Defensive Instinct (Survival Instinct Book 4)

For Margaret & Alexander ‘Slim’ Stittle, and Anneliese Kaufman

Strong survivors all

Encounter

The soles of Misha’s shoes slapped against the pavement as he ran through the early morning sun. The saw-backed machete on his belt bounced rhythmically against his leg, while the rifle over his opposite shoulder acted as a counter balance. He never went anywhere without either of them. Behind him were over a dozen footfalls. One pulled ahead of the pack, coming up fast behind Misha. Misha held his course.

The dog burst ahead of him, inches away from grazing his side, which would have thrown him off balance. It had happened before; Bullet always wanted to be the first one inside.

As Misha neared his home in the shipping container, slowing down to a walk, the rest of the dogs gathered around him. They were wagging their tails, waiting to be petted, maybe given a treat or having a ball thrown for them. Misha had nine dogs in all, an entire pack of strays that considered him their alpha; this didn’t include other people’s dogs who were frequently coming around to play or get attention from him.

“Go on,” he waved at them. “Run time’s over. Go roam.”

The smallest dog, some sort of terrier mix, reacted to his hand gesture as if he had thrown something, spinning around and listening frantically for its landing. The dogs didn’t understand him, not really, but they seemed to figure out that he wasn’t going to give them any attention for the moment. Three of them padded over to the shade cast by the row of shipping containers and laid down in it, three others wandered away, and the terrier followed Misha, still expecting something.

Walking through the open doors of the container, Misha saw that Bullet was already inside, slurping noisily out of one of the four buckets Misha tried to keep filled with water. The terrier went to a mattress near the entrance and hopped up, lying down but watching.

Moving to the back of the container, Misha could see the contents of his unorthodox home by the light of a modification made to the container roof. A hole had been drilled through it and then plugged up by a plastic bottle that had been filled with water and bleach. Misha didn’t know the science behind it, but when it caught the sun above, it glowed like a light bulb. By its light, he could see his stack of milk crates holding things like clothes, food, ammunition, tools, and dog toys. Beyond them was the mattress he slept on, and a ladder that led up to the container roof’s second modification: an emergency escape hatch. Misha went to his bed to check on his ninth dog, the one who hadn’t gone running with him

“Hey Rifle, how you feeling today?” Misha asked the German Shepherd.

Rifle responded by lifting his head slightly and thumping his tail against the mattress. He was the only dog that Misha allowed in his bed: the rest used a trio of mattresses at the front.

Misha sat on his mattress to rub Rifle’s side and the dog lowered his head, tail still thumping. He wasn’t sick, just old. He had been a spry three-year-old when Misha first met the Shepherd when they escaped the horrors of Leighton together, but Misha had been calling the dog his brother for eleven years now, which made Rifle an elderly fourteen. His muzzle had greyed, his coat had lost a lot of its lustre, and his joints were arthritic. He didn’t appear to be in pain most of the time, but he didn’t move with the fluid speed of his youth. Rifle spent most of his days lying on Misha’s bed and occasionally accompanying him on slow walks around the perimeter.

Bullet walked over to the mattress and nosed at Rifle, then looked at Misha as if asking how he was doing. The splotchy, Australian Shepherd-looking dog could never replace Rifle, but he had taken over the duties that Rifle could no longer perform. He even wore the German Shepherd’s old harness.

“He’s fine, Bullet,” Misha told the younger dog while giving him a scratch behind the ears.

The terrier trotted up behind him, expecting the same. Rolling his eyes, Misha scratched the little dog too. Spring responded in her usual way by wiggling her entire body, her head held up and shaking side to side making it difficult to properly pet her. Still, Spring was an amazing ratter despite her quirks, and a good ratter was vital whenever the aggressive vermin carried the disease into their midst.

“You up for a patrol, Rifle?” Misha asked.

The old dog huffed and rolled to get onto his feet. Misha helped when it looked like he was going to have difficulty today, then got his own legs under him. Bullet and Spring gave Rifle a good sniffing as he plodded toward the entrance, ignoring them. He was used to their attentions and rarely grumped at the other dogs.

Grabbing a bottle of water from a milk crate, Misha followed the pooches back out into the sun, readjusting the light-weight hood that protected his head. Sunscreen was rare these days and reserved for the children, so Misha, like nearly everyone else, had taken to wearing clothing that covered the skin yet was airy enough to allow the body heat to disperse.

The three dogs that had chosen to lie on the pavement in the shade looked up when Misha emerged. Seeing Rifle with him, two of them lowered their heads again, but the third, Barrel, got up. He was a weird mix between a Doberman and something with a much stockier body. His face was narrow and his legs were thin and a bit stumpy, but his body was bulky. Misha always tried to treat his dogs the same, but there was definitely a hierarchy amongst them, and Barrel was at the bottom of it. Rifle never snapped at him, however, so the awkward dog liked to be around him when he could, trailing a bit behind Misha and the other dogs.

Spring, not liking the slow pace, bounded off before they even reached the perimeter, hunting for rats, mice, and any other rodents stupid enough to come around. Rifle kept to Misha’s side, walking along with heavy steps. Bullet tried to keep to Misha’s other side, imitating the older dog, but often he would trot ahead and then circle back. As long as no one was snapping at one another, Misha let them do what they wanted.

The perimeter wasn’t the edge of the shipping yard, as it was far too big to completely cover and protect. Over the five years that he and the others had lived there, dozens of shipping containers had been emptied and painstakingly moved to form a barrier some distance away from the large warehouse, which acted as their base of operations. Where the containers abutted the fence, the chain link was removed to dissuade any would-be climbers. The wall was now two containers thick all the way around, and continuing to reinforce it was an ongoing project. About a year ago, they had discovered a method to lift one container up onto another and were now making the outer layer two containers high. They left parapet-like gaps between the upper containers that could be easily barricaded with the containers’ doors; this allowed them to post lookouts up there as well as use them as exit routes.

“Hey, ghost eyes!” a voice called down from the wall.

“Are you referring to me or Bullet?” Misha responded, looking up. Both he and the dog had such pale blue eyes they almost came across as white.

“The dog, obviously. He’s much cuter.” A teenaged girl in a battered cowboy hat was on top of the container, grinning down at him and the dogs.

“Are you supposed to be up there?” Misha asked, knowing the answer was most likely not.

Instead of answering, Dakota went to the nearest ladder and scrambled down. Bullet and Barrel went straight to her, hoping to get some treats, but Rifle stayed at Misha’s side. Misha waited for Dakota to make her way back to him, flanked by the dogs.

“Well? What were you doing up there?”

“Does it matter what I was doing?” she countered in that aggravating tone that only teens testing the limits of their independence could seem to pull off.

“Yes, actually,” Misha told her calmly. He knew she was trying to get some sort of rise out of him. She had been testing all of the adults lately. Misha still found it odd to consider himself an adult, but at thirty-two years of age, he couldn’t deny it. He had now spent a third of his life living amongst this craziness. For the younger ones, like Dakota, it was most of their lives. She probably didn’t have many memories from before the Day, if any.

“I was bringing breakfast to some people,” Dakota finally sighed.

“Cameron ask you to do that?” Misha continued his walk around the inner perimeter.

“Yes. She thinks I don’t have enough to do.” Dakota kept pace.

“And I’m guessing you think otherwise?”

“I don’t know,” she shrugged.

“Are you keeping up with your studies?”

“Yes,” she rolled her eyes, aggravated. It was probably a question she got asked a lot. “But most of it’s boring and pointless.”

“What’s pointless?”

“Math.”

“Okay. You have three thousand two hundred fifty-two calories of food and three people to feed. How long will it last you?”

Dakota gave him a sulky stare.

“You have to travel three miles to reach the next safe zone; how long will it take you? You have to build a wall, like this one, and need to lift heavy objects: how many pounds of force do you need and what kind of set up is required to hoist them?”

“Okay, okay, I get it, math
can
be useful sometimes,” Dakota huffed. “But what about English, huh?”

“When you’re out there, you’ll sometimes come across notes left by other people. Sometimes they’re warnings or advice about the area. You want to be able to read them. Occasionally, you’ll find journals, which can contain a wealth of knowledge depending on the people who wrote them. And I don’t just mean what they did right; they’re opportunities to learn from the mistakes of others. You also might end up having to write your own messages one day, either to warn others coming through the area, or because you have to stay silent with someone who doesn’t know sign language.”

“You’re no fun,” Dakota grumped.

“I never said I was. Don’t know where you got that impression.”

“I remember you and Rifle doing tricks on the Diana.”

“Well, the Diana’s gone now, and so are a lot of people.”

“I’m well aware of that, thanks,” Dakota scowled. Loss was hard for everyone, but the young especially. “You don’t like people, do you?”

“I like some people.”

“I think you like dogs better,” she continued. “You never smile unless you’re playing with the dogs.”

Misha didn’t bother with a response. Her statement was mostly true after all. Sure, there were occasions he’d laugh or smile around people, particularly with Danny or Jon, but he didn’t hang around with them much. He understood dogs better, plus the solitariness probably had something to do with the fact that he had been forced to kill his best friend on the day, and the closest friend he had made after that was blown up. They never did find out exactly who had made the bomb and why, or why it was planted in Alec and Misha’s closet. He hoped that whoever it was had died when the Diana went down.

“Is there any particular reason why you’re following me this morning?” Misha changed topics after a minute.

“Cameron said I should shadow people and start trying to learn their skill sets.”

“And the skill set you’re trying to learn from me is?”

“Dog handling.”

Misha suppressed a laugh. “That’s not a skill.”

“Sure it is.”

“To train a dog, you set up a reward system, you be patient, and you be nice to them. It’s not hard.”

“What are you doing right now?” This time Dakota changed topics.

“Walking the perimeter, same thing I do every morning after my run.”

“Don’t you run around the perimeter?”

“Yes, but it’s harder to see and hear everything when you’re running. You can’t take it all in.”

“What do you do afterward?”

“Go eat breakfast, say hello to some people, then head to my day’s assignment. Once I’m done for the day, I’ll eat dinner, take another perimeter walk, go for a swim and bathe if the weather permits, then return to my container and read until I fall asleep.”

“You do the same thing every day?” She was asking out of simple curiosity.

“For the most part. I like the security of routine.”

“I don’t.”

Another silence came between them.

“I’m going to go find Cameron. Maybe she has someone interesting for me to shadow today.” And with that Dakota walked off, pausing only briefly to scratch Barrel’s head when he followed her for a bit.

“What do you think,
bratishka
?” Misha looked down at Rifle. “You think she’ll turn out okay?”

Rifle looked back, one of his eyes a little more grey and filmy than the other. He hadn’t lost the sight in it yet, but it was going.

“Yeah, I think she’ll be okay too.” Misha rubbed the Shepherd’s head and continued his walk.