Free Adaptive Instinct (Survival Instinct) by Kristal Stittle

head away.  She joined Claire and Jon in singing Open Ground .
    When they were halfway through the song for the second time, the crowd around the bus suddenly moved off.  Lauren glanced up and looked through the window behind her head.  The crowd was still there; they were just swarming the vehicles behind them now.  A green military Hummer pushed its way through the people and over them.  Lauren turned to look forward again, feeling sick.  Nothing made sense, nothing, none of it.  It was all crazy.  She was going insane; that was the only logical explanation.
    “Lauren?”  Claire was looking up at her.
    “Yes, Claire?”  Lauren did her best to keep her voice calm.
    “Will we be safe from the monsters where we’re going?”
    “I hope so.”  Lauren pulled Claire tighter against her side.  “I certainly hope so.”
    ***
    It was well over an hour before the school bus finally stopped.  Both the front and the back doors were opened and everybody piled out on dead legs.  A few people needed assistance getting off, including the woman of the elderly couple who had gotten on before Lauren and the kids.
    Lauren looked around and tried to figure out where they were.  She knew they had headed south out of the city, toward Toronto, down highway 533.  As she looked around, she realized they must have taken a turn-off somewhere when she hadn’t been paying attention.  She didn’t think they were far from the highway, however, maybe only a mile or so.  After travelling with the TV crew so many times, she had become fairly good at judging distances based on time.  The bus was parked in the parking lot of a motel, which stood in the woods in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere.  A tall and cheesy-looking sign announced that it was the Pummel Motel.  All of the other vehicles had discharged their passengers here, and more were coming in.  After getting off the bus, they were quickly ordered out of the way.  The bus was then moved and parked on the grassy divide between the parking lot and the road.  Lauren noticed that most of the vehicles were being parked that way, making a makeshift barricade, while the others turned around and headed back toward the city.
    As everyone huddled together, two policemen and a man with no uniform went through the group and gave out orders.  One of the uniformed officers came over to Lauren.
    “How many in your group?” he asked, looking Lauren over.
    “Just me and the two kids here,” Lauren answered, holding Jon and Claire tightly around the shoulders.
    “Were any of you bitten by anyone in the last few days?”  He asked this question very nervously.
    “No.”  Lauren looked to Claire and Jon who both shook their heads.
    “Good.  Umm,” the officer looked around,  “we have three other kids who seem to have been separated from their parents.  Would you be willing to take them in?  Just temporarily of course.  We just need someone to keep an eye on them while we get better organized.”
    “Sure,” Lauren replied without hesitation.  The thought of more abandoned kids alone in this mess made her heart break.
    “Great, thank you.”  The officer sounded so relieved that Lauren suspected he had gotten several rejections already.  “I’ll take you to the kids, and then you can all go to room 28.”  The officer led them toward the motel’s office while he continued speaking.  “There should be a Private Winchester there or maybe an Officer White.  There’s also another woman already in there.  Nobody knows her name yet.  We think she had a breakdown of some sort.  We don’t think she’s dangerous in any way, just closed off.  In either case, an officer or a soldier should be in or near the room at all times.”
    None of what the officer said made Lauren feel much better.  She couldn’t understand why they would put kids in the same room as a mentally unstable person.  She didn’t know why they had a mentally unstable person on the