“Yes. I’ve decided that you can go and train with the others.”
Dakota’s heart began to race with fear, which was in complete contrast to the smile that spread across her features. “Thank you, Cameron.”
“You should be thanking Bronislav. He’s the one who ultimately convinced me. He said they need the older kids like you to help give the younger ones more confidence.”
This surprised Dakota, as she hadn’t realized that Bronislav and Cameron had talked. It seemed that once the captain had decided to go ahead with this idea, he was fully onboard and committed to it.
“How about we eat breakfast together this morning?” Cameron suggested.
“Okay. I have to pee first though.”
“So do I.”
As Dakota climbed down from the top bunk, Cameron rolled away from her spot against the wall to the side of the bed. They both got dressed in the dim light, not needing more than what was coming through the bottle and not wanting to waste a candle.
“It’s weird not seeing Misha’s dogs everywhere,” Dakota commented as they walked toward the wooden stalls bolted to the cement pad that lined the river: the structures that served as their toilets.
“They’ll be back sooner than most of the others,” Cameron commented.
“If they’re okay.”
“Yes, if that. But they’re with Misha and are quite capable of handling themselves if any unexpected events occur.” Cameron never lied to Dakota—as far as she knew—and wasn’t afraid to share information with her. So while her words weren’t the typical kind for comforting, they did make Dakota feel better. She really liked all the dogs, and she had to admit that she thought Misha was pretty cool too. Weird, but cool.
The line for the toilets was long that day; it seemed every kid had gotten up with the sun. There were nervous caretakers and parents standing all about, yet the general air was one of excitement. Dakota wondered if they all felt the same worry deep in their guts that she did.
Because it was a big day for many of them, Dakota had subconsciously thought that they would get more rations for breakfast, and was therefore disappointed when she received the exact same discouraging meal that she always did. She didn’t even get a chance to try the alligator meat as it was only for adults, due to the slight chance it wasn’t cooked properly and still carried an infection. She sat at a table with Cameron, Hope, and Riley. The doc wore a baggy T-shirt; Dakota knew that Riley still had stitches and bandages and things around her chest. She tried not to think about it, but every now and then her friend’s mom would wince and carefully change her posture. Ever since her double mastectomy because of a cancer scare, it had become a lot easier for everyone to tell the identical twins apart, but Dakota could already do that, and didn’t like the reminder that the same thing could happen to Cameron.
“Do you know who’s going to be teaching us?” Dakota asked during breakfast.
“I’m not sure,” Cameron replied. “Bronislav didn’t give us any details. I think he was still putting everything together.”
“I don’t like how last minute all of this is,” Riley added.
“Mom, we’ll be fine,” Hope sighed.
“I don’t mind you receiving training; it’s going outside the wall that I don’t like.”
“I doubt he would send us out alone,” Dakota did her best to soothe the adults. “And it’s not like we’d be going very far. He just wants to use us to make a field ready for planting. We’ll probably be right beside the wall, and the guards up there will also watch over us.”
“I understand,” Riley nodded. “But I still don’t like it. There are times you’re going to find yourself in the same position, having to do things you know are right but that you’d rather not do.”
Coming from a woman who had voluntarily had her breasts surgically removed, the words carried more weight. Dakota really hoped she wouldn’t have to make that sort of decision.
After they had finished breakfast and placed their dishes on the washing pile, Cameron and Riley accompanied Dakota and Hope outside. They immediately found where they were supposed to meet with Bronislav, where a pile of kids and a handful of guardians were lingering around, but Bronislav himself was currently nowhere in sight.
“Will you be okay if I leave you?” Cameron asked Dakota. “I have rounds to make.”
“I’ll be fine.” Dakota wanted her to go, in fact.
Riley also left, so Hope and Dakota were free to wander about the group. They located Adam and Becky, who were on their own, and stood with them. Peter was lingering at the edge of the group with one of his caretakers, Lauren. She was basically his mom, having raised him since he was just a year old. Dakota wondered what it would be like to have spent her life with the same couple raising her. Emma also stood with her parents to one side.
When Bronislav finally did arrive, he wasn’t alone. He had brought Freya with him, which caused Dakota’s heart to instantly speed up. Dakota knew that Freya was a fierce warrior. She was surprised that the Jamaican woman wasn’t out scavenging, although maybe she preferred to stay put because she was a mute. Learning sign language was a must for everybody because it allowed them to safely communicate in silence, but it also let them speak with Freya. A disease of some kind had paralyzed her vocal cords, which meant she couldn’t call out any kind of a warning. If you weren’t looking at her, she couldn’t talk to you.
“All right, we’ve got a good grouping here,” Bronislav said. “Parents, guardians, if you don’t mind, I believe you all have your own jobs to do. Your kids will be well taken care of, and they won’t be going over the wall today.”
Many of the adults still hanging about were hesitant to leave, but they obeyed. Peter and Emma were soon both standing with Dakota and the others, as the whole group of kids gathered close to Bronislav so that he wouldn’t have to shout.
“So who’s ready to learn how to defend themselves outside the wall?” Bronislav asked.
Dakota raised her hand along with most of the others. As Freya’s hard gaze swept over her, she prayed that she was actually ready for this.
I: The Sky
Randall sat on the floor, listening to the conversation going on in the next room. He wished he could join in, that he could laugh at whatever jokes they were telling one another. But he was old, and learning more than a few words and phrases of their language had proven impossible, despite the immersion. He was all but alone; only one other man could speak his language, and he had not taken a liking to Randall.
Standing up, Randall walked over to the floor-to-ceiling windows to stand amongst his plants. They were going to need watering soon. Water was the most precious resource, carefully rationed and jealously guarded. A lot of men and women had died to build the pumps, and still more had perished in the maintenance of them.
Leaning against the glass, Randall looked down. Despite how often he did this, a thrill of fear still fluttered its way through his belly. The ground was so far below, that the walking dead were mere specks, even harder to distinguish because of the sand that covered both them and the streets. Randall wasn’t even supposed to be here when the virus broke out. When he retired, he had originally wanted to go to Hawaii. But just before it was time to plan his first trip since his twenties, Randall happened to watch a Mission Impossible movie. Tom Cruise scrambling around outside the Burj Kalafi had enamoured Randall with the building. He decided that Dubai would be the first stop on his trip, and then he’d pop around to a few other countries before finally landing in Hawaii. He had worked hard for many years, and deserved to see the places he wanted to see.
The virus broke out in Canada as he was on the plane. Three days after he had checked in, the massive hotel closed its doors, refusing to let anyone in or out. They said it was for public safety, and Randall had no reason to disbelieve them. Unfortunately, an infected individual, who had checked into the Burj Kalafi the day after Randall, attacked a small part of the populace out on the streets and spread the diseas
e. The hundreds of people within the one hundred sixty-three storey hotel were kept safe from Dubai’s outbreak, but they could only survive inside for so long before resources became scarce, and people began to die either getting them or fighting over them. Randall didn’t like to think about those times. His limp made it difficult to forget.
Randall’s room—not the one he had originally booked—didn’t have a view of the ocean. Instead, he faced outward toward the desert and so he could monitor the progress of the coming sandstorm. Sandstorms were both a blessing and a curse. The bad ones shredded the dead, sometimes burying them for a few hours, so that it was safer for people to exit the building. But the sand also wreaked havoc with their water system, forcing people to go outside.
The coming storm didn’t look too bad. Randall moved away from the window and limped over to his bed. He picked up his e-reader and carried it pressed to his chest as he circled his room. Filled with books he wanted to read, the device had eventually run out of batteries, leaving them inaccessible. Randall wasn’t sure why he continued to cling to the hunk of plastic. Maybe it was because it was the only thing he had left from home. All the rest of his luggage had been stolen one night.
Following a worn path in his carpet, Randall exercised his legs. Others jogged out in the hallways, but Randall hadn’t been able to manage a fast pace since even before he had injured his leg.
Another burst of laughter came from the room next door. He could hear it clearly, as both doors were propped open. It was the best way to get light into the halls, and people got nervous whenever someone shut themselves away for too long, even someone who could barely communicate with everyone else.
When he finished his walking, Randall sat on his chair and waited. He had become very good at waiting. It was not a skill his profession had taught him, but one he had been forced to learn over the years due to long periods with nothing to occupy his mind but his thoughts. Some people hadn’t been able to learn how to wait. They tended to make use of their belts in such a way that they’d never have to wait for anything ever again. But Randall could wait. His belt remained on his hips, holding up a pair of pants that might have fit him before his forced diet.
A man, whose name was unknown to Randall but whose face was recognizable, stepped through Randall’s door. This was a man who often looked at him with pity, which was better than those who looked at him with disgust, anger, or annoyance. The words he spoke were ones that Randall knew and had been expecting. In his mind, they translated to your turn to pump.
Randall walked to the room in which the pump had been placed, after climbing down several flights of stairs to get there. The stairs were always so dark despite the propped open doors, and Randall hurried down them. He didn’t know how the people who went outside tolerated the long climbs. He knew they took rests on the way back up, but he couldn’t tolerate the dark for even five flights, let alone the dozens and dozens they mounted.
The pump room was easy to find. Randall walked alongside the line of people, all of them waiting for their ration. Randall always got his in the morning. There was always a set time of day when everyone got theirs, yet they lined up anyway, day and night. Randall did too.
The woman currently pumping was glad to see him. Not only did it mean she no longer had to pump anymore, but she got an extra water ration as she went off duty. Randall would get the same, which he would feed to his plants. But first, the pumping.
Sitting on the stool, Randall wrapped his hands around the metal handle that had been worn smooth with constant use. He began to pump. His arms were far stronger than they used to be, and his hands bore tough calluses. Still, if it weren’t for other pumpers stationed all along the line, some even set up in different buildings, there would be no way that Randall could move the lever. It was a long way up, after all.
Each pump sloshed more water into a trough below the nozzle. If they were on a lower floor, another pipe would be sucking it up from the trough, carrying the water through holes that had been drilled through both floors and ceilings. But Randall lived at the top, the highest point to which they carried the water. As he sat there, pumping, he listened to conversations he couldn’t understand. He watched as one person after another dipped their ration cups into the trough, every single one making sure that their cup was completely full to the brim before departing. Randall silently identified the people whose names he knew. There were more whom he didn’t know, but he recognized their faces, and thought of the memory he most associated with each one. Some memories were bad, some were pleasant, but most were completely benign. No one tried to talk to him, since they knew he wouldn’t understand whatever language they spoke.
Randall worked the pump. Every time he pressed on the lever, he prayed that it would feel right, that there wouldn’t be the loose sensation of no water, which happened whenever a problem along the line caused the trough to empty below the last pipe. Up and down, up and down, the lever went, making use of the fact that nature hates a void.
Up there in the desert sky, water was life, and Randall still wanted to live. Despite everything, he still wanted to live. He worked the pump.
Section 2:
Human
7: Misha
4 Days After the Bombing
Misha gripped his machete tightly as his breath started to fog up his mask. He didn’t mind the faint blur this overlaid the world with, since he preferred not to see too many details of what was coming. All too fresh in his memory were the images of wave after wave of zombies coming toward him.
They had waited for the others to catch up, the groups that had planned to cross the bridge. Many suggestions were vocalized, including just sneaking past the dead. But with the close proximity of the container yard, that idea was quickly shut down. Another suggestion had been to block in the zombies, to trap them in the smaller yard until they could be dealt with using their full force. Whilst this idea was very popular, no one knew how to actually trap them, not even Harry, not without wasting hours upon hours, and risking the dead things hearing them work, anyway.
Misha shifted his feet from side to side, and back and forth, making a somewhat clear patch in the slime so that his boots could better grip the pavement beneath. At that moment he couldn’t see any zombies, but based on what he could hear, others elsewhere were already encountering them.
“Ready?” Crichton asked, standing at Misha’s side.
Misha nodded.
Raising a machete of his own, one that didn’t have jagged saw blades along its back like Misha’s, Crichton started pounding the butt of it against the nearest container. The ringing clang seemed to echo around the entire small yard, but in fact, it was others doing the same. The plan was to split the zombies up into the smallest possible groups in order to make them more manageable. They had spent maybe an hour or more waiting for everyone to get into position, encircling the place. By having everyone not currently engaged in taking out the zombies make a lot of noise, the pack should be broken up as they moved toward different sound sources. They were to hit the largest metal object, start shouting, or blow on a whistle until zombies came their way, even if they had just finished killing a dozen. The hope was that if those killing the zombies did so as silently as possible, the chains the dead occasionally formed—of one following the corpse ahead of it as if it knew where it was going—could be broken up and redirected. This would make it so that one team wasn’t forced to take out considerably more zombies than the rest.
“Here they come,” Misha said to Crichton, his voice muffled by the rubber of his gas mask.
Crichton pulled up the bandanna that had been around his neck so that it covered his nose and mouth. His eyes were protected by a pair of close fitting sunglasses. As he stood alongside Misha, he kept tapping the tip of his blade against the nearest container, making sure the zombies heading toward them weren’t going to suddenly peel off. Misha thought that he should probably be doing the same on his side, but couldn’t bring his body to move out of a ready
stance. When the zombies were just a few feet from striking distance, Crichton finally mirrored Misha’s pose.
The nearest of the dead lunged at Misha, who sank his blade through its partly decayed skull, and the battle had officially begun.
It didn’t take long for Misha’s arms to get tired. His legs, too, felt rubbery from kicking zombies off his blade. It was a feeling he knew he could power through, having learned how from defending his home. This assault was different than that one, however. Here, there was no one to call changes to the line; there were no lines. In that narrow alley, it was just Misha and Crichton, each of them having to cover a little more area than they would have liked. There was no one to take Misha’s place when he got tired. He just had to hope that they got a break when the dead were called elsewhere. The biggest difference, he found, was that at any moment he was free to run away. If he and Crichton began to feel overwhelmed, they were to retreat and regroup elsewhere. Misha wasn’t boxed in this time. Only his desire to get the job done, to not let Crichton down, kept him fighting. It made the task surprisingly more difficult.
The next time there was a break in the zombies, Misha held out his hand, asking Crichton to wait a minute before he went banging on the container again.
“What is it? Are you all right?” Crichton’s voice was flooded with concern.
Misha nodded. “I just need a breather.”
“Pull your mask up for a minute.”
Misha shook his head. He pointed to the pile of bodies at his feet by way of explanation. There was no way he was going to take his mask off with so much contaminated flesh around. His gloves, also, were coated in the thick, black gunk that was once human blood, and he wasn’t about to risk accidentally touching his face.
“Hate to tell you, but it looks like the dead aren’t going to give you a break,” Crichton said, pointing down the container alley.
Through the haze of his foggy mask, Misha could see the shapes stumbling toward them. He brought his machete back up, prepared to cleave more bones. He cracked another skull, and then another. And then something strange seemed to happen. Misha started to see faces beyond the rot. Eyes weren’t clouded over, noses hadn’t been broken or chewed off, lips hadn’t been peeled back. These human faces were even more terrifying. Of course, Misha didn’t realize that with his mask fogged up he shouldn’t be able to see such details. To him, he was being attacked by zombies who hadn’t been dead for long. He was being attacked by people who weren’t dead at all.
Survival Instinct (Book 5): Social Instinct Page 10