Z-Minus Box Set [Books 1-3]

by Perrin Briar

  “Go!” Chris said. “Now! Go! Run! As far and as fast as you can! Go!”

  Maisie turned and ran, her feet making loud crunching, rustling noises. Chris pressed his hands to either side of his head and dropped to his knees, gripping his head like it might burst. The throbbing red pulse was there once again, consuming and all-encompassing, absorbing him and everything that he was. And then it stopped, the throbbing arrested like it had frozen.

  Chris opened his eyes to find Maisie hugging him close. He could feel the fringes of her body warmth on his skin, feel it swell and permeate through his clothes. It was like coming in out of the bitter cold, the heat enveloping him. Maisie took his arm, the bite mark black and smelly, and held it in her tiny hands.

  “Don’t leave me,” she said.

  She cried, the tears rolling down her face and falling onto his bare skin. One fell onto his wounded arm. It felt like someone had just poured acid onto his flesh. The muscles in his arm stiffened, then relaxed, and a soothing sensation came over his body.

  “What are you doing?” he said in a hoarse whisper.

  “I don’t know,” Maisie said.

  Chris felt the corrupted memories in his mind float up from the dark recesses of his mind. He spied fragments of his past, coarse voices and fractured images snapping into place automatically like a computer completing a puzzle.

  “We have to go,” Chris said, snapping out of his lethargy.

  Chris took Maisie’s hand and they ran through the undergrowth. Chris still felt tired, his bones like they were made of iron, but the cold grip of the virus had, for the moment, left him. They ascended an incline that wound upwards. At the top of the hill they came to a stop before a large bramble bush, stretching as far as they could see.

  Chris took Maisie’s hand and led her along the thorn bush toward what appeared to be the end, but as they got to it, the bush rounded a corner and continued down to the far end of the hill. By the time they found a way around it the Reavers would have caught up with them. Chris turned to look back at the bush, the long needle-like thorns curved and vicious as razorblades.

  “Come here,” Chris said to Maisie.

  He held her between his feet and wrapped the long leather coat around them both. The coat reached down to Chris’s knees.

  “What are you doing?” Maisie said.

  “Getting us to safety.”

  Chris looked at the thorn bush. He lowered his head and kept his arms wrapped tight around Maisie, and then pressed forward. The first thorn glanced off the leather and scraped a deep line across its surface. The second and third thorns, low on the bushes, dug into his shins and scratched his flesh. The fourth thorn caught the top of his ear and tore a small piece off. The blood ran down the side of his face. Chris grunted at the pain, but it was thankfully distant and almost numb, like it was happening to someone else.

  The jagged sphere of light peeping out from the end drew closer. Chris grunted as a particularly big thorn thrust itself through the coat and into his side, his skin stretching and tearing free, taking a chunk of flesh with it. He grimaced with the pain, but forced himself on. Then they were through, on the other side. The air smelled clean and fresh.

  Chris looked down at his coat, now torn to shreds. He shrugged it off. Blood seeped from a dozen points over his body. Maisie emerged from his protective cocoon, none the worse for wear. Chris had a thin trickle of blood running down from a cut to the fleshy part of his thumb, from a thorn he hadn’t even noticed. He sucked the end of his thumb clean.

  “There they are!” a voice said.

  Chris looked back through the thorn bush to see the green curved horns of a Reaver pointing at him.

  “We’re coming for you, zombo,” the Reaver said. “Don’t you go nowhere.”

  He disappeared to one side.

  Chris took Maisie’s hand and they ran across the road and hopped over the short brick wall on the other side. Chris lifted Maisie up onto the top of the wall. She seemed impossibly heavy in his arms, his strength failing him, shaking with the effort. Maisie gripped the top and pulled herself up. Chris put his hands on the top of the wall but couldn’t lift himself up.

  “Take my hand!” Maisie said.

  “I’m okay,” Chris said. “You go find somewhere safe.”

  “Take my hand!”

  “You’ll never pull me up.”

  “Try!”

  Chris shook his head, and then reached up. He gripped Maisie’s hand and braced himself with his other hand. Maisie leaned back, the muscles straining in her small arms, pulling with her tiny strength and, miraculously, astonishingly, he began to rise off the ground and up onto the top of the wall. Maisie was leaning back so far she fell down onto the other side of the wall. Chris rolled forward and let himself fall too.

  Z-MINUS: 2 HOURS 43 MINUTES

  The fall wasn’t far, but it knocked the wind from his lungs. His breath wheezed back into his chest. He looked up to see a square had been drawn on the wall. A dirty football sat on the grass to one side beside a miniature swing, seesaw and slide. They limped toward the back of the small rundown house, but before they even got there the French doors slid open and an old man armed with a shovel faced them.

  “You’re trespassing,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

  Chris put himself between the old man and Maisie and held up his palms in a plea.

  “Please, we don’t mean any harm,” he said. “We’ll be out of here in a moment.”

  A woman in her mid-twenties pushed past the old man. She took Maisie by the hand.

  “These people need help, Grandfather,” she said. “Can’t you see they’re hurt? Please, come in.”

  She led Maisie inside. Chris staggered after her, casting a wary eye at the old man, who scowled in response.

  “We shouldn’t be inviting strangers into our home,” the old man grumbled. “Especially ones that look like they’re about to turn.”

  “I’m not about to turn,” Chris said, surprised at the strength of his voice.

  “We have food,” the young woman said. “It’s not much, but it’s yours if you want it.”

  “Thank you, but we have to be going.”

  Something caught Maisie’s attention and she floated down the dark hallway. Doors splintered off on either side.

  “Maisie?” Chris said. “We have to go.”

  Maisie, either not hearing him, or choosing not to, approached a door halfway down the corridor. Soft flickering candlelight played at the cracks around it. She pushed it open.

  The heads of two dozen people turned. Despair clung to the room like gum. No one wore black, but the feeling was akin to a funeral. As Maisie moved forward the assembled eyed her and instinctively moved aside.

  At the front of the assembled a woman sat with a little girl spread across her lap. The girl was a year or two younger than Maisie, her breath sawing out of her throat, making rasping noises. Her eyes were closed, her body limp. The mother brushed the girl’s hair with her fingers.

  “What happened to her?” Chris said.

  “She was getting water from the well when she felt a nip on her ankle,” the young woman said. “One of the blasted things had crawled along the ground and bitten her, breaking her skin. She doesn’t have a lot of time left.”

  The mother looked up at Maisie, curious, yet fearless, her face a mask of strength.

  “Maisie,” Chris said, his voice hollow in the vacuum-like space. “We need to go.”

  Maisie laid a hand on the girl’s forehead. Her skin was cold and clammy with sweat, and the deep creases of her frown relaxed and became smooth. Maisie leaned down to kiss the girl.

  “Don’t,” the mother said.

  But Maisie did it anyway, pressing her lips to the little girl’s forehead. After a moment, the little girl opened her eyes. They were red at the corners and white and cloudy in the middle, making the irises unclear and distorted. Her skin was pale, her tiny hands screwed up into claws. She looked up at Maisie, into
her eyes, and the pain that she clearly felt faded from her face like the wrinkles out of a shirt under the press of a hot iron. She smiled, and her mother gasped. Tears she’d been holding back in the corners of her eyes ran down her face and glinted like diamonds, pooling on the girl’s dress.

  Maisie put her own index finger into her mouth and bit down. She held her hand over the little girl’s mouth. The girl’s mother reached up to pull Maisie’s arm away, but her husband restrained her, sensing something miraculous was about to happen.

  Maisie squeezed the end of her finger and a drop of blood fell into the little girl’s open mouth. The girl ran her tongue over her teeth, not with the voracious hunger of a zombie, but cautious curiosity. A second drop followed, and then another. The little girl’s body relaxed and she fell into a deep sleep.

  “She’ll feel better soon,” Maisie said.

  The mother looked at Maisie and her eyes began to swim with tears at the repercussions of what Maisie had just said. She pressed her fingers to her daughter’s forehead.

  “She’s warmer now!” she said. “I can feel it! She’s getting warmer! And her skin! It’s turning pink again! Come look!”

  The family members crowded around the sofa.

  “There are men outside,” the old man said, peering out the window from behind a curtain. “They’re coming to the door.”

  “Maisie, we have to go,” Chris said.

  Bang, bang, bang! On the front door.

  “Open up! We know you’re in there!” Spiky’s voice said.

  “Is there another way out of here?” Chris said.

  “The back and front door,” the young woman said. “That’s it.”

  Someone beat on the backdoor too.

  “Maybe a way up onto the roof?” Chris said.

  “It’s a bungalow,” the young woman said.

  “We’ll fight them,” the old man said, clutching his shovel close. “You beat a hasty retreat. We’ll hold them off.”

  “You’ll all die,” Chris said.

  The old man looked at Maisie.

  “She’s worth it,” he said.

  “We can’t go,” Maisie said. “You can’t die for me.”

  “My girl,” the old man said, laying a hand on Maisie’s shoulder. “Without you we’re all dead anyway. You’re what we’ve all been waiting for. I don’t know who these people after you are, but they don’t sound the type to do the right thing to me.”

  There was a crunch as the front door burst open, the door frame splintering. Heavy footsteps thudded up the hallway. The door swung open and Spiky ducked into the room, his hairstyle grazing the roof. He peered around at all the gathered faces.

  “What’s going on in here?” Spiky said. “A birthday party? And no one invited us?”

  The Reavers filed in one by one. They looked odd in the familial surroundings. They sneered at those standing around, poking at the photo frames and objects from a past world that neither loved nor cared for them. Two of the men seized Chris, one on either arm. Spiky’s eyes rested on the little girl in her mother’s arms. The mother stiffened, wrapping her arms tight around her daughter.

  “I can help you with her, if you like,” he said.

  “She’s already been helped,” the mother said, her eyes moving to Maisie.

  “There’s no cure but this,” Spiky said, running a finger over the edge of his machete. “Give her to me. I’ll make it quick.”

  “She’s going to live. She cured her.”

  Spiky smiled.

  “She’s not cured,” he said. “She’s going to turn and come back and bite you all, and then I’ll have to come back and clean up after her. No, much better for me to do it now.”

  The crowd in the group stiffened, their hands reached for the handles of their shovels and pickaxes. The Reavers reacted likewise, resting their rough hands on their weapons.

  “I’ll go with you,” Chris said. “Just don’t hurt these people.”

  “I won’t,” Spiky said, “so long as they do nothing to deserve it.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  Maisie walked toward the open doorway. The Reavers dragged Chris after her.

  “Mummy? Who are all these people?”

  Every head in the room turned to look at the little girl. She was still pale, her eyes white and cloudy, the veins in her skin still visible, snaking across her face and neck. But her green irises became clearer with each passing minute, accompanied by a strength in her small frame.

  “They’re nobody, dear,” the mother said. “Just some visitors. They’ll be leaving soon.”

  Spiky marched to the little girl. He pulled up her sleeves, stretched the collar of her Barbie T-shirt.

  “Where is it?” he growled.

  “Where’s what?” the mother said.

  “The bite! If she’s suddenly cured, then where’s she been-”

  And then he froze, peering at the crescent moon-shaped gap in the girl’s ankle, the white bone shining through. He stepped back, wide-eyed, like she had the plague. Spiky turned and looked at Maisie.

  “What did you do?” he said, his voice a hoarse croak.

  “She healed her, that’s what she done,” the old man said. “She’s immune. And more than that, she can cure us all.”

  Z-MINUS: 2 HOURS 17 MINUTES

  The Reavers dragged Chris and Maisie outside the house onto a quiet cul-de-sac. The people inside the bungalow watched through the windows. Kevin scowled at Chris and Maisie with a melodramatic hatred. He had a big purple and black knot on the side of his head. Spiky marched Maisie toward his bike.

  “What are you going to do?” Paul said, sidling up to Spiky. “This changes everything.”

  “This changes nothing. We continue with our plan.”

  Spiky tied Maisie’s hands and feet together and placed her on the back of the bike.

  “She’s too valuable to toss into the zompit,” Paul said. “We have to protect her.”

  “We’re on orders to return her to Scorpio. She’s the rightful owner.”

  “If she’s immune she belongs to us all. If we can manufacture the cure all this will be over.”

  “Scorpio is what the world needs. You’re forgetting she’s immune too.”

  Paul’s expression hardened.

  “According to who?” he said. “Where’s the evidence?”

  Spiky spun around, stabbing his finger in Paul’s face.

  “That’s treachery!” he said. “She’s immune. We all know it.”

  Paul looked at the Reavers, who eyed Maisie with a mixture of awe and trepidation.

  “But she’s never been bitten by a zombie,” Paul said. “This girl has. And Scorpio has never cured anyone of the virus. This girl has. She is the real deal. We have to do what’s right for her, for all of us.”

  Some Reavers nodded their agreement, others shook their heads. Chris stepped forward.

  “She carries the cure in her body right now, but it won’t last forever,” he said. “We need to get her to a research facility before time runs out. That’s why we were going to Brighton pier. She only has a couple of hours left. If we turn back now and head down the main roads we can still make it. We can still use her blood to manufacture the cure and save the world.”

  “You’re lying!” Spiky said, his voice scratchy and harsh. “You’re just saying this to make us turn back and do what you want. I don’t believe she even has the cure.”

  “Do you really want to take that chance?” Paul said. “We all saw what she did for that little girl. Your decision now could decide the future of the entire human race. Make the right call. Take us back. You’ll be remembered forever as the man who gave humanity back to itself.”

  “Or as the guy who had the world in his hands and then let it slip away. No, I won’t be that man. We’re going to Scorpio, as planned.”

  Paul stepped up close to Spiky, his eyes burning hot coals.

  “You’re a fool, blinded by your obsession for her,” he said. “You are not
hing to her but a plaything. You always were.”

  Spiky drew himself up, looking Paul square in the eye.

  “I am everything to her!” he said. “It was you who was always jealous.”

  Spiky drew a vicious knife out of its holder at his side and put it to Maisie’s throat.

  “Don’t do anything stupid,” Paul said. “She’s not a normal child. She’s what everyone is looking for, what we’ve all been looking for. Hope. A symbol that our future is going to be what we want it to be. We have to get her to Brighton.”

  “Scorpio wants them dead or alive. She prefers alive, but dead is fine too. What do I care?”

  “You should care. The world will give us whatever we want if we had a truly immune girl. She’s our winning lottery ticket. We can rule.”

  “Scorpio must rule.”

  “We must rise up against Scorpio.”

  Spiky’s glare softened, and he shook his head.

  “Don’t do this, Paul,” he said. “Don’t do this now.”

  “It’s not me that’s doing anything. It’s you. You’re the one with a knife to a girl’s throat. You have to let her go, and you know it. Come on, Spiky. This should be about us, together again. Against the world.”

  Paul smiled a childish smile that looked like he wanted to play some mischief on a teacher.

  “We’ve been friends a long time,” Spiky said, nodding.

  “Our whole lives.”

  “Don’t make me choose between you and Scorpio.”

  “Afraid you’ll make the wrong choice?”

  “No. The right one.”

  Paul grunted and stepped back. He had his back to Chris, his expression unviewable. He raised his hand and it glittered black in the moonlight, like he was wearing a liquid glove. Spiky put his hand on the back of Paul’s neck and pulled him closer.

  “You’re like a brother to me,” he said. “But even brothers are not exempt from betrayal.”

  “You’re right…” Paul said, his smile broken. “But I’m not the betrayer.”