Z-Minus Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Perrin Briar

  He took off at a slow pace, heading for the fields that sat before the property. He ran along the hard dirt track that weaved between the fields and the edge of a thick woods. There was no sound save the hard pat of his footsteps on the earth and the gentle rustle of the die-hard dry leaves on the trees. An owl screeched and something rustled beneath the thick brown foliage. Chris picked up the pace and stretched his legs, throwing his arms back and forth in wide arcs, eating up the land, which was overgrown, rough and bumpy. His arms and legs began to ache, but he pushed on.

  A small white-washed house that backed onto the property grew larger. It had once been a stables, but had been converted into a neat little bungalow. Its windows were musty green with algae, the bottom half of its walls furry with moss. Chris gave the house a wide berth. He’d never liked that house, even as a boy. The tales of ghosts and supernatural beings had taunted his dreams, and although he knew they were just tales to keep children safe from entering the dilapidated building, the stories had still had an effect on him.

  He turned and began to make his way across the top of the field. He was at the halfway point. His lungs burnt and his throat ached. The sweat on his forehead grew into beads and rolled down his face. He could taste the salt in them. He turned to head back to the farm, and he paused.

  The scene took his breath away, as it did every morning. The sun poked up above the forest tree line, bathing nature in golden light. The farmhouse and barn were just over two miles away, the ground running downhill slightly, the white of the farmhouse reflecting the sunlight back, shining like a beacon of hope.

  Bleep!

  Chris checked his watch. It had just turned seven in the morning. As he ran back toward the barn he picked up the pace, using the ground’s gentle downhill leaning to propel him forward. He widened his gait and ran as fast as his legs could carry him. His lungs begged for air, and his throat grew hoarse and hot, but he pushed himself harder. He got to the bottom of the field and came to a steady jog. Then he put his hands on his head, expanding his lungs and breathed in the cold crisp morning air.

  Chris walked around the side of the barn. On the other side of the concrete clearing was the farmhouse. It was big and old, with a curved roof and white walls. In the space between the two buildings were all manner of farm machinery, rusting tractors and harvesting equipment lined up in rows like soldiers ready for war.

  Chris approached a tap that jutted out from the barn wall. Chris turned it on, and the water chugged out in sputtering sprays. It splattered on the uneven concrete, dousing his legs up to the knees. He placed his hands under the water, filled them, and then thrust his face into it, the ice-cold water shocking his system and making it more alert. He scrubbed his face with his hands, and behind his ears and neck. He turned the tap off and wiped his face on his T-shirt, exposing his trim waist. Now fully awake, he entered the barn.

  “Maisie!” he said, calling up to the ledge where Maisie lay. “Maisie, wake up.”

  She grunted and rolled back over again.

  “Maisie,” Chris said again.

  “What?” her voice said, fuzzy with sleep.

  “I’m going to go into the woods. You should come with me.”

  “Can’t you go by yourself?”

  “Don’t you want to see what you caught?”

  “I’ll dream about what I caught.”

  “Get up.”

  Maisie grunted with dissatisfaction and then pushed herself up. After a moment of faltering footsteps the two prongs of the ladder appeared over the edge and lowered to the ground. Maisie’s small frame climbed down, her movements slow and tortured.

  “All right,” she said. “I’m up… Or down.”

  Maisie’s frizzy hair stuck up in all directions. Her clothes barely covered her forearms and calves. They’d only been on the farm for two months but already her clothes didn’t fit. They’d raided the big farm house and stolen a teenager’s abandoned clothes. Chris had taken some of the clothes in, but he’d never been good with needle and thread, so the clothes looked rough and unkempt.

  “Good morning,” Chris said, patting down her hair.

  “Is it?” Maisie said, peering at him through one eye.

  “It’s another morning, so it must be good, right?”

  Maisie didn’t reply, and instead yawned a yawn that took up her whole face.

  “We’d better go check the traps, see what’s on the menu for breakfast,” Chris said. “Come on, let’s get dressed.”

  “I’m already dressed.”

  “I mean properly dressed.”

  7:35am

  In a corner of the barn lay two piles of clothes. Chris put on a pair of thick trousers with industrial plastic around the ankles and knees. Chris had hammered thick nails into them so they jutted out like a robot hedgehog. He wore an ominous-looking mask with narrow horizontal slits for eyes and vertical slits over the mouth. Chris had sawed a helmet in half and attached it to the back of the mask, so it covered his head. He wore a leather jacket with high collar. His gloves, consisting of tiny metal links like a mail shirt, had pointed studs along the knuckles. He carried a small sharp axe in one hand.

  Maisie was a walking Michelin man, her clothing doubling her size in every dimension. Her arms and legs were heavily padded with metal struts. She wore an ice hockey helmet with plastic front that covered her head completely. She could run, but it was ungainly and awkward. She carried a policeman’s baton, but her only real defence was flight.

  “Why am I the one who has to look like a Teletubby?” Maisie said.

  “Because you’re the cutest. It’d look ridiculous if I tried to wear those clothes.”

  “And I don’t?”

  They made their way across the field to the woods that surrounded the property. Sunlight played on the ground with a million flecks of light from leafless limbed trees. Maisie wrapped her arms around herself to keep warm. She was never in a good mood early in the mornings, and their hunter-gatherer antics immediately after waking up was not her idea of fun.

  They came to an open clearing with dried brown leaves up to their ankles like a vast sea. Her father knelt down on a studded kneepad and felt at a wooden stake that protruded from the ground.

  “Maisie,” he said, waving her over. “Come look at this.”

  She ambled over, her teeth chattering, looking at what made her father so excited. A wooden stake jutted up from the ground, the end snapped clean off, the wood fibres underneath a light brown colour. Chris lifted up his mask.

  “Do you see what happened here?” Chris said. “Do you see what you did wrong?”

  Maisie pressed her weight against the snapped stake, pulling it from the ground.

  “It wasn’t strong enough?” she said.

  “That’s right.”

  Maisie tilted turned her head to the side.

  “That’s funny,” she said. “I thought I did make it strong enough…”

  “Obviously not. So how do we make sure it is strong enough?”

  Maisie looked around and approached a tree, laid her hand on its bark.

  “We should attach it to something that won’t pull free,” she said.

  “And how would you go about doing something like that?” Chris said, handing her a long length of wire.

  Maisie wrapped the wire around the tree trunk and tied a slip knot, positioning it around a narrow natural tunnel where rabbits, hares and other wildlife often traipsed.

  “Good,” Chris said. “But what if you didn’t have enough wire to wrap all the way around a tree trunk?”

  Maisie frowned.

  “Find a smaller tree?” she said.

  “Or, make ourselves a stronger anchor,” Chris said, reaching up and pulling a branch free.

  He snapped it in half and drove the sharpest end into the ground. He pressed his weight onto it and drove it in deep.

  “The advantage of making one like this,” Chris said, “is that we can put it anywhere we want. Preferably next to a trail. And
we can decide on the thickness and strength of the anchor. There are other advantages too. A stronger anchor means the animals don’t have to suffer any more than they need to. Come on, let’s go find the poor animal that broke this trap.”

  Chris’s eyes trailed the spread of dead leaves along the ground. Small green plants had been bent over, twigs snapped. The trail led to the crest of a hill. Chris gestured for Maisie to keep back. He trudged up the incline and came to a stop at the top. He peaked over the side. He froze.

  Below him, in the deep clutching brown of dead leaves was a pale white-skinned body. Blood splattered its varicose-veined skin. Its legs twitched and kicked out with feeble thrusts. Its left ankle wore Maisie’s snare like an anklet, biting deep into its skin, drawing a thick red, almost black, oozing liquid. The ruins of the snapped stake tapped the ground as he struggled. Chris’s breath grew tight in his throat, drawing a ragged gasp.

  Four bodies crouched over the unfortunate, tearing at his stomach and pulling out the long sausage string-like entrails. The blood around their fingers made them look like they were wearing fingerless gloves. Chris stepped back and lay down on his front. He gestured for Maisie to join him.

  “Huh,” Chris said. “Looks like it wasn’t your fault the trap broke after all.”

  “I thought I made a strong anchor!” Maisie said.

  Maisie made to peer over the mound. Chris pulled her back down.

  “How many are there?” Maisie said, her voice low and steady.

  “Four. Not including the one they’re eating, assuming he’s already turned. We should head back to the barn.”

  “But they could wander out here for ages,” Maisie said. “Let’s just kill them now.”

  No matter how many times he heard her say such things, he was always surprised a girl of eight and a half had the foresight to think so logically. She’d inherited the straight forward way her mother used to think.

  “How do you want to do it?” Maisie said.

  “Same plan as always. Just be careful. And don’t take any unnecessary risks.”

  Maisie got up and kept her head low, making her way around the rim of the rise. She got to the tree and peered around at the uneven surface on the other side. She looked back at Chris and nodded her head. The coast is clear. Chris took a deep breath and waited as Maisie crested the rise on the left-hand side. She stood up, her figure bulky against the sunlight.

  “Hey!” she said, waving her arms. “Hey! Hey!”

  But the zombies were slow in their response, the snapping and slurping of entrails blurring Maisie’s voice.

  “Hey!” she said again. “Hey!”

  This time they looked up. The sight of fresh meat brought a faint smile to their blood-encrusted lips. They stood on unsteady legs and stumbled in Maisie’s direction. They struggled up the incline, the exposed bones of their feet crunching and snapping under their weight. One male zombie had a blue backpack and a deep cut to the base of his neck. The female zombie’s hair was shiny and looked untouched, as if she’d just come from the hairdresser. A heavy-set zombie with tiny bald head fell to his knees and began to crawl toward Maisie. The last zombie would have looked remarkably like Justin Bieber if it wasn’t for the missing flesh around his mouth and nose. He was lightest on his feet and led the pack.

  Maisie stood her ground, staring down at the angry white-eyed glare of the zombies racing toward her.

  Chris took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He lowered his mask and got to his feet. He ran down the incline and flew at the zombies from behind. The large zombie, on his hands and knees, didn’t even have time to react when Chris brought the axe down onto the back of his head, knocking it flat. But he gargled and, not yet dead, Chris pulled the axe back and slammed it into the top of the zombie’s head. There was a satisfying wet crunch, and the big zombie didn’t move again.

  Chris pulled his axe free and turned to find two zombies had spotted him. They turned and lumbered toward him. He swung at the female zombie and caught her across the face, tearing open her cheek. A thick sludge dribbled down her pale skin. She hissed. Chris took a step back and swung again, this time catching the zombie under the chin.

  “Look out!” Maisie said.

  Chris turned, but too late as the zombie on the ground, his insides hanging out of his body, reached for his boots. Chris hopped back out of its reached. The first zombie was on Chris, reaching for his arms. Chris swung again, and this time buried the axe in the zombie’s head, just above the temple on the left side, severing her blonde hair. The female zombie hit the ground, unmoving. Chris knocked aside the zombie on the ground’s grasping hands and threw the axe down with all his might, caving in the zombie’s skull. The arms flopped down into the brown leaves.

  Chris looked up to face his final zombie attacker. The zombie’s mouth mawed open, a black cavern. Chris stepped forward and drove the spike on the handle end of his axe up through the zombie’s mouth and through the top of his head. The body flopped to the floor like a sack of old potatoes. Panting slightly, Chris looked up to face the final teenage zombie.

  Only it wasn’t there. Neither was Maisie.

  8:43am

  Zombie Justin Bieber chased Maisie at a speed she could barely keep ahead of. He tripped but caught himself before falling, propelling himself forward.

  Maisie looked back over her shoulder. The teen was falling behind. There was a snap sound and she was thrown forward onto her face. Dirt and crushed leaves jammed up her nose. She sneezed, dislodging most of it. Something had snagged her boot. She got up and carried on running, but it wasn’t a dozen yards before she ran head-first into a bush and fell, rolling down a steep incline on the other side.

  Maisie’s helmet struck a rock with a sharp crack. She heard a high-pitched whistling and a throbbing like a second heartbeat was in her ears. She got to her feet and stumbled forward. She heard foliage crunching underfoot. A moan escaped the throat of something that did not sound human. Maisie spun around and found the Bieber zombie impossibly close, arms outstretched and reaching for her.

  Maisie shuffled back on her hands and feet. Bieber tripped on a tree root and fell forward, landing before her. Maisie screamed from behind her plastic visor. The zombie looked up, eyes misty blue, saliva dribbled out of the corner of his mouth. He grabbed her boot and pulled. Maisie shook her leg to get him off, but he clung on.

  Bieber pulled himself up, his other hand had two fingers missing and couldn’t get a good grip. Finally he seized the leg of her trousers. Sticky drool unspooled from his mouth and onto her black boots. He opened his mouth and brought it down on the tip of her toecap. He clamped his mouth shut tight. Maisie felt the pressure against her toes, the leather bending inwards. There was a snapping, crunching sound like ice cubes under pressure. The zombie’s rotten teeth cracked, splintered, and then gave way to pressure around the steel toe capped boot. Maisie lay on her back before him, eyes wide.

  Her fear escaped her throat not as words but a high-pitched squeal. Bieber pulled himself further up her body, seizing great handfuls of her overalls and tearing it, pulling at it. He made a hole and worked his fingers into it, tearing the fabric apart, revealing a series of hard white plastic tubes, and beneath it, visible between tiny slits, Maisie’s pink skin.

  The zombie pressed his fingers against the slit and Maisie could feel his rough skin on her shins. Then she felt his weight pressing down on her, squeezing the air out of her tiny lungs. An ugly blur formed in the visor of her helmet. Maisie beat at him with her baton, but he gripped it and tore it away from her, tossing it aside.

  With predatory instinct he reached under her helmet, slipping under the rim for the soft skin at her neck. He came into horrific view as her helmet came off, revealing the open sores covering his missing nose. He grinned, pulled his head back and prepared to bring his rotten teeth down. Maisie was too terrified even to scream.

  Something slammed into him, knocking him aside, off of her. She gasped as oxygen flooded into her deprived
lungs.

  Chris bent down, grabbed her by the front of her coat and tossed her aside like an empty crisp packet. He lifted the axe, but Bieber was on him, knocking the axe aside. Chris raised his arm in reflex. The zombie sunk his teeth into the thick padding there. Chris seized Bieber’s collar and pushed him back, into a tree, keeping his forearm padding pressed firmly in the zombie’s mouth. He lifted him up, the boy’s shrivelled body light and insubstantial.

  Chris raised his studded fist, his face curled with rage, but then he did something very strange. He hesitated.

  He lowered his fist and the anger drained from his face.

  Instead, he pressed his full weight into Bieber’s face. First his jaw creaked, and then it snapped, the bottom jaw hitting his chest. Chris pressed harder and the boy’s skull fractured and then shattered under the pressure. His whole body went limp, and Chris let him fall to the ground.

  Chris stepped back, breathing in hard through his aching burning lungs. He could hardly lift his arm. He looked over at where Maisie was, lying sprawled across the ground a short distance away, tree roots jutting up to either side of her, like a hammock made of tree roots. Chris pulled her out, and then pulled at her clothes, checking her skin.

  “Were you bitten?” he said. “Did he bite you?”

  “No,” Maisie said.

  But Chris didn’t stop, checking every inch of her bare skin.

  “Stop!” Maisie said. “I said stop!”

  And Chris then did stop. He looked into his daughter’s face.

  “I’m okay,” Maisie said. “Really. I’m fine.”

  Chris picked her up and held her tight in his arms. She could hardly breathe, but she didn’t complain. And there they stayed, two desperate figures clinging on to one another at the end of the world.