Survival Instinct: A Zombie Novel (102 page)

* * *

The ride down was bumpy, and not because of rough air.  Riley still wasn’t completely used to the sensitivity of the chopper’s controls.  She would go too fast, then too slow, then too fast again.  They were going a little fast near the ground and hit hard.  The impact jarred Riley somewhat, which caused the stick to move a little and they drifted sideways.  The skids made an awful noise as they scraped along gravel and hard packed dirt.  She grabbed the stick, spewing a string of curses at it.  She managed to get it under control and steady.  Danny leaned forward once more and quickly hit the kill switch.  Riley didn’t reprimand him for it this time.

Once the blades had slowed to the point of nearly stopping, Riley remembered to breathe.

“Okay guys, we’re down,” she spoke over the headset.  There was no reply, not even static.

“I shut the whole thing down.”  Danny looked at her sheepishly.

“That’s fine.”  Riley took off the helmet, opened her door, and hopped out.  She walked up to the rear door and slapped a hand against it.  “You can come out now!”

Riley backed up a few steps and the door slid open.  Misha and Tobias were the first to come tumbling out.

“Remind me never to fly with you again.”  Tobias wobbled over to the side and collapsed with his head between his knees.

“Pansy!” Mathias called over to him as he unstrapped and climbed out.

“You okay?” Riley frowned at him.  “I heard you took another bullet.”

Mathias lifted up his shirt to show the lead buried in the vest.  It was at the bottom of his ribs, just to the left of centre.

“I’m going to get another bruise, aren’t I?”  Mathias grinned.  In fact, there was a chance the top of his new bruise would reach the bottom of his day old one.  “Although I might be dead if it weren’t for this guy right here.”  He threw his arms around Misha’s shoulders, who looked uncomfortable with the sudden expression of gratitude and closeness.  “It was a damn good thing he spotted that guy taking out his gun.  I might have been shot in the arm or side where there’s no protection, but Misha here got me facing forward so I could take it in the belly.”

“I knew he had a vest on,” Misha said defensively.

“A little help here.”  Abby had dragged a heavy bag to the edge of the chopper.  Mathias turned to help her off-load.

Danny walked over from the cockpit and helped by standing lookout for everyone.  Although everybody kept an eye out anyway, it was nice to have one set of eyes looking solely for zombies.

“You all right, Cender?”  Riley poked her head into the dark cabin.

Cender was unbuckling Rifle.  “I’ve got my face about a foot away from dog pee right now, how do you think I am?”

“I think you’re right at home,” Riley grinned and pulled her head back out.

When Rifle was free, he shot out of the chopper like a rocket.  He then turned and gave it a good barking before sulking over next to Tobias.  Shoes seemed rather well with the ride and the bumpy landing.  The hound waddled to the exit with a large yawn.  Mathias treated him like he did the bags.  He scooped the dog up and placed him on top of the pile of packs.  Shoes just walked down them like a staircase.

“Time for the cripple.  And you too, Alec.”  Riley pulled out Alec’s wheelchair while Mathias offered a hand to help Abby out.

“Ha ha.”  Cender gathered up his crutches and rolled his eyes.  He hopped out, landing on his uninjured leg and trying to get his crutches under him before he fell.  He would have fallen too, except Riley quickly grabbed his shoulder and righted him.

His ears turned red as he hobbled out of the way for Alec.

Once Alec was out and in his chair, everybody picked up their respective bags with Misha grabbing LeBlanc’s.  Mathias closed the chopper door and they turned toward the little house at the end of the runway.  There still had been no movement from inside the house.  Riley started to get really worried.

“Everyone, keep your guns ready,” she told the group.

Everybody gripped their respective weapons.  Since the Keystone firearms had been ditched, Mathias borrowed Alec’s pistol while Alec carried his sniper rifle.  Misha was the only one who didn’t have a gun, but he seemed perfectly comfortable with the machete that Tobias handed him.

Riley took up Shoes’s leash and led the way up the runway.  Her ears strained for any source of noise from the house, but the only thing she heard was the wind in the trees and flapping from the nearby windsock.  She had walked this runway many times before, but it never seemed to take this long.

* * *

As they neared the house, Shoes began to bark.  Riley looked at Alec, wondering if it was his signal.

“He’ll lie down if it is.”  Alec had read her look.

Riley nodded, and then faced the house again.  Shoes pulled on his rope toward the door.  He pawed at the screen door, barking in his low voice.  Rifle wandered around and through the group, nervous.  He was either set off by Shoes’s barking, or possibly by whatever it was Shoes was barking at.

Riley reached forward and grabbed the handle of the door.  The screen door was never locked and opened with a screech.  Beyond it was a wooden
door, which she also found unlocked.  That was more unusual.

Mathias suddenly stepped up beside her.  “Let me go first,” he whispered.  “What’s your brother’s name?”

“Connor,” Riley whispered back,  “Connor Bishop.”

Mathias nodded once, then pushed through the door.  Riley and everyone else followed after him.  They entered Connor’s pleasant but dirty kitchen.  The group waited in it with Riley, while Mathias went to clear the house.  They could hear him calling out as he went.

“Connor?  Connor Bishop, are you here?  My name is Mathias Cole.  I’m here with your sister Riley Bishop.  If you can hear me, please respond.  We’re not infected.  Riley wouldn’t lead us here if we were.”

This message was repeated three times as he swept the first floor and then headed up to the second.

Riley waited with baited breath.  Perhaps Connor was out on a hike, or even a hunt.  Sometimes he hunted the area around his airfield instead of taking his truck somewhere.  But then why was the back door unlocked?

Mathias came clopping down the stairs and back into the kitchen.  He looked at Riley and shook his head.  Riley read his face.  He wasn’t shaking his head because Connor wasn’t here, he was shaking it because he was and something was wrong.

“No.”  Riley shook her head.  “No!”

She dropped both her gun and the dog leash, and tried to run past Mathias to get to the stairs.  Mathias grabbed hold of her, bear hugging her to him, not letting her go.

“Let me go!” Riley wailed.  “I have to see him!”

“No.”  She felt him shake his head again against her shoulder.  “No, you don’t.”

Now that Shoes was free, he dashed up the stairs, barking as he went.  Riley could hear him continuing to bark upstairs.  She could picture him lying down.

“How?”  Riley relaxed, and looked at Mathias as tears sprang to her eyes.  She never thought she needed to worry about her family’s safety, especially Connor’s.  “Was it…?”

“It looks like he did it himself.”  Mathias pulled no punches.  Still, hearing that was better than learning he had been torn apart.  “I found this nearby.”

Mathias put a letter in her hands.  He then disappeared upstairs, calling after Shoes.

Riley slumped to the floor, holding the letter.  The others quietly left, disappearing into the living room so she could read it in peace.

The letter broke her heart and confirmed what Mathias had said.  He did do it himself.  He wasn’t even sure he was infected, but a small part of him thought he might be.  More so, he couldn’t live knowing what was happening.  He couldn’t take the pressure.  He couldn’t do as he was trained.  Riley remembered the surreal feeling herself.  If she hadn’t met up with Mathias and LeBlanc, would that feeling have gotten worse?  Would it have just kept growing and growing until she arrived at the same thought her brother had?

Riley didn’t know she was crying until the drops hit the page.  She read the letter several times, committing it to memory.  She had always thought of Connor as strong.  Her strong, big brother who ran his own business and lived alone in the wilderness.  She had looked up to him, and he had made living with her parents easier.  He would sometimes help her cheat to pass their dad’s tests, like when he stashed some supplies in a cave for her the night she had to spend alone in the woods.  He thought of the tests as games.  Maybe that was the problem.

“Umm, Riley?”  Abby stood sheepishly in the doorway to the living room.

Riley sniffed and wiped clear her eyes.  “What is it?”

“There’s another letter.”  Abby held out another envelope.  “This one was found in the door.”

Riley stood and took the letter.  Whereas the last one had been addressed to the family, this one was addressed specifically to her.  She followed Abby into the living room, hoping that it wasn’t more bad news.

This new letter was actually from her parents, and Riley read it aloud.  They had probably missed each other by only a few hours.  The letter told them that Riley’s parents, and her other brother, had already been on the way here for a visit when all hell broke loose.  They had found Connor as he was and begged Riley not to go look.  They apologized for not being there, but her sister had called them.  She needed their help getting out.  Riley explained to the others that she lived in Sudbury.  Her parents and brother were going, but they told Riley to take the plane.  They would meet her at the cabin, and they would bring the dogs if possible.

“Dogs?” Mathias frowned.  He had returned from upstairs and was standing with Shoes in his arms.

“My parents run a dog sledding business with my other brother,” Riley told him and everyone else.  “They breed and train champions.”

“Wait.”  Tobias held up a hand.  “Does this mean you’re flying?  Again?”

That managed to bring a touch of a smile to Riley’s lips.  “It does.”

Tobias groaned loudly.

“Don’t worry, I’ve flown this plane many times,” Riley assured him.

“I’m more worried about the landing, myself.”  Cender crutched toward the kitchen and rear door.  “Let’s get this show on the road then, shall we?”

Riley nodded, doing her best to shove her worries into the back of her mind.  They weren’t at the cabin yet.

* * *

Everybody walked over to the big hanger in which Connor’s DHC-3 Otter plane sat.  It was a twelve seater and would be able to fit them all, plus their gear.  When Connor used the plane for tours, he would land on lakes and let his passengers do a little fishing off the floats.  Riley had taken the key from inside and now opened the door.  While Cender helped Danny load the packs into the plane, Mathias, Abby, Misha, and Tobias made trips to and from the house.  They gathered up any extra supplies that would also fit into the plane.  While they did this, Riley herself walked around the plane, checking everything out and making sure it was good to fly.  Alec watched over all of them with his
long-range rifle.  Once the plane was ready to go, Mathias and Tobias carried Alec up into it.  It was a difficult task.  The plane’s floats held it a considerable distance off the ground.  Eventually, Riley and Abby had to step in and assist a bit.  Alec grumbled about all the manhandling, but there was no way he could do it on his own.  Cender also needed some assistance getting in.

Getting Rifle to get into the plane was the hardest.  Shoes they just passed up the ladder, no problem, but Rifle had learned from the helicopter.  He kept away from the plane and anybody near it.  Finally though, Misha managed to convince the dog to come close to him by using his skunk toy and a treat from Alec’s pocket as bait.  He was able to grab Rifle’s harness, and with Mathias’s help, they hauled the dog up into the plane.

Danny opted not to be co-pilot this time and so Mathias took his place.  With all the stuff they had packed in, it was for the best having the largest guy up front.  Misha tied Shoes’s collar and Rifle’s harness up between his seat and Alec’s.

“You ever flown a plane before?” Riley asked as she started up the engine and did a systems check.  She put her headphones on and handed a pair to Mathias.

“Nope,” Mathias told her.  “In fact, I haven’t even flown in them all that often.  I drove whenever I could.”

“Then don’t touch anything.”  Riley gave him a stern look to make sure he knew she meant it.

Mathias held his hands up in an innocent gesture.  He wouldn’t touch a thing.

As Riley was about to direct the large plane out of the hanger, a figure appeared at the other end of the runway.

“Who’s that?”  Mathias spotted him first.

Riley looked, squinting, but she couldn’t tell.  The distance was too far.

“Alec, hand me your scope!” Mathias called over his shoulder.  Shortly enough, the sniper scope was placed in his hand.  He held it up to one eye and looked at the figure.

“And?” Riley wondered.

“Missing half a face,” Mathias told her.  “I say punch it.”

Riley nodded and got the plane moving.  As it inched out of the hanger, another figure appeared beside the first.  This one didn’t stop and stare though, it ran straight for them.  More kept appearing out of the woods.