Survival Instinct: A Zombie Novel (65 page)

She went through life wondering how she would die.  Would it be from a drug overdose during her ‘troubled times’?  Or malaria when she went to the jungles of Africa to try and help those in need?  Maybe it would be on one of her expeditions up a
mountainside.  She would get lost, break a leg, and never be heard from again.  Being trampled or gunned down during a riot was also a possibility, as she never backed down from a fight.

Even now she didn’t.  She bent her head forward and pressed on through the trees.  She felt so very weak, but she did have a goal in mind.  Once last thing to do.  One last thing to see.

She came through a clearing in the trees and reached her goal, the lake.  It was beautiful and clear and so blue it hurt her eyes.  The sky was so bright, clean, and vast.  She kneeled and looked out upon it all.

It was then she remembered Gregory the horse again.  She remembered what had happened to him.  He favoured his leg in the wet weather because of a condition, arthritis or something of the sort.  The people that ran the stable had decided he had become lame and put him down.  They shot him.  Kara could have protected him.  She could have stood up for her horse.  She could have begged her daddy to pay for the extra care he needed.  They could certainly afford it.  But she hadn’t done anything.  She put up no fight.  Her exciting life, ultimately worthless in comparison to that horse.  Kara fell forward and landed on her stomach, her face turned to one side.

“I’m sorry, Gregory,” she whispered into the moss and undergrowth as her eyes slid closed.

White Knight

Cillian was glued to the radio along with everyone else in the limo.  It was their third time through the message.  Although it was clearly being broadcast live, the speaker did eventually repeat her message.  She wanted everyone to hear it.  The second time through was when she gave the most information.  The third time was a little more hurried.

“I’ve known all along and I did nothing to stop it,” she spoke about how Keystone was responsible and how she had been involved.  “I sat by and let it happen.  I helped it happen.  What I’m telling you now could never make up for what I’ve done, but hopefully at least a few lives can be saved.”

It didn’t take long for those in the limo to find out why she had begun speaking in a rushed tone.  As they listened, the door was broken down.

“I’m so sorry.  Good luck,” were her last words.

Cillian was a firefighter, he knew all about fire.  When he heard the roar, he knew he was hearing the sound of flames.  He couldn’t comprehend it though.  The sound made no sense.  Unless the speaker had been doused in gasoline, there wouldn’t have been a whoosh like that.  Not without an explosion at least.  Perhaps she had committed suicide.  She clearly felt guilty, and maybe those who had broken in would do worse.  Although what could be worse than burning to death?

“What happened?” Tobias frowned.  “They cut her off.”

Obviously, he didn’t recognize the sound.  Cillian turned and looked at the others through the partition between the front seats and the back.  None of them looked like they knew what had just happened.  Cillian wasn’t going to tell them.

“Must have been Keystone guys,” Abby offered.  “She wasn’t saying anything nice about them.”

“Do you think what she said was true?”  Cender sat back in his seat with a glass of whiskey cupped in his hands.  As far as Cillian knew, he had yet to take a single sip.  He just swirled it around in the tumbler, clinking the melting ice.

“Sounded truthful to me,” Cillian shrugged a shoulder.  It also seemed too full of knowledge and logic to be a hoax.  If it wasn’t true, then the woman either knew this was going to happen beforehand and prepared, or had one hell of an imagination.  Before finding her, they had listened to some other people on the radio, but most of them were just ranting about the end of the world.  Some said they knew who caused it, but by their
suggestions, you knew they were false.  One guy was convinced it was aliens.  This woman though had facts and dates that couldn’t have been pulled out of thin air unless she was a genius.  A few times, she almost slipped into the science of the whole damn thing, but that was too complex, and she apologized and went back to the need-to-knows.  Cillian would’ve liked to hear the science even if he didn’t understand it.  It would have made him trust her words completely.  Right now, he was about 85%.

“How much longer?” Jessi asked quietly.  She directed the question at
Cillian, even though Cender was the one who knew where they were going.

“I don’t know.”  Cillian met her eyes.  He saw something there he didn’t recognize, and didn’t like.  It had been there since they reunited.  He wanted to protect Jessi from all the bad things, but he wasn’t sure he could do that.  He might have failed already.

Jessi wouldn’t really talk about what happened.  Cillian had heard a bit of Abby’s story, but it seemed that Abby didn’t want to talk about it while Jessi was around.  It was probably because of B.  Nobody knew how to approach that subject.  The man wasn’t infected, but Jessi had killed him.  It was pre-emptive self-defence and no one could blame her for it, but still…  The man was dead, and she had caused it.

Cillian thought of the people he had killed on the way to her.  That was different, especially after what they had just learned. 
Apparently, they were already dead.  But even before learning that, you could tell these were not people you could reason with.  They weren’t going to listen to your pleas for life and mercy.  B was still thinking though, still talking.  Someone might have been able to talk him down given the chance.

“How much longer until we’re out of the city and into the suburbs?” Cender asked Cillian next.

“I can’t say.  The traffic is completely random.”  Cillian diverted all his attention back to driving.  Not that it needed much attention.  There was only one moving lane of cars.  Everybody was following the same line, the same path through the abandoned and wrecked vehicles.  Earlier they had been moving at a brisk pace, but now they were crawling again.

“Can you change the radio back to the one with music?”  Abby was the third person to ask a question.

“Sure thing.”  Cillian reached forward and changed the dial.  They had found one station that seemed to play all music all the time.  Nobody cared that it was all in French.  It sometimes faded in and out, or became a garbled fuzz, but it stayed clear for the most part.  There was actually a device in the roof in back that worked the radio, but no one had figured out how to make it work, and suspected it might be broken.  It was easiest for Cillian just to do it.

They came to their first full stop.

“That can’t be good,” Tobias frowned even more.

“I hope we’re not stuck because someone crashed.”  Cender tried to see forward through the tinted window next to his head.  “I can just see them now, getting out to exchange insurance.”

Abby let out a tiny giggle, which she quickly stifled.

“Then the zombie comes along and starts chewing on one of their heads,” Cillian added.

“I say good chap, that’s quite the chapeau you have,” Tobias put on a lofty accent, mocking the pretend crashers.

“Then another zombie comes along and clamps on that guy’s wrist.”  Cender put on his own accent, “Why thank you, but it is nothing compared to your beautiful bracelet.”

Abby giggled some more but still tried to hold it in.

“Oh
, this old thing?  I just had it lying around,” Cillian did his best to put on the same accent that Tobias had.  “You must tell me where you got that hat.”

“It is a rather fine hat, isn’t it?”  Cender sat up and pretended he was showing off a hat on his head.  “Yes quite fine, although I must say
, it does get rather hot and it’s murder on your hair.”

That was the last straw for Abby, and she went into fits.  Cillian couldn’t help but chuckle a few times as well; it was just so absurd.  He couldn’t believe laughter still existed in him after all that had happened that day, but it did.  It felt nice to laugh too, to just joke around and be stupid like his days spent at the firehouse.

The laughter stopped when Jessi suddenly got up, went to the sunroof, opened the panel, and stood with her torso sticking out of it.  Cillian immediately felt bad about joking and laughing.  This wasn’t exactly the right time for it.  They were still in danger, and they were joking about something awful.

Jessi suddenly ducked her head back inside with a confused expression on her face.

“There are trucks.”  She disappeared topside again.

“What do you mean, trucks?” Cillian leaned back and yelled toward the open

sunroof.

She didn’t reply.

Cillian sighed and put the limo into park.  He looked out the window, but, when he didn’t see any threats, he opened the door and climbed out.  He looked up at Jessi sticking out of the roof.

“There.”  She pointed ahead.

Cillian turned but couldn’t see anything.  They had been following behind a rather large Hummer most of the time, which meant that in their shorter limo, they couldn’t see much ahead.  Cillian climbed up onto the hood of the car and stood up.  As he looked up the street, he did indeed spot some trucks.  The line of cars in front of them went on for about seven vehicles before it came to a stop.  They halted, not because they were blocked by wreckage, but because a tight, fast moving convoy of military-looking vehicles was zooming down a street that crossed theirs.  Several people had climbed out of their cars to watch, and some even tried to flag down the military trucks in the vain hope that they would actually stop.

The screech startled Cillian into slipping and falling.  His shoulder left a good sized dent in the hood, but he didn’t feel the pain.  He didn’t even bother to look for the source of the sound, just scrambled quickly over to his door, yanked it open, jumped in, and slammed the thing closed behind him.  Jessi had dropped back into the limo the moment she heard the screech as well and was holding the button to close the sunroof, muttering something under her breath about it being slower than snail mail.

“There.”  Abby pointed back and to the left.

Everybody turned to watch as an infected leapt upon the car behind them and started smashing on the windshield with its bare hands.  Cillian put the limo into drive and scooted the long car as close to the Hummer as he could.  In fact, he rubbed bumpers with it.

“To the right!” Tobias yelled.

They all looked right as a middle-aged man in biker gear ran face first into the window.  Everyone on that side of the car instinctively moved to the other side.  The zombie must not have been able to see them through the darkly tinted glass however, because he quickly regained his balance and climbed up and over the car.  The
sunroof had been closed by then, which was a small relief.  The man leaped off the car and took off down an alley, where at the other end a couple could be seen fleeing.

“There’s more coming up from behind us.  A lot more,” Cender groaned looking back.

Cillian turned around and looked out the back window as well.  It did look like quite a few were coming.  He shifted the limo into park again, snapped off the French radio, then scrambled and wedged himself into the little window that separated the back from the front.

“What are you doing?” Jessi asked as she shifted out of the way.

“The back windows are tinted really dark.  They probably won’t be able to see through them.  The front windows though are crystal clear.”  The window was barely big enough for his large frame.  It was even tighter than trying to squeeze through the air ducts, although he had more leverage.

Jessi grabbed his arm, but she wasn’t much help.  It wasn’t until Tobias got up and pulled on his other arm that he popped through.  Cillian decided right then that he should go on a diet.  Not that he was overweight at all, but right
now, he’d prefer to be rail thin.  That brief thought of food reminded him that he hadn’t had anything to eat or drink since the can of Pepsi at the concert.  That seemed like forever ago.  He never did figure out what happened to Jim and Doyle and was beginning to realize he never would.  There were a lot of people that he was likely never to hear from again

As soon as he had popped through, Jessi pressed the button to raise the tinted partition.  Without the sunlight coming through the front windshield, the back of the limo became quite dark.

“Try to stay still,” Tobias whispered.  He probably didn’t need to whisper, but nobody was going to test that.  Carefully, he set up his camera on the back of the rear seat and started recording.  Cillian noticed during the brief time Tobias had the LCD screen opened, that the camera was running out of batteries.  He wondered if he recorded any of the radio message and made a note to ask him later.  The more Cillian was around Tobias, the more he cared about what he was filming.  He was beginning to see the appeal of it.  Like recording what was going on was proof that it wasn’t just some sick and twisted nightmare.  Cillian preferred it to be reality over a dream, because in dreams, he never had control and anything could happen.  At least the real world had
some
sense to it.

Other than Tobias who stayed right behind his camera, the rest of the group huddled together in the middle of the limo.  Cillian wrapped his arms around Jessi, drawing her warm body as close to his as he could.  They all watched as the swarm came toward them.  It smashed into cars, breaking windows and prying open doors to get at the people inside.  A little Smart car was toppled over, the woman inside frantically screaming as a flood of zombies descended upon it.  Its excellent fuel mileage did nothing to save her.  Eventually, the hoard hit their limo.  The infected people crawled up over the back and across the roof.  They streamed around the sides, jostling each other as they madly ran.  The banging across the roof and along the sides was deafening.  It was like being in a
hailstorm but the hail was the size of basketballs.  Some of the zombies stopped and looked at the limo but then kept running.  Except for one.  It stood there at the back window and stared.  No one could tell if it could see them or if it just decided to stop there for whatever reason.  Others ran past it hitting its shoulders.