Survival Instinct: A Zombie Novel (56 page)

As he reached the side of the pool, a groan drew his attention across it.  A man in a barbecue apron had wandered out of the house’s shattered sliding glass door.  As Misha hastily climbed out of the pool, the man’s shuffling gait brought him to the other edge.  Not stopping, the man took a final step and tipped over into the pool.  He also sank like a rock.

Misha looked down at the pair from the safety of the pool’s edge.  The howler that had chased him kept struggling to get to the surface.  A few times, she even started to get close but then she would do something counter-productive and end up back at the bottom.  The barbecue man looked like he was just doing the same shuffle down there as he did up here.  Misha decided it was time to leave.

He went to the fence and climbed over it into the next backyard, dropping to all fours from exhaustion.  This yard had plenty of trees and a very wide, covered back porch.  After crawling his way over to one of the trees, Misha collapsed with his back up against it.  He had lost Rifle.  He didn’t realize just how much he had bonded with the dog until right then.  Now he was completely alone.

As he thought about whether to bother continuing on with his plan or not, he heard a soft chuff come from near the house.  He looked up to find Rifle standing next to it with his head cocked.

“Rifle!” Misha was so shocked and elated to see him that he spoke much louder than he intended.

Rifle trotted over to him with his tongue hanging out and his tail wagging.

Misha scratched him behind the ears and rubbed his side.  He swore the dog was smiling.  “I thought I lost you, buddy.  How did you find me so fast?”

Rifle ran off behind a tree then came back quickly with a small blue and yellow football.  He clenched his jaws and the ball squeaked.

“What is that?”  Misha reached for the ball but Rifle hopped away.  He lowered his head to the ground and stuck his butt up in the air, tail wagging furiously.  He made the ball squeak two more times.  He wanted to play.

“Is that your toy?” Misha said this in a playful, doggy speak manner, but then he thought about what he had said.  What if the toy actually was Rifle’s?  This very well could be his house and that’s why he had come here.  The dog was heading home and just happened to find Misha in his backyard.

Misha stood up and walked over to the back door.  Rifle quickly followed him and dropped the football on the porch.  He starting pawing at the door and whined lowly.  Misha tried to open the door but it was locked.  Rifle then walked over to a large stuffed mat on the porch.  He circled it a few times and lay down on it with a huff.  There was a mangy stuffed toy skunk on it that Rifle started chewing.  This was definitely his house.

Misha went back out onto the grass and looked up at the two story house.  He felt safe in the backyard with its abundance of old growth trees and didn’t particularly want to test if the front door was open.  It was likely locked like the back door.  As he looked up at the second floor, he noticed a window up there was open.  If he could reach the porch roof, he could get inside the house.  After studying the trees and discovering that one of them might do the trick, he scrambled up the trunk of the tree.  For the first time since leaving home, being shoeless came in handy as he could grip the bark better.  Still hurt a lot though.  He took his time scooting up the tree and across its branches, not wanting to risk a broken limb by falling.  He finally reached a branch where he could easily jump from the tree to the porch roof, and once up there he took a short break.  In just one day, Misha’s appreciation for climbable, old growth trees had increased about a hundred fold.

He looked down into the backyard and saw Rifle staring up at him, ratty skunk toy in his mouth.  Noticing that Misha was looking, he swished his tail back and forth a few times.  Misha then looked back at the sky wondering what time it was.  He had absolutely no idea.  He looked over into the next yard with the pool.  He could still see the woman thrashing beneath the surface, which was impossible because she should have drowned by now.  He thought that maybe she had managed to break the surface and get another gasp of air, but then he saw the shuffler was still shuffling.  Besides, if they had air in them, they would be more buoyant.  These guys sank and should have been dead in a minute.  Misha’s skin was probably already burning to a crisp and sitting on the roof wasn’t helping, so he headed to the window.

Peering inside, he saw that the only thing out of place was a small bloody handprint on the doorframe.  It probably belonged to the same individual who had left a print on Rifle’s side.  There was a similar print on the windowsill.  Misha stuck his head through the window frame and took a better look at things around the room.

“Hello?” he didn’t speak loudly, but it was loud enough to cause anything in there to react.  Nothing did.  Taking that as a cue that the room was safe, he climbed in.  It was nice to feel carpet under his feet again, especially after the sun-heated shingles.  Misha checked out the bathroom and closet and then went to the doorway.  He took a quick glance around the corner, then quickly pulled his head back.  Someone was lying in the hall.  He peered around the corner with one eye.  She was lying face down with her head turned to the wall.

“Hello?” Misha’s voice had become even dryer, but he managed to speak louder than a whisper.  The woman didn’t move.  He stepped out into the hall, fully exposing himself.  There was a lot of red gunk matted into the woman’s hair.  A lot more red spread halfway up the wall.  Misha concluded that this woman must have been shot in the head.  Remembering the pool party still going on next door, he approached her carefully.  People hadn’t been dying when they should have for most of the day now.  Death was on vacation.  He hurried past the body and headed downstairs.  The rest of the house looked normal and it didn’t take long for him to find the back door and unlock it.  He opened it up and let Rifle in.

Rifle knew exactly where he wanted to go.  Misha followed him through the house and out into the garage.  Once there, Rifle dropped his stuffed animal and whined.  He trotted over to a pile of stuff and rooted his nose through it.  Misha walked over and looked at everything.  He then saw the large blood stain in the corner.  Rifle whined and poked his nose at a box.  Misha opened the box and was surprised to see a military dress uniform in it.  If the owner was military, then there must be a gun somewhere in the house.

Misha searched almost the whole first floor for a gun, but he didn’t find one.  He decided against going back up the stairs.  Eventually he gave up the search and went back to the garage where Rifle still sat.  Misha poked through the pile of stuff on the ground some more.  He lifted up a pair of pants to see if they would fit him when something glinted on the ground.  The pants had been sitting on a revolver.  A gun at last.  Misha picked it up and looked it over.  He didn’t see anything that looked like a safety, so he assumed it was a point and fire type of gun.  He looked around for a holster of some kind, or perhaps extra ammo, but he didn’t see any.  Putting the gun on the trunk of the car, he picked up the pants again.  They were far too big for him, so he dropped them.  There was also a pair of kneepads that looked promising, but even with the adjustable Velcro straps, they didn’t fit him in a way that he was comfortable with.  They were likely just to end up around his ankles and tripping him.

Just as Misha was about to decide that the house had nothing else useful for him, he saw a bunch of crumpled and rolled papers.  Out of
curiosity, he opened one up.  It was a map with a line marking out a route.  He looked over the map and noticed it was labelled in the corner.  It was simply labelled ‘zombies.’  Misha laughed at this.  The map seemed silly, but Misha didn’t have any other plans.  He knew he didn’t feel safe here in the city so what was the harm in following this map?  And he had gotten this far by following a dog tag, so why not follow the map that the tag had led him to?  It was like a treasure hunt.  A horrible, terrifying, nightmarish treasure hunt.

The map itself was too big for Misha to consider taking with him, so he went to the kitchen and found a note pad and a pen.  Back in the
garage, he went over the map and wrote down the directions.  Rifle watched him with interest.  When Misha was done, he tore his page of directions off the pad, folded up the slip of paper, and put it in his pocket.  The pockets were still somewhat damp from his trip into the pool, but he had nowhere else to stash the paper.

“What do you say to going on a trip?” Misha asked the dog.

Rifle stood up on his feet and gave a slow wag of his tail.

“We’re going to need some wheels though.”  Misha walked around the car toward the garage door.  That’s when he found the arm pinned under it.  He decided he did not want to open the garage door and that ruled out taking the car.  “How about we look elsewhere?”

Misha picked up the revolver again and led the way back out of the house.  Rifle padded after him, his skunk back in his mouth.  Misha was glad that Rifle decided to drag the skunk around instead of the squeaky football.  Maybe Rifle knew the danger of noise, and that was why he chose the one toy over the other.

“Know any houses around here with a good set of wheels?” Misha asked his companion.

Rifle squeezed his silent skunk in response.

Misha picked a random direction.  They went to the back fence and Misha climbed over.  With a great amount of effort and the butt of the revolver, he managed to break some crappy boards out of the fence so that Rifle could squeeze through. 
Apparently, Misha’s luck continued to hold out in a big way.  In the backyard he had randomly chosen, there was a tarp draped over something.  When Misha pulled back the tarp, he found an old, rebuilt motorcycle.  With a sidecar no less.  Misha couldn’t help but laugh out loud.  Going with the flow was working for him.  He had ridden motorcycles before and figured one with a sidecar couldn’t be too much different, but still, he would need the keys to start it.

He went up to the back door and tried to open it.  It was locked as well, and this house didn’t have a conveniently open window for him to climb through.

“Fuck it.”  Misha used the butt of the revolver to break out the glass.  So far, the gun was turning out to be a useful hammer.

“Stay,” Misha said to Rifle.  He didn’t want the dog hurting his paws on the glass.  The dog sat.  Misha reached his arm carefully through the broken glass and unlocked the door.  It swung inward and he very carefully stepped over the glass.  He didn’t want to hurt his own feet either.  Once inside, he looked up to find himself confronted by a man with a baseball bat held high.

“What do you want?” the man shouted.

Misha raised the gun on instinct and pointed it at the man.  The man wavered and took a step back.

“I just want the keys to your bike.”  Misha’s hands shook.  He should have been paying more attention when he came over here.  His luck and the gun had given him a false sense of security.

“That’s it?” the man sounded like he didn’t believe Misha.

“That’s it,” Misha nodded.

The man looked behind him, through a doorway into what looked like a pantry closet.

“Give them to him,” a woman’s voice said.

Misha looked past the man and saw a woman huddled on the floor of the pantry with two small children.

“Will you go away if I give them to you?”  The man stepped forward to block off Misha’s view of his family.

Misha could only nod in response.  His voice had failed him again.  He was robbing a family.

“They’re on a peg board in the cupboard behind you.”  The man gestured with his head.

Misha made his way slowly back, keeping his eyes on the bat.  When he had to let go of the gun with one hand to open the cupboard, the other shook even worse.

“It’s the last one,” the man said.

Misha found the key, which had a little silver motorcycle fob, and took it.

“Now go.”

Misha nodded and continued his slow way back to the door, being careful of the glass again.  “Do you have another vehicle?”  He managed to get out.

“Leave!”  The man took a hesitant step forward, trying to be threatening but being fearful of the gun as well.

“I’m just saying that if you do, you should think about leaving town,” Misha told him, then quickly ducked outside.

Rifle was still sitting where Misha had left him.  He cocked his head to one side.  Misha ran over to the bike.  “Come on, buddy.”  He patted his side.  Rifle trotted over, and with some coaxing Misha got him to jump up into the sidecar.  He started the bike and gave it a once over to make sure it was ready to go.  Looking up at the back door, he saw the man with the bat watching him through the broken window.  Misha walked the bike around the side of the house and down an extended driveway the man had probably paved just for the bike.  He straddled it and tossed the revolver into the sidecar.  Rifle put his skunk toy down between his feet and then looked at Misha.

“You ready to go?” Misha asked him, revving the engine once.

Rifle chuffed.

The Other Dead

Harriet had gotten separated from her friends at the concert.  She didn’t know what all the commotion was about, just that everybody was fleeing for the exits, and she was being swept along with the crowd.  She tripped over something, either a shoelace or someone’s foot, a dropped bag or maybe even her own two feet.  Whatever it was, she went down, and the flood of people around her never noticed.  Feet stomped all around her, on her.  Someone else tripped over her and fell down as well.  Harriet did what she could to protect her head, crying and calling out, praying someone would notice her and help her.  In the end, none of it did anything.  A heavy boot to the side of her head sent her into a blackness she never came out of.