Adaptive Instinct (Survival Instinct) (41 page)

The look on Mathias’s face suggested he had the same thought as Misha: bullshit.

“Can I call her?” he asked.

“We agreed that only she would call us,” Shawn insisted.  “We don’t want to risk her phone ringing while she’s trying to hide from something.”

That was an unfortunate point they had all agreed upon.  In fact, Riley’s phone wasn’t even likely to be turned on at the moment.

They walked the rest of the way to the cabin with Mathias basically frog-marching Shawn.

***

“I think we should go,” Abby insisted again.

“Go where?”  Mathias sighed.  This was the main counter-argument.  “There’s nowhere to go.”

“But it’s not safe here.”  Since the zombie, Abby had been petitioning to leave the cabin.

“We could probably find somewhere safer than here.”  Tobias wasn’t as irrational about going as Abby was, but so far, he was siding with her.

“Anywhere else isn’t likely to have a greenhouse and as many supplies,” Josh brought up.

“We could go somewhere warm.  An island in the south.”  Abby wasn’t giving up.

“I like the sound of that,” Danny spoke quietly.  The boy and his brother were on different sides of the argument, causing strained looks between the two.

“Doesn’t matter to me where we go,” Alec told everyone from the kitchen where he looked out at the storm through the porthole window.  “What do you think, Misha?”

The argument had been going in circles for at least an hour but this was the first time someone asked for Misha’s opinion.  Up until then, he, Alec, and Shawn hadn’t said a word.

Misha shrugged.  “I like it here.  I like the greenhouse, the lake, and the supplies.  But I understand where you’re coming from.  I may like things here, but I hate zombies.  I hate them more than anything.  Recently, I got comfortable here.  I finally stopped fearing the things.  I hadn’t realized just how much that fear was weighing on me.  Now I know, because it’s back.  If there was a place totally free of zombies, I’d be tempted to try for it.  With or without supplies already there.  The thing I mostly have a problem with is travelling there.  You can assume and plan all you want, but that doesn’t change the fact that you would have to go through what are likely to be infected zones.  More zombies.  So what do I think?  I think both options suck ass.”  It was the most he had ever spoken to them at one time.

There was a moment of silence while everyone digested what he said, but it wasn’t long before they were arguing again.  Misha sat back in silence, leaning against the wall.  He had been sitting with Shoes and Rifle since they got back, giving them a thorough towel rubbing to dry the rain off their fur.  Nobody liked the smell of wet dogs.

As the argument got worse, nearing the peak of people’s voices, causing tension to build up in their bodies, Shawn rose to his feet.

“All of you shut the fuck up!” he screamed as if he were a child who’d been listening to his parents fight.  “It doesn’t matter what you want!  This is my family’s cabin, my family’s supplies, my family’s plane!  Unless I say so, none of you are going anywhere with any of it!”  He stormed out of the living room and slammed the bedroom door shut behind him.  It effectively killed off the discussion.

***

That night, Misha was lying on the couch, but he couldn’t sleep.  When he had talked about his hatred and fear of the
zombies, he had meant it.  Now that those feelings were back, he was finding it difficult to shut his eyes.  He probably wasn’t the only one, but he didn’t know what the others were doing behind their doors, what they might be thinking about or looking at.  Misha kept the fire burning brightly.  The darkness only amplified his feelings.

The storm outside didn’t help.  There had been a lull for
a while during supper, but when the sun sank below the horizon, the rain came back with a vengeance.  Lighting flashed through the porthole while thunder rocked overhead.  The entire cabin shook with it.  Misha had to lie with his legs curled up, because Rifle was cowering on the end of the couch.  The big dog kept whining, and had his head on Misha’s legs.  Milly was also nervous about the storm, but not as much.  She sat by Misha’s head with her ears flat, looking up at the ceiling.  Even Shoes was lying closer, but Misha was pretty sure it was because the old dog wanted to curl up closer to the fire and had nothing to do with nature’s ruckus outside.

Misha’s thoughts kept circling and circling through the arguments he had listened to.  A part of him really wanted to go.  Just pack up a bag full of supplies right now and head out, regardless of the storm.  The other part of him said that that part was an idiot.  They weren’t even sure there were more zombies out there.  Still, even if the hiker’s companions weren’t infected, who’s to say that more wouldn’t come?  It would just take one shrieker to show up and start calling the others for everything to go to hell.  Misha didn’t like to picture the deck surrounded by the undead, but that was almost all he could think about.  Whenever he closed his eyes, they were there, with Dean amongst them.

He also thought about Shawn, and how unstable he seemed.  If a swarm of zombies did show up, how long would it take for him to crack?  A day?  Hours?  Minutes?  And unless they wanted to hike out into unknown terrain, they couldn’t leave unless he let them.  He was the only one who knew how to fly after all.

The lightning cracked right next to the cabin.  It was so loud that Misha jumped, despite all the rest of the thunder he had listened to so far.  There was another, quieter crack right afterward.  It was the sound of a tree trunk giving way.  The bolt must have hit a nearby tree.  Misha could hear the snapping and crackling of branches and bark as it gave out.  Then he heard an unexpected noise.  It sounded like the loudest shattering of glass that ever existed, almost as if a bomb had gone off.

Misha sat bolt upright, his eyes wide.  All of the bedroom doors flew open, and terrified faces looked out.  They made eye contact with one another, and then rushed to the door.  Misha could hear Alec cursing about his chair as he reached the antechamber.  As he rushed outside, Misha didn’t bother with a coat, boots, or even a gun.  He didn’t even bother to shut the door as the others rushed out after him.

Everyone ran around the deck, to the other side of the cabin, ignoring the torrential downpour.  The rain and the darkness of the storm made it difficult to see, but Misha found the bridge.  When the next bolt of lightning flashed, it illuminated the greenhouse on the other side of it.

Only a few panes remained, and those were badly cracked.  The framework was twisted and crumpled in the middle where a monstrous evergreen had fallen upon it.  Shrapnel of glass reflected the lightning from everywhere.  A few pieces had even made it to the deck, and Misha had to watch where he stepped.  The fragile new plants inside, with their soft dirt, were being drowned in the downpour.  Misha couldn’t see them, but he could imagine how badly this much rain must be for them.  Not to mention how many shards of glass could have speared through their weak stems.  The grow lights had been turned off for the night, but it was unlikely they escaped unscathed.  The heaters, too.  Misha tried to focus on the base of the structure, praying there were no cracks to let the rain get at the generators, but the inconsistent lightning made it impossible to tell.

Next to him, Abby fell to her knees.  There was no way to tell if there were tears mixing with the
rainwater on her face.

Power Struggle II

Edelstein kicked the empty drum and sent it rolling.  It was one of many.  The nuclear waste storage facility had tons of drums for diesel fuel lying around, but over the last two weeks, they had been thoroughly emptied to keep the generators going.  The men he had brought with him had just given him the bad news: nowhere within walking distance was there any diesel fuel left.  It seemed that the man who had been here before them, Triston Chelios, hadn’t been lying when he said he had collected all the diesel he could.

Edelstein turned back to look at the drums which weren’t empty.  If they calculated the rate the fuel got burned off correctly, then they had roughly a day’s worth.

“Take some of the empty drums,” Edelstein commanded his men without turning to face them.  “Siphon fuel out of nearby cars and fill them.”

“Regular gas won’t work in a diesel generator,” one of his soldiers said, as if Edelstein didn’t know that.

He turned to face them.  “That fuel could still give us an hour.  When the diesel runs out, we put in the regular gas and get the hell out of here.”

“But without the generators-” one of them started to say.

“I know exactly what’ll happen without the generators!” Edelstein barked.

“Why don’t we just use one of the cars to get gas from farther away?” yet a third soldier asked.  Edelstein had thought about this question thoroughly before deciding on his current plan.

“If we have engines driving in and out of here all day, where do you think the zombies will come to?” he asked his men.  “They would eventually surround the chain-link fence, and knock it over.  Then where would we be?  We’d be trapped inside this building is where.  The gas would still run out, the only difference being that we would still be hanging around to die of radiation poisoning and/or burning to death.”

Edelstein’s men, eight in total, looked nervously at one another.  They all knew what high doses of radiation would do to them.  They also knew that letting the generators run dry could result in the poisoning of the entire prison.

“I assume we have no means of transporting the material out of here.”  Grey, Edelstein’s second in command, didn’t make it a question.  Edelstein liked Grey; he had been with him since he left the White Box with the scientist, Roy.  They had gone to the school together where they had succeeded in killing
East, the traitor, and nearly killing LeBlanc and Cole.  Grey had been shot in the leg for his troubles and he was still walking with a limp.  Two other men with them had been waiting at the school when they arrived.  The first was the sniper who had placed the bullet in East’s heart, and the other had used a flame-thrower to try to burn the others.  He hadn’t succeeded, but he did get a chance to use it on the traitor, Chant.  She had played them all for fools, and Edelstein still seethed at the thought of her.  The other men currently with him had shown up at the school later, with more scientists, but Edelstein had managed to convert them to his own following.

“I already checked.  All the transport trucks must have been taken during the evacuation.”  Edelstein imagined it was more a mass panic than a true evacuation.  “Even if we could find a few insulated trucks, there wouldn’t be enough time to get it all out of here.  This may be a smaller facility than most, but there’s still more than we can safely transport in the time we have.”

“So what are we doing?” the soldier who had used the flame-thrower asked.

“We use what fuel is left.  When that’s gone, we put in the gas we get from the cars and get the hell out of here. 
Either we go back to the prison and hope for the best, or we go some place else.”

The men shuffled, not exactly loving the idea.  They didn’t have much of a choice though.  Two of them stepped forward and grabbed an empty drum.

Section 3:

The Escape

17:

Lauren Sanford – Days 16-17

Lauren gingerly pulled part of the mattress away from the window and looked outside.  The sun was rising, casting a gentle, grey light.  The clouds had closed over again.  It had been hours since she had last heard anything.  Behind her, the majority of the children were asleep.  Those who
weren’t, watched her, holding their breaths.  Beyond the glass, there was no movement.  Lauren replaced the mattress and took her seat by the door again.  The children stopped watching her, relieved their defence was back in place, and that she wasn’t going anywhere.

“How much longer do you think we should wait?”  Jon was sitting next to
her, speaking in the barest of whispers.  A few conversations were had here and there, but none of them rose to a volume that could be heard across the room, let alone outside of it.

“Someone will come,” Lauren told him again
, “I’m sure of it.”  She wasn’t sure of anything.  Her hope was that someone had survived the attack, and that once everything was clear, they would surely come to check on the children.

She was starving though.  All the excitement from the night before, and then staying up all night had set her appetite to extreme.  A few times her stomach rumbled but not loudly enough for anyone else to hear.  At least not yet.  She was sure she wasn’t the only one either.  Many of the children who couldn’t sleep rubbed their stomachs
unconsciously.  If someone didn’t come soon, Lauren would have no choice but to go out there on her own.  The kids would need breakfast soon.  Once they started waking up, their stomachs would awaken as well, and then they would all be crying and whining.

A sequence of knocks came from the door, startling everyone who was awake.  Lauren sat bolt upright, terrified.  She recognized the pattern of the knocking though.

“Shave and a hair cut,” Dakota sleepily mumbled the words to the tune, as she awoke from the noise, “two bits.”