Survival Instinct: A Zombie Novel (41 page)

“This is my home,” the doctor didn’t bother whispering
,  “I know it inside and out.  I know everywhere someone could hide in here and am keeping an eye on those places.  You saw how well I can shoot, and I have you covering me.  Believe me, I’m pretty safe here.”  She picked up a big board that was propped up against the wall.  “Now, do you care to help me cover this window so that nothing else comes through it?”

Mathias looked around the room again,
and then lowered his rifle.  LeBlanc had his back so they should be fine.  He wondered about the strange décor mixed in with the normal stuff as he crossed the room.  Grabbing one end of the board, Mathias helped Bishop place it over the broken window by sliding a pair of attached two by fours into brackets bolted to the frame.  Bishop returned Mathias’s pistol to him, and then grabbed another one off a nearby table.

“You’re just prepared for anything, aren’t you?” LeBlanc commented as he nudged a gas mask with his foot.

“I try to be,” Bishop shrugged.  “It’s something my dad drilled into me.  I’m actually not as bad as the rest of my family.  I usually forget I have stuff like that lying around until someone visits.”

“I take it you don’t have a lot of visitors.”  Mathias raised his rifle again and thoroughly swept the room.  It was clear.  He was surprised to find that he and Bishop had something in common; they both seemed to have had dads who were determined that their kids share their ideals.  No matter the cost.

“No,” Bishop sighed.  A moment of pain crossed her face but it passed by so quickly that Mathias couldn’t be sure he saw it.

“We’ll clear the house first, then gather the supplies.”  Mathias headed toward a hallway, letting LeBlanc and Bishop do other parts of the house.  The hallway led to closed doors again.  Perfect.  Mathias did his sweeps as fast as possible.  He wanted to get back to Danny’s house as quickly as he could.  The bedrooms were clear and were as ‘normal’ as the living room, minus the broken bay window, of course.  The bathroom medicine cabinet had clearly been rummaged through, and some sort of paper that had been tacked to the bedroom wall had been torn down and was now missing.  The only thing to indicate it had been there were some tacks in the wall still holding torn scraps, and holes where other tacks had been.  As he turned to head back to the living room, Mathias noticed the dirty footprints he left behind.  He also spotted several lines that tracked along the
floor, which he couldn’t possibly have made.  Perhaps the lock picker did get in.

Mathias met up with LeBlanc in the kitchen.  He stood at a closed sliding glass door at the back.

“Where’s Bishop?” Mathias asked, walking over to him.

“We cleared the basement.  She’s down there deciding what stuff would be best to bring.  She’s got a lot of supplies down there, even a goddamn panic room,
” LeBlanc laughed.  “I think this fella out here was the bay window intruder.”  He pointed through the glass.  “The door was open when we first checked.”

Mathias looked out on the porch to find the form of a man l
aying across it.  One of his arms was twisted at an awful angle.

“I checked the body quickly,” LeBlanc told Mathias.  “One solid shot to the head.  The shooter was either lucky, or good.”

“Probably lucky.”  Mathias looked out at the little backyard.  There were a number of broken boards in the wooden fence.  He sighed and turned away from the window, looking at the kitchen tile.  He noticed some footprints that couldn’t have been his, LeBlanc’s, or Bishop’s.  They were too small, almost child-sized.  As he knelt down next to them for a closer look, his heart seemed to split in two, one half leaping into his throat, the other dropping into the pit of his stomach.  He must have gotten a look on his face because LeBlanc knelt down next to him.

“What is it?” he asked.

“These are Danny’s footprints.”  As strange as that was, they were.  He knew they were.

“How can you know?”

“I bought Danny some shoes, and one of the first things he did was to carve some weird design into the tread.  He was going through a rough time so I didn’t stop him.”  Mathias pointed to a certain part of the print.  “It’s faded because the rubber’s been worn down, but it’s still there.”

LeBlanc hmm-ed in such a way that Mathias couldn’t tell if he was just humouring him.  LeBlanc got up and headed toward the front door where he looked at the floor again.

“What are you doing?”  Mathias followed him.

“The prints are more distinguished over here.  Well, the ones we didn’t step on anyway.”  LeBlanc straightened up.  “You’re right though.  There is a pattern on the bottom of those shoes that I don’t think belongs on them.  They’re mismatched.  It looks like he was pushing around a shopping cart or something from these lines.”

“No, I saw those down the hall with no footprints other than my own,” Mathias tried not to sound too overly happy.  Danny had gotten out okay.  He didn’t know what the hell he was doing, but he got out.

“A wheelchair.”  Mathias and LeBlanc looked toward the kitchen where Bishop had just come up from the basement.  “A wheelchair would make marks like those.”

“So my brother is with someone in a wheelchair?”  Danny didn’t know anyone handicapped.  He must be with someone he just met.

“Someone armed.”  Bishop thumbed over at the dead man.  “One of my pistols and two magazines of ammo are missing.  They also took a bunch of medical supplies.”

“I would think more would be missing,” LeBlanc frowned.  “You have an armoury down there.”

“Danny must have taken them.  The person in the wheelchair wouldn’t have made it down the stairs,” Mathias pointed out.  “He knows how dangerous guns are and how much I disagreed with him having one, even a BB gun.  He probably took it because he’s scared.”  He knew his brother.  If the person in the wheelchair had wanted a gun, they would have taken one from up here.  The gun was for Danny, which meant he really felt he needed one to protect himself.  “I don’t think he’s going to go back to the house.”  Mathias finally accepted the fact.  It felt like a crushing weight had just been shifted onto him, one he might not be able to bear.

“Where do you think he’ll go?” Bishop asked the question that Mathias was already trying to figure out.

“I don’t know,” he shook his head.  “He’ll probably stick with the person in the wheelchair and go wherever they go.”

Mathias went into the living room and sat on the couch.  Placing his face in his hands, he let out a low sound like that of a wounded animal.  He failed to protect his little brother and now he would never see Danny again.

Source of Infection

Nick had become infected at a party.  There was a girl there that he really liked, adored even, and he finally got to kiss her for the first time.  He didn’t care that she had swapped spit with several other guys at that party, and even a few of the girls.  He thought to himself that he could now die happy.

Jelly, nicknamed for her dance moves, didn’t have a lot of money.  When she went out to celebrate her friend’s new job, they split one meal and one drink between them.  During all their gossiping, her friend somehow forgot to tell her the story about how a rat in her apartment had bitten her.

Another homeless man named Patrick attacked the man referred to as Dirty Dan
.  Patrick wasn’t even a zombie when he attacked Dan; they had just gotten into a scuffle over some turf and Patrick had bitten him in defence.  Patrick won that fight and Dan shuffled off to the tunnel he lived in.  Dirty Dan’s real name was Bernard, but nobody had ever bothered to ask him his real name.

Kelly Louise hated her dentist.  He never put on his mask soon
enough and she always got a misting of spit in her eyes.  It was disgusting.  She swore she would find a new dentist that week.

Brittany had been jumped and raped on her way home from work one night.  It was the most terrifying and shameful thing ever to have happened to her.  They caught the guy, but she was still scared.  She worried about her HIV test results and the possibility of being pregnant.  She wouldn’t have to worry too long.

Jacob Jones spent his last days on a cloud.  The most recent batch of drugs he got was good.  Really good.  He knew he shouldn’t have shared his needle, but he didn’t want to go on his trip alone.  It was beautiful.

Little Henry had fallen and cut his knee open on a piece of glass.  When his camp counsellor tried to remove it, she cut her hand.  He got to leave camp early, which made him happy.

Markus, Justin, Gus, and Freddy got into an argument with a guy at a bar.  When he left, they jumped him outside and beat him senseless.  All of them wound up with cut and bloody knuckles.

Newt and Hudson were best friends.  Newt had been bitten by a bat they found outside while playing in the backyard.  Hudson thought it was funny that Newt needed a Band-Aid.  Later that day, they came up with the idea of becoming blood brothers.  Hudson snuck into the house and stole his dad’s
pocketknife for the job.  He grabbed the box of Band-Aids too, just in case.

Section 3
:

Intentions

The Business Woman

When the lights went out, Jessica gasped and clutched her shovel to her breast.  The darkness was complete and unpenetrable.  The sound of the subway train’s glass breaking sent a cold shiver racing up her spine.  The trapped were now free, and she couldn’t see a thing.

It was only a moment later that the battery-powered security lights popped on, bathing the tracks in a dim glow.  It was only a moment, but it seemed like such a long time that Jessica was sure she had aged.  Abby glowed like a pale ghost.  All the blood had drained from her face.

Without a word, the two women hurried much faster toward the second station.  They didn’t want to be on the tracks when those… things from the subway car got to them.  Jessica had found crushing the rat easy: disgusting, but easy.  She couldn’t imagine having to swing the shovel into someone’s face.  That would be a lot harder and just so awful.

They reached the next station and scrambled to get up onto the platform.  Up until the blackout
, Jessica had been thinking of suggesting they follow the subway lines all the way to the hospital.  The next station was a transfer station, and the other line had a stop right across the street from Leighton General.  Now, she just wanted to get out of the underground as fast as she could.

As she pulled herself up onto the platform, she heard a tearing.  Instinctively she groaned, knowing it was her skirt, which drew a brief and worried glance from Abby.  Why had she worn her nice stuff today?  It wasn’t
as if she was doing anything special.  She was just going to the office and picking up some files.  The fact that she had run into someone she knew had been a total fluke.  Poor Jack.  In hindsight, she should’ve worn a pair of track pants and an old T-shirt that she wore around the house during her time off.  An old T-shirt that had once belonged to Cillian.  She had thought about giving it back, but just couldn’t get up the muster to call him, so she had decided on keeping it.  He probably didn’t even realize it was missing.

Once on the platform, Jessica looked down at her skirt.  There was a big tear up the left side.  Not only that, but both the skirt and the blouse were covered in smudges and dusty streaks from the climb up.  She looked over at Abby who was no cleaner.  Her white T-shirt was now grey and her grey pants were nearly black.  Her short hairdo looked roughly the same though.  Jessica wondered how her own hair was faring.

The girls made a beeline for the stairs and hurried up, followed by the sounds of groaning and screeching coming from the tunnel behind.  They stopped at the top of the stairs to look for any other potential attackers, but they didn’t stop long.  Once they assessed the way was clear, the women hurried through the turn styles and past the newsstand.  Jessica happened to notice the headline as she went past.  It was about a big drug bust.  She wondered if the drugs had anything to do with what was happening today and what the headlines would say tomorrow.  Would there be any headlines tomorrow?

That was not a good thought, but it popped into her head anyway.  What if there were no reporters left?  No one to run the printing presses, no one to deliver the paper,
and no one to sell it?  The end of the world.  It seemed likely after looking at all those people in the subway train.

Abby led the way up the next set of stairs toward the surface.  She stopped and crouched near the top, looking out cautiously.

“See anything?” Jessica whispered.  She kept looking behind them, back down into the subway.  She didn’t want anyone sneaking up on them.

“No.”  Abby moved up further.

Jessica followed closely behind, avoiding a spilled, blue Slushie.  They stood at the top of the steps, looking up the street.  A groan sounded behind them.  Jessica wheeled around, looking down the steps first, but then realized it came from higher up.  On the other side of the concrete barrier that surrounded three sides of the subway entrance, was a pale and white-eyed individual.  The barrier reached up to his waist and he leaned forward over it, arms outstretched.  He was trying to walk forward, toward them, despite the concrete.