Survival Instinct: A Zombie Novel by Kristal Stittle Read Free Book Online Page B

hit him hard enough to draw blood.  “I don’t think it’s bad.”
    “Still, we should head to the hospital.  Maybe there’ll be someone there who can tell us what we should be doing.”
    “That’s right, why haven’t I heard anything over the radio?  Try getting someone on it.”  Cillian grabbed a handset and passed it to Sam.  The moment he looked away from where they were going, they slammed into something and came to a dead stop.
    “Oh, God,” Sam whined.
    Cillian looked out the windshield.  There was a huge multi-car pileup in front of the rig.  “I’m getting out to look around.”
    “Are you shitting me?  Out there?”
    “You have a gun , remember?”  Cillian had to kick his door to get it open.  He took off his other glove and jumped out of the truck.  Looking around, he saw panicked people running all over the place.  Except that not all of them were panicked.  Some were running after others with murderous intent in their eyes.  Cillian couldn’t see as much as he would have liked, so he climbed up on top of the fire truck.
    “Cillian!  Where’d you go?” Sam called from the other side of the truck.
    “I climbed on top!”  Cillian rolled his eyes.  He couldn’t believe his luck getting stuck with this complete idiot.  At least he had that gun though.  They both would have been screwed without it.  It didn’t take long for Sam to climb up on top with Cillian.  He dragged up two firefighter jackets with him.
    “Here, you should put this on.”  Sam handed Cillian the jacket he had used to wipe away the gore.  He then put on the clean jacket himself.
    “One, this jacket is disgusting.  And two, it’s like forty degrees out here.”  Cillian shook the jacket out over the side of the truck, trying to knock the chunks off it.
    “I noticed only the outside was...  dirty, and it’s the only other jacket in there.  If someone attacks us, they shouldn’t be able to bite through the material.”
    So maybe he wasn’t a complete idiot.  Cillian put the jacket on as he started looking around again.
    As far as he could see up the street, cars were stopped and abandoned.  Some were even piled onto sidewalks as a result of their drivers trying to pass the traffic, only to end up slamming into light posts, garbage cans, mailboxes, and bus shelters.  Cillian thought he saw a way around it though.  He pulled his helmet off, tossed it over the side of the truck, and looked to the sky for a moment, trying to clear his head.  A headache was starting to form, most likely from the bump on his skull, but maybe just from Sam’s constant whining.  He also really wanted a cigarette.  That’s when he spotted him.
    On a four-story building nearby, a man with a camera under one arm was looking frantically up the street.  He kept glancing over his shoulder at something.  Cillian could probably guess what.
    “Sam, follow me.”  Cillian made his way across to the back of the rig, having to step carefully around the damage the stone slab had caused.
    “What is it?”  Sam stumbled a few times but made it over to him.  They stood at the base of the fire truck’s turntable ladder.
    “See that guy?”  Cillian pointed up to the roof while he flipped some switches.
    “What about him?”  Although Sam shielded his eyes from the sun with a hand, as he looked up, his eyes squinted into narrow slits anyway.
    “We’re going to help him.  Pay attention.”  When Sam looked, Cillian pointed to the levers before him.  “This extends the ladder up and down and this one moves it left and right.  You have to get me up there.”  He got on the ladder and started to make his way to the end of it.
    “But...”  Sam was nervous as all hell.
    “Just do it, Sam!” Cillian snapped.  He couldn’t stop thinking about the girl outside the rig, the one he didn’t warn.  He didn’t help her.  He didn’t help any of them.  He killed two people.  This man though, he thought he might