Survival Instinct: A Zombie Novel Paperback Read online

  Survival Instinct

  Kristal Stittle

  Section 1:

  Outbreak

  1:

  Tobias

  Tobias trailed behind Lucas Jonas through the crowded park. It was hot, noisy, and smelled of hair gel and body odour. The camera bag he carried started to slide again, so he pulled the heavy thing higher up on his shoulder and pushed through a particularly tight knot of people.

  The press of bodies was starting to get to him. He hated crowds. Even though he stood taller than almost everyone did, with the average person reaching only up to his nose, having so many crammed around him was unsettling. Tobias wasn’t a loner. He had a good group of friends, but anyplace that had more than ten people made him uneasy. Here, there were hundreds, thousands even.

  He was beginning to think that living in the city wasn’t such a great life choice after all. It wasn’t the first time he thought it either.

  “How much farther?” Tobias called up to Lucas.

  Lucas’s only response was a flick of his wrist at shoulder height. Tobias grumbled to himself. Working with big names like Lucas Jonas was always the worst. They never answered questions and they always insisted on the heaviest equipment. Tobias had packed a much smaller and lighter bag earlier, but then, when Mister Big Shot saw it, he insisted on the big stuff. Bigger was not better, but it looked more impressive. And looks were all these guys really cared about. And what kind of a name was Lucas Jonas anyway?

  Finally, they broke through the crowd next to the security fence. Tobias stopped to take a refreshing breath of air. Well, as refreshing as the air could be in a city park, standing next to a mass of sweating bodies in the hot, August sunshine. During his break, Tobias had briefly lost sight of Mr. Jonas, and when he spotted him again, Lucas was trying to make his way through the security point. Tobias sighed and made his way over. Lucas was arguing with a big, black security guard who had arms as thick as Tobias’s legs.

  “Do you know who I am?” Lucas stood on his tiptoes but still wasn’t even eye-to-eye with the massive guard. “I’m Lucas fucking Jonas! See this pass?” The laminate he waved in front of the guard’s face moved so fast, Tobias was pretty sure the guard wouldn’t even have registered its colour. “It lets me go wherever I want in this whole damn shebang!”

  Lucas finally noticed Tobias standing next to him and yanked him over. He grabbed Tobias’s bag and opened a zipper, nearly spilling out the expensive contents.

  “See? Video camera equipment!” With his face red, he turned on Tobias, “Don’t just stand there like a lump, Toby, show the man your bloody pass!”

  He let go of Tobias’s arm with a slight shove. Tobias seethed about being called Toby, he thought it was something you’d call a dog, but pulled his pass up on the string around his neck. He handed it to the guard and let him look it over thoroughly.

  “Rough day today, Mackenzie?” The security guard asked in his rumbling voice as he looked at Tobias’s credentials.

  “Is it that obvious?” Tobias gave Lucas a somewhat smug look. Having met a lot of security guards while working for the Leighton Network occasionally had its perks.

  “You know this man?” Lucas looked from the guard to Tobias. “Then why the hell didn’t you say something sooner? God, amateurs.” He annoyingly pronounced it am-e-tures.

  The security guard stepped aside and let Lucas storm past, a cheeky grin revealing his pearly whites.

  “How’d you get paired up with him?” the guard asked as he watched Lucas go.

  “Bad luck I guess.” Tobias hiked his bag up once more. “So Bruce, me and some of the guys are going to The Foxers next Friday, you wanna come?” He liked The Foxers because it was never crowded. It was easy to breathe there, unlike the packed clubs. Unlike that crowd he had just passed through.

  “Sure thing, Mackenzie. He’s not coming, is he?” Security man Bruce jerked a thumb over his shoulder towards Lucas, his grin still lighting up his face.

  “If he is, then my life is over. I better get going before he calls my boss, demanding someone else.” With a sigh, Tobias Mackenzie started walking in the same direction Lucas had gone.

  Bruce’s booming voice followed after him, “Your boss would never be that mean to anyone else! Just you!”

  Tobias flipped Bruce the bird over his shoulder. The laughter resulting from this gesture echoed after him as he looked for Mr. Lucas Jonas. It would be some time before he heard such honest and completely carefree laughter again.

  As Tobias worked his way around the scaffolding and the usual equipment you’d expect to find piled up behind any stage, he finally spotted Mr. Jonas again. When Lucas spotted Tobias in turn, he rushed over and Tobias knew it couldn’t be good. His arm was grabbed and Lucas hauled him along quicker.

  Counting slowly to himself and taking deep breaths, Tobias allowed himself to be forcibly led. Goddamned TV personalities always seemed to be in a rush, he thought.

  Lucas stopped between the edge of the stage and the corral of buses the rock stars were in.

  “Here.” Lucas pointed between his feet.

  “What about here?” Tobias sighed. He couldn’t see anything particularly different or interesting about that spot of trampled earth.

  “I want you to film from here,” Mr. Jonas’s eyes rolled like it should have been obvious. “All the rockers have to pass by here to get on stage. It’ll be the perfect opportunity to get interviews with all of them and get some shots of the performances.”

  “You want everything filmed from one spot?”

  “Have you never seen my show? Of course you haven’t, you’re just an ingrate. My stuff is way beyond you.” Lucas waved Tobias off with a flip of his wrist and started looking around.

  Tobias was fairly certain that Lucas didn’t know what ‘ingrate’ meant, but that he was using it to insult him. He took another deep, steadying breath, and closed his eyes. “You realize, if we film here, we’ll a) be in the way, and b) be so close to the speakers, nothing you say will be heard over the music.”

  “What?” The speakers, sitting only a few paces away, suddenly came to Lucas’s attention.

  This was why Tobias hated filming at concerts. Especially the charity kind. The music caused problems for the sound, and the sight of the cameras caused the crowds to flip out more than usual. He would have loved to have been one of the other guys, the ones who just sat at the stationary cameras. They didn’t have to follow an idjit around, just point and shoot at what looked interesting. At least the money for this was good.

  “All right, we’ll free-roam it then,” Lucas said this like he was making some great sacrifice. “Get your camera out.”

  After unzipping his bag, Tobias lifted out the heavy piece of equipment. He placed it on the ground by his feet and began hooking everything up. He even had a waist and leg harness, like rock climbers used, to help him carry the large battery and various other bits and bobs. While he strapped this on, he watched Mr. Jonas out of the corner of his eye. The guy was ogling himself in a small mirror and picking at his no-doubt expensive teeth.

  “Here, can you put this on yourself?” Tobias held out a microphone attached to a battery pack that clipped onto the back of the user’s belt.

  Lucas once again rolled his eyes as he took it.

  Tobias finished setting up his own equipment, trying not to grind his teeth, and lifted the camera up onto his shoulder. He slung his now almost empty bag across his back. The last time he had let a camera bag out of his sight at one of these things, it disappeared forever.

  Once he was ready, they did a sound check. Tobias couldn’t hear anything Mr. Jonas said through the noise-
cancelling headphones he wore. Apparently, Mr. Jonas had attached the microphone correctly, but had forgotten to turn it on. Somehow, Tobias got blamed for that.

  “All right, I want you to film everything from here on out, you got it? The editors can splice it together later.” Lucas looked down at himself and straightened his clothes once more. He tried to look like a reporter and a rocker at the same time. Tobias thought he just looked like a douchebag, but he might have been somewhat biased.

  Tobias was a jeans and T-shirt kind of guy. Currently, though, he wore beige cargoes. He had learned early on that the large pockets were very handy for work. He had never been one to care about his appearance too much and let his light, sandy hair grow out like a mop on his head. He had been told he sometimes reminded people of a surfer bum with his laid-back appearance, especially when he became tanned during the summer. He always thought he looked like a really tall teenager with softer features than the rest of the guys around him. It did seem to help him get girls though. They felt safe around him with his disarming looks.

  After counting down from five with his fingers, Tobias pressed the record button. Instantly, Lucas Jonas’s TV persona took over. Tobias never knew what to call it, but he had seen it hundreds of times. The people on the TV would shift from one personality to another as soon as a running camera was on them. The shift was so great with Mr. Jonas that it made him look like an entirely different person. Now Tobias could understand how this guy got to be so popular. He seemed a lot more approachable this way.

  Soon Tobias switched over into his own altered state; what he and his buddies called film mode. He trailed Mr. Jonas wherever he went and kept his mouth shut. If someone Mr. Jonas was interviewing asked Tobias a question, Lucas would answer for him, or Tobias would give a slight shake or nod of the camera if it were a yes or no question. His boss had told him that Mr. Jonas’s viewers liked that.

  Otherwise, Tobias was completely absent-minded. He went somewhere else in his head. Currently, it was to next Friday. He and the guys, which now probably included Bruce, were going to The Foxers. It was a favourite bar of theirs that they visited often. Tobias was looking forward to this visit more than normal, because Katie would probably be coming. One of Tobias’s friends had just started dating this chick who had a best friend, Katie, who came to almost all of the group gatherings. Katie was Tobias’s current dream girl. His dream girl changed often. This one was extremely smart and Tobias wasn’t used to girls who were smarter than he was. He was enjoying the difference, mostly because the last girl he dated was a complete airhead.

  * * *

  Tobias Mackenzie was filming a crowd reacting to the on-stage performer when Lucas started snapping his fingers in front of the lens. Tobias turned to face him, frowning slightly at the intrusion. There was no one around for Lucas to be interviewing.

  “What?” Despite his own small microphone that went straight to an earpiece Lucas had on, Tobias still had to shout to be heard over the music. Even with his large headphones on, the music was insanely loud.

  “What do you think is going on over there?” Lucas spoke into his own microphone and pointed across the sea of fans.

  Tobias’s eyes followed Lucas’s arm to see what he had seen. On the other side of the crowd, a pocket of people was moving at odds to the rest. The general populace was surging toward the stage, trying to reach its idols, but over on the far side, people seemed to be moving out in all directions, away from a central point.

  “I don’t know.” Tobias zoomed in with his camera for a better look. The distance was still too far to make out perfect detail, but he made out enough. He made out terrified faces trying to run from something in the centre of the ring.

  “What is it?” Lucas shook his arm.

  “I can’t tell, but they’re fleeing from something.” He lowered his camera. “It’s probably just a stink bomb or something.”

  “Or something. Let me see. Open that little viewer.” Lucas’s manicured hands reached for the camera.

  Tobias pulled it away from him though. He didn’t want him touching any of the expensive equipment. He flipped open the LCD view finder and turned it so that Lucas could see. The small screen filled with the crowd as Tobias pointed the camera back at the people. Some of them were now literally trying to climb over others to get away from whatever it was.

  “That is definitely something!” Lucas grinned with enthusiasm. He showed all his teeth, like a crocodile.

  Tobias didn’t hide his disgust when he looked at him. Terrified people should please no one.

  “Come on, Toby, we’re getting over there.” Lucas slapped Tobias’s arm, ignoring his look.

  “Why do you want to do that?”

  “What are you, daft? To report on it obviously!” Lucas started to go around the back of the stage, swiftly stepping over and around the wires and scaffolding.

  As Tobias tagged after him, he tried to convince Lucas not to go. “There are probably other cameras already filming it. You can do a voiceover or something later.”

  “Lucas Jonas does not do voiceovers. It’s on-scene or nothing.” Lucas wove around a particularly dense clutter of cables and equipment.

  Carrying the camera made manoeuvring far more difficult for Tobias. It didn’t take long for him to fall behind.

  “Shit,” Tobias grumbled to himself as he got snared on cable. Damned overachievers were always getting into shit they should keep their noses out of. That in itself, wasn’t so bad, but did this one have to drag Tobias with him?

  He finally made it to the security point and found Bruce, who was always easy to spot. Not only was he one of the few people Tobias knew who was taller than he was, but he was also two to three times as thick. Today, he particularly stood out due to his crisp, white T-shirt contrasting starkly with his ultra dark skin.

  “Hey, did you see that annoying jerk I was following earlier?” Tobias pulled off his headphones. Thankfully, over here, the sound of the concert was somewhat dampened, and they could hear one another. Still, the sudden assault of sound pounded into Tobias’s head like a hammer. He really hated concerts.

  “Yeah, he went out that way.” Bruce pointed out into the crowd.

  “I think there’s something going on out there. Something bad.” Tobias didn’t want to go back out into the mob.

  “Out in the crowd?” The big security guard didn’t wait for an answer. He climbed up on a cement barrier holding onto the edge of the fence for balance. After a quick look, he turned to another security guard, “Hey, Jake, hand me the binocs.”

  The other guard, equally thick but not as tall, grabbed a pair of binoculars off a table and handed them up to Bruce.

  “What do you see?” Tobias stood on his tiptoes, but he couldn’t see very far over the heads of the crowd.

  “Give me a moment.” Bruce was fiddling with the binoculars, trying to focus them. “Shit, I see blood. It’s bad.” He pulled a walkie-talkie off his belt and spoke quickly into it.

  Tobias couldn’t hear what he said over the music.

  “I take it your friend is heading over there hoping for a story?” The walkie-talkie was put away and Bruce hopped down next to Tobias.

  Tobias nodded, although he would never use the term ‘friend’ to describe Mr. Jonas. Not even sarcastically.

  “Come on, you’re going to help me get that idiot.” Bruce moved out through the gap in the fences.

  “But...” Tobias really didn’t want to go. This feeling was even worse than it usually was. Something in his gut just told him it was a bad idea.

  “Stay close behind me.” Bruce reached back and pulled Tobias after him.

  As they reached the crowd, Bruce let go of Tobias, but Tobias reluctantly continued to follow after him. The big security guard was a lot easier to follow through the crowd than Lucas had been. Bruce’s huge size and commanding voice got people to move out of the way quickly. His broad shoulders made a large enough path for Tobias to follow with his camera easily. Still, that
unsettling feeling sank deeper and deeper into Tobias’s gut, the further into the crowd they got. When he used his free hand to grab hold of the back of Bruce’s shirt, he saw that his own skin appeared to be getting quite pale, losing its nice summer tan.

  When Tobias was very young, he had been separated from his parents at a theme park. He spent hours wandering around, lost in the crowd. All he could see was a strange forest of legs everywhere he went. Eventually, someone noticed and brought him to the lost and found where his parents, all weepy eyed, picked him up. He figured that was where his dislike of crowds had come from. He always felt some anxiety in them, but he learned to deal with it. It was part of his life.

  Right now though, in this crowd, his heart was hammering harder than the bass line the band on stage was pounding out. He kept looking up at the clear, blue sky, something usually guaranteed to calm him. Not in this mob, though. Something just wasn’t right; something he couldn’t name.

  He noticed that Bruce’s yelling had increased in volume, and that they had slowed their progress considerably. The people around them were all trying to head in the other way. When they first began to wade though the crowd, people were generally calm, albeit somewhat annoyed, but their expressions changed as Bruce and Tobias pushed deeper.

  Bruce completely stopped moving forward and created a break in the flood of people with his body. They moved around him like a river around a boulder. The faces of the people slowly changed from a bit scared, to frightened, and finally to straight-out terrified. It wasn’t until Tobias saw the first people bleeding that he realized he was talking.

  “Please, Bruce, we have to go, we have to leave. Come on, Bruce, let’s get out of here. Let’s go back to the stage.” His grip on Bruce’s shirt tightened. He even tugged it slightly like a small child would tug on a parent’s hand or pants leg.

  The music suddenly cut off, allowing the sounds of screams to be heard. It looked like someone in charge finally realized something was going on.