Survival Instinct: A Zombie Novel (73 page)

“I’m not sure,” Mathias shook his head.  “I’m not sure I like the look of that guy.  The way he’s holding that rifle makes him look like he intends to use it.”

“We hold our rifles the same way when we’re being cautious,” Bishop pointed out.

“Yeah, when we’re being cautious about the presence of zombies.  This guy showed up not long after we were being pretty damn loud.  Odds are, he showed up here knowing there would be people,” Mathias counter-pointed.

“He also didn’t look like he had any supplies with him.”  LeBlanc had apparently been studying him even more closely than Mathias had.  “Now it’s possible he left them in the woods for fear of someone stealing them, but that would also mean that the idea of theft has popped into his head, at least once.”

“You think he wants to rob us?” Bishop gave him a disbelieving look.

“Yeah, actually, I do,” LeBlanc told her.

“There’s three of us and one of him.  He’d be stupid to try,” Bishop gripped her rifle tighter.

“We don’t know that there’s only one of him,” Mathias cautioned.  “There could easily be more in hiding.”

“You guys are paranoid,” Bishop sighed and started to get to her feet.

Mathias pulled her back down before she got high enough to be seen.  “Says the girl with a plan for every disaster she can think of.”

“So what do you want to do?  Belly crawl along the divider until you think we’re far enough away?”  Bishop threw up her hands.  Well, not quite, because she couldn’t put them up very high without having them go over the barrier.

“We’re just going to wait a few minutes.”  Mathias placed a hand on her shoulder, trying to calm her.  He was all for keeping moving forward, but he also knew he would be no good to Danny if he were dead.  He recalled his haste earlier that nearly got him run over.  Since then, he swore to himself that he would be more careful.

“And what are we going to do then?  What if he doesn’t walk away?” Bishop crossed her arms in front of her.

“I actually don’t think he will leave.”  Mathias shifted into a more comfortable position.  “But I happen to know that a few minutes’ walk behind us, there’s a man walking down that side of the highway.”

“So?”  Mathias actually saw his idea click in Bishop’s head.  “Wait, you want to use him as bait?  To see what the guy in the woods will do?”

“You got it, sister.”  LeBlanc also made himself more comfortable.  Mathias rarely ever needed to tell him what he was thinking.  They usually came up with the same plans at the same time.

“And what if he
does
get robbed?”  Bishop’s helpful doctor nature came through again.

Mathias was thinking he liked her better when they first met and she remained a cold clinical fish.  “If it’s just the one guy, or even two or three, we’ll help out the other traveller.  If it’s more than that, or if the guy is just looking to shoot some people…  Well then, yeah, we’re probably going to have to belly crawl.”

Bishop was silent for a moment, considering.  She then settled herself like LeBlanc and Mathias had.

“This is a stupid plan,” she muttered.

“Agreed, but it’s the best one we’ve got.”  Mathias thought about eating some more, but then remembered he had to ration for an unknown amount of time.  Rationing sucked.

Bishop, on the other hand, took out some sort of squeeze food and started eating it.  It looked like toothpaste the colour of peanut butter.  It looked gross.  LeBlanc hadn’t eaten anything since they left Keystone.

“Aren’t you hungry?” Mathias asked LeBlanc over Bishop’s head.

“No,” LeBlanc shook his head and gave Mathias a confused look.  “Should I be?”

“Probably.  You haven’t eaten since Keystone,” Mathias reminded him.

“Actually, I ate at Bishop’s house,” LeBlanc grinned.

“What?” Bishop frowned at him.

“Yeah, while I was bringing those boxes to the garage, I totally raided your fridge.  You had some left-over pizza in there; it was extremely delicious.”  LeBlanc patted his stomach.

“And you didn’t save any for me?” Mathias put on an exaggerated sad face.

“Hell no.  When did you ever save me some cold pizza?  That’s right, never,” LeBlanc gave him a mock smile in return.

“That’s ’cause I could only eat pizza when I went to see Danny, and there is no way I’d be able to smuggle that in,” he explained.

“Sure you could,” LeBlanc put on his shark grin.  “You’d just have to
…”

“Stop there.”  Bishop put her hand up in front of LeBlanc’s face.  “I don’t know where you’re going with that, and I really don’t want to know.”

When Bishop removed her hand, it revealed that LeBlanc’s grin had gown wider, but he stayed silent.

* * *

The trio sat in silence for some time.  The only sound was the wind in the trees.  They had no idea if the man with the gun was still standing in the woods.  He could have easily walked off while they were whispering, and none of them would have noticed.  Mathias hated waiting, but he constantly reminded himself of the importance of it.  Although he would have loved to have been up and doing something, he knew that was how guys got shot.  Hell, it might have been why most of his family had bitten the bullet already.  Some predisposition to charge into the fray half-cocked.  He had gone through a reckless phase himself.  When he was in the army, his whole unit had been reckless.  It wasn’t until one of them, another kid named Kestrel, got shot through the eye while he was right next to Mathias, did he realize the insanity.  When he realized that, he also realized his commander was a total bat shit dick wad.  He had let him know it, too.

His commander had let it slide the first time, and the second, because the rest of the guys in the unit liked Mathias, but when Mathias punched him, full force, on the third instance, he got dishonourably discharged.  He didn’t care though, he had kind of been hoping for it.

He drifted around after that, not being able to hold down a job for very long, his family dropping like flies.  There were a lot of funerals.  His mother died giving birth to Danny while he was still in the army.  She had been too old to have another child, but she insisted on bringing him into this world.  Not long after, it had been Mathias’s father, a formerly high-ranking soldier who let himself waste away in a drunken stupor until he wrapped his car around a tree.  Mathias’s older brother and another younger brother were both killed in action: soldiers like he had been.  His sister, only a year younger than him, had been raising Danny on her own.  She was shot when she placed herself between a group of kids and a man robbing the convenience store.  Aunts, uncles, and cousins all died off or vanished without a trace throughout Mathias’s entire life.  When it ended up being just him and Danny, he freaked.  He never told Danny, but he had seriously considered just dumping the kid and bugging out.  He couldn’t raise his brother like he was supposed to, not like his sister had, no way.  Keystone had found him, though.  They approached him one night, out of the blue, with a job offer.  It seemed almost too good to be true.

He worked for them doing various private security jobs.  At first, low clearance stuff, so that he and Danny still lived together and saw each other all the time.  Then they had to move into the first place, which was this creepily happy town full of Keystone employees and their families.  It was the kind of place that was going to turn into its own version of Leighton one day.  Neither of the Cole brothers had liked it there very much.  Eventually Mathias got offered a position in a high security facility.  That was when the foster family thing had started for Danny.  They had talked it over a lot, the two of them. 
First, it was just five days a week, weekends off to spend together.  Then it was every other week.  Then once a month.  Then, finally, how things had been for the past year.

“I hear something,” Bishop interrupted Mathias’s reminiscing, bringing him back into the present.

All three of them listened intently.  It was the sound of shuffling feet walking down the highway.  The man that had been trailing behind them had finally caught up.  They practically held their collective breath as he approached.

Finally,
a voice spoke up.

“Hey, you!”  It sounded like it came from the woods.  The man was still there.

The scuffling steps stopped.

“What you got in that bag?”  The voice was gruff, harsh, like there were pebbles in his throat grinding together.

“Noth… Nothing,” the walking man stuttered.

“It don’t look like nothing.  Looks kind of heavy.”  The gruff voice had moved closer.

“It’s just so…so… some photo albums.  Pi… pi… pictures of my family.”  The walking man’s voice had also gotten closer, stepping away from the woods.

“Pi… pi… pictures?” the woodsman mocked.  “Let me see ‘em.”

“No,” the walker said firmly.

“Let me see ‘em or I’ll blow your head off,” the woodsman got angry.

A gunshot sounded, loud and clear.  Before Mathias could put a restraining hand on her, Bishop sprang to her feet, rifle at the ready.  Mathias grabbed a strap from her backpack that was hanging near her hip and pulled hard.  She toppled sideways as a bullet ripped past her ear.  She fell into his lap.

“Don’t shoot!” LeBlanc yelled in their defence.  “We’re not here to hurt anyone!  Don’t shoot!”

LeBlanc raised his hands above the barrier, palms spread wide.  He slowly stood up, not holding his gun, but not hiding it either, as it hung from its strap off his elbow.  He glanced down at Bishop and Mathias and gestured for them to stand.  Bishop scrambled off Mathias.  Mathias didn’t say anything, but in her attempt to get up, Bishop had shoved on the bruise the sniper bullet had made earlier.  He got to his own feet, trying to raise his hands the same way LeBlanc and Bishop were.  It was painful to raise his left arm, but he did it with only one wince.  Bishop gave him a quick side glance, scrutinizing his face.  He tried to play it cool, but it was obvious she knew she had hurt him.

When Mathias stopped thinking about his pain, he was surprised to see the walker was still standing and the woodsman lay dead on the ground.  The walker was pointing a huge revolver at them, steady as a rock.

“All I have are my fffffffamily pipipictures.”  The man’s stutter must have been something he had always dealt with because the rest of him appeared perfectly calm.  The woodsman had probably made the mistake of thinking it was fear.

“And you can keep them,” LeBlanc spoke calmly.  “We don’t need, or want, anything from you.  We were hiding from that guy in the woods.  We weren’t sure if there were more of them or not.  It seems there aren’t, and we’d like to go on our way now if you don’t mind.”

“You used me as bait.”  Mathias wondered if the stutter had disappeared briefly out of anger, because his voice carried no emotion.

“We did, and for that, I apologise,” LeBlanc continued to speak calmly.  “We didn’t have much of a choice without putting ourselves in danger.  It was selfish, but these seem to be selfish times we’re in.”

The man nodded.  He agreed with LeBlanc’s statement.  That was good.  It meant he was a little less likely to shoot them.  Or, at least, Mathias hoped so.  It could also mean he was
more
likely to shoot them.

“Can you put your gun down, please?”  LeBlanc gestured to the man’s hand with his head, keeping his arms up and hands open.

The man looked at the revolver he held, then lowered it to his side.

“Thank you,” Bishop sighed, lowering her arms.  “Do you need someone to travel with for awhile?  In case he’s not the only one waiting along the side of the road?”

The man shook his head.  “I’m d… d… dying.”  He pulled down the collar of his shirt so that they could see a partly healed but still quite nasty wound on his chest.  “Bbbbbit.”

Bishop nodded.

“Where are you heading then?” Mathias wondered.  It now seemed a lot more believable, and even sensible, that he was only carrying family photos.

“Ffffamily cabin.  Best years of my lllllife.”  A look of sadness and pain washed across the man’s features briefly before returning to its neutral state.  “Proposed to my wi… wife there.”

“What happened to her?” Mathias realized how stupid the question was the moment it left his lips.  Bishop also noticed and gave him a light kick in the shin for it.

“Home.”  The man gestured with his head toward the city.  “With the ch… chi… ch… kids.  Wouldn’t let myself inffffect them too.”

“You’re a very brave and noble man,” Mathias told him.  He didn’t know what he would do if he found Danny, but also got infected.  Would he be able just to walk away?

The man gave him a weak smile and a brief nod.  It was probably easier for him than to say thank you.

“We should get going.”  LeBlanc hopped over the barrier and took a few steps forward.  He looked like he was going to shake the man’s hand but stopped out of arm’s reach.  “It was nice meeting you sir.  Thank you for not shooting us.”

“I’ll wait a mmmmoment.  Let you get ahead a sssss… safe distance.”  The man waved them on.

“Thank you,” Bishop smiled at him then turned and started walking.  LeBlanc began following after her.

Mathias took a few steps in that direction as well, but then turned to the man.