Z-Minus Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Perrin Briar

  A few dozen scientists left, but most stayed. A few more left over the next couple of hours, too afraid for their loved ones to concentrate. Dr Kahn was without a doubt the greatest driving force behind finding the cure. Without her we wouldn’t have gotten anywhere.

  We barricaded the doors and locked ourselves inside the research centre. We could hear the people outside screaming and shouting for help, and more than once the scientists dashed forward and began removing the chairs that blocked the doors, but they were soon stopped, and we waited as the world turned quiet. Police sirens and ambulances screamed in the distance, crashing as they failed to make it past a blockade.

  The scientists began coming up with theories about what had happened. ‘It was a terrorist attack,’ one scientist said. ‘No,’ another scientist said, ‘it’s the North Koreans or Iranians. They’ve hacked into our computer systems and shut everything down.’

  But when we looked out the windows we saw a world torn apart, a world burning, destruction that could not have been caused only by computer errors. Debris lay scattered across the street, human bodies like floating crisp packets on a putrid swamp. We saw people stumbling through the streets, chased by human-shaped creatures.

  The scientists continued to try their phones but still couldn’t get through, the dial tones long and drawn like the death note from a ventilator. And then came the knocking on the door, the scratching of nails as they tried to get in. But eventually that went too, leaving a resounding silence.

  Then we saw one of them up close. At some point Dr Monroe, of Houston, Texas, must have been bitten because he collapsed. He shook with convulsions, and when he awoke it was not with the intelligent grey-steel eyes he had displayed the past few days, but a cloudy milk-white. The man was wild, his hands curled into claws. We fashioned weapons made from our chairs and beat him until he lay on the floor, unmoving.

  Scientists sank into a deep depression of remorse and guilt. Psychologists were on hand to aid them. We took samples of Dr Monroe’s blood and later discerned what was happening to him. A process of trial and error took place. It did us all good to focus on something other than the troubles outside.

  With no great science knowledge to call upon, I became a dog’s body, doing anything and everything asked of me. I was treated as an apprentice of sorts, allowed to sit in on meetings. My training as a manager helped me to cut short any theories that would remained only wish fulfillment. After a week I was summoned by Dr Kahn. She charged me with a duty I spent the rest of my time there doing: maintaining our food and water supplies. We were running short and needed more.

  The most well-stocked location was in the canteen, I knew, but how were we to get it with the undead outside? There was no option but to meet them head-on. Myself and a contingent of men waited until the sun rose and beat a track for the hospital canteen. We were lucky the first few times we made the run, but by the fourth attempt we became unstuck as a mob of zombies chased us through the hospital corridors. Afraid to head back to the research centre for fear they might follow us there, we hid in the pantry.

  Armed with a room full of food we outlasted the zombies, and after two days, they retreated. We returned to the scientists to find them near starvation. We had arrived just in time, but their work on the cure had largely stopped, exhaustion and malnutrition taking precedence. We needed a better, more reliable source of food. By the end of the second week our prayers were answered.

  We were awoken by the revving of an engine, a sound at odds with the world we then inhabited. An army supply truck had come to the hospital to pick up medical equipment. For the longest time we had all believed the armed forces would come to rescue us. We saw flashes on the horizon, deep booming thunder that rocked the foundations, but until then we saw no sign of any soldiers. I rushed out to meet them, and after explaining our predicament, we came up with a plan to keep ourselves well-stocked: the army would supply us with food and water while we worked on the cure.

  The next six weeks passed without significant incident. We worked feverishly, never stopping in our effort to uncover a cure that might reanimate people from the dead. After a process of much trial and error, we finally succeeded. But alas, our luck was not to last. The zombies had broken through the soldiers’ defences, and came at us like a wave. They beat against the doors, pressing their weight against them, and got in.

  While the scientists ran to protect their research, I ran to protect myself. I am not proud of what I did, but I am alive, and though I cannot claim bravery on my part, I can claim it for the scientists who worked so hard and died so cruelly for our cause. I hid in a small cupboard in the corner of an unassuming office. We had stored water and pull-ring tins of baked beans and tuna there.

  I heard low groans and shuffling feet. I was there for I don’t know how long, the minutes, hours? days? melting in one another. I dared not even peek around the door. Then I heard an almighty crash and gunfire break out. I was weak and weary, my body sore with cramp. Even when I saw a uniform I refused to open the door. Then the door burst open, blinding me with moonlight. A monster with red eyes stood in the doorway. I thought I was dead and the world had been consumed by hell and this was a demon sent to take me away for my cowardice. I cried and kicked and spat, and eventually blacked out with the exertion.

  The next thing I remember was waking up in a hospital room with an IV sticking out of my arm. There were figures standing around me dressed in white. They had masks over their faces, their voices muffled and indistinct. They spoke to me, but I didn’t understand what they were saying.

  They took me from my bed and led me up some steps. I kept bumping into the handrail on either side, the whole building seemed to be swaying, but I assumed it was just me in my weakened state. When I came out onto what I expected to be the roof I found I was in actual fact on a massive frigate called ‘Tomorrow’.

  It was a science vessel, fully stocked with all the latest medical technology. But they had arrived too late to save the scientists and doctors at Saint Barts’. They have a few scientists and researchers, none of them at Dr Kahn’s level. Even with the sporadic notes we were able to salvage from the research centre I doubt we will be unable to replicate the discoveries that were made at Saint Barts’.

  Our days are numbered, Dr Kahn once wrote, and I fear our destiny has not deviated from that course. If we do not rediscover the cure soon, and distribute it to all four corners of the world, we are doomed. But hope remains. Our armed services are locking down the research facility now. We can only hope and pray that a vial of the cure remains intact and can be salvaged from the wreckage.

  11:17pm

  Squadron Leader Ryan Phillips surveyed the ruins. What a mess. He kicked aside a rock and ascended the heap of red bricks, his regulation boots slipping and sliding beneath him. A dozen fires had been put out, wispy grey tendrils wafting up, tickling the night sky’s underbelly. A soldier whipped the butt of his gun around, caving in a dying zombie’s head. Phillips made his way around the back of the hospital debris to the research centre.

  The fire fight had been vicious, but they had managed to push the enemy back. Zombie bodies and fallen comrades lay strewn about the hospital’s zen garden like detritus after a rock concert. Charged explosives had reduced entire wings of the hospital to rubble so the armed forces could get to the research centre, the juicy heart of a succulent fruit. They had been careful to ensure the research centre rooms were untouched. It contained a treasure beyond value.

  Only the roof of the main entrance had been destroyed, the walls standing like the ruins of an ancient castle. Phillips followed it down to the glass door at the end. It didn’t have a scratch or a crack in it. There was a moan, and a shadow pressed against the glass on the other side. Phillips felt the reliable weight of his pistol in his hand.

  “Do you want me to handle it?” Vasquez said.

  Vasquez was a thick tree stump of a woman, short and stout, there was a reason why she had survived where so many others had fa
llen.

  “No, I can do it,” Phillips said. “You just watch my back.”

  He kicked the door open, knocking the body on the other side back. Pistol raised at head height, he entered the room. His heart sank. He’d been hoping the body still had a pulse, but that was obviously not the case.

  The zombie had blonde flowing hair and lips with red around them like a clown’s make-up. She hissed and lunged for him. He raised his gloved hand and seized her by the throat, lifted her up, her arms and legs kicking out, her mouth snapping open and closed, tongue lolling out, severed by her gnashing teeth. Phillips checked her name tag. He turned his head toward Vasquez.

  “Dr Margaret Atwood?” he said.

  Vasquez consulted a list of names on her clipboard.

  “Can’t see her name.”

  “Double check.”

  Vasquez did. She shook her head.

  “Nope,” she said.

  “Sorry, Margaret,” Phillips said, twisting his hand and snapping the zombie’s neck.

  He dropped her, her body flopping to the ground. Phillips crushed her skull beneath his boot. He sighed and moved through the room. The large tables were like museum set pieces, displaying an evolution in experiment development. But the final work table was empty. He crouched down and picked amongst the broken shards of glass on the floor beside it. This had been the cure, he thought, his stomach twisting at the loss.

  He heard a light groaning behind him, soft and unaggressive. A figure was propped up against the cabinets, her movements slow and laggard. Her eyes were pale white and haunted. Her fingertips were bloody stubs worn down to the bone.

  Something had been written across the white cupboards behind her. The letters were black, crusted with spent blood that had dribbled down, making the letters almost illegible, and the more she’d written, the less legible her writing was. Phillips turned his head side to side.

  “Vasquez,” he said. “Do you have any idea what this says?”

  “Looks like hieroglyphics to me,” Vasquez said as she took out a notepad and began copying the writing.

  Phillips knelt down before the zombie. She reached for him with weak hands. He looked down at her coat nametag, though he didn’t need to. She was number one on their search and rescue list.

  “Dr Victoria Kahn,” Phillips said, shaking his head. “Humanity’s last hope.”

  The smooth Asian curves of her face were distorted by her mawing mouth, dark as hell’s gates. The sight made Phillips shiver to the bone.

  “Tag her and bag her,” he said.

  Vasquez took two pairs of handcuffs connected by a retractable wire and put them on Dr Kahn, one pair around her wrists, the other around her ankles. The wires drew tight, restraining her hands and feet. Then Vasquez took out a bear trap-like device from her backpack and attached one part to the top of Dr Kahn’s head, another to her chin. The wire tensed and tightened, jamming the zombie’s jaws closed. Vasquez bent down and gripped Dr Kahn by the collar. She pulled her to her feet, and though the zombie reached and snapped for Vasquez, there was no danger.

  Phillips turned to leave, his foot kicking something that skittered across the floor, making a path through the glass shards. Moonlight spilled through the open window and glinted off the object’s surface. Phillips picked it up. It looked like a space age handgun. Attached to it was an empty glass vial. He turned it around and pressed his fingers to the barrel end. Phillips showed it to Vasquez.

  “What do you make of this?” he said.

  “Standard jet injector. Recently fired.”

  Phillips looked at the barrel end of the injector, brows knitted together. He looked at the glass on the floor, at how it had been crushed in measured strides toward the window. He walked over and peered at the ground outside. He waved the injector gun.

  “I think this was used to administer the cure,” he said. “Someone’s taken it.”

  Vasquez looked up at Phillips, then pulled up Victoria Kahn’s sleeves to peer at the crook of her arms.

  “She didn’t use it,” Phillips said.

  “Then who did?”

  “I don’t know. No one we’ve found yet. But their footprints are right here in the garden soil.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Phillips took the radio out of the sheath at his waist and pressed the button down.

  “The cure is in the open,” he said. “I repeat, the cure is in the open. This is Squadron Leader Ryan Phillips and I am in pursuit.”

  Z-MINUS: 6 HOURS 47 MINUTES

  The land peeled away from them like the jagged edge of a bread knife, sloping down into the sea and disappearing from view. The water lapped against the coast like a woman caressing the soft skin of her lover. The slow monotonous chugging of the engine lulled Chris into a heavy-lidded space of bare consciousness.

  The coast wound around a long blind corner, passing a small pile of neat grey buildings. In Chris’s mind they were making their way around the great pointed toecap coast that jutted out into the English Channel. They would make their way around it, and then along the south coast to Brighton, where a ship called ‘Tomorrow’ would be awaiting them… If it was there. Once again he was operating under blind belief, trusting in nothing but the words of a dying stranger. At what point did I become so trusting? he asked himself as the boat took a shallow swell.

  Maisie sat at the top of the small boat. She was turned side-on so Chris caught her profile, the moonlight catching her, turning her skin silvery white. Her face was just as pale as it had been when she was at the height of her turning, but now her skin shone with an unnatural glow, sparkling like diamonds on a velvet dress. Fine threads of green and blue snaked up her neck and across her right cheek like grasping vines at an ancient temple.

  The engine sputtered, smoke wheezing out the back, running low on fuel. The small boat ploughed through the tide’s dimples that pressed to and fro on the little boat in an endless dance.

  Chris’s eyes felt heavy and his joints were already beginning to stiffen, the virus clutching at the life left in his body, squeezing hard. He wiped the cold sweat off his forehead with a sleeve. His eyes felt rough and gritty. He reached over the side and splashed water on his face, tasting the salt on his fingertips.

  “Where do you think we are?” Maisie said.

  “I don’t think, I know. We’re rounding the corner of Margate and entering the English Channel. If we can keep going we’ll be in Brighton within the next three or four hours.”

  “Simple, huh?”

  “For once, yes. I might need to make a pit stop to get more fuel, but we should be fine.”

  They puttered along the coast, the land opening into dry flatlands. Chris sat up, looking at the land ahead. It came to a sharp point before backing up on itself and heading back the way they had come. Chris frowned, surprised at this sudden dead end. He tried to compute it with the map in his mind but came up blank. He scratched his head and peered around, like the laws of the universe had suddenly ceased to operate. The engine coughed and wheezed and then cut out.

  Chris picked up the oars and began to row toward the shore. The boat lurched as it struck the soft wet sand of the coast. Maisie hopped out, followed by Chris. He wrapped the mooring rope around a large rock. They walked up the hill to a large billboard covered in plastic to protect it against the harsh wind.

  “Where are we?” Maisie said.

  Chris followed the map, peering around the bird excrement at the place names. His eyes followed the ‘You Are Here’ arrow. His blood turned cold.

  “We’re right here,” Chris said, jabbing his finger at the map. And then, dejected: “After two hours. We’re only here.”

  Maisie looked where he’d placed his finger, noting the long length of land still remaining to get to the real Margate and English Channel.

  “We’ve hardly gone anywhere!” she said.

  Z-MINUS: 6 HOURS 42 MINUTES

  “How could we have only come such a short distance?” Maisie said, follow
ing Chris’s back as he led them into town. “I thought we were going to be there in three or four hours?”

  “I might have been a little off.”

  “How far off?”

  “About twenty-four hours.”

  Maisie stopped.

  “Twenty-four hours?” she said. “But that’s a day!”

  “There’s no fooling you, is there?”

  “How could you be so wrong?”

  “I’ve never been in this part of the country before and I don’t know anything about sailing. How should I know?”

  “You were so confident,” Maisie said. “So, we’re not going back to the boat?”

  “No, we’ve only got six hours left,” Chris said, checking his watch. “We’ll never get there on time in a boat. We’ll have to travel across the land.”

  “Not again! I hate the land!”

  “I do too, but we don’t have a choice.”

  They crept past a sign proclaiming the town they were now entering was called Gillingham. The streets were empty, save for a few urban tumbleweeds of used toothpicks and tin cans.

  “Doesn’t anyone have any cars in this part of the country?” Chris said.

  They turned a corner and came across a single car sitting with its doors wide open.

  “Finally!” Chris said.

  He approached the car, leaned inside, and checked the fuel indicator. The arrow was over the letter ‘E’.

  “Great! It’s empty!” Chris said, slamming the door closed. “Of all the rotten luck. It couldn’t get any worse!”

  A low disgruntled groan emanated from the alleyway to their right, wreathed in shadow. Chris took hold of Maisie’s hand, led her down the street, and into a quiet cul-de-sac. They crouched down and hid behind the hedge.

  “Do you think he’ll follow us?” Maisie said.