Adaptive Instinct (Survival Instinct) (49 page)

Cameron went over to sit with Brewster and the acne-covered kid, who was named Thomas.  Riley went over to Brunt and the cat-eyed, Indian woman named Shaidi.  They were currently setting up the equipment to connect with the satellite.  Shaidi carefully placed and angled the mini-dish while Brunt typed on the laptop.

“Now?”  Shaidi asked, her voice heavily accented in such a way as to make Riley think of a cat’s purr.

“Not perfect, but I think that’s the best we’re going to get,” Brunt told her.

Riley looked over his shoulder at the screen.  A bar was slowly filling as it tried to connect with the satellite roughly 22,000 miles above them.

“So what was that about?”  Brunt noticed Riley’s presence.

“Just a sister to sister argument.”  He didn’t need to know the specifics.

“I don’t have to worry about you two trying to scratch each other’s eyes out, do I?”  He looked up at her with a boyish grin.

“Not likely, but if it comes to that, I’ll be sure to inform you first.”  Riley sat next to him.  Shaidi also walked over and stretched out her lithe form on a nearby sleeping bag.

They sat quietly while the computer connected.  When it did, they all watched as it began to calibrate and finally begin tracking the location of the other truck.

“Do you think they already stopped for the night?” Shaidi wondered.

“If they’re even stopping for the night at all,” Riley pointed out.

“I’m sure they are,” Brunt said in his slightly southern-American twang.

Technically, their group had enough drivers that they could search all night in shifts, but they had all decided against doing that.  Even though the truck they were looking for was big and white, they could still easily pass it by in the dark, especially if it had pulled over onto a tiny side street, or into a garage of some sort.  Not to mention that zombies would be a lot harder to spot once the sun was down, which could spell trouble when they needed to pull over for bathroom breaks.

“If they’ve stopped, that means we’ll get a more accurate reading for tomorrow, yes?” Shaidi purred.

“That’s right.”  Brunt nodded.

As the satellite narrowed down the location, they saw it was still a good distance away from them.  The fugitives seemed to be going in random, purposeless directions so far.  It was impossible to predict where they might be headed next. 
Considering that they always had to stop and wait to use the satellite, they were always a certain distance behind.  Maybe tomorrow they would manage to close the gap.

“Are you going to call Crichton tonight?” Riley asked Brunt.

“No, he said to call him at sun up.”  Their last communication with the prison had been just past noon.  The news was basically that they needed to hurry the hell up.  They were being given tomorrow and the following day to find them, but after that, they had to head back.  Apparently, Edelstein had called in with some very bad news about the storage facility.

“So, Brunt, why do they call you that?”  Riley had been meaning to ask him for
a while.  “Your name’s Pike, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, Andrew Pike.  Brunt’s just a nickname.  I got it back in middle school, before going off to military school.  It came about because I was always the brunt of the joke.”  With his soft, round features, Riley could see that happening. 
Although he always handled himself well, and was likely of reasonable intelligence, the slight accent, combined with his doe eyes, made him come across as dim-witted.

“That sounds awful.  Why would you let them call you that?”  Riley would pound on anyone who gave her such a name.

Brunt shrugged.  “It bothered me in middle school, but when the guys learned it, they never used it to make fun of me.  To them, it became just a meaningless nickname like so many of them already had.  Like Saint Louis.  He has no connection to the place, he’s far from being a saint, and his real name is nothing like Louis, but all the guys call him that anyway.”

Riley still found it strange, but that was because she had never really known such camaraderie.   Her parents, her dad especially, had raised her in a military-like fashion, but she had never had the experience of the tight brotherhood that formed between those who served together.  Going through her residency was the closest she had gotten, and even through that, she had always been the outsider.  She looked over at her twin.  Cameron was the only one she really knew.  She got up and walked over to her.

“Cameron?”  She tapped her on the shoulder.

Cameron looked up at her, ready to be combative again.

“Can I talk to you for one more second?”

Cameron could read Riley as well as Riley could read her.  She knew instantly that it wasn’t going to be another fight.  “Sure.”

They stepped a short distance away.

“I just wanted to say, that whatever happens, whatever I decide, I want you with me.”

“Of course.”  Cameron frowned, indicating that such a thing never needed to be said.  “I’ll always be there, just like I know you’ll be there for me when I need it.”

The two sisters hugged in mutual understanding and walked back over to Brewster and Thomas.

“I’ll never understand women,” Thomas said as they sat down.  “One minute they’re fighting, the next they’re best friends again.”

“Don’t even try, boy,” Brewster grumbled.  If Shaidi were a cat, then Brewster was a bear.  “Just go with the flow and don’t think about it.”

“And remember, we’re always right,” Cameron added, and they all laughed.  Since travelling with them, Riley now understood why Cameron had volunteered.  These people were her group; she was attached to them like Riley was to her own group back north.

As they sat awake a little longer, Riley kept finding herself unconsciously placing her hand on her belly.  She quickly removed it every time, hoping nobody noticed.

***

Riley sat bundled in her sleeping bag, despite how warm the night was.  It was her turn to keep watch while the others slept, and being wrapped up made her feel better.  She wished Mathias were here, with his arms around her.  She was finally admitting to herself that she wanted him in her life.  Maybe even needed him.  He certainly made her feel better.  Although cut off from her own emotions for most of her life, ever since the Day, they had flooded Riley.  At night, especially in the infested city while everyone slept, was when she felt the most fear.

Part of that fear was for the others still up north.  Cameron had told her what Shawn had done.  Most of Shawn’s story was true, about how they had saved Cameron and taken the horses, about how their dad had died.  It was when he talked about running into the Marble Keystone mercenaries that he had become a liar.

For obvious reasons, Cameron had been mistaken for Riley.  The soldiers had demanded her capture.  Cameron and their mom had been ready to fight back, despite being outgunned.  Shawn had betrayed them though.  He had made a deal with the mercenaries, that he would subdue Cameron for his own freedom.  Cameron and her mom had been shocked.  Riley’s sister couldn’t bring herself to fight Shawn, and so she had been handed over to the pack of mercenaries.  That’s when their mom had flipped out.  She had tried to free Cameron on her own and gotten shot.  Shawn had run away at that point and Cameron had been locked up in the truck.

Shawn had done this to his own family, so who knew what he might do to a bunch of strangers.

When Riley had called at noon, Shawn had picked up.  Riley told him that she knew everything and demanded to talk to Mathias.  Shawn claimed he had no idea what she was going on about, and that the others were elsewhere and too hard at work to talk on the phone.  That was bullshit, and they both knew it.

Riley found her hand on her belly again.  She had told Cameron it was a problem they could deal with later, yet she found it constantly invading her mind.  She needed to talk to Mathias about this.  No matter what happened, it would affect him.  The decision was ultimately hers to make, but he should be allowed to have some say.  She also wanted to know what he thought because she had no idea what to think.  Being a mother had never crossed her mind.

Curled in her sleeping bag with her rifle, Riley tried to sort things out.  Ultimately, she couldn’t and always ended up back at square one.  The big
I don’t know
.  Rarely did Riley not know what to do, so this frightened her badly.  She looked over at her sleeping sister; at least they were together.  Now if only she could get back to the rest of them.

With her mind racing in circles, Riley sat through her shift.

***

The next morning, everybody got up with the sun.  Except for Shaidi, who had been up even earlier, taking the last shift of the night.  They ate a light breakfast with the haze of sleep still clinging to them.  Riley felt especially exhausted as she had been tossing and turning all night.  She had even gotten up and taken another pregnancy test at one point; it read positive as well.  She knew it would, but had done it anyway.

Brunt confirmed the position they would be heading toward next, marking it on a map for all to see.  He then packed the laptop and the mini-dish back into the hard-shell backpack he carried them in.  The look of the backpack was like the carapace of a beetle, and Brunt had assured them that no matter how rough and tumble things got, the equipment inside would be perfectly safe.  Cameron expressed an interest in owning a suit like that.

When they loaded up into the truck, it was Riley and Cameron’s turn to ride in the back.  Nobody liked being back there, which meant they had to do it in shifts, just like guard duty.  Although it was an awful thing to think, Riley was glad that the doctor woman and the snake man were gone; it meant the shifts in the back of the truck were much shorter, having to ride for only one stop before being rotated to the front.

“I still can’t believe it,” Cameron said the moment the rear doors were closed.

“Can we drop it, please?  Talk about something else?”  Riley sprawled out on one of the benches.

“Sorry,” Cameron apologized, knowing this must be wearing on Riley.  In fact, if it weren’t for Cameron, they wouldn’t even have known.  She had just ended her period the day before heading out, and had mentioned to Riley that was lucky, because travelling around and having to find time to change tampons and pads would be a pain.  Riley had totally forgotten about that herself.  She and her sister had incredibly rigid and regular cycles that matched up perfectly, even when they were apart.  At first, Riley had chalked it up to stress throwing her off, but Cameron had probably been even more stressed out with what she had gone through, and she had stayed on the clock.  When Riley noticed the pharmacy, she had suggested they stop for supplies, and they ended up spending the night there as well.  When the little plus sign appeared in the window, Riley had to tell her sister everything.

“So what do you think of the boat?”  Cameron had decided on a different topic.

During their travels the previous day, Riley had been told about the plan.

“I think travelling to Toronto is a stupid and dangerous idea,” she replied.

“I didn’t ask you about travelling to Toronto. I asked what you thought of the boat.”

“I don’t know.  I think it sounds good.  Sounds nice.”

“I want to go there.”

Riley looked over at her sister and determined that she wasn’t lying.

“I want to go there instead of to the cabin,” she continued.

“We can’t.  I have friends back at the cabin.  Mathias is there.”

“I know.  I’m just thinking out loud is all.  If there wasn’t anyone there waiting, would you go to the boat?”

Riley thought about it for a moment.  “Yeah, I probably would.”

“Maybe we can pick up your friends, and all of us can go meet them in Halifax.”

“That’s something we’d have to discuss with them.  It’s not a bad idea though.”  Having more people around did seem nice, even if a bunch of them were Marble Keystone mercs.  Brunt was all right, and not every mercenary would be a bad guy. 
Sailing to warmer climates where they wouldn’t have to worry about the freezing cold winters was very tempting.  Not to mention the lack of polar bears.  Riley had had quite a few bad dreams about white monsters since that incident.  The worst involved zombie polar bears.  Nobody knew if the hulking mammals could be infected by the zombie virus or not.

“You know what I was just thinking?  We need a name for the hybrid virus,” Riley decided.

“A name?”

“Yeah.  I’ve been thinking of it as the zombie virus this whole time.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“Do you like calling it the zombie virus?”

“Not really.  I don’t like the word zombie.  It’s so…”

“Fictitious?”

“Yeah.  Hybrid virus isn’t bad, where’d you get that one?”

“Mathias calls it that.  It’s apparently a combination of a virus and prion.”

Cameron nodded.  Having worked with cows, she had to learn all about mad cow disease and therefore knew what prions were.

“That’s more its class though.  Not its name.  I want a name for it.”  Everything else had a name.  In fact, several diseases had several names.  A lot of personal biographies were likely to be written in the near
future and new history text books.  Having a universal name was unlikely, but getting some people to start using the same thing was a start.