Survival Instinct: A Zombie Novel (32 page)

“What are you looking at?” Tobias whispered.

“Our friend on the bus.”  Cillian pointed.

Tobias walked over next to him and looked out the side of the tube as well.  The man on the bus was still going, but he was flagging badly.  More and more zombies were making it up on the bus and he was being bitten a lot.  His legs were shredded in such a way that it was impossible to tell what was torn pants and what was torn flesh.  Tobias lifted up the camera and started filming again.  They stood there watching until the man fell.  A swarm had made it up on the bus and buried him under its mass.  When it dispersed and cleared off the bus, the man was gone.  They had no way of knowing if he had become one of them or if he’d just been dragged off.  Tobias stopped recording and turned around.  He looked out the other side of the tunnel.  The street was in ruins all along it, cars piled everywhere into wrecks.  There were a lot more car crashes here than simply abandoned vehicles.  Some fires were starting as well.  He spotted a few people moving among them and couldn’t tell if they were zombies or not.  He filmed a few of them anyway until Cillian tapped him on the shoulder.

“What?”  Tobias turned to him.

Cillian just pointed up.  Tobias looked and saw one of the other tunnels on the fourth floor, the one nearest theirs.  There was a zombie child pressed up against the glass, smearing its bloody face and hands against the wide window.  Tobias filmed him too.  He tried very hard not to think of him as a child and had to put the viewfinder against his eye to do it.  For some things, he wasn’t ready to give up the detachment it provided.

Eventually though, he did put down the camera, but he turned away first.  “We should keep moving.”

Cillian just nodded and they walked to the other end of the tunnel.  This side was also covered in a tarp and Cillian poked his head through first.

“Clear,” he whispered and then crossed to the other side.

Other than the tarp and the little ‘sorry for the mess’ signs, there weren’t any construction-related things over there.  Although the Isaac buildings were twins on the outside, they weren’t on the inside.  They hadn’t originally been built to be a super mall, but somehow that’s what they had become.  They were now doing a lot of interior reconstructing to make them more mall-like.  Isaac Two had been remodelled first, and now it was Isaac One’s turn.  Where Cillian and Tobias now stood was an open space with a cell phone kiosk and a map of the mall.  To one side of the space was an electronics store and to the other was some sort of teen’s clothing store.  The lighting for the space came from some impressive
windows around the walkway and eco friendly lightbulbs hidden in the ceiling.  Light also came from a wide open space ahead.  One of the biggest changes being made was a great big gaping hole cut through all the floors so that windows in the roof let light down through the whole building.  Tobias had seen it once before, and it was pretty impressive from the fifth floor, probably even more so from the tenth.  They walked over to the railing surrounding the hole.

Down below were hundreds of people, all of them zombies.

* * *

“I guess we found the shoppers,” Cillian grumbled
,  “why did they all mass here?”

“There used to be a petting zoo for little kids there, right next to a pet shop,” Tobias grimaced.

Cillian frowned.  “So not even animals are safe.  Surely they would have devoured them by now, right?  So why are they still here?”

“Nothing has drawn their attention away?”  Tobias shrugged
,  “how should I know?”

“Can you name three zombie movies?”

“Uh,
Dawn of the Dead
,
28 Days Later
, and
Zombieland
.”  Tobias named the three that popped into his head first, but he didn’t understand why Cillian had asked.

“See?  You’ve seen more zombie movies than
I have.  Unless there’s some documentary or handbook I don’t know about, that’s all we really have to go on,” Cillian shrugged.  “So, how are we supposed to get outside, past that?”

Tobias was greatly unsettled that their only knowledge came from films.  Having seen production crews work, he knew all too well that their facts could be completely and even deliberately fudged to add drama.  Again: zombies.  The people who made those movies didn’t have a guide either and just made stuff up as they went.  Tobias filmed the hoard while the two of them thought of a way past this dilemma.  Neither of them wanted to suggest doubling back.

“Maybe there’s a way to distract them?” Tobias offered.

“How?”  Million dollar question.

Tobias thought some more and started looking around.  “Do you think they’d come if we broke one of these windows?”

“I don’t know, maybe.”  Cillian turned around and looked at the windows as well.  “It’s worth a shot I guess.”

“There’s a staircase on this side of the mall that they’re likely to use, but there’s one on the other end as well that we can use to get down.”

“Let’s go up first.”  Cillian turned and looked up the hole.  “I want to have as many stairs between us and them as possible when we ring the bell and run for our lives.”

“All right.  We’ll go to the fifth floor then.  Come on.”  Tobias led the way to the next staircase.

Tobias learned he liked the enclosed stairs.  These didn’t have construction barriers around them and were open to the massive space.
Only a waist high concrete barrier topped with a hand railing surrounded them.  Tobias and Cillian crawled up the stairs, side by side, staying lower than the barrier.

“I wish they built these higher,” Cillian said of the barriers in the merest of whispers.

“Just be glad they didn’t go with the modern style of Plexiglas,” Tobias whispered back.

They got to the fourth floor and, remembering the boy in the walkway, hurried around to the next set of steps.  They began crawling up again, trying not to let their weapons or the camera drag or click.

“I take it you come here often?” Cillian mumbled halfway up the next flight.

“Not that often,
only whenever I need to do some serious clothes or gift shopping,” Tobias told him.  “This place is so big you can literally find anything.”

“Does it have a movie theatre?”

“That was in the other building,” Tobias grinned.  The common conversation held in whispers and in such strange circumstances somewhat amused him.

“Ever take a girl there on a hot date?” Cillian also grinned.

“A few times, yeah.”

“Same girl or different ones?”

“Different ones.”

“You dog.”

Tobias almost wanted to laugh but easily held it in.  “You have a girl?”

“I did,” Cillian sighed
,  “we went our separate ways awhile ago.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”  Tobias meant it.

“It was for the best.  Especially if it means she’s not here in the city right now.”

Tobias nodded his agreement.  He would give anything to be out of the city at this moment.  To be back in British Columbia, where he grew up, and up on some high and empty mountain seemed like heaven. 
Instead, they were in hell.

They reached the top of the stairs again.  Once
more, they crawled out onto the floor on their bellies, like alligators, and looked around.

“Clear,” Tobias whispered.

“Clear here too.”  Cillian got up on his feet.

Tobias followed suit.  “So how are we doing this?”

“That glass is going to be pretty tough.”  Cillian looked over at it.  “Give me the axe and I’ll smash it out.  You stay near the railing and yell when or if they start heading up.”

Tobias looked at the axe in his hands.

“I’ll give it back,” Cillian rolled his eyes.  “It’s just that the axe has a better chance of smashing through the glass.”

“Why don’t I break it then?” Tobias suggested.  Being an axe murderer wasn’t the best skill to have under normal circumstances, but these were way beyond normal.  He wasn’t quite ready to give up the axe.

“First, I’m betting I’m stronger than you.”  Tobias frowned even though he was probably right.  “Second, I’m not going to get torn to bits by flying glass.”  Cillian held out his arms to remind Tobias of all the firefighter gear he had on.

“Fine.”  Tobias reluctantly held out the axe.

Cillian took it and handed him the crowbar.  “Now go watch.  We’re going to need to run fast and you gotta lead the way.”

Tobias nodded and walked over to the railing.  They were so far down and yet still way too close.  Even that high up, the stink coming off them was something fierce, like every imaginable human odour and then some.  Tobias looked back and watched Cillian walk over to the big window.  When he got there
, Cillian turned and looked at him, meeting his eyes.  He was scared but he wasn’t going to let that stop him.  Tobias gave him a thumbs up.  Cillian hoisted the axe up and took a batter’s stance just like Tobias had with the woman.  He then lowered the visor of his helmet.  Cillian screamed at the top of his lungs and swung the axe as hard as he could.

The axe bounced off the shatter-resistant window leaving only a small scratch.  Either way, several screams and roars from below answered Cillian’s.  Tobias looked down and saw the runners already hitting the stairs.

“Run!” Tobias screamed as he took off down through the mall.

He glanced back once, quickly, over his shoulder to make sure the heavy boot falls he was hearing behind him were Cillian’s.  They were.  He then took another quick glance at the stairwell.  A flood was rushing up it.  Several runners were ahead, but others were pretty much pushing the walkers along at a hurried pace.  Some took the corners too eagerly and ended up throwing themselves over the sides, only to get back up and start up the stairs again.  Some were almost near the top already, holy hell.

Tobias looked ahead again.  A little girl made her way out of the Disney store.  She was wearing a pink princess dress.  She looked at Tobias and held out her arms as if she wanted him to pick her up.  Both her hands were gone.  She shrieked.  Tobias held the crowbar out in one hand, and as he ran past her, he hit her square in the side of the head.  She went down hard and he didn’t bother looking back to see if she got up again.

He was nearing both the end of the mall, and his ability to keep running.  As he reached the far end, he saw their way down.  Instead of stairs, this side had criss-crossing escalators and a pair of elevators.  The glass sides let Tobias know that one elevator was at the bottom and would be useless and the other had several zombies standing around in it.  Escalators it was.

When he reached the first one, he slowed down to turn into it, but then realized it was an up escalator and it was still running.  He ran past it and turned around the edge of the great gapping hole.

“What are you doing?” Cillian yelled at him.

“It’s the up escalator!” Tobias yelled back.  “Other side is down!”

Cillian was further back than he thought.  The firefighter gear was weighing him down.  Thankfully, he was near one of the several small bridges that crossed the gap and was able to take that as a short cut.

Tobias rounded the corner and nearly wiped out.  His old and well-worn sneakers didn’t have the best grip.  He ran to the other side and made it to the down escalator.  Just as he reached it, so did Cillian, and they started rushing down one right behind the other.  The downward movement of the escalator and just the fact that they were going down, allowed them to pick up some of the speed they had lost from exhaustion.  As they reached the halfway mark, the faster zombies reached the top on both sides.  Some of them rushed down after them, but others jumped over the railings.  One hit the escalator’s railing right in front of Cillian and went spilling over the side.  Another missed completely.  Tobias wished they all did this but he didn’t have such luck.  One landed on the stairs in front of Cillian.  Cillian didn’t hesitate and swung the axe right into its face.  It went down and Cillian pulled out the axe in one swift movement, the back swing nearly taking out Tobias.  One sounded right behind Tobias.  He turned and caught it with the crowbar.  It pitched to one side and flew over the edge.  They reached the bottom of the escalator and quickly turned to head down the next one.

More zombies tried to jump down, but now the other up escalator was safely above the running men.  Most of the zombies missed or landed on the rails where they could be batted off.  The worry was from those on Tobias’s ass.

One of them leaped onto his back.

“Cillian!” Tobias screamed as he was pitched forward into the firefighter’s back.

Cillian lost his footing and they all went tumbling down the stairs.  Tobias felt a sharp pain in his shoulder.  He prayed he hadn’t been bitten.  Please don’t let it have been a bite.

They crashed at the bottom of the escalator.  Cillian got to his feet quickly and dragged Tobias up.

“Where is it?” Tobias panicked about the zombie that jumped him.

“It fell off the side, come on.”  Cillian dragged him along.  He was heading away from the escalators.  He threw Tobias into the nearest store and then quickly turned and dragged down the big security fence.  Just as it clacked to the bottom, the zombies on their butt hit it, arms reaching through, teeth snapping.