Adaptive Instinct (Survival Instinct) (33 page)

“Is Robin awake yet?”  River spoke at the same volume April had.  He tried to be quieter, but physically couldn’t be.  When he tried, no sound came out.

“No,” April replied.  “Her breathing is regular, and her pulse feels fine, but she doesn’t seem to be awake.”

“We need to leave this car,” River decided.

They were all silent.  Nobody knew how to leave the car without putting themselves at huge risk.  Then River felt Splatter climb up his pant leg and onto his lap.  He grabbed the small kitten and handed him to Quin.

“Put him outside.”

“What?”  Quin spoke quietly this time.

“You’re next to the window.  Either you go outside, or you put him outside.  Isn’t that why the kittens were around in the first place?  To check for zombies?”

Nobody moved for a minute.  River was about to grab the kitten back and toss it out the window himself when Quin started to move.  He listened to the rustle of the cover’s fabric as Quin’s arms went out the window and down the side of the vehicle.  Splatter was dropped the last few inches onto the pavement.  They all listened carefully.

Nearly five minutes passed, but in the dark, silent confines of the car, it felt like an hour to River.  When Splatter mewed, he startled as if it had been a zombie’s groan.  The kitten mewed again and began to rustle the bottom of the car cover, either trying to climb it or playing with it.  Either way, there wasn’t any shrieking so there probably weren’t any zombies.  Probably.

After much coaxing, River and April convinced Quin to climb out the window, with the promise that River would follow right behind him.  They didn’t use the doors this time, out of fear of the noise.  Once the two of them were outside the car, River could see a little better.  They hadn’t bothered to go deep into the garage, and pale sunlight was trying to get in through the entrance.  Even with the shiny cars reflecting the light at that end of the garage, the area where they stood was still covered in darkness.  River felt Splatter rub against his leg.  He picked up the kitten and passed him over to Quin.  When something clattered behind them, they both jumped.

“Sorry,” April whispered from inside the car’s driver seat.  “I was going to hand you a flashlight but I dropped it.”

Cursing in his mind, River knelt down and ran his hands gently over the ground.  His nimble guitarist fingers searched their way over pebbles and broken safety glass, finally resting on the barrel of the flashlight.  He pulled it to him and flicked it on before he had time to imagine the horrible sights that might leap out of the dark.  Unless someone considered a red Dodge Viper with orange rims a horrible sight, which River did not, there was nothing.  River stood and directed the beam around the parking garage.  Everywhere, fancy cars reflected the beam back at him, glinting off mirrors, glass, chrome, and slick paint jobs.  Dotted here and there were vehicles that had been covered like the one in which they had hidden, very likely at the request of their owners.  The valets wouldn’t have done it unless ordered to.  River remembered a time, many years ago, when he worked as a valet for a hotel.  It wasn’t the Privia, but the Anic, which was the first hotel in Leighton.  It used to be the swankiest digs in town until the Privia monolith sprang up.  River still thought the Anic had more style, but there was no denying the richness and the class of the Privia.  Even its valet parking garage, which the visitors would likely never see, had higher ceilings than most, and all its pipes and wiring were hidden behind a pressboard ceiling.

“Is it safe?” April hissed through the car’s cover, pulling River out of his wandering thoughts.

In response, River began to lift the cover up off the side of the vehicle.  He found out the car they had spent the night in was a BMW.  River was never much of a car guy, but Mitchell had been.  If he had still been kicking and with them, he could’ve named the exact model, and probably even name any modifications that had been made.  He would have loved to be in this garage, surrounded by all these metal bodies.

April shoved one of the hockey bags out through the window and then quickly followed it up with the other one.  River’s stomach growled as he remembered there was food in those bags.  He opened one and found a box of sugary cereal.  After eating a few
handfuls, he offered the box to Quin.  Quin ate from the box after putting the kitten down, while River took out another box from which to eat.

“What are you doing?” April asked as she poked her head out of the window again.

“We’re eating,” River thought that should have been obvious, “because we’re hungry.”

“We can’t stop to eat here.  Let’s get somewhere safer first, like whatever building this garage is attached to.  I need one of you to help me get Robin out.  She’s still unconscious.”  April disappeared back into the car.

Dropping his cereal box back into the opened hockey bag, Quin stepped forward to help.  River realized he was going to have to carry one of the bags and resigned himself to shrugging it onto his back now.  He also put his cereal box away for later.  April was right; they shouldn’t stop to eat until they were in a safer location.  He grunted as he settled the bag into position.  What else had they stuffed into the damned thing?

The back door was opened, and Quin gently pulled Robin out.  He picked her up and slung her over his shoulder
as if she weighed no more than a sack of potatoes.  Quin’s strength always surprised River, especially now considering his frail appearance of late.  April hopped out of the vehicle and slung the other heavy bag onto her back.  She held her sword in one hand and picked up Splatter with the other.  She looked kind of funny with the bag, the sword, and the cat, and River grinned to himself.

April led the way with Quin carrying Robin behind her.  River took up the rear, shining the flashlight forward for the others.  He wouldn’t have minded having Robin’s shotgun as they walked, but it had been packed into one of the bags, and River didn’t know which one.  He had never been allowed to touch it, and they never offered him anything else in terms of
self-defence.  Well, back at the department store, he had had the guitar, but he left that behind when he fled from the fire.  At the moment, all he had was the flashlight, which really wasn’t an adequate weapon.

As they walked, April would point in the direction that she wanted River to point the flashlight.  Although they were headed for the entrance they had first come in, she was searching for any other ways out.  A door was finally spotted not far from the crashed gate.  Above it, the name of the hotel was engraved on a gold plaque.  The three of them stopped and looked at each other, silently deciding on which way to go.  They were in mutual agreement to go into the hotel.

Through the doors was a stairwell.  Even here, the railings were plated with gold, although the cement steps weren’t carpeted.  They followed the stairs up to a series of service hallways.  Gold plaques directed them to the main entrance of the hotel.

The entrance was a high, grand room, with crystal chandeliers, plush carpets, gold trim, carved pillars, marble statues, and even an odour that said rich.  Both River and Quin eyed the entrance to the bar across the space.  April didn’t seem to notice and headed straight for the front doors.  In one of the three rotating glass doors, a zombie had become trapped.  The door had been locked in place, cutting him off from coming into the building, or going farther out.  April ignored the man in his expensive, mussed suit, pawing at the glass, and checked all the remaining doors.  Every one of them was already locked.

“Either another group of survivors is in here somewhere, or the hotel saw what was happening and shut down,” April spoke her deductions aloud to the others.  She then coughed several times.

“Are you okay?” Quin asked.

“I’m fine,” April waved him off and headed for the front desk.

River
followed her, looking longingly at the bar entrance again.  They had cigarettes in there, River knew.  He and the boys had gotten drunk in there every time they stayed at the Privia, and along with booze, the bartender sold cigarettes and cigars.  They couldn’t smoke them throughout the hotel, but there was a separate, smaller bar that served as the smoker’s room.  River wondered how many people had missed out on a chance meeting with Gathers Moss simply because they weren’t smokers and never went into that room.

As they passed by the entrance, River could see the bar.  All the colourful liquor bottles that had once stood behind it were gone.  Someone had already been there.

At the front desk, April went behind the huge expanse of oak and marble, and started rifling through things.

“What are you looking for?” River wondered.

“Something that can tell us which rooms are empty.  I don’t want to risk opening a door to a locked-in zombie.”

River walked around the desk and up to a large set of cupboards.  Although
key cards were the way to go with most hotels these days, the Privia liked the old school method; they had real keys that went into real locks.  River had watched them take the keys out of the cupboards enough times to know that they kept them there.  He found a peg that still had all the room keys on it.

“What floor is that on?” April asked as he picked up the set.

“Uhhh,” River looked over the numbers.  “Twenty-third.”  That was two floors from the top and would be one of the extra nice rooms.

“No good.  Find something that’s on one of the lower floors.  Second, third, maybe fourth.”

River grumbled.  All the rooms were nice, but the lower floors were the crappier, more basic rooms.

April noticed his grumbling.  “The power’s out.  Do you really want to carry all this stuff up twenty-three flights of stairs?”

River did not.  He found a set of keys from the fifth floor.  All the rooms lower than that were booked, or at least had their keys taken.

They headed for the stairs.

***

Several hours later, they were in their room and settled in.  One of the hockey bags had a small container of litter in it so they were able to make a shit box out of a dresser drawer for Splatter.  Robin was laid out on one of the beds, still out of it.  Even Quin wasn’t sure if it was because of the drugs, or because she was so upset about what had happened that she was just refusing to wake up.  Seemed like a cop-out to River.  April had been coughing a lot more, and that concerned him.  Weren’t the zombies created through an infection?  And with Robin out, he and Quin had no idea what happened to them on their trip to the grocery store.  Quin didn’t seem concerned, but he could just be fried again.  It was up to River to look after him.

April lay down on her side of the bed next to Robin, and started coughing again.  She said that she was exhausted, that she had barely slept in the BMW.  Even while she tried to sleep, she clutched the sword in one hand.  Quin lay down on the other bed; maybe trying to sleep as well, maybe just out of it to the point where lying down was the best thing to do.  He still hadn’t had any drugs and was soon likely to be taken by the shakes and shivers that had plagued him the last few days.

Having slept quite well in the BMW, River wasn’t tired at all and occupied a plush chair in a corner of the room.  He was going to stay awake and watch over them.  He was going to make sure that April didn’t suddenly try to eat Robin and Quin like Zach had.

As he sat there, River thought about all the places he had been in his life.  All the countries, cities, and hotel rooms.  He had seen so many people in his lifetime.  Oceans of faces.  He wondered how many of those millions of people were still alive, how many of them had been turned into zombies.  He thought of his mom and was glad she had passed away many years ago.  She wouldn’t have been able to handle this; it would have cracked her mind.  She would have gone screaming out into the street, gibbering madly as the zombies brought her down.  Everyone River cared about was dead, save Quin.  His mom, Mitchell, Zach, Gregory, all dead.  Even the people he only somewhat cared about, either were dead or could be presumed dead: their manager, Jared, the bodyguards, Harris, Terry, Lewis, and Fred, his estranged wife, Lucille, and his ex-wives, Paris and Suzanne.

The next person who came to River’s mind actually surprised him: his father.  River hadn’t known the man much.  He was just a guy who showed up once a year on his birthday to give him a present, take him out to a hockey game, and give his mom a wad of cash.  River realized he had no idea what his dad did for a living, or why his mom never talked about him.  He had never asked her, and just accepted things for what they were.  He remembered his dad as a harsh man who never took shit from anyone.  There was one year when someone tripped on the steps next to them at the hockey game, and spilled a drink all over River’s dad.  He proceeded to give that guy an earful, threatening to rip his head off with his bare hands.  River thought his dad could do it too.  Although he wasn’t very big, there was a fierceness to him.  After his thirteenth birthday, his dad just stopped showing up.  River never learned why, never even asked.  He had been scared of the man and was totally fine with spending his birthday with his mom and his friends.  River’s dad had given him one life-changing gift though.  He had been the one to give River his first guitar and his first guitar lesson.  How he could have forgotten that, he didn’t know.  He wished he had that guitar now: a simple acoustic guitar with steel strings and a bird-wing sticker stuck to the back.  Being able to play something now would have been great, soothing. 
Instead, he had to listen to April coughing in her sleep.  His dad would’ve known what to do about that.