Defensive Instinct (Survival Instinct Book 4) Read online

“’Kay. Whose crew?”

  “I think Boyle’s, although you may want to double check that.”

  Misha nodded that he would. “Have you checked the zombie report yet?” That word came so easily now. It used to be strange, almost laughable, but it had become a part of their daily lives. The walking corpses had taken so much, leaving behind a new world devoid of the previous one’s luxuries. Medicine had basically been reduced to what they could grow, new clothes were either made of self-cured leather or dusty scraps the moths hadn’t yet eaten found in shops and homes, electrical power was savoured and used sparingly, while gas had all but disappeared—no one was refining it anymore.

  “The report is the same as yesterday: no sign,” Cameron told him.

  “We haven’t seen any in a while. It has me worried,” Riley admitted. “Whenever there’s nothing for a few days, they always end up appearing in a bunch.”

  “The walls are strong,” Cameron said offhand.

  “It’s the people outside the walls I’m worried about.”

  Danny, Mathias’s younger brother, was one of those outside. He and a few others had gone scavenging. It used to be a simple job where they would be out and back within the day, but now they had to go farther and farther. They camped out there, mapping the land, marking locations where there were things useful to the group that they couldn’t bring back with them. They had been gone for over a week now.

  Misha had finished his meal and lowered his plate to the floor, letting Rifle gobble up the scraps. His tongue squeaked across the surface of the china as he licked up every bit. When Cameron and Riley were done eating, they held their plates down in the same manner.

  “Well, we best get to work then,” Cameron sighed as she stood up. “I’ll try to find time to examine Trigger.”

  “Thanks. Come on, Rifle.” Misha carried everyone’s plates and utensils to the dirty dishes deposit with Rifle following at his heels. The German Shepherd kept out a constant eye for dropped bits of food, or people holding out their plates for him. After breakfast was cleared away, some of the dogs would be let in to give the floor a thorough once over.

  Beside the dish deposit, the warehouse wall was covered in a series of whiteboards and chalkboards. On them were written everyone’s name along with what they were expected to be doing that day. Although the structure here wasn’t as formal or rigid as it had been on the Diana, people were still expected to pull their weight. It also helped to know where someone was at any given time. Even Danny’s name was on a board, simply listed as ‘out.’

  Outside the warehouse, Misha and Rifle were rejoined by Bullet who had been waiting patiently. They would walk Rifle back to their home, and then go find Boyle in the usual meeting place. Misha wondered what dogs he should bring over the wall with him this time.

  ***

  “All right, everyone ready?” Boyle asked the small, assembled group. They stood before a shipping container out in the section of yard they didn’t use. In a moment, Boyle was going to open it up and they were going to go through the contents. The containers occasionally held surprises and not all of them good.

  Misha nodded along with the others.

  Boyle grabbed the handles, popping them up and then pulling open both doors at the same time. A sour smell washed out of the container, followed by a buzz of flies.

  “Rotten bananas,” Boyle announced, the first to identify the contents.

  Rotted food was always the worst. It had been so long that there was nothing left but a mushy paste and a vast colony of flies that had built up in the dark. Everyone pulled up their masks. Misha wondered if one of the other three teams had found anything better.

  “Let’s get to work,” Boyle waved everyone forward.

  Misha stepped into the container alongside Harry, the Australian engineer who had designed their method for moving containers. Just because he was intelligent and innovative didn’t mean he was spared doing grunt work along with everyone else. They set up step stools facing the pile.

  “The wood from the boxes still looks pretty good,” Harry commented as he grabbed one end, his voice muffled by his mask. Misha took hold of the other end and they lifted the box down. Two more workers took the box from them and brought it outside. There, the wood, the mush, and anything else there might be, like fruit netting, would be separated as best they could manage. Mush would be placed in deep, plastic wheelbarrows whereas the wood would be stacked on flat movers. Both wheeled conveyances would be pushed over to the wall once full, and there they would be lifted up with a pulley system to where their final fate would be decided. Mush was often put into plastic buckets that got delivered to the farms as fertilizer, whereas wood had a variety of uses. Even if the wood was crappy and rotten, it would just be added to the firewood pile.

  Misha and Harry worked at a sedate pace, allowing time for the others to do their jobs without being overly rushed. Misha’s gloves soon stank, and he was glad for the full-face mask. He didn’t have any filters for it, but it still helped to reduce the smell, especially with its overpowering scent of rubber.

  A tiny, distant cry made its way into the container, drifting over from one of the other teams.

  “White, go find out what that was about,” Boyle ordered one of their lookouts while separating mush from wood.

  Misha and Harry continued to do their job, waiting patiently for the news from the other team. A cheer like that was always a good thing.

  When White returned, he was panting from the run.

  “They found a first-aid shipment, medicine that never made it to Africa,” he reported with a smile on his face.

  A small cheer went up from their team. Medicine was always a great find, especially if it came with supplies such as needles and proper bandages that hadn’t been used and washed several times over. Their elation was quickly cut off.

  “Herd!” a shout drifted over the container yard. It was quickly picked up by the other lookouts, who began scrambling down from their perches.

  Misha and Harry returned the box they were moving and swiftly evacuated the container with the others. Boyle relocked the container with the step stools still inside, as Misha ripped off his face mask. Pulling off a glove, he stuck two of his fingers in his mouth and whistled sharply. Bullet appeared at his side in an instant. A moment later, as everyone was running back toward the wall, Spring tore out from between the large metal boxes, immediately keeping pace.

  “Barrel!” Misha called out as he ran with the others. “Barrel!” His eyes darted everywhere, looking for the awkward dog but not landing upon him. He reached the wall and paused beside the ladder: all of the teams were scrabbling up one of three emergency rope ladders which had been hastily lowered.

  “Misha, come on,” Boyle said, patting him on the shoulder. He then grabbed Spring and handed the smaller dog to the next person going up, who carried her easily to the top of the wall.

  Misha tried whistling again. “Come on, Barrel.” He hated the idea of leaving a dog behind, but he knew he would have to if it came to that. Zombies started appearing between the containers. They were rotted like the bananas, only more dried out. This herd looked like an old one, with mummified husks staggering along on scrawny limbs, bones poking through thin flesh while lips were peeled back or gone, revealing grimy, broken teeth. Half-blind eyes bulged from lidless sockets. It was a good sign: they were less dangerous. The fresh, juicy ones were more deadly, especially the smarter ones, the ones who could still run and climb.

  “Give me Bullet,” Boyle ordered. “You can be the last one up, but you can’t carry two dogs if Barrel does come.”

  Before Misha could even give his consent, Boyle was hauling Bullet up the ladder, carrying him over one shoulder. Misha continued to wait, watching the dead get closer, watching them reach the open span between the wall and the unmoved containers.

  The last of the people reached the ladders. The rope ladders were pulled up behind the final person, and Misha climbed onto the lowest rung of the met
al one. He paused though; he couldn’t help it. He whistled again.

  “Misha!” Boyle barked at him from the top of the wall.

  As Misha took another step up, resigned to leaving Barrel behind, he heard a sharp bark. Looking back, he saw the dog burst between the legs of a few zombies, knocking them over in the process. He loped awkwardly toward Misha, his tongue hanging out.

  “Come on, boy!” Misha encouraged him. “Come on, Barrel!”

  Above him came the sound of a cocking rifle. A few zombies were getting close to Misha, and Boyle was preparing to take them down.

  Misha dropped back to the pavement as the Doberman mix reached him. Before the dog had even stopped moving, Misha was hoisting him up onto his shoulder. Turning sharply on his heel, he returned to the ladder and scrambled up. Arms wrapped around him and the dog as he reached the top, pulling him out of the way so that more hands could grab the ladder and haul it onto the wall as well.

  Once he was let go, Barrel stumbled away. He looked over the far side and whined, wanting to be put back down on the ground where Spring and Bullet had already been lowered.

  “You and your stinking dogs.” Boyle helped Misha to his feet.

  Misha just laughed, unable to control it. The joy of surviving an encounter generally had that effect. Together, they looked out into the yard, watching the diseased corpses come toward them.

  “At least they’re helping us move a cart,” Harry commented, pointing toward one of the alleyways. Several zombies kept bumping into their flat cart of wood, slowly pushing it toward them as it scraped along the side of a container.

  “How many do you think there are this time? Think we’ll be able to get back to work before the end of the day?” a woman from another team wondered.

  Boyle just shrugged. They would do what they always did when this happened: several people would stay on top of the wall, drawing them in from the yard, making noise if need be, and then taking them out with long, pointed objects. Sometimes it would take a few days, but other times the herd was small enough to take out in a couple of hours.

  Misha turned away from the yard. He picked up Barrel again and climbed down with him. Bullet immediately gave them a sniff check.

  “Looks like we have some time off,” Misha told the dogs. “Who wants to throw a ball?”

  He was answered by a trio of wagging tails.

  2

  Wycheck’s In Pain

  “Just a little farther. Just a little farther,” Wycheck kept whispering to himself, half the time so quietly that nothing came out. He dragged his right leg painfully behind him. He had escaped the zombies, but at what cost? His weapons were gone, his supplies were gone, his ribs were in all probability broken, and his leg definitely was. Every step was agony, but to stay still was to die. He knew there were living people around here somewhere. Not only had he seen evidence of it, but the soft white smoke of a cook fire drifted lazily up in the distance. Someone had to be there; he just had to reach it.

  It had been a stupid idea to come out here by himself, but he just had to get away on his own. Jasmine had been harassing him again, insisting that they were meant for one another. Wycheck knew differently, seeing as how he couldn’t stand to be near her for more than a few minutes at a time. He hadn’t even told Evans where he was going, or even that he was going. Evans would have sent out a search party, or maybe he had the whole group looking. Wycheck just had to survive until they found him. Could be that the smoke was theirs. It wasn’t impossible.

  “Just a little farther. Just a little farther.”

  It felt like the smoke wasn’t getting any closer. Hauling his broken body forward a few inches at a time was getting him nowhere. There was no other option. He couldn’t call out for help: the zombies could be close. There was nothing he could see that could assist in transporting him, nothing with wheels that he could move on his own. Stumble-step, drag. Stumble-step, drag. It was the only way forward.

  Sweat poured off his body, soaking his already blood-soaked clothing. He fought and struggled for every motion, every forward movement. He was going to survive this. After everything he had been through, all the death and pain, all the suffering, he was going to survive. Nothing was going to break him.

  Wycheck didn’t get to hear the crack of the rifle or feel the sting of the bullet before it shut him down forever.

  3

  Abby’s Tired

  “Come on, Abby, it’s time to get up.”

  Abby groaned and rolled over, burying herself deeper beneath the warm blankets of her bed.

  “Up!”

  The blankets were ripped away, leaving Abby exposed to a cool draft. She gasped, her eyes cracking open while her body reflexively curled tighter. Lauren stood at the end of the bed, a cheeky smile on her face as she held the bundle of blankets.

  “Can’t I take the day off?” Abby sighed as she sat up.

  “No can do, Poker-roo.” Lauren dropped the bedding and proceeded to pick out clothes for Abby to wear.

  “You’re very chipper this morning.” Abby slid off the bed and began her morning stretching routine on the floor.

  “Not all of us can wake up on the wrong side of the bed. I’ll start breakfast.” Lauren disappeared from the room.

  Abby’s bladder became insistent before she was done with her workout. Taking a break, she gathered up her clothes and left their bedroom. After relieving herself and brushing her teeth, Abby finished her routine on the tiles, skipping only one exercise that required more space than the bathroom allowed. She then showered, towel dried her thin, sandy hair, and quickly got dressed.

  “Claire and Peter already up?” Abby commented on their open doors as she carried her pyjamas back to her bedroom.

  “I think Claire ended up spending the night with the farmers top side; her bed doesn’t look like it’s been slept in.”

  “Again? Do you think it’s because she likes farming, or do you think a boy is involved?”

  “I think she just likes farming and being outside,” Lauren answered with a shrug. “She hasn’t mentioned a boy to me, and she’s not acting like she’s in love or anything.”

  “And Peter? Where’s he off to this morning?”

  “He left a note about going to the computer lab, but it didn’t say why. Maybe we can ask him when we get there.” Lauren served up their breakfast, which had been made from the rations delivered to their door earlier. “What are we working on today?”

  “I haven’t decided yet.”

  “Maybe this time pick a movie that I’ve seen. I’m more helpful with those.”

  “Name one.”

  While finishing their meal, Abby and Lauren listed off several movies to one another, picking a good one that they had both watched back before the Day. When the food was gone and the dishes were cleaned and put away, they left their apartment-like home. Walking across the blue floor, they held hands as they followed the dark grey arrows painted on the pale yellow walls of the underground building known as the Black Box. The arrows took them down a staircase and into the computer lab, which had originally been much bigger. The directions were formerly indicated by the gold arrows, but the computers weren’t as useful as they had been before and so were downgraded to a smaller space. Several terminals lined the walls of the room, with fewer than a handful of people seated at them. In a back corner sat Peter.

  “You’re up early,” Abby commented as she and Lauren walked over to him.

  “Woke up, couldn’t fall back asleep,” he answered, more absorbed in what was on the screen than in the women standing behind him.

  “What are you up to?” Lauren asked.

  “Studying.”

  “Studying what?” Abby was looking at the screen but couldn’t figure it out. Several formulas were spread across it, and half the words between them confused her.

  “Math,” Peter replied. He had never been one for talking. When Lauren had first taken charge of him, there had been concern because he was a baby who virtually ne
ver cried. Now, he was an eleven year old looking at complex formulas that Abby could barely recognize. And she had a near perfect memory and used to read science books.

  “Dr. Guptar give you this?” Lauren asked.

  Peter nodded.

  “Well, we’re about to start our recording. We won’t bother you, will we?”

  The gangly, wild-haired boy shook his head.

  Abby and Lauren left him alone to go to their own computer across the room. They had in essence claimed ownership of one of the terminals by the mere fact of being down there just about every day. Lauren sat before the keyboard and booted up the system, while Abby took the seat beside her and hooked a microphone over her ear, adjusting it in front of her mouth.

  “I’m glad Dr. Guptar is encouraging Peter,” Lauren spoke quietly before they began. Dr. Guptar was one of the computer scientists who already lived in the Black Box before they had arrived: a brilliant man who found himself more useless than not. Teaching Peter kept him occupied most days now. “Could you imagine if we were still trying to teach him math with the other kids?”

  “He’d be teaching us at this point. And probably getting frustrated.”

  “I sometimes wonder if he’ll be the next Einstein. Or Hawking.”

  Abby lifted a shoulder. “Could be. Or he could get bored and move on to something else.”

  “I like to dream that he’ll be the one to fix all of this. Make the Earth normal again.”

  “You know as well as I do that that’s impossible.”

  “Like I said, I dream. And I think we can get close to normal again. Our population is a hell of a lot lower than before, and we have to treat death differently, but we could get close.”

  “We should get started,” Abby said, gesturing to the computer. Lauren was right that humanity could probably get really close to what it had been before, but Abby didn’t like to think about it. She didn’t believe it was something that could happen in her lifetime, and was resigned to accepting the world as it was.