Survival Instinct (Book 5): Social Instinct

by Stittle, Kristal

  “We have time to think about it. Why don’t I go ask Dinah if they even have a graveyard first? Then, if they do, we’ll ask the others what they think.”

  “Okay.”

  Marissa remained rooted in place as James went to talk to the Theatre group. In the dim light, Dinah’s people looked pissed off, not appreciating being called murderers. But like James’ people, they hung back, letting Dinah meet James halfway between the groups for a quiet conversation.

  “You know what we have to do, right?” Dinah said, gesturing toward where Aaron lay motionless. Motionless for now, at least.

  “I know. I’ll do it myself in a second, but I have to ask you something first.”

  “What? It better not be some veiled accusation, because we did nothing to your man. We were going to help him.”

  “I know. I know that. What I wanted to ask was if the Theatre has a graveyard we might be allowed to bury him in. We might decide to bury him somewhere else, but I have to ask if that’s an option.”

  Dinah sighed, releasing the tension from her body. “Yeah, we have a graveyard. You can definitely bury your man there if that’s what you want.”

  “I’ll tell the others and let them decide.”

  “Now can you please handle the body before it becomes a problem?”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  James walked over to Aaron and knelt down beside him. Holding the head firmly against the floor, he checked for any signs of life that may have been missed. There were none; he was clearly dead.

  “What are you doing?” Marissa asked, shuffling closer.

  “Just making sure. I’m going to have to stab him now. Do you want to watch or…?”

  “I understand. Go ahead.”

  She stuck around as James drew out his knife. Aaron’s skull was still pretty hard, so he grabbed a crowbar someone had left lying nearby to use as a hammer against the end of the blade’s handle.

  “Need some help?” Marissa asked.

  “If you don’t mind.”

  Marissa knelt down and held the knife steady so that James could get a good swing at it. If he could succeed on the first try, that would be better for everyone. The crack of bone and clang of metal striking metal were the only sounds in the Costco.

  “They said we can bury him in their graveyard if we’d like,” James told Marissa after the deed was done and he had cleaned off his blade. “Why don’t you go tell the others?”

  “Okay.”

  James carefully wrapped up Aaron by himself. It wasn’t difficult. His sleeping bag, which no one would want to use after this, became his body bag. James used the man’s pillowcase as a shroud for his face, and secured it all with some rope.

  “Need any help?” Dinah asked, keeping a safe distance.

  “I’m all right.” It wasn’t exactly easy to roll Aaron’s body back and forth to get the rope around him, but James wanted to do it himself. After the way they had left White and Jack to be eaten by animals, he felt he had to do it himself.

  Breakfast was sombre, and James found that he couldn’t eat much. He wasn’t sure if the others could, as he focused solely on his own meal. It was the only way to smother the grief. He couldn’t let it rise up; he needed to focus on the task ahead: figuring out what they could possibly offer in trade to the people at the Theatre.

  “Have you decided where you want to bury your friend?” Dinah came over and asked after eating with her own people.

  “They would like to bury him in your cemetery, provided they don’t take issue with it once they see it.”

  “Okay. Are you ready to get going? It’s safe enough and bright enough out there.”

  The rain was more like a heavy mist, soft and all consuming. James sat astride Soot, bundled up against the damp as best he could beneath a tarp around his shoulders, but every part of him that was exposed was going to be soaked through by the time they reached their destination. Beside him, Aaron was slung over Spark’s back and tied on like luggage. The drenched pillowcase turned semi-transparent, revealing the shadowy outline of his dark hair, while gravity drew blood out of the head wound and formed stains.

  Dinah and her people led the way. It was nice to see that they didn’t feel the need to surround James and his people as they travelled, and they didn’t mind having their backs turned toward them. Dinah had convinced her people to trust James’ despite that morning’s hostilities.

  The walk was dreary. No one felt up to talking, providing no distraction from the grey landscape all around. James tried to stay vigilant, to keep an eye out for danger, but there was something about travelling with Dinah’s people that gave him a sense of security. These were their lands after all, and they clearly patrolled them.

  By the time Dinah’s people stopped, James was pretty much in a daze. It was the same state he used to drift into during long car trips. He didn’t realize until just then that he used to call it zombie driving. If zombies could drive, they would have had a lot more problems over the years.

  “The Theatre isn’t far,” Dinah spoke loudly enough for everyone to hear. “But this is our cemetery.”

  It was a large empty patch of ground between two buildings. James didn’t think it had always been a cemetery, but there were headstones now, some of them large with crosses or angels on top. The ones James studied were very old and worn down by decades of weather. They were also crowded quite closely together.

  “Why isn’t it closer to where you live?” Marissa asked.

  “People don’t like having the dead too near.” It wasn’t Dinah who answered, but someone James thought was named Gabe. “Some people don’t want to visit, so we decided to choose a spot that was out of the way. Somewhere where visiting is a choice. Would you like me to help you find a spot for your friend?”

  “Where’d you get the headstones?” Katrina asked.

  “Some we made. Most are from another cemetery, a very old one,” Gabe admitted. “All the identifying markers had been worn off. We cleaned them up, and chiselled the names of our own dead onto them.”

  “So you stole them?” Katrina raised an eyebrow.

  “Did you steal Aaron’s pack, that I notice is being carried with you? Did you steal that pelt from the lion? We use what is no longer needed by others. And it’s not like we left the old graves unmarked; we just put smaller rocks in their place.” Gabe motioned toward the wall of a neighbouring building where a pile of large, smooth stones had been piled. “You can pick whichever rock you’d like to use as a marker. We’ll have someone chisel Aaron’s name into it, and anything else you might want it to say, once the weather is good.”

  James stayed on his horse during the burial. A spot was chosen near the road, as close to the shipping container yard as it could get. It turned out that the Theatre people buried their dead in a sort of upright fetal position, so as to save space. They planned to live here a long time, and were thinking ahead about the many people who would die of natural causes over the years. No one from the container yard minded, especially when it meant digging a smaller hole. Shovels and a pickaxe were retrieved from inside one of the neighbouring buildings, and people from both places took turns digging.

  “How do your people normally handle the dead?” Dinah asked James, having drifted over to where he watched. “What are your funeral rites?”

  “We would bury our dead beneath our farms. Crops were our headstones.”

  “No markers? No names?”

  “The names were all written down. I think the plan was to build a memorial for them all once we were finally comfortably settled, but those names are gone now.” They would have been lost during the attack on the Black Box.

  “How many names can you personally remember?”

  “Too many.” James had missed the worst of it, but he knew that during the container yard clean up after the zombie attack, plenty of people had been burned instead of buried. There just wasn’t time. Had anyone written down their names?

  Aaron was planted in the m
uddy ground, his hole partly filled with water. The dirt was pushed back on top of him without much ceremony. One of the stones was chosen and plunked down on top.

  “We should include White and Jack when we tell them what to write on the stone.” It was an unexpected idea from Skip, but everyone agreed that it was a good one. They had died coming to this place, so they should be honoured here as well.

  Three people had died on the journey to the Theatre. James wondered how the hell he was supposed to go on, to go farther. There were two other communities their group was meant to visit, one of them to be reached by Katrina and him alone. At that moment, it didn’t seem possible.

  Vin, as the most religious of their party, spoke a few words over the grave. Nothing personal was said. No one thought there was time to mourn just yet. Once Vin was finished, they merely gathered up anything they had put down and started walking once more.

  Dinah hadn’t been lying when she said that the Theatre was near. They walked a few blocks, following a zigzag of roads between old shops and restaurants. When it suddenly opened up, they knew that they were there.

  A massive parking lot dominated the space in front of the large movie theatre. About a third of the way across from where the visitors had arrived was a cobbled together wall. James now understood why they had stripped everything they could from all the nearby buildings. Shelves, couches, fencing, cars, even flat screen TVs had been wedged together and stacked to form the twenty-foot high barricade. It swept all the way across the arch shaped parking lot, and James assumed it continued on behind the building where it took a sharp bend out of sight. Guards stood, sat, or walked along the wall at regular intervals, all of them huddled beneath ponchos and rain slickers. Past them, James could make out the top of the movie theatre, where greenery lined the upper edge; it seemed they grew something on the roof. But past the theatre was a sight James hadn’t expected: a massive windmill. It barely turned, for the air was quite still, but James could imagine it slashing through the storm last night. There were no other windmills in sight, as James would have expected of a wind farm.

  “Was that already here?” he couldn’t help but ask.

  “No,” Dinah told him. “We found the parts on some trucks, I think. Or in a warehouse? I can’t remember. Took us years to figure out how to assemble it here and hook it up to some batteries. Come on.” She and her people started across the empty section of the parking lot.

  James was amazed at what they had done here. They must have lived in this one place since the beginning, or at least close to. As they approached the wall, he could see the problems with it, namely that it was scalable by anyone or anything smart enough, but it was still impressive. Whoever had designed it had done a good job, managing to work in everything that couldn’t be used elsewhere.

  “We’ve got travellers hoping to trade,” Dinah called up to a guard on the wall. “Nine people with two horses. They’ve never been here before.”

  James failed to see where the door was. The hodgepodge of stuff didn’t have any obvious openings.

  “All right, give us a minute,” the guard called down.

  Dinah turned to James and his group. “This is as far as I take you.”

  “What?”

  “You’ll be escorted inside. Don’t worry, no one will take any of your things. Just follow them, and they’ll make sure you talk to the right people.”

  “Why aren’t you coming with us?” Katrina asked before James could.

  “Not our time. We still have a job to complete out here. You’ll be fine. By escorting you this far, I’ve vouched for you. Just don’t do anything stupid.”

  Dinah and her group waited with them until an opening was revealed. A chunk of plywood, a large stop sign, and a free standing car door swung upward like a hatch. The opening wasn’t square, and was just large enough for the horses to fit through, as long as James dismounted first. A man stepped out through the opening to greet them. He didn’t have a rifle with him like those on the wall, and wore a smile as bright as his thin, yellow poncho.

  “Hi, hello!” he said, offering his hand to Katrina, the first person he came to. “I’m Reggie, I’ll be your liaison while you stay with us. What’s your name?”

  “Katrina.”

  “Katrina, it’s nice to meet you.” Reggie went around and introduced himself to everyone. He repeated every name once he was told what it was. James had met someone who used that trick before. He bet Reggie would never forget their names the entire time that they were there.

  “James,” he said when it was his turn. He came last, because he had to climb off of Soot’s back first.

  “James, so glad you’re here.”

  “Can I get a doctor to take a look at my hand?” Skip asked.

  “Certainly, Skip. But let’s get you inside and settled first. I’m sure you’d all like to get out of this rain, and how does a hot meal sound?”

  It sounded great to everyone.

  James led Soot through the opening, studying the hidden hinge, and how it was opened using a winch on the other side of the wall, a little like an upside down drawbridge. Just inside the wall, platforms had been built for the guards to stand on, using the same inconsistency of materials. It didn’t always look safe.

  Once they were all through and the door swung shut behind them, Reggie led the way across the rest of the parking lot. Neat rows of planters were interspersed with camping tents of all sizes and colours. Despite the weather, a fair number of people moved about. Most were tending to the plants, repairing any damage that had been done to them by the storm. Others were repairing and shoring up sections of the wall, which James had been right about when he thought it went past the side of the theatre and beyond. A handful of people ran about, their exact purpose unknown, but James guessed that they were delivering items and messages. Through a few tent openings that were thrown aside as someone entered or exited, James could see more exotic plants being grown, including some mushrooms. Evans had claimed this was a large population centre, but right now, the place seemed too big for the number of people James saw.

  Reggie first led them toward the entrance of the theatre, but then started to guide them around the side of it.

  “We’ll get your horses set up and comfortable in the stables first, and then we’ll see to you folks. Sound good?”

  No one answered, still taking everything in with a dose of caution.

  The building was large. From what James could see, the central structure was a cylinder, with two wings extruding from either side. As they followed along the edge of one wing, they passed a crude structure that James thought might have housed some gas generators at one time. He thought this because the generators were still clustered outside the shelter that had been constructed from the massive, fabric posters that must have once hung on the side of the theatre. The generators were rusting heaps, that helped to keep the sun-bleached posters in place during windstorms, and had been butchered for parts. People must now live under the posters if bedding inside was any indication. James couldn’t see it being a pleasant place when there was any wind, what with the open ends of the structure.

  As they rounded the side of the theatre, they came upon other small structures. Some were sheds, the assemble-yourself kind that used to be sold at hardware stores. Others were made out of repurposed materials. At least a couple of the structures housed chickens based on the noise coming from them. James couldn’t determine all of the sheds’ functions. People popped in and out of a few of them, but they were quick, always sliding through a minimal sized opening that they blocked with their bodies.

  Around the back of the theatre, the structures, tents, and planters gave way to trees. A massive orchard prevented James from seeing just how far the wall stretched; he was guessing it encircled the base of the windmill, which was still a fair distance off. This place was huge.

  “Here we are,” Reggie said as they approached a long, low structure built against the inside of the wall. “Several of our
horses are out with a few of our roaming parties right now, so there should be plenty of space for your two.”

  They all crowded in through the doorway, taking shelter from the rain beneath the roof made of aluminium sheets bolted together. In a few spots along the walkway, the rain was dripping through into buckets. Stalls flanked one side, most of them empty, but a few were housing horses at the farthest end. Above the stalls, and beneath the sloped roof, was a loft full of hay. At least one person was asleep up there, with his arm hanging over the edge, oblivious to the sounds of new people entering the space.

  “Hi, Oleg,” Reggie said as a gruff man who had heard them came out of one of the occupied stalls. “We have guests, and they have horses. Think you can see to them?”

  “Of course,” Oleg nodded. “Just put them in these first two and I’ll see that they’re fed, watered, and brushed down. What are your beasts’ names?”

  “Soot and Spark,” James told the man who smelled like horse. “Soot here is old and mostly deaf, Spark is rather rambunctious.”

  Oleg gave a curt nod of understanding. “Don’t worry about them. They’ll be fine as long as you’re staying here. We’ll even exercise them if they need it, and feel free to visit any time.”

  “Thanks, Oleg,” Reggie told him.

  James and Katrina walked the horses into neighbouring stalls. The others helped to remove the gear the horses were carrying, dividing it all up among them. Before heading back out, James gave Soot’s chest a scratch, and hoped he had somehow conveyed to the horse that they would be back. As he passed back out into the rain, one last look over his shoulder revealed to James that Oleg was giving some hay to both horses, who munched on it eagerly. They would be fine. Probably.

  Reggie guided them toward the centre of the theatre’s backside, where the closest entrance was located beside a third protuberance jutting out from the center cylinder. This last boxy structure was a lot shorter than the other two wings. Some of the glass within the doors had been shattered and replaced by plastic sheeting. As they stepped through, James noted that there were security gates still intact. He figured that those had probably saved these people a number of times before their wall was built.