Defensive Instinct (Survival Instinct Book 4) (47 page)

“It’s all right,” a voice ahead drifted toward them. “Just keep following the people in front of you, it’s okay.”

Riley couldn’t see who it was until they were next to him.

“Winchester!” she called out.

Winchester startled, stared at her for a moment as he fell behind, then finally recognized her and ran up beside her stretcher.

“Don’t worry, we know where we’re going,” he spoke in a rush, speaking more to Josh than to Riley. “Just follow the others; there’s a plan. I don’t know what it is, but Bronislav is leading us somewhere. I saw Lauren, Claire, Peter, and Dakota pass by a while ago. They were with your sister and daughter,” Winchester briefly looked down at Riley before looking back at Josh. “I haven’t seen Abby or Anne yet, but I’m sure they’re all right; they’re probably just behind you somewhere. Don’t stop, just keep walking.”

Before any questions could be asked, Winchester disappeared, heading back to where he had been before, urging people to keep moving and telling them that everything would be all right.

Riley wanted to tell her carriers to go faster, to catch up to her daughter wherever she was, but managed to keep her mouth shut. They were all going to the same place; they’d be together in the end.

As soon as the Black Box fences were out of sight, the column left the industrial roads and buildings to head into the woods. Robin came over and retrieved her shotgun from beneath Riley, bringing a relief that Riley hadn’t realized how badly she needed. Looking to one side, she spotted a fairly large and freshly dug hole. As she was pondering it, they passed another: this one with a man squatting down beside it. An unfolded tarp lined the bottom of this second hole, and the man was handing out baseball bats, crowbars, and bladed weapons evenly along the line.

Weapons cache
, Riley realized as the hole disappeared behind them. She didn’t see any guns though. Ammo was probably too precious to waste by having it buried out here. Still, some weapons were better than no weapons, and the tarp would come in handy. She hoped the first hole had been filled with the same, or maybe with food, and that it wasn’t just a hole they dug in the wrong spot as they looked for the cache.

In a clearing, a fairly large group of people had stopped to rest. Without much sleep the night before, the long walk was wearing on them. A few sat around in their pyjamas, captives who hadn’t had a chance to dress properly, but more were stripping off extra layers they had put on in order to get more clothing out. Riley’s stretcher was briefly put down again, as another set of volunteers took over.

“Riley!”

She twisted her head around to find the source of the familiar voice, and spotted Brunt jogging toward her just as the new volunteers begin pressing onward. Riley didn’t even need to reach out, as Brunt quickly scooped up her hand as soon as he had fallen in beside her. She was pretty sure he was checking her pulse.

“Good to see you got out okay,” he said, grinning.

“Hope?”

“She’s up ahead with Cameron and the others. I’ve been searching the line for you. Want me to go get her?”

“Yes.” Riley felt confined on the stretcher. She wanted to get up and find Hope herself, but the moment she tried to rise, her head began to swim again and Josh gently pushed her back down.

“All right, I’ll be back.” Brunt took off running up the line, dodging around people and plants alike.

“What’s wrong?” Riley frowned up at Josh whose concerned look put a damper on her good mood. “Is it something about the container yard?”

“I’m thinking about what Winchester said and wondering why Abby isn’t with Lauren.”

Riley hadn’t realized how odd that was until he said it. Abby
should
have been with Lauren and the others, so why wasn’t she? Was she okay?

“And yes, I’m thinking about the container yard as well. We didn’t want to tell you before your surgery, but there was word that a group was heading there to attack them as well. The yard was forewarned and prepared, unlike us, but we have no idea if the two groups are somehow related. And that rumble… I have no idea what caused that, but it could have been from that direction, and if it was, that means there’s still a battle going on.”

“Is that why we’re heading the wrong way?” Riley wanted to get angry for not being told, but she knew she would have done the same thing if she and her sister had changed places.

“I don’t know. I don’t know where we’re going. I don’t know if anyone has heard from the container yard since the attack over there was supposed to happen. I don’t know anything, it seems.”

Riley fidgeted and picked at her nails as she absorbed the information.

“Mom!”

Riley did her best to look around, raising her head as high as she could and turning it to look forward, both Josh and pain preventing her from twisting her torso.

“Mom?” Hope called, moving down the line alone, running ahead of the others, searching through faces.

“Hope! I’m here, sweet pea!” Riley called back, doing her best to wave her arm, but she couldn’t rotate at the shoulder very much.

“Hope, over here,” Josh added.

The girl came dashing up to them, a large smile of relief on her face. Riley wanted nothing more than to hug her daughter, but her limited range of motion, and the bandages and drainage tubes around her chest prevented it. Instead, she merely squeezed Hope’s shoulders with her hands, grateful that her stretcher-bearers had stopped for the moment. Hope clasped her smaller hands around one of Riley’s elbows and squeezed back as hard as she could.

“Look, I got my slingshot out,” Hope proudly told Riley, pulling it out of the pocket of her pants once they started moving again. “Me, Peter, and Dakota have been finding rocks and things we can use in it. Dakota has hers too.”

“That’s good. That’s very good.”

As the rest of the group showed up, Riley was told the story of how they had started to leave, but got stopped before reaching the stairwell. Abby was separated from them at that point, and no one knew what happened to her. Once they had reached the suite of rooms, they barricaded the door behind them. Cameron, Brunt, and Lauren stayed out in the living room, while Claire took Hope, Peter, and Dakota into Peter’s room, where they moved his bunk bed to block that door. The kids were given orders not to open the door unless one of the adults gave a special knock.

“I’m going to go look for Abby,” Brunt said as soon as the group had settled into the pace of the stretcher-bearers.

“Can you search for Anne as well?” Josh asked him.

“Of course.”

Riley didn’t know if Brunt had ever met Anne, but he must have at least known what she looked like because he didn’t ask.

“Thank you,” Riley told Cameron and Lauren for what they had done for Hope. The two women brushed her thanks aside, as a lot of people in the march would have done the same thing. Riley thanked them again anyway.

A little farther along, Riley spotted a corpse among some tree roots. Its head was caved in, but the impact had happened long ago based on the dryness of the blood and brains. Riley wondered who had been the one to kill it, whether it was someone from the Black Box or not, and again wondered where they were going.

Brunt returned with both Abby and Anne, eliciting a happy response at the reunion. Neither of them knew where they were going either, and both told the group what had happened to them. Anne had been barricaded in one of the hydroponics labs, having gotten outside and witnessed the fire fight the sentries were in before being turned around. The hydroponics lab she ended up in had several tools she and others were able to use to secure the door. Other labs hadn’t been so lucky, as the invaders were able to break their way in. Several people around Anne had been able to smuggle out seeds and a few clippings, but she had been searched, her pockets turned out and emptied, a woman even checking her bra. Unlike the medical centre, there was nothing like tape or bandages to secure the supplies in unusual places.

Abby told her story about being captured and the interrogation. Before the Day, she might have glossed over some of those details with the kids present, but now they needed to know that stuff like that happened. Josh checked over her wounds as best he could and decided that there was nothing serious.

A little while later, Brunt and Josh relieved Riley’s stretcher-bearers. Cameron and Lauren offered to assist them, badgering the men by saying that having four people carrying would be easier than just two until they relented. Hope stayed by Riley’s side, holding her hand the whole time.

“I think we’re heading toward the ocean,” Anne declared after many footfalls of silence.

“My sense of direction is terrible, but I think she’s right,” Abby agreed. “I believe we’re angling toward it.”

“But we’re on the wrong side of the Black Box,” Josh commented.

“Maybe we’re circling around,” Claire offered. “You know, so they can’t follow us to the container yard?”

“Then why head toward the sea? Why not head straight east before hooking north?” Cameron wondered.

“Maybe it’s easier to walk along the coast.” Brunt shrugged with the arm not carrying Riley. “Or maybe there’s another cache of gear and supplies out there.”

They had passed a small group of people digging another hole. The majority of the unburied weapons went to the front of the column where they might stumble into a horde, while a large chunk of the remainder was held onto for the back, because a gathering was likely to come from behind them, drawn by the sounds of the march. Still, their little group had been given a baseball bat, which Anne was carrying, and Robin wasn’t far away with her shotgun. If a big group of the dead showed up, their best option was to run, but a handful they could probably deal with.

“People are clumping up ahead of us,” Dakota called out from where she was picking her own trail through the trees to their right, scrambling up and over some large rocks. “I think they’re stopping past the trees. Maybe it’s the ocean?”

“We’ll see when we get there,” Cameron told her, the nervousness in her voice obvious to Riley even if it wasn’t to the others.

Riley wanted to twist around, to try to peer through the trees herself and see what was ahead, but she couldn’t. She had only enough energy to keep awake, listen to the nearby conversations, and on the rare occasion add to them.

It was still a couple of minutes before they were in direct sunlight, the trees falling away behind them. Dakota had been right: people were clumping up and stopping, while the ocean crashed close by.

“Oh wow,” Lauren was the first to say something.

“What? What is it?” Riley wanted to know, able to see only people’s backsides.

Instead of answering, Lauren and Brunt guided their little group around and through the gathering of people, making for the water. Once they were in the clear, Riley saw it. Although everyone had been told that it was destroyed, the German submarine was floating in the water, secured to the docks of what might have been a factory at one time. People were making their way down the shore toward the docks, where they were being loaded onto it one at a time.

“They didn’t scuttle it,” Abby breathed, as amazed to see it as Riley was.

“That’s one hell of a secret to keep,” Josh barked, half-annoyed and half-excited.

“I’m sure they had their reasons,” Anne insisted.

“I’m guessing she still runs if they’re loading us aboard,” Brunt commented. “We’ll be able to get to the yard much faster now. Come on, we should get Riley there before all the bunks get filled up. We don’t want to have to balance her on the hull outside.”

With the stretcher between them, people were willing to part for the little group, although some grudgingly. For once, people were looking directly at Riley, either trying to decide if her wounds were bad enough to need the stretcher, or enviously wondering if they should wish the same injury upon themselves in order to get ahead of the line.

Bronislav himself stood at the end of the dock, keeping everyone orderly as they boarded the submarine. A few people stood around, delaying boarding as they looked for certain people, but most formed a ragged line and got on when they were told.

“You son of a bitch,” Josh called to Bronislav with a huge grin on his face.

Bronislav merely shrugged in response and continued to move the line slowly forward and onto the sub.

“Are we going to go under the sea?” Hope whispered to Riley, the girl’s grip tightening around her mother’s hand.

“No, sweet pea,” Riley assured her. “We won’t be diving under; there are too many people to fit inside. Some are going to be sitting on top.”

“Good.”

Riley wondered what she was thinking about, but there was no time to ask. She and her daughter had to be split up while they hoisted Riley aboard. As she was raised above the heads of the crowd, she spotted Max’s stretcher not far behind them and was oddly glad for it. She also saw a group of people with bladed weapons holding back a large but spaced-out horde of zombies that was staggering out of the nearby cluster of buildings. Hopefully, it never got worse than it currently looked.

After strapping her to the stretcher via her waist, arms, and legs, Riley was finally made vertical so that she could be lowered through the opening at the top of the conning tower. There were still so many people waiting to get aboard, she worried that they wouldn’t all be able to fit, even when clustering up on the hull. She quickly put that out of her mind though. Hope was right behind her while the rest of the small group she cared for was making their way on board. As Riley sank into the belly of the sub, she hoped she’d be able to get some more sleep before arriving at the container yard. If there was to be another battle, she wanted to be on her feet for it.