Survival Instinct: A Zombie Novel (62 page)

“There might be someone I can help.”  Riley didn’t try to pull away though.  Even if she had, LeBlanc’s grip was like steel.

“There could be, yes,” LeBlanc nodded.  “But some people will have died, and some of those dead may have been infected and are now rising again.  Or even if they aren’t dead, you run a high risk of getting contaminated blood on you and getting infected yourself.  Besides, how many do you really think you can save with the supplies you have on hand?  Not to mention we may need those supplies.”

“What if one of them is Danny?”  Cole stared at the pillar of black.

LeBlanc let go of Riley and sat silent for a moment.  “We’ll take a quick look,” he finally said.  “But we’re not to use our supplies on anyone.  If they have their own, then go for it using theirs, but only if you think you can do it without getting any blood on you.”

Riley nodded and headed toward the wreck.  Cole followed right beside her, but LeBlanc stayed a few steps behind them.  He kept his rifle up and at the ready; he was being the rational one.

* * *

The first victim Riley came across was very dead.  She couldn’t even tell if it was male or female, just a hunk of charred and burned flesh.  He or she must have been next to the tanker when it went up, the body thrown a good distance.  It was probably a quick and maybe even instant death.  Here and there were bits and pieces, some identifiable, some not.  Riley tried not to focus on them.

Cole started calling out his brother’s name.  The closer they got to the truck, the louder he had to call to be heard.  The roar of the flames was consuming all other sound.  A second, smaller explosion went off causing everyone conscious to duck.  It had been a car on the other side of the tanker exploding.  Several others were on fire and likely to go off as well.  Riley quickly saw there was little she could do.  Even with an unlimited amount of supplies, a sterile work environment, and no risk of infection, those that weren’t dead already soon would be.  Cole wasn’t the only one calling out a name.  Several people were looking for friends, loved ones.  Some had found them and just sat there, bawling.

A woman spotted Riley and her eyes went wide.  She must have noticed the stethoscope around her neck.  She stumbled toward Riley, arms stretched out.  She wasn’t badly hurt, only a few minor burns on her arms, but she kept pointing behind her, gesturing to someone else in the crowd.  The roar of the flames and Cole’s shouting drowned out her cries for help.  Riley didn’t know what to do.  The doctor in her wanted to step forward, the survivalist wanted to run away.

LeBlanc suddenly stepped forward, placing himself between Riley and the woman.  His gun was raised, muzzle pointed at the woman’s face.  He began shouting at her, telling her to back off.  She stopped, scared of the gun, but continued to cry out for help.  LeBlanc started backing up, pushing Riley along behind him.  Cole scanned the area frantically but he stopped calling out and followed backwards with them.  LeBlanc finally turned around.  He grabbed Riley’s shoulders and spun her around as well, marching her forward by grabbing the handle on the top of her bag and pushing.  He kept looking over his shoulder.

“I can walk on my own.”  Riley finally managed to shrug out of his grip.

“How about we agree not to stop for any more big disasters?” LeBlanc suggested.  He looked at Riley only briefly as he said this and focused most of this statement toward Cole.

Cole nodded, but continued to look around.

Out of the bushes next to them sprang a snarling man, causing Riley to gasp and trip over her own feet.  Despite seeming distracted, Cole raised his gun reflexively and fired.  The man went down, two shots to the torso and one saviour to the head.  A bit of
ammo waste, but at least the zombie was down.

“They’ve gotten pretty far,” Cole frowned as he helped Riley get back to her feet.  Her heart was hammering in her throat.

“Like I said, that blast probably created a bunch in a hurry,” LeBlanc shrugged.  Both the men were eerily calm.

“No,” Riley shook her head as she looked down at the body.  “This man has no burns.  Other than the gunshots, it looks like his only injury is to his shoulder.”

Riley looked around and noticed a wide swath of brush had been flattened nearby.  She made her way to it, her own rifle now raised to her shoulder.  Down the cleared patch was the Jeep they saw earlier, now rammed up against a tree.  The three of them headed for it.

“What did I just say about accidents?” LeBlanc muttered.

“You actually said ‘big disasters’,” Cole pointed out.  “I don’t think a car crash counts as that.”

They slowly surrounded the Jeep and took a quick look inside.  There was nothing and no one, although there was a fair amount of blood on the
dashboard, especially around the passenger seat.

“Looks like at least one person walked away.”  Cole stepped forward and took a closer look at the vehicle.  “It’s totalled, we can’t use it.”

“Gee, you think?  I thought the crushed hood kind of gave it away.”  LeBlanc tapped the end of his gun on the crumpled nose of the vehicle.

Riley was trying to get a look in the glove box, which had popped open, without having to open the door, when Cole dropped out of sight around the back.  She half hurried around the car to make sure he was all right.  He was just checking out something in the dirt.

“What is it?”  Riley crouched down beside him, slightly irritated that he had made her worry but more curious.  LeBlanc made his way over to them but stayed upright, keeping watch.

“What do these look like to you?”  Cole pointed to a pair of grooves in the dirt.

At first, Riley didn’t know and shrugged.  “Wait a minute.”  She remembered seeing something similar earlier that day.  “Wheelchair treads?”

Cole grinned up at her.

“Hey now,” Riley shook her head,  “it could easily be someone else in a chair.”  It could have even been a shopping cart for all they knew.

Cole paid no attention to her and started looking around in the dirt.  “Here!”  He cried out with joy.  Riley hurried over and looked.  Sure enough, it was a shoe print similar to the one in her house.

“I’ll be damned,” she shook her head, not quite believing.  She looked up at LeBlanc who seemed just as surprised.

Cole took off running back toward the road.  “Danny!  Danny!”

“Cole, wait!”  Riley wasn’t as quick to get to her feet.  First, it was she who went off running, and now it was Cole.  They weren’t doing a very good job of keeping their heads.

LeBlanc was already on his feet and was able to reach Cole faster.  Cole was damned lucky he was able to.  Just as LeBlanc grabbed his pack and pulled, a pickup truck roared past them, just barely missing Cole.

“Slow down some.”  LeBlanc hit him on the arm.  “Not to sound like a cliché but, you’re no good to anyone dead.”

Cole took a breath and closed his eyes.  He opened them and looked at Riley.  Riley had no idea what it meant but knew it meant something.  He then looked to the ground for tracks.  LeBlanc helped him while Riley kept watch for attackers.  She was a little jumpy.  A few survivors were already on the move again, even more cautious than before.  Riley wondered how much longer it would be before they had to worry about the uninfected trying to attack them.

They found the wheelchair tracks and started following them again.  Cole kept looking forward, expecting to see his little brother walking up ahead.  Hell, Riley herself thought that might happen.  The odds were insurmountable and yet, here was evidence.

Then they rounded a bend and the tracks disappeared.  Cole searched the area frantically but found nothing.  He yelled out a wordless curse of pure frustration.  The survivors nearby flinched, wondering if they should run and hide.  Riley understood the feeling, wondering that a little herself.

“Calm yourself, dude.”  LeBlanc put a hand on his shoulder.  “There are still cars moving on this side.  You nearly got run over by one yourself.  They probably managed to thumb a ride.”  He pointed out a bunch of tire tracks running through the dirt.  “Something we should start thinking about doing ourselves.”  He looked to Riley for support.

“He’s right,” she nodded.  “It takes sixteen hours to get to my brother’s place by car, maybe fifteen now subtracting what we’ve already covered, and I don’t really want to find out how long it takes on foot.  Whoever Danny’s with probably realized this and thought to get a new car quickly.  We need to find one ourselves.”

Cole nodded and ran a hand over his rugged face and across his buzzed hair.  Riley found it strange that LeBlanc was keeping his emotions in check better than the rest of them.  She always thought she could take on any challenge, pass any test, and overcome any obstacle.  Now, when the thing she had been training for most was finally here, she needed the support of these two men.  She realized she wouldn’t have gotten as far as she had without them.

They started walking, keeping an eye out for a vehicle they could use.  And potential attackers.  Whichever came first.

Lady Taggart

Kara glanced up at the rear-view mirror again.  Again, she caught that Alec McGregor guy looking at her.  He clearly didn’t trust her.  She was perfectly fine with that, because she didn’t trust him either.  The only reason they were putting up with each other was for the sake of their own survival and, to an extent, the children’s.

Danny and Alice were getting along famously.  They were talking about kid stuff, like candy and toys and children’s TV shows that Kara had never heard of.  She would half listen to their conversation, as it was a nice escape from what was going on outside the Jeep.

Things had gotten much worse out there.  As they drove through the neighbourhoods, more and more cars were getting on the road.  More people were leaving their homes on foot as well.  This meant that more attacks were in plain sight instead of behind closed doors.  People on foot were running; people in cars were being reckless.

Walter was being very careful.  He was driving under the posted speed limit and constantly keeping an eye out for anything and everything.  Kara normally preferred speed when in her own car, but she wasn’t going to push for it.  She had witnessed enough accidents already to know that she definitely didn’t want to be in one.  The strangest had been a head on collision they had narrowly missed being part of.  The driver, or maybe it was a passenger, of one car hadn’t been wearing a seat belt.  The collision itself wasn’t that bad, considering, but it was bad enough to send a man flying out through the windshield and in through the windshield of the other car.  The driver of that other vehicle, a woman, freaked out, but looked unhurt.  The woman was clearly very frightened though.  Kara saw through the side windows as the woman turned and looked into her backseat, where the man had been thrown.  Maybe she wanted to see if he was all right, maybe she just wanted to see.  A pair of arms then reached up from the back and grabbed the woman.  The thrown man pulled himself upright and attacked the woman in such a vicious manner that Kara had to look away.  But not before blood had been sprayed all over the windows.

Kara noticed that the boy in the backseat, Danny, kept lifting his eyes up to the window and looking at what was going on out there.  He never said anything about it though; just occasionally went pale with a grim look on his face.  Mostly he was keeping Alice distracted from seeing the more heinous and mentally scarring things.  Apparently, he was looking out for the only one in the car younger than he was.  Kara thought there was something honourable and noble about that.  She normally had a very low opinion of children and saw them as whining brats who cared only about getting what they wanted with the least amount of effort.  In her experience, she was almost always right.

Other than looking out at humanity destroying itself, there really wasn’t much to do in the car.  Kara clicked on the radio and skimmed a few stations, but nothing was coming in except for someone speaking a foreign language, possibly a
Middle Eastern one.  It happened to be a language that Kara didn’t know a word of, so she switched it off.

“So,” she finally said aloud, half turning in her seat to face those in the back.  “What do you do for a living Mr. McGregor?” her tone suggested that she really wasn’t interested, but was asking anyway.

“I’m a mechanic,” McGregor’s tone also suggested he had no interest in the conversation but was playing along.  “What do you do?”

“I’m a part owner of Marble Keystone.  Other than a few money delegations from time to time, I’ve actually never worked,” she informed him.

“Daddy’s money.”  McGregor didn’t say it as an insult but it still sounded like one.

“Yes.  My grandfather was a founder,” Kara tried not to sound too defensive.  “My family helped build this entire city from the ground up.”

“And in the end, helped tear it down.”

Kara had no idea what he meant by that.  Her facial expression must have given that fact away.

“What?  You don’t think Keystone had something to do with this?”  McGregor gestured to the car’s surroundings.

“Of course not,” Kara frowned.  In fact, she was pretty sure she had seen some of Keystone’s security down a side street but she hadn’t said anything.  Although the White Box, everyone’s nickname for the lab, would be well protected, not even Kara could get Walter and Alice admission to the place.  And she wasn’t about to separate from them now.  For whatever reason, this was the first time in Kara’s memory that she didn’t want to be alone.