Survival Instinct: A Zombie Novel (39 page)

“Stop!” Alice cried over the sound of the alarm.

“What is it now?”  Kara was very annoyed.

“That’s his special command when he finds a
cadaver
.”  She said the word very carefully so as to get it right.

“He’s a cadaver dog?”  Kara stepped back off the stairs, her expression changing completely.

“He was before he got too old.”  Alice patted her dog on the head.

Kara looked up the stairs then back at the dog.  He continued to woof, looking up toward the top.

“Come on.”  Kara led Alice and Shoes over to a door.  It opened up to a set of stairs leading down.  Kara looked at Shoes, who looked back her, and then stepped down them.

Alice brought Shoes onto the stairs and just as a loud thump sounded from where the broken window was, Kara closed the door.  They hurried down the steps.  Alice noticed the whooping was a lot quieter here, which was nice, but it was still very annoying.  Something started banging on the door at the top of the stairs.

“This way.”  Kara led them through the nice basement to another door.  They went through it into a room that Alice thought was strange.  There was a cage within the room that had many bottles on shelves in it.  Alice didn’t understand why you would put bottles in a cage.  Kara closed the wooden door behind them, then opened the metal cage’s door.  She ushered Alice inside.  Once they were all in, Kara shut the cage door behind them and locked it with a key that had been sticking out of the lock.  Kara took the key.

Something started banging on the wooden door that led to the rest of the basement.  Kara hurried over to a pair of steps that led to these great big storm doors.  She pushed and pushed on the
doors, but they wouldn’t open.  They were locked from the outside.

The wooden door smashed in, and the man from the bushes came through.  He ran into the metal cage and reached through the bars at them.  Alice was very scared.  If she hadn’t gone in the bushes, she might have peed her pants.

Kara pulled Alice as far away from the man as they could get and sat with Alice in her lap.  Alice picked up Shoes, placed him on her lap, and started to cry.

The Mercenary

Mathias leaned forward between the front seats of the ambulance, looking at the house.  The door was hanging wide open.  It was a terrible sign.

“I’ll check out the place by myself,” Mathias told LeBlanc and Dr. Bishop.

“No way, man,” LeBlanc shook his head.

“She shouldn’t come in,” Mathias pointed to Bishop
,  “and I don’t trust her not to take off without us, so you’re going to stay here and watch her.”

Bishop made a show of rolling her eyes.  “Just bring me with you.  I can handle myself, especially if you hand me one of your guns.”

“You not only have to be able to identify a zombie the moment you see one, but you have to hit them in the head.  A simple body shot isn’t going to work,” Mathias told her, trying to convince her that staying put was for her own safety.

“So they
are
zombies,” Bishop nodded to herself.  “That’s what I was thinking, but it’s good to get verification.”

“Wow,” LeBlanc grinned.  “You’re just totally cool with that?  No, ‘zombies don’t exist
,’ comebacks or arguments?”

“No,” Bishop shook her head.  “Now give me a gun and let’s go in.”  She opened the ambulance door and hopped out.  Closing the door behind her, she looked back at the boys through the glass.

“She’s feisty,” LeBlanc grinned at Mathias.  “I like her.”

LeBlanc opened the driver side door and climbed out, while Mathias headed out the back.  They both left their packsacks in the back of the ambulance with Bishop’s box of goodies.  Mathias checked his assault rifle again as he climbed out.  Despite looking it over thoroughly in the back of the ambulance, he worried about the gun.  He had been afraid that the firing pin might have been removed or swapped with one that didn’t work.  The thing could be rigged to explode in his hands for all he knew.  It looked to be in proper working condition, but he wouldn’t know for sure until he used it.  LeBlanc’s gun clearly worked, so at least there was that.

Mathias headed around to the front of the ambulance.  He took his pistol out of its holster and held it out to the doctor.  “You only get one mag.”

“More than enough for one house.”  Bishop took the gun from him.  She released the magazine to check the bullets, then slammed it back in and cocked a round into the chamber.

“A doctor who knows her weaponry.  I like,” LeBlanc commented.

With LeBlanc in the lead, Bishop following after him, and Mathias guarding the rear, they made for the house.  LeBlanc held his rifle forward and entered the house first.  Mathias grabbed the back of Bishop’s white coat with one hand to make sure she didn’t follow in right away.

“Clear,” LeBlanc whispered from inside.

Mathias let go of Bishop and allowed her to enter.  With guns drawn, they carefully crossed the threshold.  Mathias noted that the doctor not only held the pistol correctly,
but also was very careful with her line of fire.  She made sure that LeBlanc was never in it, and if it was unavoidable, she lowered the muzzle to point at the floor.  She knew gun safety.

“I’ll take the ground floor.  You two check upstairs,” LeBlanc whispered.  He spoke for the sake of
Bishop; the gestures he made with his hand were all Mathias needed.

Mathias stepped around Bishop and scanned the top of the stairs.  Seeing nothing
, he started up, taking one step at a time and listening closely for any signs of life.  Or unlife actually.  Bishop followed after him.  He would have preferred that LeBlanc have his back, but he also wanted to find Danny quickly.  Splitting up was never a good idea, but fuck it.

He reached the top of the stairs and took a quick look down the hall.  It was clear, so he continued down it.

“Wait here on the stairs,” Mathias whispered to Bishop.  “The hallway is too tight for both of us to move in it safely.”

Bishop sighed, irritated, but stayed put on the steps.

Mathias went to the first room, Emma’s.  He opened the door and scanned the room fast for anything standing or lying in the open.  “Danny?” he whispered into the room.  There was no response, just a tail flick from a goldfish.  He did a more thorough sweep of the room, checking under the bed and in the closet, in case Danny was too scared, or worse, too hurt to respond.  Emma’s room was clear.

He returned to the hall and went to the next room.  He cleared two more rooms in a similar manner before reaching Danny’s room.  He didn’t know why he expected to find Danny sitting in there waiting, but he wasn’t.  Mathias sighed as he looked around his little brother’s room.  There were video game posters all over the walls and model helicopters and aeroplanes hanging from the ceiling.  He spotted a small, stuffed elephant poking out from under Danny’s pillow.  Scooping up the raggedy bean-filled thing, he stuck it in his thigh pocket.  When he found him, he knew
Danny would appreciate that he had grabbed it for him.  Mr. Ears was a family heirloom after all.  He couldn’t be left behind with the fish.

After fully checking Danny’s room, Mathias went back to searching the rest of the upstairs.  He reached the last door and placed his hand on the handle.  That’s when a burst of rifle fire crackled from downstairs.  Mathias turned his head away from the door, toward the steps, and took his hand off the knob.  The door opened behind him anyway.  A woman lurched out at Mathias.  He spun and fired off a shot, but he wasn’t fast enough; he only hit her in the upper chest.  The woman crashed into him, snapping her teeth, but both of them managed to keep their feet.  He grabbed her throat in an attempt to hold her back.  Her nails dug into his shirt as she tried to pull him toward her.

“Get out of the way!” Mathias heard Bishop shout from down the hall.

Easier said than done.  He swung the zombie woman sideways and slammed her into the wall.  He still needed both hands to hold her though, and couldn’t bring his rifle to bear.

The sound of a pistol shot rang out from down the hall, and the woman’s head blew out sideways.  Mathias let her go as she slid down the wall to the floor.  When he looked down the hall, he expected to see LeBlanc, but only Bishop stood there.

“You’re a hell of a shot,” Mathias commented as he went back down the hall.  He had checked a bathroom earlier and went into it now.  Turning on the sink with his elbow, he stripped off his fingerless leather gloves and checked his hands for cuts under the running water.

“My grandfather was an expert sniper in World War II and taught my parents, me, and my siblings how to shoot.”  Bishop stood in the doorway.

“Thank God for that.  Just keep an eye on that room.”  Mathias didn’t want any more zombies rushing out at them.  Although telling this to Bishop was unnecessar
y, as she was already alternating between watching him and the room.

“What are you doing?”  Bishop gestured at the sink.

“Well, when you blew her brains out, some blood got on my hands,” Mathias explained.  “I may have broken skin on my hands from when I fell in front of your ambulance.  I forgot to check.  If I did, I may have just become infected.”  He turned off the tap and towel dried his hands.  After a close inspection that determined there were no wounds, he put his gloves back on.  “I’m good though.”

Mathias started heading down the hall toward the room, rifle raised.  Bishop followed behind him, but kept a safe distance.

“So this virus is blood born,” Bishop noted.

“Blood and saliva.  Also, it’s apparently a prion, whatever the hell that is,” Mathias corrected.

“Prions are terrible infections,” Bishop frowned.  She seemed to know what they were.  “All known prion infections attack the brain and have no known cure.  They’re what cause mad cow disease.”

“You know, that makes a lot of sense.”  No one had told Mathias about the mad cow connection before.

“Still, this strain must be very different to do what it does.”  Bishop was clearly trying to get information out of him.

“They mentioned viruses a lot.  I think somehow they combined the two or something, I don’t really know that part.  But yeah, nearly any bodily fluid can infect you.  Thankfully, you can’t be infected through your pores, but if you get their sweat on an open wound, you’re probably dead.”  He entered the final room and started his sweep, while Bishop stood guard at the door.  “Their sweat is the least likely thing to infect you though.  Blood to blood contact is like a 95% chance of infection.  It depends on how fast you can irrigate the wound.  Same if saliva drips into a wound.  A bite that breaks the skin is pretty much a guaranteed infection, so is saliva to saliva contact.  You haven’t kissed anyone lately, have you?  Or had sex?  That’ll infect you too.”

“No,” Bishop shook her head.  She wasn’t embarrassed by the question at all.

“I assume you took all the normal precautions at the hospital.  I figure you work at a hospital because of the ambulance.”  Mathias finished clearing the room.  No one else was in here.  Where the hell was Danny?

“Chief resident of the ER,” Bishop told him,  “and yeah, we take a lot of precautions in case of HIV.  I haven’t been bitten either, although I know some people who were.”

“Consider them dead.”  It was harsh, but Mathias wasn’t in the mood to pretty things up.  Not until he found Danny.  He headed out the door, passing Bishop, and she followed him down the stairs.  LeBlanc joined up with them at the bottom.

“I heard the gunshots,” LeBlanc commented.  “You found one too, huh?”

Mathias looked behind LeBlanc, but Danny wasn’t with him.  “Yeah, Bishop is a hell of a shot.  No sign of Danny?”

“I guess it’s a good thing we ran into you then.”  LeBlanc gave Bishop a wink.  She just frowned.  LeBlanc turned back to Mathias.  “Sorry man, no luck.  The door in the kitchen is all smashed out.  Something went through it on its way in.  I figure it was the chap I found in the basement.  He had a lot of glass sticking out of him.”

Mathias only half listened to this last part; he was looking at the ground near the front door.

“What is it?” Bishop asked.

“The shoes.”  Mathias pointed to a populated shoe rack.  “Danny’s shoes aren’t here.”

“So he was probably out somewhere when these visitors popped in,” LeBlanc shrugged.  “I’m sorry man, but we can’t go looking for him.  He could be anywhere.”

“But he might be headed here.”  Mathias figured Danny would head home seeing it as a safe place.

“What?  You want to just hang around here and wait?”  LeBlanc raised an eyebrow at him.  “From what you’ve told me, your bother is smart, but he doesn’t leave the house very often.  It’s likely that he ran from this place when the back door got smashed in.  Why else would the front door be open?”

Mathias sighed.  LeBlanc was being logical, when Mathias couldn’t be.  He had hoped so badly that Danny would be here and that he would be okay.  He could have just grabbed him then, and they would have headed out.  Looking for him though…  Mathias looked out the doorway at the streets.  Somewhere in the distance, a fire had broken out, and smoke rose above the rooftops.  Looking for him was a crazy idea.  Leaving without him though, without even knowing if he was alive, was a crazier idea.