Adaptive Instinct (Survival Instinct) Read Online Free PDF Page A

would be gone by the end of the day.
    Greg hadn’t been as keen as River and Quin to do the concert.  He had said he saw a bunch of crows sitting on the balcony railing of their hotel room, which was a bad omen, and that they should back out.  Quin had told him he was a fucking idiot and River concurred.  Looks like those shit-eating crows had a point.
    River Webster was the lead guitarist of a band called Gathers Moss.  His band mates were Gregory Ireland, the drummer extraordinaire, lead singer, Quincy Beharry, better known as Quin, and rhythm guitarist, Zachary Matson, son of the late and great Mitchell Matson.  Mitch had gotten a tumour next to his spine about ten years ago, which was when River quit drugs, booze, cigarettes, and random women in one terrible go.  The cigarette habit returned less than a year later, his estranged wife still wasn’t coming back, and he would accept a night cap if offered, but he stayed off the drugs for as long as he could.  Anyway, the band stopped playing when Mitch got sick; he was too weak to play.  They still got together to jam on his better days and spent the holidays together, but it wasn’t the same.  It could never be the same, not without half a million fans screaming for them.  Just before Mitch finally bit the bullet about a year back, he told the guys he wanted them to play again.  He wanted them to get back on the stage with his son, Zack, playing in his place.  Zack was good.  He grew up playing his dad’s guitar, his dad’s notes.  He could probably play them in his sleep.  After some test sessions, and talking to some managerial people, they decided to do at least one concert.  They would see how it went and would take it from there.
    In honour of Mitch, the concert they had decided upon , was Keystone’s charity concert for spinal research.  Not only was it a charity directly related to what had happened to Mitch, but all the guys had lived and met in Leighton, so it would be nice for their comeback to be there.  They had also arranged for it to be a secret, which was a massive challenge.  A handful of homegrown, up-and-coming bands would start things off, and then a few big bands would get things really going.  During the last song, Gathers Moss would sneak up on stage, and as soon as the song finished, they would launch into one of their own.  They were going to play only three, maybe four songs, and then leave in a hurry.
    To help keep this secret, they were picked up from the hotel in a band bus.  River hadn’t been in a bus for some time and rather enjoyed the novelty of it.  It was great to be back with the guys, to be performing again.  It was even great having Zach around; because they could tell him all the stories they were sick of telling each other.  The bus drove to the park, went through the band entrance, and parked in the midst of all the other buses back there.  Some of the starter bands were so small that they didn’t even get buses, just vans.  That really took River back.  When they had first started, he was seventeen, and drove all around Leighton in Quin’s rattletrap van.  He was now sixty-seven and usually travelled in a private jet.  Unlike most of the other band buses, their bus didn’t have their name smeared on the side of it.  Most of the other bands didn’t even know they were there and that they would be playing.  River had a good time surprising some of them backstage.  He also had fun dodging reporters and cameras.
    There was this one man he remembered, Lucas Jonas.  Although the little idiot had never spotted him, he must have heard something and tr ied to track them down.  Quin said he dressed like a man who didn’t know what world he belonged in; he was trapped between a rocker and a hard news reporter.  At least his cameraman looked very professional.  He just introduced himself to the band members who were being interviewed by the Jonas character and then stayed silent.  He probably