

Behind this carnage came a group of some twenty of the cannibals, some semi-nude and covered in blood.  Tom was shocked to see the girl from the quad, her thin chest flapping open in the Y incisions of an autopsy.

He considered following the students uphill, but now that group was screaming, and he knew they had run into another group of attackers.

He wished he could take the gun off the campus cop, but it was too risky.  He grabbed Taylor and she shrieked, thinking she was being attacked.

She looked at him, pale, and wild-eyed.

“Come on!” Tom shouted, taking her hand and pulling her toward the castle-like structure of Kerckhoff Hall.

They ran, their way was relatively clear, but he saw that some of the lurching cannibals – zombies, Jesus, were they zombies? – moving to follow them.  Fortunately, they seemed slow and somewhat uncoordinated.  He and Taylor could easily outrun them.

Taylor was crying and he felt sorry for her, but part of him was exhilarated in a way he had never felt before.  Here was a girl he had feelings for, and he was saving her life! It was as if his pre-adolescent fantasies of being an action hero who gets the girl were coming true.

Tom Meyers, Zombie Killer!

A giddy laugh almost escaped his lips, but he choked it back.  He knew it was just adrenaline, but he didn’t want Taylor to think he was weird or insensitive.

“Where are we going?” Taylor asked.

“Gotta find something to defend ourselves with, and call for help.”

Taylor looked back.  “They’re coming, Tom.”

“It’s okay, Taylor, I’ll protect you.”

She clung to him and he led her into the display of costumes and props for “The Tudors.”

As he remembered, there was a display case of weaponry in the center of the room, which included a broadsword, a crossbow, a mace, and a halberd.

Tom grabbed a fire extinguisher off the wall and smashed the case.  The shattering glass was shockingly loud, and surely, any creature in earshot would head their way.

Clearing away several jagged shards of glass, he reached in and grabbed the mace.  It had a comforting heft and the business end was covered with several blunt protrusions.  He handed it to Taylor while he fished the crossbow out of the case.

The first of the creatures shambled into the room, a man Tom recognized as a parking attendant for the Student Union lot.  His UCLA Student Union shirt was covered in gore and tufts of hair.  His eyes were bloodshot and moving almost independently of one another.  He saw Tom and Taylor, and snarled as viscous pink drool, blood, and ragged chunks of flesh dripped from his mouth.

Tom stepped in front of Taylor.  In his mind, he had already saved her, and they were kissing ardently as police swept in to clean up the mess.

“It’s okay,” he said to her, and grinned. He aimed the crossbow at the creature, and fired.

Nothing happened.

Frantically, he examined the crossbow, and saw to his dismay it was literally a prop, with no working mechanism and the bolt glued down, probably for shots of the user carrying it on horseback or something.  Nothing that might go off at the wrong time and injure someone.

Of all the weapons, he had chosen the one that absolutely would not work.

He threw the crossbow at the creature and it struck it in the face.  It snarled and kept coming, though the weapon had left a sizeable gash on its forehead.

Tom ran to the display case, and picked up the broadsword, as Taylor screamed. The broadsword was light, too light, probably painted balsawood.  He picked up the halberd and was happy to note it had actual heft to it, and the blade, beak and spike were all steel. 

Good to go, he thought.

He brought the weapon out, turning in his panic the wrong way around, so that it caught on the edges of the case. As he fumbled with it, Taylor screamed and dropped the mace.  It landed on the tiled floor with a dull thud.

Tom looked up to see that she was now surrounded; other creatures had come in the door behind them.

Tom swung the halberd clumsily, trying to get a feel for its balance and weight.  He grazed the first creature in the back with the spike, and it snarled, spittle flying into Taylor’s face. 

As Tom adjusted his grip and swung again, a zombie in a barista apron bit deeply into Taylor’s neck, and bright blood jetted across a wardrobe case for Queen Elizabeth.

“No!” Tom screamed and managed to slice deep into the bicep of the first creature.  It turned on him, even as its fellows were tearing into Taylor.   Tom saw them rip away her tee shirt, exposing fair skin and a pink, lacy bra, before they opened her up and pulled out intestines that looked like purple sausages.

Tom vomited into the display case, unmindful of the creature advancing on him.

There was a loud report of a revolver and the creature was blown back, a large hole blossoming in the middle of its Student Union shirt.

“Come on!” Dez screamed in his ear, and he was pulled toward the exit by Dez and Newkirk.

Tom struggled against them.  “She’s hurt!” he cried, tears now spilling from his eyes.

“She’s dead, bro, we gotta bail!”

They dragged him from the place, and his last memory was of Taylor, her convulsing in a pool of blood as her ribs were cracked and everything protected there, was ripped away and eaten.

Tom shut down then, following his friends on some sort of autopilot, his mind not really understanding or processing the chaos and carnage around them.  Newkirk had brought his SUV up Bruin Walk.

That’s a violation, Tom thought.

They piled in, Dez taking out a zombie EMT and a guy dressed only in an athletic supporter. 

“House?” Dez asked.

Newkirk shook his head.  “Called Poe – he and Sugar Bear are trapped on top of the parking kiosk for Lot 2.”

“Poe” was an English major, hence his nickname, and “Sugar Bear” was studying psych.  Sugar Bear was a burly African-American fellow with a deep voice.  Tom had never gotten a nickname; some of the guys in the frat just never inspired one.  He had tried to get them to call him something artistic, but nothing had ever stuck – he was always “Tom” or “Meyers.”   Sometimes, one of the brothers would call him “Tommy Boy,” which he detested, but the best way to make such a nickname permanent and in wide use, was to protest.

Taylor is dead

Taylor is dead

Taylor is…

“Tom!”

Tom looked at Dez.

“Bro, we’re gonna need your help if we’re going to save our friends and get back to the house – you can flip out later, just not now.”

“It’s my fault she’s…”

“It’s no one’s fault, Jesus! Now focus, or I’ll loosen a couple of teeth, got it?”

Tom nodded.

People were pounding on the vehicle now, only he guessed they weren’t really people anymore.  One girl, scraped and bloody, jumped on the hood of the car.

“Let me in, goddammit, let me…”

She was dragged off, and disappeared screaming into the mob forming there on Bruin Walk. 

“Can’t go back,” Newkirk said, and gunned the SUV, moving forward.  The living tried to slow him down, but moved when they saw he wouldn’t stop – the others, they were just bumped aside or mowed down.

The mob began to thin as they crested the hill, and Tom guessed the creatures were flowing downhill, gravity encouraging them to do so.  If they were on foot, they never would have made it.

“Thanks, Newkirk, for coming to get us.”

“You owe me twenty bucks, Tommy-Boy – you think I’d let that go in the middle of a zombie apocalypse?”

“You guys, you think that’s what this is?”

“Look around, dude,” Dez said, “if it walks like a duck and fucks like a duck…”

“But… it’s just not possible…” Tom protested.  “Nothing on Earth reanimates after it’s dead.”

“Well, not counting Jesus,” Dez said, and laughed.  “But, bro, I reiterate, if it looks like a freakin’ duck…”

Newkirk continued east, moving over to the shoulder when he came to a series of steps, then gunning it when the way was clear.  The campus was a maze, and not all his choices were meant for vehicles, but Newkirk drove with a confidence Tom envied.

The kind of confidence that might have saved Taylor.

He shook his head.  This wasn’t the time, he had two brothers depending on him.  Four if you counted Dez and Newkirk, and they were his best friends.

Newkirk skirted the Inverted Fountain outside Franz Hall, just as a lurching man in a hospital gown rose up from a partially consumed body of a nun, her habit covered in blood and gore.  Newkirk roared and tromped down on the accelerator, and the vehicle struck the lurcher dead on.  He flew backward and struck a cement wall with a sickening crunch.  Newkirk sped on, and something struck the vehicle’s tailgate with a loud bang.