Survival Instinct: A Zombie Novel (10 page)

Abby continued to learn as she ended her spin cycle.  Once done, she took another large swallow of water before getting off the spinner, and towelling her neck.  She looked over at the weights, debating with herself.  She had a doctor’s appointment later that day and was deciding whether she should use the weights, or swim, during the time she had left.  In the
end, she decided to swim.

She walked out of the gym and crossed the hall to the ladies’ change room.  It was empty, which was always nice, but even so, she changed into her bathing suit in a convenience stall, just in case someone walked in.  Abby wasn’t necessarily ashamed of her body.  She worked out a lot and knew she was super fit, but growing up in a house of all boys meant she had no one to talk to about things.  No one other than her mother, and that hadn’t turned out well.  She had one female friend who had been her best friend for the past two years.  She was learning from her how to be comfortable in her own skin, and to understand what was considered a ‘normal’ body.  For now though, she still preferred to be safely hidden while completely naked.

Once she changed, she gathered up her things and put them into one of the mini-lockers.  She locked the door and clipped the little key onto her bathing suit.  She hated swimming with that little key attached to her, but there was no way around it.

After checking the showers quickly, she stepped into them.  Once, she had walked in there when a woman was showering naked.  It was really awkward for Abby even though the woman didn’t seem to care.  She rinsed off the sweat from her cardio
workout and then headed for the pool.

The pool area was nice, with a whole wall of glass letting the sun shine in brightly.  A couple of mothers sat in chairs, sunbathing, while their kids and kids’ friends played in the pool.  Abby knew this particular group; they came swimming here nearly every Saturday during the summer.

“Hi, Abby!”  A little boy in the shallow end waved.

“Hey
, Bobby.”  Abby waved back.

Bobby lived on the floor above her with his mom, two younger brothers and little sister.  He was a good kid.  Hearing Bobby’s greeting, his mom looked over her shoulder.  She also gave a brief wave to Abby, and so did Mrs. Kellermen, the other mother.  They then resumed their chat before Abby could even wave back.  Mrs. Kellermen had three daughters and lived on the fifth floor with her husband.

“Can you play with us today?” Bobby asked excitedly as Abby slid into the pool.

Abby looked at all the kids in the pool, naming them off in her head.  Her sharp memory made her great with names.  She didn’t need to know each one of them, but she liked to.  She always liked to know who was around her.  Bobby was in the shallow end, watching over his little sister, Lucy, while she floated around in a foam chair.  A little deeper in the pool were his brothers, Matt and Frank, the twins, playing something with their friend Harris.  Mary Kellermen was looking through a pile of pool toys with her friend Cassy off in a corner.  Her oldest sister, Claire, the oldest of all the kids here, was practising swimming underwater in the deep end.  The last Kellermen girl, Hillary, was with her two friends, Julie and Nancy, huddled in the corner of the pool gossiping about something.  Ten kids in total with two mothers.  Most people would never have bothered to get to know each one of them, but Abby had.

“Maybe some other time,” Abby told Bobby with a smile,  “I have to go to a doctor’s appointment soon and I want to do laps today.”

“Oh, okay,” Bobby shrugged.  “I’ll make sure the other kids keep out of your way.”

“Thanks.”  Abby was pretty sure Bobby had a crush on her, but it was innocent, so she let it go.  Abby liked to think that one day he would notice Claire more.  She thought they would make an adorable little pair.  Maybe once they became teenagers.  On normal days, Abby would usually play with the kids after doing her laps.  It was hard work because they would bicker and argue a lot, but sometimes it could be a lot of fun too.  She didn’t know how their parents could handle living in these small apartments with so many kids running around.  Then again, they came to the pool a lot.  The large space of the pool area probably helped, and so did the view seen from twenty-seven stories up.  Intimidating but also breath taking.  Sometimes the kids would just sit and look out the window.  When Abby had first moved in, she had been terrified by the height.  Now, though, she was used to it.

Abby started swimming her laps along one side of the pool, trying to keep most of the pool open for the kids.  Some of them would talk to her while she swam.  They liked telling her about things, about what they’d done during the last week, or stuff they had learned.  They liked to tell her because Abby always listened.  Claire tried to swim a few laps with her, but had to give up after two, from exhaustion.

“One day I’ll be able to keep up with you,” Claire stated matter-of-factly as Abby turned herself around.

“I look forward to it,” Abby encouraged her.

She ended up cutting her laps short to judge a swimming contest the kids held amongst themselves, and to watch over little Lucy while they did.  Afterwards, several of the kids begged her to stay longer but she had to decline.  They couldn’t understand why anyone would willingly go to a doctor’s appointment.

Abby climbed out of the pool and headed back into the showers.  She rinsed the stink of chlorine off her body and out of her hair, then towelled off.  Her hair was slightly shorter than shoulder length and rather thin so it dried fairly quickly.  Abby liked that about her hair, even if she wasn’t too keen on its bland sand colour.  She then gathered her things out of her chosen locker once more and again changed in the convenience stall.  When she checked her watch, she saw that she had a bit of time, so she used her hair dryer to finish the job
quickly, running a comb through it to straighten it.  Once done, she headed out to the elevators.  It always felt chilly when she rode down to her floor after swimming, until she got into her apartment.  Inside, she put her exercise gear in a corner and quickly changed into something clean and doctor-appropriate.  A light, white T-shirt and comfy grey slacks.  The pockets in her slacks weren’t very large, just big enough to take a little bit of cash, her health card, her ID, and the key to her apartment.  She left the rest of her keys on a small table.  She also left her cell phone sitting on the charger because she didn’t expect any calls.  It needed to charge, since she had a long, intimate phone call last night, and had been too tired to return it to its cradle.  A silver chain necklace with a cross pendent sat next to the phone.  Abby’s belief in God was a fickle one due to her up bringing.  Some days she was a true believer, other days she wasn’t.  Today was an off day and she left the necklace behind.  Once back out in the hall, Abby locked her apartment again and headed back toward the elevators.

As Abby rode the elevator down, she stared at herself in the mirror.  She did this every time she rode down to the first floor.  She had moved to the city only two years ago when she had gotten a job with a TV show production crew.  Her job was to make sure the continuity of things stayed true.  Her memory was perfect for it.  The city was a challenge however.  She still wasn’t used to the tall buildings all around, the sidewalks crowded with people, the streets filled with cars.  She read the newspapers and watched the TV reports.  She heard about all the muggings and murders, car crashes and hit pedestrians.  She understood the ratio of unharmed to harmed people meant it was unlikely it would happen to her, but she still had to psyche herself up to go out there.  Especially lately.  An increase in attacks had been reported in the news lately.  Most of them seemed to be homeless people doing the attacking.  There was a homeless man, Eddy, just up the street from Abby’s building.  She brought him sandwiches sometimes, or bought him a coffee.  He seemed nice, just down on his luck and a bit addle minded.

Abby studied her face in the mirror.  She wore no makeup; she never had.  Her friend had once described her features as pixie-like but Abby wasn’t sure what she meant by that.  She thought she was dull.  Her eyes matched her hair colour and she had a small smattering of freckles across her nose, but none of that made her special.  Not to herself anyway.

The elevator reached the ground floor and opened its doors.  Abby stepped out and noticed Mr. Fargus, the doorman scheduled for that day, wasn’t there.  He must be taking a bathroom break.  As she was about to exit the building, Mark Green, a teenager from the fourteenth floor, and a friend Abby didn’t recognise, burst in.  The door made a nasty cracking sound as they did.  It looked unharmed, but Abby made a mental note to tell Mr. Fargus about it.

“Hey!” Abby called out as they brushed past.  “Slow down, where’s the fire?”

Mark didn’t respond as he and his friend charged toward the elevators.  Abby rolled her eyes as she headed outside.  One day that kid was going to learn a hard lesson.

In addition to having a great memory, Abby was also quite perceptive.  She always won the game where you would study a room, leave it, and then come back after someone had removed or added something to the room.  Walking up the street was kind of like that.  It didn’t take too many steps for Abby to notice that all the cars had been emptied.  A lot of people were walking, even on the road.  Abby thought that maybe an accident had happened, and they had to close the street.

“Ms. Walker!  Ms. Walker!”  Mark Green came tearing back out of the building behind her.

“Mark?”  Abby noticed the fear on his face.  “Mark, what’s wrong?”

“It’s Claire,” was all he said before running back inside.

* * *

Abby didn’t like the sound of that.  She quickly ran back to the building.  Mark knew the other kids from the building; he sometimes showed up when they were swimming.  He was usually more destructive though, pulling the girls’ hair and dunking the boys underwater.  He was a pest for everyone.  For him to be so formal and polite as to call Abby, Ms. Walker, meant that something was very bad indeed.

She went back into the building and saw the two boys by the elevator.  She hurried over.  Once she reached them, they parted to reveal Claire huddled on the ground.  She was soaking wet, still in her bathing suit.  She was also bleeding from a head laceration.

“Claire.”  Abby knelt down in front of her.  “Claire, honey, are you all right?”

Claire just shook.

“Mark, hit the button for the twentieth floor,” Abby ordered as she looked at Claire’s wound.  It didn’t look very deep.  “I have a first aid kit in my apartment and we can call the paramedics.”

“Okay, Ms. Walker.”  Mark hit the button.  He kept looking at Claire and was slowly turning more and more green, to match his last name.

“If you can’t stand the sight of blood, don’t look,” Abby told him and his friend.

Mark turned toward the wall.  He then took out a can of red spray paint and started spraying the walls.  He also sprayed the camera, likely out of habit.  Abby didn’t like him vandalising, or his choice of colour, but knew that he was just trying to distract himself.  For now, she would let him get away with it, but they would have a talk later.

“Are you okay?” Abby asked Mark’s friend, noticing he was still watching.

“I’m cool.”  He kept staring.

“Give me your sweater.”  Abby held out a hand.

The boy untied the hoody from around his waist and gave it to Abby.  Abby bunched it up and pressed it to Claire’s head.

“Is she going to be okay?” the boy asked.

“I’m sure she’ll be fine,” Abby told him.  “I read that head wounds usually bleed more than others, and there doesn’t seem to be much more blood than a nose bleed might cause.”

They reached the twentieth floor and the elevator doors slid open.  Abby scooped Claire up into her arms.  Mark’s friend helped by keeping his sweater pressed to Claire’s wound.

“Mark, can you get my key out?” Abby asked as they began heading down the hall.  “It’s in my front right pocket.”

Mark nodded.  He was very careful getting the key, trying not to touch Abby.  There was a little silver moon fob attached to her apartment key and it always stuck out of her pocket a bit, so Mark was able to find it and get it out with relative ease.

They reached Abby’s door and Mark unlocked it.  Abby carried Claire straight to her dun-coloured couch and placed her gently upon it.  The boys stepped over the threshold, but stopped there, almost like vampires, needing an invitation to enter someone’s home.

“You can come in.”  Abby gestured with her head for them to come forward.  “And close the door please.”

Mark’s friend closed the door but they both looked very awkward being in there.

“Mark, there’s a first aid kit in my bathroom,” Abby instructed.  “I think my apartment has the same layout as yours so you should be able to find the bathroom easily.  The kit is attached to the side of the sink.  You just have to slide it out of the plastic holder.”

Mark nodded and dashed off.

“You, what’s your name?” Abby finally asked as she gingerly took his sweater off Claire’s head.

“Jon.”  He took a step forward.

“Okay Jon, go into my kitchen over there.  In the cupboard above the microwave is a big plastic bowl.  I want you to fill it up with warm water and bring it to me.”

“Okay.”  Jon disappeared into the kitchen just as Mark returned with the kit.