Adaptive Instinct (Survival Instinct) (28 page)

“I take it you’ve tried using the snipers on him.”  Nicky couldn’t see how they wouldn’t if a simple zombie pawing at the ground deserved one.

James nodded.  “He stays just far enough away that his head is a tough target, and even if we do hit it, the shots aren’t powerful enough to get through his helmet.”

“What about bombing the woods?”  They had a grenade launcher lying around somewhere.

“We don’t know how deep in he is, or if he maybe moves to the left or right once he’s in there.  Usually he comes out by the boulder, but he’s been spotted in various locations along the edge of the woods.  We don’t have nearly enough ammo to blast away the whole place.”

The guards watched a moment longer,
and then drifted back to their proper posts.

“We should head back inside.  I’m sure someone in one of our sectors is looking for us.”  James headed for the stairs.

“Isn’t someone always?”  Nicky followed him.  She took one last look around the tower.  It was an entirely open space, not unlike a lighthouse, with windows on all sides.  Men stood at each of these windows, watching the goings-on of the people inside the grounds and those of the zombies outside.  Nicky knew most of these men.  She was happy to see that the number of people on their side, James’s side, outnumbered the people on Keystone’s.

***

Nicky had just finished diffusing an argument between two men in her sector when another one broke out.  With a sigh, she headed down the line of cells to see what this one was about.  As she walked, she had to avoid all the things that had spilled out of people’s cells onto the walkway.  Things like toys, hair ties, string, scissors, empty cans, plastic utensils, and bits of paper were often forgotten, abandoned, or outright discarded.  People had gotten into the habit of leaving their shoes and boots lined up outside their cells, to keep from tracking dirt into them.  They had begun to think of the individual cells as their homes and they were keeping them clean, but not the walkway outside of them.  Nicky would have to call a meeting about that soon.  She was hoping she could relate the walkway to lawns and sidewalks, and that it was their responsibility to keep the walkway in front of their own cell clean, even if everyone else was using it.  She felt sorry for Victor and Marcy who were in charge of the first floor.  Every time something fell off one of the higher floors, that’s where it ended up; more than once striking someone.  They had been lucky so far in that no one had fallen, or worse, jumped.  Nicky tried to push things away from the edge with her feet as she went by them.

The arguing was coming from a cell that was shared by two old men and one old dog.  If the cell Georgia lived in could be called the hen house, then this was definitely the buzzards’ nest.  Nicky walked up to the cell and knocked on a small piece of wood strapped to a bar.  The wood had been the idea of a resident on the second floor.  He had noticed that when people approached someone’s cell, they didn’t have anything to knock on
politely if they weren’t noticed right away.  Now, nearly every cell had one.  At the moment, the buzzards’ nest was occupied by its two human residents.  The dog was probably outside being walked by the two old men who lived a few cells down.  The buzzards sat on the lower bunk beds across from one another with a cooler in-between.  On the cooler sat a chessboard.  When Nicky knocked, neither of the old men took notice, so she cleared her throat loudly.

Upon seeing her, one of the men immediately pointed at the other and
shouted, “He cheated!”

“I did not!” the other shouted back.

This was a common argument between these men, although which one was cheating seemed to change every time.  Nicky sighed and stepped into the cell, getting a better look at the board.  The man doing the accusing, Eugene, was playing as white, while Burt, the man being accused, was playing as black.  The black had checkmated the white, but it also had both its bishops on black squares, an impossibility without cheating.

“Burt, you cheated.”  Nicky pointed out the bishops to him.

“Ha!”  Eugene threw his hands up in victory.  Both men then hunched over and began to reset the board.

“Next time, can you try to keep your voices down?” Nicky asked as politely as she could.  These were the kind of men who didn’t like to be told what to do, especially not by someone younger, female, and Asian.  “Mrs. Lemcke’s headaches can sometimes be set off by noise.”

“Oh yes, sure, I didn’t realize I was disrupting Mrs. Lemcke.  Of course, I’ll keep it down.  I can’t say the same thing for him though,” Burt said, pointing a pawn at Eugene.

“Please convey my apologies to Mrs. Lemcke.  I will certainly keep quiet and do my best to keep this one silent as well,” Eugene then said, waving a knight in Burt’s direction.

“Thank you, sirs,” Nicky smiled and left the cell.  Just the other day she had discovered that the buzzards were sweet on dear old Mrs. Lemcke, and had been finding ways to use that ever since.  And the bit about the headaches wasn’t a lie either; the poor woman was plagued by them, usually getting at least one bad one a day.  Nicky had placed her in a cell down one of the quieter halls, hoping it would help, and the buzzards had no idea their voices couldn’t carry that far.  Although she was tricking the old men, it was better than their never-ending arguments disturbing those who
could
hear them.

Nicky walked to the end of the block and found a quiet hall in which to think for a moment.  She was still trying to process the odd behaviour of Roy the zombie.  She hadn’t yet had a chance to talk to James in private about his thoughts on the matter.

The radio on her belt crackled, ending her seconds of peace.

“Nicky?  You’re needed in the medical centre.”  The voice over the radio was that of Dr. Owen.  During the last week, he and Nicky had been spending time together whenever they could.  Enough time that she no longer referred to him as Owen, which was his last name, but as Edward.  They were friends, but Nicky sensed something more was growing between them.  The timing was the absolute
pits; however, there was no way she was going to put the brakes on.  This radio call, though, wasn’t to chat or hang out.  If she was being called to the medical centre, it could only be for one of three reasons.  The first was that someone thought she might be sick, or worse, infected, and had ratted her out.  This was unlikely.  The second was that a patient from her section was down there and was asking for her.  This was a possibility, but also unlikely.  The last, which was probably what it was about, was a secret meeting of the rebels.  Rebels.  The word still sounded strange and wrong to Nicky.

“Be right there.”  Nicky hung her walkie-talkie back on her belt and left the hall.  She found a group of residents she trusted and explained where she would be if anyone needed her, then headed for the medical centre.  She met up with two other mercenaries on the way whom she knew to be rebels, which confirmed her suspicion.

The medical centre was one of the few places where they could call meetings without the risk of being disturbed.  It was made up of several rooms they used to hold injured or sick residents.  Depending on whom it was and what was wrong with them, determined into which room they were put.  The separation of rooms came in handy when that woman with the flu showed up; they were able to quarantine her to keep the other residents from getting sick.  They actually had more rooms than patients, however, and so one was often hastily set up as a meeting room for the rebels.  Because Nicky was in charge of a sector, she got to be in on all the meetings.  She knew that lower rank rebels weren’t invited to every meeting and had to hear the plans second hand.  There were even some who didn’t come to any meetings, and had to take it on faith that things were progressing.  Nicky had been given the names of a few of those people, and it was her job to update them.

She entered the room and took a seat between James and Edward.  Seating space around the table, which had a map laid out on it, was limited, and several people had to stand.  Some of the members were new to the group, so they all introduced themselves.  There were a lot of them now.  Either fewer people would have to come to the meetings, or they were going to need a bigger room.

“Let’s get down to business.”  James began to relay the events that had happened since the meeting yesterday, focusing on the departure of the scientists and the appearance of Roy the zombie.  “I’m concerned that Roy has the digger.  He may learn from the digger, or even already know and begin teaching him how to dig properly.  Our lack of intel on Roy makes him our biggest threat outside the walls.  I think we need to move these people out of here even sooner than we had planned.”

“We still don’t have enough transports, even if we use the prison vehicles which aren’t nearly as spacious or safe,” a man two seats over from James spoke up.  “I don’t care how much cramming you think we can do; there just isn’t enough physical space in them to fit that many people.  Not to mention supplies.”

“We’ve come up with a solution for that,” another man leaned forward on the table and pointed to a spot on the map.  “The outside teams have found a truck stop here.  Big rig trucks.  If we’re careful, we can clear out the backs, fit them with handles to hold onto inside, and fill the gas tanks.  With two of them, we should be able to just fit everyone.”

“How would the trucks get inside?” a third member asked.  “Big rigs won’t be able to fit between the doors, and if we open both sets, the zombies will all swarm in.”

“The teams did some measuring of the backs of the trucks,” the second man spoke again.  “If they back up together, they can completely clog the doors.  It’ll be a tight squeeze, but I don’t think anyone will mind losing some paint.”

“It won’t be a smooth ride in those,” Edward mentioned.  “Even with handles to hold onto.  We agreed a minimum of two mercenaries per vehicle right?  One up front and one to sit in the back with the residents there?  I think everyone who doesn’t have one of those roles should be in the backs of the trucks.  The rest will have to be residents, but we should pick the strongest among them.”

“Sounds good to me.”  James nodded.  He then gave them an update from headquarters, the first in some time.  It was quite an advantage for them to have a man working in the radio room.

In the White Box, some of the executives had discovered things going on that they hadn’t authorized.  The split that the rebels had always hoped for was happening.  Apparently, the virus was still being tested, even mutated.  This is what James thought had created Roy.  He thought the man had injected himself with a mutated version of the virus because he preferred it
to being eaten.  The biggest fear was that the virus would mutate even further, into something airborne, but so far, the infection sources remained the same: blood and saliva.  The rebels learned that the scientists had used it as a tool to punish people.  There was a woman, Elizabeth, who had been working on a cure in an apartment lab she had secretly put together.  The rebels knew she had sent someone to get her work, and that he had failed, but they hadn’t known what had happened to her until now.  The White Box scientists had found out what she was doing, and turned her into an experiment.  She was now a zombie, trapped in the White Box, and nobody knew where her research was.  The executives had also found out that one of their own family had been deliberately left behind: Kara Taggart.  No one had been sent to get the woman or even tell her about the virus.  She was presumed dead.  The combination of these things upset some non-rebels.  That night, the people who were unhappy were going to leave the White Box.  Some were going to meet up with the rebels and head to another safe zone, while others were too ashamed of what they had been part of and were going to go their own way.  There was talk of something awful being left behind in the Box, but James wasn’t telling many what that might be.  Most people suspected a bomb.

Next, James updated them on their outside contacts.  There was a group of survivors at a motel and, for now, they were still doing okay, but they didn’t know how much longer they could stay there.  James gave them the go ahead to leave without them if they felt pressured.  The convoy from the prison was supposed to meet up with them, but they needed to take care of themselves first.  He had also gotten in contact with the group of survivors at Pearson International Airport, on the outskirts of Toronto.  They were still doing just fine, and said the prison had lots of time.  The rebels’ goal was to get to the airport where two Boeing 747-400s were ready with full crews, and a handful of additional survivors.  The planes were then to fly to the Canadian Forces Base Shearwater, in Halifax.  Just off the Halifax Harbour, which was across the bay from the base, was a cruise ship waiting for them.  The cruise ship was where everyone was going to live until the zombies finally wasted away into a manageable number.

The large boat had been just far enough away from the outbreak to get an advance warning.  The cruise was cancelled, its passengers refunded and disgruntled.  At the time, no one knew that it was safer on the boat than off.  Because the harbour was busy, the cruise boat and its crew anchored itself off the coast and was spared the atrocity that befell those on shore.  The pilots of the 747s were actually the ones who had managed to get through to all the parties involved and set the plan in motion.  The prison’s job was to get the residents prepared for transport and get them to the airport.  Those at the airport were currently under lockdown and keeping an eye on the level of zombies in their area.  Thankfully, the empty runways held nothing of interest for the zombies, and the whole airfield was surrounded by fencing.  The cruise ship crew, who felt terrible for not helping the people of Halifax when they could have, was preparing the ship for them.  A small crew of rebels had already completed their defection and had recently made it to the ship.  Using the helicopters from the base, they gathered food, fresh water, gardening and farm supplies, medicine, even solar panels.  They were prepping the ship for the long haul, deciding where the best places to anchor would be, preferably someplace warm, near a fresh water river that met the ocean.  Although they were setting up a system to desalinate the salt water, they couldn’t depend on it lasting forever.