Survival Instinct: A Zombie Novel Paperback Read online

  “I tried, believe me I did. But I need to get home. I have a little girl I have to get to. If she hears about this, and she will, she’ll be so scared.” Real concern crossed the cop’s features as he slumped into the seat.

  Cillian felt for the guy, well, more for his kid, but he still wasn’t going to drive into that mob.

  “What’s your name, by the way? I’m Sam Carter.” The cop named Sam held out his hand.

  “Cillian Knight.” They clasped hands and shook once. Sam’s hand was disgustingly sweaty, so Cillian wiped his hand on his shirt, not caring if he offended the officer. Sam didn’t seem to notice.

  Slam!

  Both men jumped and turned towards the passenger door where something had just collided with it. Sam moved as far away from it as possible and put his hand on his pistol.

  A red hand reached up and smacked on the glass. It left a bloody print. Cillian tried to lean over Sam to see better, but the frightened policeman pushed him back.

  “They could be hurt,” Cillian justified, trying to push forward again.

  “No.” Sam continued to hold him back.

  A second bloody hand joined the first and they began hammering on the glass window. Thump-thump thump-thump thump thump thump thumpthumpthumpthump. Then they disappeared and started pulling on the handle, over and over again, as if the twentieth time it would suddenly be unlocked. The shriek of rage and frustration that followed caused Cillian to reconsider his curiosity and sit back in his seat.

  All sound suddenly stopped. The policeman and the fireman sat perfectly still, staring at the door. Neither of them even breathed.

  Another shriek pierced the quiet of the rig’s cab and a blood-covered boy threw himself into the side window. Both men jumped, Sam nearly landing in Cillian’s lap. Everything went silent again. Cillian realized he was near the other window and quickly moved away from it on instinct, pushing a reluctant Sam closer to the passenger door. He looked out into the side mirror and saw a girl walking up alongside the truck. She was clearly lost and confused, tears running down her face, ruining her black Gothic makeup. Or making it better, who knew with these kids.

  Cillian knew he should warn her about the crazy guy on the other side of the truck, but he couldn't move. He didn’t dare open the door or even crack the window. He was having enough trouble remembering to take in oxygen. He watched the girl pass right under him. As she reached the front of the truck, she looked around hesitantly, never noticing Cillian and Sam sitting in it. The girl then began to make her way toward the crowds in the distance. The men watched her progress in silence, hoping she would make it.

  The blood-soaked boy thought otherwise.

  He ran out after the girl, screaming. She turned around just in time for the boy to land both his feet onto her stomach. She hit the ground hard, her head bouncing once off the dirt and grass. The boy sat on her, clawing and biting at her chest. There was blood, and she screamed, but Cillian still couldn’t move to help. The girl’s screams reached a high when the boy pulled what looked like her collarbone right out of her chest with his teeth. He then grabbed it with his hands and stabbed it into the bloody hole, silencing her pain.

  He then turned his attention back to the truck.

  The boy was now covered in even more blood as he ran back at the fire truck. He jumped onto the wide front bumper and began beating on the windshield with the girl’s collarbone. Sam starting screaming when the windshield cracked.

  “Shoot him!” Cillian was pressing himself into his seat.

  “What?” Sam had forgotten about his pistol.

  “Shoot the fucker! Self defence!” The crack got bigger.

  Sam tried to get out his pistol, but he fumbled with it. When the crack got larger still, he dropped the gun on the floor. Cillian scooped it up. He had talked to enough cops to know how to turn the safety off and did so now. He pointed the gun at the boy and fired.

  Part of the windshield smashed out. The bullet passed through the attacker’s shoulder, throwing him off balance and off the bumper.

  “You got him!” Sam actually cheered.

  It was a short-lived moment as the boy reappeared quickly. He jammed the bone into the bullet hole in the windshield and started to pry it bigger.

  “Shoot him again!” The cop was clearly torn between keeping his eyes on the boy and turning to climb into the back seat.

  Cillian once again pointed the gun and fired. This time he missed.

  “Christ!” It seemed Sam finally decided he’d feel better in the back seat and climbed over.

  Cillian fired off another shot. He hit the boy again, but this time, it just seemed to pass through his chest as if it was nothing. And the hole in the windshield just got larger with every shot. The boy started to use his hands to try and get in, peeling away the safety glass and causing deep wounds to his fingers.

  “Stay the fuck down!” Cillian screamed at him. He put the gun right up against the windshield where the boy’s head was and pulled the trigger. Blood and brains splattered out behind him as the boy dropped. His arm got caught in the windshield causing him to hang down the front of the rig like a gruesome hood-ornament, the collarbone still loosely clutched in his hand.

  Cillian and Sam sat in silence, waiting for something else to happen. Nothing did.

  “Is he dead?” Sam whispered, fearing his voice would set off some terrible reaction.

  “I shot him in the head.” Cillian didn’t bother to whisper and the loudness of his voice shocked him. “I shot him, in the head.” Cillian looked at the gun in his hand. He tossed it onto the passenger seat as if it had suddenly become red hot and then absentmindedly wiped his hands on his shirt. It was a tool of death.

  “What about the girl?” Sam leaned forward, trying to see out the unbroken half of the windshield.

  “She had her collar bone stabbed into her heart,” Cillian snapped at him. “I’m pretty fucking sure she’s pretty fucking dead.”

  “I’m not that sure.” Sam pointed out the window.

  Cillian turned and looked. The girl was trying to get up, her one arm hanging limp and useless. Somehow, she managed to get to her feet and started looking around.

  “What the hell?” Cillian leaned forward as if moving slightly closer would dispel the illusion.

  “I told you man.” Sam leaned back, his voice rising to a higher pitch, “I told you they get back up.”

  The girl looked at the fire truck. Without warning, she ran at it.

  “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.” Sam disappeared in the back seat, hiding.

  The girl jumped up on the bumper and pulled the dead boy out of the broken window with her one arm. The moment he was clear, she started trying to get in through the same hole. Unlike the boy, she was disturbingly silent, which meant that Cillian could easily hear Sam whimpering in the back.

  “Goddamnit!” Cillian got his heavily booted foot up and kicked the girl in the face as she tried to climb in through the windshield. She got knocked off the bumper but recovered quickly and came right back. Cillian scrambled for the gun he so heedlessly tossed away, not remembering why he would have done that. Before he could grab it, the girl was coming in again. He tried to kick her once more, but because of the awkward angle, he missed. The girl grabbed his leg with her good arm and started gnawing on his boot. The heavy material that caused him so much discomfort in the day’s heat now protected him. While she was distracted, Cillian managed to reach the gun.

  “I hate this shit! You mother fucker!” The firefighter pointed the gun at the side of the girl’s head. She turned to bite his hand and Cillian shot her full on in the face. There was more blood and brains, only this time they splattered the inside of the vehicle.

  Cillian yelled in frustration and kicked the limp body out the window. It collapsed with a thump on top of the other one. Still furious, Cillian sat up and looked in the backseat. Sam was still cowering back there.

  “You... are officially... the worst cop... I have EVER MET!” Cil
lian flicked the safety back on and threw the pistol at Sam’s head.

  “Are they gone?” Sam whispered as he sat up, cradling the pistol to his chest.

  “I don’t know, maybe they’ll decide to get back up and attack again.” Cillian threw his arms up. “Hand me that coat will you?” He reached over the backseat for a firefighter’s jacket.

  “This one?” Sam picked it up and handed it to him. “What do you want it for?”

  “I need something to wipe away the grey matter and there’s nothing else inside the truck.” He started using the outside of the jacket to clear gore off the steering wheel and the inside of the windshield.

  “Grey matter? You mean brains?”

  “Of course I mean brains. Calling it grey matter just makes it easier to deal with,” Cillian clenched his teeth. This was not part of his job description. Cops carried guns. Cops were supposed to shoot people if shooting had to be done. Firefighters were only supposed to save people. Cillian was running on autopilot, doing his best not to think about it.

  “Here, these should help.” Sam handed some firefighter’s gloves up to Cillian.

  Cillian put on the gloves and wiped away the rest of the chunks. “You know, you could also help.” He then started breaking out the rest of the broken windshield on the passenger side.

  “Why are you breaking that out?” The cowardly cop shrank back into the seat again.

  “Because then I’ll be able to see better when we drive out of here.” When Cillian finished breaking out the glass, he put his jacket down on the bloody driver’s seat, clean side up, and sat on it. He tried to clean the glass in front of him some more, but just ended up smearing the blood around. Only partial visibility was achieved.

  “I thought you didn’t want to drive through that crowd.” Sam started to climb into the passenger seat again.

  Cillian pushed him back, the blood on his gloves leaving a mark on Sam’s chest. “I’m not going through them. You’ll want to stay back there.”

  “But they’re between us and all the exits.” Sam put on a seat belt. “Even the vehicle entrance is clogged.”

  “We’re not going through an entrance.” As he turned the keys that had been left in the ignition, the truck started up with a rumble. Cillian let out a small sigh of relief that it didn’t have any engine problems.

  “Then how are we getting out?”

  “Did they tell you much about this park, Officer Sam?” Cillian put the rig in drive and slowly pulled out from between the other fire truck and the police cruiser it had been sitting between.

  “Not really. Just where the exits were. I was told more about the concert and how security was going to work.”

  “Well, we firefighters got a more thorough breakdown in case a fire did break out.” He started carefully turning the fire truck around. He tried very hard not to think about the two people he had shot and was now running over, repeatedly. “You see these big brick walls all the way around?”

  “Yes.”

  “They’re actually two walls. Two brick walls with a large gap in the middle and a flat stone lay on top to make them appear much thicker than they are. We were told this because if a fire were to break out near them, the air inside could super heat and possibly even cause an explosion. It’s highly unlikely, but still, not a good design.” The fire truck was now completely turned around. Cillian found his helmet and put it on his head.

  “And what does that have to do with us?”

  “I suggest you duck your head.” He stamped his foot on the accelerator, turning on the sirens and flashers for good measure.

  “Wait, you’re not... Oh God, you are.” Sam bent over, placing his head between his knees and his hands on his head. One of them still clutched the pistol.

  “Hold on to your ass.” Cillian was speeding the truck right at the wall.

  Just before they hit, he ducked down, holding his helmet tightly to his head. The fire truck rammed into the wall, sending bricks in all directions. Many crashed in through the already-broken half of the windshield and several more got in by breaking the rest. The heaviest hit came from the stone slab. It hit into the truck cab’s roof making a big dent and causing the sirens to sound distorted. It scraped along the roof for a moment before sliding off to the side.

  Once Cillian thought they were through, he tramped his foot down on the brakes. They didn’t stop in time before ramming into several cars on the street. The crunching squeal of metal on metal drew Cillian back up. They were in the middle of the street, jammed between a couple of cars.

  He groaned and pushed the chunks of brick off himself. After putting the rig in park, he partly stood up and looked out through the broken windshield. Cillian looked at the cars around him first and noticed that they were mercifully empty.

  “You’re a crazy man,” Sam groaned from the back seat and sat up, rubbing his neck.

  “Well we’re out of the park.” Cillian sat back down in the driver’s seat. He put the truck back in drive and started scraping his way through the vehicles. The easiest route was the one they took, up the centre of the road. The big fire engine plowed the cars to either side out of the way. Cillian thought about the guys and how they were going to hate what he had done to the rig.

  * * *

  “Where are we going?” Sam unbuckled himself and started climbing back up into the front. The constant bouncing off other cars made it a somewhat difficult thing for him to do, but he finally got up there. Before being able to sit, he had to first shove some bricks into the foot well and toss others out through the broken windshield. Once seated properly again, he buckled back up.

  “I don’t know,” Cillian finally answered. He was choosing his route randomly based on the space between cars.

  “You’re bleeding,” Sam gestured to Cillian’s head.

  Cillian took his hands off the wheel for a brief moment to strip off a glove. He touched his bare hand to his forehead while the other resumed steering. It stung a little and his hand came back bloody. It seemed that, despite the helmet, something managed to hit him hard enough to draw blood. “I don’t think it’s bad.”

  “Still, we should head to the hospital. Maybe there’ll be someone there who can tell us what we should be doing.”

  “That’s right, why haven’t I heard anything over the radio? Try getting someone on it.” Cillian grabbed a handset and passed it to Sam. The moment he looked away from where they were going, they slammed into something and came to a dead stop.

  “Oh, God,” Sam whined.

  Cillian looked out the windshield. There was a huge multi-car pileup in front of the rig. “I’m getting out to look around.”

  “Are you shitting me? Out there?”

  “You have a gun, remember?” Cillian had to kick his door to get it open. He took off his other glove and jumped out of the truck. Looking around, he saw panicked people running all over the place. Except that not all of them were panicked. Some were running after others with murderous intent in their eyes. Cillian couldn’t see as much as he would have liked, so he climbed up on top of the fire truck.

  “Cillian! Where’d you go?” Sam called from the other side of the truck.

  “I climbed on top!” Cillian rolled his eyes. He couldn’t believe his luck getting stuck with this complete idiot. At least he had that gun though. They both would have been screwed without it. It didn’t take long for Sam to climb up on top with Cillian. He dragged up two firefighter jackets with him.

  “Here, you should put this on.” Sam handed Cillian the jacket he had used to wipe away the gore. He then put on the clean jacket himself.

  “One, this jacket is disgusting. And two, it’s like forty degrees out here.” Cillian shook the jacket out over the side of the truck, trying to knock the chunks off it.

  “I noticed only the outside was... dirty, and it’s the only other jacket in there. If someone attacks us, they shouldn’t be able to bite through the material.”

  So maybe he wasn’t a complete id
iot. Cillian put the jacket on as he started looking around again.

  As far as he could see up the street, cars were stopped and abandoned. Some were even piled onto sidewalks as a result of their drivers trying to pass the traffic, only to end up slamming into light posts, garbage cans, mailboxes, and bus shelters. Cillian thought he saw a way around it though. He pulled his helmet off, tossed it over the side of the truck, and looked to the sky for a moment, trying to clear his head. A headache was starting to form, most likely from the bump on his skull, but maybe just from Sam’s constant whining. He also really wanted a cigarette. That’s when he spotted him.

  On a four-story building nearby, a man with a camera under one arm was looking frantically up the street. He kept glancing over his shoulder at something. Cillian could probably guess what.

  “Sam, follow me.” Cillian made his way across to the back of the rig, having to step carefully around the damage the stone slab had caused.

  “What is it?” Sam stumbled a few times but made it over to him. They stood at the base of the fire truck’s turntable ladder.

  “See that guy?” Cillian pointed up to the roof while he flipped some switches.

  “What about him?” Although Sam shielded his eyes from the sun with a hand, as he looked up, his eyes squinted into narrow slits anyway.

  “We’re going to help him. Pay attention.” When Sam looked, Cillian pointed to the levers before him. “This extends the ladder up and down and this one moves it left and right. You have to get me up there.” He got on the ladder and started to make his way to the end of it.

  “But...” Sam was nervous as all hell.

  “Just do it, Sam!” Cillian snapped. He couldn’t stop thinking about the girl outside the rig, the one he didn’t warn. He didn’t help her. He didn’t help any of them. He killed two people. This man though, he thought he might be able to help him.

  The ladder shook and moved in jerks as Sam worked the controls, but Cillian held on tight. He rose up and began moving towards the man on the roof. Cillian didn’t bother calling to him, as it looked like the guy had given up. That, and climbing the ladder, was exhausting; he needed to save his breath. The man was just sitting on the ledge, doing nothing but filming with this large camera on his shoulder. Cillian wasn’t going to give up on him though.