Survival Instinct: A Zombie Novel (95 page)

* * *

They drove down the winding and hilly road, now completely out of farm country, and into the woods.  Abby liked it better that way.  The farms reminded her too much of home.  Also, she didn’t want to run into any more pigs.  Abby had never seen pigs like that.  She guessed they must have somehow been infected.  Zombie pigs, how strange.

Abby was enjoying their ride immensely.  The day had been working up to a scorcher again and the walking had made her all sweaty.  Riding was creating a comfortable breeze.  The sky was blue, the air was fresh, the trees were in full green dress.  Then they drove past a body face down at the side of the road.

Abby sighed to herself.  Her wound was already getting itchy.  She wanted desperately to scratch at it but she knew that would be the worst thing to do.  She hoped the itching meant it was healing.

Cender suddenly tapped her on the shoulder, speaking in her ear, “Slow up a moment, stop.”

Abby stopped and checked her mirror, thinking it was Tobias.  Tobias seemed fine though, other than confused.

“What is it?” Abby asked Cender.

“There.”  Cender pointed.  “There’s a little bit of smoke coming up from over there.”

Abby looked.  Sure enough, some neat white puffs of smoke were rising up above the trees.

“It could be your white truck,” Cender suggested.

“I thought you were against the idea,” Tobias brought up.

Cender didn’t say anything.

“Let’s check it out then.”  Abby started them forward again.

They came across a fork in the road, and Abby chose the one that led toward the smoke.  She slowed as they neared it and rounded a corner.  The smoke was coming from the chimney of another cabin, this one much nicer than the one before.  The large, white truck sat parked in front of it, but none of the soldiers could be seen.  Abby stopped the four-wheeler.

“I don’t like this,” Cender said.

“Me neither.”  Abby went to turn them around, but halfway through the turn, two soldiers popped out of the brush on either side of the road, barring their retreat with rifles.  Abby looked forward again to see two more soldiers with guns.  They were trapped.

“Shit,” Cender said.

“Turn off the engine,” one of the soldiers ordered.

Abby obeyed.  She was scared of the large rifles.

“Get off and collect your things,” was the next order.

“Do you mind lowering your weapons?” Tobias asked as he climbed out of the trailer.  They acted as if they hadn’t heard him.

“Who the hell are you guys?” Cender asked the next question.  Again, they made no move.

Abby climbed off the four-wheeler.  She helped Cender off while Tobias got his crutches.  They all put their packs on their backs.  During this time, the soldiers all moved in closer.

“Is that everything?” one of them asked once they had their bags on their shoulders.

Abby nodded.  They decided to leave the gas cans behind.  She noticed Tobias was still filming but that they didn’t seem to care about it.  She took that as a bad sign, although why
would
they care?  The world order had changed in the last twenty-four hours.

“Head to the truck.”  A soldier gestured with his gun.

They walked toward it, the soldiers keeping a box position around them.  Their guns never wavered.

“Seriously guys, who the fuck are you?” Cender asked again angrily.  “And where are you taking us?”

“Give it up,” Tobias told him when they didn’t answer again.  “You can ask them questions until you’re blue in the face, and they won’t answer a single one of them.  They look like they’re trained not to.”

Cender didn’t bother with any more questions, trusting Tobias’s judgement.

Once they reached the truck, the back door was opened.

“Get in,” they were ordered.

Abby climbed in first, followed by Tobias.  Tobias helped Cender up.  Once they were all in, the heavy doors were shut and locked behind them.

Inside the cramped back were a few other people, all looking very frightened.  One of them was a young scrawny guy wearing a firefighter’s jacket.  His nose was bleeding.  He was also handcuffed to a handle on the side of the truck, a dog tied up and muzzled next to him.

The truck started moving with a jolt, and Abby nearly lost her feet.  Tobias caught her though.

“Hey.”  Cender went over and sat next to the guy in the handcuffs.  “You all right?”

The guy nodded but shifted as far away as he could.

“It’s all right,” Cender tried to comfort him.  “I’m a doctor, just let me take a look.”

The guy didn’t have much of a choice and didn’t bother to fight.

“It’s not broken,” Cender assessed his face.  “But you’re going to have some serious black eyes.”

“I saw them drag you in here,” Tobias told him.  “Is that how the rest of you ended up here?  Did they force you in here?”  He looked at the others in the back of the truck.

There were two women and one young boy.  The women nodded.

“They broke down the door and came charging in,” one woman told him.  “They just grabbed us and started shoving us toward this truck.”

“That’s what they do,” the handcuffed kid said.  “They take you whether you want to go or not.  I saw them in the city.  They shot a man that tried to run away.”

“Where are they taking us?” Abby asked, taking a seat.

The guy shrugged.

“Where did you get that jacket?” Tobias asked him.

He didn’t answer.

“Did you get it from a man?  A man named Cillian?” Tobias pressed.  “You don’t look like a firefighter but you’ve got their boots and jacket on.”

“Yeah,” the guy frowned
,  “you knew him?”

“He was a friend travelling with us.  I’ll show you.”  Tobias gestured to the camera around his neck.

While he showed the guy the film, Abby introduced herself to the others.  “Hi, I’m Abby.”

“I’m Betty.”  The one who had spoken earlier introduced herself, but no hands were shaken.  No one knew if there was any infection in there.  “This is Georgia and the boy is Jean-Marc.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” Abby nodded.  “That’s Tobias and that one is Cender.”

The women and the boy clearly had no interest in being friendly.  They shied away, grouping closely together.

“I’m Misha,” the cuffed guy said after seeing the video.  “And yeah, I definitely got these from your friend.”

“What happened to him?” Tobias spoke slowly, as if he didn’t really want to know.

“I found him washed up on the shore of some river,” Misha told them.  “He had been stabbed, once in the face and once in the gut.  He died.”

Tobias nodded and looked at his feet.

“Who’s the dog?” Abby asked attempting to lighten the mood, even though her gut clenched.  “He’s a little cutie.”  She leaned forward and patted the dog’s head.  His tail thumped on the floor.

“That’s Rifle.  I picked him up back in the city, and he’s been helping me out ever since.”  Misha smiled down at the dog.  He had clearly bonded with him.

“Where do you think we’re going?” Abby asked no one in particular.

“Nowhere good,” Misha grumbled.  “But when we get there, I’m going to find a way to take them out.  I’m not going without a fight.”

Little Brother

Danny fidgeted with the straps of his backpack.  He didn’t like sitting in the back of the truck and it was obvious that no one else did either.  He sat at the front end, next to Mathias and across from Riley and Alec.  The soldier who said his name was James sat alone near the rear doors.

“So what were you doing out on that road?” Mathias asked James.

“Just out looking for survivors,” James answered.

“Seems like a random place to be looking,” Riley brought up.  “It was in the middle of nowhere.”

“We found
you,
didn’t we?” James retorted.

“Seems fishy if you ask me.”  Alec leaned his head back on the side of the truck, closing his eyes.

“Good thing no one asked you then.”  James rolled his own eyes.

“Hey, McGregor.”  Mathias turned to Alec with what Danny knew to be his shit-eating grin.  “What do you think about Keystone stumbling upon us in the woods?”

Alec grinned as well, then opened his eyes and leaned forward.  “Why Cole, I think it’s mighty fishy.”

Mathias smiled smugly at James.

“You guys should be more grateful,” James told them with a scowl.

“Grateful for what?” Riley scowled back.  Danny thought she was kind of scary when she did.  “Grateful that you caused us to go off the road?  That you could have killed us and destroyed our ride?  That you stopped us from getting to our destination and insisted we come to your supposedly safer location?”

“It is safer.”  James stuck to his guns.  Literally, actually, he still had his rifle in his hands.

“And how would you know how safe the place we were going to is?” Riley kept grilling him.

James stopped bothering to argue.  He seemed to focus on a point in the doors and decided to ignore them.

All the hostility made Danny feel uncomfortable, but he wasn’t going to say anything about it.  He went back to fidgeting with the backpack straps.

* * *

Shoes started pacing back and forth, chuffing and whining.

“What’s wrong with the dog?” James asked.

“I think he needs to pee.”  Danny may never have owned a dog, but it certainly looked to him like he needed to pee.

“Actually, I kind of have to go as well,” Riley spoke up.

“Likewise,” Mathias nodded.

James sighed in a very irritated manner.  He pressed a button on the wall next to him.

“Guys, we need to make a pit stop.  Pull over when it’s safe to do so.”  James didn’t speak toward anything in particular.

Danny looked around the truck’s interior, but he couldn’t see anything that looked like a microphone.  Other than the straps, the walls and ceiling of the truck were completely smooth surfaces.  The floor was made of tread plate so it was even less likely to be built in there.  Maybe it was in the seat near James, on the wall right next to him where his body blocked Danny’s line of sight.

They drove on a while longer with no indication that the guys in front had even heard them.  Shoes began to get really impatient.  He pawed at Alec’s leg, whining even louder.  Eventually he barked and the sound rebounded extra loud off the walls causing everybody to wince.

“You know, he’s going to start howling soon, and in here that could burst your ear drums,” Alec told James.

Danny wondered if that was true.  It seemed possible.

“We don’t know what’s out there.  There could be twenty zombies closing in on our position,” James explained, trying to be patient.  “They’ll stop when they know it’s clear.”

Just as he finished saying this, the truck came to a slow stop.  They all remained seated, waiting for James to open the doors.  He never did.  Eventually, another soldier opened them from outside.  Danny really hoped that didn’t mean that those doors couldn’t be opened from the inside.  He didn’t like the idea of being completely trapped with no way out.  What if something happened to the guys up front and no one came along to free them?

Shoes hurried to the open door and leaped out, his rope leash trailing through the air behind him.  Mathias and Riley both got up to follow after him.

“Do you need to go too?” Alec asked Danny.

“Do you?” Danny replied.

“It’s probably for the best we both go,” Alec
suggested.  “I think James here might blow our heads off if we asked to stop again.”

James was not amused by that comment.  Danny was thinking Alec was probably right.

He helped Alec slide down the bench toward the door where he propped himself up against the tailgate.

“Watch your feet,” Danny heard Alec tell the soldiers as he unzipped his pants.

Danny walked away before that happened, finding his own spot along the side of the road.  He could hear Riley somewhere off in the bushes.  She was extremely angry with a soldier who would not leave her alone to do her business.  Danny thought that if that soldier didn’t leave her alone soon, he was going to get slugged.

He pulled down his shorts only as much as he needed to and tried to pee, but he couldn’t.  He had his own soldier standing right behind him, guarding him.  Despite the considerably full bladder, he just couldn’t go.

“Come on, Danny.”  Mathias walked past behind him.

“In a minute.”  Danny felt heat rush to his face.

“What’s the hold-up?” his brother asked, a small amount of concern in his voice.

“I can’t go while he’s watching,” Danny admitted.  It was creepy.

“This will go a lot faster if you turn around,” Mathias said.  Danny assumed it was to the soldier.

He heard a grunt and a shuffle.  He looked over his shoulder to see that the guard had turned, but now Mathias was standing there.