Defensive Instinct (Survival Instinct Book 4)

by Kristal Stittle

  “Elsewhere. I’m an outrider, searching for points of interest for the main column.”

  “Well, this ain’t no point of interest,” Park informed him.

  “No? You appear to be a settlement. You’re not open for trade?”

  “No, we ain’t.”

  “Very well, I’ll be on my way then. May I leave you with some advice?”

  Park and the other man looked at one another and then shrugged, gesturing for Evans to say his piece. Other guards were watching, fingers near triggers.

  “You see that smoke over that way?” This far, the black smoke from the body fire was thin and wispy. “My column came from there. If you have scavengers out, I wouldn’t recommend sending them that way for a few weeks. There’s a massive horde of the dead.”

  “What’s the smoke from?” asked the first man to have spoken.

  “We managed to trap a bunch in a warehouse and light it. The flames distracted the things still outside while we escaped. Still lost a lot of good people though.”

  “We’ve been seeing smoke from there for days now. Why’s it still burning?” Park glanced suspiciously in that direction.

  “Didn’t have time to get a proper look, but it appeared to be some sort of lumber yard, lots of stuff to burn. It’s a shame really. A lot of good material is going to waste, but I’m not complaining. It should keep those rotten bastards occupied while we keep moving.”

  “You see any other groups out there? Big ones, not much in the way of supplies?” Park changed topics.

  “No, why? Should I have?”

  “You gave us advice, so I’ll give you some. There are bandits somewhere to the south and east of here. I suggest you take word back to your party and tell them to head straight north.”

  “These bandits why you’re not open to trade?”

  Neither of the men answered.

  “We’ll head north then, thank you.” Evans started to turn Moe around.

  “I like that horse,” the gruff sounding one called out.

  Evans sighed. He had come so close to getting away clean. “I like him too.” Evans turned Moe again so that the horse’s head and chest could shield him from a direct shot from the fence.

  “Yeah, but what if I like him more than you?” the gruff one said with a grin.

  Evans proceeded to pull back on the reins, getting Moe to walk backward as straight as the horse was able.

  “Where you going?” the gruff man laughed.

  “You said you weren’t open to trade.”

  “Doesn’t mean we’re not open to gifts.”

  “Let’s be honest. We both know that if you want my horse, you’ll have to shoot me, and you’re more likely to hit him than me.” Evans pulled out his shotgun and held it in one hand while the other stayed tight on the reins.

  “I don’t mind horse meat,” Park commented.

  The gruff one raised his rifle again, but after a second lowered it. He mumbled something to Park, and they both watched as Evans continued to ride backward to the intersection. As soon as he was in line with the next street, he wheeled Moe about and kicked him into a gallop, crouching low over the big horse’s neck to make himself as small a target as possible.

  With his heart hammering in his throat, Evans steadied his breathing. He didn’t know what stopped the gruff man from shooting: maybe the possibility that Evans wasn’t lying about having a party not far away. He was just glad that he didn’t.

  Taking a different route back to the rest stop, Evans ran Moe hard, making sure no one could follow. He had completed the first step of Riley’s plan, and now he had to move onto the second.

  37

  Doyle’s Uncomfortable

  Living in the woods was a miserable affair. The floor of the cave was on a slight slope, which was never more obvious than when trying to sleep. Their only meat came from squirrels who got caught in the snares, several of them not dying quickly, leaving the task to whoever’s turn it was to check the traps. Doyle suspected it was the small amount of meat off one such squirrel that had him outside the cave and shitting over the side of a log for most of the second night. That, or the stream water hadn’t been boiled properly, although no one else was affected. Because of the boiling, the water tasted of the metal pot, while the rest of their food was hard, dry, and didn’t taste like much of anything.

  “To think that after the Day, this is how we lived,” Doyle once commented to Canary.

  “This isn’t how we lived at all,” she replied. “We kept moving, food was easily scavenged as it hadn’t yet started going bad, the water was still running in a lot of places, and we often found couch cushions, if not actual beds, when we stopped for the night.”

  At least her leg seemed to be healing. Everyone in the group worried about it, but it hadn’t bled for some time and the discoloration was from a bruise that had formed around the injury and not from infection. Canary took off her bandages and washed them and the injury in the ocean every day, then wrapped the long strip of gauze back around. For the most part, everyone went into the sea at least once a day. Feeling clean was possibly the only luxury this place afforded, even if it didn’t take long to get dirty again.

  “I miss clean underwear,” Jamal said on the third day.

  “Wash it in the ocean,” Doyle grumbled, having barely slept the night before. He had just come in from washing his ass off and didn’t need any reminders about that part of his body.

  “It’s not the same, not without soap.”

  Doyle didn’t bother trying to keep up the conversation; he just curled up in his sleeping bag and closed his eyes.

  On the fourth day, they had a bit of a zombie problem. A few of the dead things that lingered around the factory up the shoreline decided to come down for a visit. The zombies had been useful on the second day when one of the men who had attacked the Black Box came snooping around. He had followed the trail as far as the zombies would allow, but had to turn back when the dead noticed him. Had he been able to linger, he might have discovered the trail went suspiciously cold at the docks and figured out that the group had gone to sea.

  Doyle’s axe sank into the skull of the final zombie.

  “That the last of them?” James asked as he looked around for more.

  “Looks like it,” Doyle answered. “What do we do with the corpses? A body burn will draw too much attention.”

  “Well, we can either spend hours digging them graves, or we can push them out to sea.” James clearly preferred the sea option so that’s what they did.

  It took more work to remove the bodies than it did to kill them. Doyle and James had to pick up the rotting things between them and walk them to the water. Once there, they waded in across the slippery rocks, and attempted to push the things down where the undertow would grab them.

  “I hope Jamal is okay.” The third man was out checking their snares and getting water from the stream. Doyle tried not to think about Rose, who was today’s spy, watching the Black Box from a distance, and possibly dealing with much worse problems.

  “The guy’s a monkey; he could be up one of these trees before the zombies even knew he was in the woods,” James told him. “I just wish he’d hurry up and get back here to help us with these.”

  At that moment, the corpse they were carrying between them split in two, leaving Doyle holding a pair of hips and legs, and James a torso, head, and arms, with a string of guts slopped out between them. The smell hit Doyle hard, and he might have thrown up if his stomach hadn’t been so empty.

  “Goddamn it, why couldn’t it rot like this before leaving the factory?” James hissed between his teeth. He was just as tired of their situation as everyone else. Doyle bet he would scream if that wouldn’t risk their safety. He knew that he wanted to scream. They dragged the corpse halves to the water, the guts managing to stay attached as they slid over the rocks like some mutant squid.

  At least the zombies gave them something to do. That was what was really trying about staying out there
: the never-ending boredom. Outside of checking the traps, fetching water, and cooking, there wasn’t much to do. The only interesting task was watching the Black Box, but only one person did that at a time. Doyle was grateful for the books they had risked their lives for, because he was sure they would be killing each other by now without them. Everyone read most of the day, especially Canary who could only do so much on her wounded leg. Nights were worse, when there was no light to read by, and even standing guard was dull and dreary. They could have used their flashlights, but no one wanted to drain the batteries, just in case.

  It was the ‘just in case’ that no one spoke about out loud: just in case the submarine didn’t come back. Doyle was sure they would wait a few days past the expected time, hoping the submarine was only delayed, but what if it wasn’t? What if something happened and they never showed up? It would be just the five of them with minimal supplies, trying to walk all the way back to the container yard, with known hostiles along the way. It would be a week, more with Canary’s leg, and they wouldn’t know what they were walking into. If the submarine didn’t come, the only reason why, that Doyle could think of, had to do with the container yard being in trouble. The noises Jamal claimed people had heard while evacuating only gave strength to that idea.

  The last of the zombies was finally sent out to sea, and James and Doyle waded out of the water.

  “We should wait awhile before anyone goes swimming in case those things come floating back,” James suggested.

  “Agreed,” Doyle nodded.

  “I’m going to go find Jamal.” He stalked off. He was what Doyle considered a man of action, always needing something to do. All this waiting seemed to be wearing on him the most.

  Doyle decided he should let Canary know that neither of them were dead.

  Back in the cave, Canary was lying in her usual position, her head and shoulders propped up on her bedroll in the spot that got the most sunlight. She had clearly been reading again based on the book lying beside her, but a dagger was held firmly in her hand as Doyle came in.

  “Everyone okay?” she asked, laying the dagger down once she knew he wasn’t a zombie about to attack her.

  “As okay as we get out here,” Doyle answered. “That book any good?” He noticed the cover was different from the last one she had been reading.

  “Not sure yet, I’m not very far in.” She picked it up and showed him where her bookmark sat very close to the front cover. “The one you’re reading get any better yet?”

  Doyle found his book and flopped down beside her, glad he had thought to take bookmarks as he removed his. “No. That ending I theorized? There’s been more evidence to support it. For a mystery story, it’s not being very mysterious.”

  “Maybe it’s deliberately misleading you and you’ll be surprised.”

  “I doubt it; I don’t think this writer is good enough for that.”

  With their conversation ended, Doyle and Canary opened their books, but he read only a chapter before he became tired with the current section of plot and ended up just sitting and staring out through the mouth of the cave, watching the spaces between the branches for Jamal or James. He finally gave up and crawled back out. Canary didn’t bother to ask him where he was going: they both knew the answer would be nowhere.

  Doyle wandered around for a bit, checked to see if any of the corpses had washed back onto shore, then headed over to the fire pit. Nothing had changed, and they already had more than enough split wood so Doyle wasn’t going to bother cutting more. His axe had become rather dull, but no one had a whetstone with which he could sharpen it, and he wasn’t about to use some random rock and risk damaging his primary weapon. At least the weight of the axe was still enough to drive the blade through a zombie’s skull, even if the blade ended up being as dull as a spoon.

  Since he was there, Doyle knelt down and set the fire, so that when Jamal returned to cook any meat he brought back and to boil the water, all he’d have to do was light it. It didn’t take long, soon leaving Doyle with nothing to do again.

  When James returned with Jamal, they found Doyle just sitting next to the unlit fire, staring off over the water. Neither asked what he was thinking about; Jamal merely handed over the three squirrels and the skinning knife. Doyle went to work separating the meat, while James put down the water pails and left to fetch the single small pot and single small pan Jamal had been left with. Jamal lit the fire, careful to keep it as smokeless as possible. They had deliberately set up their fire pit beneath the branches of a very thick coniferous along the edge of the pebble beach, so that any smoke they did emit would hopefully be dispersed and hidden by its branches.

  “We’ll be out of squirrels soon,” Jamal commented once the fire was going.

  “You make them sound like rations.”

  “Moving the snares isn’t enough; there just aren’t that many around here anymore,” he continued. “Did you notice I only brought back three today?”

  Doyle had noticed, but didn’t want to say anything. When they first started laying snares, the forest was lousy with the rodents, which was great considering the animals couldn’t be infected. Every day they brought in fewer, however. The squirrels had either learned to avoid the traps, or had left the area all together. Doyle didn’t believe they could have eaten so many as to reduce the population that much, but he would also admit that he could be wrong.

  James returned with the pot and pan. With nothing else that they could do, they boiled the water, carefully roasted the meat, and hoped for the best.

  ***

  On the sixth day, Doyle found himself lying on the leaf-strewn ground of the forest floor, his eyes locked upon a rabbit. His body was perfectly still as he willed the rabbit to come just a little closer. If it came just a bit closer, perhaps only two lengths of its own body, Doyle should be able to strike out fast enough to hit it. Striking it with Canary’s pointed copper pipe wouldn’t necessarily kill it, but the rabbit wouldn’t necessarily survive either. Both this morning and the day before had yielded no meat in the snares, and Doyle was craving protein. The rations were keeping them alive, but only just, all of them constantly hungry and desiring flavour. He had spotted the rabbit by chance and creeped and crawled as close as he dared. Now he just needed the thing to come a little bit closer to him, just a hop or two.

  Somewhere beyond the rabbit a branch snapped loudly.

  No! No, no, no! Doyle thought as the rabbit raised its head, its large ears on the alert as its nose twitched. Leaves crunched from the same direction as the branch, and the rabbit bolted. Doyle attempted to catch it anyway, lashing out with the pseudo spear, but he wasn’t even close. The rabbit disappeared.

  Doyle silently cursed and grumbled, wondering whether it was Rose or James he’d have to berate, when he realized that the sounds weren’t coming from the direction of the camp. Whatever it was, it sounded big and was following the trail the Black Box residents had blazed. The flattened path was already starting to fill in with new growth, and some of the trampled stuff managed to spring back upright. For a second, Doyle wondered if it could be a boar, which excited him with the prospect of meat. Two things quickly put him off this idea, the first being that it didn’t really sound like a boar, and the second being that pigs were easily infected in the same way that humans were.

  Lying still, Doyle waited until the sounds passed by his location, then crept toward the trail so as to come at the thing from behind. He kept hoping that it was just a deer, something he could pretend was possible to catch, but he knew it was nothing like that. When he reached the flattened area, Doyle kept low against a half-rotted log, peering over the top of it. Along the trail ahead of him walked a big grey horse with two riders perched upon its back. Doyle would have been even angrier if his wrath weren’t so tempered by his fear.

  At a great distance, one in which Doyle couldn’t even see the horse, he followed it along the trail that wound through the trees. He hoped no one was on the pebble beach, or if they were, t
hey were in a position to dive out of sight.

  Doyle left the path and crept through the trees in order to spy on the beach. The horse had stopped at the edge of it, the rider not risking the animal in the open. Instead, the man hopped down, leaving his smaller and younger rider up on the horse. The man was tall, broad, and blond with a large sword strapped to his back. Doyle pulled his fire axe off his back and wished he had attempted to sharpen it.

  Reaching into one of the packs that the younger rider had been sitting on until he slid forward into the saddle, the big man pulled out what appeared to be a large piece of stiff paper that had been rolled and then crushed flat. A terse instruction was given to the young rider, one which Doyle couldn’t hear, and then the big man walked out over the rocks. When he neared the water, he unrolled the paper and held it up toward the forest, slowly turning left and right. Even with the big, bold, black letters, it took Doyle a moment to read and understand the words.

  The Container Yard Sent Me.

  Beneath these were squiggles that Doyle definitely couldn’t make out. Not sure what to do, the former fireman continued to lie flat. The man was probably a friendly, but why wouldn’t the yard send someone more recognizable? Why send someone at all? It could have something to do with the submarine, which would be bad, or could be the Black Box invaders had captured the container yard, which would be worse. In the end, Doyle didn’t have to make a decision, because James stepped out of the trees and approached the man first. Deciding he shouldn’t be alone when there was that second rider, Doyle got up and approached as well, keeping firm grips on both his spear and his axe.

  “Is one of you Jamal?” the stranger asked warily as Doyle and James approached.

  “No,” James answered simply.

  “James and Doyle then. Crichton had hoped you’d found your way here. This is for you: he, Boyle, and Bronislav signed it.” The man handed James the stiff paper while Doyle kept his distance, watching both the stranger and the young rider still mounted on the horse.