Flowers vs. Zombies (Book 3): Contagion

by Briar, Perrin

  “They’re too fast,” Liz said.

  “And unpredictable,” Ernest said. “We have no idea what they’re going to do!”

  “Are you all right?” Bill said to Liz.

  “Did you see that?” Liz said. “It went around my shield and attacked me!”

  “It was some bad luck, all right,” Bill said.

  “Are you sure these things can’t see?” Liz said. “They look like they can see plenty well to me.”

  “They move by randomness, not by instinct,” Bill said. “Without eyes, we can be fairly certain of that. It’s only our brains that see patterns in what they do.”

  Ernest slapped Fritz on the cheek. The elder brother started awake, peering at his surroundings, disorientated.

  “This isn’t working, Bill,” Liz said. “No matter what we do, they keep going around us, avoiding us. There’s nothing we can do to stop them.”

  “I know,” Bill said. “You’re right.”

  “There has to be a better way than this,” Liz said. “There just has to be.”

  Chapter Seven

  BEATEN, SWOLLEN, dirty and exhausted, the Flower family emerged from the jungle. Francis hopped onto his feet and waited at the corner of the treehouse landing. The family’s shoulders were slouched and forlorn, like traffic accident victims.

  “How did it go?” Francis said.

  None of them spoke, climbing the ladder with slow, forced movements.

  “We fought one,” Ernest said.

  “That’s great!” Francis said.

  No one seemed to share his excitement.

  “Isn’t it?” Francis said.

  “It is good,” Fritz said, nodding. “Except that it got away and there are dozens more.”

  “Oh,” Francis said.

  They took off their heavy boots. Each family member sported red feet, thick with hard skin and blisters. They sat down and rested for a moment, letting the memories of the past few hours wash over them.

  “I’ll get you some food,” Francis said.

  He ran into the kitchen and started a small fire with the matches Bill had made. He heated up the stew that sat on the hob. Within minutes it was bubbling. He stirred it and cut some bread up into thick slices. He ladled the stew into bowls and placed them around the table with the plate of bread in the centre.

  “Dinner’s ready,” he said.

  The family limped on their swollen blistered feet and sat at their places. They tore off chunks of bread with a grimace—every muscle hurt—and dipped it into the stew. They sucked on the soaked bread.

  “There’s some good news,” Francis said. “None of the Spinners came here!”

  It seemed of little consolation. The family finished up their stew, washed, taking special care to add a salve to the soles of their feet, and went straight to bed. Francis was left with a table full of dirty dishes.

  Within an hour the Flower family was asleep. None of them made much noise, their bodies unmoving, still recovering from the shock. Fritz sat on the edge of the treehouse landing, legs dangling over the side. The family had thought it prudent for them all to sleep in one treehouse as opposed to their separate rooms. Ernest stirred, tossing in his sleep for ten minutes before he sat up and rubbed his eyes. He crept over to Fritz and sat down next to him. Below them were their cattle, which slept standing up, save the goats who nestled together in the corner.

  “Any sign of Spinners?” Ernest said, yawning.

  “Not yet,” Fritz said. “You can go back to sleep, if you like. I’m not tired.”

  “I’d rather stay awake,” Ernest said. “That’s quite a shiner you’ve got there.”

  Fritz touched his puffed up eye and flinched.

  “The Spinner really caught me a winner,” he said.

  “You hit the floor like a sack of spuds!” Ernest said.

  Jack mumbled in his sleep, and then fell silent again.

  “Thanks for helping me,” Fritz said.

  “We’re brothers,” Ernest said. “It’s what we’re meant to do, right?”

  Ernest looked at his hands.

  “I dreamt about them,” he said.

  “And?” Fritz said.

  “And no matter what I did I couldn’t escape,” Ernest said. “I have no idea how to beat them.”

  “None of us do,” Fritz said.

  “But I’m the ideas guy,” Ernest said. “If I don’t come up with a solution…”

  “This is all our problem,” Fritz said. “It’s not up to you to save us. But we need to come up with something soon. The sun will rise in a couple of hours and right now we don’t have a clue what to do.”

  “Do you think we’ll end up leaving?” Ernest said.

  “After we worked so hard in defending our home?” Fritz said. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “This has got you worried though, hasn’t it?” Ernest said. “Not knowing what we’re going to do?”

  “I think we’re all worried,” Fritz said.

  “I’m not,” Ernest said.

  “You just said you were,” Fritz said.

  “No,” Ernest said. “I said I know you’re all worried.”

  “Then why aren’t you?” Fritz said.

  “Because I know we’ll come up with something,” Ernest said.

  “What if we don’t?” Fritz said.

  “We will,” Ernest said.

  “But what if we don’t?” Fritz said.

  Ernest looked off at the horizon, the sun just beginning to crest the jungle. A frown creased his forehead as if the thought had never occurred to him before.

  “Okay, now I am worried,” he said. “Thanks. Maybe, given enough time, the Spinners will spin their way off the island.”

  “Leaving us without cattle, without crops, with nothing but a dead island,” Fritz said. “I’m not sure if I’d put much stock in that idea.”

  “Me neither, to be honest,” Ernest said.

  He looked down between his feet at the ground below.

  “I miss home,” Ernest said.

  “This is home,” Fritz said.

  “I mean our real home,” Ernest said. “Do you think our friends and family are still there?”

  “Probably,” Fritz said. “Though I hope they’re of a livelier disposition than our current company on this island.”

  “I remember in History, studying the French invasion of Switzerland in 1798,” Ernest said. “Chucerne was the only town capable of resisting them. We didn’t have a huge population or well-trained troops. We survived because of the terrain. There is only one way in and out of Chucerne. The land itself protected us, like Russia with her frigid winters. Do you think they could defend themselves like that again?”

  “There’s no reason why it couldn’t happen again, I suppose,” Fritz said. “But it’s better to expect nothing. For everyone to be gone, and then when we go there, if there are people left, we can be happy and not depressed. It can only be better than we expected.”

  “Until then you live in fear,” Ernest said.

  “No, I live in hope,” Fritz said. “I just won’t be as disappointed as you will be.”

  Ernest looked out at the moon hanging low and bright in the sky, the craters massive like pock marks on its shiny surface.

  “It’s not so bad here though, is it?” he said.

  “Not so bad,” Fritz said. “Except there’s no future here.”

  “It’s the same everywhere these days,” Ernest said.

  Something slapped a bunch of leaves, like an open palm smacking bare skin. A flash of white whipped past a gap in the shrubbery. Fritz and Ernest stiffened, gripping the struts of the balcony with white-knuckled fists.

  There was a grunt below them in the animal pen. Valiant snorted and dug his front hoof in the soil, looking toward the jungle, in the direction of the noise.

  Flap, flap, flap…

  The sound disappeared deep into the jungle. Fritz and Ernest relaxed.

  “They’re getting closer,” Fritz said.


  “Come morning, we can’t just sit here,” Ernest said. “We have to do something.”

  “What would you have us do?” Fritz said. “We’ll do anything that sounds half reasonable right now.”

  Francis mumbled in his sleep. He rolled over, away from his noisy brothers.

  “The problem is their speed,” Ernest said. “If there was some way we could travel as fast as them…”

  Ernest’s eyes widened. He clicked his fingers.

  “Yes! That’s it!” he said. “Of course! Why didn’t I think of it before? It’s so obvious!”

  “Wait,” Fritz said. “What’s obvious?”

  “I know what to do!” Ernest said. “I have a plan!”

  Francis shot up into a sitting position.

  “Wha?” he said, eyes heavy and groggy with sleep. His eyes fluttered closed and he fell back to bed.

  “What?” Fritz said. “What’s the idea?”

  Ernest bent down and shook Jack and Francis by the shoulders. They grumbled but didn’t wake up.

  “Get up!” Ernest said. “We’ve got work to do!”

  Ernest ran into Bill and Liz’s bedroom.

  “I’ve got it!” he shouted.

  Liz shot up, instantly awake. Bill was still fast asleep, snoring, his blistered feet hanging over the end of the bed.

  “What are you doing?” Liz said. “Your father’s exhausted.”

  “I’ve got an idea!” Ernest said. “How to beat them!”

  “Can’t it wait till morning?” Liz said.

  “It’ll be daylight soon,” Ernest said.

  Liz sighed and then leaned over Bill, nudging him awake.

  “Bill,” she said. “Wake up, honey.”

  Bill turned, his face thick with sleep. Drool hung out the corner of his mouth.

  “The Spinners!” Ernest said. “We can’t catch them or force them over the cliff because they’re too fast!”

  “Yes, so?” Liz said. “We know this already.”

  “So we need a way to keep up with them!” Ernest said. “Not only keep up with them, but to go faster than them!”

  “Is this going anywhere?” Bill said, face stretching into a wide yawn.

  “The animals!” Ernest said. “We’ll use the animals! We’ll ride them and force the Spinners over the cliff like a giant game of bumper cars!”

  Ernest chuckled like a mad scientist and ran out of the room. Fritz looked at his parents. Liz wore a deep frown. Bill’s eyes were ringed with grey, incapable of anything except staring into space. Fritz moved to the window that looked down on the animal pen outside. Ernest jumped the fence and ran amongst the animals. They shied away from him. They hardly looked like Spinner killer material to Fritz.

  “He’s gone mad,” Fritz said.

  Chapter Eight

  THE FAMILY were up soon after Ernest’s idea had been shared with them, before even the sun had fully risen. Bill and Fritz headed into the jungle and cut down several mature bamboo trees. They lashed them to Lightfoot and Lightning and dragged them into the clearing.

  They took careful measurements and set to shaping and cutting out the pieces of bamboo, identifying the thickest, strongest sections. Liz, Ernest and Jack drilled holes and passed woven vines through them. Francis kept watch along with Fritz’s bird Beast high in the treehouse. He stood up, peering deep into the jungle. Beast screeched.

  “They’re coming!” Francis said.

  The foliage rustled, the undergrowth snapping. The Flowers reached for their weapons. Mutilated bodies, grazed, cut and dirtied, flashed in the foliage. They made the same hideous wet flapping noise that rose into a cacophony.

  The cattle in their pen went wild, running and dashing in different directions, unsure where to go, but knowing their current location was not safe. Then the snapping twigs and rush of foliage dissipated. Only once the animals stopped baying, snorting and mehing did the Flowers lower their weapons.

  “They’re getting closer,” Bill said.

  “We have to hurry,” Liz said.

  They bent down over their worktops and got back to sawing, chopping and screwing the armour into shape. It was nearing midday when Bill led the best behaved goat out from the pen and tied her to a hitching post. He picked up a small breastplate made from bamboo. Bill had screwed reinforced strips of metal into it to strengthen it. He wrapped the straps around the goat’s front legs and chest, and then led the goat around on her lead.

  “She seems comfortable, don’t you think?” Bill said to Liz, picking up the pace and making the goat run.

  “Yes,” Liz said. “Does the armour come in pink?”

  Next, Bill affixed armour over the goat’s back and haunches, as well as specially-designed blinkers. The goat would run a mile if she saw what she was facing.

  “She looks badass,” Jack said. “We should paint some skulls on the front.”

  “Yeah,” Fritz said, rolling his eyes. “That’ll demoralise the Spinners.”

  They put the armour on the other animals they would be riding—Lightning, Lightfoot, Herdy, and Valiant. Sometimes the armour rubbed the soft skin around the animals’ legs. The family shaved off any rough edges to make the armour as comfortable as possible. Then the family members put their own armour on. They flinched when they put their boots on—the blisters on their feet hadn’t healed yet.

  Liz climbed onto Lightning’s back and strapped a short shield to her forearm. The zebra swished her tail and snorted with excitement, no doubt expecting another race. Fritz climbed onto Lightfoot’s back. The donkey showed no such excitement.

  Bill took to his chariot, the four goats in front ducking their heads down and chewing on the grass at their hooves. Ernest made to climb onto Valiant’s back, but the great bull turned and trotted away. Ernest chased after him. He put his foot into a stirrup and began to pull himself up, but Valiant trotted away again. Ernest hopped on his free leg before losing his footing.

  “He doesn’t want me to ride him,” Ernest said.

  “Then you’ll have to ride something else,” Bill said.

  “Like what?” Ernest said.

  Gwek!

  “No!” Ernest said. “I won’t ride her. Not again.”

  “She’s the fastest creature we have,” Bill said. “She could do a lot of good.”

  “We haven’t got any armour for her,” Ernest said. “We’d be dead within thirty seconds.”

  Bill picked up a set of armour plates.

  “I made some for her,” he said.

  “That was fortunate,” Ernest said drily.

  “I thought it prudent,” Bill said. “You know how cantankerous Valiant can be.”

  “Shall I ride Valiant?” Francis said, climbing down the treehouse ladder wearing his armour. “He’ll listen to me.”

  “Francis, we need you to stay here and guard the fort,” Liz said.

  “But it’s not a fort!” Francis said. “It’s a treehouse! I want to come with you.”

  “You can’t come,” Bill said. “Not today.”

  “Not today, not yesterday, not every day!” Francis said, screwing up his face. “Why can’t I come?”

  “One day you will come with us and you’ll wish you didn’t have to,” Bill said.

  “Jack was my age when he first went out hunting with you,” Francis said.

  “Jack was a year older than you,” Liz said.

  “I’ll trade places with him,” Ernest said.

  “You’re not helping, Ernest,” Liz said.

  “But no one else can ride Valiant—he won’t let you!” Francis said. “I can ride him and I can help—all of you. I would have won the race if it wasn’t for the jaguar!”

  “You are helping us,” Bill said softly, “by staying here and protecting our home. Be our guard. The animals and plants need you.”

  Francis turned away.

  “I’m not a child anymore,” he said. “I’ve seen what’s out there, what keeps trying to get us. I want to fight them.”

&
nbsp; “You will fight them,” Bill said. “But not today. It’s not because you’re not big and strong and brave—you are. It’s just that we need to be able to hold our shields up against the Spinners.”

  “I can do that!” Francis said.

  Bill pressed his lips together.

  “Lift and carry that shield,” Bill said, pointing to a solid block of wood as tall as Francis and twice as wide.

  “Bill-” Liz said.

  Bill waved Liz away.

  “Try,” Bill said.

  “All right,” Francis said.

  He pouted and grabbed the shield. He bent his knees and lifted it with both arms. They shook with the effort. It came out of the soil by an inch. Francis put it back down.

  “I did it!” he said. “See?”

  “Now bring it over here,” Bill said, pointing to the ground at his feet.

  Francis eyed the distance. It was short, no more than four or five feet. He licked his lips and gripped the shield handle with both hands. His face turned red with the strain. He managed to lift the shield, his whole body shaking. He took a step forward. He gasped, and dropped it. Francis looked at his feet in shame. Bill snapped his reins and approached Francis. He laid his hands on his son’s small shoulders.

  “You will come with us one day,” he said. “I promise. But it will be when you’re ready. You’re too important to us all to lose. Okay?”

  Francis nodded, wiping his snotty nose.

  “Hey, chin up,” Bill said. “You’ve got a very important job to do.”

  Francis nodded, his smile broken.

  “Let’s move out,” Bill said.

  Francis watched his family leave with tears in his eyes.

  Chapter Nine

  THE ANIMALS were slow and skittish at first. They were not used to having their eyes covered, and jumped like they’d been stung with each unexpected rustle from the underbrush. Worse was the fact the animals could not avoid obvious obstacles automatically. The riders had to lead with great care, as if the animal was a part of them, aware of every obstacle and recess they came to. But after an hour of trudging through the jungle, negotiating their way through the tree limbs that bore down on them, thick and oppressive and sinister, rider and steed alike learned to trust the other.