Flowers Vs. Zombies (Book 6) Native

by Perrin Briar

  But what was the point? He was only extending his own suffering. Manuel was going to get him, was going to tear him to pieces. There was no stopping the juggernaut that was Manuel. Rupert should know. He had helped create him. There was no going back now.

  It was always going to end this way, he supposed. There was no avoiding the inevitable. He was Frankenstein, Manuel his monster.

  Then he saw it, and hope rekindled in his chest after it had momentarily flickered out.

  A ship. Down below.

  He’d just caught sight of its great mast, rearing agonizingly into the sky. The great billowing sails that, had its anchor not been put out to sea, would have tugged it into the world beyond.

  And then Rupert’s smile faded. He dropped to his knees as he realized with horrifying clarity that this ship was not altogether unknown to him.

  It was The Red Flag.

  They had found him. After all these weeks of escaping Shih’s clutches, they had finally found him. He dropped to the deck, lying flat on his stomach.

  Now he was truly stuck between a rock and a hard place. Who would have thought Shih would have been so desperate to get her claws back into Rupert and the others? Or perhaps they were here on some other errand… But that was too much to hope for. No, they were here for him. No question about it. Shih wouldn’t stop, not until she had them back.

  Rupert was overtaken with despair once again. If a miracle happened and Manuel did not get him, Shih most certainly would. Rupert was a rat trapped in a maze with no exit. He might as well throw himself over the cliff edge. At least then the death would be quick, instantaneous.

  And then he had an idea.

  It was so obvious! Instead of trying to avoid the two factions, he should be bringing them together, forcing them into a confrontation so one would destroy the other.

  Rupert had seen Manuel in action. There was no stopping him if he came from nowhere. He could take out five, six men before they managed to put him down. And they would put him down. It was so deliciously simple that Rupert could barely contain his excitement.

  He got a second—or perhaps it was a third or fourth—wind and began to trot along the jungle’s edge. Manuel hadn’t emerged yet. Why, Rupert didn’t know. Didn’t want to even consider. He could be hiding in the jungle, Rupert’s imagination going wild. Manuel wasn’t capable of such thoughts. The only thing he understood was to follow, attack, and destroy. That was all.

  Rupert liked to think he could always tell when an idea he had was going to work. It seemed to glow brightly in his mind, and he couldn’t wait to get started. Hope was on the horizon, and he was running directly for it.

  He would use Shih and her men to distract Manuel. At the very least they would knock him unconscious so Rupert could finish him off himself. It was going to work, he told himself. All he had to do was find Shih and direct Manuel at them. Rupert might even be able to get hold of one of their guns. If he could do that… All his worries would be over.

  There was one place he could start—the same place he’d started when he’d first arrived on this damn island. The only place that had anything worth exploring. The Flowers’ home.

  Rupert began at a decent pace. He wanted to get there before it was too late.

  Chapter Fourteen

  FEAR WAS a powerful motivator. When used correctly it was almost as powerful as love. It was certainly safer. Fear prevented those from taking action who would otherwise do you harm. And if they had loved ones they feared for, knowing what would happen to them if they didn’t follow your rules, all the better.

  Kristian was afraid of Captain Shih. He made no apology for it. Furthermore, Captain Shih knew he was terrified of her. She could do anything she wanted to him and he would not retaliate.

  Kristian checked his pocket watch again. Shih was late. She was never late. Now Kristian was stuck, not sure what he should do. Shih had never been late before, and Kristian was not confident about assuming command of the crew as dictated by the rules of seniority. Who knew how Shih would react. Might she think he had attempted to take the crew and power for himself? The thought alone gave Kristian goosebumps.

  It was mostly because Kristian owned that watch that he was still alive. He possessed it, therefore he was the one most qualified to operate it. It hadn’t been true when he had received this position, but he had made damn sure he knew everything about the inner workings of that watch afterwards.

  He did not possess the photographic memory Smee had, or his assistant Jim, but that didn’t seem to matter. Captain Shih wanted Jim back because he was the only one who now knew the location of all the weapons caches they had buried. Without them, Shih’s teeth would be drawn. There were other pirate captains in these waters and if they discovered Shih’s weakness… It wouldn’t end well for any of the crew.

  Kristian could have taken The Red Flag for himself and sailed into the sunset… Except he was too afraid of Captain Shih to do that. All the crew were. That was why none of them even contemplated doing it. The captain was a legend already, and there was no doubt in any of their minds that should they take The Red Flag, Captain Shih would find them at some point. The thought of turning around to find her standing there, her blade buried in his ribs and that half-crazed smile on her face…

  Kristian shivered. It was too much to bear. But it wasn’t worth worrying about anyway. There were far more pressing concerns He doubted he would survive long enough at sea before the crew committed mutiny. They would never follow him as their leader. He was far too weak.

  He knew full well that was why Shih had chosen him to be her first mate in the first place. He was the weakest of all the crewmembers, and if he displeased her, he would be put amongst them, a lamb amongst the wolves. He would be dead before the sun set on the first day.

  In choosing him as her leader, Captain Shih had made a grave error. For, in situations such as this, when Kristian needed to step up and take the helm, he needed to be strong, a leader. But he was far too weak. The crew were more likely to ignore him than follow him.

  The only way Kristian stood a chance of success was if he went onto the land to find Captain Ching Shih. It was his only hope.

  But Kristian wasn’t without his strengths. He was a good observer, and noticed how Smee always puffed and panted when he was forced to run. He was always heavily out of breath. Kristian was lucky that his mother had suffered from a similar list of ailments reserved for the overweight and unfit. Even a slight uptick in heart rate could kill him. And so Kristian took it upon himself to shout, screaming at Smee one night when he was out walking the decks, lost in thought. Others would hear the scream, of course, but Kristian knew they would have assumed it was Smee himself who had cried out.

  Smee ought to have died immediately, but he hadn’t. It took several minutes for him to die, his trusted assistant Jim bent over him. Jim would be an added benefit, Kristian had thought, licking his lips.

  With Smee dead, that left his position open. Kristian stepped up with his pocket watch, and assumed the role. But he never got the opportunity to take advantage of Jim. He was gone by the time the sun rose. They had been searching for him ever since.

  All that had led to this moment, with Kristian facing the crew, each with arms larger than Kristian’s legs. Not one of them wasn’t battle scarred and missing digits on their fingers, or eyes from their sockets. Kristian’s voice shook when he spoke.

  “Listen up men,” he said. “The captain is late in returning to The Red Flag. We all know the drill. We’re to go onto the land and retrieve her. No matter the cost. Understood?”

  No one uttered as much as a mutter.

  “Then let’s get to it,” Kristian said.

  He would need to keep eyes in the back of his head. One of them would likely attempt the same double cross he had played out on Smee. Kristian took a few calming breaths and began to climb the ladder down to the rowboats. He’d never signed up for this.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “THEY’LL BE c
oming from the eastern shore,” Jenny said, pointing at a map. “That’ll bring them through the jungle in this direction. We only have a little time, so we need to prepare everything we can. Is there anything you can think of that we might use in this area as defense?”

  “We set up an assault course of pit holes there before,” Fritz said. “When an undead horde came at us.”

  “It’s still functional?” Jenny said.

  “Should be,” Ernest said. “They’re just holes.”

  “We don’t know if they’ve been sprung or not already,” Bill said.

  “We do know,” Liz said. “The first was. Not the rest. I saw them just yesterday. Believe me, most of them haven’t been sprung.”

  There was something in her voice that Bill couldn’t help but pick up on. Something that told him something bad had happened there, something she couldn’t shake from her mind. But now wasn’t the time to be discussing it.

  “Good,” Jenny said. “That ought to take care of some of them, and at least buy us some time. Then they’ll be heading this way.”

  She slid her finger through the dense jungle and circled the two trees that were the Flowers’ home.

  “Any other defenses you’ve got available?” she said. “Anything that we can set up within the next couple of hours?”

  “We have walls in place,” Liz said. “Bill, the boys and Rupert and Manuel set them up. They were meant as a way for us to deal with the natives, should they return here. Obviously, that never happened.”

  “We expected the natives to take position behind those walls and use them to fire at us,” Bill said.

  “Isn’t that defeating the purpose of having the walls in the first place?” Jenny said. “If you’re giving them somewhere to attack you from?”

  “That’s what I thought at first,” Bill said. “But think of it this way: if we know where they are, then that makes attacking them a lot easier.”

  “Yes,” Jenny said. “I see what you mean.”

  “What do you suggest we do?” Liz said.

  “Do you have oil?” Jenny said.

  “Yes,” Liz said.

  “Bowls?” Jenny said.

  “Yes,” Liz said.

  “Then we’ll heat them up and put them on top of the walls, with vines attached so we can pull on them and they’ll tip over onto the pirates,” Jenny said.

  “You don’t believe in half measures, do you?” Ernest said.

  “They’re pirates,” Jenny said. “They’ll do a lot worse to us if they can get their hands on us, believe me.”

  “It’s not enough,” Fritz said, peering intently at the map. “It’s all good, and it’ll delay them, and incapacitate some of them, but it’s not going to be enough to stop them.”

  “These are merely distractions,” Jenny said. “We’re going to have to use guns.”

  “Guns?” Liz said. “But they’re living people.”

  “I’m afraid that if you want to continue you’re going to have to get your hands dirty,” Jenny said.

  “No,” Liz said.

  She shook her head and peered round at her boys, her family.

  “We can’t do this,” she said. “I know we want to live, but taking someone else’s life when they’re still alive…”

  “There’s no other way for it,” Jenny said. “Either that, or they will come and take your lives, and those of your family. They do not have the same compunction you do. They will do everything they can to take you. You should be willing to do the same in return.”

  Liz shook her head.

  “I don’t think I can do this,” she said.

  “Maybe there’s a way around this,” Ernest said.

  “This is no way around it!” Jenny said. “We either do this, or we don’t. If we don’t we need to think of some other way to destroy them.”

  “What if we fired the guns, but we weren’t the ones to pull the triggers?” Ernest said.

  “Then who would pull them?” Jenny said.

  “They will,” Ernest said.

  “Who?” Jenny said.

  “The pirates,” Ernest said.

  Jenny frowned and let what Ernest had just said roll over her. She didn’t know specifically what he had planned, but she believed in his confidence when he looked like that.

  Liz couldn’t rightly explain it, but there was something about taking another person’s life that just didn’t sit right with her. It was the knowledge that they were a real person, were still capable of making their own decisions and continuing with their lives.

  “If we kill, we’re no better than them,” Liz said. “It’s a thin line, I know. But it’s one we have to keep on their side of. It’s what separates them from us, animals from civilization.”

  “I understand,” Jenny said. “Really, I do. But they will fire at us, hack us to pieces if they get half a chance.”

  “Let them try,” Liz said. “And we’ll do our best to ensure they never get that chance.”

  “We’ve got plenty of guns,” Bill said. “More than we can possibly use. I say we use them all.”

  “We’ll need to use everything we’ve learned to survive on this island,” Bill said. “It’s the only way we can beat them. This island has plenty of its own methods of self-defense. We just need to harness them.”

  “What about the Lurchers?” Jenny said. “Do you have many of them on this island?”

  “Yes,” Bill said. “But I’m not sure we should be using them right now.”

  “Why not?” Jenny said.

  “We think they’ve been compromised,” Ernest said.

  “By an overlord?” Jenny said.

  “You know about them?” Jack said.

  “A little,” Jenny said. “Rumors, mostly. There were stories of them sailing in ships in Europe, heading this way. If it was true, then we have no hope left. The whole world will be undead, given over to them. It’s a shame we can’t use them here. They could have been an effective way for us to distract the pirates.”

  “Wait,” Ernest said. “There are some Lurchers we could take advantage of.”

  “I thought you said they were all under the overlord’s control?” Jenny said.

  “They are,” Ernest said. “The ones that have any form of consciousness. But there are others. There are those that have no consciousness, those that do not do what the overlord says because they operate on autopilot.”

  “I’ve never heard of such a beast,” Jenny said. “What are they?”

  “We call them Spinners,” Fritz said. “They spin. It’s what they do, and nothing we do can stop them, save knocking them over a cliff edge so they go off to another part of the world.”

  “But how are we supposed to manipulate them?” Ernest said. “How are we supposed to turn them into effective weapons?”

  “I’ve got an idea for that,” Liz said.

  Chapter Sixteen

  ERNEST’S ARMS shook under the strain of the bag of weapons he was carrying. His weak muscles weren’t used to hefting anything more than a book, or swinging a cudgel from time to time. He avoided hard physical labor whenever possible. Fritz, on the other hand, carried two bags. One on his shoulder, the other by the handles. He appeared not to be having much difficulty with them at all.

  “Shall we set it up here?” Ernest said, struggling to take another step.

  “No, we need to head a little deeper into the jungle, I think,” Fritz said. “Where there’s more foliage to conceal the weapons.”

  “I feared as much,” Ernest said, bending down to pick the bag up again.

  The sweat ran down his face and stung his eyes.

  Jenny walked past, carrying her own bag. It was the same size and weight as Ernest’s, and yet she appeared not to have any difficulty in carrying it. Ernest began to wonder perhaps his bag was laden with all the heaviest items. But it couldn’t be—he’d helped pack it. If anything, it was lighter than theirs. But he wasn’t about to admit that, especially not in front of Jenny.

  And
then the strangest thing happened. Ernest suddenly became stronger.

  He bent his arms and legs and picked the bag up, shifting the weight so most of it would be lifted by his legs and not his arms.

  Fritz had seen Jenny too. He turned to Ernest, a sinister grin on his lips. He took the opportunity to bend over Ernest and say loudly: “Would you like a hand with that, Ernest? You look like you’re struggling.”

  If looks could kill, Fritz would have been writhing on the floor.

  “You worry about your own bags,” Ernest said sharply. “I’ll take care of my share.”

  “One bag for you, two for me,” Fritz said. “Hardly sounds like sharing to me.”

  Ernest gritted his teeth.

  “Then give me another bag then,” he said.

  “I don’t know,” Fritz said. “This is pretty heavy. Are you sure you can handle it?”

  “Yes,” Ernest said. “I can. Give it here.”

  “All right, muscle man,” Fritz said, handing the bag over.

  “There’s only one muscle in the human body we need to concern ourselves with,” Ernest said.

  “My thoughts exactly,” Fritz said with a cocked eyebrow.

  Jenny had the audacity to smile coyly. She giggled behind her hand.

  “And it appears that’s the only one you’re capable of thinking with,” Ernest said.

  “Hey, if it gets the job done, why not?” Fritz said.

  “Hundreds of thousands of years of development and we’re still left with the stamp of our lowly origin,” Ernest said.

  “We’re animals,” Fritz said. “We have needs. There’s no running from that.”

  The weight of the two bags was too much for Ernest, but he straightened his back and shuffled forward.

  “I guess we’ll see you when you catch up,” Fritz said.

  He grinned as he repositioned his own bag over his shoulder and headed deeper into the jungle. In Jenny’s direction. He was going to talk with her while Ernest lagged behind.

  Good move, Ernest thought. It had incapacitated him, made him look physically weak, and given Fritz time alone with Jenny.