Survival Instinct: A Zombie Novel (55 page)

Misha was guessing that the person on the porch was male.  Probably a big muscular guy who worked in construction or something.  Most of the guys in Misha’s college class looked like that, so he knew the type.  His boots were big and heavy and clomped around.  Eventually he stopped pacing.  Misha didn’t know if that was a good thing or not.  He could, all too well, picture the individual suddenly moving silently, sneaking up on him while he thought he was standing still.  Misha turned his head to the gap in the boards and listened as intently as he could.  He could hear the person breathing, but it sounded odd, as if he was wearing a mask of some kind.  He then heard the screen door of the house open, and the person tried to turn the knob.  It must have been locked because a loud crack came next.  Misha assumed he had kicked the door down with his heavy boots.  It sounded like he entered the house.

Rifle scooted away from Misha toward the front of the porch.  He didn’t crawl out from under it though.  Misha rolled slowly and made his way next to the dog.  He peered out from under the wooden beams.  Judging by the amount of sunlight and shadow, he hadn’t been asleep for very long.  However, it was long enough for some visitors to have arrived.  On the street were three odd, big, white trucks flanked by a pair of covered military-type trucks.  A few men and women in gear similar to the military’s stood around the vehicles with large rifles at the ready.  Misha didn’t think they actually were military though.  Everything they wore was completely black and there were insignia on the shoulders.  The insignia looked familiar, even at a distance, but were too far to make out any real detail.  They certainly didn’t bear the
flag, which Misha thought all military uniforms were supposed to have.  Of course, even if the gear was military, it was their stance that really made Misha think otherwise.  They weren’t as crisp as real soldiers should have been; they had an almost relaxed stance.  Every one of them wore full face gas masks.

Above, the porch visitor returned with several loud clomps of his boots.  He went down the front porch steps and headed to the street.  Misha saw that he was indeed a big man.  He walked over to the vehicles and exchanged some words with the people there.  He was clearly one of them.  More people like them came out of other nearby houses and gathered with the rest in the street.  Misha noticed someone come out of the house that the old woman lived in.  Some soldiers, Misha didn’t know what else to call them, banged fists on the sides of the strange trucks.  The trucks responded by having their back doors opened from the inside.  Unidentifiable personnel in sterile, white suits hopped out of them and headed for the houses.  The suited people were all accompanied by at least one soldier.

As they came to the house whose porch Misha was hiding under, he shrank away, deeper into the shadows.  The big man returned and clomped up the stairs first, across the porch, and into the house.  Following after him was someone in a clean suit.  The shapelessness of the body and the shiny visor made it impossible for Misha to tell anything about the person.  He couldn’t even identify gender.  Gas masks Misha was more used to seeing, his father had even owned one, but the sterile suits were so strange and foreign to him.  It reminded him of spacemen in their spacesuits.

Once the two of them were inside, Misha looked across the street again.  Those that had gone into the old woman’s house came out, dragging her with them.  Even from under the porch across the street, he could hear her confused and angry rantings.  She clearly objected to what was going on, but no one seemed to listen to her.  Misha watched as she was shoved into the back of one of the white trucks.  A handful of people from other houses were also brought out.  Some of them objected and some of them went along quietly.  All of them were clearly scared, and all of them were put into the backs of the white trucks.

One man suddenly broke free of the arm that held his and made a run for it.  A single rifle was raised, and a single shot was fired.  The man’s head practically exploded off his shoulders.  Misha’s eyes just about bugged out of his own head at the sight of it.  The shooter was then lightly punched by one of the other soldiers and it looked like he was being scolded.  Only
scolded
for shooting an innocent man in the head, when he should have been arrested or even beaten.

Misha figured the rifle shot would bring more attackers.  He remembered the woman on the lawn.  She had only left when she heard the gunshot in the distance.  That shot was likely to bring more now.  Perhaps that’s why the gunman was being told off?  Either way, Misha didn’t like the idea of staying there any longer and crawled over to the side of the porch.  He watched the people on the street and waited until no one was looking in his general direction.  He then squeezed his way out and headed down the side of the house.

This house had a tall gate between the front yard and the back.  Pulling on a string unlocked the latch allowing Misha to push open the gate.  Rifle hurried past him.  As Misha was about to step through himself, another shot sounded out on the street.  He risked taking a few steps back to see.  This time it looked like somebody had shot someone running
at
the group.  Misha had been right about the noise bringing more.

As he turned to face the gate once more, Misha realized he was standing right next to a window.  He also realized that the large military-like man was standing on the other side of it and, beyond him, was the suited individual.  As Misha turned, so did the massive soldier and the suited person.  Through the glass, Misha’s eyes met that of the soldier’s, who looked back through the pair of plastic windows in his gas mask.

“Stay where you are!” the soldier shouted through the window.

Misha had no intention of doing such a thing.  He took off like a shot into the backyard.  The soldier started shouting something else, but Misha couldn’t make out what. 

When he got into the backyard, he saw that Rifle was pacing back and forth in front of the rear fence, whining.  There was no hole to crawl through this time, and the fence was very tall.  There was, however, a very large yet somewhat squat tree.  Misha ran to the tree and called Rifle over.  He hid behind the tree as the back door burst open, the solider shouting for him.  Misha still didn’t listen.  He heaved Rifle up off the ground and shoved the dog up onto the wide lower branches.  The dog seemed very uncomfortable up there, but he started to creep along the branch that almost went over the fence.

“What the hell?  A dog?” Misha heard the big man say, even through the muffling of the mask.

Misha climbed up into the tree himself and started following Rifle.

“Hey you!  Stop!” the man shouted.  “Stop or I’ll shoot!”

This just made Misha climb faster.  Rifle reached the furthest point he could before it got too steep for him.  Thankfully, it was far enough, and he was able to leap off the branch and over the fence.  Misha scrambled like a monkey to the same spot and didn’t hesitate at all before leaping.  It was a good thing he didn’t because something impacted the branch right after he jumped off it.  Something like a bullet.  Misha’s leg clipped the top of the fence, and he ended up tumbling over.  He managed to get his arms out in front of him to catch his fall.  Now would be the worst time to break something.

Without bothering to check the house for movement or sticking to the safety of bushes, Rifle and Misha ran around the side of this next house.  He could hear the soldier cursing loudly as he gave chase over the fence.  Misha needed to find somewhere he and Rifle could hide, but where?  The front yard of the house offered no solutions, so he kept running.  He didn’t think he would need to cross this street so he made a ninety degree turn and headed across the front lawns of the next houses.  The loud crack of a gunshot sounded behind him and a bullet thumped into the dirt near his heels.  The front yards were too open.  Misha quickly cut to the side of the next house, going toward the backyard.  Rifle suddenly stopped short though, ears laid flat, head down.  His lips kept rising in a silent snarl as he sniffed toward the yard.  Someone unpleasant was in that backyard.

* * *

The soldier was getting closer.  Misha was trapped between him, and one of the weirdoes.  He looked around the tight space frantically.  He saw only one option.  He patted Rifle to get the dog’s attention,
and then went up to the side of the house.  There were windows into the basement on this side that were down in window wells.  Misha hopped inside one and curled up as tightly as he could.  Rifle squeezed in next to him.  With the two of them in there, the space was really tight, but it was deep enough for them to be below the surface.  It only took a moment for the sound of the soldier’s heavy boots slapping the ground to fill the window well.  Misha held his breath again and stayed as still as a statue.  He didn’t need to though.  The soldier had no idea that he had stopped and charged straight into the backyard.  The next thing Misha heard was his startled cry, followed by a scream.  A few gunshots went off, but a sickening crunch ended both them and the screams.

Misha turned his head and looked into the house.  There were bars across the windows so he wouldn’t be able to get in, but he looked in anyway.  It was dark inside and hard to make things out, but something was moving.  Suddenly
, a face slapped up against the window right next to Misha’s.  It was a teenage boy probably not much younger than Misha himself.  He grabbed hold of the bars and was raging against them, trying to get out.  Rifle whined.

The dog needed a small boost to get out of the window well, but Misha was able to climb out easily on his own.  He looked toward the backyard and saw the soldier
laying there, his head turned toward him with what looked like a small camera attached to the side of his mask.  If that’s what it was, they now had a perfect image of Misha.  A girl that looked to be the same age as the boy in the basement was perched upon him, eating his chest and belly.  Misha immediately bent over and threw up all the pasta he had eaten.  The girl looked at him, her eyes considering him from out of her red stained face.  She then turned back to the soldier.  Misha didn’t even consider trying to get the soldier’s gun.  He made his way back toward the front of the house on shaky legs, his stomach still rolling, and his head still reeling.  Once he reached the front of the house, he leaned against its brick wall and took several large gulps of air.  Rifle looked up at him, his ears flat with concern.

“I’m all right, buddy.”  Misha patted the shepherd’s head.  “This day just isn’t going how I expected it to is all.”

He took another steadying breath and looked around.  They were only about a block away from the street they were trying to get to.  They would have to move fast too.  Not only would the soldier’s gunshots bring more weirdoes, but also he, or the suited person, had probably called for backup, which would be on its way.  Misha hurried along, being a little bolder about being visible because of the girl.  He wanted to get far away from her before she decided he
was
worth chasing down.  Or before more of those phoney military men showed up.  The suited individual had probably told them what he looked like.  Misha wondered what would happen to the old woman.

As Misha approached the house on the corner of an intersection, he became extremely cautious.  Something didn’t feel right.  Even Rifle was sniffing at the air, ears flipping between flattened and alert.  He didn’t whine or growl though.  Misha checked up and down the street but he didn’t see anything hostile.  All was very still.  He crouched low and ran toward a car parked on the street.  Once he reached it and hid next to it, he searched the area again.  There was nothing to indicate any danger, but the hairs on the back of Misha’s neck stood on end.

He sat next to the car for a long time, but without anything to tell him what he was afraid of, he finally decided it was all in his head and dashed across the street.  Rifle trotted quickly behind him, sticking close to his heels.  His ears were kept flat and his head was kept low.

Halfway up the lawn of the next house, a woman’s shriek ripped through the neighbourhood.  Misha wheeled around and saw a middle-aged woman drop out of a tree from a nearby yard.  Misha had never thought to be wary of the trees.  At the same moment, the front window of the house they were heading to exploded outward as a great big fat man in a pair of too small shorts and a too small undershirt charged through it.  Both he and the middle-aged woman spotted Misha and Rifle and started running at them, the woman shrieking and howling while the man was totally silent.

Misha and Rifle both took off running at top speeds, but in different directions.  It was just Misha’s luck that the fat man ran after the dog while he got the howler.  He thought he could outrun the fat man, but the woman looked quick.  He didn’t bother looking over his shoulder to see just how quick.  His feet didn’t appreciate the extra abuse that running inflicted on them, but they would have to suck it up.  A house up ahead separated its lawn from the one next door using a tall, thick line of bushes.  Misha didn’t like the idea of running around it when he couldn’t see anything on the other side, so he cut down toward the backyards again.  Although the last backyard hadn’t held anything pleasant.

As he passed the back corner of the house, he dared a quick look over his shoulder.  The woman was right on his heels.  Misha faced forward again and only had time for a quick gasp before he was launched into space.

He was in the air for at least a second before the pool water rushed up to meet him with a great splash.  As his head went under, he heard the second splash through the vibrations in the water.  A hand brushed over his leg but didn’t manage to grab hold.  Misha’s head broke the surface and he splashed his way toward the pool’s edge.  He looked behind him as he swam and saw that the woman had sunk to the bottom of the pool like a stone.  She thrashed around down there at the deepest part, trying to reach up to Misha, but she had zero co-ordination and went nowhere.