Adaptive Instinct (Survival Instinct)

by Stittle, Kristal

  “At least this plane isn’t so high up,” Alec grunted as they got him in. “I’m not looking forward to how you plan on getting me into the big planes in Toronto.”

  “Maybe we’ll find a working crane to lift your heavy ass,” Mathias joked.

  “I hate flying,” Tobias muttered as he took a seat. Considering all he had gone through, it was amazing that the guy didn’t have a crippling phobia of heights yet. He had a near-death experience on more than one rooftop, on the escalators of a multi-storey mall, and in some two storey-high ventilation ducts. He also nearly got sick during the helicopter ride up north, and was not a fan of the risky landing on the lake in the Otter.

  As Misha took a seat across the aisle from Tobias, he wondered if maybe they should make him walk. It seemed like Tobias plus heights equalled bad luck.

  The tail end of the plane was completely filled with supplies, and their packs spilled out into the aisles, under their feet, and on their laps. Rifle looked uncomfortable, squished up between Alec and Mathias’s seats with packs on either side of him. Milly was curled up under Misha, who sat crossed legged in the cushy seat. Shoes was already asleep on Danny’s lap.

  “Oh, your socks and shirt.” Abby was sitting in the rearward facing seat across from Misha. She reached into her bag and pulled out the articles of clothing for him.

  “Thanks,” he said wiggling out of his firefighter gear to put the socks and shirt on underneath.

  As the twin engines started up, Misha glanced out the window at the rotating props attached to the wings.

  “You know, since the zombies, I’ve gotten to ride in some pretty classy vehicles,” Josh commented. “First the stretch limousine, now this executive plane? Fancy.”

  “And we’re going to a cruise ship,” Danny added. “Do you think they’ll have kids my age there?”

  “Sure they will,” Mathias assured his brother. “I’m sure there’ll be lots of kids.”

  “Shoes will like that.” Danny stroked the dog.

  Since finding the zombie, Shoes had had more pep. They had begun to believe that, maybe the dog wasn’t sick, he was just lonely. He missed his little girl, Alice, who had been the one to drag him through the zombie outbreak. All the excitement now was keeping him busy. However, Misha was still going to get Cameron to look at him once they met up with her.

  The Beechcraft lifted off the tarmac, leaving the ground behind once more. They were headed south again, back in the direction where so many bad things had occurred. It was impossible for Misha not to live out those memories in his head as they flew, and there was no doubt that everyone else was as well.

  ***

  As they neared Leighton, everybody pressed themselves to the windows and looked out.

  “Are we going to see the prison?” Abby wondered.

  “No, it’s too far west,” Alec told her. “It looks like we might fly over my neighbourhood though.”

  This especially intrigued both Danny and Misha because they had lived in the same neighbourhood. As they soared overhead, looking down at the cookie-cutter houses, they could see changes. There were cars in the middles of streets at odd angles, or up on lawns, and against lampposts. They were low enough to make out the occasional speck of a person, likely a zombie, wandering the roads. One section of the neighbourhood had become a black ruin; a few fires were still smouldering, sending up inky black smoke, but they must have had some serious rain, which put most of it out.

  “City up ahead,” Mathias informed them.

  Ahead of the plane were the tall skyscrapers of the city. As they drew closer, the engine on the left side of the plane began to sputter.

  “What is that?” Tobias asked nervously.

  Misha looked out his window at the prop. It wasn’t rotating smoothly anymore, but stuttering slightly. It was not a good sign. It began to stutter more, making a loud racket as the city buildings started to pass under them.

  “What’s wrong?” Mathias asked Rufus’s sister. She shook her head and shrugged. Mathias unbuckled himself and began climbing over the packs toward the front. The plane jolted as the other engine began acting the same way. They all watched Mathias closely as he quickly climbed back toward them, gripping tightly to seat backs to stabilize himself against the shuddering of the plane. When he sat down, he instantly buckled into his seat causing everyone to do the same.

  “What is it?” Alec asked as the plane dropped slightly.

  “Rufus didn’t correctly calculate if we could make it on the amount of fuel we had at this weight capacity. Apparently, we cannot.”

  “We’re out of gas?” Danny’s voice cracked significantly.

  Mathias nodded. “We’re going down.”

  Misha glanced out the window again. The engines were doing worse. He looked down and saw that they were just passing the core of the city, leaving the tall buildings behind. At least they’d be south of that mess. If they survived a landing that was. Misha decided not to look out the window again; he didn’t want to see how close or far the ground was.

  “I hate flying,” Tobias groaned, bending over and placing his head between his knees. Others started doing the same.

  Mathias took Shoes from Danny, while Alec convinced Rifle to sit in the tight space between his knees, with his front paws up on Alec’s thighs. He wrapped his arms tightly around the big dog who looked frightened. Since Milly was smaller than Rifle, Misha was able to haul her up onto his lap. She sat awkwardly, with her lower back on Misha’s thighs and her back legs sticking up. He wrapped one arm around her ribcage and the other around her stomach. Milly whined deep in her throat.

  The plane began to shudder even worse, and then the sound of one engine cut out, followed by the other. It became eerily silent. They were gliding now.

  Misha could feel that they were heading down. Being so far from Rufus, no one knew how well he was handling it or what he was doing about it. They could only hope it was the right thing.

  There was no sense of time as they went down. Misha’s heart hammered in his chest, everything going too fast and too slow at the same time. When they had decided to head south, he had been afraid of zombies and unstable people, not plane crashes. He squashed Milly tighter to his chest, feeling her own heartbeat through her ribs. She whined, possibly from fear of what was happening or maybe just because Misha was holding her too tightly.

  Although he had told himself he wouldn’t, Misha glanced out the window again. The ground was too close. He looked around the cabin at his terrified friends. Mathias was the only other person still looking around. They locked eyes, and then the plane hit.

  The impact was jarring, throwing Misha forward and then back into his seat. Shoes began howling, the only sound that could be heard above the scraping, groaning, and crunching of metal. The entire plane vibrated violently, shaking the fillings in Misha’s teeth. They twisted sideways. The moment Misha realized this, the landing gear on one side snapped off with a twang. They pitched toward Misha’s side of the plane, and the wing scraped down into whatever it was they had landed on. The wing crumpled, ripped, and tore apart. It separated from the body of the plane as they began to roll over it. Misha saw ground rush toward his window, as gravity pulled him to it. The glass blew out, and then they were upside down. Packs and supplies were launched around the cabin, getting torn open and spilling their contents everywhere. The only thing Misha could do was hold tightly to Milly. They were upright again for a moment, the other wing having also been torn off, and then they were rolling back toward the roof again. The frame of the cabin squealed and screamed as the metal was stressed and tortured. Part of the roof above Misha’s head was ripped open as they began to roll upright again. Suddenly they slammed hard into something, nearly ripping Milly out of Misha’s grip and causing her to yelp as his fingers dug into her sides.

  It was nearly a minute before Misha acknowledged that they had stopped. He was sitting on an angle with Tobias lower than he was. The interior of the plane looked nothing like it had b
efore. Everything was torn, twisted, ripped, and mangled. Groans and pops came from every surface as they settled into their new configuration.

  “Everyone okay?” Mathias asked.

  A few people answered from both their group and Rufus’s, but not everybody. Misha looked across at Abby and saw that she was hanging limply in her seat, with blood running down the side of her head.

  “Oh, God.” Milly dropped with another yelp, this one from fright, as Misha released her. She quickly scurried through a hole in the fuselage while he fought with his seatbelt buckle, but it wouldn’t come undone. He looked around for something to help him. That’s when he saw the wicked blade, which had buried itself in the seat next to his head. He reached a hand up to the side of his head and felt a sharp pain when he touched his ear. His hand came back bloody; the knife had sliced right through it. Ignoring the terror tightening his chest, Misha pulled the knife out and used it to cut through the seatbelt. Once free, he carefully moved himself over to Abby’s seat. He placed two of his fingers under her slumped chin, trying to find a pulse in her neck. He found one.

  “Tobias, help me out.” He looked down.

  Tobias had freed himself and was assisting a dazed Joshua. Once Josh was on his way out through the same hole Milly had taken, Tobias climbed up to Misha. Together, the two of them freed Abby and gently lowered her to the ground. Tobias took her out of the hole, while Misha moved forward in the plane to check on the others.

  “Take Shoes.” Mathias handed the basset hound off the moment he could, and crossed to Danny.

  “I think my arm is broken.” The boy winced. A large red and purple, swollen section was forming on his left forearm.

  “As long as you’re alive, we can patch you up,” Mathias told him as he helped him free.

  Alec was freeing himself in the lower half of the plane, his right upper arm covered in bruises. Rifle had a gash on his muzzle but otherwise looked all right.

  “I’ll get myself out. You take the dogs,” Alec ordered Misha.

  Misha obeyed, leading Rifle over to the hole. The big dog squeezed out first, as Misha put Shoes down. The smaller dog followed easily after him.

  When Misha crawled out of the plane, he was amazed by what he saw. Pieces of airplane lay strewn across the entire length of a massive field. Josh was examining Abby’s head wound, a beat-up boot he found covering the foot he hadn’t had a shoe for, while Tobias ran about locating supplies that were still good. Rufus’s family members were still peeling themselves out of the wreckage, all of them with their own injuries. Misha looked back at the main section of the plane. The reason they had stopped rolling, was because they had slammed into the massive cement base of a water tower.

  Once everyone was out of the plane, they discovered that three people had died, and a fourth was quickly fading. Rufus, his wife, and his eldest daughter had all been killed on impact, having been in the front section of the plane. His sister-in-law was gasping for breath, a large piece of metal having smashed her rib cage and punctured a lung. She’d be gone very soon. Rufus’s three surviving kids were bawling their eyes out, draping ratty looking blankets over the dead they had removed from the wreckage, and crying over their aunt. Rufus’s sister did all she could to comfort them. Somehow, the old woman had survived, and she watched over the girls with a stony expression. Her breathing had a wheezing quality, and Misha couldn’t remember if that was normal for her or not.

  Everyone who could move began gathering what they could, except for Josh who continued examining everyone’s injuries one by one. As soon as any sort of medical supply was found, they brought it over to him, and most of the time it was used right away. Misha’s ear was hastily stitched up.

  “Alec, I found your chair!” Tobias called from a short distance down the field. He dragged the metal contraption over to the man so that he could look it over. It had taken a beating, but looked to be in one piece.

  “It’s not going to work as is,” Alec sighed. “If you can find me some tools, I might be able to get it at least partly functional.”

  Misha added tools to his mental list of things for which to keep an eye out. He was actually trying very hard not to burst out laughing. Although they were in the middle of a disaster, he was just so happy that everyone he knew was still breathing. He felt badly for Rufus and his family, especially considering this wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for them, but he felt no loss or regret over it.

  Abby began to wake, dazed and confused about what just happened. She couldn’t remember anything after flying over the suburbs. Josh said that wasn’t uncommon.

  Not long after she woke up, Misha looked toward the edge of the field. There, coming through the trees, he saw the first of the zombies.

  22:

  Robin Paige – Days 15-17

  Robin woke up and saw River standing over April with the sword in his hand. Still half asleep, groggier than she had ever felt before, and with a raging headache, she managed to realize that something was terribly wrong. Terror rose in her chest and then out of her mouth in a shattering scream.

  River looked away from her, back to April, ready to strike with the sword. Quin came out of nowhere and tackled River to the floor, knocking the sword out of his hands.

  “Quin! This is for your own good!” River shouted as he and Quin tussled on the carpet.

  April woke up next to Robin, just as frightened about what was going on. She curled up against the headboard, and that’s when Robin first realized they were in some sort of hotel room. She wrapped her arms around the other girl, still trying to put things together but knowing that April needed protection.

  River got back to his feet, the sword in his hand again, but Quin stood between him and the girls. Even under his baggy T-shirt, Robin could see Quin’s body shaking with anger.

  “What are you doing, man?” he shouted at River.

  “She’s infected. We have to kill her before she can infect the rest of us.” River was talking about April.

  Robin had a moment of hesitation. Had she missed something? Was April infected?

  Quin glanced at them and sounded sure of himself when he spoke next. “She’s not infected.”

  “You’ve heard her coughing,” River said.

  Robin put it together. “We were out in a rain storm. You don’t think it’s possible she might have gotten a cold?” she told him. “She was never bitten.” Clearly, River was mistaking it for the awful kind of infection.

  “You can’t be sure of that. Do you watch her every second of the day?” River challenged.

  “She’s not infected.” Robin had no idea what had happened when she was put to sleep, but if April were infected, she’d tell them. Wouldn’t she?

  River turned back to Quin. “Quin, she’s infected. You remember Zach, right? He got sick first.”

  Robin had no idea who Zach was.

  “We have to protect ourselves,” River continued. “It’ll be harder later, when she’s trying to bite us, to infect us as well. You have to see that.”

  Quin looked over his shoulder at Robin and winked, then turned back to River. “You’re sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “Quin!” Robin wasn’t sure what that wink meant.

  Quin actually stepped aside, giving River access to the girls. River stepped forward, readying the sword again. Since he wasn’t focused on Quin anymore, he didn’t see the punch to the side of the head coming. The surprise made him drop the sword once more.

  “You son of a bitch.” River wheeled on Quin, prepared to fight back. “Fucking pussy wanker, ass bitch.”

  Quin punched him in the face again, causing River to stumble into the wall behind him.

  “You killed Greg. And I saw you; I saw you light the fire.” Quin’s eyes had filled with tears. Robin’s did too as she realized what that meant. River had killed Charlie and Charcoal. That pain was still unbearably fresh and learning that River had caused it was like jamming a hot poker into it.

  “I did
it for Greg!” River rammed into Quin’s waist, driving them both into the wall across the room.

  As they fought, Robin sat frozen on the bed. She didn’t know what to do, and her head hurt worse than ever. Quin landed a solid kick to River’s head, which stunned him. Just when the fight seemed to be over, Robin could hear a smashing and splintering sound coming from the door of the room. Something was trying to get in.

  Robin jumped off the bed, dragging April with her as the other girl began coughing. She grabbed the nearest hockey bag and the sword, ready to fight her way out if need be.

  “Quin, get Splatter!” she ordered as her head pounded worse than ever. “April, grab the other bag!”

  “Is someone alive in there?” A voice outside the door shouted as a crack appeared in it. Robin didn’t expect that the thing breaking in was alive. The sharp blade of an axe crashed through the door, hacking out the locking mechanism.

  Robin was too stunned to reply as the door was kicked in. A man in yellow firefighter gear stood there.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, looking at Robin.

  “Uh, yeah.” Robin wasn’t really sure if she was, but was too confused to think of a proper answer.

  “He tried to kill me.” April gasped, looking back at River. Then she started coughing again.

  Quin came out of the bathroom with little Splatter folded up in his arms. “Doyle?”

  “Quin?” It seemed that Quin and the firefighter knew each other somehow.

  “I thought you were dead,” Quin commented.

  “I thought the same when I finally got back to the bus and found you gone.”

  River groaned on the floor.

  “Can we get out of here before he tries to kill us again?” April clutched the sword tightly after Robin handed it to her. She had located her shotgun and she took it out of the bag.

  “Yeah, of course.” The man Quin had called Doyle stepped aside and let them hurry out past him. He shut the shattered remains of the door behind them and then led them down the hall.