Defensive Instinct (Survival Instinct Book 4) (9 page)

“So it all boils down to one question,” Evans sighed, attempting to sum up the meeting. “Whether Wycheck intended to come back or not, do we go looking for him?”

He and six other members of the party had gathered around a table in the townhouse next door.

“It’s his own fault for leaving, I say we leave him,” a woman mumbled. She was one of the new people and had insisted on attending. Evans was fine with that, but she hadn’t said much, and when she did, she always mumbled.

“I’m goin’ to go look for him, no matter what you decide,” Old Salt declared for the umpteenth time. Evans knew him well enough to know his words were hollow. He’d do what the group decided.

“Wycheck wouldn’t just leave,” said a mother who had volunteered to speak for the families. “He might have gotten annoyed and gone off by himself for a day, but he’ll come back. We shouldn’t send anyone out until at least tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow might be too late,” Arman reminded her. “We’ve been seeing quite a bit of activity lately. More of the dead have been showing up every day, wild animals too. Wycheck hasn’t been truly alone for a long time. I can understand the need to get away every now and again, but he’s gone too far. Salty said that some of his personal supplies are missing, over a day’s worth, and he’s not in any of the nearby houses. It’s very dangerous to be alone right now, more so than usual.”

“If we do go looking, I know a bunch willing to make up a search party,” Elijah volunteered.

“You’ve been quiet, Ki-nam.” Evans turned to the former North Korean. He had spent the meeting listening quietly, sitting perfectly still except for his silver hair which got caught in a slight draft. “What are your thoughts?”

Ki-nam remained silent for a moment longer before speaking. “I suggest we send a small team after him. As Arman stated, the dead have been finding us more frequently. We need to move on from this place. A scouting team will go ahead, following Wycheck’s trail, if they can. The rest of the party will follow at a safe distance, perhaps a day or more behind.”

Evans nodded. He had been meaning to get everyone moving again, but searchers kept coming across good finds, like the cows.

“What if we can’t find his trail? If he doesn’t want to be found, he won’t be marking the way,” the mother worried.

“If he doesn’t want to be found, then he doesn’t want to be found,” Evans said, shrugging. He would never force someone to remain with the party. “However, we’ll also inform the searcher teams moving with the party to keep an eye out for anything the forward team might miss. Are we agreed?”

They were, albeit unenthusiastically. While Evans was perfectly happy on the move, most of the others were not. They liked taking breaks in places like the townhouse, where they could settle and rest up for a few days, maybe even a couple of weeks. But in the end, Evans always kept them moving. He understood peoples’ need to settle, and the advantages of it like growing crops, but he believed in movement. The number one reason he lost party members was their desire to cocoon. Often, when they came across a friendly camp, a large swath of people would stay behind. Whenever that happened, Evans just reminded himself that most of the people who had joined him had done so because their camp had fallen due to one threat or another: zombies, raiders, illness, or inner turmoil; Evans had heard it all.

Lately, however, he’d been losing more party members to death. He couldn’t find any signs of them being followed, and it didn’t feel like they were moving through someone else’s territory, but someone had been picking off his searchers when they were alone. He knew that’s what Arman really meant when he said it was especially dangerous to be alone these days. The party hadn’t been informed, because they were safe all grouped together, but they knew something was amiss. Far too many searchers had had ‘accidents’ lately. Evans and Arman both knew that they weren’t accidents; the men and women had clearly been stabbed. It enraged Evans that he hadn’t been able to do anything about it, that every few weeks or sometimes only days, Arman would come to him and mention that another searcher was dead. Every time they moved, Evans hoped they had gotten away from the perpetrator, but so far they had had no such luck. Maybe this time he would take his party a very long distance before stopping. If someone was stabbed again, then they were clearly being followed, or else someone within the party itself had snapped. Either way, Evans had protocols for such events. The only reason he hadn’t done anything yet was because of the infrequency of the deaths. He prayed they were merely within the roaming territory of a cowardly band of raiders.

All of the meeting’s participants rose from the table and headed for the door. Evans exited last, making sure there was no one who wanted to linger to ask a private question. No one did: they all knew what to do when it came time to move, even the new folks.

Back in the townhouse where they had spent the last week, a flurry of activity filled the hallways and rooms. Backpacks were refilled with personal items and bedding, while supplies that had been brought in were carried back out to the carts. In the backyard, tents were carefully disassembled and the last of the meat was eaten off the barbecue.

Evans went to his own corner of the back room, picking his way through the couch cushions and other items that still littered the floor. There had been two couches around a TV when they had first arrived. Since then, the party had taken the TV and its stand, as well as a coffee table, and had chucked them over a back fence to make more floor space. The couch cushions had been pulled off for some people to use on the floor; others set up their sleeping mats on the denuded couches. Evans personally didn’t know how they could sleep with the springs so uncovered like that, but to each his own.

Picking up his pack, Evans proceeded to carefully go through his personal stash of supplies. If he got separated from the party, a possibility that had happened before, he could still survive on his own. He encouraged all party members to pack their kits with the same items. Inside his bag were a few packages of dried goods, two water bottles he always kept filled, basic first-aid supplies, water-proof matches, a lighter, flint, shotgun shells, both empty and ready to be used, a sharpening block, some rope, a flashlight with an extra set of batteries, at least one other set of every article of clothing he wore, a tarp, a couple of maps, and a few personal hygiene products. Taking most of the stuff out in the process, he repacked it all in the order he liked best while travelling, then rolled his sleeping mat and blanket, and fastened them to the straps hanging from the bottom of his pack. Unlike most of the others, he didn’t use a sleeping bag or carry a pillow. They tended to stick to warmer climates, so he often used the blanket as a pillow.

While he was packing, Arman came back with a forward scouting party prepared to head out. Evans accepted the walkie-talkie from him, then let the party be on their way. They would communicate back to him their whereabouts and anything they might find.

Standing up, Evans hoisted his bag onto his broad shoulders. At six feet, four inches, he was easily the tallest member of the party. His size, at one time making people wary of him, now drew them toward him. They felt safe in his presence, as opposed to threatened. His choice of weaponry matched his size. Across his back, beneath the backpack, he slung a large broadsword, the handle sticking up behind his head. It had been given to him by an old woman in a friendly camp, as if he were some great knight. Evans thought the woman was crazy, but liked the weapon and accepted it, secretly leaving behind a tin can filled with oil in exchange. Hanging against his thigh opposite the knife, was his pistol grip, twelve-gauge shotgun. Although not the most accurate, and not very good for distances, it was chosen by Evans because he seemed to find the most ammo for it. Also, he knew how to repack expended cartridges, dismantling and using the powder even from non-compatible ammo. Besides, he rarely fired the thing anyway; ammunition was a precious commodity these days.

Walking around the house with his full kit, Evans offered his assistance to those who were taking longer to pack. Whenever they stopped for a few days, people somehow managed to misplace things they simply couldn’t leave without: personal items like photos, teddies, books, various trinkets, odds and ends. Evans had no such items. The closest would be the small, leather-wrapped notebook kept in a side pocket of his pants, but even that he wouldn’t be too upset about losing. Unlike a few others, he didn’t keep it as a journal. Instead, he wrote down tidbits of useful information: names of people in his party, various important notes about them, locations of camps along with apparent leaders, attitudes toward travellers, trades that had occurred, what plants were edible, what was good to pack in a shotgun shell, and so on.

The fact was that Evans didn’t make attachments. He seemed incapable of them ever since his father had butchered his mother and then turned toward him with the knife. Evans, at thirteen years of age but already growing big, had defended himself against the larger man, finally delivering a killing blow and saving himself. The people around him now weren’t there because he needed them to be. They were there because he understood about safety in numbers, shared knowledge, and shared workload. If they were all to suddenly die, he’d be sad, but no more than if the horses died, or if all the food was stolen.

“Here, Annabelle, your doll ended up in the closet.”

Evans walked along at the head of the column, like a Viking with his short blond hair and equally short blond beard. The dull blue colouring of his eyes masked their sharpness as he kept alert for threats. Behind him rattled the two large supply carts, each pulled by a team of four horses. The smallest children and the eldest of the elders sat along running boards on their sides, whereas everyone else walked beside them. The riders mounted on the last three horses brought up the rear, occasionally trotting up next to the column, or ducking down side streets and alleys to check on the small teams running parallel to them.

A small furry bit of movement drew Evans’ eyes down to the pavement. A black and white cat was trotting alongside him.

“So you decided to stick with us, huh?” Evans mumbled to the cat.

The cat meowed at him.

Evans didn’t mind there being pets in the party, but he made sure that whoever brought them understood that the animals were their responsibility: they were never included during the rationing process. Every now and then, an animal would start following the party on its own. Evans treated it the same. If it wasn’t hostile, it could stick around, but he certainly wasn’t going to feed it any of his rations. This black and white cat had shown up at the townhouse the first night they spent there and immediately made itself at home. It took to rubbing against legs and sticking its face into people’s food, suggesting it had been fed by people before. While Evans wasn’t a cat person, not even an animal person really, with most creatures ignoring him as much as he ignored them, this one black and white cat decided to cuddle up against him every night and follow him around during the day. Evans had no idea why.

After acknowledging the cat’s presence, he returned to scanning for threats. From the edge of his vision, he noticed the cat continuing to keep pace with a light trot. From what Evans knew about cats, it was an odd behaviour, but he figured the stray would soon get bored or tired, and either leave the party or convince someone else to carry it.

“Evans?” a voice called out from behind him. “Arman’s on the walkie for you.”

He slowed his pace and dropped back until he was next to the cart where the driver was holding out the walkie-talkie for him. One of the party members had been a mechanical engineer and had rigged up a system so that the turning wheels of the cart could charge their few walkie-talkies and one hand radio. As Evans accepted the black box with its slightly mangled antennae, he found himself checking for the cat. It was keeping its distance from the horses and carts, but still keeping pace with Evans. He wondered if the cat would stop if he did.

“Go ahead,” Evans said into the walkie as he depressed the side button.

“Is there a good place for the party to stop near you?” Arman’s distorted voice broke through the static.

Drifting sideways, away from the main column, Evans lowered his voice. “There are some potentials, why?”

“We found Wycheck. You may want to see this for yourself, but the rest of the party probably shouldn’t.”

“Give me your location,” Evans sighed. He knew this meant that Wycheck was dead.

Arman gave him rough directions to where he was.

“All right, I’ll be there shortly.”

Returning to the cart, Evans handed the walkie-talkie back to the driver. He then turned to the rear of the column and waved one of the horsemen forward.

“What is it?” Ki-nam asked as his horse came up alongside the tall man.

“I need to go meet up with Arman. That store on the corner there looks like it has sliding doors large enough to fit the carts through. Think you could clear it out and get everyone to hold up there until I get back?”

“Not a problem.” Ki-nam quickly rode off and started giving orders.

Several people asked Evans questions, but stopped when they realized he was going somewhere else. It wouldn’t be the first time this had happened, and those who had been in the party longest knew exactly what it meant.

“I’m coming with you.” Jasmine ran up beside Evans.

“No, you’re not,” he replied without breaking stride.

“It’s about Wycheck, I know it is. I have to know he’s okay.”

“Stay with the party.”

“You can’t make me.”

Evans stopped and wheeled around to face her. “Stay with the party.” He hadn’t lowered his voice or put on a threatening tone, but Jasmine saw it in his face. She shied away, taking a few careful steps back before turning and retreating toward the other party members.

Turning around again, Evans ran a hand across his face and kept walking. He didn’t want to have to deal with Jasmine’s grief while looking over the body. She was going to get hysterical when she found out.

On his way to Arman, Evans walked out in the open. Being by himself, he didn’t want to risk turning a blind corner only to bump into something with teeth. By strolling down the middle of the road, he’d see anything coming his way. Although ready to draw it with twitch-like reflexes, Evans kept his sword on his back. He wanted to show confidence to any cowardly humans that might be in the area.

The moment he spotted Arman, he knew something was up. Only two of his team members were with him, the other three off someplace else. Not only that, but they were agitated, pacing around the body that lay on the broken sidewalk between an old stripped car and the side of a building. It seemed they had come to their own conclusion about what had happened here.

Evans waved in greeting, and Arman responded by stepping out of the way, letting him see the body. Evans stepped up beside it, quickly confirming that it was Wycheck, and that there was no way he was alive. The hole in the side of his head was hard to miss.

“Bastards robbed him. They beat him, shot him, and robbed him,” Arman grumbled.

“They tricked him and ambushed him,” one of Arman’s team members, Justin, spoke through gritted teeth.

“Tricked?”

“Fake cook fire in the distance,” Arman pointed. “Helen and Mike are over there now with our other walkie. Wycheck must have seen it and started heading for it when he got jumped. Broke his leg, beat him a little. I don’t know whether they took his stuff before or after they shot him.” Every word Arman spoke was peppered with anger.

“They even took his fucking belt, man,” Chuck muttered.

Evans had noticed. If he were going to strip a man of everything, he would have taken the belt too. Hell, he would have taken Wycheck’s jeans as they weren’t that bloody, but he definitely wasn’t going to say any of that; not around these men who were chomping at the bit for someone to lash out against. Everyone else who had been killed recently had died quickly, but Wycheck looked like he was in some pain before he got taken out. And a bullet was different from a knife. If Evans had to guess, he would say that this murder was committed by a different person, or persons.

“They’ve gone too far this time,” Arman seethed, not coming to the same conclusion.

Spotting something fluttering near the tireless axle of the car, Evans bent down and fetched it. It was a battered photograph, one Evans had seen Wycheck looking at before. It was a group of happy, smiling people with their arms around each other, possibly siblings or maybe just friends. Evans put it in his back pocket. Later, he would toss it when no one was looking. It had no value to anyone anymore, but it would only stir up the team members more to see him treat it callously.

“If Helen and Mike went to investigate the cook fire, then where is Elijah?” Evans knew the young man had volunteered to go with Arman.

“He went to check out the buildings in the area, should be back soon.”

It was no sooner said, than he returned, running as quickly as he could. Evans and the others waited for Elijah to reach them, his face bright red and his voice broken by ragged panting.

“I found…” he gasped. “I found the fuckers who did this.”

“Where?” Arman and the others straightened up, hands moving toward weapons.

“They just left a paint supply store. They must be stripping the area. All the buildings around here are pretty much cleared out. They have a horse and some shopping carts.”

“If they’re stripping, they probably have a camp somewhere.” Arman turned to Evans, knowing he understood that. “We’ve reached the bastards’ home territory.”

Looking around at them, Evans saw the same glint in their eyes. They wanted revenge. They wanted to direct their anger at someone, and that target had presented itself.

“Follow them,” Evans gave the order. “Don’t interact with them in
any
way, but follow them. Let’s see where they go.”