Survival Instincts, page 21
Skeever’s unrelenting barking wasn’t helping matters any.
Lynn whirled to face him. “Quiet!”
He snarled through the bars, all of his hair standing on end. He shivered with rage that couldn’t go anywhere but his vocal cords.
“Quiet!” She snapped her fingers in front of his face, but far enough away to make sure he wouldn’t bite at them.
He finally looked up at her. For a few seconds, he didn’t seem to recognize her, and he snarled darkly. Then Lynn saw the light come on in his eyes. He barked twice more, then turned in a circle. He bumped his side along the gate.
“Stay.” Lynn brought her hand down. “Stay.”
After the second time she said it, he lay down under the overhang.
Carefully, she reached through the bars and smoothed his fur back down. “Good boy.”
He whimpered and licked globs of saliva from his nuzzle. His eyelids fluttered.
Lynn finally allowed the realization that they’d survived to course through her. Her muscles relaxed a fraction, and she took a deep breath, savoring the knowledge it wouldn’t be her last.
“We’re not done yet.”
Dani’s voice pulled Lynn’s gaze back to her.
Dani retrieved her knife and yanked the spear out. “Someone locked us in with these.” She kicked the nearest wolf. “They starved ’em, tortured ’em, and sent them out to kill.”
Lynn stared at the dead animals. This species of predator had most successfully navigated the apocalypse. They made their dens in abandoned buildings and roamed the Wilds, hunting for prey. At least once a day, she would catch a glimpse of shaggy gray fur or catch a low growl. Wolves were scary smart, too, which made them even more deadly. But Dani was right; these two hadn’t ended up here by accident. She glanced back at the gate. “We need to get this up.” She held no illusion that either of them could lift it. It was solid iron, the bars fist-thick. They would have to find whatever mechanism those chains were attached to.
Dani thrust her weapons into Lynn’s hands.
Lynn nearly dropped them, surprised by the sudden weight. She clutched them against her chest to keep them from slipping. When she looked up again, Dani had made her way over to the gate.
She squatted, gripped the bars, and tried to lift the barrier with all her might. It didn’t produce even an inch of movement. A vein in her neck thumped angrily.
“Dani, that—”
Dani ignored her. She tried to pull the gate aside instead. Again, her efforts had barely an impact.
Skeever got up and wagged his tail. He licked Dani’s fingers as they gripped the bars.
“It’s not going to work.”
Dani yanked one more time, then stepped back. She glared at Lynn, as if this was somehow her fault. “Fine. Then we’ll fight our way out. Are you up for that?” Her expression was unreadable, but Lynn didn’t trust herself to read Dani anymore.
Lynn’s body hurt, and she felt drained already. One fight like this was enough for a day. She nodded anyway. “Left or right?”
“Straight through the middle.” Dani headed to the door that had remained closed. She gripped the handle and pulled, then pushed. “Locked.” Before Lynn could offer advice, Dani made her way over to a heavy plant by the window. She kicked it over. Dirt and little brown balls scattered across the blood-, piss-, and shit-soaked tiles, but she paid it no heed and picked up the pot. Stumbling under its weight, she walked to the closed doors and threw it against the glass with another cry.
The noise of glass and pot shattering deafened Lynn a moment. It reverberated down the hallways and deeper into the building. It would announce to anyone that they had survived, but she was beyond caring.
Dani took her weapons back. She sheathed the knife behind her belt and gripped her spear. Her hands and arms were bloody, her jaw set. Lynn had snapped Skeever out of his bloodlust, but Dani seemed to use it as fuel. “Time to go.”
Lynn followed her down the hallway and rallied her own energy. Dani was right; they would be fighting their way out of this, and Lynn knew weakness would equal death. She gripped the handle of her tomahawk and focused on the task at hand.
There were windows at the end of the hallway, but the walls were blind.
A tall, broad figure rushed around the corner.
Lynn startled and raised her tomahawk.
Dani stepped out, and the spear left her hand.
With only a few feet between her and the figure, they didn’t have time to dodge. The spear struck them straight in the throat. The figure went down instantly.
It was a middle-aged man, Lynn saw as she came closer. He wore a leather chest piece, and he’d tied his long hair into a ponytail. He tried to breathe around the blood that filled his lungs. Lynn knew she would never forget the look of absolute horror on his face or the fear in his eyes as she passed him, but for now he was just one man down.
Dani yanked the spear out while he still shuddered. “Do you want the left or right?”
“L-Left.” Lynn didn’t want to split up, but she understood the need to. This way, they could ensure that even if their captors hoisted the gate, they would always run into one of them.
Dani turned right without sparing her a second glance. She stalked down the hallway, away from Lynn, like a hunter in search of prey.
Lynn’s gut clenched. Let’s hope there aren’t too many of them, though. Else we’re dead. She turned the other way and channeled her own hunting skills. There was reason to believe she was going to live through this: if their captors had to rely on wolves for protection, they were either weak, small in numbers, or both. She could still wind up dead if she let herself be caught off guard, though. Lynn focused on any sound that rose above the rain and on any scent not blood or mold. She scanned the hallway for movement but saw nothing. The entire right wall was made of windows, but the world outside was as dark as her heart felt. She reached down and gripped her knife in her left hand and renewed her hold on her tomahawk in her right. With a big breath, she pushed forward.
The offices had been raided long ago and were now deserted. Lynn worked to slow her heart rate and breathing; she needed to be able to think clearly. Just like Dani, she’d kill anyone she came across. Survival today was only possible if she took the lives of others.
She moved slowly, checking every room and every niche. The first of the offices was small. It held just a single desk that no one was hiding under. The rest of the hallway’s doors led into one big room with at least a dozen desks, most of which had been upturned and ransacked. She weaved through them.
The rustling of her clothes and the creaking of floorboards was drowned out by the rain that beat against the glass.
Her shoulders hunched like those of the wolves they had just put out of their misery. Logic dictated there had to be someone here. The wolf that had first attacked her had come from the left, and the man from the right. He couldn’t have released both wolves from their prisons at once, so the logical conclusion was that there was at least one other person here.
She passed another desk and stepped aside to peer under it. Nothing. Another desk, then another. She kept her back to the wall and studied every shifting shadow. Even pulling out a chair to check for people under the desk revealed nothing.
Once she came to the end of the room, she slipped back into the hallway and chanced a glance in the direction Dani had gone. The hallway was empty. Lynn turned back to the unexplored section of the passage. She had to focus on herself.
With her back against the wall, she peeked around the corner. In the seconds she allowed herself to poke her head out, the only thing she registered was a large metal cage, now empty. She stepped out and took a moment to admire it. Someone had put a lot of effort into making an iron cage that could have housed three wolves easily. Whoever had captured the wolves had padded the cage with a layer of grass and sand. Both were coated with dried and fresh blood.
“Bastards!” Abusing an animal into aggressiveness and then using it to do your dirty work. It was a brilliant setup but also completely without honor.
Only when Lynn walked closer to the cage did she see two doors. One was marked with a skirt-wearing figure, while a figure without a skirt graced the other. Listening at the door would be useless with this rain bearing down. She carefully put her knife away before she pushed the door with the skirtless symbol open. It was dark inside. The little light that fell into the room from behind her revealed a single cubicle and oddly shaped fountains—or something similar—along the wall. She let the door fall shut without entering.
The second room was a nearly identical copy in both décor and emptiness. There were no fountains here, and two cubicles instead of one. She carefully lowered herself to the ground to peer under the dividers.
The door of the cubicle flung outward. A figure lunged from within and rushed her way. Something metallic flashed.
Lynn’s breath caught. She dropped her tomahawk so she could grab at the attacker’s wrist as the woman lunged. They hit the ground hard, and Lynn gasped for air. Long, brown hair obscured her vision.
Her attacker smelled like wolf, smoke, and sweat. She was breathless already.
Lynn tried to push the woman off with her knees, but her attacker was heavier.
The woman grunted as she tried to push the knife down. She was missing a few teeth. The scent of rot hit Lynn as the woman exhaled. Her eyes held a glint of madness.
Lynn’s arms trembled as she tried to fight the force applied by the woman above her. She was going to lose: her attacker could put all of her weight behind the motion, and Lynn had just the muscles in her arms. The realization filled her with renewed vigor to break the stalemate. She groped for another way to get the woman off her. Her arms threatened to buckle, which gave her the barest smidgen of an idea. She didn’t have time to think about the stupidity of it; she had to go for it—or die.
Lynn lessened her struggle just a bit. This brought the woman closer as she leaned her entire body over Lynn’s to put weight behind the blade. The sharp tip of the knife stopped inches above her chest when Lynn pushed to stop the descent of the blade. Every muscle in her body tensed. Her heart pounded wildly, and cold sweat pricked on her forehead. She needed to time this exactly right or risk impaling herself on the knife and doing the woman’s work for her. Just as her arms were about to give out, she pushed up with her abdominal muscles and slammed her forehead against the woman’s skull hard enough to make herself see stars.
“Fuck!” The woman sat up over Lynn’s abdomen and gripped her head.
The knife fell to the floor.
Elation burned hotly in Lynn’s system: this was her chance. She swung her tired arm out and brought it down against the woman’s ear with as much force as she could muster.
The stranger yelped and lost her balance.
Lynn tilted her hips, bucked her off, then scrambled to get control of the knife.
The woman’s eyes widened. She rushed to grab it as well.
Before her attacker could close her hand around the knife, Lynn gripped her wrist. She threw her body into the other woman’s until she was sprawled on top of her, and they writhed together on the floor, trying to scratch and bite any part of the other that came close enough to reach. This was fighting at its most animalistic: bare survival without thought of tactics or a next move.
Lynn’s tomahawk had clattered somewhere out of sight, and she had her knife in her boot but if she reached for it, the woman would grab the knife and undoubtedly kill her. That weapon needed to be gone before she could even hope to think of what to do next. Lynn elbowed her attacker in the breast.
The woman cried out and went limp just long enough for Lynn to grab the knife. She scrambled to crawl more firmly on top of the woman, sucked in a few gulps of air, then pushed up so she could straddle her hips. Before Lynn’s brain could catch up and intervene, Lynn plunged the knife down.
The woman whimpered and froze. Her eyes widened. The look of absolute terror on her attacker’s face would be another thing Lynn would remember forever.
Lynn clenched her jaw to steel her resolve and twisted the blade deep inside of the woman’s shoulder, just where it met the neck. Then she yanked the knife out.
Now the woman cried out. She thrashed, scratched, hit. She fought like any animal would when it thought it still had a chance to live.
Lynn knew that chance was gone. Even if the woman managed to fight Lynn off, every movement quickened the pace of the gushes with which the arterial spray painted the wall. She was dead; she just didn’t know it yet. Lynn fought the urge to squeeze her eyes shut. Instead, she tossed the knife away as far as she could and fought for control of the woman’s wrists. Lynn was panting now, and sweat slid down her back. Somewhere in the fight, she’d detached from her emotions. Cold determination was all that was left in her.
“S-Stop! Please!” The other woman sobbed. Her legs kicked out, but Lynn had found a good position, so her attacker couldn’t reach her. “Just…wanted…survive!”
Lynn pressed the woman’s wrists down with far more ease than only a few seconds prior.
The force and frequency of the spray lessened.
Something wet trailed down Lynn’s face—blood or tears, she didn’t know. Her chest contracted painfully. Unable to watch a moment longer, she closed her eyes.
The woman’s breathing became irregular. She inhaled with ragged shudders and exhaled almost right away.
How much longer will it take?
The resistance slowly wavered. The inhalations became fragmented, seemed to seize, then started again for two or three breaths. It was endless. Lynn opened her eyes and found the world fuzzy with moisture. She had been crying—was still crying.
The woman was watching her with pale blue eyes. She was older than Lynn by at least ten years, maybe more. An ugly scar ran along her left cheek.
“You,” Lynn accentuated the word strongly, “attacked us. Not the other way around.”
The woman swallowed. Fresh tears spilled from her eyes. She turned her head away and squeezed her eyes shut. She inhaled one more time, twice, then it stopped. This time, her breathing didn’t start up again.
Lynn sagged forward. Her arms trembled. She tried to catch her breath, but the second she inhaled, her stomach turned. Lynn felt it coming and stumbled off to vomit violently in a rush of disgust and relief. Finally, only sour slime remained in her mouth. She spit it out and wiped her hand with an arm she could barely control.
As much as she wanted to curl up into a ball and recover, she wasn’t done. With great effort, she pulled her shaky legs under her and got up. With her reclaimed tomahawk in hand, she headed back down the hallway.
Dani met her halfway down.
Despite all her lies and schemes, Lynn relaxed just a little as she laid eyes upon her. At least she wasn’t alone in this building full of enemies.
Dani inspected her. Judging by the squint that etched into Dani’s features, Lynn was showing her wear and tear. “You okay?”
Lynn nodded. She was nowhere near okay either physically or emotionally, but it was useless to dwell on that right now. “One dead.”
Dani continued to inspect her.
Lynn tried to weather it.
Eventually, Dani relented. “Good. There’s a staircase at the end of the hall. I didn’t find anyone else, but I think I heard something upstairs.” She observed Lynn. “Are you ready for more?”
Lynn nodded again, without knowing if it was true. “Let’s just get this over with.” She pushed past Dani and headed down the hallway. She was tired—so tired. Whoever remained, she just wanted to dole out justice, go to sleep, and forget.
There was only darkness up the steps. She forced her tired muscles to grip her tomahawk more tightly and walk up.
Dani followed her quietly.
From halfway up the stairs, Lynn could look through the glass panels of the railing that squared off the staircase. A narrow hallway led all down the length of the building, mirroring the one downstairs. Doors opened into a space that Lynn couldn’t see into from here. Waist-height white walls blocked her view. She went up a few more steps until she could look through long panes of glass atop the walls. As quietly as possible, she took the last step up from the stairs and stopped to slide her gaze over the mayhem beyond the glass.
From here, she could just make out the layout of the large space. The left side was piled full of junk—mostly dividers, desks, and chairs—while the right side had been cleared and made up as a living space. Three makeshift beds lay under the windows.
Dani stepped up with her. “Three beds.” She whispered the words. They were almost entirely drowned out by the sound of the rain that was more pronounced here, as they were under the roof.
Lynn nodded. Three beds, three people. One of their attackers still lurked somewhere in the building. She rounded the railing and tried the door farthest to the left. It opened easily, and she slipped inside.
Dani followed her in but stayed a few paces behind her. She lowered herself down to the ground and looked through the pile of office paraphernalia. She lay her spear on the floor and took out her knife.
Their gazes met.
Dani nodded slowly.
There hadn’t been any communication about the plan of action, but they both knew basic hunting strategies.
Lynn pushed up and rounded the pile. She let her gaze slide over the mess but still saw nothing.
“Come out and meet your death with honor.” Despite her anxiety, Lynn’s voice was mercifully steady and calm. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end, and she felt targeted in the middle of the room. There was a good chance the third attacker was hiding somewhere else, and then she’d left herself exposed. She counted to ten. “I know you are in there. Your two companions are already dead. The wolves are dead. You gambled and lost.”
