Survival Instinct (Book 3): Fighting Instinct Read online

  Jon only glanced up from his work, curious as to how the man knew that Yanis had been taken out. The corpse was mostly behind the wall with Jon; however, one of the dead man’s arms was sprawled out beyond it. Jon didn’t respond, focusing intently on the lock.

  “You’re going to make me come down there, aren’t you?” the man sighed. “Why don’t you make this easy for both of us and come on out? You’re dead anyway. I’m sure you have even more bites on you now after that ordeal. Just give up. Let me take care of you.” His voice was travelling toward the staircase.

  Jon was sweating profusely. He had to get this lock open before the man reached him. The slow opening and closing of Yanis’s mouth next to him wasn’t helping. Still, the zombie wasn’t loudly snapping his jaws, and giving away the fact that Jon had it with him.

  The man whistled another song as he descended the staircase. A show tune this time, one that sounded familiar to Jon, but that he couldn’t quite place.

  As the man reached the bottom of the stairs, the lock finally snapped open. Jon slipped silently out of the cuff and backed away into the far corner, carefully holding the head of Yanis by its ears. With a quick glance, Jon saw the man moving toward the corner around which the chains disappeared. The man was silent now, grim-faced, with an arrow set against the string of his bow.

  Jon prepared himself. He grabbed Yanis’s hair, gripping more securely than he had before, and began swinging his arm in slow, gentle arcs. Blood was still dripping out of the severed neck.

  Everything happened fast. The man stepped around the corner, bow ready, but aiming in the wrong location. Just as his confusion started to become understanding, Jon threw the bear trap zombie, which snapped its jaws in the same rapid fire manner it had earlier. The man turned, saw it flying through the air at him, screamed, and fired his arrow. He missed the head, but Jon didn’t know what happened with it after that. He had already dashed around the far corner. Originally intending to run straight for the stairs, he had realized the moment the man fired his arrow that he had forgotten to bring the broken one with him. Jon had no weapon, and odds were, he’d need one. Instead of the staircase, Jon ran to the heavy plastic statue and pulled the arrow from its head. With no time for the stairs now, Jon disappeared into the darkness of the Den’s other passageways and openings.

  “You son of a whore!” the man shouted. “That’s disgusting! Who the fuck throws heads? You sick mother fucker!”

  Jon stayed quiet, crouched down in an alcove that held a fake stained glass window, the light that used to be behind it having long since been removed.

  “You know that thing almost bit me?” the man cried. He sounded genuinely frightened, but also pissed. He had moved back to the central dance floor, and Jon could picture him trying to decide which way to search. “You are so fucking dead now! I was just going to kill you as a service to the Diana, but now, I want to kill your ass.”

  Jon’s eyes kept darting from one location to the next, watching for the man while his brain fervently thought up a plan. The man fell silent again as he hunted for Jon.

  There, Jon saw the man pass in front of a light. He had the advantage of being in complete darkness, to which the man’s eyes had yet to adjust. He was coming toward Jon’s hiding spot, silhouetted by a faint light at his back. Jon hunkered down deeper into the alcove, checking his grip on his arrow.

  The man got close enough for his light footsteps to be heard. Jon’s muscles tensed up as he steeled himself for what he was about to do. It was kill or be killed with this guy.

  When the man approached the alcove, he had his bow ready. He stepped in front of it, facing it and as far back as possible, but again, he was aiming at the wrong spot. He was aiming too high, as Jon sprang up from the floor. The arrow zipped over Jon’s head, so close that it passed through his hair with the feathers leaving a friction burn along the top of his scalp. It thumped through the plastic window just as Jon drove his own arrow up into the hollow at the base of the man’s throat. Hot, fresh blood poured down over Jon’s hands, mixing with Yanis’s blood. The man’s eyes were wide as he pulled away from Jon, dropping his bow to the floor. He reached up and yanked the arrow out of his neck, causing his own blood to flow even freer. Jon watched as the man choked, his lungs filling. There was a strange whistling from the hole as he tried to breathe, much less tuneful than earlier. Bubbles appeared in the blood between his fingers, as the man tried futilely to hold the hole shut. He fell to the floor.

  It took longer for the man to die than Jon had thought it would. He stayed where he was and watched him die, not from blood loss like Yanis, but from drowning. He couldn’t get enough oxygen into his blood-filled lungs, and eventually expired.

  Jon finally moved, heading toward the stairs. He didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t stay here. Even if he told the guards everything that had happened, there was no way they would believe he wasn’t infected, not with all the blood on his hands and clothes. He probably even had a few drops on his face. No, he couldn’t stay here.

  Robin. Robin would help him. He remembered how his infection had shocked her into running off, but she would have pulled herself together by now. She’d hide Jon if he needed her to.

  At the top of the steps, Jon walked around behind the bar. It was empty. There was still a sink back there that worked, and he used it to clean himself up. He scrubbed hard at his skin and was very careful not to get anything in his eyes or mouth. After taking a long drink straight from the tap, Jon turned off the water and walked back around to the front of the bar. Before he headed to the door, he was distracted by a sound that came from below. It didn’t sound like something that Yanis’s head could be causing if it were still moving.

  Looking over the railing, Jon saw the man stumble around the corner onto the dance floor. His first thought was that he had been wrong, and that the man hadn’t died, but that was quickly swept from Jon’s mind. This man was now a zombie, no doubt about it, but how? Jon didn’t think he had gotten any of his own or Yanis’s blood on the man. Maybe the bear trap zombie had bitten him? But the man hadn’t said anything about being bitten; in fact, he had said it almost bit him.

  Not bitten. Yanis’s words returned to him. The man had not been bitten and he had turned. But why? He hadn’t been on the other ship. Why had he turned after he had been killed?

  Before Jon could think upon it further, the door to the Dragon’s Den began to open. The door wasn’t a regular door, but more like a rounded rotating wall. The entrance to the Den was a small circular room with an opening at both ends. When open, people could walk straight through, but it closed via an inner curved wall that rotated and blocked off both ends. This was not a fast process, giving Jon just enough time to dash back behind the bar. He found a large cupboard that used to hold kegs and scrunched himself down inside it, closing the cupboard door behind him.

  It didn’t take long for the guards to realize something terrible had happened while they were gone.

  ***

  Jon had been sitting in the cramped keg cupboard for what must have been twenty minutes now. As soon as the guards noticed the zombie shuffling around down below, they had taken it out. An investigation was conducted, with several ship defenders coming and going. Jon hadn’t been able to hear everything, but he knew they were looking for him. No one checked the cupboard, because they assumed he must be long gone from the Den.

  The other prisoners were led to some different location, but Jon couldn’t hear where. He found himself hoping that Freya was okay. Although she appeared tough, he wanted her life on the Diana to get better. Dealing with a prison was already a crappy way to be introduced to a new home, but one with zombies must be infinitely worse.

  Finally, it sounded like the investigators were gone. Jon continued to stay put for several more minutes, just in case he was wrong, but he continued to hear nothing. At last, he slowly opened the cupboard door and poked his head out. There was no one behind the bar, as he had expected. The searchers had prob
ably glanced behind the bar, but he learned from their conversations that they didn’t expect him still to be in the Den. They hadn’t searched it thoroughly before moving on to the rest of the ship.

  Jon popped up from behind the bar like a prairie dog, taking in everything at a glance before dropping back down. He hadn’t seen anyone in the upper section of the Den. Feeling it was safe to do so, Jon stood up fully and walked out from behind the bar. The Den appeared to be deserted. Walking slowly to the door, Jon looked out through the opening. At the far end, was a guard facing outward and barring anyone from entering. He was also keeping Jon from exiting. It was one thing to attack and kill a man who was trying to kill him; it was another entirely when it was some guy doing his job.

  Silently searching the upper level, Jon found no other guards, and nothing that could help him. Looking down at the dance floor, he saw that the body of the man who had tried to kill him had been covered by a tarp. He walked around the opening, observing as much of the lower level as possible, and listening intently for any sounds. As far as he could tell, there were no guards remaining downstairs. They must have learned all they could from there, at least for the moment.

  Heading back down to the dance floor, Jon lifted the tarp. He had dealt with plenty of dead bodies as an off-shipper, and so had no problem frisking this one. There wasn’t much, but a pocketknife he found in the man’s boot might be helpful. Walking around the rest of the area, he discovered that the guards had taken away the man’s bow and arrows, as well as covered the body and head of Yanis with two different tarps; they had been too far away from one another to be covered by just one. Other than the tarps, the guards hadn’t left anything behind.

  Jon went to the only place he thought might hold his freedom. At the back of the lower section, there used to be two, mirrored exits that led to the elevator banks on either side. The moment the Dragon’s Den was converted into a holding cell, those exits had been locked and sealed. Jon went to investigate them now. Maybe there was a way to open one of them that no one had thought of yet.

  Both doors were the exact same, so Jon spent most of his time checking out the one on the right. It was a glass door that used to slide open via a motion sensor. The sensor was obviously gone, and the glass had been reinforced with several layers of chicken wire. Even if Jon broke the glass—which would certainly draw the attention of the man by the upper door—he probably wouldn’t be able to get through the wire. By tugging on the door’s small handle, he learned there was no way to open it like that either. When he pressed his head tightly against the glass, he could just make out part of the metal plates that had been welded over the edge of the door and its frame. It also looked like something had been jammed into the slot that the door slid into, so that the door would no longer fit in there, were the welding to fail.

  Jon started to pace back and forth between the two doors. How was he going to get out? The only tool he had was the pocketknife. Whatever plan he eventually thought up, he’d have to execute it quickly. He knew that the guards would soon return to pick up and dispose of the dead bodies. Now was the only chance he’d get.

  But what could he do?

  10

  Hope’s On An Adventure

  The room was boring. Hope liked that Milly was there, and that there were a bunch of other doggies, but it was still boring. There was nothing to do in there.

  “We should go find Peter,” she told her friends, who were sitting around the small table.

  “But the mister said we should stay here,” Adam reminded her.

  “Yeah, and Ms. Lauren and Ms. Abby always say we have to stay in class, but we didn’t do that.”

  “It’s not like there’s a reason we have to stay here,” Becky sided with Hope. “He’s just going to take us back to class afterwards anyway. Leaving here wouldn’t be much different from leaving class. Right?”

  Dakota hopped off her chair and dragged it over to the door. By standing on the seat, she could look out through the spy hole in the door.

  “There’s no one outside,” Dakota informed the other kids.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” Adam announced.

  “So do I,” Hope realized.

  “Okay, we’ll all take turns in the bathroom before going. Like when leaving on a road trip.” Dakota opened the bathroom to let Adam go first.

  “What’s a road trip?” he asked as he stepped through the door.

  “It’s when you take a really long ride in a car,” Dakota told him.

  When Adam was finished in the bathroom, Hope went next, then Becky, and finally, Dakota.

  “Okay, now everyone has gone. Can we go?” Dakota asked.

  The other three nodded.

  Dakota looked out the spy hole again, informing them that the coast was still clear. After moving the chair back to the table, the four kids left the room. As Hope was walking out through the door, Milly squeezed out with her.

  “Milly!” Hope whisper-shouted at her dog. “You can’t come. Stay inside.”

  “No, let her come,” Dakota stopped Hope from pushing the husky back through the door. “That way, if anyone else finds us, we can say we were just bringing Milly back to your mom, or dad.”

  Hope decided that Dakota had a good idea, and let Milly follow her.

  “Do you know where we are?” Adam asked.

  “Yeah. We’re on the wrong end of the ship. Come on, we’ll go downstairs first.” Dakota lead the group to the nearest staircase, and the four of them descended the steps.

  They climbed all the way down the stairs to the fourth deck, where Dakota stopped.

  “I don’t know if we can get to the other end of the ship if we go lower. I’ve never been down there,” she told the others.

  “Then we’ll cross here,” Adam suggested.

  “We can’t go outside,” Hope told them. “We don’t have an adult with us, or lifejackets.”

  “You won’t fall in,” Dakota told her.

  “We might,” Hope replied.

  “I don’t want to go out there without a lifejacket,” Becky agreed. Becky was a good swimmer, but she didn’t like the water very much. Hope wasn’t a very good swimmer.

  “We can go through that place full of plants instead of going outside,” Hope continued.

  “Don’t be stupid. There’s going to be a bunch of adults in there. We have to go along the outside deck,” Dakota told her.

  “I don’t think we have to. And I’m not stupid.” Hope tried to stand taller, but Dakota was still a lot bigger than she was.

  Dakota sighed in the same way that Hope’s mom did when Hope couldn’t decide what to wear. She looked like she was about to say something when they heard footsteps on the stairs above them.

  “Hide,” Becky hissed.

  Just across from the stairs was a public bathroom. They all rushed inside, even Adam, despite the fact that it was a girl’s bathroom. Just in case the footsteps was someone coming to use this bathroom, they went into the handicap stall, and shut and locked the door. Milly had followed them in, and started sniffing around the toilet.

  “Hello? Anyone in here?” a woman’s voice called from the door.

  All the kids paled and stood very still.

  “Yes?” Dakota answered in the most adult-sounding voice she could manage. It sounded adult to Hope’s ears.

  “I’m sorry, but I’m supposed to clean this bathroom. Will you be long?”

  “Um. Yeah? Can you clean the rest of the bathroom and just do this stall later?”

  “I guess I can do that, yeah.”

  Hope shot a look at Dakota. Why didn’t she make the woman go away? Dakota shrugged and shook her head.

  They quietly listened as the woman went to the sinks and turned one of them on. It sounded like she was filling a bucket. Hope and Becky stood to either side of Milly, holding her collar and making sure she didn’t move.

  Eventually, the tap turned off and the woman began mopping the floor. They knew she was mopping because
the spaghetti head swept under the edge of the door. Once it left, Adam lay down on the floor and looked out through the narrow space. Sitting back up, he motioned around his ears and mouthed the word ‘headphones.’ Apparently, the cleaning woman had headphones on.

  Once Milly lay down, they knew they were going to be there awhile.

  ***

  Hope was curled up next to her dog, resting her head on Milly’s soft fur. It was really boring in the bathroom. Becky was sitting next to them, while Dakota sat on the toilet seat, and Adam lay on his stomach, watching the cleaning lady’s feet. All of them sat up straight when they heard the cleaning lady’s supplies rattle over to the door.

  “I’ve done everything else,” the woman called out. “I’ll clean the other bathrooms for now.”

  “Thank you,” Dakota responded in her adult voice again.

  The cleaning supplies rattled out the bathroom door. Adam lay back down and looked underneath the edge of the stall again.

  “She’s gone,” he told them.

  “We should wait a little bit longer, just in case she’s still near the door or forgot something.” Dakota stood up and stretched.

  Her motions prompted Milly to stand up, nearly knocking Hope to the floor in the process.

  “Milly!” she hissed at the husky, while getting to her feet.

  While they were stretching and waiting, a voice spoke over the PA system.

  “What did he say?” Adam asked. The PA wasn’t always easy to understand.

  “He’s calling people to a meeting,” Becky told him, “and they’re looking for us.”

  “We have to wait here longer,” Dakota sighed.

  “Why?” Hope frowned.

  “Because, now a bunch of people are going to be walking past here to get to the meeting. We’re not far from the auditorium. Look on the bright side, while everyone is at the meeting, we can move freely around the ship. We won’t have to walk along the deck outside.” Dakota sat back down on the toilet.