Adaptive Instinct (Survival Instinct) (53 page)

“Well, for one thing, you and your family could come with us.”

Rufus bristled and became tense at the mention of his family.

“Shawn may not like us, but Riley trusts us.  She told me you’d likely be here with your family.  I don’t know about you, but we’ve seen a zombie up here.  This area isn’t a hundred percent safe until the snow comes and freezes them all.  But of course, they’ll just thaw again in the spring, and the winter could be brutal.”

“We saw a group of five wander across the end of the airstrip.”  Rufus gestured to where he saw them.  “Couldn’t say for sure they were zombies, but I figur’d they were, considering they didn’t come to check out the buildings for shelter.”

“If you think you’re safe enough here, then we’ll try to barter something for a flight, but if you don’t think you’re safe, come with us.”

Rufus looked at the group again.  “I’ll have to ask my family.”  He turned and walked back toward the building he had come from.  He then stopped and looked at Shawn.  “Oh, and boy?  There’s no fuel here.  I didn’t have time to bring any and this place has been dry for a long time.  I also ain’t going to trade any my supplies with you ’cause I got what I need, and need what I got.”  He then began heading toward the building again.

Everybody silently watched him go.

“Well,” Shawn broke the silence
, “looks like I have no reason to stay here.  Guess I’ll head out.”  He was clearly fuming about Rufus’s refusal to trade.

Shawn turned back toward the Otter and began walking.  Nobody tried to stop him, but Milly started to
follow after him.

“Milly, come here,” Misha called for her, following after the two of them.

“Go away, Milly,” Shawn told the dog.  “You’re not staying with me anymore.”

Milly continued to
follow him.

“I said go!”  Shawn turned and shouted.  “Go away!”  He then kicked Milly in the face.  She stumbled due to her missing leg and fell over.

Misha’s hands clenched into fists, and before he knew it, he had launched himself at Shawn.  He knocked the bigger man to the ground and began hammering at his face.  He got in a few good hits before Shawn really knew what was happening.  Shawn was a better fighter though.  Once his brain caught up, he hit back.  Misha took a shot to the temple, and another to the jaw before Shawn threw his skinny frame to one side.  Misha sprang to his feet, prepared to go again, but Tobias and Josh grabbed both of his arms to stop him.  Shawn pulled his revolver out, but Mathias had moved next to him unnoticed and disarmed him before anything really serious could happen.

Shawn had a bloody nose and was glaring at all of them.  “I hope you all rot in hell,” he said, turning back to the plane and climbing the ladder.

Milly had run off and hidden behind Abby after she had gotten back up.  Abby was hunched over, petting her head and trying to reassure her.

Josh and Tobias released Misha and they all hurried away from the plane as the engine started up.  Misha could feel a drop of blood trickle down the side of his face where the skin had split at his brow line.  His lower lip was also split, and a large bruise was likely forming on his jaw.  At least his eyes weren’t black and his nose wasn’t bashed up like the last time he had fought against someone bigger.

“You’re an idiot,” Alec commented once the engine was far enough away not to drown them out.  “I would have done the same if my legs were working, but you’re still an idiot.”

“I wish you had more muscle,” Mathias added.  “I have to say, I would’ve liked to pound the snot out of Shawn.”

“Seconded,” Tobias agreed.

Josh looked at Misha’s injuries and determined they weren’t bad, just needed to be cleaned.  Misha’s tongue kept prodding the cut on his lip, bringing him the taste of blood every time.  They watched as Shawn took off, back into the sky.

“Where the hell is he going?”  Rufus’s voice sounded behind them.  They all turned to face him.

“He had to go,” Misha answered, his tongue still probing.  Rufus clearly noticed the new injuries to his face.

“I hadn’t agreed to help you yet.”

“Even if you don’t, Shawn would have left without us.  If we can’t convince you to fly us, we’re hiking,” Mathias told him.

Rufus looked at Alec and his chair.  “You ain’t hiking far.  Lucky for you, both my wife and my mother love the ocean.  They want to see this boat.”

“Thank you so much.”  Although Mathias managed to come across as strong during the entire talk, the relief in his voice was immense.

“It’s going to be a tight squeeze.  I was thinking we’d leave tomorrow.”

“No, we have to go now.”  Mathias shook his head.  “The groups are already moving toward Toronto, and that’s the best place for us to meet up with them.”

“The sun will be down by the time we reach there.  We’ll have to land in the dark, likely without guide lights.”  Rufus looked at the sky.  It would be dinner time soon.

“Well, you’ll have all of Pearson’s airstrips to pick your landing from.  And if you really need light, we can radio the people and arrange for flashlights to mark the way.”

Rufus thought about it.  “All right.  Sure.  Head down to that hanger over there.  I’ll get my family packed up.”

“Thank you,” Abby told the gruff man.

Shortly, everyone was thanking him.  Rufus waved them all off.  “Just hurry your asses over there will you?  You can thank me when we’re on the damn boat.”

***

With the exception of Rufus, his entire family was female.  There was his mother, a crotchety old woman who complained about everything, his wife, who bitched about everything, his sister, his sister-in-law, and his four squabbling daughters.  The eldest of those daughters immediately began flirting with Tobias and making him very uncomfortable.

The plane was a Beechcraft B200 King Air according to Rufus.  The capacity was listed as thirteen people, but that wasn’t including the pilot and co-pilot’s seats.  There was just enough room for all of them, but with their gear and the dogs, it was going to be a tight fit.

The Beechcraft was a nice looking plane with leather seats.  When Mathias asked about it, Rufus explained that he was a plane for hire.  He flew some hotshot Hollywood types and upscale executives when they needed to hop from one city to another, but mostly he flew small film crews out into the wilds.  Considering what the man looked and sounded like, the classy interior surprised Misha.  Rufus went to the front of the plane, with his wife taking the co-pilot seat.  The rest of his family took all the seats in the forward section of the plane, leaving their group to the back.

“At least this plane isn’t so high up,” Alec grunted as they got him in.  “I’m not looking forward to how you plan on getting me into the big planes in Toronto.”

“Maybe we’ll find a working crane to lift your heavy ass,” Mathias joked.

“I hate flying,” Tobias muttered as he took a seat.  Considering all he had gone through, it was amazing
that the guy didn’t have a crippling phobia of heights yet.  He had a near-death experience on more than one rooftop, on the escalators of a multi-storey mall, and in some two storey-high ventilation ducts.  He also nearly got sick during the helicopter ride up north, and was not a fan of the risky landing on the lake in the Otter.

As Misha took a seat across the aisle from Tobias, he wondered if maybe they should make him walk.  It seemed like Tobias plus heights equalled bad luck.

The tail end of the plane was completely filled with supplies, and their packs spilled out into the aisles, under their feet, and on their laps.  Rifle looked uncomfortable, squished up between Alec and Mathias’s seats with packs on either side of him.  Milly was curled up under Misha, who sat crossed legged in the cushy seat.  Shoes was already asleep on Danny’s lap.

“Oh, your socks and shirt.”  Abby was sitting in the rearward facing seat across from Misha.  She reached into her bag and pulled out the articles of clothing for him.

“Thanks,” he said wiggling out of his firefighter gear to put the socks and shirt on underneath.

As the twin engines started up, Misha glanced out the window at the rotating props attached to the wings.

“You know, since the zombies, I’ve gotten to ride in some pretty classy vehicles,” Josh commented.  “First the stretch limousine, now this executive plane?  Fancy.”

“And we’re going to a cruise ship,” Danny added.  “Do you think they’ll have kids my age there?”

“Sure they will,” Mathias assured his brother.  “I’m sure there’ll be lots of kids.”

“Shoes will like that.”  Danny stroked the dog.

Since finding the zombie, Shoes had had more pep.  They had begun to believe that, maybe the dog wasn’t sick, he was just lonely.  He missed his little girl, Alice, who had been the one to drag him through the zombie outbreak.  All the excitement now was keeping him busy.  However, Misha was still going to get Cameron to look at him once they met up with her.

The Beechcraft lifted off the tarmac, leaving the ground behind once more.  They were headed south again, back in the direction where so many bad things had occurred.  It was impossible for Misha not to live out those memories in his head as they flew, and there was no doubt that everyone else was as well.

***

As they neared Leighton, everybody pressed themselves to the windows and looked out.

“Are we going to see the prison?” Abby wondered.

“No, it’s too far west,
” Alec told her.  “It looks like we might fly over my neighbourhood though.”

This especially intrigued both Danny and Misha because they had lived in the same neighbourhood.  As they soared overhead, looking down at the cookie-cutter houses, they could see changes.  There were cars in the middles of streets at odd angles, or up on lawns, and against
lampposts.  They were low enough to make out the occasional speck of a person, likely a zombie, wandering the roads.  One section of the neighbourhood had become a black ruin; a few fires were still smouldering, sending up inky black smoke, but they must have had some serious rain, which put most of it out.

“City up ahead,” Mathias informed them.

Ahead of the plane were the tall skyscrapers of the city.  As they drew closer, the engine on the left side of the plane began to sputter.

“What is that?” Tobias asked nervously.

Misha looked out his window at the prop.  It wasn’t rotating smoothly anymore, but stuttering slightly.  It was not a good sign.  It began to stutter more, making a loud racket as the city buildings started to pass under them.

“What’s wrong?”
Mathias asked Rufus’s sister.  She shook her head and shrugged.  Mathias unbuckled himself and began climbing over the packs toward the front.  The plane jolted as the other engine began acting the same way.  They all watched Mathias closely as he quickly climbed back toward them, gripping tightly to seat backs to stabilize himself against the shuddering of the plane.  When he sat down, he instantly buckled into his seat causing everyone to do the same.

“What is it?” Alec asked as the plane dropped slightly.

“Rufus didn’t correctly calculate if we could make it on the amount of fuel we had at this weight capacity.  Apparently, we cannot.”

“We’re out of gas?”  Danny’s voice cracked significantly.

Mathias nodded.  “We’re going down.”

Misha glanced out the window again.  The engines were doing worse.  He looked down and saw that they were just passing the core of the city, leaving the tall buildings behind.  At least they’d be south of that mess.  If they survived a landing that was.  Misha decided not to look out the window again; he didn’t want to see how close or far the ground was.

“I hate flying,” Tobias groaned, bending over and placing his head between his knees.  Others started doing the same.

Mathias took Shoes from Danny, while Alec convinced Rifle to sit in the tight space between his
knees, with his front paws up on Alec’s thighs.  He wrapped his arms tightly around the big dog who looked frightened.  Since Milly was smaller than Rifle, Misha was able to haul her up onto his lap.  She sat awkwardly, with her lower back on Misha’s thighs and her back legs sticking up.  He wrapped one arm around her ribcage and the other around her stomach.  Milly whined deep in her throat.

The plane began to shudder even worse, and then the sound of one engine cut out, followed by the other.  It became eerily silent.  They were gliding now.

Misha could feel that they were heading down.  Being so far from Rufus, no one knew how well he was handling it or what he was doing about it.  They could only hope it was the right thing.

There was no sense of time as they went down.  Misha’s heart hammered in his chest, everything going too fast and too slow at the same time.  When they had decided to head south, he had been afraid of zombies and unstable people, not plane crashes.  He squashed Milly tighter to his chest, feeling her own heartbeat through her ribs.  She whined, possibly from fear of what was happening or maybe just because Misha was holding her too tightly.

Although he had told himself he wouldn’t, Misha glanced out the window again.  The ground was too close.  He looked around the cabin at his terrified friends.  Mathias was the only other person still looking around.  They locked eyes, and then the plane hit.