Adaptive Instinct (Survival Instinct) (17 page)

“What kind of experiments?” the warden asked nervously.  He shrank when everyone turned and looked at him.  All the mercenaries knew better than to ask that question.

“Looking for a cure,” Crichton grumbled at him in a way that suggested the warden shouldn’t open his mouth again.  The rest of them knew that a cure was not their end game.

“Will they be setting up shop here then?” another ward leader asked.

“No, we don’t need to worry about that.  We only need to find temporary space for them, away from the general population.  Some of their things are sensitive and it’s better for everyone if they’re not in the open.”  By sensitive, he probably meant dangerous.

“I’ve been thinking of converting the garage into a living space.  With some help, I can have it ready before they get here,” James offered.  Along with the
Laundromat, he was also in charge of the other odd spaces, like the gym, the garage, the library, and various storage rooms they had emptied out and weren’t using for storage.

“That’ll be perfect,” Crichton nodded.  “The other mercenaries are just being added into our own ranks, so we only need to find space for the civilians.”  The prison was a T-shape and the mercenaries had taken the short ends as their own living quarters.  They had voted one of their own to be the ward leader and had more space to spread out than the civilians had.  Only one person to a cell there.

“Again, I can take them, or at least a lot of them,” James said.  “We just opened up the gym as a living space.  My people won’t be too happy about losing the space I just managed to get for them, but I figure if the scientists are only going to be here temporarily, we’ll gain it back when we get the garage.”

“Thank you.  Maybe we can fit them all in the gym for now and spread them out as we find space in other wards.”

“How will the scientists be leaving?” the merc in charge of outside operations asked.  “Should I be sending out a team to make sure the route to where they’re going is clear?”

“No.  A pair of helicopters will be coming to pick up them and their gear.”

Everyone shuffled uncomfortably at this.  The day after they had set up in the prison, there had been an incident involving a helicopter.  They had managed to catch a man named Mathias Cole, who also used to be a mercenary for Keystone.  He had apparently turned traitor, and when they tried to put him down, he had escaped, injuring some other men and killing two other mercenaries: East and LeBlanc.  They had caught him and were waiting for the right time to put him down, when all hell broke loose.  He had a team with him made up of a collection of civilian survivors.  This team had firebombed the guard tower, and during the ensuing havoc, had stolen the helicopter and taken off.  They killed three men during their escape.  One of those men Nicky had known, but she knew Mathias too, and it seemed out of character for him to be a traitor.  Nobody would really say what he had done to be given that brand and she couldn’t see Mathias killing LeBlanc.  They had been really close friends, close enough that LeBlanc would help Mathias no matter what the reason.  Nicky wasn’t sure who to believe in that standoff.  Keystone was known to lie, but theirs was the only information she could get.

After the helicopter was stolen—an experimental Ostra class no less—home base had sent another to look for it.  They found it on a small strip of runway up north, but there were so many infected around, they couldn’t land.  As far as Nicky knew, they still hadn’t recovered the chopper.  They were supposed to have the helicopter for dire emergencies, but after what happened, home base didn’t think they could handle owning another one and refused to send a replacement.  Nicky would have felt a lot better having it present.

“Next order of business: we’re going to start having weekly meetings,” Crichton moved on.  “I want us to keep updated on each other’s wants and needs.  We need to keep the population as evenly distributed as we can and make sure supplies are distributed accordingly.  We also need to start putting some of these people to work.  Several have already volunteered for guard duty on the walls.  There are probably some doctors or nurses who could be very useful.  Winter’s coming, and things like colds and the flu are likely to sweep through this place like wild fire.”

By the way some people stirred, they hadn’t all thought of this.

“If we get enough people, I’d like to start more thorough examinations if we could,” Dr. Milo spoke up.  “We should be getting these people’s medical histories: previous operations, allergies, epilepsy, diabetes.  We should know these things so we can treat them properly.”

Nicky nodded her approval of this,
and then spoke her own thoughts.  “We should train some of these people.  A lot of them don’t have any skills that are useful to us right now, but if we set up classes, we could teach them whatever we need.  First aid especially, so they’re not going to the medical team for every little thing.”

“I was thinking the same thing,
” Crichton nodded.  “That’s why I kept the wing with the therapy rooms and solitary confinement cells empty, so we can convert them into a learning centre.”

The meeting continued for several hours. Everyone discussed what kinds of classes they should set up, how their section had been doing during their first week, anything special they would like the outside team to try to find for them, and whatever else they felt needed mentioning.

***

Nicky had agreed to help James clear out the garage.  She figured her section could live without her for a few minutes.  At least she hoped they could.  A few others had volunteered, and they quickly got the prisoner transport trucks and police cruisers out and into the spaces between the fences.  They moved out the tools, which were added to their supply storage in the basement, and began setting up a few cots.  Nicky wasn’t ready to go back to her section right away, so when most of the other guys left, she stayed to help wash the floors and walls.  The smell of oil and gas was hard to get out.

“Do you really think the scientists will care about the smell?” Nicky asked James for the sake of conversation.  “I mean, they’ve probably used chemicals that smell far worse than this.  I’d be surprised to hear they still had a sense of smell.”

James laughed.  “True.  It’s not them I’m worried about.  I’d rather start getting this smell out now so that it’s ready for my people to move into after the scientists ship out.  Space is tight in my ward.  Unlike where you are, they don’t have the privacy of cells.”

Nicky nodded, smiling about how genuinely concerned he seemed for his civilians.

James looked around the mostly empty space, checking that they were indeed alone.  “Can I ask you something?”

“Don’t see why not.”

“When the helicopters got mentioned in the meeting, most everyone got a kind of pissed-off look on their face.  You didn’t, you looked worried.”  Looks like Nicky wasn’t the only one who studied the others.

“I was thinking about the fact that we don’t have a helicopter anymore.  That bird was to be an emergency life line, and I don’t like that we don’t have it.”

“Yeah, I figure most people were thinking along those lines.”  James mopped his way closer.  “But most people are angry about it.  You know, angry at the traitor for stealing it.”  James didn’t stress the word traitor
as everyone else did.

“You mean Mathias Cole?  Did you know I knew him?  We both worked in the Black Box outside of Vancouver for
a while.  I even went on a week-long mission with him once.”

“What was he like?”  James sounded genuinely curious.

“Not like a traitor if that’s what you’re wondering.  He seemed like a nice guy.  In fact, I would use the term loyal to describe him, though he wasn’t loyal to Keystone.  He had a little brother who he seemed to adore, and I heard through the grapevine that his brother was the whole reason he worked for Keystone.”

“Danny Cole,” James filled in the little brother’s name.  “He was with Mathias when we brought him in.”

“Right, you were part of the team that tracked him down.”

“Yup.  So what do you think about the fact that he killed some of our guys?”

“Confused,” Nicky told him honestly.  Something about the way James spoke made Nicky think she could trust him with these things.  “I met LeBlanc a few times as well, and he and Mathias seemed like really good friends.  I can’t see Cole killing LeBlanc for anything.”

James paused a moment before speaking again.  “We don’t know that he did.”

Nicky stopped mopping and looked at James.  “What do you mean?”

“LeBlanc took off
with
Cole.”  James stopped mopping as well so that they could look each other in the eyes.  “My team was supposed to bring him in as well.  When we grabbed Cole, he had LeBlanc’s gear with him, but LeBlanc was nowhere in sight.  We assume something happened to him.  The higher ups came up with the story that Mathias killed East and LeBlanc during his first escape from the school.”

“Did East go with him as well?”

“No,” James shook his head and started mopping again.  “The first team that tried to take out Cole and LeBlanc managed to kill her.”

“Why was she killed?  Why did Cole get labelled a traitor in the first place?”

James shrugged.  “I don’t know that part.  From what I’ve overheard, he just wanted to leave.  He just wanted to go be with his little brother.  Keystone didn’t want him to go, as it might give others ideas to do the same.  LeBlanc wanted to leave too; he had planned to go with Cole.  Supposedly, East wanted out as well, although she wasn’t as boisterous about it.”

Nicky turned away from James, scrubbing a stubborn stain on the floor.  All they wanted to do was leave and they were killed for it?  Or at least, Keystone tried to kill them, and succeeded with East.  If Nicky had had family elsewhere whom she wanted to be with, would they have killed her too?

“Where did you hear this from?” Nicky finally spoke again.

“From Chant.”

Nicky stopped scrubbing and turned to face James again, but his back was to her as he kept mopping.  Chant
was
a traitor.  She had gone on the radio and spilled as many beans as she could.  She told everyone who would listen that Marble Keystone had released the virus, and that they had released it on purpose.  That was troublesome.

Nicky thought that something drastic needed to be done to fix the world’s many problems, but she didn’t condone the killing of so many innocent people.  She didn’t think the virus should have been released, however it was too late to change that.  When Chant told people what had happened, it only caused an unnecessary panic.  Several Keystone employees had been injured and even killed by angry mobs.  In the camps they had set up, unrest was just under the surface, and they were always on the alert for an uprising.

Chant had told the people to go north.  This was stupid.  Many of those people were going to freeze to death up there once winter came.  Sure, zombies froze solid when it got cold, they had no body heat, but people could freeze too.  And unlike the zombies, people didn’t just thaw out and resume what they were doing when spring came.  Not to mention they needed to eat, and could get sick if they ate the wrong things.

Many survivors didn’t trust the Keystone mercenaries now, which made it very difficult to get them to come with them.  A lot of these people weren’t going to survive the winter without them.  Some wouldn’t even last that long.  Coming with Keystone was the best option for them.  A few survivors really didn’t want to come, and some of the mercenaries, having to deal with their crap all day when they were trying to help, overreacted.  Survivors were occasionally beaten into submission or sometimes even shot.  One team had trouble with a kid who took off.  When the kid was running, he had gotten the mercenary who was chasing him killed.  That kid wasn’t treated well at all when the team managed to find him again.  Now that Nicky thought about it, the kid was the one who had ended up helping Cole: he threw one of the firebombs.  Cole must have gotten him out somehow, and after the way he had been treated, it was no wonder he helped bomb the place.

“Nicky?”  James had noticed she hadn’t moved since Chant’s name was mentioned.

“When did Chant tell you these things?” she decided to ask.

“Just before she went on air,” James told her.  “After she locked herself in the broadcast room, she called me.  She told me what happened with Cole and East and what she was going to do.  I told her not to do it, it would only cause more problems, but she didn’t listen.”

“Why would she call you?”

“We used to know each other.  For nearly a year, we worked together in the England branch, until she was moved to Leighton and I was sent to California.  When we were all shipped to Leighton, just before this happened, we ran into each other and got to talking.”

“What did you talk about?”

“How well can I trust you, Nicky?”  James and Nicky were now standing face to face again.  She looked into his pale brown eyes, he into her dark brown ones.

“I don’t know,” Nicky finally said in honesty.  She sensed she was on the edge of a very deep rabbit hole and she wasn’t sure if she was ready to tumble down it.

“I admire your honesty,” James smiled.  “If you ever feel I can trust you, completely and thoroughly, come find me.”

He turned away and went back to mopping.  Nicky felt the rabbit hole recede a little.  She was no longer on the edge of it, but now she was aware of its presence and wouldn’t be able to
forget about it.  She knew that eventually she was going to tell James that he could trust her, but whether that would be the truth or a lie she didn’t know.