Survival Instinct (9 page)

Nadine moved inside slowly, one hand clutching her baby tight to her, the other balled in a useless fist at her side. She wanted to go for one of the knives she’d concealed on her body, but knew if she jumped the gun, she would be unable to help Ryan when a better chance presented itself. The man walked Ryan backward and she followed as carefully as she’d ever moved. No sudden movements, just extreme caution.

She knew him now, the man who held them at gunpoint. He was one of the two nutjobs she’d seen wearing BDU’s and tearing the safe house apart.
She didn’t know what he wanted yet, but that wasn’t the main issue. She had to get him to lower the gun. He gestured her to a chair and she went willingly, showing him that she wasn’t a threat. In her mind she did an assessment of her weapons and how quickly she could reach them. She had one knife tucked into each boot as well as a larger one clipped to the back of her pants. That one was pretty visible as she didn’t worry about concealing weapons from the undead- they didn’t do threat assessments.

She had plenty of weapons in her bags, but he’d already made sure she set them down on the opposite side of the room he led them to. Ryan was seated in a chair across from her and he’d been secured to the chair with large zip ties, so he wouldn’t be able to free himself. The man came toward her with another set but she balked at that. “I can’t take care of my daughter if you tie me up. Please, sir, I need my hands free.” She put a plea in her voice and wished she was a good enough actress to work up real tears to go wi
th it, but that was beyond her, so she settled for looking down at the floor and making her lower lip tremble.

The man studied her coldly and seemed to give it a great deal of thought before nodding. “Fine, girlie, I won’t tie you down just yet. As long as you behave yourself, that is.” He walked closer, making each movement threatening and offensive. Nadine fought the urge to arm herself, but she needed him to feel that she was weak and only alive because of Ryan. “How old is the kid, anyway?”

Nadine didn’t want to answer any of his questions, but maybe he’d answer some of hers. “She’s not even a week old yet,” she replied. “Why are you after Ryan? What did he do to you and your partner?” The man stiffened, obviously bothered by either the questions or the acknowledgement that he wasn’t alone. “Where is he?”

“Don’t worry about NoOne- he’s taking care of business,” he said gruffly.

Ryan raised his head, not bothering to hide his anger. That was fine with Nadine- he’d be seen as the bigger threat, and she’d be further from the man’s notice. “His name is ‘NoOne’? Then what does that make you?” He made the words venomous, something that should have inflicted damage, and was satisfied to see a flinching around the other man’s eyes.

“I’m NoTwo- Number Two,” the man said, daring the pair to make fun of him for it. They said nothing, and he nodded as though he’d expected nothing less. “That’s all the name you need, and all the name we answer to anymore.”

Nadine picked up the thread. “Okay, NoTwo, why are you after Ryan?” She made the question casual, and debated on how best to get a response. Sighing inwardly, she raised the hem of her black maternity shirt and unfastened the clasp that held the nursing bra in place. Peeling it down, she left her breast exposed as she raised her daughter up to feed. Cassidy rooted, making little chuffing noises under her breath as she sought the nipple that would provide her nourishment.

NoTwo seemed mesmerized by the pale flesh with its large, dark pink nipple that the baby was now feeding eagerly from. For a moment Nadine feared he’d forgotten she’d asked a question, and cursed herself for crossing too many lines. But then he raised his eyes, full of heat and an obvious desire to possess her. “It’s not him we’re after, girlie,” he said with too much sexual promise in those simple words. “It’s you we’ve been searching for.”

Nadine’s blood ran cold, and she knew her face had gone pale at the thought of them searching for her for all this time. She shook it off, trying desperately to think it through. These men were obviously military, and that left few possibilities for what they wanted with her. She brushed her hair back from her face and tried to put a promise in her eyes- that she could be his, if he wanted her to be. “Well, it looks like you found me,” she said, forcing a smile to go with the words. She couldn’t fake interest in him, but since her breast was still exposed she really didn’t need to. He wasn’t trying to make eye contact anyway.

He finally looked up from her chest- his gaze lost the lust and became something harder. “You didn’t ask why we wanted you, Nadine.” The military training was obvious- he stood at parade rest even as he glared down at her. “But I guess you don’t have to, since you already know. We want the files, Nadine, and we need to take a drive.” He
jerked a thumb toward Ryan without even bothering to look at him. “And since he knows too much, he gets to come, too.”

“Files? I don’t understand,” Nadine said, trying for innocence as she struggled to think of a way out of this. She knew if they left with him, neither she nor Ryan would survive it. God only knew what would happen to Cassidy once the adults were disposed of. “Please, I have a baby to take care of. I just want to try and survive this horror as best I can.” Real tears came this time as she thought about dying and leaving her daughter alone in the hands of the government.

NoTwo just shook his head. “We know you have them,” he said without sympathy. “The people at the camp where you slaughtered those two people were happy to tell us all about it. We need them back- those are the property of the military and you had no right to take them. Now hand them over and let’s get going.”

She nodded, hanging her head as she stood and removed Cassidy from her sling. She kissed her daughter’s tiny forehead and was glad the baby slept peacefully after her feeding.
She set Cassidy on the chair and straightened, avoiding eye contact. “All right, I have them over here,” she said, walking slowly towards their bags. NoTwo followed her closely, and she could practically feel his body heat radiating through her clothing. She bent down and unzipped the one pack, clearly showing the files inside. He rushed past her, disregarding her as he began pulling the manila folders out of the pack.

She reached behind her and pulled the large knife from the base of her spine. Without hesitation she gripped his chin firmly in one hand and drew the blade deeply and smoothly across the expanse of his throat. He made a gurgling sound as his blood gushed out in time to the frantic beating of his heart, and she quickly grabbed the straps of their packs, pulling them away from the pooling blood before they absorbed any more of it.

She rushed to Ryan and cut the ties that held him to the chair. They were free, but they both knew their freedom was fleeting. The man had a partner, at least one, and time was of the essence.

They fled after that, both of them desperate to put some space between them and the dead man. NoTwo was not alone, after all… There was still a NoOne out there and maybe even more. Just because Nadine had only seen the two men didn’t mean that there weren’t others searching that they had yet to lay eyes on.

It was late afternoon when they took off from the housing community, and they had no plan except to continue on as far as possible
before nightfall. Destinations weren’t important anymore- the world wasn’t what it once was. Once, it seemed so long ago, the world had run on clocks, cell phones, television and the internet. Now the world just ran- at least, those who survived did.

They travelled by day- people just couldn’t maneuver their way through this strange new life after dark if
they wanted to live. Flashlights were too much of an advertisement that someone was out and about, and wandering in the dark was just asking to be eaten. It wasn’t just those on two legs they needed to fear. Not all the dead they saw walked- some crawled on all fours, some didn’t have enough limbs to even make that possible.

They saw a child that very afternoon dragging herself across the crumbling road with her one remaining arm. Half her ribcage was exposed, making the method of her death easy to figure out, while the other side was torn and dirty from crawling for God knows how long.
Her hair was as black as tar, and she’d probably been beautiful once. A prickle of tears touched Nadine’s eyes as she thought about the mother of this poor child- that hair had probably been shiny and clean once, brushed lovingly. Now it was matted and full of leaves. Once this little girl had run and played like any child. Now she had no legs to contend with, just her head, ribs, and that one arm. Neither of them said a word as they walked past her, but Nadine used the thick stick she’d sharpened to a lethal point and put it through the poor child’s head. The thought of leaving her like that was too much to bear.

They didn’t kill often- most of the time they were quicker than the
undead so it was more prudent to dodge and weave around the traffic rather than get jammed up by taking the individuals out. Also, Ryan had pointed out that they were being hunted by their fellow survivors. A trail of unmoving bodies was as good as a map to those with military training. Now they only killed if it was absolutely necessary, and if they killed to clear a place to sleep they moved the bodies far from them. At least if someone found the corpses they would waste time searching near the bodies instead of where the bodies came from.

They stood watch while they slept now, so neither got a full night’s sleep anymore. The world wasn’t safe enough for that now that they’d been forced from the fortress Ryan had built.
Now the world seemed much darker than it had been. Both of them were in unfamiliar territory far from where they’d once made their homes and travelling farther every day. But holding on to a piece of land wasn’t worth their sanity, and it certainly wasn’t worth their lives. Had Nadine stayed on base, or had they both stayed in Ryan’s cabin, they would have eventually died there. They lived simply because they wouldn’t stop moving.

Ryan had been muscular and fit when Nadine first saw him in the basement that day. Now his muscles were fading away, and any ounce of body fat had dissolved long ago.
There were hollows under those eyes that hadn’t been there before, and they grew deeper and darker by the day. They weren’t starving- nowhere near it- but they burned off any calories they ingested as they walked from one bleak wasteland to another.

A week went by and then two, and then they lost track of what state they were in. Somewhere north was all they knew- the air held a bite to it, warning them of the approaching autumn as the sun set earlier each day and the air grew cooler with the approach of nightfall. They sweated all day long and then huddled together for warmth each night. It took its toll on them and it wasn’t long before Nadine fell sick.

She’d been healthy once, her immune system golden and she barely acknowledged the common cold. But as times had changed so had she and she woke one morning wracked with chills and her throat on fire. It was all she could do to bring Cassidy close to her to nurse. Ryan was in the other room of the doublewide they’d broken into. He kept watch more than she did, but when she demanded he allow her to do more he ignored her. They’d had this argument more than once, and he wouldn’t change his stance, pointing out that while she could keep guard the same as he did, he was physically incapable of lactating. So with a lack of grace she gave in and allowed herself the extra sleep.

Apparently it wasn’t quite enough, however. She had to pee, and it was a struggle to force herself to her feet to go to the adjoining bathroom, but she finally made it. Her bladder now empty, she leaned both hands on the sink and took in her appearance. Her
brown hair was filthy, knotted and darker with accumulated dirt. Her eyes were red-rimmed and fever bright, and her nose was red enough to glow in the dark. Her lips were chapped and cracked, bloody in the creases. She was sick, no doubt about it, but damned if she could hold onto the thought long enough to worry about it.

Nadine turned on the faucet, grateful the house they’d chosen to hole up in still had running water. Dimly she thought that houses with this much land had individual wells, but again, the thought just didn’t stick. She cupped her palms under the water, filling them with water and bending to splash her burning face. The world swam and she felt like she’d dunked her face entirely and was trying to see underwater, and then nausea hit. She swayed like a tree in a storm before turning drunkenly for the door. She needed to get Ryan… for something…

And then the edges blurred, darkening into shadows until everything went black. She was unconscious before she even hit the floor.

Nadine swam in and out of consciousness for days. It was all a sea of feeding Cassidy, drinking water and taking pills that Ryan held out to her. She saw the worry on his face, and the stress had carved new and deeper lines into him, paring him down to a more exhausted version of the man she’d first stumbled across.

She surfaced more often than she was aware of, but Ryan took care of her, wiping her fevered brow, caring for the baby at the first whimper. His mother often told him when his daughter was young that a baby could be spoiled that way, but in these new harsh days the sound of a crying infant was a death knell. So he tended Cassidy’s every whim and helped nurse Nadine back to health. He sat guard and slept lightly, and under it all was a new kind of terror. What if he got sick, too, by not tending his own needs? What if both adults were so sick that they couldn’t take care of Cassidy, or protect themselves? But the worry simply drove him to work harder, to be better, and sent him out into the streets of the housing community they’d holed up in alone.

It took precious hours to search the houses for supplies. They needed food supplies since they were running low. The days of fresh fruits and vegetables were long gone, and all that was left was canned goods and stale boxed items. He pushed the fear away- there was nothing they could do about it, so he filed it away to worry about later, if there was a later.

He’d emptied 3 of their duffel bags for this trip. He’d haul as much back with him as he was able and then return to check other houses. On his return trips he checked on both Nadine and Cassidy, changed the baby if she needed it, and wiped Nadine’s face and arms with cool cloths before unpacking any treasure he’d stumbled across and going back out to search again. He’d been lucky to find a bottle of antibiotics in one of the first houses- there had only been four tablets remaining, but it was a start while he sought out others. The beautiful thing about the America they’d used to know was that although doctors told their patients to use all the antibiotic, most people left a few behind, hoarding them for God only knew what reason. It worked in his favor, and he found another bottle with a half dozen white pills remaining. Ten pills might not be enough, but it was the best he could do for the moment, and Ryan was pleased that he’d found even that many.

On the third day of antibiotics, Nadine finally swam to the surface and took stock of their situation. Her first thought was one of blind panic- they’d been here too long, Ryan was gone, and they should get moving immediately. She got to her feet, her legs shaking like a newborn colt as she gingerly made her way to the bathroom. Once she’d emptied her aching bladder she washed her face, wincing at the image staring back at her from the mirror. She looked like Hell and felt worse, but she was alive and knew she was on the mend.

Cassidy whimpered from the bed where she’d been curled up sharing Nadine’s body heat, and she made her way back to feed her baby.
Her stomach growled, but she had her priorities. She’d tend her daughter’s needs and then see if she was feeling up to taking care of her own. She didn’t know how long she’d been unconscious, and she had no way of knowing how long Ryan had been gone. But what he’d been doing was obvious- one corner of the bedroom was loaded down with more supplies than they’d possibly need, as they would move on at the first opportunity. There were three cardboard boxes, canned goods peeking from the top. As she propped herself up slowly on the pillows and clutched Cassidy to her, Nadine took stock of what was visible to the naked eye.

If the boxes were full, and Nadine had no doubt that they were
, there was at least a three month supply of food inside- a month of food per box. Four half-empty cases of bottled water were there as well, and she did the math quickly. If they rationed them carefully, that would be at least enough for two weeks for the two of them. They could supplement their rations by drinking from any houses that still had running water.

There were two boxes of diapers nearby, and the labels showed clearly that they were the size Cassidy was currently wearing. Her daughter was so small, and she ruthlessly pushed away the concern for the baby that had once worn the same size. She couldn’t afford to wonder if he or she had made it. She had to think of her own little group and not wonder about the survival of unknown others or she’d go mad with it.

Cassidy whimpered in her sleep, and Nadine soothed her instinctively. The baby wore a purple blanket sleeper that she’d never seen before, and she knew Ryan had brought it. The scent of fresh soap came from the baby’s thick brown hair, and that had been his doing as well. Her eyes welled with tears- Ryan had taken such good care of them. She didn’t love him, and that made her sad beyond her wildest dreams, but she was thankful that she’d found him all those months ago. Although she was loathe to think of anything happening to him, she hated her dependence on him. He’d saved her life, and likely the life of her baby as well, but just because he seemed to be immune to those things didn’t mean they couldn’t overwhelm him with numbers and bring him down.

And other survivors were just as dangerous, as she well knew. A human could kill them all just as surely as a horde could. They’d come to a treacherous place in time- survival of the fittest was the name of the game now. On her travels she’d seen it all- would-be gods holding court in their insulated communes, religious zealots preaching about the end of days, and those who seemed thrilled with the opportunity to plunder that this plague had opened. Yes, she thought she’d gladly face a horde of the undead over those still living and breathing.

But that was for later- for now, Ryan’s voice alerted her to his presence, and she could catch up on what she’d slept through. Her smile of greeting died a quick death as his face came into view- he was sheet white and sweaty, his eyes haunted as he saw she was finally awake and aware. And his clothes, a grey long-sleeve shirt and black jeans, were covered in blood and thicker things.