Adaptive Instinct (Survival Instinct)

by Stittle, Kristal

  “Well then, I guess we should all partner up. We could certainly use the ride.” The man looked at the SUVs and the van.

  “We’re not all going to fit,” Robin thought out loud. Even with six of their members gone, there were still twenty-two people and, she just noticed, four dogs. The SUVs and van could hold seventeen, more with squishing, but certainly not all of them. Especially not with all their supplies.

  “We’ll find a way,” the military man said.

  Most of their gear was loaded into the trunks of the SUVs, including a banged-up wheelchair. The man who must be the owner of the chair was assisted into an SUV’s passenger seat, while the broken rear window was covered in a tarp and duct tape. It had been decided that Doyle would drive that SUV and lead the convoy. Also riding in it, would be a woman who studied all the maps between here and where they were going. Supposedly, she had a perfect memory and could redirect them on the fly should a problem arise. She sat on the man’s lap in front, while three black girls and an older woman who looked related to them crammed into the back.

  The four youngest kids got into the back of the other SUV, along with a basset hound, a golden retriever, and a white husky that had only three legs. The uniformed man and a tall guy got into the front of that vehicle.

  When Robin opened the van door, Splatter was sitting on a seat, waiting for her. She scooped him up and carried him to the backseat. Quin took the space next to her, and the canary sat on the other side of him. Robin still didn’t know her name—perhaps even preferred not to as she liked thinking of her as the canary—but was glad to see that she had made it. Elizabeth and Cynthia took their customary middle row seats, while Harry slid in behind the wheel, and a man who Robin deduced to be Chester took the passenger seat. Robin would have liked to have the van filled with only people from her group, but it couldn’t be. A man in hospital scrubs joined them, sitting on the floor between Cynthia and Elizabeth. The pale boy, Misha, also climbed into the trunk with a great big German shepherd. He had no complaints about sharing the awkward space with the big dog, and the dog didn’t seem to mind Splatter at all. Robin had been afraid the thing would eat her little kitten in one gulp, as he was certainly big enough.

  All remaining packs and gear had been stuffed around, and on top of people, wherever there was space. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any rope or bungee cables to hold things down on the roof rack. Then again, if they ever needed to quickly abandon the vehicles, that was probably a good thing.

  The convoy started up and headed down the road, with Doyle leading the way. The sinking sun was showing off its usual riot of colour.

  Although the only thing different from the last time they were driving was the addition of more people, Robin found herself to be on edge. At every turn, she expected a new atrocity or dilemma barring their path. She expected another high-speed getaway to occur at every hill. It might have been just the coming dark, but she didn’t think so. It was no longer a relaxing ride through the countryside.

  27:

  Riley Bishop – Days 17-18

  As soon as Riley and Cameron had helped Nicky out of the back of the truck, they were hauled away. Riley protested against this. Nicky was her patient, and she should see to it that the next doctor the woman was handed off to knew everything she did. Her words fell on deaf ears, and by the time the uniformed men stopped pushing her and Cameron along, Nicky had disappeared into the building.

  “I heard you’re a doctor?” a gruff-looking man asked, drawing Riley’s attention away from the door.

  “Yes.”

  “What about you?” he asked Cameron.

  “I’m a veterinarian,” she answered.

  “Close enough. We’re trying to space out the medical staff, have at least one in every two or three vehicles. The doc can go in the third truck, the vet in the fifth.”

  “No way.” Riley grabbed Cameron’s hand. “We’re sticking together.”

  Cameron sidestepped so that she was shoulder to shoulder with her sister.

  The gruff man looked at the two of them.

  “You can’t separate us,” Cameron told him. “Riley’s pregnant.”

  Riley shot her sister a look. She didn’t like that she had just told a stranger. Apparently, she had a reason for it though.

  “Her body is flooded with hormones right now,” Cameron continued. “There’s no telling what might happen. She could pass out, right at a crucial moment. She needs backup, and it might as well be me.”

  The man looked from one to the other again. He clearly had no idea what happened in a pregnant woman’s body. He consulted a stack of sheets attached to a clipboard in his hands. “You’ll have to ride in the first truck then. It’s the only one that no one on the medical team wanted to ride in, and it should have one.”

  “Fine with us,” both Bishop girls said in unison, eliciting a raised eyebrow from the man.

  “Okay. You’ll be riding in the backseat of the front section with two others. It’ll be tight, but we need the space. I assume, with the mission you were on, that you don’t need to grab anything from inside. Head over to the truck now and keep out of the way.” He gestured to the truck in question, and then jotted something down on the clipboard.

  Before anyone else could try to separate them, the Bishop twins hurried over to their truck. Several men were working on the lead trucks, attaching massive ploughs to the fronts of them.

  “That was quick thinking,” Riley complimented Cameron.

  “Not really. You would have done the same if it wasn’t you who was pregnant.”

  “Maybe.”

  “You seem worried about Nicky.” She knew Riley well enough to cut straight to the heart of all issues.

  “I think she had some brain trauma. It was hard to tell with just the one eye to look at. She’s taken more than one hit to the head over the past few days. I’m concerned there’s a deeper problem, and I can’t express that to whichever doctor has taken her.”

  “Even if you had, could you do anything about it?”

  “Not without an MRI, no. Although, if it were something like a brain bleed, we could try to relieve the pressure with a bore hole.”

  “How medieval. And I don’t think there’d be time for that.”

  “Probably not. I just wish I could have told someone so that they keep a closer eye on her. I don’t think the morphine I gave her is helping either. She seemed a little loopy as we got her out of the truck, but I don’t know if that was the drugs or the trauma.”

  “Well, it’s out of your hands now.” Cameron placed a comforting hand on Riley’s shoulder. “You have other things to worry about.”

  “Mount up!” a man shouted from very close by, causing both women to flinch. The call rippled down the line of trucks. As the last bolts were tightened on the ploughs, a stream of people flooded toward them from where they had been gathered outside the prison. They were trying to hurry to the trucks while remaining in a calm line. Despite the fact that all of them clearly knew which truck they had to go to, it was still a mad house.

  Riley and Cameron were quickly ushered into the backseat of the lead truck. Only moments later, two men crammed in on the other side. Riley did some mental math, estimating how long it would take to get to Toronto. It would take hours, up to six of them, and that was without the detours they would undoubtedly have to take. Riley groaned internally and shifted to get into a better position. It didn’t help that they had to sit with their packs and guns, and that Cameron had managed to score the seat against the door so that Riley was pressed against the strangers.

  Once everyone was generally settled, their driver got in, followed by Brunt climbing into the passenger seat.

  “You girls all right back there?” he asked over his shoulder. Even though he had more space to his left and right by being in the front seat, he had no legroom as a crate was shoved beneath them. He also had his own pack propped up on his legs. “I hope you had time to go to the bathroom first.”

 
; The girls hadn’t, but neither of them said so. Riley’s bladder felt like a shrivelled prune and she imagined Cameron’s felt the same. They had both been trained since childhood to hold it in for longer than normal periods of time; what their father had referred to as giving them men’s bladders. Their mom’s had always been the size of a corn kernel, causing her to pee every twenty minutes it seemed.

  “I didn’t realize you’d be riding in the lead truck with us,” Cameron said to Brunt.

  “Yeah, well, not many people want to ride in the lead truck. I got the short straw as usual.”

  The engine rumbled to life. Riley shifted once more so that she could see the monitor showing the feed from the rear of the truck. So many people were packed on the benches back there, with crates filling the spaces between their legs, and bags covering their laps.

  “Why don’t people want to ride in the lead truck?” Cameron asked.

  “Who do you think has to hit all the zombies and obstacles first?” Brunt said as a way of answering.

  That explained the ploughs.

  “What kind of dog is that?” Riley asked Cameron, hoping to distract herself until they got moving. Once on the road, the passing scenery should be able to occupy her.

  On the monitor, sitting on a woman’s lap, was a small, and very fluffy dog.

  “Looks like a Pomeranian,” Cameron told her. “Certainly not a dog that Dad would approve of.”

  Their dad liked big, working dogs, such as huskies. The Pomeranian didn’t look like it could pull a cat on wheels, let alone a man and his gear on a sled.

  The constant intrusion of thoughts about her family upset Riley, but she didn’t want to cry sitting next to strangers. She swallowed the lump in her throat, and put on her clinical face. She could get emotional later, when they were on the boat. Maybe even as early as the plane. Although one of the things they had to discuss still frightened her, Riley was looking forward to talking to Mathias again. She hoped he would already be there by the time they arrived at the airport.

  Sensing her stress, Cameron pointed to the last object loaded into the back. “Is that a parakeet?”

  Riley leaned as close to the screen as her pack allowed. The small screen didn’t allow for fine viewing, especially of objects in the distance. “Looks like a cage for one at least. Hard to tell what’s inside it though.”

  “It’s probably the parakeet.” Brunt had been listening in. “Since we picked up a lot of people from their homes, their pets came too. Mostly cats and dogs, but a few gerbils, hamsters, rabbits, two ferrets, some canaries and budgies, a turtle, and a snake. Oh, and a few bowls of gold fish and beta fish. We stopped at any tanks bigger than one man could carry, and I heard a tarantula was refused entrance.”

  “Huh.” Riley kept looking at the parakeet cage. She wondered how the bird felt about everything that was going on.

  Behind the cage, the doors to their truck were slammed shut. As soon as they were sealed up, they shifted into drive and headed for the large doors. Once the doors were opened, their truck drove through them as close to the right as possible. On the left, another truck inched through right next to them. The rear-view mirrors on the sides of the trucks overlapped, so that if one of them sped up or slowed down, both of them would be missing a mirror. Cameron grabbed Riley’s hand and squeezed. When Riley looked at her face, Cameron gave her a strained smile that Riley read perfectly. Her sister was feeling claustrophobic.

  Cameron could face her fears like the best of the Bishops, but sometimes she still got nervous in tight spaces. During a game of hide-and-seek, when they had been little and living in a house in Saskatchewan, Cameron had hidden in an old clothes trunk in the garage. Their dad, not knowing she was in there, placed a heavy table saw upon the trunk. Cameron had been trapped in there, in the dark, for hours. Nobody could hear her screaming out in the garage. Their dad had finally found her. They had searched the whole neighbourhood, but it wasn’t until it got dark outside, and he went into the garage to get flashlights, that he heard the SOS tapping of Morse code. Riley thought it was amazing that Cameron didn’t have a bigger fear of tight spaces, or the dark for that matter. Then again, all the Bishops had stories that could have led to a paralyzing fear of the dark.

  “We’re so messed up,” Riley whispered to her sister.

  Cameron snickered, knowing exactly what she meant.

  The doors behind them closed, and the ones in front opened. A wall of flesh and tattered clothing surged in at them. Their driver pressed his foot to the gas, the blade of the plough shoving the corpses aside. The tires crunched over the bones of those that fell. Once they were clear of the other truck, it started to follow behind them. The build-up of zombies was so great, that they were instantly surrounded on all sides. Palms and fists slammed into the reinforced glass as the dead things tried to get in at the living things. Dead eyes stared in at them, and lips pulled back from teeth in gruesome grimaces. A rock came flying out of nowhere and bounced off the window next to the driver. To his credit, he didn’t even flinch.

  Cameron pressed tighter to Riley’s side, more claustrophobic than ever. Earlier she had handled sitting in the back of the truck like a champ, but this was too much for her. Riley was now glad she had gotten one of the middle seats next to the strangers. She looked down at the feed from the camera in the rear compartment again. The people in there were terrified. They knew nothing of what was going on outside other than hearing the slamming of many fists on metal. Riley could remember what that had been like when she was brought into the prison the first time, with her friends, over two weeks ago. Depending on how quickly those people had been picked up, they may never have had that experience. Small children, who were sitting on the laps of adults, clung to their caregivers. It was impossible to tell if they were with their parents, or just someone who had taken on the job. It was likely that at least one of them was an orphan, picked up by strangers. Several people were holding hands, trying to draw strength from one another. At least five had their heads bowed, clearly in prayer. If Riley had ever been the praying type, now would have been a good time.

  Suddenly the truck broke free of the mass, blasting out into full sunlight and open road. They could have floored it now that the zombies weren’t packed around them, but they kept their pace. It was probably so that the trucks behind them would have a chance to catch up once they pushed through the mass as well.

  Some time later, the sound of helicopter blades finally pounded past overhead. Nicky was on that chopper. Riley hoped she was okay.

  “So how many people will be at the airport?” Cameron asked.

  “Hard to say,” Brunt answered her. “There was a fairly large group at a motel that was supposed to be on their way there. We haven’t heard from them since they left, but they’re not due for another few hours.”

  “Will we all fit in the plane?” one of the men next to Riley asked worriedly.

  “Planes,” Brunt corrected him. “There’re two planes. And yeah, we’ll all fit.”

  “What kind of preparations are they doing on the boat?” Riley asked next.

  “I don’t have the full details on that.” Brunt looked to their driver, hoping he did, but he shook his head. “I know a helipad has already been established. Maybe even two. They’re loading up on supplies for the long run, is what I heard. Air lifting in soil to plant gardens in, bringing aboard livestock.”

  “They’re checking the livestock for infection right? I have some friends who were attacked by zombie pigs.”

  “Yeah, they have their blood checked before they’re even loaded in the choppers and then again on the boat.”

  “Zombie pigs?” Cameron looked at Riley.

  “Yeah. Tobias even took some film of them and showed it to me. They’re vicious.”

  “Are any of the scientists going to be there?” one of the men spoke up again. Riley wasn’t quite sure if she heard a trace of fear or hope in his voice.

  “Do you mean the scientists from Marble
Keystone specifically?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I think there may be a handful. None of the ones that worked on the virus though. All of them were in the White Box.”

  “What happened to the White Box?” the man asked, confused. Clearly, he didn’t know the same things that Brunt, Cameron, and Riley knew.

  “It got overrun,” Brunt put it bluntly. “Nicky’s the closest thing to a survivor from that place.”

  The face of the man who had asked suddenly collapsed into an expression of despair. The man between him and Riley looked uncomfortable about it, like he should do something but didn’t know what.

  “My wife worked there,” the upset man whispered, explaining his distress. “All this time I thought she’d be safe. She was called into work the morning it happened, which isn’t unusual; she always worked a lot of strange hours. She said it shouldn’t take long, that she’d be back in time for our dinner date. All this time I assumed she was safe.” He turned away from the group in the truck and placed his forehead against the window, trying to privatize the rest of his grief.

  Part of Riley wanted to give him some hope, to say that maybe she wasn’t in the Box when the zombies were let loose. She couldn’t though. She couldn’t lie to the man like that.

  The inside of the vehicle fell silent.

  ***

  The convoy had started making good time once everyone was out of the prison, and had caught up. Word came from the back that they had gotten out of there just in time. Zombies had started pouring over the walls just as the big, long haul trucks were leaving.

  At no point during the drive could Riley really relax. She learned why no one wanted to ride in the front truck. They didn’t head down busy roads, but on the other hand, they didn’t pick empty ones either. Every few minutes, they’d come across some cars stopped too close together for them to squeeze through. Not that they ever tried to squeeze through. The plough would slam into one, and with a screech of metal, knock it to the side. The truck would shutter from the impact but never slow down. Riley had learned these trucks were powerful, but not how powerful until now. As long as the centreline of the plough blade could fit between things, they were smashed to the sides.