Defensive Instinct (Survival Instinct Book 4) (10 page)

When Nessie awoke that morning, her pop bottle light was only a faint glow, letting her know just how early it was. She remembered the days when she could sleep past noon, but they were long ago and buried in memory. There was no sense in trying to fall back asleep now; years of early mornings had taught her it would be impossible. At least she wouldn’t have to worry about her bladder for a little while, as she had used the potty in her container roughly an hour ago.

Easing herself up, Nessie swung her legs over the side of her bed and allowed gravity to help her get to her feet, which slid into a pair of battered slippers. With her hand wrapped around the familiar carving of a bear on the head of her cane, she made her way over to her dresser and got dressed. From there, her slippers now replaced by the rubber wading boots she always wore, she went to the front of her room and turned on the little electric kettle. After a series of trades, she had managed to secure herself a solar panel, a big, high-end one that let her make her morning tea provided she didn’t run anything else at the same time. While the kettle was heating up, Nessie removed the iron bar from the brackets that kept her doors closed and swung them open. She breathed deeply the fresh morning air, enjoying the scent of the sea. In her younger days, she had dreamed of living by the ocean, but never had she imagined it in quite this way.

The influx of light drew a rattling from behind her. Turning around, Nessie saw her parrot waiting for her, hanging on to the door of her large, makeshift cage.

“Polly want a cracker?” she asked.

“Fuck Polly,”
the parrot gave his usual reply.
“I’m a dragon.”
He then imitated the T-rex roar from
Jurassic Park
, which Nessie had played for him several times.
“Dragon. Dragon.”

“That’s my boy,” Nessie cooed at him. She walked over to the cage and opened the door, letting Dragon side step his way up her sleeve and to her shoulder. He could fly, his wings hadn’t been clipped, but being raised in a small apartment never gave him much room and so he had learned to walk and climb more often, with only an occasional flutter from one spot to another.

As the water in the kettle began to boil, Dragon copied the sound. This kettle didn’t have a screaming whistle on it, but the one she used to have did and if she let it boil too long, Dragon would whistle for it.

As she sat down and steeped her tea, Dragon moved to his customary spot near the table edge that butted up against a wardrobe. He poked a tin kept there, trying to get it open on his own. When he couldn’t get the catch to release, he turned to Nessie.

“Pellets?”
he asked.
“Dragon wants pellets?”

“Ask nicely.”

“Please, pellets?”
He then rumbled like a car for no reason.

Nessie picked up the tin, with Dragon gently nibbling her hand in anticipation. She opened it carefully, making sure to hide the trick of the latch from Dragon’s watchful eyes. Once the lid was off, she took out a few pellets and placed them in Dragon’s bowl. They’d hold him over until breakfast.

“I’m going for a walk to the bathroom,” Nessie told her parrot.

He made the sound of a toilet flushing.

“You’ve been good lately so I’m letting you stay out of your cage, but I’m closing the container doors.”

“Darkness,”
he then laughed maniacally, yet with the bottle light it wouldn’t be dark.

Nessie got up and exited the container, leaving Dragon preoccupied with his pellets.

“See you later,”
he croaked as the doors were swung shut.

With her cane and a mug of tea carefully held in one hand and her nighttime potty in the other, Nessie made her way toward the toilets. It was embarrassing having to carry the children’s potty, especially with its
Dora
pictures, but her bladder, and the limited number of commodes the scavengers brought back, didn’t give her much choice. Not many people were up at this hour, mostly just the wall guards, but she spotted Misha on his daily run. He wasn’t hard to miss with that pack of dogs trailing behind him. Nessie used to run, but now her aching joints could only manage a swift hobble or maybe a light jog for a short period of time if the situation demanded it. Most days she could get along just fine without the cane, but she always had it with her anyway. Not only was it useful on the days the arthritis in her right knee flared up, but it was practical in this age of walking corpses. With a twist of the bear-shaped handle, she could unlatch it from the ebony shaft, allowing her to draw forth the metal blade within. When her knee had started to go bad, her niece had bought her the cane knowing Nessie would think it was cool. She had not only been right, but the sword within had saved her life on a few occasions. Nessie wished she could have returned the favour, but by the time she and Dragon reached her niece’s home, the entire family was either dead or gone. That’s where Marble Keystone had eventually found her, sitting on her niece’s bed and watching an electronic frame as it ran through a hodgepodge of photos.

The outhouses came into sight along the water’s edge. Nessie had since learned to trust them, but when they were first completed she wasn’t so sure. Just because a man said he was an engineer didn’t mean he knew shit about building a shitter. Turned out that this man did.

Along the river’s edge, a string of wooden structures had been bolted into the concrete, with guy-wires providing extra hold from their upper edges. While half of each structure was on solid ground, the back half hung out over the water. Nessie made her way into the box she thought had the best seat, her tea mug now empty. Placing the mug on a small shelf within and leaning her cane against the wall, Nessie emptied the potty through the opening, and then dropped her drawers and placed her bare fanny on the seat. It was just like using an outhouse, except instead of their waste accumulating in a reeking pile, it dropped into the salt water river, which carried it out into the large bay and then the sea.

The toilet paper supply was getting low again. Nessie prayed that those out scavenging found a whole lot to bring back. They had run out of the stuff a few times before, and it wasn’t fun using a rag that you then had to wash by hand.

The doctors said that Nessie had a strong bladder for her age, but she wasn’t so sure she believed them based on how often she found herself emptying it. Once done, she then carried the used toilet paper back out of the box with her and deposited it through the flap in a large, plastic bin. Later, it would become compost. With that done, Nessie turned to the large basin of salt water kept next to the bin and washed her hands. This batch of soap wasn’t very well made and caused her hands to itch. She used the same water to rinse her mug and potty, dumping it back into the river when she was done with it.

Cleaned up and ready to go to breakfast, Nessie first took a moment’s pause. Looking around the container yard, she could see more and more people waking up and opening their doors. A small group of women were heading toward the toilets, while a few men made for a space next to them, preferring simply to pee out in the open. After a handful of good mornings were exchanged with these relatively early risers, Nessie headed back to her home to get Dragon, and to shove the potty back into its hiding space under the edge of her bed.

“Bright light! Bright light!”
Dragon greeted her as the door was opened, repeating a line from a movie that Nessie enjoyed. She had taught Dragon to say a lot of useless things, but they were entertaining every now and again, especially when other people weren’t expecting them.

Once the bird was in his customary place on her shoulder, the mug returned to its place beside the kettle, Nessie headed back out, leaving her container doors wide open. She wasn’t afraid of anyone stealing anything: why would they? There wasn’t much she had that others didn’t or couldn’t get with ease, except for maybe the solar panel, but it would be pretty obvious if someone took that. Besides, she left a power bar hooked up to it at the edge of her container, free for anyone to use. It was obvious to anyone looking in that she wasn’t home, but a cardboard sign hanging from the bracket on the inner side of her door confirmed it with one word: out.

Inside the community centre building, the cooking of breakfast had only just begun. That was all right: Nessie was used to waiting. She took up her usual seat. Dragon fluttered over to the back of the one next to her, his talons having left several scratches and pressure marks in the plastic over the years they had been there. On the board, Nessie’s name was listed under its customary task: clothing repair. While she waited, she took the battered notebook out of her pocket and wrote in it. Pages upon pages were filled with her cramped, tiny handwriting. Virtually her entire life had been recorded in point form by her own hand ever since she learned to put words to paper. Her house had been filled with all sorts of notebooks, every one dense with her written words. She often wondered if those notebooks and journals still existed, jammed together in boxes in the basement storage unit of her building, with more recent ones stuffed into the cupboard of her nightstand. How odd they must be for someone else to find. While waiting for breakfast, Nessie summed up the previous night’s dreams and her morning activities, including things that Dragon had said. There had been a few occasions when he managed to surprise her with words and sounds that she hadn’t taught him. Most of those were later forgotten when she didn’t reinforce them.

“Good morning, Nessie,” Bill greeted her as he sat down. “Morning, Dragon.”

“Morning, Bill,”
Dragon croaked.

“Good morning, Bill,” Nessie said at nearly the same time, not looking up from her writing.

Bill grinned at the bird, patiently waiting for Nessie to complete her writing. “You are one ugly bird,” Bill told the grey parrot.

Dragon ruffled his feathers as if he knew what that meant. Maybe he did. Nessie finished with her writing, and then the book disappeared from the table and into one of the large pockets of her coat. Even in Texas she found herself cold half the time and was almost always wearing her faded blue jacket with its large pockets and oversized hood. The pockets and hood were great, but she especially loved that the collar zipped up all the way to cover her neck.

“I saw Dr. Riley outside just before coming in here,” Bill said.

“Oh? And what did she have to say?”

“She’s planning on taking a trip to the Black Box to run some tests. Wants me to go with her.”

“You better go then.”

“I suppose if the doc says I should, then I guess I should.”

“You saying you don’t want to? Don’t want to sit around in comfort with the electricity on, running water all the time, and where you don’t have to worry about what the weather is like before you go anywhere?”

Bill smiled at her, realizing that Nessie was teasing him. “We came out here for a reason. Besides, that’s not why I’m not keen on going.”

Nessie waited silently for him to say more.

“I’m not sure I want to know what’s wrong with me.”

Nessie nodded, as she understood completely. If you were dying, it might be better not to know.

“Looks like breakfast is ready. Shall we?” Bill rose from his seat and held out a hand to Nessie.

She accepted the unneeded assistance to her feet, holding out her arm for Dragon to crawl up the coat’s sleeve. Another advantage of the jacket was that it was made of a tough fabric that could withstand the abuse from Dragon’s talons, although it still had to be repaired on occasion.

As Nessie and Bill stood in line together, the rest of their breakfast mates found them. They customarily sat at one of the larger tables, and while most of their group consisted of older folks like Nessie and Bill, there were some from the younger generations as well. Conversations were always light and entertaining once they were all together, Bill not mentioning to the others what he had told Nessie.

While Nessie ate, adding bits to the conversation every now and again, she picked out pieces of her meal and gave them to Dragon. He gobbled up each morsel gratefully, occasionally even squawking a thank you. All the while, Nessie thought about what it might be like to know you were going to die soon. The way the whole world was now, living until a natural death of old age was a luxury most people wouldn’t have.

The sewing machine whirred as Nessie worked the foot pedal. It was the only thing in her container that she had hooked up to the solar panel beside the kettle and power bar. Even then, on darker days or when the solar charged battery ran out, it could be worked by turning a hand crank. She had been at it for a while when she noticed a shadow near her door. The cardboard sign was turned around, now reading ‘in,’ and she had been receiving visitors all day. People who had clothing that needed mending were always stopping by, adding to her pile of work.

“Don’t just linger, come in if you’d like,” Nessie called out without looking up after the shadow hadn’t moved for a while.

There was a hesitant shuffling, and then the shadow moved inside. Nessie glanced up to see that it was young Becky who had shown up at her door.

“Do you have something for me to fix?” she asked the child.

“No.” Becky looked over her shoulder like she thought she had made the wrong decision and was thinking of running away. “No. I came to see Dragon, but I can see he’s sleeping.”

The parrot was on a perch within his large, chicken wire cage, his eyes closed and feathers slightly poofed.

“Come sit down.” Nessie gestured to the office chair near the straight-backed one she was sitting in. She liked the different chairs depending on what she was doing.

Becky shuffled her feet once more, but eventually walked all the way over and sat down.

“This from your solar panel?” Becky asked, pointing to the light on the sewing machine.

“Indeed it is.” Nessie depressed the foot pedal slightly, the machine chugging a few more stitches through the jeans she was repairing with a small, thin patch of leather. “I don’t normally see you alone. Your friends all busy?”

“Yeah,” Becky nodded.  “Hope’s gone with her mom to the Black Box, I think Dakota is on Animal Island right now, and Adam is helping his dad with that car project thing.”

“Adam, he’s the dark-haired boy you three are usually with, right?” A few more chugging stitches. She’d talk to the girl, but Nessie wasn’t going to stop her work outright.

Becky nodded. She wiggled slightly in the seat, so that it turned partial rotations back and forth, her feet dangling over the edge and not quite reaching the floor.

“Doesn’t his dad usually help out with the wall? He’s the engineer that started the whole thing I thought.”

“He did. A bunch of zombies showed up, so everyone searching the containers and stuff had to retreat.” Becky started to warm up a little, but still spoke like she didn’t know why she was there

“Anyone hurt?”

“No. At least no one has said that someone got hurt.”

“That’s good. Why aren’t you learning from your folks?”

“They don’t have any school lessons for me right now.”

“And you don’t want to help them out with their jobs? I thought that’s what you kids do sometimes.”

Becky sighed, bending at the waist to prop her elbows on her knees and rest her chin in her hands. “My dad mans the radio, scanning the frequencies every now and again. It’s really boring; he mostly just reads books all day. My mom cooks. I usually just get in the way when I try to help.”

“So your mom was responsible for today’s flavoured potato mash, huh?” Nessie then leaned toward the girl conspiratorially. “Not her best work.”

Becky actually smiled in response. “She doesn’t decide what we eat though, she just helps make it.”

Nessie shrugged and pressed the foot pedal some more, finishing up the last of the patch. Carefully snipping the threads so that she saved as much on the spool as possible, she removed the jeans from the machine.

“There, what do you think?” Nessie held up the jeans for Becky’s inspection.

“That’s a lot of patches,” she observed. There was one on each knee, another on the right thigh, and still one more along the left shin.

“Uh huh,” Nessie nodded. “Some people wait until they absolutely need stuff patched before bringing it to me. In this case…”  She turned the jeans around and showed Becky a patch running along the seat of the pants.

Becky smothered a giggle with her hand. “That must have been embarrassing.”

“I hope it wasn’t a windy day for him, ’cause then it might have gotten a little chilly too.”

This time Becky laughed openly, finally relaxed. The noise woke up Dragon who said something garbled, but the girl didn’t pay attention to him. She seemed more interested in talking to Nessie now, and Nessie was okay with that.

“You know, I can teach you how to knit if you’d like. It’d give your hands something to do.”

“What’s knitting?”

“What’s knitting?” Nessie put on an obviously fake flabbergasted tone, hiding her honest surprise that Becky didn’t know. “See that blanket on my bed?”

Becky couldn’t, so she got up and walked over to it. “This one on the top? Made of wool?”

“That’s the one,” Nessie nodded. “I made it myself, using a knitting technique.”

“It looks really warm,” Becky commented as she returned to her seat.

“It is, it’s very warm. How about I teach you how to knit one yourself, and you can keep the result?”

“Really?”

“Maybe we’ll start with a headscarf instead of a large blanket, but why not? Knitting is a useful skill to have.”

“Okay, I guess.”

Dragging out her basket of yarn, Nessie plucked out a set of knitting needles for each of them. Using her own as an example, she set to work teaching Becky to knit. Once the girl seemed to have the hang of it after a few rows, Nessie returned to her patchwork.

“Where do you get all this stuff?” Becky commented, staring intently at her slow work. It would be a long while before she got comfortable enough to knit by touch alone, or to pick up any sort of speed.

“All what stuff?” Nessie’s machine chattered on before her, as she sewed a cloth patch along the belly of a T-shirt.

Becky shrugged. “Any of it.”

“Well, some of it was supplied to me as basic necessities, just like in your container.”

“We have a bunk bed in ours, with a bigger bed along the bottom.”

“I think most containers with a kid and parents have that.”

“Yeah, but we don’t have a dresser, or that big standing cupboard thing.” Becky carefully put down her knitting to point to the wardrobe. “And you have two desks.”

“I requested these things. When it comes to furniture, you just put in a request and your reason for wanting it, and then, if there’s time, someone will go get it from one of the nearby houses.”
Although they don’t always get exactly what you want
, Nessie silently added, thinking of the
Dora
potty.

“So I don’t have it because my parents don’t want it?”

“That’s right.”

“What about this other stuff? All those scraps you’re using as patches and this wool?” Becky returned to her careful knitting.

“Most of the scraps are given to me. People who don’t sew have no use for them, so they donate them here with the understanding that one day they may be used to patch up their own clothes. As for the yarn, it’s rationed out just like food. There’s probably some in your container if your parents haven’t bartered it away.”

“What’s barter?”

“It’s another word for trade.”

“What do people trade for?”

“I don’t know, various things I guess.” Nessie finished the shirt, folded it up, and put it on her pile of completed clothing. She then picked up the next article, which was a pair of holey socks. Although needing patches around the toes and heels, one also required some stitching along a run up the back of the ankle. “I’m usually the recipient of a wool trade. That means I’m getting the wool.”

“What do people want from you?”

“I usually knit the wool into clothing or blankets they want, but most of the time, people give me things to move their clothing up the line. Sometimes it’s their last pair of pants I’m fixing, or their favourite shirt, and so they want it repaired sooner than the usual time it takes. They give me wool or sometimes larger pieces of cloth and leather to get bumped up the line. I then take what they give me, turn it into new clothing or what have you, and trade it back to other people for other things or more clothing supplies. That’s how I got the solar panel. It was actually one of your brothers who traded it to me, if I’m not mistaken. Does one of them have a long leather coat?”

“Yeah, Larson does.” Becky sounded excited about this revelation.

“I made that for him along with several other high-end items in exchange. I believe he still wears the coat, although he might have traded the rest for other goods.”

“Why did Larson have the solar panel anyway? Shouldn’t it have been with the others on the community building?”

“Honestly, what do they teach you if you don’t know this stuff?”

Becky shrugged. “Math and junk. How many calories to eat each day. I know how to cook a bunch of things even if I’m not very good at it.”

“Well, first of all, the community centre currently has all the solar panels it needs. Mind you if that changes, or one breaks, they can take mine. It’s more like I have it on loan in that way. The reason your brother got it was because he goes out scavenging.”

“That’s where they both are right now.” Becky sounded a little sour about this, either missing them, worried about them, or most likely both.

Nessie nodded, remembering seeing their names on the away board. “I won’t sugar coat it, it’s a dangerous job they do. But, because it’s dangerous, they get to claim part of the loot they bring back as a reward. Basically, they get first dibs on anything the community centre doesn’t need.”

“I think I’d like to do that when I get old enough. It sounds exciting.”

“What? More exciting than a swarm of zombies showing up at our wall?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you’re not old enough yet, so keep knitting.” Nessie thought she might have a talk with Becky’s parents later, or maybe even talk to the girl herself. More exciting? It was deadly out there. Sure, it wasn’t as bad as when the outbreak occurred—Nessie refused to call it the Day like everyone else—but it was still the most deadly occupation. They had lost a few scavengers over the years, while others had been injured, and one team had been completely lost. They went out for a search and not one of them made it back. No one knows what happened to them; could have been any of a number of things. There were zombies to worry about, but there were also animals, unfriendly humans, unsafe terrain, and even basic illnesses. As structures aged, they weakened, becoming more prone to collapse. Even if the whole thing didn’t come down, enough scavengers had returned with cut-up legs and broken ankles to attest to the dangers of even one weak spot in the floor. It’s why Nessie decided to move to the container yard. She could see and trust the structures here, whereas the Black Box’s supports were buried beneath painted drywall so the place looked good. Who wanted to live somewhere that looked nice when your life was at stake? Nessie thought that Becky didn’t understand the world yet and that somebody should talk to her about it. Then again, when do young folk ever listen to the advice of older generations?

The sewing machine whirred as she moved on from the socks to a jacket.

A skittering of nails on metal drew the attention of both Becky and Nessie to the front of the container. One of Misha’s dogs stood there, the tall skinny grey one who was mostly Great Dane. Powder was her name.

“I don’t have any treats for you today,” Nessie told the dog.

Powder’s head cocked to the side upon hearing the word ‘treats,’ her tail making a single swish back and forth in anticipation.

“No, not today,” Nessie said again, avoiding the trigger word.

This time Powder took another step inside. When Nessie turned away, ignoring the big dog, she listened as it circled the front of her container and lay down.

Nessie sighed. “People don’t like bringing me things when there’s a giant dog blocking most of the entrance.”

“I can take her somewhere. I think she just wants attention.” Becky carefully placed her knitting on the table beside the sewing machine and dropped out of her seat.

“That would be lovely, thank you, dear. Anytime you’re bored and would like to knit, this will be waiting for you.” She patted the beginnings of a headscarf that might one day shade the girl from the sun, or hold back her hair depending on how large it became.

“Come on, Powder,” Becky called as she walked toward the Great Dane. “Let’s go find you something to play fetch with.”

The dog raised her recently lowered head, inspecting Becky as she approached. Upon determining that the girl was indeed talking to her, Powder quickly scrambled back up onto her feet. Dragon barked at Becky’s back as she left with the lanky beast.

Nessie sighed and shook her head once she was alone again. She had never had any children of her own, never wanted them, but she worried about the future generations all the same. It wasn’t just that they were growing up in a changed world, it’s that their parents hadn’t, and so didn’t know the proper way to raise them. What should be taught? What could be ignored? On average, how did kids react in certain situations? No one really knew, because no one had grown up in this world. Most of the teenagers had grown up to be clever, helpful individuals, ready to step forward and assist at a moment’s notice, but the ones even younger? What would they be like?