The Swiss Family RobinZOM (Book 4) (13 page)

Jack started awake, flying up into a sitting position. He jerked back, almost sliding off the edge of the sheer rock face. He crawled back on his elbows. He got to his feet and checked his body, the strength in his muscles and tendons. He felt himself again. He jumped, performing a backflip in the air and shouted, “Woohoo!”

It was still night time. That was good. He might not be late.

He bent down and plucked Greenie Stripies, stuffing them in his pockets. He looked down and saw the zombie, scratching at the sheer cliff wall, nails torn from its fingers. Jack picked up a rock, relishing the strength of his body, and threw it.

The zombie stood staring dumbly up at the rock, making no attempt to avoid it. It smashed into his skull and flattened his head into the ground in a miniature crater.

Jack looked up at the top of the trees roiling like the sea. He gave Nips a high five.

“About time we got home, don’t you think?” Jack said.

He took two steps back and then threw himself over the edge of the cliff and down into the trees below. On his descent, he seized a vine and swung his way up, into the upper boughs.

He hit the branch and ran as fast as his legs could carry him. Faster and faster he went until the world was a blur and the creatures he passed didn’t react quick enough to get out of the way before he was gone.

Jack ran into his parents’ room first, filling a glass of water on the way. He took the petals out of his pocket and mashed them up, adding the water to make it into a thin paste. He took it to his mother.

Her pulse was weak and he had to hold her up in order to feed it to her. The liquid spilled into her mouth and down her throat. Some of it spilled down her cheek, but he was quick to slide the cup up her face to recapture it.

He did the same with his father, and then his brothers in the order they had been infected. He was relieved to find they were all still alive. Once he was done, he set to cleaning the vomit up off the floors.

He pulled up a chair and waited with the full intention of staying up all night to care for his family, but no sooner had he rested his head against the cabinet than his eyes began to drift closed.

Jack’s eyes opened into slits, the light stinging and painful. The world was fuzzy with multiple blocks of indistinct colours.

“He’s coming around,” a female voice said.

Jack recognised it but couldn’t put a name or face to it.

“There is he,” a deep voice said. “Our little hero.”

Three more blurs joined the first two.

“Our hero?” another voice said. “He’s the one who made us all ill in the first place! Funny hero.”

“But he brought us the cure too,” the deep voice said, and Jack recognised it as his father’s.

Jack blinked, and his vision snapped into focus like hitting the autofocus button on a digital camera. His family stood around him. He was lying in bed.

“Am I undead?” Jack said.

Liz chuckled.

“Far from it,” she said.

A fuzzy mass of fur lay curled up on Jack’s stomach. Nips looked up at Jack, a big smile on his face. His movements were slow and awkward.

“What’s wrong with him?” Jack said. “He hasn’t caught it too?”

“No,” Bill said. “Just an overdose of loyalty. We tried to feed him but he wouldn’t take anything we gave him. All he would do was sit by your side. Or, rather, on your stomach.”

“But you’re all okay?” Jack said.

“We’re fine,” Bill said. “Thanks to you.”

“I woke up and found everyone else unconscious,” Liz said. “It scared me, I can tell you. But when I saw you and the petals in your pockets I knew what I had to do. I made more of the paste and gave it to everyone every hour. They each woke up one by one.”

“Why didn’t the other medicines Father made work?” Jack said.

“It didn’t work because I assumed it was Ernest’s hat that had caused your mother to get ill,” Bill said, “but it wasn’t the hat at all.”

“What was it then?” Jack said.

“It was your flowers,” Bill said. “They were what got into Liz’s system. She’d breathed in their poison in a deep inhalation. That’s why she was affected first. The rest of us were affected much slower, the pollen gradually entering our systems. I don’t know why I was affected before Fritz or Ernest. It might have been down to fatigue, or maybe I was just more susceptible. Francis is smaller, so it’s logical it would affect him quickly.”

“How can you know it was definitely the flowers?” Jack said.

“Because I gave the flowers to some rats we caught,” Bill said. “They collapsed and died – too small to suffer the poison and live. We got lucky this time. This isn’t your fault, Jack. It could have happened to any one of us. Just goes to show you can live in a place for months and never really know anything about it.”

“How did you know the Greenie Stripie would cure us?” Jack said.

“Because of its properties,” Bill said. “It was while speaking with Ernest, when I mentioned even the most innocuous of things could cause us harm that I thought of your innocent-looking flowers. It was then that I deduced they had been the cause.”

“But if that’s true how come I was the last one to be affected?” Jack said. “I was the one who picked the flowers in the first place. Shouldn’t I have been first?”

“You would have,” Bill said, nodding, “if you hadn’t have spent so long up in the trees every day. You visited these particular flowers a dozen times over a period of a few weeks. You developed a resistance. I’m surprised you developed symptoms at all. It must have been a very powerful plant for it to have affected you the way it did.”

“This was all your fault, you little squirt,” Fritz said.

“And thanks to him we all came out of it too,” Bill said. “We’d all still be vegetables now if it wasn’t for Jack. Or worse. We might never have recovered.”

Jack got out of bed, his legs shaking under his weight, black spots spoiling his vision. He put his trousers on.

“Where are you going?” Liz said.

“I’m going to tear every one of those flowers out of the ground,” Jack said. “I know where they are.”

“You’ll never find them all,” Liz said.

“I can try,” Jack said.

“Leave them,” Bill said. “Just don’t go near them anymore. You never know what effect removing them might have. Every living thing here plays an important role. We don’t want to risk messing up the delicate nature of things. Besides, one day we might have need of them.”

“What would we need them for?” Ernest said. “In case we want to poison ourselves?”

“You never know,” Bill said.

Jack wobbled on his feet. He sat down on his bed.

“I dreamed I was back in Chucerne,” he said.

“It wasn’t a dream,” Bill said. “It was a memory.”

“A memory?” Jack said.

“The flower appears to make its victim experience hallucinations,” Bill said. “But not just any hallucinations. Images of the past, a specific memory, the happiest place and time we can recall.”

“But my memory wasn’t very happy,” Jack said. “Actually, it was pretty miserable.”

“Apparently it was happy on some level,” Bill said. “Maybe a self-realisation or moment of great importance in your life.”

“Did you all have a hallucination?” Jack said.

“Yes,” Liz said. “What’s interesting was it all occurred on the same two days in our past. The time when we decided to come to this island.”

“What does that mean?” Jack said.

“It probably doesn’t mean anything,” Ernest said.

“Or it might mean we made the right decision to come here,” Liz said. “We’re
meant
to be here.”

“That’s spooky,” Jack said.

Bill nodded.

“Spooky,” he said. “Or reassuring. We are where we’re meant to be.”

“I don’t know about you all,” Liz said “But I’m famished.”

“Peering over the abyss of death will do that to you,” Bill said.

“Shall we continue with the birthday celebrations?” Liz said.

“I hate to break this to you,” Bill said, “but it’s not your birthday anymore.”

“Yesterday doesn’t count,” Liz said. “Let’s pretend like it never happened.”

“Fine with me,” Bill said.

And so, a day late, but in high spirits, all six members of the Robinson family sat down to finish Liz’s birthday meal. This time, without presents.

The family has survived a dire sickness and things are only about to get worse! In their next adventure the Robinsons face a new type of enemy never seen before… Find out what it is in Book 5!

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The Swiss Family RobinZOM
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Perrin Briar is an English author best-known for his apocalypse series
Blood Memory
,
Z-Minus
, and
The
Swiss Family RobinZOM
. He was born in Huntingdon, grew up in Norfolk, graduated from Bournemouth, worked in London, and then chucked it all in to live in South Korea.

He has written for BBC radio, and worked in the production and development departments of the BBC, ITV and Channel 4.

You can email him at
[email protected]
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@perrinbriar
. He loves corresponding with fans, so don’t hesitate to contact him if you have a question!

Copyright
© 2015 Perrin Briar

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Published by Briar Patch Publishing.

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