Survival Instinct (Book 5): Social Instinct

by Stittle, Kristal

  Claire knew all of this, but it was good to hear it again. Despite his lack of evidence, Jon sounded totally confident that everything would be fine. Claire needed to be that confident, to not have to worry so that she could focus solely on the task at hand.

  “We should start with the lowest levels of the garage, just in case there’s a bit of flooding,” Bryce recommended.

  The others agreed, in particular because it would give them a chance to make sure the whole place was clear of zombies before they started checking out the cars.

  It was dark down in the parking garage. In the storage room, with the door held open at the top of the singular staircase, they had gotten a tiny amount of bounced light from elsewhere on the first floor. There was no such light in the parking garage. It was pitch black with the lights out.

  “Hello?” Jon called as they walked around the first level, searching for the ramp down to the lower ones.

  Bryce dragged the butt of his spear along the pavement. It rattled and scraped and echoed off the low ceiling. In addition to the smothering darkness, it had also been as silent as a tomb before they started making noise. They were probably the first people to bring sound and light to this place in years. If there were any zombies inside, the dead would be drawn to them like a trained dog to the word ‘treat’.

  Claire was glad that she was holding a lantern as opposed to a flashlight. She liked being within a pool of light instead of just following along behind a beam. It was also less obvious that her hands had developed a slight tremor. She felt a strange sensation, as though the world didn’t exist outside of what she saw. Every time a car appeared at the edge of the light, its shine visible before anything else, her chest tightened. Why that happened, she couldn’t say. It was always just a vehicle, and she knew that, but her anxiety acted up anyway.

  They located the ramp to the surface first. Jon went up and tested the door, making sure that it was indeed secure. They didn’t want anything coming down behind them. The ramp to the lower level was right beside it, so they walked down. It turned out that all the ramps were right beside one another, like a stairwell for cars. They could’ve gone straight down to the bottom, but instead opted to search each level for movement first. They made their way back to the stairwell, which descended to every level, and made sure that the door wasn’t jammed.

  The parking garage turned out to be made up of four, relatively small levels. A lot of the parking spaces were empty. The vehicles were likely driven away during the area’s evacuation. The cars that remained wore a coat of dust.

  “Okay, it looks like it’s time to get to work,” Jon said once they successfully reached the bottom without running into anything that moved.

  Bryce used the butt of his spear to smash the driver’s side window of the sedan farthest from the ramps. A short, sharp scream escaped Claire’s throat at the sudden explosion of sound. A wash of embarrassment undoubtedly turned her face a bright red, but none of the guys commented on her startled response.

  Going through the car was quicker and easier than the storage rooms had been. Claire was assigned the back seat, Bryce searched the front, Jon investigated the trunk, and Larson checked under the hood. They had a device with them to test the charge of the car’s battery, but even if it was dead, the submarine could be used to recharge it. They had plenty of car batteries back at the container yard, but they could always use more. Before moving to the next vehicle, they also checked the car for any fluids that could be drained from it. Oil, gas, washer fluid, brake fluid, everything. Even the stuff that had gone bad some people could find a use for, and so they drained it all into various containers they had located throughout the day.

  The next vehicle in line was a blocky SUV. This time Claire was more prepared for the explosive shattering of safety glass, and so managed to keep her own sound inside. She still flinched though.

  There was never much to find in the back seats of the cars. Some had long forgotten bits of trash or a water bottle. One had a blanket in the back, and another had several toys scattered around a child’s car seat. Twice there were maps, and three held tissue boxes. The glove boxes and the trunks always held the best finds. Napkins could be used as toilet paper, and so every single one was to come with them. All the car jacks and tire irons were taken, with the intention of putting them in the storage room for a possible future pick up. Only one was kept with them.

  “Here,” Jon said, handing the tire iron to Claire. It had a socket wrench for wheel nuts on one end and a pry bar on the other. “I’ve always felt you needed more than just a knife. This pry bar is a little sharper than the others we’ve come across, and should go through a zombie’s skull quite easily.”

  “Thanks.” Claire didn’t yet have a method for carrying the weapon in a way that would allow it to be drawn easily, so she held it in her hand for the time being. It was pretty good for smashing windows, she found out when Bryce let her break into the next vehicle. The sound wasn’t so startling when she was the one causing it.

  Everything they intended to take to camp with them was piled either on one of the dollies, or inside one of their packs. Everything else they planned to take to the storage room, they clustered by the stairwell doors for later pick up.

  The last vehicle to check on the third level was a panel van. It had no windows along its sides other than those at the front. The windows at the very back were covered in some sort of black paper or film, so they couldn’t see in that way either.

  Jon pressed his ear to the vehicle’s metal skin. He tapped on the side with the butt of his sword, listening for any movement. Bryce shone his flashlight in through the front.

  “There’s some sort of barrier between the front and rear,” he reported. “I can’t see anything back there.”

  Larson pulled on the handle of the passenger side door, expecting the resistance of a lock. When the door swung open, he was taken completely off guard and nearly fell to the ground as he stumbled.

  “Door’s open,” he needlessly reported.

  “Driver side, too,” Bryce added, having gone around to that side.

  Claire went to the rear doors and was a little surprised to find that they were unlocked as well. She held her tire iron at the ready, in case something popped out, even though Jon hadn’t heard anything. Nothing came out of the rear compartment, but Claire’s jaw still dropped.

  “Um,” she whispered, and then cleared her throat. “Um, guys?”

  “What is it?” Jon walked around to join her behind the van. “Oh. Um. Yeah.”

  Inside the van were several chains bolted to the walls with leather straps attached to the ends of them.

  “Oh wow,” Bryce breathed as he came to look.

  “Oh shit!” Larson said, a little too enthusiastically as he joined them as well. “Did we just find a serial killer’s van?”

  “We did not just find a serial killer’s van,” Jon admonished him, refusing to believe it. “This person was probably just a dog walker or something. Picked up the dogs in the van, and then transported them to the park to be walked.” He didn’t sound as confident in his assessment as he usually did.

  “Then wouldn’t there be leashes and not chains?” Larson questioned him.

  “Could have been a dog catcher,” Bryce suggested. “Dealt with strays.”

  “Animal control always has labels on the sides,” Larson reminded him. “And they tend to have a lot more equipment than this. We’ve found some good stuff in the animal control vehicles.”

  “It’s not a serial killer’s van,” Jon insisted. “There’s got to be some other reason for this that we just don’t know about.”

  “Whatever they were, I’m sure the owner is dead,” Claire finally chimed in. “And whatever those chains were used for, they can still be useful to us.”

  “Yup,” Jon nodded. “Come on, let’s get back to work.”

  Larson and Bryce headed back to the front of the van; Claire and Jon climbed into the back.

  “
Well, I don’t see any stains, so that’s good,” Claire commented.

  Jon, who had seen plenty of old bloodstains during his time scavenging, nodded his head in agreement.

  Claire held the light while Jon worked at the nuts and bolts with the tools he had brought. He didn’t have the right sized wrench for the job, but was able to make do with some pliers. Whenever a chain came free of the wall, the slack fell to the bottom of the van with a rattling thump. Claire was not a fan of that sound. It was worse than the smashing windows.

  “Last one,” Jon said, moving to the final bolt.

  Bryce and Larson had finished with the front, and had drained the liquids. They had gathered up the chains that were already free, and were carrying them over to the stairwell.

  “Have you ever come across anything like this before?” Claire finally asked the question that had been percolating in the back of her mind.

  “A van full of chains and restraints? Not really.”

  “No, I mean… something criminal.”

  “We’ve found plenty of formally illegal drugs hidden in people’s homes, and once we came across a decent sized stash in a warehouse.” Jon referred to them as formally illegal, because nowadays they had to use the stuff for medical purposes. Recreational use was still frowned upon, and addicts were dealt with on a case by case basis, but it wasn’t like there was enough of the stuff for that kind of thing to happen often. Marijuana was only grown in tiny batches by individuals, and even alcohol wasn’t distilled all that often—at least, not the kind that was safe to drink. Claire had tried both booze and pot, but found that neither was for her. When her mind wasn’t sharp, she got scared. She suspected that that was true for a lot of people, and so that was why neither was produced in much abundance.

  “What about other stuff?” Claire asked.

  “You’re referring to kidnapping and murder scenes?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No, I’ve never come across anything like that. Not that I know of, anyway. There’ve been a few times on the islands when I’ve come across places that looked like a mass execution occurred. I’ve always chosen to believe that that was one of their attempts at dealing with the sick.”

  Claire was glad to hear it.

  “You know what I have stumbled across a few times?” Jon continued, his voice taking on a lighter tone. “BDSM stuff.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, hidden away in people’s closets or basements you can sometimes find some super kinky shit. Masks, and whips, and ball gags, all that junk.”

  Claire chuckled, trying to picture what it must have been like the first time they came across such a collection.

  “It’s always startling to find a dildo,” Jon went on. “You never know where one of those might be kept.”

  Claire was full on laughing now, which kept her from being bothered by the sound of the final chain falling to the van floor.

  “Did we miss a good joke?” Bryce asked, appearing at the back of the van.

  “I was just telling Claire about what it’s like to find dildos,” Jon told him.

  “Fucking dildos!” Larson lamented, as though it were as awful as finding a snake. “Those things are everywhere! I found one at that house we were in earlier.”

  “Did you tell Rose about it?” Jon asked.

  “No, why?”

  “You’ve never had to scavenge with her before. She likes to throw dildos at guys when she finds them.”

  “Good to know,” Bryce nodded.

  Claire couldn’t help but giggle.

  “If you start doing that as well, so help me God,” Jon told her, with a serious finger point that just made the situation seem all that much funnier to Claire.

  Since there weren’t that many chains left, they opted to carry them up to the next level and leave them by the stairwell up there. Jon and Claire led the way, leaving Larson and Bryce to push the dollies along behind them. The guys were telling Claire about other humorous items they had come across, trying to keep her laughing as they reached the next ramp.

  “Son of a bitch!” Jon startled everyone by yelling halfway up to level two, the chains slung over his shoulder crashing to the ground.

  The group instantly fell silent, and weapons were drawn, as all the lights converged on the top of the ramp.

  There, standing in the center of the opening, was a mannequin. It had one hand raised as if in greeting. Eyes and a grotesque smile had been drawn on its face with some sort of black paint. Someone had come into the parking garage behind them. Someone with a very perverse way of saying hello.

  18: Onida

  Approximately 1 Year Ago

  They were making their way around a patch of radiation when the first heavy frost hit them. Onida had woken up to discover that the ground both glittered and crunched. She didn’t like it. The frost would kill some plants and cause the others to go into hibernation. It would be harder to forage. And after the frost would come the snow.

  Onida listened as the grass crinkled and cracked beneath its covering of ice as she walked over to the horses. Askuwheteau’s leg wasn’t getting any better. He could still keep up, but he couldn’t carry anything and it was hard to get him moving. Onida worried about him having some sort of infection that she couldn’t see. She worried about Shawn deciding that he was no longer worth the trouble. Onida knew what would happen at that point: Shawn had said as much. The only reason the horse was still being kept around, was as an emergency supply of meat. Shawn had likely had that plan all along, and it was why he refused to use the horses’ names, and why he let Onida always be the one to take care of them. He wasn’t going to form any attachments to an animal he would later slaughter for food.

  “I think we’ll get around the worst of the radiation today,” Shawn said as he built a small cook fire for their breakfast. He believed that most of the radiation had been in a sort of belt, in the places where people didn’t have enough time to prepare, or didn’t believe they could be overrun. But for all either of them knew, the south was an irradiated wasteland.

  After breakfast, they mounted up and got moving again. Onida had no idea where they were. She generally knew which way they were going, but she wouldn’t be able to point out where she was on a map. But then, it’s not like either of them needed to know. They had no destination in mind, only a general direction.

  Onida shifted around in her saddle. Her ass and legs would never be the same after this journey. She sometimes imagined being an old woman, walking around with her legs bowed out to the sides as if there were still a horse between them. It was an amusing image, one that scattered like dry leaves in the wind whenever she reminded herself that she might not live to be an old woman. Life expectancy rates had taken a nosedive over the last decade.

  It was in the afternoon when Shawn brought them to an unexpected stop. Night came early this time of year, but not this early. Onida kept quiet as Shawn listened. He had taken a radiation reading not long ago, and they were still okay, so she didn’t think it was that. Had he seen something? Heard something?

  “Stay here with the horses,” Shawn whispered as he dismounted.

  Onida held his reins and worried as Shawn walked off the road they had been following. Had he spotted an animal that was too good to pass up? Was he hunting?

  After ten minutes dragged by without any new sights or sounds, Onida hopped off her mount to stretch her legs. The horses were getting a little anxious too. They didn’t understand why they had stopped, or why, having stopped, they remained tied together. Both trains were no longer in straight lines, but rather a wiggly shape as some horses bunched together, and others attempted to reach the more abundant foliage at the side of the road. Onida took a quick look to make sure none of them were getting tangled together.

  After another ten minutes passed, Onida had to free the horses from each other before they got nippy. She hung a long rope across the road, and tied a few of the horses to that. The others shouldn’t be tempted to leave without t
hem, and those that looked like they were about to wander a little farther away than Onida liked, she would round up and bring back.

  How long was she supposed to wait? Onida thought about what it would be like to travel south on her own and shivered. She didn’t know how the Geiger counter worked, and she realized now that she should have asked. She also should have gotten Shawn to teach her more about hunting. Even if she could hunt as well as him, how could she do both that and care for the horses at the same time? She’d end up killing and eating the horses one by one. That’s what would happen.

  Just when Onida was seriously considering moving on, to go looking for some shelter for the night, Shawn came back out of the forest. Onida was relieved to see him, and not just because Mask, whom she had grown very fond of, was also with him.

  “Where did you go?” Onida had to restrain herself from yelling. She was pretty sure he hadn’t been hunting, for he brought back no meat, and it looked like he had the same number of arrows.

  “I found the Amish.”

  “The Amish?”

  “I think we should go meet them.”

  Onida fidgeted with the reins of the horse she was holding as Shawn started to move the others back into the train formation. “What good will come from meeting the Amish?” The idea of meeting any new people made Onida squeamish.

  “If we like them, and they like us, we could ride out the winter with them. Maybe we can just stay there even after winter has passed.”

  “I thought we were heading south?”

  “We were heading south so that we could find a place to survive. We could survive with the Amish.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “What? Survive?”

  “Stay with the Amish.”

  “Why not?”

  “We’re too close.” Onida finally moved to help with the horses.

  “Too close?”

  “To where I’m from.”

  “We’re miles and miles away. Are you really still afraid that they’re still after you?”