Survival Instinct: A Zombie Novel (88 page)

“Because I’m not the one filming it,” Tobias actually laughed at his own expense.  “Seriously dude, I hate being filmed.  Could you put that down?”

“I will in a bit.  I just want to capture some more of this lovely sunrise.”  Cender actually filmed some of the scenery outside of the car.  “But at least now we’ve got one shot of you for posterity.”

Tobias didn’t tell him that Cillian had already recorded him attacking an old lady with an axe.  Not one of his finer moments, to say the least.

“Why have you been filming all the things that have been happening?” Abby asked.

“I don’t completely know,” Tobias shrugged.  “I feel safer looking through the lens.  It doesn’t feel like I’m actually there, you know?  Like it’s already happened.  And maybe because it represents some kind of hope to me.”

“What do you mean?” Abby frowned.

“If I record it, that means there’s going to be somebody left who will watch it.  It’s weird and really bad logic, I know,” Tobias laughed to himself again.  “There’s no guarantee anyone will be left after all of this, but it’s just the way filming makes me feel.  Something is filmed to be watched, therefore there must be someone to watch it.”

“Aw, how touching.”  Cender had turned the camera to him again.  “When the new world Oscars get established, you’re going to win every award, including acting.”

Tobias gave him the finger.

“And now you blew your chances.  Way to go,” Cender laughed.  He finally put down the camera and turned it off.

The car, which was still cruising in electric mode, quietly died.  They coasted down the road as far as they could until it came to a stop.

* * *

“I guess that’s that,” Tobias sighed.  “Looks like we’re hiking it from here.”

“Great,” Cender grumbled.

Everybody opened their doors and got out, Tobias grabbing his camera and slinging it over his neck as he went.  Abby dragged packs one through three out with her.

“You sure you can handle this?” she asked Cender as she helped him get his pack on.

“Do I really have a choice?” Cender retorted.  “We all have to carry our own weight, and in this case, that’s pretty literal.”

“Yeah, but we don’t have to do it with a broken leg,” Abby pointed out as she hiked her own bag up onto her shoulders.

“True, but I also don’t have to spend the trip listening to someone complain about having to carry a heavy bag with a broken leg.  I think our irritation levels will be even,” Cender joked.

Tobias picked up his bag.  The thing was immensely heavy, but he could handle it.  It was like carrying that camera bag that Lucas Jonas had made him carry.  That had felt like forever ago, but really, it had been less than twenty-four hours.  He adjusted the shoulder straps and did up the buckles in front.  At least the bag had been designed with long hikes and heavy equipment in mind, so it distributed the weight nicely.  He took one last look at the car and the other bags.  Then he turned and began walking.

They had separated from the caravan of cars sometime last night.  Although a few other vehicles had picked the same roads as they had, they were all gone for the moment.  Tobias walked down the centre line, Abby on his left and Cender, using his crutches, to the right.

He picked up his camera and started to film some of the scenery.  Cender did have a good idea about that, but Tobias saw it in a different light.  It was the emptiness, the stillness of the scenery that made him want to film it.

“Let’s play a question game,” Cender finally spoke up again.  He just couldn’t keep his mouth shut for more than five minutes, could he?  “We each get to ask a question, and everybody has to answer it truthfully.  Sound good?”

“Fine,” Tobias answered without emotion, still filming.

“Sure,” Abby agreed.

“All right,” Cender said happily.  “Who wants to go first?”

Tobias assumed that he had had a question in mind, but apparently he didn’t.  “I got one.  Cender, I don’t even know your name.  Is Cender your first or last name?”

“You missed the point.  We all have to answer the question and that was directed only at me.  How about we all state our full names then?” Cender decided.  “I’m Joshua Juliann Cender.”

“Joshua Juliann?” Abby laughed.

“Yup.  My parents are lovely folks,” Cender laughed as well.  “They like to call me JJ.”

“Well, I’m Abigail Margaret Walker,” Abby told them.  “Although, if you call me Abigail I’ll punch you in the nose.”

“That’s how I feel about being called Toby, but nobody seems to listen,” Tobias sighed.  “My full name is Tobias Mackenzie.  I don’t have a middle name.”

“Really?  I didn’t know people could not have middle names.  Huh.”  Abby was genuinely surprised.

“Of course he has one, it’s Toby,” Cender ribbed him.

Tobias just groaned.  Having Cillian call him that was bad enough.  And at least Cillian hadn’t talked nearly half as much as Cender seemed to.

“I’ve got a question, but it’s a little morbid,” Abby frowned to herself.

“Fire away, it’s just between us and the pavement,” Cender encouraged.

“I was just wondering, who was the first dead person you saw yesterday?” Abby asked quietly, sounding somewhat ashamed of her question.

“Lucas Jonas,” Tobias said without hesitation.  Odd that he had just been thinking of him.

“No way!” Cender said excitedly.  “You saw Lucas Jonas?”

“I told you I was filming at the concert, right?”  Tobias couldn’t remember exactly what he had told Cender when they met.

“Yeah,” Both Cender and Abby nodded.

“Well, it was him I was filming.”  Tobias tried to shrug, but the weight of his bag didn’t let his shoulders go far.  “He ran off into the crowd, and I had to follow him.  When I got to him, he was in the middle of this circle of chaos with an umbrella sticking out of his chest.”

“The umbrella wasn’t open, was it?” Cender asked.

“What?” Tobias frowned, pulling his eye away from the eyepiece to look at him.  “No.  You’d think that being a doctor you’d realize that the human body is tougher than an umbrella spring.”

“Okay, just wondering.”  Cender briefly let go of his crutches to put up his hands in a defensive posture.  “It could have been a really tough umbrella, like, a razor umbrella.  Or maybe it went so far through him it opened on the other end.  Being a doctor, I’ve seen a lot of crazy shit that I didn’t think was possible.  Oh, and as for your question Abby, I’m not sure who the first dead person I saw yesterday was.  If I remember right, we had some old guy come in who had an MI.”

“That’s a myocardial infarction, right?” Abby asked.  “A heart attack?”

“Look at you!  Watch a lot of medical shows?” Cender grinned.

“No, I just like to study things.  And I remember things really well, better than anyone I’ve ever met, actually.”

“Do you have an eidetic memory?” Cender sounded extremely interested.

“I never really looked into it, but I might,” Abby admitted.

“For the unintelligent here, what does an eidetic memory mean?”  Tobias had no idea what they were talking about.

“Most people refer to it as a photographic memory,” Cender told him, but clearly had no interest in talking to him at the moment.  He quickly turned his attention back to Abby.  “So, you can remember things in crazy amounts of detail?”

“That depends on what you mean by crazy amounts of detail,” Abby said.  “Like, I wouldn’t be able to tell you how many stalks of corn we’ve driven past.”

Tobias slowly faded out of the conversation, not actually all that interested.  Although it did sound somewhat fascinating, he didn’t understand half the words Cender and Abby were using.  Apparently, she was a bookworm.  Abby even walked around to the other side of Tobias so that she and Cender weren’t talking through him.

Tobias didn’t mind.  He was happy
just to keep filming.  That was his perfect memory, whatever he caught on film.  As they walked, the landscape changed from fields to forest.  Tobias actually spotted and captured a deer on film as it wove its way through the trees.  It saw them, or rather heard Cender and Abby’s mumbo jumbo talk, and directed its path further into the woods.  As Tobias kept filming the trees, trying to pick out more wildlife, he saw a little house up ahead.  It had a large white truck parked in front of it that seemed vaguely familiar.

“Guys.”  Tobias had a bad feeling.  “Guys!” he said louder to get their attention.

They stopped and looked at him.

“There.”  He pointed ahead to what he was looking at.  “There’s a house with a weird white truck in front of it.”

“So?” Cender frowned.

“There were white trucks driving with the military guys.”  Abby did have a good memory.  Being in the backseat, they had barely been able to see the military convoy as it crossed their path.  They had to press themselves against the side windows to see around the cars ahead.

“Come on.”  Tobias headed for the trees.  He had a really bad feeling about this.  “Hurry up.”

They followed him to the tree line and let him drag them into the bushes.  He ducked down and encouraged them to do the same.  Cender had no problem taking a break from his crutches.

“Wait here.  I’m going to go closer,” Tobias whispered.  He shook out of his pack and headed toward the house.  He found a spot near the edge of the clearing it was in and resumed filming.

He couldn’t see anyone in the truck, but there was movement beyond the windows.  A lot of movement.  Suddenly he could hear barking as well, coming from inside, and then the sound of a shot being fired.  Tobias scrunched deeper into the protective brush and leaves.  It could easily be a zombie fight going on in there.

The door burst open with a loud bang and a big man in fatigues walked out.  He was carrying a German shepherd by its arm pits, the dog’s rear legs flopping and kicking pathetically at the air in front of it.  Following him came three other men.  It looked like they had someone between them, but Tobias couldn’t get a good look.  Whoever it was, was furious.  It looked like he or she was kicking and thrashing, and doing whatever he could to escape, but the men surrounding him were built like oxen.  The scrapper was yelling in some language Tobias had never heard before.

Both the dog and the fighter were tossed into the back of the truck.  A soldier followed them in and after about a minute, he popped back out and the rear doors were slammed shut.  Three of the men climbed into the front section.  The fourth was about to climb in when he stopped and looked around the area.  Tobias froze; he assumed this was how the deer felt when it noticed them coming down the road.

Finally, the big man turned and got into the truck as well.  The engine roared to life and the truck did a multi-point turn to face the road again.  As it did this, Tobias saw that the front bumper was covered in blood.  It then pulled out onto the road and drove away from him.

He waited several minutes to make sure the vehicle was completely gone before he headed back to the others.

“What happened?” Abby asked.

Tobias started to put his backpack back on.  He shook his head.  “I have absolutely no idea.”

Cole

Mathias Cole bolted awake at the sound of a shrill scream.  The first thing he did was look over to where Danny slept.  He was still there.  Last night hadn’t been a dream; he really did find him.  Danny was awake now too, frightened awake like Mathias.  Then Mathias glanced around the rest of the room making sure the screamer wasn’t in there with them.  He saw LeBlanc already on his feet, rifle in hand.  McGregor, the man he had met last night, was shifting himself from his seat into his wheelchair.  Bishop had already gotten out of the front seat of the car she had slept in.  No screamer in sight, though.

“Where’s Alice?” Bishop asked, the first to notice the little girl’s disappearance.  She had already looked in the back seat.

“Alice!” McGregor called out, but there was no answer.

“The chain’s off the door.”  Danny pointed.  Was that a pistol he had pulled out?

Mathias got to his feet quickly and shouldered his own rifle.  He was closest to the sheet metal door and went closer now.  In his head, he swore up a blue storm aimed at little Alice.  If she went out on her own, she was going to get such a spanking.  That is, if she wasn’t the screamer herself.

He opened the door slowly, listening carefully.  He reminded himself that charging out into something unknown was how you got killed.  Most of his old army buddies had been killed that way.  He narrowly avoided death on several occasions himself.  Once the door was open wide enough, he stepped through it, rifle first.  The outer room looked clear, which was both a good sign and bad.  He had been somewhat hoping to find Alice sitting out there playing with her ponies.

As he thought about checking behind the desk, something brushed passed his leg.  He wheeled around, bringing his gun to bear, but it was just the dog.  What was its name again?  Socks or something?  The dog headed straight to the door, big nose snuffling at everything.  Mathias
followed it.  As he did, he saw LeBlanc come out of the garage, following him.  He hoped the others would stay inside and watch out for Danny.