Defensive Instinct (Survival Instinct Book 4) (48 page)

On the container farthest from the battle, Nessie switched her thin sword from her right hand to the other. Her hands were sweaty, her fingers slick on the handle. She wiped them off on her shirt and then returned the blade back to her dominant hand, plucking her sheath of a cane from where it stuck out of the side of her rubber boot. She liked to hold the body of the cane in her other hand as it would make a good bludgeoning tool should she need it.

“I don’t like how close they’re getting,” old Willard grumbled beside her, just loudly enough to be heard over the gunfire, screams, shouts, and moans.

“I can’t see them,” Nessie admitted, the containers and people on them blocking her view of the zombies once they were over the high wall.

Willard shifted his grip on the big revolver he held. “Neither can I, but you can see the people easily enough. I don’t like how much they’ve backed toward us, how many of them have been forced to crowd together over there.”

Nessie immediately understood what he meant. She hadn’t noticed it herself, but now that Willard pointed it out, it was easy to tell how far the zombies had pressed into their ranks by looking at where the greatest number of people were gathered. She turned and looked at the community centre, where the strangers and former enemies picked off anything that came around that side. Again, Nessie stuck her sheath into her boot so that she could hold her sword with her off-hand while wiping the sweat from the other.

“So, why’d you stay?” Nessie asked Willard to have something else to think about. He was definitely old enough and frail enough to have been allowed to cross the bridge with the others. The hand holding the revolver shook half the time, and Nessie often wondered if he’d be able to lift and fire it.

“Because I’m old,” Willard answered. “They should have put me at the front. Let me die instead of the young kids. You?”

“I’m still too fit to send away,” Nessie told him, although she would have stayed even if she weren’t. There was a lot of grey hair and many teens not yet fully grown along the back line. She hoped they weren’t going to be needed, especially the young ones. She felt ashamed to have been put in the farthest corner, but that’s where she had been assigned, so that’s where she stayed. The only people farther from the action were those put on top of the outhouses, as least as far as she could tell. If any zombies got past the far side of the community centre, however, then Nessie would be the farthest.

A wordless cry went up from somewhere near the middle of the pack, but whether it was a good cry or not, Nessie couldn’t tell. Taking her whetstone out of her pocket, she sharpened her blade again, although it certainly didn’t need it. She wished she had her knitting needles to keep her hands occupied. Maybe if she had taken the metal ones, she could have sharpened them into deadly points, so that way they were also useful as weapons. If they survived this encounter, sharpening them might not be a terrible idea.

A louder cry went up, and this one was definitely cheerful.

“What’s going on?” Nessie asked Willard while squinting at the backs of the front lines.

“I can’t tell,” Willard answered, his worse eyes squinting even more.

Thankfully it didn’t take long for word to travel to them. Apparently, one of the zombie piles had stopped sending new corpses over the wall. Now there were only two or three, one of which they thought might be petering off. Nessie hooted when she heard the news and couldn’t help but dance a little in her boots. Finally, some news other than the front line being pushed back. Maybe they could do it; maybe they could hold off this horde.

Nessie looked around to see all the other hopeful faces. As her eyes swept past the shoreline, she spotted something that stopped her cold. A tiny figure was crawling around on the rocks. The size and co-ordination were definitely that of a toddler. Had he or she been forgotten somehow, or fallen in the water off Animal Island and gotten lucky with the current? Either way, the tot was not in a safe place.

“Help me with the ladder,” Nessie turned to Willard.

“What? Why? Did someone fall off the container?” He grabbed hold of the metal with her and helped swing it over the side.

“There’s a kid,” she pointed with her sword.

“You sure that’s a living kid?” Willard squinted again as he helped lever the ladder upright.

“No, but I’m not going to do nothing, because there’s a chance it is.”

“Be careful.”

Nessie sheathed her sword to climb down. “You’re welcome to come.”

Willard shook his head. “I’ll guard the ladder for your return.”

The moment Nessie’s boots hit the pavement, she questioned her decision. From down there, she couldn’t see the toddler who had been down the slope of rocks near the water. Remembering when her niece had been that age, and then how Nessie hadn’t been able to protect her on the Day, she stepped away from the ladder. Drawing her sword, Nessie moved toward the rocks.

When she reached the top of the jumble of stones, the boy—for that’s what the haircut suggested—had nearly crawled his way high enough to meet her.

“Child, are you all right?” Nessie asked, remaining on the pavement as she never trusted her footing among the boulders and pebbles.

The boy looked up with an unfamiliar face, his skin pale and his eyes yellow. Nessie sighed.

“I’m sorry for what happened to you,” she told the small thing as it rose to its feet and stumbled toward her with outstretched hands and a yawning mouth. The moment the zombie child came close enough, Nessie thrust the tip of her sword between its eyes, being as gentle as she could while still penetrating the skull. When she withdrew the blade, the boy fell backward onto the rocks.

Shouting from behind drew Nessie’s attention. Several of her too old and too young companions had gathered along the backs of the containers and were pointing, while Willard was making gestures for her to hurry back. Nessie looked toward the water and saw that the zombie boy was not alone. A dozen or more sopping wet corpses were staggering out of the water, tripping and crawling up the rocks.

For the first time in a long while, Nessie ran. Her boots slapped against the pavement, as a stitch formed in her side. Reaching the ladder, she nearly collapsed, out of breath, and narrowly avoided cutting herself with her sword as she sheathed it again.

“Hurry up,” Willard encouraged her as she grabbed the sides of the ladder. As soon as her cane was high enough, he plucked it from her fingers, letting her get a better grip to climb the last few rungs. Gunfire rattled from much closer by as people fired upon the water-logged dead. As she pulled herself up onto the container’s top, she rolled to watch them coming. The aim of those firing was terrible, mostly planting useless body shots the times they didn’t miss. Together, she and Willard pulled the ladder back up.

“How many shots do you have for that thing?” Nessie asked through gulps of air. All her joints ached in a way she had forgotten they could.

“Only the six currently loaded,” Willard admitted. He hadn’t fired a shot yet, waiting until the things were closer so that he wouldn’t miss and waste a bullet.

Nessie swallowed a hard lump, trying to catch her breath before she needed to use her blade again. Finally, a headshot landed, and then a second close behind it. One after another the zombies fell, the shots no longer missing. Nessie looked along the containers and saw Misha and his dogs standing among a group of youths, most of whom didn’t look old enough to be there. The young were loading and handing him their single-shot rifles so that Misha could fire one bullet after another. His aim was a lot better, missing as infrequently as the others hit their target. When one of the teens called that he was out of bullets, an elder took his place. The zombies were coming out of the water so slowly that Misha was doing most of the shooting. Only a couple of people at the far end needed to take care of the ones down there. By the time Nessie was feeling better, albeit still a little woozy, the water walkers and swimmers had stopped coming. If there were more in there, they hadn’t found their way to the rocky shore, most likely sinking into the gorge. Hopefully, the current would prevent any other potential swimmers from making it to Animal Island.

Actually using her cane for its intended purpose, Nessie made her way to the other side of the container row. She scanned the backs of the congestion of people, trying to determine if they had been pushed closer, moved farther away, or were in the same place. She wasn’t able to tell, so she assumed they hadn’t moved. Looking along the ground between her container row and the next, she saw no corpses, moving or otherwise. Toward the far end, a container had been placed to bridge the gap, although there was still room for zombies to get by on either side.

The sun beat down unrelentingly. Nessie’s run had dislodged the headscarf she had donned before the battle, so she took the time to readjust it. Not everyone was properly attired to be spending this much time in the sun; a lot were going to end up with some pretty bad sunburns. Nessie could already see patches of angry red forming in the exposed sections of skin of those nearest to her. She wondered if her own light coverings were enough, or if some part of her was burning as well.

Gunfire from the community centre had been relatively infrequent, so when it picked up in tempo, Nessie turned her attention toward the structure. What she saw dashed any hopes she had begun to hold onto. A sudden swarm of the dead must have come staggering around the containers between it and the wall, for they were surrounding the building rather quickly. Those on the containers nearest the community centre were firing at the corpses, but this particular group of dead seemed only interested in the people on the roof. Their recently formed allies were raining bullets down upon the rotting heads below, but it took surprisingly little time for them to become an island in a sea of dead flesh. Beyond them, the defenders on the toilets huddled fearfully at the back, nearly falling into the river. As Nessie watched, the emergency hatch to a repurposed storage container was pulled open and a ladder shoved through the hole. Those who had remained prisoners hastily scrabbled out, spurred on by the hands slamming into the walls of the container, afraid one might get the outer latch to open. Once up the ladder, the people continued to clamber upward, making for the higher safety of the roof.

A furry brush against her leg drew Nessie’s gaze downward. One of the dogs had come over and was watching the community centre alongside her. When she looked up again, she saw that Misha, sweaty and panting beneath his hood, was perched on the container’s edge only a couple of feet away.

“Can you shoot that distance?” Willard asked him.

“Easily, it’s no farther than the rocks.”

Willard held his revolver out to the man, his hand trembling.

Misha glanced at the gun but didn’t take it. “You might need that. I’m going to move to the closer containers.”

And just like that, Misha was gone again, crossing a ladder bridge to the next row. Two of his dogs were smart enough to run around to the container bridge in order to follow him, while the others whined and danced at the ladder’s edge. One dog hadn’t made to follow at all. The German Shepherd with the grey muzzle gently lowered himself to the metal with a loud groan, and then began panting heavily.

“You too, huh?” Nessie remarked to the dog. “Age sucks.”

The nearby youths all left their posts to gather around Nessie and watch the community centre. She would have attempted to order them back, but unless zombies came out of the bay again, it didn’t matter where they stood. Besides, the elderly all remained in place, watching both the water and the alley between the container rows. They would bellow if something showed up, and the young teens definitely had enough energy to swiftly spring back into place.

Nessie returned her gaze to the community centre. She had begun to notice a lessening of gunfire from all around the yard. Were there fewer zombies to kill? Were they in less danger so people took more time to aim? Or were they running out of ammo? She watched as the last of the prisoners hauled himself up onto the roof, the gentle metal slopes now crowded with breathing bodies, some forced to sit gently on the solar panels to make enough room. As two people hauled up the ladder that connected the roof to the holding containers, a third man picked up the rifle one of them had put down. Nessie didn’t know why her attention had been drawn specifically to him, but it had been. While she watched, he checked that there was ammo in the magazine, and a bullet in the chamber. He then levelled the gun toward Nessie and the kids.

That couldn’t be right, surely he was just pressing the gun to his shoulder and would aim down at the zombies in a second. Only he didn’t. The man rested his cheek up close to the rifle, peering down the sights.

“No! Get back!” Nessie screamed, turning and shoving whatever kid she could lay her hands on, knocking over several of them.

There was no way to tell which
crack
came from the man’s rifle, but Nessie felt the bullet punch into her hip. A hot slug of metal burned into her, the pain twisting her body so that when she fell, she landed on her back. Adrenaline kept her focused long enough to watch as the man’s own people turned on him, trying to grab him and wrestle the gun away. In the struggle, he fell off the roof, and not on a side where there were containers.