Adaptive Instinct (Survival Instinct) (8 page)

After that night, Saria broke up with Orson and started hanging out with new people.  Not
as if Orson cared, Kelly was all over him now.

In high school, Orson’s life started to fall apart as he began to drink a lot more and began stealing.  The police had caught him on several occasions.  The courts threatened to separate him from his mom and send him to a juvenile detention centre.  That’s when Orson knew things were bad.  His mom had started to be around more often though.  She had gotten a better job, a day job, and she was attending AA meetings.  She found a new man, Mr. Norton, and
she had dumped all her old friends.  Mr. Norton was okay; he didn’t butt into Orson’s life, didn’t try to be his dad, and he was helping his mom.  Not long after the thing with the courts, the Kings moved in with Mr. Norton, across town, where Orson had to change schools.  He left all his friends behind and didn’t bother making new ones.  He joined an art program that he attended every day after school and for most of the day on weekends.  He loved it.

Art became a real passion for Orson, and his art teachers began telling him he had real talent and a real imagination to go with it.  He once painted an image of a ferocious cat-beast he had designed himself and was complimented profusely on the realism.  Orson just politely thanked everybody.  He didn’t tell anyone that he had killed, skinned, and dissected the neighbour’s cat to learn all about feline musculature and structure.

On graduation night, Orson was alone in the house.  Both Mrs. King and Mr. Norton were out for their bi-weekly date night.  As Orson sat down to watch a movie, the doorbell rang.  It was three of his old friends from across town.  Somehow, they had managed to find out where he lived and were clearly drunk or stoned, probably both.  Orson took them to his room where they got into an argument.  One of them spilled beer on his sketchbook, and another smashed his fist through the painting of the big cat.  One made a comment that the reason Saria dumped him was because she found out his mom was giving him better blowjobs than she could.  Orson went over to his bed and pulled out a long, serrated blade from under the mattress.  He had upgraded from the kitchen knife some time ago.  His former friends fled.  Later that night, Orson crossed town and snuck into the house of the one who had made the comment.  He found the boy asleep in the bathtub, all alone in the house.  Leaving no trace of himself, Orson used a razor from the medicine cabinet to slit the boy’s wrists, making it look like suicide.  He was never caught.

That same night, Mr. Norton proposed to Mrs. King and she said yes.

Orson loved university.  He loved the teachers, he loved the work, and he loved the new friends he made.  He was the top student.  The second student was a female named Cassidy, and she was friends with Orson.  Orson loved Cassidy’s work; it had a certain flair that appealed to him.  One day, Cassidy invited Orson to her place for lunch, a usual thing they did.  She flirted with Orson, which was also not that unusual.  This time though, she really flirted with him, coming onto to him, admitting to wanting to have sex with him.  Rough sex.  She wanted him to put the same kind of energy into her as he did into his art.  He finally obliged, and they made a mess of the place.

As Orson was nearing the end on her living room floor, she began to say no and bat at his chest.  It was just part of the act.  Orson just wasn’t aware of how much of an act it was.  He was too into it to hear the keys in the lock.  Cassidy really started to protest then, and to shove, confusing Orson.  Her boyfriend, whom Orson didn’t even know existed, walked in and what he saw, Orson could imagine.  He knew that it looked like he was raping Cassidy, and that’s exactly how Cassidy wanted it to be seen.  She had even made sure it had been rough so that she would be bruised up.  The lies she told, and the acting she put on, far exceeded what Orson could do when he was little.  She had set him up completely.

With his record, an eyewitness, and Cassidy’s bruises and cuts, there was little Orson could do.  He was sentenced to ten years in prison in North Leighton Correctional Facility.  He did surprisingly well in jail.  He used his cunning not to stand out and draw attention, but also not to be a dog that everyone beat on.  He made himself useful to those higher up in the hierarchy of prisoners and guards, while not being needy or dependent on them.

He was still in prison when the zombie outbreak happened.

***

Orson had one true friend while he was in prison.  Hank wasn’t as blind as a bat, because bats could at least see something.  Hank was truly and completely blind.  Orson had gotten him as a
cellmate a year ago due to his cautiously balanced, good nature with both the other prisoners and the men who guarded them.  Hank had to be in a special ward and got special treatment because of his affliction—if you could call it that.  Hank was one cool cat.  Despite being blind, he always seemed to find his way.  He had a cane, but he almost never used it.  Even when they took him to new places, he rarely used it.  Orson had asked him about this once, about how he managed to navigate places he had never been.  Hank had replied that the objects told him where they were, that they spoke.  Everything in the world had minor vibrations to them, these small sounds, an inner rhythm; you just had to know how to listen for them.  Orson had asked Hank how he had learned to do that, and Hank just gave him a sly grin.  He responded with a question of his own.

“You said you’re a painter; how do you paint?”

“I practise.”  Orson couldn’t see how the two things were related.

“Practice is part of it, yes, but how do you paint things no one has seen before?  How do they come to you?  Are you one of those
painters who just attack the canvas and sees what comes out, or do you know what you’re painting beforehand?”

“I know what I’m painting beforehand.  I imagine it first.”

“And can you imagine the small details of this painting?  Say, the stripes on that cat you told me about?  The look of the man’s face who was fighting it?”

“Sometimes I can imagine the details beforehand.  Not all the details, and not every time, but sometimes.”

“Your imagination is like a normal blind man’s hearing; becoming acute with use.  Now use that imagination to picture someone with talent, someone who can see every detail of the painting before he begins.”

“So you’re saying, you’re a grand master of hearing?  A natural-born talent?”

“Not just talent; remember there is practice in there as well.  I’ve had a lot of practice.”

Orson couldn’t quite wrap his head around it, but he sort of saw where Hank was coming from.  He guessed it was one of those things that you couldn’t quite describe unless you were in the same condition.  He understood the practice part though, and Hank had a lot more practice at listening than Orson did at painting.  Hank had gone blind when he was only five years old; he said he had stared at the sun too long, if he was to be believed.  Hank was now forty-five, with a wife and two children outside the confines of the prison.  Hank was in that prison because of them.

Orson had yet to see it, but apparently, Hank could have quite the mean streak.  To the general public, and to Orson, he came across as a suave, generally well-spoken,
cool
guy.  To his family, he was a brutal tyrant.  He would insult them, yell at them, and beat the hell out of them.  His wife had been to the emergency room a few times, but she never pressed charges.  Hank called her his tame cow.  Orson knew exactly what he meant; he had one of his own once.  However, one time, Hank beat his daughter just a little too hard.  She had to go to the emergency ward, and with the other marks on her body and her mother’s record, the police knew what was going on.  Hank would still have been fine, but his daughter opened her mouth and ratted him out.  When he got out of prison, Hank was planning to give her such a whipping, but only Orson knew that.  Hank was polite and gentlemanly to everybody.  He got along with them even better than Orson did.  Orson knew he could learn from this man.

Orson also liked to hear about Hank’s rebellious daughter.  She was the strong one of Hank’s three family members.  She was the only one who stood up to Hank about anything.  Apparently, Hank’s son was older than the
girl was, but if it wasn’t for her insistence, he never would have gone to university.  Not because he wanted to stay to protect the family or anything so noble, it was just because he was a cow as well.  A cow too afraid to move.  Nevertheless, the girl had convinced him to apply to the University of Toronto and he had actually managed to get accepted.  They knew Hank would never pay for him to leave Leighton, but with the savings both the boy and the girl had collected from jobs Hank insisted they have, as well as student loans, they managed to get him into the school and out of the city.  Out of Hank’s reach.  The part that made Hank the most furious was that he had no idea any of it was going on.

The girl was smart.  When she was younger, she would try to get back at her blind father in small ways: leaving toys on his seat, rearranging the furniture, moving his clothes around in his closet, putting spices in his food.  They didn’t work ninety-nine percent of the time.  Hank could do that weird hearing of objects, feel the different fabrics and cuts of his clothes, and smell the spices.  What his daughter had finally done though, was learn sign language.  She learned to sign, and taught her brother when she found out that writing wasn’t good enough; Hank could hear the scratching of pens and pencils on paper.  Hank knew something was up, he could hear the rustling of fabric if they had sleeves on, and feel the movement of air as their arms passed through it when they were making grand gestures.  He had eventually figured out what was going on, but he had no idea what they were saying to each other.  And he couldn’t always tell when they were doing it.  It infuriated him.

Orson liked to hear of this strong girl.  When he got out of prison, he was going to pay his own visit to her.  He liked Hank, and so he was going to break his daughter for him.  It would be fun, and hey, what were friends for?

His second visit would be to Cassidy.  He would be careful, and take his time so as not to put suspicion on himself.  But he would go see her.  He would go see her and show her what rape really was.  He would also show her his other
talents
.

***

The day of the outbreak started like any other day.  Wake up call, breakfast, exercise, work in the laundry, and lunch.  It was after lunch when things changed.  The guards sent everybody back to their cells instead of letting them out for their second, shorter yard time.  Word was that they got some call from some bigwig.  These calls had happened before, but they usually affected only the prisoners who were in for life.  Some lawyer would come down from Marble Keystone and make deals for the lifers.  Apparently, these were chances to get out, in return for being guinea pigs.  Nobody really knew exactly what happened, because none of the lifers ever came back.  Some said they had gone free and given new identities; others were more pessimistic and said they had just been sent to another prison, and of course, many of them believed they had been killed outright.

Orson and Hank waited in their cell, sitting on Hank’s bottom bunk together.  Orson was reading him a book about a band, Gathers Moss.  Hank was an avid music lover and liked to learn about his favourite groups and bands.  He said Gathers Moss was one of the best rock bands in the history of music.  Orson had to agree.  It was a shame they had stopped playing.

Hank held up a hand for Orson to stop reading, and so he did.  A moment later, a guard opened the door to their little neck of the prison.  They were in a special mini-ward, as Orson liked to call it, a small branch off the main prison block.  A few of these mini-wards were used for special prisoners.  Special prisoners was a broad category; they could be handicapped, a threat to other prisoners, a threat to themselves, a rat for the guards, a high profile prisoner, someone useful to the guards, someone overly dumb, someone overly smart.  Really, anything that the guards wanted.  The hall that Hank and Orson were in had ten cells with two prisoners in each of them.  Orson liked his hall because they didn’t fight each other, and everybody was quiet at night.  Orson had even been practising to use his ears, although he knew he would never get as good at it as Hank.

When the guard opened the door, all the prisoners went silent.  Many, including Orson, went to stand at the bars where they could see the guard.  Hank continued sitting.  He could hear just fine from where he was.  The guard was the one who Orson thought looked like a weasel.  He
was
a weasel too, always snivelling and sucking up to management, and then trying to be all tough and badass around the prisoners.  His put-on persona seemed to have fallen away, however.  He stood in the doorway, his mouth opening and closing silently like a fish, staring at a point on the floor in front of him.  He suddenly seemed to remember why he was there and looked at a clipboard in his hands.

“Terrance Bitterton,” he read off the clipboard.  It was the name of one of the other inmates in their hall.  “Orson King.  Hank Paige.  Franklin VanHassen.  Please hold your hands through the bars and prepare for transfer.  The rest of you can return to what you were doing.”  The weasel sounded like he wasn’t sure about what he was saying.  And considering that the word ‘please’ was used, he was probably reading those lines straight off the clipboard.

The prisoners obliged.  Orson placed his hands through the bars while Hank got up to do the same.  The weasel came to their cell first.  He locked handcuffs on both Orson and Hank, binding them to the bars, which was something they usually did only for the trouble prisoners.  He then opened their cell and walked in.  The weasel was being uncharacteristically silent; normally he would be jeering and name calling, making himself feel tougher than he really was.  There was a moment of hesitation when he didn’t seem to know what to do with the clipboard.  He finally placed it face down on the bottom bunk.  He patted down Orson and Hank, making sure they didn’t have any items on them.  Orson wasn’t stupid; he had hidden the shiv he had made inside his ratty mattress.  Once the weasel decided they were clean, he unlocked their hands and then locked them again behind their backs.