Not far from the mouth of the aisle, a girl rose to her feet, brandishing a samurai sword. She was a black girl who looked to be Robin’s age. Her dark hair was in tight cornrows, and she wore similar sneakers to Robin’s, calf length jeans, a bunch of rubber wristbands, and a dirty yellow T-shirt with the name of some band on it. Her makeup had been applied more heavily than Robin’s, but was streaked and running. Robin’s probably wasn’t much better.
“You have a sword?” Robin whispered to the girl.
“You have a shotgun,” the girl replied, also whispering.
“I found it in a cop cruiser.”
“Found this in a pawn shop.”
“Don’t they also have guns in pawn shops?”
“Those were behind locked cases. I didn’t have time to try to get in them.”
The two teenaged girls stood in a standoff, both eyeing and judging the other. Robin finally lowered her gun.
“I’m Robin Paige,” she said, stepping forward and holding out her hand.
“April Byard,” the girl lowered her sword but didn’t shake Robin’s hand. “Before you come any closer, you have to pass the sniff test.”
“Sniff test?”
April bent down and scooped a black and white kitten out of a small bag on the floor. She held it out to Robin with one hand. Robin held one of her own hands out to the kitten, who smelled her. The kitten eventually started kicking, wanting to be put back down. When April complied, the cat went back into the bag.
“You pass,” April told her. “Come here and help load these.” She had a small amount of boxes and bags that she was putting into a shopping cart. The boxes and bags were full of food that had yet to go bad.
As Robin walked over, she looked into the bag on the floor. There were three small kittens inside, wrapped up around each other.
“What would have happened if I failed?” Robin wondered.
“The cat would have hissed,” April said as she passed her a bag to be put into the cart. “And then I would have given you ten seconds to get away from me before I started swinging.”
“Good to know.”
Robin helped April finish packing up the cart. April pushed the cart toward the door, the wheels heavily lathered with oil to prevent squeaking, while Robin carried the three kittens in their cloth bag, in the crook of one arm. She carried her shotgun with the other.
The two girls moved cautiously down the street, watching each other’s backs. April led the way. Robin didn’t know where, but hoped it was somewhere safe. She figured that if April was gathering supplies, she must have holed up somewhere. The kittens were quiet the whole way, rarely even moving. Perhaps they sensed the danger, or perhaps they were just sleeping as cats usually do. Only the black and white kitten poked his nose out of the top of the bag from time to time.
To Robin’s grateful surprise, the journey was uneventful. They heard things going on in different parts of the city, the loudest noises echoing through the streets, but those sounds were mere ambience now. Car horns replaced with gunshots, vendor’s cries replaced with screams, the hum of machinery replaced by the moaning of the undead.
April rolled the cart up to a large department store that had one of its windows shattered, and pushed open the door. Robin helped her manoeuvre the cart through it, and then closed the door behind them.
“We’ll have to unload everything down here and carry it up the stairs,” April told her, speaking only slightly louder than she had in the grocery store. “I’ve been living on the top floor; it’s safe up there.”
“What about the kittens?” Robin looked down at the little fuzz balls in her arm. She couldn’t carry them and any of the supplies, not while also holding her shotgun.
“We’ll take them up first.” April grabbed a few bags and headed up the stairs. Robin tagged along after her.
At the top of the stationary escalators, on the third floor, there was a couch barring the top of the stairs. April climbed over it and helped Robin over. The two of them did a quick search of the floor to make sure nothing had gotten up there while April was out. The third floor consisted mostly of furniture.
“We should be able to speak normally up here,” April said as she led Robin over to her living corner. There were several mattresses piled up on the floor with heavy, wooden bed frames tilted and shoved around them.
“You did this by yourself?” Robin stepped into the protective circle of wooden and metal frames. The only light came through small, high windows, but they provided enough light to see by.
“No, there were others earlier.” April put her bags down in a corner. “We set this up together the day of the concert. We had all been there, but we didn’t know each other. Two days ago, we were going to flee the city together, but a swarm of those things came and we had to run. I got split up from the others, so I came back here. I haven’t seen them since.”
Robin put the kittens down, and they crawled out of the bag. Along with the black and white one, there was a calico cat, and a grey, striped cat. “So where’d you get these guys from?”
“I went out scouting for locations of interest yesterday. I happened across them in an ally. I wasn’t going to bring them with me, but they started meowing and hissing, and next thing I knew, a zombie was on me. They seemed to know it was coming before I did, so I thought hey, might as well bring them along.”
“Have you named them?” Robin was smiling as she stroked each of the kittens.
“Not really,” April shrugged. “I’ve taken to calling the cow coloured one Adolf, because he’s got a bit of a Hitler stash going on.”
Robin found that both funny and sad. “Would you mind if I named them all?”
“Go for it. Just help me bring up the supplies, which include cat food, litter, and a litter box. They’ve been pooping in some sheets that I threw out on my way to the store.”
Robin left her backpack behind with the kittens, but brought the shotgun with her. She noticed that April’s sword was in a sheath that was held to her belt with duct tape. The belt didn’t go with her outfit and it had likely been picked up purely to hold the sword. Robin realized she should probably make a strap or something for the shotgun or else she could only carry up one arm’s worth of stuff each trip. When she mentioned this to April, they made a stop on the second floor, which was all clothing. April grabbed a long thin scarf and tied it to either end of the weapon. It was crude, but would do for now.
They worked in silence, hauling all the supplies up to the second floor, and then on up to the third floor. Robin was curious about how easily she had fallen in with April and how readily April accepted her company. Robin had never been very good at making friends; it usually took her awhile to feel comfortable around someone. The friends she did have were the ones that she had known for years. Ever since the zombies though, anyone who wasn’t trying to kill her was cool in her books.
Once everything was hauled into the corner, and the kittens were given food, water, and litter, the two girls lay down on the mattresses near one another.
“I think I’m going to name this one Charlie,” Robin told April as the black and white kitten crawled over her stomach.
“Why Charlie?”
“For Charlie Chaplin. Hitler wasn’t the only one with that moustache you know.”
“I guess.” April really didn’t seem to care all that much.
“As for the grey one, he’ll be Charcoal. Last, but not least, is Splatter. Charlie, Charcoal, and Splatter, the three kitten amigos.”
The girls talked late into the night, a flashlight set up between them. They learned they were the same age, sixteen, and both would have been starting grade 11 in September. They went to different schools of course, but some of the people at them were so similar, it was like they didn’t. They talked about nearly everything: friends, family, clothes, sports, school, music, movies, and books. The only thing they didn’t touch on were zombies and what had happened the last few days. That topic hung in the air constantly,
was always on the tip of the tongue and mind, but that’s precisely why they didn’t bring it up. They needed to escape that topic for a while, to bury it under heaps of trivial garbage. And that’s what most of their life before had been, hadn’t it? Trivial garbage? A remembered life that was only good for passing the time.
As the sun began to rise, the girls finally decided to sleep. Robin lay her head down on her pillow, grateful to be on a real mattress again with blankets. Maybe tomorrow she would even change her clothes. She had forgotten she had been wearing the same thing the whole time until she saw all the clothes on the second floor. The three amigo cats curled up around her, comforting her further. Charlie slept on her pillow, in her hair, while Splatter curled against her neck. Charcoal opted to curl up against her belly. Surrounded by the soft smell of kittens, Robin fell asleep.
***
Maybe it was the kittens, or the late night, or even that Robin was in something close to a real bed, and probably it was all three, but she slept in late. Very late, like, noon late. A week ago, she would never have considered noon as late. It would have been early in fact. Since the bus, however, she had been getting up at the crack of dawn. Even when sleeping in the safety of the vault, once the sun was up, so was she. She might have slept even later if it weren’t for Splatter. He was literally poking her in the face with his little paws.
Robin mumbled and rolled away from the small cat, but this only enticed him. He pounced upon her head, getting one of his needle-like claws into her cheek. Robin inhaled sharply, the pain lancing through her face. Instinctively, she sat up, causing Splatter to tumble toward her stomach, his nail scraping along her face and wounding it further. Robin placed a hand to her cheek, and then looked at her hand for blood. There was none, for now at least, but there was bound to be a good-sized scratch. She looked down at Splatter who looked back at her with fierce, yellow eyes. He was a wild cat in a wild mood. Robin attempted to stroke his fuzzy head and was rewarded with a soft chomp to her fingers.
“Go play with the others,” Robin whispered in case April wasn’t up yet.
Splatter, instead, bounded to the end of the mattress and attacked the tag sticking up there. Good enough. When Robin looked over, she noticed two things. The first was that April was gone; she must have already gotten up. The second was that her shotgun was also gone. Panic fluttered through Robin like the wings of her namesake, her thought being that April had surely stolen her shotgun and left. However, all the other supplies were still present, and considering how much effort April had put into getting them, it seemed unlikely that she would just leave them behind. She must be somewhere else in the store, carrying the shotgun for protection. Although why she couldn’t at least have left her sword behind for Robin was a mystery.
Peering over the edge of the bed frame fortress, Robin couldn’t see April anywhere. That didn’t mean much, because the large furniture and a big, central pillar that housed the escalators blocked most of the view. Robin thought that if she were going to be staying here for a while, she would want to find a way to move some of the furniture around. Although what was awhile? How long did she plan to stay here? How long could a zombie outbreak reasonably be expected to last anyhow? She still had to get to her brother in Toronto. That was still on the agenda. She didn’t know how she would get there, but she would.
Robin stepped out of the nest, closing the gap with a wheeled desk that had a solid frame all the way to floor. She didn’t want the kittens wandering off through the store where she would never be able to find them again. As she looked for April, she moved slowly. There was no way of knowing where danger was lurking. Even with the sun shining full force, the department store was uncomfortably dark and silent. The top floor was made up of desks, chairs, sofas, beds, futons, bunk beds, fridges, washers and dryers, exercise equipment, and stacks of TVs in the corner. They created alleys every which way, dark shadows in which something could be lurking. Knocked-over desk chairs and stools were constantly being mistaken for a crouched form, ready to pounce. Finally, Robin spotted a proper human form, April standing not far from the escalators. Even at a distance, her expression was unmistakable: fear.
“Zombies!” she suddenly screamed. April raised the large shotgun and fired a deafening blast. The kickback was hard enough, and surprising enough, to knock the black girl right off her feet. The next sound Robin heard was an unmistakable cry of pain from a male set of vocal cords. Zombies couldn’t feel pain; they didn’t cry out like that.
Robin ran as fast as she could, no longer paying attention to the shadows. Who the hell had April just shot? She rounded the corner just as April was struggling to get back up on her feet; the end of her sword had wedged itself into a wire rack holding boxes of blenders. Three men were on the ground, the one in the middle clearly wounded and holding his leg. He howled in pain.
“What the fuck?” one of the men yelled at April. His words were slurred and it came out sounding more like wahf the ffuc. The stench of booze was heavy upon them.
Robin didn’t know what to do. Check to see if April was all right, and help her up, or check on the injured man?
“You shot me,” the injured man stopped wailing long enough to spit out. “Guys, she fucking shot me.”
April finally got to her feet on her own. She looked horrified.
“I’m so sorry,” tears spilled down her cheeks. “I thought you were one of them. I thought you were a zombie.”
“We do look a little like zombies,” the tall lanky man on the right laughed. “Especially because we’re soooo wasted.”
“I’ve been shot!” the one in the middle yelled at his friend.
Robin stepped closer to get a better look at the man. He had taken the shot in his left leg. It looked like birdshot; small bloody holes bloomed all over. Anything more powerful might have taken his leg clear off. Why a police gun had birdshot shells, Robin had no idea; over-zealous cowboy types were likely involved.
“Maybe… maybe we should tourniquet it?” the darkly dressed one on the left spoke.
Something about these three looked familiar to Robin, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Two of the men were making odd, drunken, impossible-to-understand jokes, while their friend was whimpering and wailing. April kept crying and saying over and over again how sorry she was. There was so much noise, so much commotion that Robin couldn’t think straight. How was she supposed to figure out what to do? No one was letting her think.
“All of you shut up!” Robin screamed out of seemingly nowhere. The suddenness of it got them to be quiet more than her words did. Even the injured man fell silent for a moment. “April, give me the shotgun and then go get one of the kittens for the sniff test.”
April responded by shoving the large gun at her, as if it would bite, and ran off toward the bed frame fort.
“Sniff test?” the darkly dressed one asked the lanky one. He then made a gesture like snorting coke off the side of his hand. The two laughed, while the injured one looked back and forth in confusion. Considering he wasn’t wailing anymore, just whimpering, Robin worried he was going into shock.
Shortly enough, April returned with Charcoal held out before her. She dropped the cat unceremoniously next to the three men.
“Aww, what a cute little kitty,” the lanky man scooped him up and began stroking him. Charcoal clearly wanted to be put down, but he wasn’t meowing or anything so Robin took that as a good sign.
“All right, good job, April. Now go find the first aid kit. I thought I saw one in the bags we brought up yesterday.”
“Yeah, I grabbed a few from the store actually. Should I grab all of them?”
“Yes.” Robin didn’t really know; she was just playing this by ear.
“Hear that, Greg? First aid kits! You’re going to be all right,” the darkly dressed man took Charcoal from the lanky man and put the kitten on the ground.
“So your name is Greg?” Robin was glad to have at least one of their names.
“Sure
is.” The injured man, Greg, nodded, then looked queasy and sank down lower on his elbows.
“Lie down, Greg.” Robin made her way over to the men and knelt down near Greg’s head. She shooed the others farther away, figuring that giving him space was good. Wasn’t that what they always did in the movies and TV shows? Gave them space? The two men knelt nearby, watching Robin and Greg closely.
“I’m Quin.” The darkly dressed man held out his hand. Robin didn’t shake it.
“Of course you’re Quin!” the lanky man crowed. “Who else would ya be?” His drunken slur got worse, blending most of his words together.
“All right, Quin, you had a good idea about putting a tourniquet on his leg. Give me your belt.”
“I don’t got a belt.” He unnecessarily lifted his shirt to show this. He had a very fit body despite how old his face looked.
“I got several.” The lanky man looked down and thrust his hips forward to show that he was indeed wearing at least three belts. “Which one you want?”
“Either one I guess. That one.” Robin pointed to the mid-sized belt.
“Okay.” The man began to unbuckle his belt. “Normally I make my women try a little harder before I take my belt off for ’em.” He laughed, a harsh and grating sound.
Robin didn’t think the joke was funny. She took the belt from him and looped it around Greg’s leg. He moaned in pain when she jostled him.
“Easy on the goods,” Greg muttered as Robin began to tighten the belt. She had to wrap it almost up at his hip to get above all the holes. When she pulled the belt as tightly as she could, Greg cried out.
“Hey, you’re hurting him.” Quin fretted between pushing Robin away and letting her do what she was doing. He seemed to become less drunk as his injured friend’s condition worsened.
“He’s taken harder shots than that,” the lanky one waved it off.
“Shush up, River. You ain’t helping,” Quin chastised his friend.
Adaptive Instinct (Survival Instinct) Page 10