Survival Instinct: A Zombie Novel (40 page)

“How about this,” Bishop cut into his thoughts,  “we’ll go to my place where I have some supplies.  I also know of a place to go that should be safe.  We can collect the supplies and start heading there, but before we go, we’ll swing by here again and wait awhile to see if your brother shows up.  Does that sound like a good idea to you?”

Mathias thought about it.  He weighed the pros and cons and logically came up with only pros.  Illogically though, he thought up cons.  This woman had a place to go, and supplies, two things Mathias knew he would need to survive.  She also knew emergency
medicine, which was vital knowledge during a time like this.  Running into her was probably the best thing they could have done.  She even had a running vehicle so he wouldn’t have to hot wire one.

“All right,” Mathias finally nodded
,  “but we’re going to wait for as long as I say so.”

“Sure thing,” Bishop smiled, but it was cold.

Mathias could see in her eyes that she was just humouring him.  She would come back here and check again, but she wasn’t going to wait very long.  Maybe Mathias could squeeze out a few hours at best.  Still, it was better than no plan at all.  And if Danny didn’t show up, maybe he could convince them to let him wait on his own with some supplies and a map to wherever it was Bishop was going.

* * *

The trio left the house and headed back to the ambulance.  Bishop climbed into the driver’s seat this time, with Mathias getting the passenger side.  LeBlanc climbed into the back.  As Bishop backed out of the driveway, Mathias checked his rifle again.  It fired fine but he still didn’t trust it.  At least that’s what he told himself.  Really, he just needed something to keep him occupied.  LeBlanc leaned between the seats, looking out the front windshield.

“If Danny does come back here, I hope he’s smart enough to wait outside,” LeBlanc commented.

Mathias frowned at him, “What do you mean?”

“Our gunshots seem to have woken up the neighbours.”  LeBlanc pointed out a few zombies headed toward the house.

Mathias flipped the switch that turned on the sirens and left it on as they headed down the street.  “And now they’ll all come further this way.”

After about a block, he turned it off.

“So you were going to tell me about what’s going on,” Bishop reminded Mathias and LeBlanc.

“Right,” Mathias nodded.  “Well, as I mentioned in the house, it’s a highly contagious virus, or prion, whatever.  There’s no known cure, like you said about those other prion things.”

“How does it work?”

“I’m not totally sure about how it works,” Mathias admitted.  “The prion/virus spreads quickly, infecting every blood and organ cell from my understanding.  It only needs a little bit of the body’s protein and the electrical output from the brain to keep it going, and it, in turn, keeps the brain going.  Sort of.  It’s self-sustaining.  The organs all get shut down because it doesn’t need them.  In fact, they’re more likely to hinder the prions, if anything.  Once they’ve spread throughout the system, the prions can somehow pass energy from one… cell?  Are they called cells?  Prions?  From one prion/virus thinger to another to another in a stagnant system.  I’m not a scientist so I don’t actually know how all this crap works.  I just know that it does and the hybrid infection - I’m going to call it that from now on, it’s easier – But
yeah, the hybrid infection causes people to be dead, but part of the brain still lives, hence the walking around.  The hybrid infection’s sole purpose is to spread itself.  Bites are the most effective way of doing this.  Zombies also bite to kill, because a dead body more actively infects other people than a live one.  The hybrid infection is what’s in control.  It wants to spread and spread.  If you see a zombie actually eat, like swallow part of something they’ve bitten, that’s likely just some part of the brain’s old self, remembering that is what you do after biting something.  You eat it.  Although the hybrid infection probably uses the protein it gets.  Sometimes pieces of the brain survive.  Depending on the person and how they were infected seems to determine that.  Some infected can’t even function enough to stand and walk, while others have the reasoning skills to run, open doors, climb ladders and stairs, and other more complex tasks required to get at whoever they are chasing.  That’s why they came toward the gunshots, and now the siren.  Sometimes, senses get shut down, like the eyes, but not always.  The brain remembers partly how these work and what, say the sound of a gunshot, means.  The hybrid infection is like its own brain, or reads the brain, or something, and it processes that gunshot equals noninfected person, equals go there and infect them.  The brain is the only thing left running; that’s why you have to take it out.  Pain is not something registered by it anymore, and it doesn’t think anything of the person that is left.  Personality is destroyed.  It’s a fever that kills those who escaped without mortal wounds.  Picture it like someone going brain dead.”

“Couldn’t have put it better myself,” LeBlanc teased Mathias for his awkward explanation.  “You know more than I do.  I guess ’cause you hung around that Roy.”

“Roy hung out with me, not the other way around,” Mathias corrected him.  He didn’t want to be associated with that son-of-a-bitch in any way.

“Roy?” Bishop frowned.

“One of the scientists who made the fucking thing.”  Mathias ground his teeth at the thought.  Not only did he help create the hybrid infection, but he was also part of the plan that nearly got him shot and barbecued.  “Try not to think of us as bad guys.  We didn’t make the hybrid infection, but we did work for the people who did.”

“Who made it?  And how did it get out?”  Bishop was a curious one, so full of questions.  They didn’t sound judgmental though; she wanted facts.

“Keystone.  There’s an underground facility just outside these suburbs.”  Mathias pointed off in the general direction.

“We didn’t want to be there anymore, so they cut us loose.  Actually, they tried to kill us, but we escaped.  Well, two of us escaped.  East didn’t make it,” LeBlanc looked depressed for a brief moment as he said that.  It was eerie; LeBlanc never got depressed.  He was the happiest bastard you could ever meet.

“The hybrid infection got out because some lab rats of theirs that were infected, got into a ventilation shaft or something and escaped,” Mathias told Bishop.

“That’s what they
say
happened,” LeBlanc corrected him.  “For all we know they released the buggers on purpose.”

“True,” Mathias nodded. He had suspected that himself
, but there was no evidence to support it.

“Rats can be infected also?” Bishop frowned.

“They’re carriers,” Mathias remembered the word Roy used.  “Apparently, they only get a little more aggressive.”

“So it can be carried by other species,” Bishop sighed.  “Which ones can carry it and which get infected?”

“Well, I don’t know all of them,” Mathias shrugged,  “but primates become infected, so do pigs.”

“Zombie pigs,” LeBlanc chuckled.

“Rats are carriers, some bats, umm, I think sheep were.”

“Zombie sheep.  Sheep get infected,” LeBlanc corrected him again
,  “I remember the zombie sheep.”

“Right,” Mathias nodded.  He could remember the zombie sheep now, too.  Weirdest eyes you ever saw.  “Goats were the carriers.  It’s hard to say because it depends on how they’re infected.”

“Some are carriers through a direct injection of the hybrid infection, but will become fully infected if another infected thing bites them,” LeBlanc explained.  “Some things can only become infected through an injection of the pure hybrid infection though.  Each animal it ends up in mutates it somewhat, so it depends on what the hell is giving it to you.  Just our luck though, that it seems humans always become infected while those shifty rats are always carriers.”

“I see you listened sometimes,” Mathias grinned at LeBlanc this time.

“The word mutate was mentioned, so of course, I paid attention to that part,” LeBlanc laughed.

“Sorry, we’re not the best at explaining all this.”  Mathias looked at Bishop again.  “We’re just the hired goons.”

Bishop was frowning, probably trying to process all the information they had just given her.  “Better than nothing.  What are the symptoms?”

“There are none.  A fever burns you out at the end of it, while all your organs shut down, but before that, you wouldn’t know you were infected unless you knew all this stuff and knew you came into contact with an infected or carrier,” Mathias shrugged.

The line between Bishop’s eyebrows deepened.  “Is there any way to tell if someone is infected?”  If that line got any deeper, Mathias thought it might never smooth out again.

Mathias shrugged.  “If you had a microscope, it would probably show up in the blood.  I also heard that one of the scientists trained a dog to smell it, but that could have just been a rumour.”

“I think it’s true,” LeBlanc voiced his opinion,  “dogs are smart.”

Bishop sat in silence.  She seemed to have finally run out of questions.  Mathias turned his attention out the window and noted all the zombie evidence they passed.  It made him think of Danny being out there though, so he stopped.  Next
, he turned to the CB radio and started scanning stations.  Some came in clearly, others were very fuzzy.  Many of them were filled with panicked people, asking for help, not knowing what to do.  Policemen, firemen, paramedics, and average people.  None of them really knew what was going on.  Voices talked over each other constantly.  Except one channel.  It came through clear as a bell with a single voice.  It was a man giving a sermon.  It was a good sermon too.  It didn’t seem to settle on one religion but dabbled in several, and didn’t talk about hell fires and the end of the world.  It talked about forgiving one another and pulling together in these times, as opposed to apart.  Mathias thought the man probably wasn’t even a priest, but that he should be.  Eventually though, he decided to shut the radio off again.  He didn’t bother scanning through the AM and FM radio channels; they would be mostly dead air, crazed reporters, or maybe even music, which would just be too odd right then, perhaps even creepy.

“I’ve turned that radio on a few times myself,” Bishop commented.  “Sometimes everything comes in well, sometimes you get nothing.”

“That’s also Keystone’s fault,” Mathias told her.  He suddenly felt very weary.  “They own a lot of the buildings in this city and as things get out of control, they’ll be locking them down.  Part of the lockdown includes systems that don’t allow signals in or out of the building.  This tends to fuck up everything around them as well.”

“Why would they do all this?”  Bishop finally brought up the million dollar question.

“Who the fuck knows,” LeBlanc’s voice sounded farther away.  Mathias looked back to see him rooting through some of the supplies.

“You would need to kidnap a CEO to find that out,” Mathias agreed
,  “and even then, they might not know.  They just… do stuff.”

The three in the ambulance were quiet after that, each closed off in their own thoughts.  Mathias thought about Danny.  He was so worried, it practically made him sick.  Danny was smart, but unarmed and alone, and he wouldn’t know what was going on.  In hindsight, he should have told Danny about the hybrid infection.  He just thought at the time that he didn’t need to know, that the hybrid infection would never get out.  He should have learned from those stupid movies and books.  Shit like this always got out.  Always.

* * *

“We’re here,” Bishop announced unnecessarily as they pulled into a driveway.

Mathias looked at the corner bungalow.  The massive bay window was broken, indicating that something had gotten inside.  He checked his rifle once again.

Bishop turned off the engine, and everybody climbed out of the vehicle.  While they grouped in front of the hood, LeBlanc and Mathias covered the scene with sweeps of their rifles.  Once everything looked clear, Bishop led them to the door.  As they got closer, Mathias covered the window with its tattered curtains, while LeBlanc watched their rear.  Going in through the window was an option, but they silently decided not to risk the broken glass.  Bishop fished out her keys, but stopped before sliding one into the lock.

“What’s the hold-up?” Mathias whispered over his shoulder.  He didn’t like being in the open and wanted to put some walls around them.

“Someone either picked the lock, or tried to,” Bishop whispered back.  “Look at the scratch marks.”

Mathias looked over his shoulder.  Tiny scratches adorning the lock plate indicated someone without a key had indeed tried to get in.  He quickly reached past Bishop and tried the handle, but it didn’t open.  “Either they gave up, or once they got in, they locked the door behind them.”

Bishop slid the key home and snapped the lock open.  Mathias quickly stepped between her and the door and opened it himself.  Bishop made an indignant noise, but he ignored her.  Despite what she seemed to think, he was trying to protect her.  He entered the house first, rifle raised and ready to fire.  Bishop followed after him, followed by LeBlanc who closed the door.  As Mathias headed into the living room, Bishop took the opportunity to get ahead of him and cross the room.

“Hey,” Mathias whispered angrily at her,  “you might want to wait till we’ve cleared this place.”