Survival Instinct (Book 3): Fighting Instinct Read online

  Hanna watched a handful of boats slowly passing the cruise ship. In the light from the flares, she could make out that they were full of men with guns. Surely, they couldn’t all have come from this cruise ship. It couldn’t be people from the foreign cruise ship who were attacking the Diana. Then again, these new boats were completely ignoring the ship that Hanna was aboard. There was clearly some piece of information that she was lacking.

  Sitting down on the walkway, Hanna stopped to think about what she should do next. Her original plan had to be put on hold. There was no way for her to know which way they were heading, or where the nearest land was. Nor did this seem like a good time to be scavenging the ship.

  One idea was just to wait. She could find somewhere on the ship to hole up, and then just wait things out. It wasn’t a bad idea, but Hanna didn’t like it. There was no telling how long she’d be waiting. Besides, those men with the guns might end up searching the ship from top to bottom, and they might find her.

  She could always join the men.

  The thought was quickly expunged from Hanna’s mind. The idea made her feel sick to her stomach. There was no way she could betray the Diana again. If the men with guns found her, she’d fight them to the death before joining them.

  That left just one last option that Hanna could think of: fighting the men. She had no way of attacking the boats slipping past, but it was clear to her that someone on their side was driving this ship. She had made a lot of bad assumptions and even worse decisions in the past, but this one seemed right.

  A lot of your other decisions seemed right as well, Hanna thought to herself, and it was true. The bomb hadn’t really seemed right, but a lot of what she had done afterward did. How many times had she made the wrong call? Done the wrong thing?

  Sitting on the small walkway, Hanna really thought this one over. She tried to come at her predicament from all angles, but they all led to the same place. She should go up to the bridge and fight whoever was there. The plan sounded like suicide, and maybe it was, but Hanna felt she needed to do this. If she could stop this ship, then maybe, just maybe, she could redeem herself for the bomb. Obviously, there was no way anyone could forgive Hanna, she couldn’t even forgive herself, but maybe they would allow her back on board. Maybe she could go home and live the rest of her life in confinement, which was more than she thought she deserved.

  Hanna got to her feet. She had made her decision. Whether it was the right one or not, she was going to find out, but she had made her choice.

  ***

  From the walkway alongside the remaining lifeboats, Hanna made her way back inside the ship. It was a lot noisier since the last time she was in there. It seemed all the zombies on board had become active. There were a lot of groans and moans echoing about the ship. Hanna noticed there wasn’t any screaming, which she found odd. Although a lot of zombies were slow and shambling these days, there were still a few smarter and faster ones, and they occasionally screamed a blood-chilling cry. Based on the sounds alone, this ship contained no fast zombies. That was good. The fast ones were terrifying. The slow ones were scary as well, especially in hordes, still it was the fast ones that Hanna feared most. They were like animals that were unable to feel either pain or fear, just hunger for flesh.

  Hanna shuddered despite the warmth of her sweater and the southern night air.

  She was currently on the fifth deck, and needed to get up to the tenth deck if she wished to enter the bridge. After making it up only a single flight of stairs, she ran into trouble.

  About a dozen zombies lingered on the steps above her. The nearest of them spotted her and stumbled down the stairs, prompting the others to do the same. Hanna turned and ran for the steps on the other side of the ship, only to be confronted by nearly a dozen more of the dead. Hanna had no choice but to dash into the café between the staircases. Unbeknownst to her, she found the same barricade that Jon had, and came to the same conclusion it had been built as some sort of last stand. She ran toward it, intending to scramble over it, and maybe escape through the back. There were a handful of zombies hanging around in the café, all of them slowly turning toward her, but Hanna was sure she could reach the barricade ahead of them.

  Just as Hanna was about to climb, the head of a dead one rose up over the edge of the barricade. The thing scrambled up on top of a table, not even pausing for a moment before coming at Hanna.

  Hanna backed up two quick steps; all she had time for before the thing was on her. It was a smart one. She had hoped that no screams meant there were no smart ones, but she hadn’t been lucky enough for that.

  As the zombie grabbed at her, its mouth hanging silently open, Hanna lifted one of her feet and kicked as hard as she could into the thing’s stomach. Her foot didn’t just press against the flesh, but punctured partly through it, covering her shoe in thick, black goo that had probably once been blood. The zombie’s broken fingernails scraped down the sleeves of her sweater as it was knocked back, somehow managing not to find purchase. As it came at her again, Hanna raised her frying pan and smashed it across the face, knocking the grotesque thing down.

  The other zombies were closing in now. Soon, Hanna would have to deal with them as well as this fast monstrosity. She backed up several more steps, heading toward a door she could see in a corner near the entrance. Only one zombie was between her and that door.

  The fast one was up again, moving toward her before it even got its feet completely under it. Hanna wound up and smashed it again. The blow should have been a skull crusher, but the zombie either ducked or stumbled at the last moment, its shoulder rising up to take the impact instead. Although not taken out, the fast zombie was sent sprawling to the floor again.

  Hanna turned, still swinging her frying pan. The slow zombie had gotten close enough for all of its teeth to get smashed in. It fell to the floor in a crumpled heap. Hanna didn’t wait to see if it was going to get up. She bolted for the door the moment the path was clear.

  Behind her, she could hear the fast zombie running after her. Its dead feet sounded disturbingly alive.

  Bursting through the glass door, Hanna quickly turned and tried to slam it shut. The hydraulic hinge worked against her. The zombie smashed into the door, attempting to force it back open.

  Hanna was on something similar to the walkway she had been on earlier. The door led out onto a little platform, which had a staircase leading down to the walkway. Hanna had noted the staircase earlier, but had decided to enter the ship through a different doorway. Now, bracing her back against the railing, she tried to hold the door closed with both hands.

  The zombie’s rotting face was flattened against the glass. Suddenly, it pulled its head back and smashed its forehead into the clear pane. Then it did it again. And again.

  Hanna had no idea how strong the glass was. It was possible the thing would kill itself before bursting through, but she couldn’t take that chance. Besides, the other zombies in the café were going to build up behind it, and then the zombies from the stairs were going to build up behind them. There was no way to hold them all back. Hanna’s only option was to take on the smarter zombie, and outrun the dumb ones.

  She waited for the zombie to pull its head back for another smash, and then threw herself toward the stairs and down them. The door burst open, and the zombie’s momentum carried it forward into the railing. If it had been on its own, the zombie might have recovered its balance, but as it was, all the zombies behind it crashed into the thing. More of the fast zombie’s stomach was split open as it was pushed over the railing. Guts fell out and became tangled in the flailing arms and legs of the stupid zombies behind. The smart zombie fell to the walkway below, its intestines trailing behind it. Hanna wanted to vomit, but she saw an opportunity. The fast one was held in place, tangled up in a leash made of its own organs. As disgusting as that was, it gave Hanna time to run down the walkway.

  It wasn’t long before those same footfalls as in the café were after her again. The fast zombie must
have broken free of its own guts.

  She turned and made her stand. The zombie was running full tilt at her, head lowered, mouth open, stomach skin flapping to reveal brief glimpses of a mostly hollowed out gut.

  Hanna wound up with the frying pan again.

  As the smart and fast zombie got close, she swung. If she wasn’t sure it had ducked before, she was sure it did this time. That was okay, she was prepared for it. Hanna wasn’t aiming for the head, but swung low, striking the zombie in the ribs when it raised its arms. There was a loud snap as several ribs broke. The force of Hanna’s blow knocked the zombie off its feet for a third time. It was slammed into the walkway’s railing, and Hanna made sure it went over by swiftly grabbing its leg and heaving the thing over. Other bones broke as it crunched into the solid wood deck beneath the walkway.

  Hanna knew there was no quick way up from the fourth deck to that section of the walkway. If the fast zombie was still mobile, it wasn’t going to be a problem for a while. Hanna went through the nearest door that led back inside, before the slow zombies falling down the stairs and over each other could assemble themselves to come after her.

  Needing to go forward, Hanna instead headed for the rear of the ship. Zombies were still likely to be congregating around the staircase she had first tried, and she thought the stairs at the back were a better idea. She made it up to the seventh deck before zombies blocked her way again. They didn’t notice her like the others had. Hanna checked both the port and starboard side stairs, but there was no way to get past them on either side. She didn’t like it, but she headed for the front of the ship once more. She was only one deck higher than the last time she had been forward and hoped it was enough.

  Sticking to the hallway on the opposite side from where she had attempted to go up before, Hanna moved as quickly as she dared, holding her frying pan at the ready. There was only one zombie in the hall, and it was painfully slow. She dispatched it easily, leaving the corpse behind her with a caved in skull.

  As she came upon the staircase, she slowed down considerably. Creeping along the wall, Hanna approached the stairs as cautiously as she could. There was nothing around the landing. She inched closer and closer, more steps becoming visible with every movement. When the landing came into view, Hanna stopped again. There were feet on the landing. Lots of them.

  Crouching down, Hanna brought more of the scene into view. There was a cluster of zombified children, all shuffling in a circle, one following the other. Hanna shuddered. Undead children were the worst to see. She found it easier to pretend they were just little people. Sometimes this was hard to do, especially when some of the kiddies still had braces, or large, childish ribbons in their hair, or were dragging around a tattered stuffed animal.

  She couldn’t see a way to get past them, or even approach them without being seen. Maybe there was a way to get into the spa? Just as it was on the Diana, the spa was located on this deck. There was a single spiral staircase on the Diana that connected the spa with the workout facilities above, but there was no way of knowing if this ship was like that as well. Besides, the more Hanna looked around, the more she realized there was no way to sneak by the children without being seen.

  Moving back, Hanna went to where the bank of elevators was situated. Through the glass sides, she could just make out the staircase on the starboard side of the ship. A few zombies were lingering around it as well. How was she supposed to go up with all the staircases blocked?

  Movement drew her attention directly across the opening above the promenade. One of the glass sided, pill-shaped elevators over there was moving upward. While Hanna watched, it stopped at the deck below hers and opened its doors. Nothing went in or out, and then the elevator closed its doors and moved upward to Hanna’s deck. A zombie was standing inside the elevator repeatedly pressing all the buttons. When the doors opened, the zombie stopped, looked at them for a moment, and then went back to pressing the buttons. It paused and looked at the doors for the same length of time when they closed again. Hanna wasn’t sure the zombie actually knew what it was doing. She bet that if she waited long enough, the elevator would come back down, stopping at every deck, and the zombie would still be inside. Some faint memory, possibly muscle memory depending on what the zombie had done in life, remembered that buttons were to be pressed, but probably didn’t know what those buttons did.

  Still, it helped Hanna out of her predicament. As she had assumed with the lights, she had thought the elevators would be on lockdown to conserve energy. She was so used to them not working on the Diana that she hadn’t considered them an option.

  Making an ass of yourself again, she thought.

  Hanna pressed the button nearest to her and then went to the end of the elevator nook where a small balcony jutted out over the promenade. Crouching down on the balcony, she was hidden from the elevators. There could easily be another zombie hanging around in one of them on her side.

  A soft ding filled the air as the elevator cab arrived. The skin on the back of Hanna’s neck prickled as she realized the children might be drawn to the noise. It wasn’t one of the glass elevators jutting out over the promenade that had arrived, but one of the closed in ones along the opposite wall. Hanna could see the open door, and watched for anything that might come out of it. Nothing did, and the doors eventually slid closed on their own. Hanna waited a little longer. Finally, she crept off the balcony and moved to where she could see the children. As far as she could tell, they hadn’t reacted to the elevator at all, and continued to wear a ring into the carpet with their shuffling feet. Hanna went back to the elevators and pressed the call button again.

  The same elevator as before opened, as it was still sitting there. Hanna frowned. She didn’t want to ride in that elevator; she’d rather be able to see what the floor was like through the glass siding of one of the other elevators before getting off it. She ceased frowning when she thought up a simple solution. Pressing the button for the tenth deck, Hanna slipped out of the elevator cab before the doors closed again. Once it was moving, she pressed the call button for the third time and returned to her hiding place on the balcony. From there, she watched one of the glass elevators rise up to her position. She could see that it was empty, and was grateful for it.

  As Hanna entered the glass-sided elevator, she suddenly worried about the one she had already sent up. The children may have ignored the elevator’s arrival, but that didn’t mean that any zombies up on the tenth would do the same. If that were the case, they’d already be lingering around when her elevator arrived. She thought that maybe she should go up to the eleventh deck, so that she could assess the state of the tenth as she passed it.

  The elevator doors slid closed while it waited on Hanna to press a button for the floor she wanted. She shook her head and pressed the number ten. There was no point in going to another deck; there could just as easily be a bunch of zombies up there. The elevator rose swiftly and relatively silently. Hanna watched the other floors as she went up. There were a few zombies here and there, but no real gatherings. Only one of the dead noticed her as she went past the eighth deck, but it didn’t know how to reach her. The zombie walked into the railing and reached up, looking like a refugee crying for help. It was almost sad.

  The doors slid open with another soft ding as Hanna reached the tenth deck. She held her frying pan at the ready even though she saw nothing through the glass doors. No zombies came rushing around any corners, which allowed Hanna to relax a little. Before the doors could close again, she stuck her foot in the gap to keep them open. Hanna noticed a panel inlaid in the floor of the elevator cab when she did this. It had Tuesday written upon it. Hanna couldn’t remember what day of the week it was, but she didn’t think it was Tuesday. She hoped it wasn’t; she had never liked Tuesdays in her old life.

  Hanna tiptoed out of the elevator, keeping a sharp eye out for undead. She moved toward the hallways with no problem; it was the hallways themselves that were the difficulty.

  Looking
toward the bridge, Hanna saw that the narrow passage was packed with zombies. Apparently, they had learned that someone was in there and were trying to get through the door. There was certainly no way around these zombies, not like the others. She needed a distraction, something that could lure them away, but what?

  Hanna retreated to the small balcony off the elevator nook where she felt safe enough to go through her supplies again. She found that she was hungry again, and ate a bit of the emergency supplies. They tasted like dust, but nourishment was nourishment. Still, she wished she had a bit of water with which to wash it down. Hanna looked over the supplies while she ate. Most of them couldn’t help her at all. The whistle had promise, but she wasn’t sure how she could use it. Simply blowing the whistle would draw the zombies straight to her, and she didn’t think she’d be able to give them the runaround up here. As Hanna looked at the flare gun, she realized what she had to do.

  Tearing open the package of flares, Hanna found three of them inside. Instructions on how to load and use the flare gun were printed on the backside of the package. Reading the instructions carefully, and following the diagrams, Hanna loaded and unloaded the flare gun several times, making sure she had it right. It was very simple, but she really didn’t want to screw this up. When she felt she had it right, Hanna repacked everything. The two extra flares she put into the front pocket of the sweater she took, which hung below the edge of her lifejacket. Taking several slow, deep breaths, Hanna steadied herself for what she was about to do. Before indecision could take hold of her, she got to her feet, the frying pan in one hand and the flare gun in the other. The whistle was clamped between her teeth.

  Hanna went back to the hallway. She checked only once and then didn’t hesitate to follow through with her plan. Hanna blew a short blast through the whistle, then quickly snaked her arm around the corner and fired the flare gun. The flare burst forth, launching itself down the hall and away from Hanna and the zombies. Hanna didn’t watch where it went or what the zombies’ reactions were. She quickly returned to the elevator nook and hid on the small balcony again.