Survival Instinct: A Zombie Novel Paperback

by Kristal Stittle

  “Umm, Alec,” his voice cracked with panic, “we’re being followed.”

  “Hold on tight.” Alec wrapped an arm around Danny and quickly swung the chair around to face the other way. “Kneel on me now, and get those wheels spinning as fast as you can,” Alec ordered.

  Danny awkwardly rested his knees on Alec’s legs. He had never been more uncomfortable in his life. Still, he did his best to get the wheels spinning faster. It was hard though. He didn’t think he was doing a very good job, but at least they were gathering momentum from the slope of the hill. Alec leaned to one side to see around Danny and held out his pistol behind him.

  “Why don’t you just shoot them?” Danny wondered.

  “I think the first gunshot is what drew them and I’m waiting for a good shot. I don’t want to waste any ammo if I don’t have to.” Alec’s voice had gone monotone as he focused. “If I have to shoot, I’m going to warn you by saying ‘firing.’ The moment you hear me say that, let go of the wheels and lean away from the gun.”

  “Okay.” Although facing forward had its advantages, Danny didn’t like wondering how close the people behind them might be. He also didn’t want to look over his shoulder to find out. What if they were closer than he thought?

  “Firing!” Alec suddenly shouted in his ear.

  Danny shifted his body sideways, not because he remembered he was supposed to, but because the sudden shouting had frightened him into reacting that way. The gun exploded behind him, sounding a lot louder than it had behind the house. Of course, that was because he was much closer to it than he was before. He almost didn’t hear the body hit and scrape along the pavement due to the minor ringing in his ears. It had been very close.

  “Keep trying to get us up to speed,” Alec commanded.

  Danny shifted back over and started working the wheels again. This seemed less awkward now that he had an idea about how close it had been. They were gaining precious speed and the hill was getting steeper. It got to the point where it was safer for Danny’s hands if he stopped trying to touch the wheels.

  “Firing!”

  This time he shifted over because he remembered to. Even though he was now expecting it, the gunshot was still frightfully loud. Another body scraped the pavement behind them.

  “I can’t control us anymore,” Danny told Alec after the ringing faded. He meant that he couldn’t do anything to help their speed, but after saying it, he realized that steering was also an issue.

  “Doesn’t matter, I got us now.” Alec tapped one wheel with his partially gloved hand and spun them around. Danny was nearly thrown from the chair. “Just tell me if they get too close.”

  While Danny watched their rear, Alec controlled their speedy descent with a few taps to either wheel now and then. There were even more people running after them now. Danny counted five on the street behind them and at least three on either sidewalk. Where were they all coming from? Alec’s theory about the sound of the gunshots was probably true. Although it took them down, it also brought more. Catching movement out of the corner of his eye, Danny turned his head. A man ran out of a house, coming toward them. Danny almost warned Alec, but then realized this man was different. He was scared, terrified. He wasn’t one of the attackers.

  The man ran out into the street behind their speeding wheelchair, not paying any attention to his surroundings. Danny watched as the mob that had been chasing them now converged upon this frightened man. They knocked him to the ground where he started screaming. Danny glimpsed blood before the mob completely surrounded him.

  “They stopped chasing us,” Danny told Alec with a dry mouth.

  “You sure?” Alec tried looking over his shoulder.

  “Yeah. A guy ran out of his house behind us. They swarmed him.”

  “Well just keep holding on tight, we’re nearly at the bottom,” Alec sighed. He was silent for a moment before speaking again. “You okay?”

  “Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?” Danny thought that was a stupid question. If he had been hurt, Alec probably would have been as well.

  “I meant in your head,” Alec clarified.

  “Oh.” Right, adults often seemed to worry about the younger kids’ mental status.

  “I’ve seen real combat, so I won’t always remember that seeing certain things is going to be new to you.”

  “I’m fine,” Danny told him honestly. At least he was pretty sure it was honest.

  “You say that now, but you might not be later. If you aren’t, just remember to talk to me.”

  “You make it sound like I’ll be around you for awhile,” Danny noticed. He still hadn’t taken his eyes off the diminishing mob, but they were far enough away that he couldn’t make out details.

  “Well if we’re up shit creek as far as it seems we are, then it might be better for both of us to stick together.”

  “With Emma,” Danny nodded, “she’ll need your help too.”

  “She’ll need yours as well. Hold on, we’re breaking.” Alec gently but quickly slowed the wheelchair. He directed them to one side, bumped up a driveway and then onto a lawn. They stopped much faster on the grass.

  As soon as they stopped, Danny hopped off. His legs felt all rubbery, but he didn’t think it was so much from the bumpy ride as it was from the rush of adrenaline. His whole body trembled.

  “We need you more than you need us.” Danny knew that was completely true. Although he wasn’t fond about needing protection, he did like having it.

  “You’re kidding me, right?” Alec grinned, nearly laughing. “I don’t have any legs right now in case you forgot. Hell yeah, I need your help as much as you need mine. In fact, help me now get off this damn grass. I seem to be in a rut.”

  Danny didn’t believe Alec. He was sure the man could get along just fine on his own, based on what he had seen him do so far. He thought Alec was just humouring him.

  Danny grabbed the little handles that were too low for fully grown people. Having yet to hit that growth spurt that Mathias kept promising him would happen, Danny was on the short side, and the handles were actually at a perfect height for him. Turned out that Alec was indeed in some sort of rut, but working together, they managed to get him out of it. When a loud crash sounded in the house they were in front of, they hurried as quickly as they could off lawn and down the street. Danny spotted Alec’s house ahead because of the teenager still trapped by the garage.

  “Can we kill him now?” Danny asked as they headed up the driveway.

  “If we use the gun it’ll draw more of them here.” Alec stopped next to the teenager, just out of reach. And he reached all right. The guy looked furious.

  “Maybe we can just beat him to death,” Danny shrugged.

  Alec gave him a strange look. “Go inside.”

  “Why?” Danny frowned.

  “Just do it.”

  “It’s locked,” Danny reminded him.

  “Here.” Alec tossed him the keys.

  Danny went to the door, unlocked it and stepped inside, then turned and glanced around the corner at Alec. Alec had taken out a large combat knife. Deciding that maybe he didn’t want to see, Danny stepped fully into the house. He tried to act tough, and sometimes he felt like he was, but not always. Now was one of the times he felt not so tough. On some level, he was still dealing with what happened in the street and now, added to that, was what Alec looked like he was going to do. It was all starting to freak him out a little.

  He looked around Alec’s front hall for a bit and then wandered over to the living room. Something seemed wrong about the space, but he didn’t know what it was because he had never been in here before, except for passing through when they left. It was as if something was out of place, or missing. He wandered around some more and found a half bath. He realized he badly needed to pee and used the facility, still wondering what was wrong.

  * * *

  After flushing the toilet, Danny pulled his shorts back up and looked at himself in the mirror. Something fundamental had ch
anged in Danny, but he didn’t know what. As he looked in the mirror, he was surprised to see the same face he saw this morning. He was short, somewhat scrawny, his plain brown hair was a disaster, and his plain brown eyes were, well, plain. He was also getting his first rash of pimples on his left cheek. How was he supposed to survive this? No, that was not the appropriate attitude. He would survive this, no matter what. Although looking back at his family’s history made this seem unlikely. Danny held the gun out in front of him and looked it over. He then looked at himself in the mirror holding it. It looked big in his hands.

  “Danny?” Alec called from the front of the house.

  “I’m in the bathroom.” Danny quickly put the gun back. He briefly rinsed his hands, wiped them on the front of his T-shirt, and grabbed the pilfered backpack up off the floor. He left the bathroom and found Alec in the entrance hall. There was dark blood staining the bottoms of his pants.

  “Where’s Rifle?” Alec asked him.

  “Rifle? The dog? I don’t know. Still in the garage I guess,” Danny shrugged. Why would he know where the dog was?

  “He always checks out the door when it’s opened,” Alec frowned. “Come on.” He led them back to the garage door. It was partly ajar. “Wait here.” Alec pulled out his gun once more.

  Danny waited. As he waited, he realized he had walked around the house but not gone to the garage. Why didn’t he go straight to the garage when he had the supplies for Emma? He watched as Alec rolled over to the door and gently prodded it open. He crossed the threshold slowly. After a few tense and silent moments, he came back out.

  “There’s no one here,” Alec told him.

  “What you mean?” Danny didn’t wait for an answer and ran into the garage himself. There was a lot of blood in the corner where Emma had been in. A lot of blood. And it was on the walls too, which made no sense because it was just a leg wound. Alec was right though; there was no one there. Just the pinned arm of the teenager, which no longer moved.

  A bubble of panic rose up in Danny and he was surprised to find it was for his own safety rather than for Emma’s. “Where did they go?”

  “I don’t know,” Alec shook his head. “I need you to check upstairs.”

  “Sure.” Danny swallowed the bubble and headed for the stairs.

  “Be careful kid.” Alec followed him to their base. “Run back here if…”

  “- If I run into trouble, I know,” Danny nodded.

  “Leave your bag here.” Alec held out his hand.

  Danny slid out of the straps and handed Alec the slightly battered and faded backpack full of medical supplies. He then turned toward the stairs. As he headed up them slowly, he gripped tightly to the railing as if the floor might suddenly mutate into a slick ramp. Like in cartoons. On one side of the steps there was a mechanical device. Danny figured it was something that got Alec up and down the stairs. He guessed the thing made noise, and that was why Alec wasn’t using it now. Things like that always made noise. And were slow. If something were up there, he’d be trapped on the machine. Of course, Danny was just guessing at all of this. For all he knew the thing was broken, or it might not have been for Alec at all. He reached the top of the stairs and looked around. There was a door to his immediate right, and three doors down a short hall to his left. The door on the right was closed and the outside of it was covered in scratches and small amounts of blood. A lump formed in his throat replacing the earlier bubble. He decided to check out the doors to the left first.

  Halfway down the hall he came to the first door, which was partly open. He prodded it open a bit further with his foot and hid out of sight. No sounds came from inside. He glanced quickly through the door, revealing only his head for a second to anything that might be inside. That quick peek showed him it was a bathroom, and it looked empty. Danny stepped into the doorway and took a more thorough look. Everything was just like a normal bathroom except that the medicine cabinet was standing open, there were rails attached near the toilet, and a sort of seat was in the middle of the bathtub. Danny figured it must be the bathroom Alec used, which backed up his theory about the mechanical device being for him.

  Danny closed the door and continued down the hall. The next door he came to was closed, but there were no scratches on this door. He grabbed the handle and turned. First, he tried to push the door in, like the bathroom door, but it wouldn’t budge. Realizing it was an outward swinging door, and therefore probably just a closet, he pulled it open to make sure. He was right. It was a closet filled with shelving holding an assortment of linens, some wrapping paper and old gift bags, and some small things like batteries and string. Danny closed that door as well.

  The last door, the one at the end of the hall, stood wide open. Danny could see most of a bedroom through it, but he could also see a bloody hand print on the doorframe. It was a smallish print, more the size of Emma’s than of that girl, Michelle. Danny approached the room very slowly. The closer he got, the more of the room he could see, but the more frightened he became. He stopped completely when he reached the doorway and looked around. The room was simply decorated, with a dresser, a queen size bed, and a pair of night stands. One of the windows across the room was wide open, letting in a nice summer breeze. Although the room looked clear, that didn’t mean there wasn’t someone hiding behind the bed, or beyond one of the two slightly opened doors on either side of the dresser. Danny took a deep steadying breath and touched the pistol in his waistband. Still not loaded, but still there for comfort. He walked into the room.

  First, he checked the other side of the bed, which was just as empty as the rest of the room. He used his foot to lift part of the bedspread up and noticed the wooden frame went straight to the floor. Good, he wouldn’t have to look under the bed for anything. Next, he checked out one of the doors. It was a walk-in closet that seemed oddly empty. There were only a few hanging clothes and a pile of folded T-shirts on a shelf. Danny closed that door and went to the last one. It turned out to be another bathroom, and it was also empty of life. It was empty of dead bodies too, which was a relief. This bathroom didn’t have the same safety rails and seat in the bathtub like the other. It dawned on Danny that Alec must not live alone. He said Michelle was not his girlfriend, though, so it couldn’t be her. And the bathroom indicated that this was the master bedroom, and it didn’t look like Alec’s room, so it was actually someone else’s house. Danny wondered who Alec lived with. He would ask after he checked out the last room, the room with the scratches.

  He was about to leave the bedroom when he noticed the bloody handprint again. The thumb of the print was on the inside of the jam, so it seemed logical that the person who left it must have been coming into that room. There was no other sign of the print’s owner though. Danny crossed the room to the window and looked out. It led out onto a porch roof facing the backyard. There was another handprint, more faded this time, on the outside window frame. Whoever came through here went straight out the window. The fact that there were no prints on the window itself, led Danny to believe that it had been left open. What if someone had come through that window first? Maybe that’s why Emma, Michelle, and Rifle weren’t there anymore. They had to run away.

  Danny walked away from the window and went back into the hall. There was just one last door to open. Logically, it would be Alec’s room. How strange when he thought about this being Alec’s house. He wondered what the military man was thinking while he searched around. He wondered if it was an odd feeling, or perhaps a feeling of inadequacy from a failure to defend his own home. Danny didn’t defend his home, and now Emma was missing. Perhaps that was the source of the bad feeling he had earlier.

  As he passed the head of the stairs, he looked down them. Alec was still there, looking up at him. He gave Danny a thumbs up. Danny returned it, but his face maintained whatever expression it had on. Most likely a frightened one. He faced the door again.

  He placed his hand on the wood, feeling the scratches. He ran his hands along them as if he were
the one that had made them. They were probably made by someone roughly the same height as him, maybe a little taller. Emma was taller than he was. He shoved that thought aside. He didn’t want to think about Emma right now, especially like that. Unlike the other rooms, he tried to open this door quickly. Unfortunately, the door was locked, so that idea failed instantly. He knocked on the door instead.

  “Hello?” He didn’t mean to whisper, but that was the way it came out. “Hello, is someone in there?”

  Something slammed into the door. Danny stumbled backwards with fright, tripped over his own feet and fell hard onto his back.

  “Danny?” Alec called from the bottom of the stairs, where he could see Danny’s head and shoulders when he fell.

  Alec’s voice was the last thing Danny heard as the door was wrenched open and Michelle, with a new, paler look and a bloody hole in her neck, came flying out of the room with hands reaching for Danny.

  15:

  The Little Girl

  Shoes was a very good dog. He didn’t pull on his leash or anything and walked right by Alice’s side. She reached down to pet him every now and again. This was a very long and slow walk they were on, and Alice decided he needed encouragement every now and then. He was, after all, a very old dog.

  Alice wondered where the lady and the man were taking her. She knew she shouldn’t go places with strangers, but they seemed like really nice people, and she didn’t want to be alone after what had happened with Judy’s daddy. Something was going on, something bad. She just didn’t know what it was.

  Well, the man was really nice, but Alice hadn’t quite decided about the lady. She seemed kind of like a witch, but she hadn’t really done anything bad so far. It was funny the way they were walking. They didn’t walk on the sidewalks unless they had to, and they hid behind trees and bushes a lot. Something was wrong with the people on the street because whenever they saw one, Mister Walter would stand in front of Alice and Shoes and hurry them over to a hiding place. It reminded her of a game she liked to play that was sort of like tag and sort of like hide-and-seek. So far, they had been good at the hiding part and no one chased them yet.