Survival Instinct: A Zombie Novel (66 page)

Cillian realized he was thinking of it as an ‘it’ again.  It was a man.  Or at least it used to be.  He was a somewhat portly Asian man who may have been nicely dressed, but it was hard to tell under the caking of blood and dirt.  Cillian thought the man’s eyes were red, but the tinting of the glass made it hard to tell.  His whole lower face was bloody with a few drops on his forehead.  He cocked his head to one side and pressed his body up against the trunk of the car.  Cillian instinctively moved back.  Jessi grabbed hold of his hands at the end of his encircling arms, her ragged nails digging in.  He barely noticed.

The zombie man then climbed up on the trunk.  He kept his face low, staring at something near the base of the rear windshield.  It was like he was looking straight into the camera, like he could see it.  Then Cillian remembered that cameras usually had record lights on the front of them.  Lights that blinked when the batteries were low.

“Toby, turn of
f the camera,” Cillian said as quietly as he could.

He didn’t know if Tobias heard him over the racket on the roof or if he made the same realization, but he pressed a button, and the camera shut down.

The zombie man’s head cocked to the other side.  He slapped a fist down on the window causing everyone inside to jump.  His hand slowly slid down, creating a long squeak.  Nobody breathed.  Then he was gone, climbing over the car with the rest of the flood.

Cillian looked up and watched the man go over the
sunroof.  He hadn’t realized but several cracks and fractures had begun to appear in it.  If the sunroof broke…

Eventually the stampede began to subside.  There were a few stragglers, some probably newly formed out of their convoy, who were still drifting by, but the main bulk had moved on.

“There are more coming.”  Tobias had pressed himself to one side, trying to look back as far as he could.  “The walkers, the slow ones.”

“I suggest we take this time to get out of here.”  Abby slowly stretched out from the incredibly tight ball she had managed to curl up into.  Her small form could probably have fit in the mini-fridge if she really tried.

“I second that motion.”  Cillian pressed the button to lower the partition so that he could take the wheel again.  In the front, the windshield had a couple of large cracks, although not nearly as many as the sunroof.  They shouldn’t be too much of a hindrance to drive with.

“Anyone else think the bit with the hand was kinda cliché?”  Cender pulled himself back up on his seat with one hand, the other still holding the drink.  He still hadn’t taken a sip.  In fact, his hand was trembling slightly, the half melted ice rattling against the glass.

Cillian climbed back through the divider again.  It was easier to go this way because he could grab the steering wheel and pull himself.  That and he was pretty sure he had sweated off a few pounds.  As he settled into the driver’s seat, he took off his jacket.  Despite the car’s air conditioning, he was feeling very warm.  Jessi followed him through the partition, eeling gracefully through it, and sat in the other seat without saying a word.

Whoever was in the Hummer in front of them was fortunate and had also managed to survive the swarm.  They were already moving forward again, using their big vehicle to shove smaller ones out of the way.  Cillian threw the limo into drive and began to follow it.  A car a few spaces behind them had also survived and was bullying its way toward them.  It seemed the convoy was going to start again.

The zombies that were still around headed toward the moving cars, but they were slow and shambling.  The only quick one ran at the Hummer.  It ran into the side of it and knocked itself on its ass.  The Hummer’s rear wheels ran over its legs, crushing them.  Still, the zombie continued to try to get up and attack the car again.  Cillian didn’t try to hit it, but he didn’t try to avoid it either.  He also ran over its legs.  Jessi squeezed her eyes shut while they did, placing her hands over her ears.  That made Cillian think that he should have avoided it.  Too late now though.

As they crossed the street the army trucks had used, Cillian looked up it to see that everything had been shoved to the sides, leaving a large clear swath.  They must have had some big ass vehicle with a plow or something on it ripping along ahead of them to do that.  Neither the Hummer nor Cillian opted to follow the path because the flood seemed to be chasing after the trucks, and the other direction led back into the city.  Since the flood didn’t attack the rest of the convoy, they caught up soon enough and rejoined the parade.

* * *

“Anybody got any wiring?” Tobias asked from the back seat.

“What do you need wiring for?” Cillian wondered.

“I might be able to hook up my old camera’s battery to this one,” Tobias answered.

“What are you?  An electrical engineer or something?” Cender scoffed.

“Not even.  I’ve just always been good at figuring out electronics and stuff.”  Tobias started searching around the limo for something he could take apart.  “I spent most of my childhood and teenage years ripping things apart and then putting them back together.”

“You ever blow anything up?” Abby asked.

Tobias let out one short laugh but didn’t answer.  Cillian saw in the rear-view mirror that Abby was disappointed he didn’t answer, even though that probably meant the answer was yes.

“What about the radio?” Cillian offered.

“That would probably work,” Tobias nodded.

“Try taking apart that roof controller back there.  It’s not like you guys figured out how to work it anyway.”  Cillian looked at his hands then and noticed the red marks Jessi’s nails had left in them.  He looked over at her.

Jessi was staring out the side window and chewing on her thumbnail.  It had always been a bad habit with her.

“Hey,” he spoke in a voice quiet enough that it shouldn’t have travelled to the three in the back.  “I thought your New Year’s resolution was to stop doing that?”

Jessi turned to face him.  That look was in her eyes again, the one that Cillian didn’t like.  It was almost as if she didn’t recognize him at first.  Then she smiled and tightly held her hands in her lap.

“You remembered.”  Although her outward appearance had become so much more haggard and stressed, her voice remained her own.

“Of course I did,” Cillian smiled back.  “I remember you bullied me into making some myself.”

“I don’t remember what yours were.”  Jessi’s face fell.

“That’s okay.  I don’t remember them myself.”  That was actually a lie, but he was trying to cheer her up.  His major resolution had been to quit smoking
finally.  He had been doing well too, until they had broken up.  Although he wasn’t going to say anything, all day whenever there hadn’t been adrenaline pumping through his veins, he would have killed for a single puff.  The first thing he did when he got into the limo was to check the glove box for a pack, but he had no such luck.

“How have you been?” she asked in a sheepish voice.  The last time they spoke hadn’t been on good terms.  Well, not including at the hospital, but then they had just told each other what had happened that day and how scared they were.

“Okay I guess.  Better than today has been, but worse since I was with you.”  That time it was the truth.  “I’ve been living on Doyle’s couch the whole time.”

“I’m sure he’s loved that.”  Jessi had met Doyle several times.  They got along well enough but would probably never have spoken if it weren’t for Cillian.

It felt like years since Cillian had seen Doyle, when in fact, it had been just that morning.  He looked at the time and discovered that only about six hours had passed since his life had been normal, since he was annoyed by the crappy bands and complaining that he had gotten a Pepsi instead of a Coke.  He really regretted not lighting that cigarette.  He also wondered again what happened to Doyle and Jim.  What became of them in that mob?  Where had they gone while Cillian slept, and why hadn’t they woken him first?

“Hey, Cender?” Cillian spoke over his shoulder.  “Is there anything non-alcoholic in that fridge?”

“There’s some water, why?”  Cender leaned forward and took out a bottle.

“Because I’m thirsty, why the fuck else would I be asking?”  Cillian thought it was a very stupid question.

Cender passed the bottle up to him.  Cillian cracked it open and downed half of it in one go.  He then put the cap back on and stuck it in the cup holder.

“Any food back there?”  The water reminded his stomach that it was hungry.  It sent frustrated signals to his brain, telling it to eat something.  Anything.

“I’ll look.”  Cender started digging through the mini fridge and the cupboards.

Cillian took a look in the rear-view mirror to check on Tobias.  The whole little radio console had been ripped down and was hanging from the ceiling by its wires.  He was busily looking over everything and taking stuff apart while Abby watched.

“He’s weird,” Jessi said quietly next to him.

“Who is?”  Cillian gave her his attention again.

“That Tobias guy,” she was speaking quietly,   “he’s kind of weird.”

“I think he’s all right.”  Cillian glanced in the mirror again quickly.  “He seems normal to me.”

“He’s weird.”  Jessi sounded very sure of her statement.

Cillian shrugged.  He didn’t think Tobias was weird.  A little quirky sometimes, but who wasn’t when you first met?

“I found some power bars!”  Cender sat up, holding up the power bars triumphantly.  He passed them around the limo, handing two up to Cillian.

“Here.”  Cillian held one out to Jessi.  “The label says that no animals were harmed in the making of this food.”

She looked at it with a blank expression, then turned to look out the side window again.  “No thank you.”

“You should probably eat.”  Cillian put the power bar into the second, empty cup holder and started to open his own with his teeth.  “When was the last time you ate?”

“I don’t know.”  Jessi had withdrawn into her expressionless shell again.  “Back at the hospital I had something.”

“Well, I’ll leave this in the cup holder if you decide you want it.”  Cillian started devouring his own bar.

Jessi didn’t respond.

He would have loved to eat the second bar.  In fact, he would have loved to eat five of them, with a steak, and fries smothered in cheese, and an ice cold beer to wash it all down.  He saved the other one for her though.  She might get hungry and he wanted to make sure there was food for her when that happened.  He washed down the rest of his power bar with some more water.  There was only about a quarter of the bottle left now.

* * *

They drove for quite some time in silence after that.  No one even asked to have the French radio station put back on.  Everybody was off in their own thoughts.  Cillian couldn’t help but remember his time with Jessi.  How happy they had been.

They had first met because she reported a fire.  There was a small amount of smoke coming out from under her neighbour’s door and she was concerned.  Admittedly, she was more concerned about the fire spreading to her own apartment than whether or not her neighbour was all right inside, but as long as the call was made, the fire department wasn’t picky.  The fire had started because the old woman who lived there had fallen asleep with something on the stove.  The fire in the pan had spread first to a dirty dishtowel, and a piece of that burned off and landed in some newspapers piled up next to the door.  If Jessi hadn’t come home at that exact moment, noticed the smoke, and decided to call the fire department, the whole building might have burned to the ground.  The woman inside would have died.  She didn’t wake up until Doyle shook her and by then, the fire had spread to the kitchen cabinets.

Cillian had been the one who questioned Jessi, and so they met.  He thought she was hot, so he flirted with her a little.  He liked to think she flirted back, but he had never actually asked her if she had.  They didn’t make a date then; that came later, after two random encounters.  The first was in Marble Keystone Park, where they had a much longer and more personal conversation.  The second was at a bar where there was a lot of booze involved.  Although they had spent that night together, their first real date didn’t occur until two days later, when Cillian called her and set up a date.  He remembered she sounded surprised when he called her,
as if she didn’t think he would.  She sounded even more surprised when he asked her out to dinner.  She didn’t hesitate to say yes, though.

“Hey
, Jessi?”  Cillian turned to her.  She turned her head to look at him, but her eyes were blank so she wasn’t
truly
looking at him.  “Do you remember when we first met?”

“In the park?”  She seemed to come slightly more into focus.

“No, before that, at your apartment,” Cillian reminded her,  “when you called in the fire at your neighbour’s place.”

Jessi looked down and thought for a moment.  “Oh
, yeah.  I remember.”  When she looked back, there was a little more light in her eyes.  She was more with him again.

“When we were talking, were you flirting with me?”  No time like the present to ask.

The corner of Jessi’s mouth tugged in an attempted smile.  It didn’t make it out though.  “No, I wasn’t.”