Survival Instinct: A Zombie Novel (89 page)

The hound made its way to the gas station, where it lay down and started woofing.  McGregor had told them the night before that this was what it did when it found a cadaver.  The hound’s signal, though, was unnecessary, as the slamming of bars drew their attention quickly.  A zombie had somehow gotten into the store and was now trying to get out through the security gate.  It rattled and shook the
bars, which had the effect of slowly sliding the gate open, bit by bit.  Mathias looked at the blood around the zombie’s mouth and then on the bars.  He noticed it was about the height of a small child’s arm.

Even if they found the child now, things didn’t look good for her.

That pissed Mathias off.  He had just met Alice and couldn’t say he felt particularly bad about what happened, considering what had happened to so many others already.  But the fact was, it could just as easily have been Danny.  Danny was smart, but Mathias could actually think of a few reasons why Danny might have walked out here without telling him, and it could have been he they were looking for.

Mathias stepped over the dog, Shoes, that’s what its name was.  He stepped over Shoes and braced his rifle hard into his shoulder.  He fired off three quick rounds, unnecessary, as the first went through the zombie’s eye.  The second hit one of the bars of the gate and the third tore open its neck.  He was tempted to pump a few more rounds into it, but knew better than to waste more ammunition.

“You need to work on your aim,” LeBlanc muttered.  “You missed two shots.”

Mathias ignored him.  “Shoes, find Alice.  Go on.”  He booted the dog lightly in the butt.

The basset hound rose up on its short legs and placed its immense nose against the ground.  It waddled toward the woods, snuffling loudly as it went.  They all went a few steps into the trees when Shoes suddenly stopped.  He pulled his droopy ears forward as much as he could, listening to something neither Mathias nor LeBlanc could hear.  His ears pulled back then and he whined.  He shuffled back and forth and side to side several steps, whining some more.  He lay down and barked, then got up and shuffle-stepped some more.  When he suddenly peed, Mathias knew something was very wrong.  He looked at LeBlanc who nodded.  He understood as well.

Mathias didn’t know how to tell the dog to stay without using words.  He held up a hand to it, hoping that would do, then slowly went deeper into the woods.  LeBlanc matched his slow pace, keeping a few steps to his left and a few steps back.  Behind them, Shoes suddenly howled.  It was a long and very mournful sound.  Things really didn’t bode well for Alice now.  Still, Mathias had to check.

Last night, after Danny had gone to sleep, Alec McGregor had told them everything that had happened.  He told them that when he had met Danny, the younger Cole had been travelling with a different young girl.  The girl was older than Alice, but Danny seemed to be looking out for her.  McGregor told them about how the other girl had died, but how Danny had pressed on.  Apparently he had really been looking out for Alice as well, and that was how she had gotten her toy horses.  Danny would want to know what had happened and Mathias was going to make sure he had an answer.

A twig snapped behind him, and Mathias almost didn’t react quickly enough.  As the weight thumped onto his back, he swung an arm up and grabbed a handful of hair.  The little girl’s teeth snapped just under his ear, trying to bite his neck.  Mathias was using his fistful of hair to hold her head back.  He tried to pull her off, but her grip was like that of a determined jaguar.  She didn’t claw at him; she just kept snapping her teeth, her hot breath on his neck.  Mathias couldn’t help but think about how that meant she was still breathing.  One of the weird things about zombies was that, although they had no need for air, their lungs continued to take it in and push it out.  Not exactly the best thing to be thinking about when a five-year-old was trying to eat you alive.

“Not today, little one.”  LeBlanc had finally stepped up behind Mathias and grabbed the girl.  He pulled hard, yanking her off Mathias’s back.

Mathias turned and saw that LeBlanc was holding a little hell cat in a blue jean dress.  He had one arm around her waist and one around her neck forcing her mouth shut.  Her arms and legs flailed, both trying to free herself from LeBlanc and to attack Mathias.  LeBlanc slammed her face first into the ground, kneeling on her back and holding her head into the leaves with one hand.  His weight was more than enough to keep her pinned.  LeBlanc pulled out his pistol.  Mathias expected him to shoot the girl, then and there, but instead, he held it out to Mathias.  Mathias frowned, confused.

“Do it,” LeBlanc told him, no humour in his voice.

“Why don’t you?”  Mathias shook his head.

“Please, just do it.”  LeBlanc wouldn’t look at him.

Mathias took the pistol.  He knelt down and placed the gun against the back of Alice’s struggling little head.  He looked up again at LeBlanc who wouldn’t meet his eyes.  He fired the pistol.

The shot rang out loud and clear.  As it faded, another mournful howl rose up from the woods.  Shoes probably knew what had happened to his little girl.

* * *

Mathias rose to his feet and so did LeBlanc.  He handed LeBlanc back his pistol.

“What was that about?” he asked his friend.

“Nothing.”  LeBlanc holstered the pistol.

“Bullshit, nothing,” Mathias frowned at him, annoyed.  More than annoyed actually, he was kind of pissed.

“I’ll tell you later,” LeBlanc sighed.  “What are we going to do with her?  Do we take her back with us?  Let the others say good-bye?”

Mathias looked down at the girl in the jean dress with her white stockings and undershirt.  “I think it’s best that we don’t.”

LeBlanc looked down at her as well.  The hole in the back of her head spoke volumes.  He bent down and rolled her over onto her back.  She looked so much more peaceful than she had a minute ago.  LeBlanc placed her hands on her chest, almost as if in prayer, and straightened her hair neatly around her head, hiding the exit wound next to her left ear.  He got back up again and walked off.

Mathias followed, now more concerned than
angry. His friend was acting very strangely, and he didn’t know why.

They found the hound again who had stopped howling and was sitting there looking mournful.

“Come on, Shoes.”  Mathias patted his leg as he walked past.

The dog didn’t move.

“Come on, boy,” Mathias tried to encourage the dog along, but it was having none of it.  He sighed.  “Give me a minute, LeBlanc.  I can’t believe I’m going to do this,” he grumbled to himself.

He headed back toward Alice’s body and patted his leg again.  This time, the dog followed.  Mathias led him to the girl.  The dog sniffed her prone form all over, gently licking her hands and face.

“She’s gone, boy,” Mathias told him.  “Time to go.”

The dog lay across his girl’s lap.

Mathias sighed again.  The hound had no intention of leaving her, and Mathias didn’t know if he should let it stay or make it come with him.  Shoes was useful, and it seemed that McGregor liked the dog.  Danny probably liked the dog too, on some level.

“Okay, you’re coming with me now.”  Mathias hauled the dog up in his arms.  He didn’t like having to carry the pooch as it meant he couldn’t hold his gun, but he hoped the dog would give him some sort of warning beforehand if they were attacked.

He carried the dog all the way back to the edge of the forest where LeBlanc was still waiting.  Mathias expected some sort of remark but got nothing.  Now he was really concerned.

He carried Shoes back into the mechanic’s office.  When he put him down, he stayed put.  Mathias knocked on the door three times.

“We’re coming in.”  He pushed on the door, which the others hadn’t chained back up.

Shoes instantly squeezed his way back inside.  Mathias opened the door wide enough for both him and LeBlanc, and walked through.  Bishop held her rifle pointed at the door while McGregor had a pistol up.

“Just us.”  Mathias waved them down.  He then closed the door behind him and started to chain it back up.

“Alice?” Danny asked Mathias, daring to be hopeful.

Mathias shook his head without turning to look at him.  If he had failed his brother already, he didn’t want to see it.

“All right then.”  McGregor sounded pain-free, but when Mathias looked at him, it was in his eyes.  He hadn’t been taking care of the girl for long, in terms of hours, but these hours were practically a lifetime.  Mathias knew; he had lived them too.

“What’s next?”  McGregor looked around the room.

“We keep moving on to my place,” Bishop said.

“In what?” Mathias asked.  “Our car isn’t safe enough to hold all of us.”

“How about this one, then?”  McGregor patted the car that Bishop and Alice had slept in.

“It’s in the shop.”  Bishop said what Mathias was thinking, only in a more snarky way.

“I fixed it.”  McGregor gave her a sarcastic smile.

“You fixed it?”  Danny looked confused.

“Yeah, I’m
a mechanic.  It’s normally my job to fix cars.”  McGregor turned to him.

“A mechanic?” Danny was even more confused.  “I thought you were a soldier?”

“I was, but disability pay sucks ass,” McGregor laughed.  “No way in hell was I going to sit around doing nothing.  I worked for my brother-in-law in his shop.”

“Well I, for one, am glad you did,” Mathias told him.

“Well then, let’s go.”  Bishop carried her bag to the car’s trunk.

“Question.”  LeBlanc stepped forward.  “How do you plan on opening the garage door without electricity?  That beast looks motorized.”

“Fuck.”  Bishop put her bag back on the floor.

It was a very good question.  Mathias walked up to the door and looked at all the components.  He placed his hand on the door and pressed, trying to gauge how heavy it might be.  He would have liked to shake it, but that would make way too much noise.  There was a surprising amount of give to the door.  It was made out of a weaker material than it looked.  He reached down and wedged his fingers in between the rubber and the floor.  He pulled, but the door didn’t budge an inch.

“That thing ain’t moving.  Looks like we’re walking,” McGregor sighed.

Mathias wondered if he saw the irony in him saying that.  He kept looking at the door though.  Something that felt so flimsy shouldn’t have been that hard to lift.  Not even the support structure looked really that heavy.  And the door hadn’t budged an inch.  Mathias knew he wasn’t the strongest guy in the world, but he liked to think all the push-ups he’d done weren’t for nothing.  It didn’t feel like trying to lift a heavy object.  It felt like trying to lift an immobile object, like a house.  Finally, he saw it.

Part of the garage door’s lifting mechanism was actually holding it closed.  The door wouldn’t open, not because it was heavy, but because something was physically holding it shut.  It was like trying to lift a hockey puck that someone was standing on.  The puck itself wasn’t heavy, but the person on it was.  However, if you could remove that person…

“Hey, you said you’re a mechanic, right?  And we’re in a room full of tools.”  Mathias turned around, stopping everyone from shrugging into their packs.  “How long do you think it would take you to dismantle that?”  He pointed to the mechanism.

“Why would you want to-” McGregor cut himself off as it clicked with him what Mathias had figured out.  He grinned and put his pack down.  “With help, it shouldn’t take very long at all.”

“I’ll help.”  Danny hopped from his seat and walked over.  He was wearing an army helmet and a neutral expression.

“Where’d you get this?”  Mathias knocked on the top of the helmet as he walked by.

“Alec gave it to me,” Danny told him and smiled.  He clearly liked the helmet a lot.  It also looked like he wasn’t upset or mad with Mathias about what had happened to Alice.  It was impossible to say for sure how he was feeling about it, though.  He might just be putting on a brave face for him.  He would have to find a moment to talk to him when things quieted down.  Maybe when they got to Bishop’s place.

Mathias had a brief moment of heart sickness when he thought that McGregor was better for his brother than he was.  He hadn’t even been there when he was needed most; he was in a hole in the ground.  The thought passed, though.

Bishop also offered to help, and, with the three of them working closely together, there was no room for Mathias and LeBlanc.

“Hey, can you come with me for a moment?” LeBlanc whispered to him.

“Where are we going?” Mathias frowned.  There wasn’t really anywhere to go.

“Just to the employees’ lounge.”  LeBlanc started for the door, leaving his pack and rifle behind.  “I was going to tell you about what happened in the woods; it shouldn’t take long.”

Mathias was actually concerned that LeBlanc didn’t take his rifle.  Every time they had ever been issued one in the past, LeBlanc would never let it leave his sight.  Now, during the worst times, when it would be needed most, he left it behind.  He did have his pistol though.

“Danny, I’ll be right back okay?”  Mathias turned to tell his brother as LeBlanc left the room.

“Where are you going now?” Danny sounded worried.