Survival Instinct (Book 5): Social Instinct

by Stittle, Kristal

  “You guys okay out there?” Bryce called through the door before Jon had even finished talking.

  “We’re all right,” Rose called back. “Just a blanket avalanche. No one’s hurt.”

  Claire thought that maybe Jon’s pride had been wounded just a little.

  “So we know our visitor is still running about and laying traps for us,” Danny commented. “He gave us some fishing line, though.”

  They ended up heading down to brace the other second floor door before totally dismantling the trap. When they did get to it, Jon took great joy in whipping the spring out into the storm, hurling it off the balcony of the first apartment they went into. The fishing line they pocketed, and the plywood they left in a living room after placing a heavy chest of drawers on top of it. The man laying the traps would have a hard time moving it off on his own. Even though there were plenty of bookshelves with thin wooden backings that he could pry off pretty easily if he wanted to, it made everyone feel better knowing he couldn’t reuse this particular find.

  ***

  They didn’t come across much in the way of either supplies or traps in the third floor apartments, not even in the one they had found unlocked. They did, however, come across plenty of things left behind by the man with the mannequins that weren’t really traps. Pens arranged on a carpet saying hello. A bunch of balloons scattered about on a bathroom floor. A mannequin posed at a table, as though it were enjoying a lovely meal. Claire hated it when she would open a cupboard or a drawer, and there would be a rubber rat, or rubber snake, or a mannequin’s head or hands sitting inside. It freaked her out every time. Occasionally they heard some loud banging, possibly the perpetrator or possibly one of his devices. But when they ascended to the fourth floor, and found more traps involving springs, tripwires, and carefully balanced objects, Claire began to realize something.

  “None of it’s real,” she said, after a closet door had been opened, and a mannequin propped against the inside had fallen out.

  “What?” Rose turned to her, misunderstanding as she panted and tried to lower her heart rate. She had been the one to open the closet door.

  “Everything he’s done. It’s not real. There’s no real danger. Fake rats, fake snakes, fake bugs, fake body parts. He’s never tried to actually hurt us. No real dead bodies, which we’ve found a number of around here. No actual rats or snakes that could bite us. The only times we get hurt are when we don’t move out of the way of something swinging at us, and even then, the worst it would cause would be a bruise. When the blankets were shoved on top of Jon, that trap could have easily been set up elsewhere, behind something like a wardrobe that could crush a person. Or when those pens were balanced on the door and toppled onto Rose. Those could have been razor blades. But no, this guy chose items that weren’t dangerous. He doesn’t want to hurt us, he’s just trying to scare us.”

  “You mean like those old haunted houses at the carnivals?” Rose wondered.

  “I never got to go to one of those,” Claire admitted. “But yeah, I think so.”

  “She’s right,” Danny agreed. “Not once has this person put us in real danger.”

  “So?” Jon snapped. He had picked up the mannequin in order to throw it outside. “What does it matter that he hasn’t tried to hurt us yet? Doesn’t mean that he won’t step up his game. And it’s not like that knowledge can allow us to lower our guard. If we do that, and we come across a real zombie hanging around in one of these rooms, we’re dead.”

  Claire pursed her lips, unable to articulate the point she wanted to make. She knew that they were going to continue to be startled by everything, or creeped out by the words and tableaus they came across, but she thought that maybe they didn’t have to be so angry at this stranger. Specifically Jon, who sometimes lashed out at whatever they found. Rose seemed merely prone to cursing, but Claire worried that Jon was going to end up doing something rash. She also worried that if she said that to him, he would only get more upset, especially that it came from her, his adopted little sister. She ended up keeping quiet and they finished checking all the rooms.

  The next two apartments they managed to get through without incident, both of them untouched by the stranger. In the next apartment, however, they were all brought to an immediate halt upon entering the living room. Slopped across the floor in a dark red liquid were the words HELP HIM.

  “You don’t think that’s blood do you?” Rose asked, her voice strangely hushed.

  Danny approached it and knelt down a little way away from the lettering. He bent at the waist and sniffed at the red glop that Claire was hoping was just paint.

  “It smells like blood,” Danny informed them. He gingerly touched it with one gloved finger. “Fairly fresh too.”

  “Bryce and Larson,” Jon whispered as he turned back toward the door, ready to rush downstairs.

  “Wait! It might just be animal blood,” Claire said as she followed him out into the hallway.

  They weren’t far from a stairwell, but when they both exited the apartment and glanced toward the dogleg, they saw a figure disappearing around it.

  “Son of a bitch!” Jon took off running after it.

  “Jon! Wait! We’re supposed to stick together!” Claire yelled, running after him and hoping that Rose and Danny could catch up.

  Every time her boots hit the threadbare carpet of the hallway, Claire’s thoughts thumped inside her head. Was it just animal blood, like she had hoped? Or had something happened to Bryce or Larson? Who was the him in the message? Did it mean anything, or was it just to scare them?

  Jon crashed through the door into the stairwell. Claire was so close behind him that she didn’t even touch it as she passed through the opening. However she rammed into the back of Jon when he came to a sudden halt. He grabbed the railing and kept them both from toppling over it, but quickly took off again, running up the stairs this time, where they could hear someone else’s feet pounding on the concrete.

  Claire climbed after him, occasionally bounding up two steps at a time. They didn’t get far before she heard the stairwell door crash open again behind them, this time by Danny and Rose, who didn’t need to stop to check which way to go.

  On every floor, Claire kept expecting them to come across another door swinging shut, which would send them racing down another hallway. Every time they didn’t, her body gave a tiny scream as it was forced up more stairs. She was fit and full of adrenaline, but it was still a lot of steps.

  The beams of everyone’s flashlights bounced all about the stairwell. The steps ahead of her flickered in and out of the darkness; the light in her hand pumped up and down with the motion of her arm. Long shadows were thrown by the railings, twitching and flashing and distorting perspective. Claire trusted the rhythmic motion of running, and that building codes ensured that the steps were all the same.

  When they passed the top floor, Claire thought she had miscounted. She thought that somehow they had missed the stranger leaving the stairwell. She imagined that he was a spirit who had vanished into thin air. But another door crashed open ahead of them, this one leading outside into the grey light. Jon didn’t even hesitate to run out onto the roof, and so neither did Claire.

  The rain hit her like a wet blanket. Her clothes were immediately soaked through, and her hair plastered to her head. She flicked off her flashlight, grateful for its waterproof housing, and stuffed it into a pocket. She wanted to have both hands free for her tire iron.

  Rivulets of rain gathered and washed down her face, dripping off her brow line and obscuring her vision, but she saw him. She saw the stranger, the visitor, the man with the mannequins. He had scrambled over an air conditioning unit and stood on the edge of the roof, looking back at them. Finally seeing him had brought even Jon to a halt, allowing Danny and Rose to cluster up behind them.

  It was still possible that the man was actually a woman, since Claire couldn’t see any of his details. Wrapped around his arms, his legs, and his torso were shells of plastic with
absurd, sculpted muscles. Only the joints were unprotected by the flesh coloured armour, connected by a black fabric. This man was so into mannequins that he had turned himself into one. His true face was covered by one made of plastic. Dark eyes with bright whites, the only real, fleshy parts of the man that were visible, stared back at them. Was that hatred? Curiosity? Indifference? Claire couldn’t tell based solely on those orbs. The fit was so tight, that she couldn’t even identify the colour of his skin. He wasn’t blinking.

  Jon started to draw his sword, but was startled out of it before it cleared the scabbard.

  “I’m gonna crush your puny little brain beneath my boots!” The voice came from the mannequin man, but it was a near perfect imitation of Rose.

  Claire involuntarily took a step back.

  “Son of a bitch!” This time the mannequin man used Jon’s voice. If it weren’t for the muffling, and slight imperfection of it, Claire would have thought that the man had recorded them.

  “Wait! It might just be animal blood.” Claire’s own voice came out next.

  “Fuck this.” Jon spoke for himself, fully drawing his sword this time.

  The mannequin man said nothing of his own. He crouched, and grabbed up a rope that snaked between his feet and hung over the side of the building. Claire hadn’t been able to see it due to the air conditioner. Just as Jon made to climb over, the mannequin man hopped off the side of the building.

  Claire joined the others in approaching the edge, and looking over the side. The mannequin man was already two floors down, sliding with ease along the rope, right at the outside edge of the dogleg, so that he was passing between balconies.

  “Fuck this guy,” Jon muttered. He swung his sword at the taut rope tied to the base of the air conditioner. There was no time for anyone to stop him. His blade bit clean through.

  Claire watched the mannequin man drop. She couldn’t tell if he panicked or not. He didn’t try to grab onto any of the balconies. Instead, he tucked in his limbs and allowed himself to fall. They all watched the splash as he hit the floodwaters.

  “If the impact didn’t kill him, he’ll drown,” Jon said. His cold and emotionless tone regarding this fact made Claire’s stomach shrivel up. “Come on, let’s go back down. We have to check on Bryce and Larson.”

  Claire couldn’t move. She just kept staring over the side, waiting to see if the mannequin man was going to pop back up, either alive and swimming, or dead and floating with the storm debris.

  “Claire?” Jon had already climbed back over the air conditioning unit, and Rose was halfway across.

  “We’ll catch up,” Danny told him. He had begun to untie what remained of the rope. “I dropped the backpack of stuff we gathered just inside the stairwell door, there. Grab it on your way down.”

  Jon and Rose both left without a word.

  “Claire? Are you all right?” Danny gently placed his hand on her shoulder. The pressure of it slowly guided her away from the edge. “Do you need to sit down?”

  “I can’t believe he did that,” Claire exhaled a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

  Danny brought her over to the air conditioner where they could sit down together. Claire’s pants were already drenched, so she didn’t notice the additional water soaking the seat of them.

  “He murdered him,” Claire finally used the word she didn’t want to. “No warning. No negotiating. He just killed him.”

  “I know.” Danny agreed and Claire waited for a but, but none was forthcoming.

  “Could you have done that?” Claire asked him.

  “If I was in the same headspace as Jon, yeah.”

  “Without trying to talk to him?”

  “Did he look like the kind of man you could talk to? Jon did what he did to protect us. For all we know, that blood came from either Bryce or Larson. Even if it didn’t, our visitor might have been working himself up to actually hurt us.”

  “He just wanted to scare us.”

  “And hurting one of us would scare the others. It could have easily escalated to that point.”

  “And it might not have.”

  “How do you think Jon would feel if he hadn’t cut the rope? If he let him get away, and then that guy came back and hurt someone? Hurt you? He wasn’t going to take that chance.”

  “It still doesn’t seem right.”

  “I know. And maybe it wasn’t. But the world’s not exactly right anymore.”

  Claire heaved a sigh that was almost a sob.

  “Come on. We should get back inside.” Danny stood up.

  Claire nodded and climbed over the air conditioner with him.

  “When we get home, you should ask to be assigned to container checking duty.”

  “Why?” Claire thought this was a sudden change of topic.

  “You’re good at keeping an eye out for danger, and you’re good at searching through and organizing things, but you shouldn’t be a scavenger, Claire.”

  “Why not?” Claire was too exhausted to get angry. The adrenaline had worn off, and her legs now felt like rubber. She was glad they only had to go down the stairs, but knew to be careful in case the water dripping off everyone had made the steps slippery.

  “Because this is the kind of shit you have to deal with out here.” Danny gestured to the edge of the roof. “Not everything makes sense, awful stuff happens all the time, and you have to look straight at it. You have to make snap decisions, right or wrong. You’ve been doing great, but I can tell you’re not sleeping well because of it. Over time, you would. You would change. And I don’t think you should change.”

  The raw sincerity in his voice stunned Claire into silence. She didn’t know how to respond to that. It seemed that Danny didn’t expect a response. As they walked downstairs together, Claire wondered how scavenging had changed him.

  “How’s your shoulder?” she eventually asked once they reached their floor.

  “Starts hurting if I use that arm too much,” he admitted, his other hand moving to rub at the injury. “But it’s been getting a little better each day. I was hoping it would be back to normal by the time we got home, but it might take a little longer than that.”

  They entered the apartment and discovered that Bryce and Larson were totally fine. They hadn’t had any difficulty guarding the stuff. The only thing that had happened for them, was hearing them when the blankets had toppled over on Jon.

  “We should continue to search the apartments we haven’t gotten to yet,” Jon spoke before Claire could even sit down. “It would be a shame to miss something.”

  Rose got to her feet, ready to start again.

  “I would like to stay here,” Claire admitted.

  “Sure, we still need someone to guard the stuff.” Did Jon know how she felt just then? Or did he just think that she was tired?

  “I’ll stay with her,” Larson volunteered.

  Claire had kind of been hoping that maybe Danny would stick around, but it was not to be. He went with Jon, Rose, and Bryce to see if any more food could be located.

  “Rose told us what happened,” Larson said once the others had departed and he had locked the door behind them. “You okay?”

  “I’ll be fine.” Claire immediately wondered if she had just told a lie.

  28: James

  10 Days After the Bombing

  Chaos briefly erupted in the Costco. James could barely stop a brawl from breaking out, and he failed to prevent Vin from punching one of Dinah’s people. At least with Skip’s injured hand, he couldn’t start swinging, because he was the kind of person most likely to cause an all out war. After being hit by the flailing limbs of one of his own people, James finally managed to calm them down and back them off. Dinah did the same with her group.

  “They’re murderers, James,” Marissa hiccuped, sad and angry at the same time.

  “They didn’t murder Aaron,” James told her and everyone else.

  “We should have left yesterday!” Lindsay yelled at the others over J
ames’ shoulder.

  “Aaron would still be alive if it weren’t for you!” Skip added.

  “Guys, calm down.” James held out his hands, trying to ease the tension. He didn’t want to get hit again. “Aaron was in a bad way.”

  “Murderers!” Marissa screamed before he could finish.

  “Marissa, please. They’re not murderers. Aaron was bitten by a zombie pig, and had to have his leg amputated. They weren’t a part of any of that.”

  “They could have helped,” Marissa’s voice dropped to a hushed breath.

  “They did what they could. They had no medicine on them.”

  “We should have left yesterday,” Skip snapped. “We could have gotten him medicine at the Theatre place.”

  “Maybe,” James shrugged. “Maybe not. Maybe we would have just been shot, or maybe Aaron would have died en route, out in the rain. I think he was too far gone. I don’t think any medicine would have made a difference by the time we got there.”

  “He’s right,” Lucy agreed. “Aaron wasn’t going to make it. Let’s face it, we all saw him. We all knew he was going to die. We just wanted to hope, is all.”

  “Bullshit, I didn’t know he was going to die,” Vin turned on her.

  “Guys, please.” James made another gesture for calm. “The fact is, we have a body to bury. And those people over there are still our best hope for our friends and family back home. We can’t go fighting them. We need them.”

  Lindsay threw up her hands, aggravated, and stormed off towards the entrance to be alone. The rest also turned away from James, to take their grief and grievances elsewhere. As long as it wasn’t toward the Theatre group, James didn’t care where they went. Only Marissa stuck around.

  “Where are we going to bury him?” she asked James.

  “We could find a place outside. Or we can ask Dinah if there’s a graveyard at the Theatre where we can lay him to rest. What do you think?”

  Marissa’s expression became conflicted, and James knew why. A graveyard did sound a lot better than some random strip of earth beside a road, but when that graveyard belonged to the people she had accused of murdering Aaron…?