Adaptive Instinct (Survival Instinct) Read Free Page B

great help in putting the small windmills together.  It was just too bad he could rarely leave the deck outside.  Although, Riley had to admit to herself that she liked having him confined there.  He would wheel around the deck with his M110 SASS sniper rifle in his lap.  The deck went all the way around the cabin and gave him a 360-degree vantage point of the surrounding area.  If something showed up, Alec would know, and, if it was dangerous, he could easily blow its head off.  It was nice to know that somebody was watching over them.
    “I’ll put the canoe in the water,” Mathias offered.  “I already know how to skin a rabbit.”  Like Alec, Mathias had also been in the military.  He was a Ranger until he got dishonourably discharged for punching his superior three times.  Although he didn’t know as much as Alec and Riley, he knew quite a bit.  He was also their only source of information about the hybrid virus.  Mathias had worked as a mercenary for the Marble Keystone Corporation, a massive company that had started out in pharmaceuticals , and branched out into… well, pretty much everything.  They had created the hybrid virus and set it loose, deliberately from what they’d heard.  Mathias didn’t know much about the thing, but he knew more than anyone else in their group did.  When they had gotten to the cabin, Riley had given him a notebook and pen and asked him to write down everything he remembered about it.  If he ever remembered something new, he was supposed to write it down in the book, even if the information seemed useless.
    “I’m done.  Anyone else?”  Misha stood up from the table , even though there was still food on his plate.
    “Here.”  Alec lifted his plate slightly.  Misha walked over to him and scraped off the half-pancake that was left onto his own plate.  He looked around the table again, but everyone was finishing their portions.  As Misha carried the plate into the main room, Rifle and Shoes began circling him.  Making sure the dogs got portions according to their relative size; Misha fed them the leftover pancakes.  Riley thought Misha could stand to gain some weight and told Abby to give him portions larger than he needed, but after every meal, he had leftovers, which he always fed to the dogs.  The twenty-something year old was practically all bone, but no one could force him to eat.  At least it meant they didn’t have to feed the dogs as much, since they were always getting scraps.
    It was nice to have Rifle and Shoes with them.  Not only were they good at comforting, they could also work.  Rifle would often chase rabbits, and had managed to catch one just the other day.  He was also big for his breed and could pull the sled.  Right now, they were still getting him used to the weight of the sled alone, hooking it up to the harness that he always wore, but soon enough, they would have him hauling wood.  Riley planned to bring him on hunts.  If they bagged something big, like an elk or a reindeer, having him help pull the sled would be great.  Shoes was handy in a much different way.  The old basset hound had been trained as a cadaver dog, and it was hard to break his habits, however, they had been learning how to use those same habits.  He would wander out into the woods and find animals that had died of one thing or another.  Once he found an animal, Riley and Josh would look it over and decide if it was safe to eat, or to use its fur or its feathers for things.  Not being animal doctors, meant this was an imprecise decision, and so far, they had always decided on ‘no.’  This didn’t mean the carcass couldn’t be used as fertilizer for the greenhouse though.  Both of the dogs could smell the infected—Shoes especially—and became their first line of defence, the warning system, if one were to show up.  That was Riley’s biggest fear; that the zombies would find them and swarm them.
    When everybody was finished with breakfast,