Z-Minus Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Perrin Briar

  His eyes rolled back and he collapsed with the grace of a bag of spuds, falling back onto the Vauxhall and then hitting the ground hard, his body kicking up tiny shards of glass like a spray of water. A groan rose up as the zombies turned to face in their direction.

  Chris crouched down beside George, bracing his head in his hands. His face was as pale as a piece of fresh paper, the veins in his neck and cheeks a mottled blue-green. His eyes were shut tight, his forehead creased with pain. Chris looked into George’s eyes, already turning thick with mist. A knot stuck firm in Chris’s throat.

  “How long?” he said.

  “The same night as your girl. I was in the house, helping clear up the last of the dead heads when one of them crept up behind me. I didn’t even see it coming. I was alone at the time. It was easy enough to keep it from the others.”

  “No one knows?”

  Chris spied the sock poking out from the top of George’s left boot. He moved closer and found it damp and sticky with blood. When he pulled the sock down he saw putrid yellow pus seeping from an ankle wound.

  “Angie,” George said. “She knew. It was the only reason she let me go.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Would it have made any difference? I needed you to let me go with you. But even if the virus hadn’t got me, the cancer would have. I was already dying, Christopher. When a man faces the end of his life he wants to make sure he did something important with it. He wants to know he didn’t waste it. Getting you and your girl here, that was my purpose. I’m sorry I couldn’t make it all the way to the end.”

  “But we could have done something, we could have given you medicine, let you rest more…”

  “Let it be,” George said, his voice calm and reassuring.

  Chris’s eyes moved to the side.

  “That’s how you knew the zombies wouldn’t bite you…” he said.

  “I had an inkling in the zompit. They never really looked at me, but through me, at you and Zora. You were the real meal. Maisie and I were almost invisible to them.”

  A groan escaped the lips of a zombie on the other side of the car. It had drifted closer after George’s collapse. Chris bent down and looked under the car at the shredded feet.

  “We have to move,” Chris said.

  He wrapped George’s arm over his shoulder and braced his weight. He led George around the car and down a narrow gap that wound between two rows of vehicles, and then back onto the pavement, behind a delivery van that had tipped over onto its side. George was not light, and the effort to carry him quickly took its toll on Chris.

  “Put me in a car,” George said.

  “Why?”

  “Just do it!”

  Chris led George over to a BMW. He opened the door and leaned inside. The keys were still in the ignition. Chris placed George on the front seat, turning the adjuster on the side so it leaned back slightly.

  “Comfortable?” he said.

  George nodded.

  “If I’m going to go to hell I might as well go in style,” he said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m going to turn, Chris. It’s already happening. I can feel it. I only have minutes left. I’m going to create a distraction while you get Maisie inside.”

  Chris shook his head.

  “No,” George said. “Listen to me. This is the way it has to be.”

  Chris’s eyes burned hot with tears, but he kept them restrained.

  “Turn the car on,” George said.

  Chris turned the keys in the ignition. The lights on the dashboard came on.

  “Give me the wires,” George said.

  Chris jimmied the cover under the steering column free and tossed it aside, exposing the wires underneath. He rooted amongst them and found the ones he wanted. He severed them and bit the plastic covering off, revealing the wire underneath. He gave them to George.

  They looked at one another. The moment stretched and felt awkward.

  “Well,” Chris said, “I suppose this is goodbye.”

  Chris smiled, though it was tinged with sadness. George smiled through the obvious pain he felt. Chris pulled away, but George caught his arm and pulled him back with surprising strength.

  “Tommy forgives you, Chris,” he said. “He forgives you, as do I. Now, you have to forgive yourself. Your little girl needs you. She needs her father, and she needs those meat hooks of yours. I fear you’re going to have to fight your way inside.

  “And I need you to do something for my boy. My sweet baby, Tommy. I want you to put him to bed. I don’t care if he’s still plugged in, if he’s still alive. I know these places have back-up generators. I don’t want him to have to struggle through the world the way we did. I want him to be in peace. Even if… if he’s changed. Can you do that for me, Christopher? Can you lay him to rest?”

  A tear dribbled down Chris’s dirty cheek.

  “Yes,” he said. “I can do that.”

  “Thank you. You’re a good man, Christopher. An even better father. You take care of your little one now, won’t you?”

  “I will.”

  “Get out of here,” George said. “Go save our little girl.”

  Maisie leaned forward and kissed George on the cheek, her eyes heavy-lidded with approaching sleep. Chris picked Maisie up, her shoeless feet dangling in the air. They looked at the old man lying in the driving seat. Chris shut the door and carried Maisie away.

  Once they had moved further down the row, Chris turned and nodded to George. He pressed the two wires together and wound them around one another. The car horn blared in a single blast, and as it did, the groans of dozens of unseen zombies shook the air.

  Chris backed into the shadowed space between the bus and overturned van. Shuffling footsteps approached, and the zombies began to file past, their rotting flesh filling Chris’s nostrils. Maisie buried her face into Chris’s chest. A fat zombie dragged his leg behind himself, snapped in half at the shin. Chris waited for a zombie to turn and investigate between the vehicles, but none of them did. Their eyes were focused entirely on the BMW. Then there was a heavy thudding sound as the zombies banged on the car windows.

  The zombies filing past Chris dwindled, and then stopped. Chris listened, but heard no dragging sounds. He edged toward the edge of shadow and looked up and down the road, his body tense and ready to spring back at a moment’s notice. The road was empty, but he remained cautious. Chris stepped out of the shadows, the glass crunching beneath his boots. He wound his way through the traffic.

  A zombie in a regulation hospital nightgown with missing legs dragged itself along the ground in the direction of the blaring horn. It looked up at Chris and opened its mouth to hiss, but Chris brought his foot down on its head before it had a chance to make a sound.

  Chris paused at the edge of the plaza, running his eyes over the debris. He stepped over the kindle of snapped wooden benches and overturned plant pots. He looked back. Zombies were still approaching from far and wide, joining the tight knot of zombies that assailed the BMW, barely visible behind the pressing crowd of zombies, their fists beating at the car.

  Chris turned to face the hospital entrance, the protruding shards of glass like grinning teeth. And as he stepped toward it, there was the sound of smashed glass, and the car horn stopped blaring.

  Z-MINUS: 41 MINUTES

  The hospital’s insides had been shredded like builders in the middle of a renovation. The chairs had been torn open, their stuffing spilling over onto the floor, like entrails. Pools of blood sat congealed, the stench overpowering. The signs hanging above the corridors were still intact, though the flashing lights made reading them difficult. Chris followed the ones leading to the research centre.

  Maisie grew heavy in his arms. He was exhausted, but the desperation he felt forced him on, beyond normal boundaries. He peered around the corner and found the next corridor empty. He stepped over an overturned bed, the mattress lying haphazard across the shiny floor, the smell
of disinfectant strong.

  Chris peered into each room as he passed them. X-ray machines, MRI scanners and a host of other technology Chris had no name for, sat empty, bent over and forlorn. Then Chris approached a large open room with a high ceiling, a long bowed reception desk in the centre. ‘Welcome to St. Barts’ Research Centre’ was written across the top. Chris studied the sign post and followed the indications for the research department.

  There was a rattling groan from a thick torn throat. Chris turned to find a zombie in the corner of the room, turning so slowly it was like it was attached to an old record player. Chris froze, hesitant in his movement, the zombie caught sight of him and Maisie. It turned its head to one side as if trying to figure out what it was seeing. Then it lumbered forward, arms outstretched, a deep moan escaping its lips.

  Out of instinct Chris turned to run, and then stopped. He peered around at the reception area. There were no other zombies. If he was going to make a stand he was unlikely to have a better opportunity than now. Chris put Maisie down on a chair and took up a fighting stance, automatically going up onto the balls of his feet. He pulled the gloves on tight over his hands, checked his pads were in place.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s do this.”

  Chris let his opponent come to him, his arms outstretched, eyes wide and wild. Chris stepped back, his breath hitching up into his throat, the same sense of panic he often felt. But then he girded himself, forcing himself to stay put. He gritted his teeth, knocked the zombie’s arms aside and punched it in the face. It was not a powerful strike, but still the zombie rocked back. It glared at Chris and approached again. Chris flew at the zombie, his fists a blur, releasing the anger and pain and frustration he’d held in for the past three years. The zombie hit the ground, dead, its head mashed to a pulp. Chris, panting slightly from the exertion, walked over to Maisie and bent down to pick her up. She stiffened in his arms.

  “There!” she said. “There’s another one!”

  A zombie stumbled in from a side corridor wearing a porter’s uniform. Chris approached him, and with a single strike, served him a powerful uppercut perfectly placed just under the chin, snapping the zombie’s head back, breaking the neck. It fell back onto the floor, not dead, but struggling to get back to its feet, its head dangling by the skin.

  A pair of zombies in civvies entered, and then another from the opposite corridor. Chris pushed one away, sending it reeling back, and descended on the other two zombies, fists flying. He threw a kick, displacing a zombie’s knee, forcing it to stumble, and Chris’s knuckles, covered in long metal nails, pierced the zombie’s skull. Chris dealt with the final zombie with a sharp crack of his elbow. He turned and picked Maisie up with one arm and took off down the corridor.

  Dried blood, turned crusty and black by time, was splashed over the walls like a Jackson Pollock painting. A body lay crumpled on the floor. A zombie’s shuffling form emerged from the cancer research division. Without breaking stride, Chris’s gloved hands shot out, the middle and index fingers piercing the zombie’s glutinous eyes. He felt the concave back of the zombie’s eye sockets, and then brought his arm forward with all the weight in his body, pulling the head to the side, twisting, and the rotten flesh gave way, the spine tearing free from its body.

  Chris turned a corner and came to an abrupt stop. The corridor was packed with standing, swaying figures in a deep sleep. The corridor was dark and he couldn’t see the end, but the sign on the wall proclaimed it the direction to follow. Could he creep through them? Dare he risk getting halfway through, only for them to wake up all at once? He put Maisie down.

  “Don’t move,” he said.

  He bent down and picked up a length of wood and a rock that had once been part of the wall. The rock fit perfectly in the palm of his hand. He approached the zombies at a slow walk, and then began to run, footsteps echoing down the hall. The zombies grumbled and began to stir. They opened their eyes and turned.

  Chris roared and flew at them, swinging the wood and rock at their heads, a spinning whirl of destruction. The zombies hissed and reached for him, the wooden beam smashed in their rotten skulls, but it sent reverberations up his arm and into his shoulder. He caught the hard forehead of a zombie, and the wooden beam jumped from Chris’s hand. Then Chris misjudged a strike, bringing the rock down on the wall, making it break in half. He dropped it, and used his fists and feet, flying at them in a rage.

  A mouth mawed open and Chris sent a fist into it, seizing the jaw and tearing it out. He thrust the teeth into the zombie’s head. A clawed hand reached for him. Chris seized it and used his momentum to throw the zombie into a group of zombies, knocking them back. He gripped a zombie’s skull between his hands and squeezed. The skull creaked, and then cracked, and the zombie’s head exploded in his hands like an egg, the lumps of brain in watery blood seeping through his fingers.

  He would never remember exactly what it was he did, the same way an athlete never thought about what she did while in her zen-like state. But he was aware when the tide began to change and turn against him, when the press of zombies forced him to concede ground. A zombie approached fast, stumbling forward faster than Chris expected, and knocked him against the wall, winding him. Chris shut the zombie down, but he was no longer in the void. The corridor’s colours bled back in, the zombies’ moans swelling up and beating against him.

  The zombies’ groans grew louder still, a choir of demon voices, sensing the tide was turning. They shuffled toward him. Chris retreated back and ran at the wall of zombies, fists flying, connecting, but failing to find the rhythm he once had. The crowd of zombies parted for a moment and Chris caught a glimpse of a shiny glass door, tinted blue, and he sensed the cure was there. Mere metres away. He flew at the zombies again, his blows growing weak. The zombies did not fall. Body aching, lungs burning, Chris retreated.

  He was surprised to find Maisie so close, having been pushed all the way back down the corridor. He picked her up, his arms screaming, and ran to a metal-framed glass-plated door and pressed the handle. It was locked from the inside and did not budge. He ran to the next door. A zombie leaned against the glass on the other side, rubbing her face against it, teeth chattering, her hand making a bloody print. Chris backed away.

  There was a deep-throated groan from behind him. A female doctor, who might have been pretty if it wasn’t for the blood smeared around her lips, emerged out of the darkness, a contingent of followers in her wake. The zombies approached from both directions. Chris had nowhere to go. They were trapped.

  Z-MINUS: 27 MINUTES

  Chris’s heart pounded in his chest. His breath hitched in his throat and he could barely breathe. He felt like someone suffering from claustrophobia as the zombies pressed in close on every side, slowing their approach as if drawing out the inevitable.

  Something dug into the small of his back. He turned to find a small door handle. He reached for it. It opened!

  He leapt inside and slammed the door closed just as the zombies descended on him. But the door wasn’t completely shut, a sliver of flickering light spilling across the floor. A zombie had her fingers in the way. Chris pushed hard on the door, once, twice, three times, severing the fingers. They fell to the floor, the ring finger wearing a simple gold band.

  Chris reached up to secure the lock, but there was none. He put his back against the door with Maisie in his lap. His feet touched the opposite side of the room it was so narrow. The broom in the corner fell forward and smacked against the door. Dirty black rags lay in the corner, tins of cleaning products piled up like Lego. The door rattled back and forth as the zombies beat on it. Chris brushed Maisie’s hair with his fingers.

  “I’m sorry, Mais,” he said. “I’m so sorry. I’ve failed you.”

  Maisie’s mouth opened and closed like a drowning fish, opaque eyes staring up at the ceiling.

  “Tell me your name,” Chris said, rubbing her cheek.

  “My name is Mais… Mais… Mais… My name is Mais… Mais…”r />
  “Maisie,” Chris said. “Your name is Maisie. Your favourite colour is sherbet lemon yellow. You like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Your favourite game is Mario Kart. You are the most beautiful girl in the world and you have a father who loves you very much.”

  Maisie smiled weakly.

  “Thank you… for trying… Dad,” she said. “I… love you.”

  Chris hugged her tight.

  “I love you too,” he said.

  His face contorted and he began to cry. The sound of his own sobbing sounded alien in his ears. The thought of his own death hadn’t even crossed his mind, but the idea he had failed his daughter hurt him more than he could express. He shook himself out of his anger and dried his eyes.

  “Maisie, I need you to do something for me,” he said. “There’s one more thing we can do.”

  He pulled up his sleeve and held it in front of Maisie’s face.

  “I need you to bite me,” he said.

  Her eyes focused tight on his arm like a starving man in the desert looking at a cold glass of water.

  “Bite you?” she said. “Why?”

  “Because if I’m infected too, they won’t attack me, and I can get you to the cure.”

  “What if there’s… no cure?”

  “Then I’m better off dead anyway.”

  Maisie thought about that for a moment. She took his forearm in her tiny hands and lowered her lips to his skin. She pulled back.

  “I can’t,” she said.

  “You can. Give in to your cravings.”

  Maisie kept her eyes on him, watching to see if this was really what he wanted. Finally, like an alcoholic taking a sip of his favourite tipple after years of abstinence, she wet her lips and bit down on his flesh. Chris gritted his teeth and stomped his foot on the floor. Blood oozed out around the bite and dribbled over Maisie’s lips. Her eyes rolled into the back of her head in pure ecstasy.

  Maisie looked up at him with grim rage on her face, his blood dripping from her chin. Chris’s breath caught in his throat. Was he too late? Had she turned already? The banging on the door got louder and more intense, their groaning reaching a climax, a pack of hungry wolves baying for blood.