Survival Instinct: A Zombie Novel (27 page)

“Walter?”  Kara noticed that Walter was still somewhere near the rear of the car.

“Ms. Taggart!  Come quick!” Walter called out.

Kara hurried back around the tree, gripping her cane with both hands, just in case she would need to use it on something, or someone.  Walter was leaning through a back door he had managed to pry open.

“What are you doing?” Kara asked him as she strode over.  Clearly, there was no immediate threat.

“There’s a little girl in here.  She’s hurt, but she’s breathing.”  Walter stood up, holding a tiny chubby girl in his chubby arms.  “I think she’s going to be okay.”

Kara strode over and placed her hand on the girl’s neck.  Her pulse was good.  She walked over to the car and looked around inside, discovering what was probably another child in the driver side foot well.  That section of the car was so badly crushed and mangled it was hard to make anything out other than blood.  Kara was pretty sure the child would have died instantly.

“Ms. Taggart, she’s waking up,” Walter told her from where he stood outside the car.

Kara stood upright again and looked back at the girl.  Her head was rolling slightly and her eyelids began to flutter.  “Put her down, Walter.”

Walter did as he was told and knelt down on the ground next to her.  Kara stood over them both.  The little girl groaned in a way that reminded Kara disturbingly of the female teenager in the back of the store.  Her eyes opened and she looked at Kara first, and then Walter.  They were crystal clear blue, which was very
unlike
the teenage girl’s.

“Hey there little sweet pea,” Walter said in the friendliest voice he could.

“I don’t talk to strangers,” the little girl mumbled.

Walter smiled and looked up at Kara.  “I think she’s going to be just fine.”

“Little girl,” Kara didn’t soften her sharp voice in the slightest.  “What happened?”

“I want Shoes,” the little girl said.

Both Kara and Walter looked down at her feet.  She wore a pair of kid’s sneakers over her white knee high socks.

“You’re wearing shoes,” Walter told her.

“Shoes!”  The little girl sat up.  “Where are you Shoes?”

Kara didn’t like her yelling like that.  “Keep quiet child. 
There are dangerous people around.”

“I don’t think they could be more dangerous than Judy’s daddy.”  The little girl began to get to her feet.  Walter helped her stand.

“These kinds of people would kill you,” Kara told the girl, assuming the man she spoke of was just someone unpleasant.  Walter gave her a disapproving look.  He was the kind of man who would lie to a child.

“So would Judy’s daddy,” the girl stated.  “Now I want Shoes.”

The little girl began walking toward a house.  She stumbled and fell to her knees.  Walter rushed over to her and put her back on her feet.

“Let me help you.”  Walter took the little girl’s hand.  “My name’s Walter, what’s yours?”

“Alice Carter.  I live there.”  Alice pointed to the house she was heading for.

Kara Taggart rolled her eyes.  “Come on, Walter.  We’ll put the little girl in her house and then move on.”

“We can’t leave her alone,” Walter frowned.

“And we can’t stay here.”

“Why not?”

“Have you seen all the broken windows we passed on our way here?”  Kara pointed across the street where there was just such a window.  “Wouldn’t you rather be at home where we have a large fence around the property?”

Walter thought about it.  “I guess so.”  He took a breath.  “But if no one is in that house, we’re bringing Alice with us.”

“Not without Shoes.”  Alice had been listening to them.  Apparently she wasn’t going anywhere without shoes, even though she was already wearing a pair.

They reached the door to the house and Walter tried the knob.

“It’s locked, silly,” Alice giggled.  “Daddy always locks the door when nobody’s home.”  She stood on her tiptoes and reached a small hand behind the
mailbox.  She pulled down a key and stuck it in the lock of the door.  Kara didn’t believe the girl actually lived there until the door opened.  And if she was right, nobody was home to look after her.

“Shoes!” Alice called into the house.  “Shoes!”

There was a low woof and a basset hound came waddling around the corner.  Its loose skin swung from side to side as it hurried toward the girl.

“There you are, Shoes!”  Alice knelt down as the dog approached her.  It gave
another low woof just as it reached Alice and proceeded to lick her face.

“Does Shoes have a leash?” Walter asked.

Kara couldn’t believe she was agreeing to this.  She should probably just leave them all behind.

“Yup.”  Alice opened a closet next to the door and took a blue leash down from a hook there.  “Wanna go walkies, Shoes?”

The dog woofed twice and lifted its front legs slightly in a hopping, almost hopeful manner.  The way the loose skin slid over the dog somewhat disgusted Kara.  If she had to choose, she much preferred cats.  Alice clipped the leash to the dog’s collar.

“Would you like me to take him?” Walter offered to take the leash. 
Clearly, he believed the girl when she said no one was home and didn’t want to take the time to check.  Kara was perfectly okay with that.

“I can walk him myself,” Alice stated proudly.

“All right then.”  Walter let the girl keep the leash.

“Can we get moving now?” Kara wondered.

“What if Shoes poopies?  We need plastic bags.”  Alice looked back into the house.

“Oh
, didn’t you hear?  Today is ‘don’t pick up dog poo day’,” Kara sighed with sarcasm.

Alice closed the door to the house and locked it.  “Oh, okay then.”

Mathias

Mathias Cole lay on his bunk staring at the ceiling.  The white stucco stared back at him, mockingly.  At least, the little bit that kind of looked like a face did.  He needed to get out of here.  He was making himself sick with worry about his little brother, Danny.  The morons in charge weren’t telling anybody what was happening on the surface.  They weren’t even telling the surface.  He tried every way he could think of to get out of that damn complex, but it was just that; it was too damn complex.  Everything was locked down tighter than a CEO’s blackmail pictures.  All he could do was lay there and stare at the damned ceiling.

“Cole!”  Someone hammered on the door.  “Cole, are you in there?”

Mathias sat up and got off his bunk.  It took him only two steps to reach the door of his little cell of a room.  He pressed the big button next to the door and it slid open with a faint hiss and a grating groan.  Most doors were totally silent here, but Mathias’s luck insured that he got the noisy one.

“What do you want, Roy?” Mathias grumbled.  Roy was a scientist who thought he was Mathias’s friend.  He hadn’t seemed to
get the memo that scientists and mercenaries just couldn’t be friends.  Too much work tension between the two groups.  Not to mention that the scientists were creepy, arrogant, and too smart for their own good.

“I got you a way out!” Roy crowed triumphantly.

“What?”  Mathias rubbed his eyes.  Surely he wasn’t talking about
out
out.

“I told Christopherson that I needed some research materials I had left back at my house last time I was there,” Roy started babbling.  He was nervous for some reason.  Energetic, excited even, but nervous.  He wouldn’t meet Mathias’s eyes either, although that wasn’t new.  “I explained to him how I
really
needed them and he said I could get them, but that I’d need a security escort.  I got you on the escort list!”

A huge grin broke out on Mathias’s rugged face showing every tooth.  Maybe he could try to be friends with Roy after all.  “When?”

“Like, right now, grab your gear.”  Roy was literally hopping from one foot to the other.  He looked like he was going to explode.

Mathias dragged a pack out from under his bunk and slung it onto his back.  “What are we waiting for?”  Living in the facility meant living out of your bag.  You never knew when they were going to assign you to different quarters or send you out on a month-long assignment.

Roy stepped aside and let Mathias walk out of his room.  He headed down the white hall, following the blue arrows.  All of the halls were a seamless white, made of something similar to glass.  Behind them was some sort of screens that once you punched in your destination on handy consoles located about, would light the way for you with coloured arrows.  Most people who worked in the facility had a tracker on them so that the building knew where they were and where to direct them.  It was actually a little creepy.  Without it, though, it was all too easy to get completely lost in the generic, white facility.  Mathias knew first hand because he didn’t like his whereabouts known, so he often didn’t have his tracker on him, like now.

Roy must have keyed in the destination before knocking on Mathias’s door because it was lit up before he even stepped out.  Mathias didn’t actually need these arrows, as they were heading to a location he went to often enough.  Roy’s short little legs hurried to keep up.

It was strangely busy in the facility.  Lots of people were buzzing about, following their own lighted arrows.  Mathias had noticed that, ever since the incident, there seemed to be more people here.  Which was saying something because there was already a small city’s worth.  It looked like more security had been brought in.  He had even run into an old colleague who had been called in from Australia.

“Who else is on the team?” Mathias asked.

“East, Chant, Edelstein, Cole… well, you know you…  LeBlanc, Coombs, and Grey.”  Roy clearly had taken his time memorizing the list.  He so desperately wanted to be friends with the hired goons.

“A seven man team?  What do they expect out there?”  LeBlanc was good; he wanted to ditch just as badly as Mathias.  Chant and East wouldn’t stop him, but Coombs was unpredictable and Edelstein would definitely stand in his way.

The happy grin that had plastered Roy’s round face fell.  “You know exactly what they expect to find out there.”

“It couldn’t have gotten that bad, could it?”  Mathias knew what had been let loose, but for it to spread that quickly seemed unlikely.

“Do the math.”  Roy waved a hand around his own head.

“I don’t know the math,” Mathias grumbled.  There was that scientist/mercenary barrier that often popped up.

“Right,” Roy sighed.  “So, three rats got out, yes?”  Roy ticked off a finger.

“Yeah, we caught the other three,” Mathias nodded.  That had been an interesting few days, trying to hunt down six white rats in a white complex.

“So, those three rats are going to infect other rats, either by biting them, or procreating, or possibly even just by nuzzling.”  Roy ticked off a second finger.

“Okay, more infected rats.”  So
far, he made sense.

“Now, we have a pretty large number of rats infecting more and more as they go.  Infected rats spreading everywhere.  These rats are going to come into contact with people.  Say, homeless people.”  Roy ticked off one more finger.  “The extra aggression is going to make them hostile toward these people, provoking them to bite.  Now we have infected poor and homeless people.”

“Rich people can run into rats too, you know,” Mathias said smugly.

“Fine, some rich people too.  Now we have infected people, but these people haven’t been altered yet.  Still following me?  They’re more like carriers, like the rats are at this point.  The people may only be a bit more irritable, if even that.  There are no symptoms.”

“Yes, yes, infected but not zombified,” Mathias sighed.  Sometimes the scientists treated the mercenaries like children.  Other times, they spoke in terms that went miles above their heads.  Mathias could never find a happy medium with them, and that was just one of the reasons he didn’t like them.  The other was he didn’t always agree with what they did.  In fact, in this particular place, he rarely agreed.

“Don’t use that word,” Roy glowered.  The scientists hated the word ‘zombie
.’  Everybody else had quickly latched onto it.  “Now these infected people are going to infect others, by sharing a fork or a bottle, possibly from biting, from kissing.”

“To be fair, I don’t think homeless people get a lot of action,” Mathias joked.

Roy just frowned.  “Either way, they spread it.  And remember that the rats are still spreading as well.  Seven to ten days after the first rat has bitten someone, they become altered.”

“A zombie.”

“Altered.  Now, you know what they do, right?”

“Try to rip your guts out and show them to you.”

“Pretty much.  But they will almost always try to bite you, at least once, which will make you infected.  It’s the prion’s way of spreading itself.”

“Prion?”  Mathias always thought of the thing as a virus.

“A prion is an infectious agent made up of protein,” Roy explained quickly, as if this made sense.  “Although it’s not a true prion; we managed to combine it with a virus.  Anyway, some people will get away with only a simple bite and bring the infection with them; others will die on the spot.  Those that die on the spot-”