Defensive Instinct (Survival Instinct Book 4)

by Kristal Stittle

  “I know, I read all your reports.” James smiled at her, reminding her that he had been her boss back on the Diana. “I’m just curious is all.”

  They continued to cross the bridge, coming to the marshy section on the far side. Doyle had to admit that he was curious now, too. It did seem odd for so many zombies still wearing packs to be clustered together, but then Rose was right, stranger things had happened.

  Reaching the far end of the bridge, they were able to pick up their pace again, the trees closing back around them. They followed the tracks for a while longer, but eventually split away from them, heading into the trees.

  “Watch your footing,” Doyle reminded the others. The ground could conceal many things, some deadly while others would just break your ankle.

  Staying in their close formation, the group moved stealthily through the trees. Cresting a hill, the forest suddenly gave way, and nothing but suburbs filled the land before them. Somewhere within the cluster of buildings was the bookstore that Doyle wanted to reach. They paused to look over the houses they could see.

  The air was still and quiet. An area of densely packed houses like this was one of the most dangerous places to go. Although this area had been evacuated, there was no telling who had returned to their home to die. Sometimes the evacuation sites weren’t that far away, and when they had become overrun, they released their deadly occupants back out onto the streets, creating a super horde.

  “There’s the hole in the fence,” Canary pointed to the gap in the boards that allowed them to officially enter the housing development.

  Doyle continued to pause. He thought about the zombies on the bridge, wondering if maybe they should go back and check them out. The bulging packs would surely have something of interest inside, maybe even a book or two.

  Stepping forward, Doyle went to the gap in the fence and peered into the backyard. It was empty, just as it had been the last time he came this way, although the shadowy interior of the dog house was always suspect. As he squeezed into the yard, he hoped he was making the right choice, that nothing would happen to make the books not worth it.

  9

  Dean’s Thoughtless

  Standing in the middle of the horde, Dean felt no fear of the moving corpses pressed up against him. What was there to fear when you were one of them? And yet, he was different. He was smarter, much smarter than the rotting, singularly purposed minds around him. Like them, his one desire in this second life was to spread his contagion, to find something living, and infect it. But he could do so much more. Whatever it was that Roy had forced into him was different from the usual blend of madness. He infected things the same way, but for whatever reason, his mind remained more intact than most. It was probably why other zombies were drawn to him. Unless something else properly alive drew their focus, they gathered as close to him as they could, sensing he was closer to the living than they were.

  Dean didn’t mind. He had learned early on that meat kept him from rotting. By taking bites out of his brethren, he was able to maintain his body far longer than they were. A couple of the brighter bulbs had learned to imitate him, chomping on dead flesh whenever he did. In this way, Dean was able to separate the smarter ones and keep them close in case he needed them.

  There were other things that Dean had done in order to keep himself together. Wearing body armour, for instant, not only prevented the humans he had run across from wounding him, but also protected him from rocks, branches, and other natural elements that tore at the others. He wore goggles filled with water to maintain his dry eyes. Although the view was always distorted, it was better than going blind. The helmet secured to his bullet-shaped head, with its retractable visor, was the best touch, as he had seen enough zombies go down to understand that his head was his weak spot. Still, he did get injured from time to time, causing sludge-like blood to ooze out due to gravity as opposed to a heartbeat. After those instances, he wrapped the area in tape, not even removing the body armour to do so. The taping was the most complex physical job he could still accomplish; his body was not as responsive as it had been when he was alive.

  There wasn’t much he could remember about living, no specifics anyway. There was a lot of muscle memory packed into the former mercenary, but not a lot of emotion. Every now and then he got flashes of things, a few managing to be retained in his limited memory, most being forgotten again minutes later. The strongest was Roy and the needle he had stuck into Dean’s arm. Dean remembered Roy and his nametag more often than he remembered his own name. The needle had turned him into what he was. Although unable to understand things like fear and anger, Dean had wanted to infect Roy the moment he turned. He never got the chance.

  After managing to teach a bunch of zombies outside his place of confinement—a school he sometimes remembered—to start battering the windows, more people in white coats came and locked him inside a box. Dean was in the box for a long time. After a while, he remained perfectly still. So still, that one of the white coats worried that their precious specimen had been lost, somehow. A woman had foolishly opened the box just enough for him to bite her. She must have hidden the wound from the others, because the next time Dean’s box opened, it was because of a helicopter crash, and her mangled body was still twitching and flailing in the wreckage. The box meant to contain Dean had protected him, and, ever since, he had wandered the Earth, looking for things to infect while the horde around him grew and grew.

  The only other memory that hung around was that of sitting in a classroom, maybe in the same school, with desks piled up. He was with a group of people, all adults save one teenage boy. Sometimes Dean remembered that this was his mercenary squad, and that the boy had been sort of adopted by them, but most of the time he had no idea who they were. For whatever reason, his infection kept focusing on them, making him want to find them and infect them. He hadn’t found a single one, but it was for that reason that he kept moving. A few times he had stumbled across a heavily fortified base with some living humans inside. There were ways he knew to get in that the brain dead didn’t, but on most occasions he moved on, preferring to keep searching rather than waste a lot of time and resources for only a few infections. That’s often how he considered the dumbest of the zombies: resources. The more he had of them, the greater his defensive wall of flesh, and the more bodies he had to throw at the larger compounds, the ones that held more than a dozen people.

  A body moved past, bumping into Dean’s shoulder. Dean turned his goggled face, peering through the slightly murky water. If he could remember, he should change the water soon. The zombie who had bumped into him was saggy blue shirt, a smart one who still moved with grace and ease. Dean couldn’t remember individual zombies unless he was looking at them. Now that saggy blue shirt was within his line of sight, Dean recalled that the zombie had been around him for a long time, eating enough protein and managing to avoid dangers so that his body had barely rotted. He still had his motor functions intact, a valuable asset. If something interested him enough, saggy blue shirt could still run, a skill many had lost upon turning, or else were no longer capable of due to stiffened muscles or various injuries. Dean was once able to move like that, but he hadn’t consumed enough protein to properly maintain himself for it. Saggy blue shirt was even now chewing on what was no doubt a piece of the horde.

  Dean was not in the center of the mob. He continued to move in a single direction, chosen for unknown reasons. A group stayed closely around him, able to head in the same direction without looking at him, or else being pushed along at the front. The rest trailed behind in an amorphous column, new zombies joining all the time, while others wandered off or became too injured to keep up. They trampled the land flat as they moved from one place to another, searching for humans or the odd animal. The travelling humans were the best, when they slept in exposed camps. Their guards and defensive warnings were no match for the sheer size of Dean’s horde. Lately, however, Dean actively wanted to find a large group. Something was telling him that m
aybe the people from his memory were in a complex somewhere. He wanted to know where.

  And so Dean kept walking, kept hunting, his horde following along obediently: his army of corpses.

  I

  The Boy

  The boy had been awake for some time, but continued to remain still, his eyes closed, letting these people think he was asleep. He didn’t know what to make of them. They had saved him and given him watery soup, but would they want something in return? New people were always such an unknown. Some were obviously destructive, some genuinely cared, while others were sneaky. They made you think they were the ‘good guys’ only to turn on you and reveal a hideous underbelly.

  Knowing that he couldn’t pretend to sleep forever, the boy assessed what he managed to hear. He knew there was a man in the room, that he had been there most, if not all, of the time. He had left only once, and some other man had sat in. That second man was now apparently going to a bookstore, and he was going to see if the boy had drawn anything to this place when he had staggered toward their fences. The bookstore might just be a bookstore, but it could also be a nickname for some other place.

  The boy would have to risk opening his eyes at some time, it might as well be now.

  Section 2:

  Infiltrate

  10

  Nessie’s Unsure

  Usually by the time the sun had set, with the last of the light leaving the sky and her pop bottle light bulb, Nessie would be in bed attempting to sleep and frequently succeeding with ease. Tonight, however, she lay on her back and stared into the darkness. It wasn’t a full moon night: the pop bottle was unable to pick up much light, but it did show as a faint speck against the ceiling that could easily be mistaken for the imagination or an after image.

  Nessie was thinking about the metal box beneath her bed. She knew she should turn it in, and either brush off their questions or perhaps even answer them. Something held her back, though. This wasn’t like finding a box of fishing lures; even Venti had understood that. He obviously couldn’t handle the stress of keeping it himself, and had decided that Nessie was the best person to hand it off to.

  Sitting up with a sigh, Nessie slid out of bed, her feet finding their way into her slippers. She shuffled around in the dark with practised ease, locating a candle and matches. Entirely by feel, she opened the box of matches, plucked one out, and ran its head along the striker. With a pop and a hiss, the match ignited, surrounding Nessie’s hand in a glow of light and heat. She quickly applied it to the candle’s wick, where the flame burned a little larger and would last a lot longer. This particular candle was already halfway melted, but that was fine; Nessie didn’t think she would need it for very long.

  As she made her way back to her bed, carrying the candle in the tin holder, she heard Dragon change places in his cage. The light had woken up the bird, or at the very least had caused him to stir. Nessie ignored him as she knelt on the floor beside her bed, resting the candle on the nearest flat surface above her. Stretching her arm beneath the bed, she groped around for the metal box. Her hand encountered dust, along with a few blankets she intended to trade, and a pair of shoes she had stopped wearing since acquiring the rubber boots. At last, her fingertips bumped into the hard surface of the box, quickly roaming about it until they found the handle along its side. She had pushed it deep under her bed, and it took an unexpected amount of effort to pull it back out.

  Once the metal box was sitting before her, Nessie paused. There really was no reason to look inside again, yet something told her she must. In the dead of night, one often had to confirm things a second time. Popping open the clasps, Nessie gently raised the lid of the box.

  Inside, nestled within sculpted foam, were a dozen hand grenades. Nessie knew if she lifted up the layer of foam, there would be two more layers underneath. Thirty-six explosive devices sitting under her bed; what was she thinking?

  Running her hands along the vaguely egg-shaped items, Nessie thought about the story that Venti had told her, the one about how he had found them. Apparently, he had been fishing in a spot he liked to go to of late, somewhere along the shore closer to the open waters of the Gulf of Mexico. He had spotted a large rabbit on shore, and thought he’d try his luck at catching it; not killing it, but catching it alive to add to Animal Island, where they bred rabbits like cattle for a source of meat. It seemed that Venti was fine with killing both zombies and fish, but he said no when it came to doing in mammals. The rabbit got away, no doubt with ease, as Venti was no trapper. As he was returning to his boat, he tripped over something hidden in the grass. It turned out to be a corner of the box, which Venti then proceeded to dig up. When he saw what was inside, he knew he had to bring it back to the container yard, but from there, didn’t know what to do. He had the same reservations about turning them over to the community leaders that Nessie had.

  Grenades had the sole purpose of killing humans. If the container yard were inhabited by the kind of people who were landscapers, needing to blast away at a boulder or something it would be a different story, but they weren’t. Other humans had come to the container yard with bad intentions before. A few had even been shot and killed, but most had been left alive. To shoot someone was one thing; there was a chance you could then save them. But with a grenade, that chance dropped to nearly nil. Nessie thought of the movies where she had seen grenades used and pictured the mess left behind.

  No, there was no reason to hand them over. Even if Nessie could completely trust that, without any doubt, the grenades wouldn’t be used, then what would be the point? They would just be placed in a storage container somewhere. At least this way, only Nessie and Venti knew about them, meaning no one would be tempted to take one, or two, or the whole damned box.

  Sighing, having convinced herself for the third time that she was doing the right thing, Nessie closed the lid and snapped shut the latches. She pushed the box back under the bed with both arms, wiggling it around any objects that may have drifted in the way after she had pulled it out.

  From his cage, Dragon made a loud chattering sound that caused Nessie to flinch and lie flat on instinct. It took her less than a second to identify the bird as the culprit and not real guns. He never got that sound quite right, never put enough power behind it, for which Nessie and everyone around her were grateful. Since the Day, Dragon had heard more than enough gunfire to try to repeat it, but Nessie never encouraged his efforts, hoping that one day he’d stop trying.

  “Go back to sleep,” she hissed at the large bird, looking over to where his big, round eye reflected the candle light, becoming luminous as he watched her.

  “Sleep. Sleep,” he whispered in the near dark, and then made obnoxious, exaggerated snoring sounds.

  Rolling her eyes, Nessie got back up on her feet. She returned the candle to its usual place and blew it out with a puff, the resulting black immediately swallowing up her container. Licking her fingers, Nessie used them to pinch the wick a few times, making sure that even the embers were smashed out. Wiping the worst of the resulting soot on her nightie, she made a mental note to add it to her wash pile tomorrow.

  Sliding back out of her slippers, Nessie crawled once more beneath her blankets.

  “Goodnight, Dragon,” she whispered.

  “Goodnight,” he whispered back with a soft whistle.

  Although warm and comfortable, Nessie continued to stare into the darkness.

  ***

  Despite her restless night, Nessie was up and following her usual morning routine at the regular time. The only change was that she made her tea extra strong.

  At breakfast, she observed that Dr. Riley and her patients hadn’t returned yet, and therefore Bill was still away. Making note of this in her book, she avoided looking at the entry about the metal box. While the others chatted as usual, Nessie found it hard to focus on their conversations, often withdrawing into herself. Despite her efforts, the metal box continued to occupy her mind.

  “Are you all right, Nessie?” the woman
sitting next to her asked.

  “I’m fine, thank you. I didn’t sleep well last night,” she forced a smile.

  “You should think about taking an hour or two off today to take a nap.”

  “Maybe I will.” She knew she wouldn’t. Not only was there too much to do today, but she had never been one for naps; she didn’t want to waste her life sleeping. Besides, she’d probably only think about the box again, and lie awake.

  After breakfast, she left her sign in the ‘out’ position and gathered up her laundry. Once she had made sure that everything was in the basket, she placed the basket into a sort of harness she had acquired through a trade. It allowed her to carry the basket on her back, leaving her hands free for various things, including holding her cane. Dragon perched on the side of the basket, ready to ride. As she exited her container once more, she felt like she should close the doors; she now had something she wanted to keep hidden, but she managed to override the urge by convincing herself that closing the door would only make people more suspicious.

  “Do you need any help, Nessie?” a young man on his way to the wall stopped to ask. He must have noticed that she was using her cane more than usual today.

  “I’m all right, thank you.” She gave him the same forced smile that she had given her breakfast companion.

  The young man nodded and trotted off to whatever job he had been assigned. Nessie sighed and looked up at the sky, wondering if some outside confirmation about what to do with the grenades could be found there. There wasn’t one; instead, she spotted some ominous-looking clouds in the distance out toward sea. Although the sky overhead was bright and sunny now, a storm was going to roll in off the Gulf in the near future. Ocean-born storms were always the worst. Without satellite imagery and a bunch of meteorologists pouring over complex data, they never knew how bad the storms would be. They never knew if it was just a lot of rain coming in, or if they were going to have to deal with a hurricane. So far, they had gotten lucky during hurricane season and hadn’t been directly hit by one. Some people in the group believed that if they ever were, their entire camp would be wiped out. Precautions were taken, such as keeping loaded and therefore heavy storage containers pressed up against the community building for stability in the wind and protection from flying debris. Living containers were lined up side by side in rows in the hopes that it would be easier for the wind to funnel down the aisles this made. Each container was braced by those next to it, provided the wind didn’t change course. Everyone knew the drills, knew where the safest places were, such as the dozen containers that had been painstakingly bolted deep into the concrete where the ends of the rows were closest to the community centre. Of course, if a big enough storm surge came along, there wouldn’t be much they could do beyond pray, as everything, themselves included, got swept away. Water was a powerfully destructive force.