Defensive Instinct (Survival Instinct Book 4) (16 page)

Danny took his time climbing the few steps at the back of the bus, pausing on each one for a few seconds before continuing. There was a warren of boxes and shelves back there, disturbed and thrown about from the crash. With his heart hammering, Danny made his way through the debris one slow step at a time until he reached the rear wall. Nothing jumped out at him.

“Clear,” he breathed out slowly, giving his heart a chance to settle.

“Watch my back for a minute.” Jon holstered his weapon and started to scale the metal shelves, bolts having kept them secured to the wall during the crash. At the top, he was able to reach the bus’s emergency hatch in the roof. It was meant for passengers to be able to escape should the bus roll onto its side, but now that Danny was looking right at it, he saw that the wiring disappeared out around its edges. Soothing sunlight pierced the darkness of the bus as Jon got the hatch open, only to be blocked off again when he stuck his head and shoulders out through it. After a satisfying look, he came back inside and dropped to the floor of the bus.

“What’d you see?” Danny asked, as the smack of Jon’s boots hitting the floor vibrated the bus slightly.

“Nothing, just the other end of the wires. My guess? These people had at least one other vehicle. I’ll bet there were solar panels or some such up there, which people forced to walk wouldn’t have bothered to take. Also, there’s nothing but trash around the beds, no personal items, not blankets or anything. Did you see anything that wasn’t junk up there?” Jon gestured to the back of the bus with his head.

“No, just toppled shelves and empty boxes and crates. Someone could have picked over this place before us.”

“Maybe. Come on, if we have time, we can take the hammocks and the cots.”

Back outside, Danny and Jon swiftly explained what they found, then Lenny and Bryce gave them the good news that they could squeeze the carts around the back.

“If we grab the hammocks and cots, we definitely have to stop at the next safe place,” Shaidi told everyone.

“I think we should take them,” Jon voted.

Danny agreed, and one by one the others followed suit. Walking to the back of a cart, Danny opened the tool box hanging there and selected a socket wrench he thought would work on the bolts holding the cots to the floor and the hammocks to the frame work. Just in case, he grabbed a few similar sizes so that he wouldn’t have to walk back out if he was wrong.

With Bryce joining him this time, Danny returned to the bus, while the others started the process of walking the horses and carts around the back of the bus.

“Think I should grab his boots and check his pockets?” Bryce asked about the driver as Danny set to work. He had selected the right socket wrench the first time.

“Can you do so safely? It looked like there was a lot of blood all over that harness and stuff.”

“Maybe not his pockets, but I think I might be able to snag his boots.”

“If you think you can, then go for it.”

In the end, Bryce managed to get the boots, which were clear of blood, and took the man’s socks while he was at it. The hammocks came down without a hitch, consisting of nothing more than fabric cocoons held by chains on either end; they didn’t even have spacers on either end to stop the hammocks from curling up around their occupants. Once they were down, Bryce took them and the boots out to the carts while Danny set to work on the cots.

The sound of sliding pebbles caused Danny to pause.

“Bryce? Jon? That you guys?” he spoke hesitantly. His earlier thoughts of being watched came back, so he pulled out his pistol and laid it on the floor beside him, within easy reach, and then locked his eyes on the door as he continued to loosen the bolts. Even if there wasn’t a stranger out there, pebbles shifting on their own was a cause for concern when the building the bus had smashed into could collapse at any moment. Danny worked even faster, bruising his fingertips by turning the bolts with them as soon as they were loose enough, his other hand moving onto the next bolt with the socket wrench. When Bryce came back, Danny told him what he had heard. Bryce began using his own fingers to help out, and the two of them hastily freed the cots. Folding them up, they each then carried out a pair and made their way to the other side of the bus where the carts were waiting.

“We better get moving ASAP if we don’t want to get hit by that storm,” Larson warned them as the cots found places amongst the rest of their haul.

Danny could feel that the wind had picked up and knew what he meant. He climbed up onto the board seat with Larson; Bryce plopped down on the other side. Jon and Lenny were already sitting in the lead cart with Shaidi. With everyone onboard, the horses were encouraged to move at a brisk trot. It was faster, louder, and more dangerous, but they decided to risk it with the thunderheads rolling in. Zombies generally got confused during storms, so they weren’t too worried about leading a bunch of them to their next hideout. By sticking to the middle of the road, it was unlikely they would get surprised by something popping out without one of them spotting it before it reached the carts and horses. Other humans were the only real concern, but then they always were, no matter what the circumstances.

They reached their next safe spot ahead of the storm, but only just, as the black clouds became visible from ground level. The sun was still out-racing them, but not by much; it would soon be overtaken, leaving everything in darkness.

“Let’s get them inside!” Lenny called out over the increasing wind, moving from the seat to Potato’s head.

Danny slipped from his seat as well and grasped the halter of Soot, a drab grey horse who was old and almost deaf. Shaidi had already dropped back to take hold of Spark, the young, energetic buck who stuck by Soot’s side like a grandson helping his grandpa. With Jon by Thumper, it was left to Bryce and Larson to go in first, to make sure their space had stayed safe in their absence. Danny watched as they headed a short way down a wide alley to a large shipment door. An easily removed bolt held it closed in place of a lock, and its presence suggested that there was nothing inside. Throwing the door up, Bryce and Larson moved boldly inside, pistols and flashlights clearing the way. The space they were searching didn’t have any places to hide, and so they cleared it without delay and waved the others forward.

Danny stood impatiently beside Soot, watching as the other cart was led in. As the sunlight was swallowed, day became night. The wind was roaring now. Soot leaned his old head into it, his barely functioning ears flat against his skull. Beside him, Spark struggled in his harness, wanting to follow the other horses immediately; only Soot’s stubborn obedience to the people around them stopped him. Then the sky split open and Danny found himself waterlogged before Jon appeared in the doorway to wave them in. Walking the eager horses into shelter, Danny was not looking forward to their wet stink reeking up the place.

Their safe spot was the back of a furniture store, where display models had at one time been put together and where the boxes of disassembled items were stored. Some time ago, on a previous scavenge, they had moved all the large boxes from the back room to the display floor, leaving a wide, open space. Only a few shelving units remained, pushed up against one wall, and half a dozen couches they had pressed up against the other.

“Let’s dry off what we can,” Lenny spoke loudly over the hammering rain, his words punctuated by distant thunder. The lightning hadn’t reached them yet, but it was on its way.

An assembly line of sorts was created to go through the contents of the second cart and dry off what they could using a stack of towels from the first cart. Only Shaidi neglected to join the line as she dealt with the horses, first freeing Thumper and Potato from the lead cart, and then brushing and to some extent patting dry Spark and Soot as they were released. Danny didn’t get to dry himself off until after the second cart had been checked. He had used his damp hands to go through the soggy items, causing the flashlight attached to his wrist to throw erratic light patterns whenever he moved. Anything that needed to be kept dry was bundled up, but with that much rain falling that heavily, it was wise to go through it all and dry off the bottom of the cart to protect the wood.

The horses were free to walk around the space, but they grouped together against the far wall, beside the door that led into the store’s front, where they no doubt believed they were the farthest away from the storm.

Once everything was finally laid out to air dry, the flashlights were replaced with lanterns. Danny and Shaidi dried off as best they could with the now damp towels, and then laid their guns down and started stripping them. They wouldn’t be able to tell if the powder in their bullets had gotten wet and gone bad, but there was no point in letting any dampness sit in the pistols or rifles. Danny hoped the bullets were fine. Although the Black Box had the necessary equipment to make more, they didn’t produce a lot, and it wouldn’t do them any good if the bullets were needed before getting home.

With their tasks completed, and the storm roaring overhead with sharp cracks of lightning, there wasn’t much to do in the back of the furniture store. Bryce and Larson were playing cards, Jon had placed some pots outside to gather rainwater and was waiting by the door for them to fill, Lenny was lying on a couch, reading a book, while Shaidi plucked some horse-friendly food from their supplies and fed it to the huddling beasts. Danny drifted around for a bit, then helped Jon lift the door and snatch the pots. The water would be used for cooking, drinking, and mopping up horse urine if it got too bad. Once that was done, Larson and Bryce invited them over to play Hearts. Danny wasn’t particularly fond of the game, but that was probably because he wasn’t very good at it, unlike Bryce. Still, he sat down and joined them to pass the time.

Eventually, Danny found himself on a couch, sprawled out as much as he could be, his eyes closed and his mind drifting. He kept thinking of the bus and wondering what had happened it to. More importantly, he wondered where the people from the bus had gone.

***

The pressure in Danny’s bladder and the hunger gnawing at his stomach woke him up. There was a moment of blindness before his eyes picked up the light from a single lantern, burning low near Shaidi and Lenny’s couches. Everyone else was asleep. Danny had slept through dinner—no one had bothered to wake him—but near the light he spied a container that held his share. His bladder had to come first, however.

Easing up off the couch, Danny tiptoed his way over to the door that led into the front of the furniture store. It was quieter than the delivery door, and even though the room already smelled of horse shit, Danny preferred it to foul a room where he wasn’t sleeping and eating. As he registered the calmness of the horses, still huddled together by the door, he listened for the storm. The crash of thunder had moved on, and if it was still raining, it was no longer hard enough to be heard from inside. Tomorrow they could get moving with the sun, spending some time to cover the carts with tarps and themselves in rain ponchos if needed.

Danny had to feel around for the door handle; the small light was not bright enough. When he did find it and pulled the door open, there was nothing but an inky darkness beyond. With some form of clouds still overhead, there was no light to come in through the front windows, nothing to illuminate the space. A small shudder ran its way up Danny’s spine. The front had been barricaded when they first decided to make this a safe spot, but barricades weren’t invincible. The others would have checked out the space when they came to relieve themselves, but Danny still found his small hairs standing on end. Stepping part way through the door so that it blocked him from the others should they wake, he unzipped his pants. Normally, he’d relieve himself farther in, but whatever was making him jittery kept him close to the door. When he finished, Danny decided he needed to check out the space in order to make himself feel better. He reached for the flashlight on his wrist and clicked it on, revealing what he had feared and foolishly brushed off.

A man was standing just out of arm’s reach, so close that Danny could see the startled expression cross his face, just as, no doubt, one was crossing his own. The man was no one he knew, and as that thought fired through Danny’s brain, he yelled at the top of his lungs. As he tried to back through the door, the mysterious man rushed at him, grabbing his shirt and pulling him toward the store’s front, past his puddled urine. Shadows moved all around, not all of them cast by the erratic flashlight on Danny’s wrist. At the same moment he learned that the man was not alone, the man drove his knee into Danny’s stomach, knocking the wind out of him and cutting off his shout of alarm.

It was impossible to know what was happening in the back room as Danny fell to the floor, grappling with the interloper and throwing punches. Horse hooves clattered on the cement floor, people began yelling and screaming, their voices overlapping. There were no gunshots, but was that a good thing or bad? Danny could barely hear himself grunt when his assailant landed a blow against his ribs. He reached for his knife, but someone, not the intruder he was fighting with but someone else, kicked it out of his hand. The pain was sharp, like having a door slam on it, followed by a more crushing force, pinning down his entire arm. Danny heard the roll up door rise; was it his friends escaping, or more attackers getting in? Flailing and struggling against the weight of two men now, Danny tried to get a better look at his assailants, hoping to spy a weak spot. Before he could make out any detail however, a cloth bag was pulled over his head, blocking out what little light there was. Something, probably a fist, struck the side of Danny’s head, stunning him.