Defensive Instinct (Survival Instinct Book 4) (41 page)

Once everyone had fired their first shot, Freya gathered up the next round of stones and handed them out. This time, before someone fired, she gave them advice and instruction on how to improve their shot. Those standing beside the outsiders who had warned them, quietly translated her signs, even when the advice was not directed at them so that they could learn from the mistakes of others. Misha over-compensated with his second shot, the stone going virtually straight up, barely getting enough distance to clear the edge of the dock and land in the water.

One stone and one person at a time, Freya taught them to sling. They spent hours at it, working their way up to the stones most like the grenades. They focused on only one target, one way to aim, allowing muscle memory to sink in. If anyone wanted to learn to sling properly, to get as good at it as Freya, they were to learn on their own time afterward. Misha was pleased to see his progress and the progress of others. They were getting good, hitting the height and distance that Freya wanted of them. Only White and the stranger, Tommy, couldn’t seem to get the hang of it. In the end, they bowed out, giving up their grenades to more competent slingers. It was quickly decided that Freya, Boyle, Yasmin, and Bryce would get the extra grenades, having proven themselves the best of the bunch. It seemed Bryce’s injuries had no effect on his capabilities to swing a sling.

After the last stone had been thrown, Boyle and Karsten dismissed them all with orders to sleep until sunrise. That wasn’t a lot of time, but Misha was grateful for even a single hour. But first, he headed to the community centre to pick up his dogs.

In small batches, groups were leaving the centre. Bitch Bridge had been connected and everyone not staying to fight was being moved there. It seemed a lot of people that were usually in the non-combatant category were staying to fight. The only people without a choice in the matter were children under thirteen, clearly pregnant women, the badly injured or sick, and elderly who were too frail or too blind to wield a gun. Misha didn’t stay at the centre long; the moment he picked up his dogs, he headed for his container.

Ladders had already been set up to reach the top of the containers, making it easy for Misha. One by one, he got his dogs up. They had learned to climb ladders, but it was awkward for them. Misha had to keep behind each dog, offering whispered encouragement, pushing on their butts, and half catching them when they slipped. Other ladders, some lashed together, bridged the gaps between the container rows. It seemed Harry was still trying to quietly move containers to bridge other gaps, but it was slow going. Nessie must have offered him all the good, large scraps of leather and thick wool she had, as they had wrapped them around the long logs they used for rolling the containers. This slowed the process down considerably, as each time they had to move a log from the back to the front, they had to rewrap the wool and leather, which tended to loosen and fall off. Still, it quieted the process considerably. Too bad the same couldn’t be said for the clicking of the dogs’ toenails on the container tops.

Upon reaching his container, Misha wasn’t terribly surprised to find Bullet snoozing next to the opening in the roof. The dog was very clever and had no difficulty with ladders. Leaving the other three with him, Misha climbed down into his container, prepared for the scent of dog piss. He was pleased to discover none of them had peed during his absence, the container smelling only of their fur and breath.

Curling up on the mattress beside Rifle, Misha hoped to follow orders and sleep until sunrise. Or maybe until a bit before sunrise; he wanted to make sure all of his dogs were up on top of the container before anything happened. Up there would be the safest place for them.

Rifle huffed next to Misha as if hearing his thoughts and not liking the idea of having to climb a ladder. Misha had to admit he didn’t like tomorrow’s ideas either.

Her face throbbed in time with her heartbeat, her cheek swollen and bruised. Abby didn’t want to think about how bad it would have been if she had not cut the stinking man’s arm, if he had managed to hit her with all his force. Other parts of her body pained her as well, from the various bruises blooming about her, to the friction burns stinging her skin. She refused to cry out or complain, sitting still with the others who had been captured. At least three dozen of them were being held in the cafeteria, sitting shoulder to shoulder on the bench seats that lined the tables, their arms tied painfully behind their backs, ankles lashed to those beside them. Many of the other captives bore injuries similar to Abby’s, the ones who had fought back but ultimately lost. A few, mostly guards from outside, had worse injuries, but whoever these attackers were, they patched up the bullet holes they had put into people. Not all the fence guards were in the cafeteria, however, which said to Abby that they had probably been killed. None of them would have simply run away. Of course, not everyone was hurt. There were those who had been quickly cornered and knew their odds were better with surrender. In one corner of the room, at a table sat several children along a bench, their parents bound and worrying at a separate table. Abby kept silently thanking Thomas who was secured across the table from her, the entire left side of his face turned unnatural colours. If his warning had come any later, she and her family would have been in the stairwell, and then all of them would have been sitting in here.

The only sound in the room was crying. A few adults, mostly parents, wept silently but the main concentration of sobs came from the children. The kids were largely ignored by their captors, but if any adult tried to talk, one of the large men posted around the room would stride over and swat the back of the individual’s head with a curt “shut up.” Everyone learned quickly not to speak.

The guards seemed to have no problem with people looking around, so Abby did just that. She put a name to every captive she could see, which was nearly all of them. A lot of people she knew only slightly, but her nearly eidetic memory put names to the faces. Every time someone new was brought in, she added them to her unfortunately growing list. It was especially heartbreaking when she spotted Crichton and Bronislav at separate tables, with bruises, black eyes, and cuts to match everyone else. She had hoped at least one of them would have escaped capture. She wondered if the invaders knew that the two of them were the Black Box’s leaders.

Abby took the time to study the guards. She came up with mental names for them based on their features, such as Scar-twin and Clean-twin on either side of the door, Bruiser for the one who did most of the head smacking, Fidget for the guard who patrolled most often, and so on and so forth. She deliberately committed even the smallest details of these men to her memory, so that if they ever got out of there, Abby would be able to recognize them again.

The door opened and another captive was dragged in. Winchester was hog tied and carried by three men and a woman, his eyes darting wildly about the room. They paused briefly when they met Abby’s and again as they fell upon on the children. He said nothing as he was borne to an empty space along a bench, apparently having already learned the no-talking rule. The woman cut his legs free, then held the blade to his throat as he was manhandled onto the bench between a fence guard and a farmer. Once seated, one of the men crawled under the bench to lash their legs together. A thin trickle of blood ran out from Winchester’s hair, sliding past his ear and down to his chin. The woman with the knife to his throat noticed. She checked out the injury on his head that had produced the blood, and deemed that it didn’t need bandaging. Only then did she withdraw her blade. The moment it was safely away, Winchester jerked back, attempting to strike her with his skull. The woman was fast, however, and nimbly dodged away.

“I wouldn’t try that again if I were you,” she threatened, taking her knife back out and placing the tip against the back his neck.

“But you know I had to try at least once,” Winchester calmly replied.

“Fair enough,” the woman said with a grin, her teeth an unexpected mixture of black, grey, and yellow compared to how nicely the rest of her looked.

The four who had dragged Winchester in then departed the cafeteria, leaving the captives alone with the guards once more.

Winchester sought out Abby’s eyes from his place two tables over. He stared hard into Abby’s eyes, then glanced at those next to her. He did the same motion three more times before Abby figured out what he was trying to communicate; or at least what she thought he was trying to communicate. She shook her head to let him know that no one else with her had been taken, that Lauren wasn’t there. Winchester nodded, then proceeded to take stock of their surroundings as Abby had, seeing who
was
there that he could identify and had the angle to spot. Most people had done this once seated; definitely those who had fought the hardest. Abby didn’t like that some people seemed to have given up, that they stared at their laps or laid their faces flat on the table. She wondered if some of those people were just faking their hopelessness, making themselves appear docile, but Abby had no way of knowing. For now, she kept vigilant, taking in all the details she could, silently deciding who would be the most useful in various situations. Unfortunately, her imagination wasn’t nearly as good as her memory, and so she could only think of a limited number of situations that might occur.

One such thing she couldn’t foresee did happen. The next time the door opened, it wasn’t another captive being brought in; a woman walked into the space, with Jo tagging along behind her, eating what looked like porridge or perhaps oatmeal out of a small plastic container. Abby hadn’t imagined seeing Jo again, and the well of anger that opened up toward him shocked her. It was because of him that all this had happened. They had taken him in, malnourished and exhausted, conditions he couldn’t fake, and in return, he opened the way for the wolves. He was just a boy; this couldn’t have been his idea, but seeing him standing there, wearing the clothes they had given him, a smile on his face while he ate… Abby never thought she’d be capable of hurting a child until that moment. In that moment, she would have throttled him if she weren’t tied up.

“Who here is your leader? Did we capture him or her?” the woman asked, her eyes scanning the faces of the prisoners. “Who in this room is highest on the food chain?”

Although a few eyes looked to Crichton or Bronislav, enough of the residents looked at others to make it go unnoticed.

“No? Not going to step forward? All right, that’s fine.” The woman carried herself with an air of authority, with complete confidence. She looked down beside her at Jo. “See anyone here you think we should talk to?”

Jo’s eyes absolutely lit up. He carried his food with him as he walked around the room, looking at everyone seated there, his hand occasionally dipping inside the container to pull out a glob and shove it into his mouth.

“This one,” Jo pointed to Crichton.

All the hairs stood up on the back of Abby’s neck. Had anyone told Jo that he was one of their leaders? Or had he just picked him because Crichton was the one who was there when he woke up? The one who asked him questions?

A couple of guards stepped forward to separate Crichton from his tablemates, as Jo continued to move around the room. When he neared Abby, she poured all the hate she could muster into her eyes. When he noticed, the boy paused.

“And this one,” he said raising a finger to point at her, glancing over his shoulder at the other woman. The moment he turned back to face Abby, she spat on the boy. The shock on his face was rather satisfying.

Wiping the saliva off on his shirt, Jo continued his walk around the room, his shoulders taking on a hunch they hadn’t had previously. Guards began releasing Abby from those next to her, taking more precautions than they had with Crichton but otherwise not reprimanding her for the spitting episode.

“No one else,” Jo finally said, walking shamefaced back to the woman’s side.

She paid him no attention as her cold eyes continued to sweep over the group. Abby watched her as she was brought over to where Crichton stood against one wall. Their legs were then lashed together.

“Which one in here tried to talk the most?” the woman eventually asked the scarred twin.

“That woman there. Kept trying to talk to the little ones,” he immediately replied, not having to think about it.

Abby noted he had pointed to Ellen whose three boys were all bound at the table with the other children.

The woman shook her head. “Which one tried to talk to other adults the most?”

“Her,” Scar-twin pointed at Brittany, who had been doing her best to keep people calm and unafraid despite the blows she had taken for it.

“Bring her too, then,” the woman decreed.

“It’s all right,” Brittany immediately told those around her as the guards made for her position. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

“Quiet,” Bruiser grumbled, smacking her upside the head, as he had already done many times before.

Brittany kept quiet as she was untied from her neighbours and hauled over to Abby and Crichton.

The woman turned to the other twin, the clean one, to ask her next question. “Not including the children or the adults brought in with them, who here has been the most docile? Who’s been co-operative?”

“I’d say him,” Clean-twin rasped. He had no obvious external injuries like his brother, but it seemed he had taken some internal damage at some point, his voice hoarse from it.

“And who seems to be the most afraid?” the woman asked next as the guards grabbed Seth, the supposedly co-operative one.

“Him.”

Abby hadn’t been able to see the face of the man that Clean-twin pointed to, because its owner had never raised his head since she had arrived. As the guards removed him from the table, a whine escaped the man’s throat. The sound was like that of a pitiful dog, but there was a familiarity to it for Abby. Her memory of the sound was validated when she saw Clive’s face. It was actually a relief to see he was the most fearful, as his fear wasn’t directed at the attackers, not entirely. Clive had various mental problems and neuroses that he had suffered from since before the Day. He didn’t like being near a lot of people, he hated being touched, he wasn’t fond of the outside, and change was a nightmare for him. Sitting in the truck that constituted the entrance in their fence was the perfect job for him, as he virtually never left the cab and was completely okay with rarely interacting with other humans. He had been in the motel where Lauren had been taken, never leaving the bathroom he had crawled into. On the Diana, he spent all his time locked up in his room, which was down the hall from Abby’s. Josh had been taking care of him as best he could while aboard the ship, and Abby had heard that pathetic whine of his a dozen times as the doctor entered Clive’s room after chatting with her. Abby would rather have him as part of this little group than someone completely sane and afraid of the invaders. She suspected she knew what was going to happen, even with her limited imagination.

Tied together at the legs and waist, their arms still bound behind their backs, the five people removed from their seats created a sort of chain gang.

“All right, I think that’s enough. I’ll take them from here, thank you.” The woman smiled and nodded to the guards. “I believe you know how to get to the basement from here,” she spoke to Crichton who formed the head of the line. “Please lead the way.”

Crichton scanned the room, looking into the faces of everyone remaining behind. He then turned without a word or gesture and walked awkwardly through the door, forcing Abby and the others to follow. The woman tailed Clive, who shuffled along awkwardly, with his head down and shoulders hunched, occasionally letting that somewhat eerie whine escape his throat.

“Journey, why don’t you go above ground and find the rest of the children? I’m sure they’d love to see you,” the woman spoke as they reached the stairwell. “I hear they’re gathered around a train of some sort.”

“I’d rather stay with you,” Jo said in a quiet, sheepish voice.

“And I’d rather you didn’t. Go on now.”

Jo trudged up the stairs as they headed down, turning and casting a forlorn look at the woman.

As they moved downward, they passed either a man or woman posted at the doorway to each level. Every one of them greeted or acknowledged the woman trailing them so that Abby was able to learn her name was Logan. They stopped only once on their descent, at the water treatment facility.

“Have you gotten in yet?” Logan asked the man in the stairwell.

“Not yet,” he replied with a shake of his head. “Jo told us that he saw what looked like important equipment near that door there, so we don’t want to go blasting through it. We’ll have to wait for the torch. It’s unfortunate that some of these rats managed to get in there and barricade it before we could reach the place.” He sneered at Abby and her group as he said this.

“Keep trying,” Logan told him. “Continue on,” she then said to Crichton.

As they reached the parking level, Abby glanced over the railing, down the stairwell to where the door led into the power generation facility. A bright light and sparks filled the lowest level. She quickly determined that they were trying to cut their way in using a blowtorch, which was what the man on the water treatment level was waiting for. Abby grinned to herself, knowing there was no way they were getting in like that, not without a hell of a lot of time and a whole ton of fuel. That door was thicker and more secure than anything else in the entire Black Box.