Adaptive Instinct (Survival Instinct) (12 page)

A cop car sat up ahead with the passenger door wide open.  Without really knowing she was going to do it, Robin jumped inside and slammed the door behind her.  She crunched down into the footwell, gasping for breath.  She felt nauseous and thought she might throw up.  Her head was swimming.  Clamping her hands over her mouth to muffle the noise, Robin took in great, whooping breaths through her fingers.  She had brought her backpack with her, lighter now that the food and drink had been consumed.  Right after she got her pillow out of her bag, a howl came from up the street.  Robin buried her face in her pillow, trying to
breathe lightly, not puke, and not scream, all at the same time.

The police cruiser filled with noise as a zombie ran up onto the roof.  Robin could picture it up there, sniffing at the air, looking for any sign of her.  Every time it moved, the roof popped.  Every time the roof popped, Robin squeezed her eyes closed even tighter.  The thing up there howled again and then ran off the back of the vehicle, perhaps having found a new target.

Robin pulled her face out of her pillow and glanced at what windows she could see.  She put her pillow on the passenger seat to give her cramped self more room, and noticed then that she had been crying into it.  Absently, she wiped at her face and inched her way out of the footwell, closely watching the windows for any sign of movement.  Once again, the world looked clear and empty.  She saw something
in
the car however, something that made a slow smile spread across her face.  There was a rack behind the driver and passenger seats, which was holding a pump action shotgun.  Robin gingerly lifted it down.

In her hands, the shotgun looked massive.  Robin tested its weight, and decided to see if she could pull back on the pump.  It wasn’t as easy as the TV shows and movies made it look, but she managed.  No shells came out, so she figured the thing wasn’t loaded.  She wasn’t going to test that theory while still in the car however.  After checking the outside world again, Robin looked for ammo.  She found a box of shells in the glove compartment that looked like they fit with the gun.  Having seen many action movies with her friends, Robin was able to load the shells into the shotgun.  She pumped the gun again, not realizing she had already put a shell into the chamber and caused it to eject.  She located the
flyaway round and loaded it back into the gun.  Robin knew guns like this probably had a lot of kickback, and it was possible that firing it could knock her off her feet or even dislocate her shoulder.  That wasn’t going to stop her from using it if she felt she had to.  Running was still the first option, but having a backup never hurt.

Robin packed the rest of the shells into her backpack, cramming socks into the box and wrapping it in her pillow so that the shells wouldn’t rattle around.  When she left the cruiser, she didn’t bother to close the door.

After several nerve-wracking blocks, Robin finally spotted a grocery store.  She stepped into it slowly, letting her gun lead the way.  Without power, the back of the store got mighty dark.  She started searching the front of the store first, looking down each aisle, when up ahead something clattered to the floor.  Robin swung around in that direction, but nothing came at her.  Slowly, so slowly, she made her way to the aisle the sound had come from.  As she swung into it, her shoe squeaked on the tile.

Not far from the mouth of the aisle, a girl rose to her feet, brandishing a samurai sword.  She was a black girl who looked to be Robin’s age.  Her dark hair was in tight
cornrows, and she wore similar sneakers to Robin’s, calf length jeans, a bunch of rubber wristbands, and a dirty yellow T-shirt with the name of some band on it.  Her makeup had been applied more heavily than Robin’s, but was streaked and running.  Robin’s probably wasn’t much better.

“You have a sword?” Robin whispered to the girl.

“You have a shotgun,” the girl replied, also whispering.

“I found it in a cop cruiser.”

“Found this in a pawn shop.”

“Don’t they also have guns in pawn shops?”

“Those were behind locked cases.  I didn’t have time to try to get in them.”

The two teenaged girls stood in a
standoff, both eyeing and judging the other.  Robin finally lowered her gun.

“I’m Robin Paige,” she said, stepping forward and holding out her hand.

“April Byard,” the girl lowered her sword but didn’t shake Robin’s hand.  “Before you come any closer, you have to pass the sniff test.”

“Sniff test?”

April bent down and scooped a black and white kitten out of a small bag on the floor.  She held it out to Robin with one hand.  Robin held one of her own hands out to the kitten, who smelled her.  The kitten eventually started kicking, wanting to be put back down.  When April complied, the cat went back into the bag.

“You pass,” April told her.  “Come here and help load these.”  She had a small amount of boxes and bags that she was putting into a shopping cart.  The boxes and bags were full of food that had yet to go bad.

As Robin walked over, she looked into the bag on the floor.  There were three small kittens inside, wrapped up around each other.

“What would have happened if I failed?” Robin wondered.

“The cat would have hissed,” April said as she passed her a bag to be put into the cart.  “And then I would have given you ten seconds to get away from me before I started swinging.”

“Good to know.”

Robin helped April finish packing up the cart.  April pushed the cart toward the door, the wheels heavily lathered with oil to prevent squeaking, while Robin carried the three kittens in their cloth bag, in the crook of one arm.  She carried her shotgun with the other.

The two girls moved cautiously down the street, watching each other’s backs.  April led the way.  Robin didn’t know where, but hoped it was somewhere safe.  She figured
that if April was gathering supplies, she must have holed up somewhere.  The kittens were quiet the whole way, rarely even moving.  Perhaps they sensed the danger, or perhaps they were just sleeping as cats usually do.  Only the black and white kitten poked his nose out of the top of the bag from time to time.

To Robin’s grateful surprise, the journey was uneventful.  They heard things going on in different parts of the city, the loudest noises echoing through the streets, but those sounds were mere ambience now.  Car horns replaced with
gunshots, vendor’s cries replaced with screams, the hum of machinery replaced by the moaning of the undead.

April rolled the cart up to a large department store that had one of its windows shattered, and pushed open the door.  Robin helped her manoeuvre the cart through it, and then closed the door behind them.

“We’ll have to unload everything down here and carry it up the stairs,” April told her, speaking only slightly louder than she had in the grocery store.  “I’ve been living on the top floor; it’s safe up there.”

“What about the kittens?”  Robin looked down at the little fuzz balls in her arm.  She couldn’t carry them and any of the supplies, not while also holding her shotgun.

“We’ll take them up first.”  April grabbed a few bags and headed up the stairs.  Robin tagged along after her.

At the top of the stationary escalators, on the third floor, there was a couch barring the top of the stairs.  April climbed over it and helped Robin over.  The two of them did a quick search of the floor to make sure nothing had gotten up there while April was out.  The third floor consisted mostly of furniture.

“We should be able to speak normally up here,” April said as she led Robin over to her living corner.  There were several mattresses piled up on the floor with heavy, wooden bed frames tilted and shoved around them.

“You did this by yourself?”  Robin stepped into the protective circle of wooden and metal frames.  The only light came through small, high windows, but they provided enough light to see by.

“No, there were others earlier.”  April put her bags down in a corner.  “We set this up together the day of the concert.  We had all been there, but we didn’t know each other.  Two days ago, we were going to flee the city together, but a swarm of those things came and we had to run.  I got split up from the others, so I came back here.  I haven’t seen them since.”

Robin put the kittens down, and they crawled out of the bag.  Along with the black and white one, there was a calico cat, and a grey, striped cat.  “So where’d you get these guys from?”

“I went out scouting for locations of interest yesterday.  I happened across them in an ally.  I wasn’t going to bring them with me, but they started meowing and hissing, and next thing I knew, a zombie was on me.  They seemed to know it was coming before I did, so I thought hey, might as well bring them along.”

“Have you named them?”  Robin was smiling as she stroked each of the kittens.

“Not really,” April shrugged.  “I’ve taken to calling the cow coloured one Adolf, because he’s got a bit of a Hitler stash going on.”

Robin found that both funny and sad.  “Would you mind if I named them all?”

“Go for it.  Just help me bring up the supplies, which include cat food, litter, and a litter box.  They’ve been pooping in some sheets that I threw out on my way to the store.”

Robin left her backpack behind with the kittens
, but brought the shotgun with her.  She noticed that April’s sword was in a sheath that was held to her belt with duct tape.  The belt didn’t go with her outfit and it had likely been picked up purely to hold the sword.  Robin realized she should probably make a strap or something for the shotgun or else she could only carry up one arm’s worth of stuff each trip.  When she mentioned this to April, they made a stop on the second floor, which was all clothing.  April grabbed a long thin scarf and tied it to either end of the weapon.  It was crude, but would do for now.

They worked in silence, hauling all the supplies up to the second floor, and then on up to the third floor.  Robin was curious about how easily she had fallen in with April and how readily April accepted her company.  Robin had never been very good at making friends; it usually took her awhile to feel comfortable around someone.  The friends she did
have were the ones that she had known for years.  Ever since the zombies though, anyone who wasn’t trying to kill her was cool in her books.

Once everything was hauled into the corner, and the kittens were given food, water, and litter, the two girls lay down on the mattresses near one another.

“I think I’m going to name this one Charlie,” Robin told April as the black and white kitten crawled over her stomach.

“Why Charlie?”

“For Charlie Chaplin.  Hitler wasn’t the only one with that moustache you know.”

“I guess.”  April really didn’t seem to care all that much.

“As for the grey one, he’ll be Charcoal.  Last, but not least, is Splatter.  Charlie, Charcoal, and Splatter, the three kitten amigos.”

The girls talked late into the night, a flashlight set up between them.  They learned they were the same age, sixteen, and both would have been starting grade 11 in September.  They went to different schools of course, but some of the people at them were so similar, it was like they didn’t.  They talked about nearly everything: friends, family, clothes, sports, school, music, movies,
and books.  The only thing they didn’t touch on were zombies and what had happened the last few days.  That topic hung in the air constantly, was always on the tip of the tongue and mind, but that’s precisely why they didn’t bring it up.  They needed to escape that topic for a while, to bury it under heaps of trivial garbage.  And that’s what most of their life before had been, hadn’t it?  Trivial garbage?  A remembered life that was only good for passing the time.

As the sun began to rise, the girls finally decided to sleep.  Robin lay her head down on her pillow, grateful to be on a real mattress again with blankets.  Maybe tomorrow she would even change her clothes.  She had forgotten she had been wearing the same thing the whole time until she saw all the clothes on the second floor.  The three amigo cats curled up around her, comforting her further.  Charlie slept on her pillow, in her hair, while Splatter curled against her neck.  Charcoal opted to curl up against her belly.  Surrounded by the soft smell of kittens, Robin fell asleep.

***

Maybe it was the kittens, or the late night, or even that Robin was in something close to a real bed, and probably it was all three, but she slept in late.  Very late, like, noon late.  A week ago, she would never have considered noon as late.  It would have been early in fact.  Since the bus, however, she had been getting up at the crack of dawn.  Even when sleeping in the safety of the vault, once the sun was up, so was she.  She might have slept even later if it weren’t for Splatter.  He was literally poking her in the face with his little paws.

Robin mumbled and rolled away from the small cat, but this only enticed him.  He pounced upon her head, getting one of his needle-like claws into her cheek.  Robin inhaled sharply, the pain lancing through her face.  Instinctively, she sat up, causing Splatter to tumble toward her stomach, his nail scraping along her face and wounding it further.  Robin placed a hand to her cheek, and then looked at her hand for blood.  There was none, for now at least, but there was bound to be a good-sized scratch.  She looked down at Splatter who looked back at her with fierce, yellow eyes.  He was a wild cat in a wild mood.  Robin attempted to stroke his fuzzy head and was rewarded with a soft chomp to her fingers.