Survival Instinct: A Zombie Novel (70 page)

Abby knew that everybody in the house now had a gun.  Cender’s was a bolt action hunting rifle of some kind, so was Cillian’s, and Tobias also had a pistol.  Jessica got a pistol too, but she instantly handed it over to Cillian as if it carried a disease.  Cillian didn’t ask, and just put it in with his own gear.  Jessica stuck with her shovel.

Abby also kept her field hockey stick. 
Some small straps on the side of the bag were able to hold the stick.  Bullets eventually ran out, but the composite object, made of carbon, Kevlar, and some fibreglass, could handle some serious whacking before breaking.  It had been expensive, but it was worth it; now more than ever.  Abby had played for her college team and was thinking of signing up for a league, but she never imagined she would be using the stick to crack skulls.

“Abby?”  Jessica looked up from a can of peas she had found in her bag.

“Yeah?”  Abby finished packing up the rest of her stuff and closed the pack.

“I want to change my shirt.”  Jessica stood up.  “Could you come with me and help see if any of them fit?”

“Sure, no problem.”  Abby got to her feet.

She and Jessica walked down the hall and into the bedroom.  They both tried not to look at the bed.  Cillian had checked out the blanket-wrapped lump earlier and told them that it was a dead body, and that no one should touch it.  Abby could tell by looking at it that it wasn’t the dead body of someone full grown.  She tried to put it out of her mind by imagining that it was just a prop, like on the set of the TV show she worked for.  The show could be violent and even gross sometimes, and they were always doing makeup and props of that sort.

Jessica went to the dresser and started looking through the drawers.  Abby felt slightly embarrassed for the owner of the house as Jessica opened her underwear drawer.  Eventually she found one that was full of t-shirts.  Jessica grabbed the first one and held it up to look at the size.  It was a medium men’s shirt so it would probably be loose on Jessica, but she seemed fine with that.  Jessica began unbuttoning her blouse.

Abby reddened in the face a little, not used to being around women who were that comfortable changing in front of other women.  She politely turned the other way and looked at a bookshelf in the corner.  Every book on it looked like it was either a factual book about things like nuclear power plants and agriculture, or it was a fictional story about people in awful and/or end-of-the-world-type situations.  There were
Cell
,
The
Stand
, and
Under The Dome
by Stephen King,
Hater
and
Dog Blood
by David Moody,
Phantoms
and
The Taking
by Dean Koontz,
The Year Of The Flood
by Margaret Atwood,
The Ruins
by Scott Smith, and lots of others.  One book in particular, stood out to Abby, though.  The top books were the fiction stories and the bottom books were the factual ones, but there was one book sitting in-between.  Abby went up to it and pulled it off the shelf.  It was called
The Zombie Survival Guide
and had been written by someone named Max Brooks.  Considering its mention of zombies, Abby thought it must be a fictional story, but as she flipped through it, she realized it was not.  It was an actual guide on how to survive a zombie outbreak.  There was another book on the shelf by the same author,
World War Z
, but it looked more like a story.

“What do you think?” Jessica asked from over by the dresser.

Abby turned around and looked Jessica up and down.  She still wore Abby’s hiking boots, pale blue scrub pants, and now a slightly too big, faded, red T-shirt with the slogan, ‘you caught me at a bad time, I’m awake’, written in white across the chest.

“Stylish,” Abby joked.

Jessica cracked a half smile.  It was the first one Abby had seen since they had run into Cillian and Tobias.  She wondered if Cillian had something to do with her not smiling, or her starting to smile again.  It was hard to tell.  The incident with the gunman happened at the same time.  And Jessica had been stressed out even before then.  Abby had a perfect memory of what she did to the legless man in the ER.  She had been like an animal.  She still looked like that sometimes: a caged animal thinking about another place.

“What’s that you found?”  Jessica pointed to the book in Abby’s hand.

“Oh, just a book that might prove useful.”  Abby shrugged.  “It looks like we’re going to be driving for awhile, so having something to read would be nice.”

“I can’t read in moving cars,” Jessica told her.

“That sucks.”  Abby noticed the lump out of the corner of her eye again.  “Let’s go find out what Cillian’s cooking up.”

“I’m not hungry,” Jessica shook her head.

“Well then, you can just sit and put your feet up.”  Abby took Jessica’s hand with her free one and led her out of the room.

They passed the bathroom where the shower was running.  Everyone had used the bathroom earlier to wash off any blood and dirt they had on their hands and faces.  And to use the toilet.  Right now Cillian’s jacket and gloves were in the bathtub getting a good soaking.  He was trying to wash off as much blood as possible, but it had really caked on.  They
continued into the kitchen where Cillian was filling up a pot with water.  Jessica sat down at the table.  Abby put the book she found on the table and walked over to Cillian.

“What are you making?” Abby asked him.

“I found a huge pile of Kraft Dinner in a cupboard, so I’m going to cook up a bunch of boxes for everybody.”  Cillian pointed to a section of counter next to the stove.  He had placed seven boxes of the brand name mac and cheese there.  “I found some other food too.  Tobias, Cender, and I agreed that MREs sounded terrible-tasting, so they’re swapping some of them out for real food in our packs.”

“Sounds good.”  Abby loved Kraft Dinner and ate it regularly herself.  Although she rather enjoyed cooking, she didn’t always have time.  She also
agreed that MREs sounded awful.

Cillian finished filling up the pot and put it on the stove to boil.  He found salt and poured some into the water.  Abby went to the fridge to get out the milk and margarine, or butter if that was the case.  She opened the door and started looking through the interior.  The inside of the fridge was the only normal thing Abby had come across in this entire house.  There were guns and gas masks in the living room, fuel and biohazard suits in the basement, and an arsenal of meds everywhere.  It worked out for them in the end, but it was still very odd.  The inside of the fridge though, looked like what you’d expect the inside of a single person’s fridge to look like.  It was fairly bare, filled mostly with
leftover containers from order-in restaurants, and condiments.  Abby had just spotted the margarine container when the fridge’s interior light went out.

“Hey.”  Her first thought was that somebody had pushed on the door sensor, making the fridge think it was closed.  Her brothers used to do that all the time.  Then she realized that the fridge’s motor had also gone out.

Abby grabbed the margarine and the milk and closed the fridge door.  She placed the items on the counter, then tried a light switch on the wall.  She flicked it up and down a few times but the overhead lights didn’t come on.

“What’s wrong?” Cillian asked from over by the stove.

“I think the power went out.  One second.”  Abby went into the living room and tried a lamp in there, but it also didn’t turn on.

Tobias and Cender gave her odd looks.

“The power’s out,” Abby told them.

“Crap,” Cender actually looked and sounded more concerned than the power outage warranted.

“What?”  Abby thought, maybe, because of the food.  “The stove is gas, so Cillian will still be able to finish cooking.”

“It’s not that,” Cender shook his head
,  “come look at this.”

Abby went and sat next to him on the couch.  Tobias also walked over and peered over his other shoulder.

“This is the map that my friend Bishop gave me, right?”  Cender unfolded the piece of paper.  “You see these coloured rings?  Well, part of the note explains them.  We have maybe four hours to get beyond this ring here.”

“Why?  What happens in four hours?” Tobias asked the obvious question.

“Apparently, with the power out, the chemical storage facilities that Keystone and other companies have around here, will no longer be able to keep things cool.  The chemicals are now changing from a liquid to a gas, which is going to build pressure.  Now apparently, there shouldn’t be too many explosions, but the pressure is going to cause the safety valves to open and release giant chemical clouds.  Depending on the generators, this could be starting to happen now and I guess in four hours it’s bad enough that we have to be beyond this point.” Cender explained as best he could.

“So now we know why there’s gas masks lying around.”  Abby glanced over at one.  “What’s the other ring?”

“That’s the seven day ring, so I don’t think we need to worry about that one so much,” Cender shrugged.  “Apparently seven days after the power goes out, nuclear storage facility diesel generators will run dry.  They will no longer be able to keep the material in cold, flowing water, and I don’t know why it needs to be stored that way, but apparently, after it’s been sitting in stale, un-chilled water for about three days, it’s heated up enough to set fire to the building.  That one
will
be a giant explosion as well as radiation being spread all over the place.”

“Well who’s to say the power won’t come back on?” Tobias frowned.

“Think, man.”  Cender poked his forehead.  “Why would the power go out in the first place?  Because people either fled their stations or were killed there.  I don’t think anyone is going back to fix the problem.”

“So we should leave as soon as we’re done eating.”  Abby knew there was a good reason she wanted to leave as soon as possible.

“Yeah, I think so,” Cender nodded.

* * *

Abby went back into the kitchen to see how much longer the food would take, and to tell Cillian and Jessica what was happening.  Cillian looked very unhappy to hear the news, but Jessica’s expression didn’t change.  She kept on her neutral, blank stare.  Abby guessed that that was better than a total meltdown and freak out.  She had taken her boots off while Abby had been out of the room.  Her stockings were torn and it looked like she might be getting blisters.

Tobias popped his head into the kitchen.  “Hey, do you have anything else you want to pack in your bags?  I think I’m going to load up the car.”

“I’m good,” Abby told him.

“Us too,” Cillian nodded, answering for himself and Jessica.

“Great.”  Tobias disappeared again.

“How much longer until the KD is done?”  Abby walked over and looked into the pot.

“I think it’s almost done cooking.”  Cillian fished out a noodle and dropped it on the counter.

Abby picked it up, and, after shifting it from one hand to the other a few times to cool it down, popped it into her mouth.  “It’s soft enough.”

“Cool, now where is the strainer?”  Cillian started looking around the stove.

Abby helped him look and found it in a cupboard near the sink.  She placed it in the sink and Cillian dumped all the noodles and water into it.  Abby used the sink’s flexible nozzle to spray-rinse the noodles while Cillian jostled the strainer to shift them around.

“Mind if I put in the cheese?” Abby asked as they dumped it back into the large pot.

“Go for it, but can I ask why?”  Cillian sat down next to Jessica, and, without her asking, lifted her feet up onto his lap and started rubbing them.

“I think they put too much cheese powder into the packets, so I like to keep some back.”  Abby started mixing the ingredients together.  She vaguely wished someone would rub her feet for her.  If her friend Lauren was here, Abby might have been able to convince her to massage them.

Lauren.  She was Abby’s only real, female friend, the only one she saw outside of work.  Of course, they worked together as well.  She was one of the makeup artists for the main actors.  Abby wished that she could’ve come with them, that there had been time to find her.  But there wasn’t.  There hadn’t even been time to
think
about her until they were in the limo.  That made Abby very sad.  She never would have survived moving to the city without her.  Although, the fact that she was fleeing the city without her made that almost poetic.  Too bad Abby wasn’t the poetic kind of person.  Lauren was though, so she could appreciate it wherever she was.  Abby knew that she would be alive.  Lauren was strong, the strongest person she ever met.  If anybody could get through this, it was she.

“Soup’s on!” Abby called out loudly when the Kraft Dinner was done.

While looking for the strainer, Cillian had found the bowls, so he got up and took them down, leaving Jessica’s sore feet to herself.  Cender came clacking into the kitchen.  He hopped up and sat on the counter so that he didn’t need his crutches and, therefore, had both hands free to hold and fill his bowl.  Tobias came into the kitchen and waited in an impromptu line formed by Cillian and Abby.  Abby filled up her bowl and went to sit at the table.  Despite eating at the hospital, she was starving again.  She looked at a clock on the wall and saw that it was about dinnertime.  She had no idea what time it had been when they were at the hospital, but it was probably four hours ago at least.