Survival Instinct: A Zombie Novel (35 page)

“It’s coming right toward us.”  Jessica stepped back and put Abby ahead of her, almost like a shield.

It was indeed a rat and not just a mouse, and it was indeed running right at them.  “Shoo!” Abby yelled at the rat, trying to be intimidating.  It didn’t work.  Maybe they were near its nest or something.  The rat had nearly reached them.  Abby stuck out the field hockey stick and hit the thing.  It squeaked and slid back, but then turned around and launched itself at Abby, landing on her shoe.

“Get it off, get it off!” Abby squealed.  She didn’t mind rats, provided they kept their distance or if they were someone’s clean and trained pet.  A subway rat on her shoe however, was not acceptable.  She started hopping around on one foot, shaking the other, trying to dislodge the rat.  It held on tightly.

“Hold still,” Jessica commanded.

While Abby held still, Jessica used the shovel to scrape the rat off the top of her shoe.  It clung to the shovel and Jessica catapulted it down the tunnel.  The rat bounced twice then turned around and ran at them again.

“Little bugger is determined,” Abby noted.

“He must really like your shoes.”  Jessica shrugged.

When the rat got close enough, Jessica brought the shovel down hard and splatted the rat against the tunnel floor.

“Ewww,” both girls protested at the same time when its little guts squished out.

Abby looked down at her shoe and found that the laces were all torn.  “He tried to bite through my shoe.”

“Then I take back my statement.  He must have really
disliked
your shoes.”  Jessica scraped the underside of the shovel along the skinny ledge lining the track, trying to get any bits of remaining rat off it.

“
I
really liked these shoes,” Abby huffed.  She had spent most of a day trying to find the perfect shoes for walking around the city.  She hoped it was just the laces that were destroyed, because those would be easy to replace.  If the shoe itself had been damaged though, she didn’t know if the store she bought them from would still have more in stock.

“Come on, let’s keep going before more rats show up.”  Jessica stepped around Abby again and took the lead down the tunnel.

“Not much further now,” Abby noted happily.

That’s when all the lights went out.  The subway tunnel was plunged into a pitch black nothingness, temporarily throwing off Abby’s sense of balance.  Then there was a loud crack from behind them.  It sounded like the Plexiglas of a subway train’s window breaking.

The Young Teen

Danny held the handles of Alec’s wheelchair even though he didn’t need to.  Alec was using the strength of his own arms to wheel down the street, but Danny held on to make sure he kept pace.  He felt a lot safer with Alec, even though the man was in a wheelchair and he barely knew him.  He
was
a man, not a boy, and he had a gun.  He hadn’t used it yet, but it was ever present.

“So where did you get the gun?” Danny asked.

“I was in the military,” Alec answered.

“Oh.  What part?  Army?  Navy?”  Danny had never met someone from the military outside of Mathias.

“I was an army ranger,” Alec answered him in a monotone voice.  His attention seemed completely focused on their surroundings, which Danny figured was a good thing.  “I was a sniper.”

“So you killed some people.”  Danny thought snipers were pretty cool, but he didn’t know too much about them.

“Some, yes.”  Mathias would never tell Danny if he had killed anybody.  This guy was cool.

“I was thinking of joining the
Air Force when I’m old enough,” Danny told him.

“Air
Force, huh?” Alec grinned slightly.  “Do you want to fly jets or helicopters?”

“I’m leaning towards helicopters right now.  I really like the Ostra class.”

“Ostra?  I don’t know that one.”

Danny smiled broadly.  “Not too many people do.  It’s a new prototype being made by Keystone.  I figure it’ll be put into full production by the time I join.”

“How does a kid like you know about Keystone’s prototypes, huh?”  Alec actually stopped briefly in his scan of their surroundings and spared him a quick glance over his shoulder.

“My brother works on their security team.  He’s not supposed to tell me stuff, but he does.  He even got me the plans for it, so I could study the systems.  Most of it is still over my head, but I’m learning.”  Danny shrugged nonchalantly.  He was trying to act cool.

“Fucking Marble Keystone Pharmaceuticals,” Alec sighed and grinned.  “They expanded so far beyond just pharmaceuticals; I wonder why they still bother keeping it in the name?”

“They don’t,” Danny informed him.  “They have a bunch of different branches that have different names.  People just always remember the pharmaceuticals part because it’s the first thing they did and what they advertise most often.  They’re actually the Marble Keystone Corporation.”

“Hmm.  So where’s your brother in all this?” Alec changed topics.

“I don’t know,” Danny sighed.  “He’s probably fine though.  He works in a big secret facility.”

“Secret facility?”  Alec suddenly took even more interest in what Danny was saying.

“Yeah.  I don’t know where it is, but they do all sorts of stuff down there.  Mathias doesn’t tell me too much though, just in case they find out.  He only tells me about the things that are about to go public, like the Ostra.”  Danny suddenly went pale.  “There’s one of them,” he whispered to Alec.

He pointed to one of the crazed people who were wandering around between two houses.

“Yeah, I noticed him,” Alec nodded.  “He can’t see us though, his eyes are gone.”

Danny took another look.  Indeed, the man’s eyes were gone, just shredded holes in their place.  He bumped back and forth between the houses.

“Are we almost there?” Danny lowered his voice.  His eyes may be gone but his ears still seemed to be intact.

“Just a little further,” Alec assured him.

Danny was worried about Emma.  Her leg looked pretty bad.  It looked to him like she had lost a lot of blood too.  If they didn’t get the doctor soon he was scared she wasn’t going to make it.  She had to make it, she just
had
to.

“Can we hurry up?” Danny asked.

“If you think you can keep up, sure.”  Alec picked up his pace.

Danny had to trot to keep up.  His legs ached a little at first, from all the running he had done earlier, but that went away quickly.  During the school
year, his gym teacher told him he should join the track team, but he didn’t.  He wanted more time for his video games.  That seemed like a really stupid decision right now.  He was a natural runner, but he never really exercised.  At least he didn’t pig out on junk food all the time like the other kids did.  He’d be fat then and would probably be dead by now.  He promised himself that if he survived this, he would exercise a lot more and spend a lot less time in front of the TV.

“There’s the house.”  Alec pointed up ahead.

It looked like all the other houses in the area, except that it was on a corner, so it was more open on one side.  Danny liked that; less spaces for the crazies to be lurking.  They approached the house and Alec frowned.  To get to the door, they had to cross a cement patio, which was a step up from the driveway.

“All right kid, I’m going to need your help,” Alec sighed.

“Sure.  What should I do?”  Danny stood up straight.  Being needed made him feel better about his decision to come.  Up until then, he had been feeling like a nuisance, like he was just slowing Alec down.

“I’m going to hoist myself up, and you’re going to lift the chair up onto the patio
, okay?”  Alec took his pistol off his lap and slid it into a pocket, then grabbed hold of an iron railing.

“Okay.”  Danny tightened his grip on the handles.

“All right, on the count of three.  One, two, three!”  Alec pulled himself up and out of his chair.  He actually stood somewhat, but clearly most of his weight was on his arms, and he was very shaky.  The railing trembled beneath him.

Danny pulled and heaved the chair up the step.  It was a lot heavier than it looked, but he managed to get it up.  “I got it.”

Alec swung his body around and collapsed into the chair.  He used his strong arms to put his legs back into position.

“You stood.”  Danny thought he would have just collapsed.

“I’m not totally paralysed.”  Alec took a short breather.  “My legs were shredded by gunfire but they’ll heal eventually.  This is temporary.”  He patted the chair.  “But I have to relearn how to use my legs and it’s hard.  Painful too.  These help though.”  Alec rolled up a pant leg and showed Danny a metal brace attached to his leg.

“Cool,” Danny said in an automatic way.  “I mean the braces,” he quickly realized he
might have insulted the soldier.  “Not that you’re in a wheelchair or were shot or anything.”

“It’s okay.”  Alec grinned and patted him on the shoulder.  “I think the braces are kind of cool too.  They make me like a cyborg.”

Danny smiled.  The two of them crossed the cement patio over to the door.  They passed by a big bay window but the curtains were drawn, so they couldn’t see much inside.

“Well, the fact that this isn’t broken is a good sign.”  Alec lightly rapped a knuckle on the window as they passed.

Danny pressed the doorbell, and soft chimes sounded from inside the house.  They waited, but no one came to open the door.

“Maybe they’re not home,” Alec shrugged.

Danny frowned.  Emma needed a doctor.  He opened the first door, which was basically a large pane of glass, and pressed his face against the frosted glass that adorned the second, big wooden door.  Soft chimes sounded again as Alec stretched up and pressed the door bell himself.  Not a single shadow moved inside.  Danny tried to open the door, but it was locked.

“Step
aside; hold the door open for me.”  Alec grabbed Danny and pulled him back.

Danny stood to one side, holding the glass door open so that it wouldn’t close on Alec.  Alec swung his big bag around and searched inside until he found a small leather case with a zipper along three sides.  He unzipped the case and folded it open.  Inside, there were little tools that Danny didn’t recognise.

Alec noticed Danny looking over his shoulder.  “Lock picking set,” he filled him in.  He selected the tools he wanted and started to work on the lock.

Danny wanted to watch him work, but he suddenly felt like there were eyes on them.  Turning to look around the neighbourhood, he spotted the watcher.  Across the street, a man stood behind a window.  He was wearing a black suit with a loosened tie,
as if he had just come home from a funeral.  He wasn’t bloody, but his mouth hung wide open, and something was wrong with his eyes, but the distance made it impossible to tell what.  He stood perfectly still, just watching Danny and Alec from behind the glass.  The curtains hung around behind him, giving the impression, he was a little kid playing hide and seek.  Remembering what Nelly looked like in the park, Danny shuddered.  He
had
to save Emma.

“Got it.”  Alec swung the door open.

“Do you need help getting in?”  Danny turned away from the watcher and noticed that there was still a minor step to get into the house.  It wasn’t as bad as the one onto the patio, but it was still a step.

“No, I got it.  Just keep holding that door open for me.”  Alec tilted back onto the big rear tires of his wheelchair.  Once the front wheels were on the step, he used one hand to grab the
doorframe.  By turning the back wheels with one hand, and pulling on the doorframe with the other, he was able to pull the chair up with him.  “Piece of cake.”

Danny looked back across the street.  The watcher was gone; the soft swaying of the curtains was the only thing to acknowledge he had even been there.  Danny quickly got into the house and shut the big door behind him.  He locked it as well, even though the big bay window was an easy break-in point.

“Whoa.  Come look at this, kid.”  Alec had wheeled into the living room.

“What?”  Danny walked down the short entry hall and joined Alec in the living room.

“This chick’s prepared for anything,” Alec commented.

Strewn around the off-white living room were various out of place objects.  Gas masks sitting under the dark wood coffee table, a crowbar in the corner between a white floor lamp and the window, a big wooden board the size of the bay window along one wall, and two pistols sitting on end tables, that matched the coffee table, across the room from each other.

Alec went over and checked out one of the pistols.  “This thing is loaded.  Well taken care of too.  Do you think she knew what was going to happen?”

“I don’t know.  Maybe,” Danny shrugged
,  “or maybe she’s just crazy.  Let’s get what we need and go.”  The house actually creeped him out with its strangeness.  The only reason he was willing to spend
any
time in it, was because Emma needed him to.