Survival Instinct (Book 3): Fighting Instinct

by Kristal Stittle

  Mathias and Jon looked at each other, having no idea what had just happened. Mathias walked over to the microscope and looked through the eyepiece. All the blood drained from his face.

  “Jon,” he said, his voice half-strangled, “you’re infected.”

  4

  Freya Makes Plans

  Hearing the footsteps approaching, Freya hurried to bury her makeshift knife beneath the sand. If they found her with it, they would certainly beat her, and perhaps finally just kill her in anger. Not that death could be much worse than what she was living through now.

  Unfolding her bedroll back over the spot, she turned to face the tent flap just as it opened. The heavily scarred face of Bob entered the bright blue tent, which was really a propped up tarp, his eyes locking on Freya’s. Freya quickly looked away, not wanting to antagonize him. Bob stared at her for an uncomfortable moment, his gaze piercing. He then looked around the tent, searching for anything amiss. He must not have seen anything because he settled into a slightly more comfortable crouch.

  “Sher wants to see you,” Bob grumbled.

  Freya nodded, still not looking directly at him. Bob continued to sit in the tent entrance, watching her. Finally, he stood up again and exited the tent. This allowed Freya to crawl out. As soon as Freya was out from under her tarp, Bob was grabbing her arm and dragging her up onto her feet. Freya didn’t fight against him or cry out. She hadn’t been able to cry out for a few years now. She hadn’t been able to make a single sound for a very long time.

  Bob marched Freya through the camp, holding her arm hard enough to leave bruises. This wasn’t going to be a good visit. Visits to Sher never were. Other women and children watched as Freya was brought past them. They all knew what happened around the camp, especially to women like Freya, but none of them ever said anything. They never stood up to the men. Freya thought they could all just go to hell.

  At the end of the beach, they reached the site where the Dunns River Falls met the ocean. The falls had been a popular tourist attraction prior to the zombies, but now it was their best source of fresh water, and the buildings provided protection for Sher and his cronies. Everyone else was in tents on the sand, protected only by the guards that Sher paid. Nowadays, they rarely had to worry about zombies anymore. Over half of Jamaica had been pretty much cleared of them, and it was only those travelling under the sea and a few that made it over the mountains that were a concern. Still, Sher had the guards continue to patrol the borders of the camp at all times: he didn’t want anyone leaving. Sher had ruled the group for two years now, ever since he murdered the last leader. In Freya’s opinion, their last leader hadn’t been any better.

  “Freya, there you are,” Sher grinned as she was thrown into the room, barely managing to keep to her feet.

  Freya was quiet as always, choosing to look down at her bare toes. She was partly disgusted with herself for not acting out, for not fighting every chance she got, but that hadn’t gotten her anywhere in the past. Her only hope was for them to let their guard down long enough for her to spring into action. Soon. She would act soon, but not now. Now she had to continue to endure this humiliation.

  “Is Freya not the most beautiful woman you’ve ever seen?” Sher asked the boy next to him. He couldn’t be more than fourteen.

  “I don’t know,” the boy shrugged.

  “Do you know what makes her the most beautiful?” Sher continued. “Her silence. Never makes a sound. She can’t, even if she wanted to.”

  “Why not?” the boy asked. Freya had seen the kid around the camp. He was clearly being inducted into Sher’s group of warriors, and would most likely get to stay at this camp based on the way Sher was treating him. Only the best got to stay at the large camp, while the others were moved about the various camps and outposts around the rest of the island. There was no way to know for sure how many men Sher actually commanded, but Freya knew it was a lot.

  “She got sick. Nothing you or I need to worry about, but it left her without a voice. Good fucking luck on our part, eh?” Sher laughed loudly.

  The boy looked at him and grinned, not entirely sure why he was there or what he was supposed to be doing.

  “Get to it, woman.” Sher waved his hand at her.

  Freya’s mind drifted off to her place without memory, as she performed her assigned duty.

  ***

  Everything was sore, but she had felt worse before. Sitting on the sand, looking across the sea, Freya thought of escape for the thousandth time. She had it all worked out, save for one thing: she didn’t know where to go. She couldn’t stay on the island, because there was nowhere to hide from Sher and his men if she did that. Going to the portion of the island they didn’t control wasn’t an option either. There were still large groups of zombies over there, not to mention all the pirate bands. No, pirates wouldn’t be any better. Freya would have to cross the ocean if she wanted to escape, but she didn’t know where to go. Travelling alone, with no destination, was a sure way to get killed. Most days, Freya wished she had gone with Captain Martin, but she couldn’t leave her brother behind, and her brother wouldn’t go. Things weren’t as bad then. Now her brother was dead and she was alone. No one cared for her.

  That’s when she saw it. Way off in the distance, sitting on the horizon, was a pillar of dark smoke. It was hard to make out against the darkening sky, but the sunset was backlighting it just enough.

  Freya wondered if anyone else saw the smoke. She didn’t react to seeing it, not knowing if someone was watching her. If no one else saw it, then that was her chance. Smoke like that could only be caused by people. She didn’t know why there was a fire and didn’t care. There hadn’t been any lightning storms in over a week, so it couldn’t be a naturally occurring fire. It was possible everyone at the base of that smoke would be either gone or dead by the time Freya reached it. She didn’t care. Noting the direction, she knew it was toward the Cayman Islands. That had been a possible destination for her before, but she suspected the Islands were too far. This smoke had to be closer, it had to be a boat of some kind. She could go to it, and stop there before continuing on to somewhere like Grand Cayman.

  But what if the smoke was coming from pirates? Sailing headlong into a band of pirates wouldn’t be any good.

  A screaming drew Freya’s attention behind her. A mother was trying to protect her daughter from being beaten. Apparently, the young girl had taken something, it sounded like food. The mother was draped over her daughter, completely covering her and taking strikes from a switch to her back.

  Fuck pirates, Freya thought. She didn’t care who the people under the smoke were; she was going to go to them. Even if it turned out to be a burning ship that had sunk by the time she could reach it, she would keep going. She would sail alone to the Cayman Islands all by herself. Damn everyone else.

  Having decided this, she got up from the sand to prepare.

  Freya’s plan didn’t take much preparation, as she had been planning it for so long. She took a walk as close to the camp’s border as she dared, noting what guards were on duty and where. They all had their various weaknesses, and she picked out the one she could get by the easiest.

  Maybe it was because she couldn’t talk anymore—not like she had anyone to talk to—but she found she learned a lot about people just by observing them. This man had a small bladder and always took a piss where no one could see him, that one was deaf in one ear, another was always hoping that Sher would look favourably upon him and allow him a woman. Even the other people in the camp had their observable behaviours, like the woman who always aligned herself with whoever was physically largest, hoping that he would protect her. There was also a young boy who was more at home amongst the goats than with his own mother. Freya was jealous of this one girl who seemed capable of blending into any setting, and could always go unnoticed by those around her. Freya could always find her though. Ever since she stopped speaking, she found she looked and listened a lot more.

  After her bord
er patrol, Freya walked along the beach. The water’s edge had been combed over many times, but the sea was always revealing new and sometimes useful things, like the small, smooth, round stone she found this time. Although she didn’t let on as she pulled it up out of the wet sand, the stone was a great find for Freya. She hoped it was a good sign as well, and would bring her luck. Pocketing the stone in the knee-length, jean skirt she wore over her tight cycling shorts, she continued to look for anything else useful. Sadly, there was only the stone that evening, although it was better than the nothing she usually found.

  Once darkness had fallen and the campfires were burning, Freya headed back into her tent. She slipped the stone into her pillowcase and lay down on her mat, waiting for Skunk. Skunk wasn’t his real name of course, just Freya’s name for him. She called him that because he showed up at her tent just about every night, drunk as a skunk. He always tried to get between Freya’s legs, but in his condition, he always failed.

  Sure enough, while Freya was lying on her back, looking up at the tarp, he crawled in. He fought with her skirt a bit, but eventually, the liquor caught up with him, and he fell asleep on top of her. Freya gently rolled his bony body over to his own mattress and lay back down. She could handle drunk Skunk, but he had a tendency to wake up in the middle of the night, so she had to appear normal while she worked. Slowly, with only one hand, she began to dig in the sand next to her bed.

  The clothes that Freya wore were the best she could get with which to protect herself. Sher demanded that all women wear dresses or skirts, so Freya had picked a knee length, heavy jean skirt because the fabric wasn’t easy to roll or push up. She wore tight bike shorts underneath, so that even if Skunk could get the skirt off on his better nights, he fought with the form fitting shorts. She also dressed similarly up top, with a tight, long-sleeved shirt underneath a baggy T-shirt that hid her curves. Even on the hottest days, Freya would rather deal with the heat than the looks.

  After a short while, she could reach the knife under her bed. Gently, she pulled out the blade. She had made it herself out of stone, twine, and seashells. The blade was oddly shaped and somewhat fragile, but deadly sharp. In the dark, Freya turned her head toward Skunk. He was lying on his back, head turned toward Freya, mouth open with a rattling snore issuing from it. God, did Freya ever hate that snore.

  She didn’t have to think twice about it. Reaching over, she quickly drew her blade across Skunk’s throat. It sliced open like butter. He woke up, still drunk and very alarmed. If he hadn’t been either of those things, maybe he would have sat up and crawled out of the tent, but he didn’t. His hands flew up to his neck, finding the separated flesh and trying to hold it back together. He gagged and choked, but was strangely quiet about it. Freya had expected a little more noise from him, perhaps enough noise that she’d have to worry, but he was close to silent. It was a little disturbing in that the noises he made weren’t that different from what Freya sounded like when she tried to speak.

  He died fast. It seemed like more than a minute, but it was certainly less than five. His blood drained out of him, spilling across his mattress and absorbed by the sand. As soon as he stopped moving, Freya got to work.

  Rolling back her sleeping mat, she dug deeper to reach her stash. It wasn’t much: a small rucksack filled with what little food and water supplies she had managed to save. Upending her pillow, she dumped out all the stuffing along with the many smooth stones she had managed to collect. Skunk had never noticed she barely ever put her head on that pillow, and now, he never would. Freya carefully repacked the pillow so that the stones would be easy to access, but the stuffing would keep them from clinking together. Near the top of the back pole holding up her tarp, was a rope she unwound and tied around her waist like a belt, securing the pillowcase to it in the process. She then unwound a smaller, leather strap from the front pole, being careful not to move the flap. This, she wrapped around her right hand.

  It wasn’t the right time yet. Some of the men, those who didn’t drink all day like Skunk, would still be sharing a bottle of moonshine around the fire. Freya could wait them out. It was the only reason she put up with Skunk: the men had a code about not disturbing a man when he was with a woman.

  By lying down on her stomach, Freya could peer out through the slit between the tarp and the sand. She could see five fires from where she lay, four of which were already burned down to the embers that would be kept glowing all night by the guards. The last still had a group sitting around it.

  Shifting slowly around her tent, Freya looked out of all the sides and found only two other fires were burning high. One had a rowdy group around it, but they were at the far end of the beach and wouldn’t be a problem. The closer fire had a single woman attending it. She was cooking something over it, possibly fish, and probably for the men. Crawling back to her original position, Freya spied on the men closest to her.

  She lay on her belly, watching and waiting like a huntress. One by one, the men began to get up and head to their own tents. When there was only one left, poking at the fire with a look of contemplation on his face, she continued to wait. If she wanted, she could have easily snuck up behind the man and killed him like she had Skunk, but she wouldn’t do that. Killing this man would only increase the risk of being caught. She could wait. She had waited for years, she could wait a few hours more if need be.

  It wasn’t hours, but eventually the man ceased his thinking long enough to stand up and go back to his tent. Freya thought he probably had a woman in his tent, one who was lying in the dark, hoping he wouldn’t come back. Freya didn’t have any sympathy. Rescuing everyone else was not her problem.

  Once ten more minutes had passed, and the fires were as low as they would get all night, Freya slid out of her tent on her belly like a snake. With a wider field of vision, she checked out the surrounding area again. She was in the clear. Moving on her hands and the balls of her feet—a method that was both exhausting and difficult, but that she had trained herself to do—she made for the border. Any time there was a flicker of movement, she would drop to the sand and wait to see what would happen. So far, it was only the wind flapping the canvases.

  Upon reaching the scrub at the edge of the beach, she moved slower. She was nearing the guards now. After a slow, methodical search, she located the guard she was looking for. He was standing with his back to her, looking toward some trees. Unwinding the leather thong from her hand, Freya pulled out a rock from her pillow-bag and slipped it into the sling. She had chosen this guard for his slow reaction time, and the fact that the nearest guard to him was the one deaf in one ear. Swinging her sling around in a tight arc, she took careful aim. It hadn’t been easy to find the time and location to practice, but Freya had, and was deadly accurate.

  The rock bounced off the back of the man’s head with a crack. Drawing in a sharp breath, he turned to find out what had happened. Freya had already moved closer and loaded another rock into her sling. This one struck him between the eyes, knocking him flat on his back. Whether he was dead, unconscious, or only stunned, Freya didn’t wait to find out. She moved in with her knife and dispatched him as quickly as she had Skunk.

  Stepping past the bleeding body, she was outside the ring of guards. She made for the trees, but then moved through them parallel to the shore. Because of her muteness, the men often mistook her for being stupid as well. They talked about things in her presence that they probably shouldn’t have. Things like where the boats were kept.

  When she spotted them down at the water’s edge, she stopped and scanned the area. There weren’t as many guards around the boats as there were around the tents. Pretty much everyone living in the area was under Sher’s control, and the few free people weren’t stupid enough to try stealing from him. Two men were in a tiny shack, half-asleep, while a third sat on the deck of the largest vessel in this particular fleet. That was okay, the boat that Freya wanted was farthest from it.

  Circling around wide, she crossed the beach on her bell
y to reach the water. Once in the surf, she let the sea float her body, while she pulled herself through the shallow water using only her arms, her sack of rocks dragging along the bottom.

  The boat was small. It was an aluminium fishing boat with an outboard motor that wasn’t really meant for the sea. Freya didn’t care. She didn’t plan to be driving long, and the sea didn’t seem overly rough that night. Very slowly, so as not to make a sound, she lifted both her pack and bag of rocks and placed them gently into the boat. Pausing, she noted that the men had not noticed anything amiss yet.

  “Take me with you,” a voice hissed behind her.

  Raising her blade, Freya turned. Behind her was the girl who could slip by anyone unnoticed. Apparently, she could go unnoticed by Freya as well, when she wanted to.

  “Please.” Her moonlit eyes were begging.

  Freya looked back at the guards who still hadn’t moved. She had three options: try to leave the girl behind, take her with her, or kill her. Out of those options, taking the girl with her seemed like the option least likely to get her caught. Freya nodded and gestured at the boat.

  The girl had her own pack with her and was even more careful about getting it into the boat than Freya had been. Once it was placed, the girl slithered up on the sand and untied the rope from the large log that anchored it.

  Before they could shove off, however, there was something else that Freya needed to do. Moving slowly through the ocean, she crept up behind the little boat next to the one she was taking. Rising carefully over its side, she unhooked the gas tank from within, and then lifted it up and out. She placed the tank in her own boat, and then repeated the stealthy manoeuvre with all the other little fishing boats along the row.

  As she was unhooking the last tank, bent awkwardly over the side as she stood in the shallow water, the door to the shed suddenly flew open. Freya froze.