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Survival Instinct (Book 5): Social Instinct

Page 55

by Stittle, Kristal


  There was a crack, a pop, and then a searing pain lanced through Dakota’s side as the glass broke and tore through her shirt and her flesh. By the time she hit the ground, the whole room had been plunged into darkness. It didn’t matter how well her blindfold was on now: no one could see anything.

  Someone tripped over Dakota’s prone form. Was it Elijah or one of the men? She couldn’t tell. There was too much animalistic shouting bouncing off the walls. If Elijah was one of those voices, she couldn’t identify it.

  It didn’t matter who it was, Dakota rolled in the opposite direction, her hand crunching over more glass and getting cut up. She ignored the pain and kept going until she hit a wall. Only it wasn’t a wall, it was the shelving unit laden with boxes. There, she struggled against her bonds to no avail. Feeling the flare of pain from the cuts on her hand, she wished she had thought to grab some of the glass as she passed over it. Maybe there was some stuck in her, but she had no way of knowing for certain and couldn’t pull it out even if there was. Not with her hands tied to her sides.

  Despite the dark, a struggle was still going on. Boots scraped over the floor, as an occasional flesh on flesh smack indicted a fist had landed. The roars had mostly died down into a rough panting. Who was winning? Not wanting to really think about what it would mean for her, Dakota knew she couldn’t count on Elijah coming out on top of this. Pushing boxes aside, she attempted to make a gap between them, some sort of opening that she might be able to hide in. She didn’t know what else to do. At least, not until she heard a clatter of metal on concrete down near her feet. Dakota thought she knew what that sound was. Spinning around, she wormed herself toward it. Her head found the object first with a sharp prick. She twisted her body about until her right hand was able to grab the knife. Whose knife was it? Who had been disarmed? The fight had fallen quiet. Were people dead? Were they all dead? Or had they just broken apart from one another? Were they circling in the dark, waiting for the other to give away his position?

  Dakota flipped the knife around, nicking her arm with the blade in the process, and proceeded to saw at the ropes. The knife was quite sharp; maybe it was the one belonging to the man with the bad teeth. Her wrist finally sprang free of her waist, the left one still trapped by the weaving of the rope around her belt loops. She ignored that wrist for now, taking the knife to her legs. She sawed through the rope around her thighs first, and her ankles second.

  Then the door opened. Light entered the space, and Dakota found herself springing away, hiding off in a corner that was still dark. She pulled the blindfold off her head, awkwardly for she refused to put down the knife.

  Whoever had opened the door was silhouetted for a moment. The person was hunched over and canted sideways, injured. Was it Elijah, or the third man? They both had similar builds, similar enough that Dakota couldn’t tell them apart from that short glimpse. The door swung shut as the person who had opened it was tackled to the floor.

  Dakota didn’t know what to do. Try to help? Open the door again so that there was some light? Hide? She remembered that her left hand was still bound and set to work freeing it. When she finished, the room had fallen silent again. The struggle had paused.

  Seconds ticked by, how many Dakota couldn’t count. She had to do something.

  “Elijah?” she called out, quickly moving out of the corner she had been in to prevent herself from becoming a target.

  There was no answer.

  “Elijah?” she tried again, more afraid. He might not have been answering for fear of giving himself away, or he might be dead.

  A hand lashed out of the darkness, grabbing the front of her shirt. She couldn’t know who it was, not for certain, but that foul breath was telling enough for Dakota. She slashed out with the knife, again and again, aiming for where she thought the face was and where she knew the arm must be.

  A man cried out, a rough sound. Dakota took that as encouragement, and kept slashing, even when the hand let go, even when the figure tried to retreat. She pursued the retreating form, often swiping at nothing but air. When the man fell, she nearly tripped over him. Instead she deliberately dropped to her knees, plunging the knife down again. The response was a solid grunt as loud as her impact. She pulled back the knife and stabbed again. She stabbed again. She stabbed again. Her hands became hot and slick with unseen blood. She had no idea what she was hitting. Something with bones that deflected, and meat that absorbed. Dakota didn’t notice that she was screaming, or crying, or that the figure beneath her had gone still. Not until her arms were too exhausted to continue. One last plunge of the blade, and then she sat there, panting, hands still wrapped so tightly around the handle that they hurt.

  The door opened again. Pale light flooded the room. Whoever had opened the door wisely kept to one side of it, hiding in the shadows. The light fell directly on Dakota this time; there was no hiding from it for her. She looked down at the back of a man. Where his lower back met his ribcage was now a bloody mess, the wounds overlapping into one carved-up mass. His arm, thrown to one side at an awkward angle, was red with gashes. His face, twisted sideways, bore smaller injuries, and for a span of time faster than the eyes can blink, Dakota thought it was Elijah, before the planes dissolved into those of the man with bad teeth.

  “Dakota?” a voice spoke from the dark. “Are you all right?”

  “Elijah?” She searched for him. A figure stumbled out from behind the door. Adrenaline still hammering through her veins, she raised the bloody knife, ready to defend herself.

  “It’s just me,” Elijah said, raising a hand. The door stayed opened as he moved away from it this time.

  Dakota shot to her feet, and almost immediately lost her balance. She tripped more than walked to meet Elijah halfway. They collapsed into each other’s arms, leaning on one another to keep from falling. Over his shoulder, Dakota could see the legs of the woman’s body holding the door open. The large pool of blood surrounding her was smeared everywhere. On the other side, the light just reached a hand, the fingers partly curled and prone. It must have been the third man, but Dakota didn’t get a good look before she and Elijah made their way out the door. She didn’t look back at the man she had killed, not once.

  They were in a factory, and Dakota had assumed the light was dim because it was early morning, but once they pushed outside, she learned that was only an effect caused by the dirty glass. There were still plenty of clouds in the sky, but the sun was finally peeking through here and there, making tiny blue patches and sun beams.

  “Are you injured?” Dakota asked as they made their way away from the factory. Neither of them seemed to know which direction they were going, but for now, away was all they needed.

  “I think I have a cracked rib or two,” Elijah told her. He had his arm thrown across her shoulders, while she had both her arms wrapped around his waist, the knife still clutched in one hand.

  “We need to hide somewhere,” Dakota told him.

  They didn’t pick any of the buildings, but instead crawled into the back of a work van. It lay on its side, pushed there by the storm, and had water puddled along the floor that used to be a wall. The broken windshield and front windows let in enough light for Dakota to see by as she inspected Elijah. While his ribs were paining him the most, he also had a pretty bad cut on his right leg, and his left arm hung strangely.

  “Your shoulder’s popped out,” Dakota determined. “I don’t know how to put it back in.” She helped Elijah turn his shirt into a sling. His torso had a massive bruise forming along its right side.

  Not caring about what she looked like in her bra, Dakota stripped off her shirt and used it to wrap up Elijah’s leg. The front of the shirt was so thoroughly soaked with blood already, she was careful to place the back of the shirt to his injury. She used the floodwater to rinse off her hands and face a little once she was done.

  “We have to keep moving,” Elijah groaned as he pushed off the wall he was leaning against, which was the van’s former roof.

/>   Dakota agreed, and helped him hobble out and then down the street. She continued to keep hold of the knife in one hand, not wanting to risk losing it by trying to tuck it in somewhere. Neither of them could determine which way the container yard lay, so they simply picked a direction and walked.

  “Are there paperclips holding your bra together?” Elijah asked as he limped.

  “Yeah, the last time I got to pick a new one, they had my cup size but not my band size. I keep meaning to get it adjusted.”

  “That’s clever. The paperclips.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I once had to use tape as a belt.”

  “You didn’t have any string or rope or anything?”

  “Nope. Just tape. Those pants were huge on me.”

  “How’d you lose the pants that fit you?”

  “I was climbing over a fence and they got snagged. I was hanging upside down for a bit. There were zombies coming, and I thought it would be faster to just drop out of my pants than it would be to try to free them.”

  “Probably a good decision.”

  “Probably.”

  They shuffled on in silence for another block.

  “I forgot to ask if you’re okay,” Elijah eventually said.

  “I’m all right. My wrists are pretty sore from the bindings, but I wasn’t in a fight like you were.” She had a couple of cuts from the broken light bulb and from finding the knife, but they were superficial and had already stopped bleeding.

  “I meant up here.” He tried to tap his head with his bad arm and failed.

  “I’m okay.”

  “You had only just killed your first zombie a few days ago.”

  Dakota knew what he was really saying: she had never killed a living man before. “I’m okay,” she repeated.

  “Well, if you need to talk, I’m here. Some people take that kind of thing pretty hard.”

  “How about we get back home before we start worrying about my mental health, yeah?”

  Elijah chuckled, which turned into a groan because of his ribs. “Yeah, that sounds like a good plan.”

  As they walked, Dakota took comfort in the warmth of his skin against hers. She planned to have a talk with Bronislav and Freya once they got back to the container yard. Their lessons definitely needed to cover a few more things.

  33: Misha

  11 Days After the Bombing

  The scream built up in Misha’s chest but he didn’t dare let it escape. He couldn’t trust that there weren’t zombies lying in wait for him outside. Although it wasn’t like he was exactly silent. Cart axles creaked and the horses snorted and stomped.

  “Okay, stop. Stop.” Misha told Thumper and Potato. “Take a break.”

  As the sun had set, Misha had been forced to find a place to stop for the night. The area he had found himself in had been hit fairly hard, and the water was still relatively high, making it incredibly difficult for Misha to open any doors on his own. He ended up having to choose a retail shop that had had its double doors smashed off. The place used to be a comic book store, one that also sold books, movies, and merchandise. All of it had been churned into a colourful soup by waters that had almost reached the ceiling at some point. Misha had spent the night in there checking on Trigger and her puppies, making sure Rifle wasn’t injured, and finding food for the horses. He got a little bit of shut eye here and there, sleeping on the counter, but thoughts of threats and his other dogs often kept him awake. Several of them had found him during the night. Bullet and Slide had been the first two, followed by Guard and Powder. As the sun rose, Stock finally came floundering in, exhausted from having swum a good portion of the way there. So far there had been no sign of Spring or Barrel.

  When Misha decided to leave, he quickly learned that that was easier said than done. Because the doors had been smashed in, plenty of mud had accumulated inside the store: enough that the cart had become stuck fast in it overnight.

  Knowing he would have to dig the cart out and that it could take a while, Misha untethered Thumper and Potato once more. If an attack came while he was working, he wanted the animals to be able to escape. Kneeling down in the muck, he set to work with his hands. Layers of comics, so wet they were barely holding together, came up with the mud. Misha used them to build sort of a wall to help prevent the slop from backsliding into the space he was working. As he scraped away gunk, certain smells were released. This was not a good, clean mud like there’d be at a sandy beach, but something that smelled as sick as it felt. It was akin to sewage, and it coated Misha’s arms up to his elbows, filled his gloves, seeped through his pants, and oozed down into his boots.

  Rifle watched him work from the driving board above, whereas Bullet tried to help without knowing what he was doing. He dug, but in random places where it wasn’t really helpful. A couple of times he stuck his nose into Misha’s hole, but Misha pushed him away. He worried that if the dog started to dig there, he might actually make it worse rather than better. Trigger was lying in the cart with her puppies, while the rest of the dogs wandered about, some of them outside the shop hunting for a morsel to chow down on.

  Misha spent a few hours digging, having to pause every now and again when Slide came over to warn him of a zombie outside. Every time she did that, he worried he’d find a small horde out there, but two was the most he ever saw at once. They all dropped like empty sacks when Misha’s machete met their craniums.

  When the trenches in front of the tires looked to be of an adequate size, Misha gathered up a handful of DVD cases, took out the disks, and placed the opened cases in front of the tires so that they had something to grab onto. He also decided to help himself to a Hylian Shield backpack and stuff it full of soggy Hogwarts house scarves. The material looked like it could be useful once cleaned. After adding the backpack to the cart, Misha rounded up Thumper and Potato again.

  “All right, guys, this time we’re going to do it.” Misha went to the back of the cart, preparing to push. “Go!”

  The cart moved far more easily and quickly than Misha had expected. With his boots in the mud, his feet stuck fast as the cart rolled away from him. He fell forward and landed in the mire face first. When he came up sputtering, he barely had time to wipe clear his eyes, because the horses were still moving, heading slow and straight, right out the doors. Misha ran after them as best he was able, scrambling up onto the driving board once they were outside. He let the horses walk until they reached a section of pavement where the cart wouldn’t get stuck again, and then brought them to a halt. Coated in slimy mud from head to foot, Misha just sat there for a minute. But then Rifle nudged him with his nose, getting some of the muck on himself.

  “No, you don’t want this on you,” Misha told his friend as he climbed back down. “I can’t pet you right now.” The other dogs had it all over their feet and legs, and in Guard’s case, his belly, but Misha wouldn’t pet them either. If they decided to roll and get extra dirty, he couldn’t stop them, but he wasn’t going to deliberately make the mess worse.

  Locating some nearby trapped storm water, Misha used it to rinse off his face and hands. The water wasn’t clean, but it was cleaner than he was. When he was done, he stuffed his gloves into a side pocket of his pants, which was probably also filled with muck. His boots squished as he walked. To prevent the mud from drying over his joints, Misha walked with the horses. Some dogs trotted ahead, and some dogs lagged behind, but they all kept fairly close. Misha’s head was always swivelling for danger. The fact that Spring and Barrel weren’t there caused constant stress as his canine headcount was always two short. He didn’t know where they were, and he couldn’t waste time worrying about them. His priority was to get back home, which was where the dogs were likely to go anyway if they couldn’t find him. Provided nothing had happened to them.

  What Misha had to worry about was finding his own way back home. He didn’t actually know where he was. How far north? How far to the east or west? He hadn’t been able to pay attention while fleeing, focuse
d as he was on spotting the best route through which to guide the horses. He knew that if he headed south, he’d eventually reach water, but where was he in relation to the bay? If he was on the east side, he might come across the Black Box again. If he was north of the bay, then there were likely a bunch of zombies to the south of him. If he was to the west, then that was good, but was he to the west? Not knowing, he thought he should head in that direction until he was certain he had gone far enough. It might mean looping back around, but it felt like the safest option to Misha.

  It was both easier and more difficult to walk that day than it had been the previous one. The water had retreated, revealing obstacles it had previously hidden, but it had also left things behind that had previously been floating and were no longer simple to push out of the way. Misha worried about food, often stopping whenever they came across greenery he thought the horses might want to eat. The dogs were still finding dead animals in the wreckage, and Misha had to find a few to give to Rifle and Trigger. He wasn’t interested in consuming any of it himself, as he couldn’t separate what was rotten and what wasn’t. He did keep an eye out for anything that looked like it had died relatively recently, but so far, he hadn’t had any luck. What he did find to eat, however, was a small scattering of coconuts the storm had likely brought in. The first one he tried proved edible, so he made sure to gather up the rest.

  It was well into the afternoon when he spotted Powder standing still up ahead, her head and ears perked up. Misha stopped the horses, wondering if they would be forced to flee from more zombies, but then Powder’s tail swished back and forth, a slow metronome, like she wasn’t sure. If it were zombies, her tail would have remained still, or even tucked up under her.

 

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