Survival Instinct (Book 5): Social Instinct

by Stittle, Kristal

  “We’re close to the ocean,” Gatsby told him. “That was an ocean storm.”

  “How would you know?” Dom challenged him.

  “The affected area can’t be that large, can it?” Mikey said before Gatsby could respond. “We’ve already been travelling through it for a day, so we might as well keep going.”

  “I’m saying we should have turned around when we left the bus depot,” Dom insisted.

  “Well we didn’t, and saying we should have doesn’t do us any good now, does it?” Helen was clearly feeling snippy. She never liked having to sleep on an angle.

  Dom kept any further remarks about what they should have done to himself.

  They spent the night sleeping in shifts, always keeping a close eye on the horses. It was very dark and hard to see them, but they had been hobbled and any movement was accompanied by the sloshing of water. Onida kept awake during her shift by playing with Mask with her fingers, in the same way one might play with a cat. He had learned not to bite hard, but Onida knew she was going to wake up the next morning with a couple of scratches from his teeth and claws. She didn’t care; her hands were often marked up by him.

  When the morning came, it revealed patches of wet pavement and marshy, overgrown lawns. A dead rat was floating belly up in a puddle formed at the end of a driveway. Butter ate the thing with a crunch and snap of bones.

  Onida checked on the horses’ hooves once more. She took the time to wipe the mud off their legs, and insisted that they give the horses a break in order to dry out, especially since it had finally stopped raining. The others didn’t mind. They were in no rush, and instead picked through the wreckage around them. Shawn went hunting, but instead of coming back with fresh meat, he had found only firewood he intended to dry out. He had it bundled up in leather in case it started raining again.

  It was after lunch when they moved on. Onida had suggested they walk with their horses instead of riding them, and everyone agreed. The horses had also filled themselves on the long, soggy grass, which Onida was happy about when she saw they were entering a more developed area. The buildings crowded the sides of the streets, leaving little room for greenery. The plants that still clung to their small patches were mostly buried under garbage.

  “Man, that stinks,” Dom commented. “I’ll be glad when we leave here and don’t have to smell all this trash anymore.”

  “Dom, you are trash,” Ronnie teased him. “I don’t think you’ll ever escape the smell.”

  “The dead fish are what’s getting to me,” Mikey added, waving his hand in front of his face.

  “We’re definitely near the ocean,” Gatsby spoke up. “Why else would there be fish? I told you it was an ocean storm.”

  “Yeah, but you didn’t know that. You just got lucky,” Dom decided.

  “Fuck you, I know shit,” Gatsby retorted.

  They didn’t reach the ocean that day, because Onida had had them stop for so long in the morning, but they suspected they were getting rather close. The number of dead fish had been slowly increasing. Mask loved it, sometimes unable to decide which carcass to eat first. They came across a few zombies that day, but they were easily killed, and had posed no threat.

  When the sun started to sink once more, they located a warehouse in which to spend the night. There was nothing in the warehouse besides a bunch of rotten pallets, some cardboard boxes that had fallen apart and all but fused with the floor, and a heap of plastic bags in a corner. The place had probably been abandoned since even before the outbreak of the zombie virus.

  Once they had set up their tents, the doors were closed so that the horses could roam freely inside. Mask managed to find a way to climb up to the rafters above, and scared some pigeons that had been taking shelter up there. Shawn managed to shoot down two before they all escaped through a broken window. Onida had fired an arrow as well, but she had missed. The pigeons were cooked and eaten that night. Everyone got just a sliver of meat off the small bodies. Shawn carefully placed the best feathers in a supply of them he kept for making arrows. The cook fire had been as small as they could make it, and then they let it die out once it had served its use. Shawn’s crank lamp was passed around, so that everyone could take a turn keeping it lit as they stayed up a little longer and talked about inconsequential things. When Onida finally crawled into the tent she shared with Shawn and Mask, she fell asleep in an instant.

  ***

  Onida started the next day feeling great. She knew they were going to see the ocean that day and she found herself looking forward to it. She was actually excited to see the sea.

  Having woken up before the others, she prepared breakfast for everyone, and then exercised Butter by repeatedly throwing his ball across the warehouse. As everyone else got up, one by one, they also seemed to have an uncommon energy. They had been travelling for a long time just to see an ocean, and now they were nearly there. No one had asked what would come next. They could come to a decision on that later.

  The conversation at breakfast was light, mostly full of pleasant reminiscing of things that had happened after the infection had broken out. While they often reminisced about times before that on their travels, there was always a dark cloud of loss hanging over the words. Talking about the good memories that came after kept the mood lighter.

  The horses were deemed fit to ride, but everyone decided to walk that morning anyway. They had enjoyed stretching their legs, and wouldn’t mind doing some more of the same. Onida threw her saddle and all her gear over her horse’s back, and spoke soft words to her. She had been riding Nadie since the beginning, and so considered her extra special. She gave her special horse scratches and kisses while she waited for the others, who were always slower about packing up.

  The sun was poking through the clouds in places when they left. Not where they were, but in the distance, sunbeams lit up the sky. Onida smiled at the sight of them. Today was going to be a good day.

  Shawn and Onida were in the lead, as they always were. They walked just ahead of their horses, guiding them through the debris. Behind them, all the others walked in a staggered pattern, sometimes side by side, and sometimes alone.

  Onida was just starting to think that she could hear the ocean, when suddenly a group of zombies walked out ahead of them to bar their path. That wasn’t typical zombie behaviour, and a cold trickle rolled down Onida’s spine.

  “Turn around,” Shawn hissed. “Turn around, go back.”

  But there was no time. The zombies had rifles, and raised them to their shoulders. With a crack, one fired. Onida felt a bullet rip past her.

  Nadie, who had carried Onida so far, screamed with her last breath. The bullet had punctured through her chest, and into her heart. She collapsed sideways, dead a second later. More shots split the air, and Shawn’s horse went down as well, and then another bullet took out Nixkamich, who had been following as a packhorse. Onida faintly registered that in order to hit Nixkamich, there would have to be other shooters, not just the ones in front of them. And since when did zombies fire rifles?

  “Get out of here!” Shawn shouted as he slammed into Onida. He kept running, dragging her with him, both of them collapsing through the smashed window of a bar.

  “Sorry about your horses!” a voice taunted. “But it seemed only fair!”

  Fair? Who was speaking? Onida didn’t recognize the voice. One of the zombies? Her mind struggled to make sense of what was going on.

  “Show yourselves!” Dom shouted back. He had been near the back of the line and wouldn’t have seen the zombies with the rifles.

  “We still have your little friends! Would you like to see them? One of them doesn’t look like he’s doing so well.”

  Onida had no idea what the taunting was about. As Shawn pulled her upright, she saw Nadie again, lying in the street. She was dead. How could she be dead? All the horses were dead. How could all the horses be dead, just like that? She had taken care of them for so long, they couldn’t just all die!

  “Co
me on!” Shawn hissed in her ear, dragging her toward the back of the bar. She felt his hands grab at her waist and startled, but a second later he had pulled her revolver free and held it out before him. His rifle had been left back on his horse, along with just about everything else. He wore only his hunting rig, his bow and arrows on his back, with Mask in his pouch, a scrunched-up ball of terror. Onida had nothing, her own bow still on Nadie’s saddle, likely snapped in two with the way she had fallen. She couldn’t recall where she had last put her sickle, but it wasn’t on her.

  Shawn pulled her through the dark, into a kitchen that could only be navigated by its faint reflective surfaces, and painful collisions. When he let go, Onida continued to follow Shawn, no longer listening to the voices out on the street. Her panic had returned, humming through her very skin as she trusted the man ahead of her to get them out of this.

  The back door squealed as it was forced open. The revolver roared before Onida even had a chance to see who Shawn was shooting. He fired twice, and once Onida’s eyes had readjusted to the light, she saw a man on the ground, choking on his own blood. One bullet had punched his gut, while the other had torn open his throat. This one was definitely no zombie.

  As they fled down the alley, Shawn fired every bullet from the revolver. He killed a woman guarding the end of the passage, and winged a sniper up on a roof.

  “Someone go around and cut them off!” Onida heard an unfamiliar female shouting nearby. “Don’t let them get back home!”

  Home? Onida thought, just one more point of confusion among many. They didn’t have a home, so how could they be cut off from it?

  Shawn and Onida didn’t stop running. They changed directions often, hoping to lose anyone that might be following them. They wove around dead cars, and hurdled fallen branches. Onida skidded a few times on sodden trash, but she always kept to her feet. She was good at running, always had been.

  When they slowed, it was because Shawn was out of breath. His lungs heaved as he staggered, and as he walked, he threw up. Onida went to his pouch and drew out Mask, holding his bundled form to her chest. She spoke words that were meant to calm him, hoping that they would calm her too.

  “What just happened?” Onida asked Shawn once his breathing seemed to be under control again.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted with a shake of his shaggy head.

  “Would you like to hold Mask?”

  Shawn held up the revolver, which he refused to put down even though Onida knew that it was now empty. Onida continued to cradle Mask, who began to relax as they kept walking.

  “Did those zombies shoot at us?” Onida couldn’t keep the question inside.

  Shawn shook his head. “They weren’t zombies and they weren’t shooting at us. They were people wearing rotten skins, and they deliberately aimed at the horses.”

  Onida had considered the horses as part of the us, but she didn’t point that out. She was horrified by the idea of living people wearing the skins of dead people. Why would anyone do that?

  “If it makes you feel better,” Shawn said, “they will likely become ill from the rot.” It was uncommon for him to say anything of comfort, so Onida nodded despite the words not making her feel even remotely better.

  They had just left the others. They had abandoned Dom, Helen, Gatsby, Julian, Ronnie, Mikey, Anita, and Harper like it was nothing. They had run from the dead carcasses of their loyal horses, and all the supplies they had been carrying. They hadn’t lingered for even a second, to find out what was going on.

  Onida had no idea which direction they were headed. They wandered about in what felt like circles. She attempted to slow her heart rate, but every unexpected sound had it hammering.

  As they headed down a narrow alley, Mask began to squirm and grunt. Onida carefully put him down, and the raccoon headed backwards a short way, and then started to climb a fire escape. Before Onida could suggest they follow him, a man appeared at the end of the alleyway, not far off. So did a large pack of dogs.

  Onida froze a few feet behind Shawn. She could see his hand trembling, and she thought she heard the word you escape from his lips, but couldn’t be certain.

  The skinny man at the end of the alleyway broke the startled standstill by raising his hands. Sound started to escape his mouth, but Shawn was too wired, too frightened. He raised the empty gun before any words could escape. He shouldn’t have done that.

  The dogs reacted, charging at Shawn. The empty revolver clicked several times as he tried to fire at them. He was too frightened to think of drawing his bow. He was too scared to run, but Onida was not.

  She took off. She ran away from Shawn just as his screams pierced the air. The dogs were barking and growling as they bit into him, but Onida didn’t look back. Maybe Shawn always knew that this would be the way he died. Maybe that was why he was so afraid of canines. But Onida was afraid of everything, so what did that say about her own end?

  She ran. She ran, and she ran, and she ran. It didn’t matter where she was going, as long as it was away from there. Her legs were pumping, her feet slapped against the pavement. She remembered this. She remembered running for her life, only now she was dodging storm debris as opposed to the trappings of the forest. She didn’t even have a backpack with her this time. She had nothing but the clothes she wore.

  She ran. It was what she was destined to do.

  35: Evans

  12 Days After the Bombing

  The sun rose in a splash of yellow against the lingering clouds. Evans had woken up early to give their provisions another once over, and to search for Gerald. The kid was nowhere to be found. Not even Blue knew where he had gotten to, answering Evans’ enquiry with a shrug and a shake of her head. He didn’t need to know sign language to understand that much.

  “Keep an eye out for him,” he told Frannie, as he performed a quick search of places where he might be in town.

  He ended up saying the same thing to his travelling party once they were ready to go. “He’s not allowed where we’re going, but he may try to follow us,” he added.

  With eleven silent ones, six people from Bridges, and Frannie’s three emissaries joining Evans, that put the party at twenty-one. As for non-humans, there were seven camels, two horses, five rather ornery mules, and a disabled hawk that one of the Bridges people had been taking care of for several years. Since there weren’t enough ungulates for everyone to ride, Evans stayed on foot with the majority, having Moe carry a few more supply packs instead.

  “They better like us, given how much food we’re bringing them,” one of the emissaries, who had introduced himself as Mac, said to Evans as a few last minute goodbyes were exchanged.

  “Given the size of our party, we’re carrying less than you think,” Evans responded. “Especially since you and two others will be making the return journey.” Not knowing if the container yard still existed, Evans had done his best to procure enough supplies to make it to the Theatre, should they need to continue. They were also carrying some seeds, which, if everything went according to plan, the container yard people would pay for by returning the same number of seeds from their future crops.

  “Everyone ready?” Evans called down the line once it looked like the goodbyes were complete. He spotted Winnie standing off to one side, her eyes shimmering, but she refused to cry. Evans had told her that he hated saying goodbye, and so she was doing her best not to get emotional about his short visit. Once everyone behind him had given a thumbs up as he had instructed earlier, Evans started walking.

  Frannie accompanied them to the edge of town, where a guard had resumed his post after the storm. She said nothing as they departed, merely stopping on her border and watching the rest of the party pass.

  Once they had officially left the town behind, Evans sent ahead the man he had chosen to be their scout. He usually liked to send at least two people, but this man was mounted on the only other horse and seemed very capable of taking care of himself. When Luke had first told Evans that he carried
a lance, Evans had pictured some cheap, mock jousting thing, or maybe a wooden spear, but it turned out that what Luke carried was as real as Evans’ sword. He rode with ease, the long piece of metal resting in a cup on his horse’s saddle and against his shoulder. The sharp, pointed end glinted in the light. Luke had come with the people of Bridges, but Evans suspected he hadn’t always lived there. He wore a bulletproof vest, a military combat helmet, metal grieves that protected his lower legs, and leather bracers on his arms. Even his horse was partly armoured with what Evans suspected was some sort of light plastic, that had been wrapped in leather to reduce any noise. The horse seemed particularly well trained and so Evans thought of it as the second man to make himself feel more comfortable about not having another human accompany Luke. The fully loaded repeater rifle on the back of Luke’s saddle also helped.

  Evans drifted up and down the line as they walked, talking with the people from Bridges and the emissaries in order to get a better idea of their various skill sets and experience. Most of the people from Bridges had travelled long distances before their journey between their ruined home and Paddock. It seemed that the ones willing to venture out were those who had arrived at Bridges after it had been established. They had been newcomers once before. Paddock’s emissaries were also well travelled, having reached out to other communities in the past. Evans decided that the party was a good group of people to travel with. The only children were the two silent ones, and while little kids were often a liability, these two naturally kept quiet, and always stuck to the middle of the pack with their mom. They seemed to have no curiosity about their surroundings, even when they stopped, which kept them out of trouble.

  They made decent time that morning, and Luke didn’t report any dangers. He had found them a patch of rock that was relatively flat and mostly dry, and suggested they break there for lunch. Evans agreed. While they were stopped, he had everyone check each others’ feet for hot spots, not wanting any of them to end up with unnecessary blisters. He instructed two of the people from Bridges on better ways to tie up their boots based on their individual foot shapes.