Z-Minus Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Perrin Briar

  4:23PM

  A blackbird fluttered its wings and came to a stop on the short wall. It cocked its head to one side, gazing at Chris. He couldn’t blame it for its curiosity. If he could see himself, he’d have been curious too.

  Chris stood with his foot out straight before him, over the building’s edge. His legs had grown stiff and sore, but he relished the pain. If he could feel, it meant he was still alive.

  He checked his watch. The stopwatch was now counting backwards. Twenty minutes had passed. Chris sat down, letting his legs dangle over the edge.

  He looked out at the roofs of the buildings opposite, and the quiet street below him between his feet. How could it be that he hadn’t turned yet? Was it a delay? Was he immune? Was Mr Bryant wrong about the virus taking eight hours to take effect? Chris had all the symptoms. The shaking, the sweating, the vomiting. And yet he hadn’t turned. What other possible reason for not turning could there be?

  On the pavement below he could make out the splatter the whiskey had made, a dark spot on the grey paving slabs. Chris frowned, and then he smiled. He slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand.

  “Idiot!” he said out loud. “Why didn’t you think of this before?”

  He got to his feet, suddenly feeling full of life. He looked into the distance.

  “Maisie…”

  He turned and ran.

  4:36PM

  The secondary school was huge, with a great ten-foot tall metal link fence wrapped around it. Unfortunately for Maisie, Mark and Janice, a mob of zombies, ten thick and fifty wide, were pressing against it, buckling it inwards. Gunfire boomed and flashed from the school’s roof.

  “Looks like it’s occupied,” Mark said. “Now what do we do?”

  “Think,” Maisie said, turning to Janice. “There must be another safe place.”

  Mark tore the wrapping off another mini Snickers bar and popped it in his mouth.

  “The shopping centre,” Janice said. “There’s lots of exits, and lots of food there.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  They turned to run. They froze in their tracks.

  Zombies rounded the corner and ambled toward them with slow, heavy steps. They appeared to be the same zombies from Mark and Janice’s house, the woman in pink in front. Their mouths hung open and drool dripped onto the road in sticky puddles. Maisie ran forward to cross the road.

  “They’re still coming after us!” Mark said.

  “Of course they’re still coming for us,” Maisie said. “They’ll never stop. Come on! We have to go this way!”

  They ran into a narrow alleyway, the darkness deep and foreboding. Steam hissed from a pipe that protruded from a wall. They stumbled over boxes and crates that had been left there, forgotten. Maisie stepped carefully to make little noise, but Mark was not well coordinated and his heavy boots clomped and stamped and echoed down the alleyway.

  “Mark!” Maisie hissed. “Run quietly! Try not to sound like a herd of elephants!”

  Chastened, Mark placed his feet carefully, but still made more noise than Maisie and Janice put together.

  They peeled down another alleyway. Daylight shone brightly at the end, to freedom. They got halfway down it when Maisie pulled up short as a silhouette appeared at the alley’s mouth. Janice and Mark ran into Maisie’s back, knocking her to the ground. Someone stepped on Maisie’s calf. She felt her muscles twist. She cried out in pain. Janice and Mark stopped, finally seeing the figure at the end of the alley.

  “We have to turn back!” Mark said.

  “Help me up,” Maisie said.

  Janice bent down and supported her by wrapping an arm around her shoulders. Maisie limped back toward the maze of crisscrossing alleyway tunnels. But before they got to the end, a crowd of zombies, perhaps a dozen strong, limped past, down an alleyway at a right-angle to their own.

  Maisie planted her feet to stop and hide until the zombies passed, but Janice and Mark barrelled forward a few more steps before they noticed them.

  A zombie turned, using his whole body to do so, and stared at them. His severed lips bent and contorted up, a severe cut connecting the corner of his mouth and one eye. He groaned, and a reply came from the throats of those around him. They shuffled down the alleyway.

  “We’re trapped!” Mark said.

  Maisie turned to look in the other direction, toward the exit of the alleyway they had been heading for. The single figure dragged his leg behind him as he approached.

  “There’s only one zombie this way,” Maisie said. “If one of you can hit him over the head, we can get out of here.”

  “We can’t kill him!” Mark said, another wrapper tumbling from his fingertips. “We’d be murderers!”

  “If you don’t kill him, he’s going to kill all of us!” Maisie said.

  “Maybe… Maybe we can run past him,” Janice said.

  “We’ll never get past him,” Maisie said. “Not with me like this.”

  Janice and Mark exchanged a look.

  “We have to try,” Mark said in a calm voice that struck Maisie as out of character. “On the count of three we’ll all run. One, two…”

  Maisie stiffened her body, ready to sprint at the zombie. She noticed his legs were wide apart when he dragged his leg behind him. If she timed it right, she might be able to squeeze between them.

  “Three!” Mark said.

  Maisie coiled her leg up underneath her. A pair of hands gripped her backpack, lifted her up into the air, and tossed her forward, where she landed in a heap at the limping zombie’s feet.

  “Take her!” Mark said. “Let’s go!”

  Maisie stared in horror as Mark and Janice sprinted past the zombie, who swung his arms at them, but missed. He turned back to Maisie. He brought his arms up to grab her. She got to her feet and threw herself between his legs. She crawled along the ground to put some distance between her and the zombie. She got to her feet, her ankle throbbing.

  The zombie began to turn, using his whole body. By now the other zombies had caught up, shuffling their feet, cajoling and bumping against one another as they bustled down the alleyway toward her.

  Maisie pushed herself to go as fast as she could, ignoring the pain in her calf. She managed a speed only marginally faster than the zombies.

  A zombie’s fingers scrabbled at her backpack, and then grabbed hold of it. She shrugged her shoulders and her bag slipped down her arms.

  The alleyway exit grew larger and brighter and filled her with hope. Could she make it? And even if she did, what would she do then?

  4:51PM

  The Porsche screeched to a halt outside Mark and Janice’s house. Chris leapt out of the car and hopped over the fence.

  The front door was wide open. He could see through to the other end of the house, where the French windows in the living room had been smashed, and spots of blood caked the jagged edge. With his heart in his throat, Chris entered the house.

  “Maisie?” he said. “Are you in here? Maisie?”

  He walked into the living room, checked the kitchen, the downstairs bathroom, and the study, but found no sign of her. Then he proceeded up the stairs, feet making heavy thunking noises on the hollow steps, and checked the three bedrooms, the ensuite bathroom, and the shared bathroom. No sign.

  He came back out the front door, shaken. His daughter was lost to him. He felt a heavy tug in his chest as he stepped toward the car. He peered around at his surroundings. Neat ash trees grew in uniform rows along both sides of the street. A nice neighbourhood. A safe neighbourhood.

  Something crunched beneath his foot. He looked down to see it was a wrapper. A golden wrapper with ‘mini Snickers’ written across it. He looked up and down the street. It didn’t take him long to find the next wrapper, flapping in the gentle breeze between two paving slabs.

  Chris smiled and got into his car.

  4:59PM

  Chris drove along the streets, looking out through the windows at the ground, eyes scouring the road surface. T
he dying light caught the wrappers and made them shine like golden nugget breadcrumbs. The wrappers led to a narrow alleyway. Chris was filled with a feeling of dread.

  The trail went cold. Just as Chris thought he’d have to go into the alley and look around, he found another wrapper on the other side of the building.

  The wrappers were further apart now. Perhaps they had been running? They led to a children’s playground. A pile of wrappers, the chocolates still inside them, laid in a discarded pile like a little bird was building a nest. Chris got out of the car.

  The playground was the typical affair with slides, swings and roundabouts. A strong wind blew and made the plastic animals squeak with long creaks on their springs. Between a smiling elephant and a laughing giraffe were the bloody remains of an indeterminate number of bodies. Chris’s insides turned to water.

  The bodies lay in a thick congealing pool of blood. Red footprints walked away from the scene in random directions. Chris’s eyes scanned the bloody remains for something, anything, identifiable as Maisie. A clutch of mousey hair, or a discarded child’s trainer, perhaps. But the fact he recognised nothing meant little. She could have been torn to pieces with nothing of her delicate little body remaining.

  Chris fell to his knees. Was this his daughter? Was this her final resting place?

  Amongst the pool of blood was an eye. It was blue, not Maisie’s chestnut brown. The eye blinked, and Chris stumbled back. A hole opened and closed, drowning in blood. Chris pushed the blood aside with his shoe. The eye blinked again and looked up at Chris. The hole was a mouth. It gasped, sucking in and gasping air.

  “You came back!” the mouth said, voice muffled with blood. “We thought you were gone for good.”

  “Who are you?” Chris said.

  “I’m Mark,” the mouth said, screwed up in pain.

  “What happened to you?”

  “They fell on us, bit us, and tore us to pieces.”

  “‘Us’?”

  Chris’s heart was in his mouth.

  “Me and Janice,” Mark said. “She’s dead, I think.”

  The eye swivelled to look at the lump beside Mark.

  “In eight hours we’ll both wake up and become those things,” he said.

  “Where’s Maisie?” Chris said.

  “Please,” Mark said. “Help us.”

  “Tell me where Maisie is.”

  Mark gurgled blood. It stained his beard red and dribbled down the side of his face.

  “She saw the zombies and ran away,” he said. “We did our best to protect her, but she wouldn’t listen. That’s how they caught us.”

  “Which way?”

  “I don’t know. Please. Kill us now. I don’t want to be like this forever.”

  “I’m sorry this happened to you,” Chris said. “Thank you for trying to help my daughter.”

  Chris picked up a rock and smashed both their skulls in. Shards poked up from their heads like they were wearing crowns. Chris stood up and returned to the car. He put his hands on the roof and tried to think where she might be. Had she said something once? A clue?

  A zombie stumbled across the road about half a mile ahead, followed by another, and another. They seemed to be heading in one direction.

  Chris got in the car, floored the accelerator and followed the trail of zombies.

  5:07PM

  “Get away from me!” a high-pitched voice said. “Get away!”

  Chris hit the accelerator and spun the wheel toward the voice’s origin. The high street stretched off up a hill. He slowed down. The voice had come from around this location.

  There was a scream, high pitched and couched in fear. It came from down an alley, bouncing off the walls and making it echo like something from a horror movie.

  Chris pushed the car forward, turned left, and then made another left, emerging on the other side of the alleyway in a car park. His eyes widened.

  Maisie was crouched on a jutting piece of window ledge eight feet in the air. God knows how she’d got up there. Maisie whimpered, her face scrunched up with fear, tears rolling down her cheeks.

  A pack of hungry zombies reached up for her with their blood-smeared hands, scratching at the window ledge. The zombies moaned a continuous “Uhhhh,” the soundtrack to the gates of hell. Maisie looked up and saw the Porsche.

  “Dad!” she said. “Dad! Help me!”

  She made a mad wave for him to see her, and lost her footing. For a split second her leg dangled out over the ledge. A hand grabbed her ankle. Another seized her shoe. She whimpered and pulled her leg back. Her shoe came off. The zombies fought over it, biting and tearing chunks out of it, and each other.

  “Dad!” Maisie said. “Hurry!”

  “I’m going to come back for you,” Chris shouted. “Just hold on a minute longer!”

  Chris honked his horn. Some of the closer zombies turned and approached the car. They pried at the doors and windows. Chris honked the horn again, and more zombies peeled away from the marauding group.

  “Come on!” Chris shouted, honking the horn. “Come get me! Come on! Nice hot human, right here!”

  The zombies hit the side of the car, beating dents into it with their ruined fists and cracking the windows.

  Chris hit the accelerator and pulled away a few yards. He honked again. More zombies followed, but there were still a lot of zombies beneath Maisie. Chris revved the engine so it roared. More zombies approached the car, about half the pack that had formerly been grasping for Maisie. The majority were following him now.

  He took the car a little farther away, leading the zombies around the corner. Chris hit the accelerator, jolting the Porsche forward and smashing into a zombie heading toward him.

  Once he got to the next crossroads, he turned right down a one-way street and flew up it, leaving the zombies behind. He came out the other side and turned right. Straight ahead of him was a stretch of road about four hundred yards long. At the end of it, the zombie mob perched beneath Maisie. Chris reached up and unwound the sunroof and put on his seatbelt.

  “Here goes nothing,” he said.

  He put the car into first and hit the accelerator. The engine roared and he slammed through the gears in rapid succession, keeping the revs high. The car sped down the road, hit the kerb, and slammed into the zombies.

  Time seemed to slow as the thick band of bodies took the impact. The car blasted through the first few rows, slicing them in half at the upper thigh, and then knocked the rest back onto the ground, some smashing their heads on the concrete, popping like balloons. Some had stood to the side and had escaped without injury. They griped at Chris’s cracked window.

  Maisie hopped off her stoop and fell through the skylight. Her knee smacked into Chris’s face, but he didn’t care. He hit the accelerator and peeled away, leaving the mutilated bodies of three dozen corpses behind.

  The front fender was badly buckled and sparks scraped from it as it dragged along the ground and made a groove along the road. The fender finally gave up and snapped off.

  Only once they were out of town did Chris look over at Maisie. She had blood on her arms and legs, and her clothes were torn and tattered.

  “Are you all right?” Chris said. “Were you bitten?”

  Maisie looked out the window.

  “Maisie?” Chris said. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” she said sourly.

  “Is that it? ‘Yes’? After I risked my neck to rescue you? ‘Yes’?”

  “I wouldn’t have been in that situation if you hadn’t have left me there in the first place.”

  “I thought I was turning into one of them,” Chris said defensively.

  “The people you left me with ran and left me the minute the zombies turned up,” Maisie said.

  “What? They said… That lying little…”

  “You met them?”

  “Parts of them.”

  “Then they got their comeuppance, at least.”

  There was a pause. Maisie folded her arms.<
br />
  “Why aren’t you dead?” she said.

  “It’s good to see you too,” Chris said. “Turns out I wasn’t infected. None of your sister’s blood got into my system. Isn’t that great?”

  “Then what about all the symptoms? The being sick, your body shaking, the headaches.”

  “I was just feeling the effects of going cold turkey. I haven’t drank anything in hours. That’s a new record for me!”

  “Oh.”

  “You needn’t sound so excited.”

  “So, you’re going to be okay? I mean, really okay?”

  Maisie’s cold exterior broke. Her eyes shimmered with tears. She blinked and they spilled down her cheeks.

  “Yes,” Chris said. “I’m going to be okay.”

  “Promise me one thing,” Maisie said. “Promise me you won’t ever leave me again.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Promise me.”

  “I promise I’ll never leave you again.”

  Maisie wiped away her tears with her fingers.

  “Good,” she said.

  They sat in silence. The engine began to sputter and smoke hissed out the exhaust like a hacking cough. The whole Porsche shook.

  “Why are there suddenly so many zombies now?”

  “They’re the second generation,” Chris said. “The first generation woke up this morning, bit new victims, and now they’re all turning into zombies. It won’t be long before the whole world is crawling with them.”

  “Mark said the apocalypse might end soon. But it isn’t, is it?”

  “No,” Chris said. “It’s not. It’s only just begun. We need to find somewhere safe, somewhere out of the way.”

  “Where?”

  “I think I know a place.”

  Something inside the Porsche’s engine made a loud rattling noise.

  “That’s if we can get there,” Maisie said.

  Chris tapped the dashboard like he were soothing a lover.

  “She’ll make it,” he said. “She hasn’t let us down yet.”

  5:24PM