The End of Everything Box Set, Vol. 1 [Books 1-3]

by Artinian, Christopher

  “I can’t...go...any...faster,” Robyn protested in between breaths. Wren looked back again and now, two or three of the moving figures seemed to have gained some ground.

  “Shit!” Wren said. “Keep going. Keep going the way we came. I’ll catch up.”

  “No. You can’t leave me,” Robyn protested as she began to slow down again.

  Wren kept pushing her. “Don’t you dare slow down. Run as fast as you can, Bobbi. I’ll be back behind you in no time at all.” Robyn sped up again, gave her sister one last fleeting look, and then Wren stopped.

  She ran to her right. “Aaaggghhh!!” she screamed at the top of her voice, hitting the javelin against trees as she went. Suddenly, all the creatures who were within earshot or sight of Wren turned and headed towards her. She paused for a second to make sure still more shifted momentum in her direction. Wren looked back towards her sister, but she was already out of view of both her and the creatures, so half the battle was won. She put her head down and ran, holding the javelin in front of her, allowing it to cut a path through the woods. The growls increased in volume as she counted in her head. Twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five and go. She made a sharp right and began heading up the incline again in a diagonal. She looked back. The creatures were cutting across towards her. There were nowhere near as many as had stormed out of the trading estate, but as she glanced through the trees, she was confident there were still upwards of a dozen.

  The nearest was just ten metres back, as the second change of direction had served in its favour. The one thing she had going for her was she was an experienced runner. It was in her blood; it was what she lived for it was—she went sprawling as her foot caught on a tree root. The javelin slid out of her hand and skidded across the woodland floor like a torpedo. Wren scrambled to her feet, not daring to look behind her but hearing the gurgling growls increase in volume.

  She picked up the javelin and began to sprint, catching movement out of the corner of her eye and seeing more creatures beginning to converge on her as she almost doubled back. She angled left, heading further up the incline, off the clear-cut path, but in the direction she needed to go. Wren zigged and zagged, but now, after her earlier mistake, she kept a close eye on the ground in front of her, making sure there were no more obstacles to trip over. The volume of the creatures’ howling did not dissipate, but it did not grow any louder and she threw a quick glance over her shoulder. She had managed to put a little more distance between herself and her nearest pursuers. She looked right; there were no more creatures coming towards her from that direction either, but she could not afford to let up the pace.

  Her thighs began to strain as she continued to move upwards, but then she was back on a well-beaten path as she turned right once more. Ahead she could see the tramp creature she had speared when they had first entered the woods; she only hoped Robyn had already reached the wall because now everything was down to split-second timing.

  Wren continued to sprint. She reached the fallen creature then turned left up the embankment. Finally, the wall was in view, and there was her sister, struggling to make it up. It was almost an action replay of before. Her arms were over the top and she was desperately trying to swing her foot onto the ridge of the wall, but it just kept rising then falling like a broken clock hand swinging between twenty past and half past.

  “Shit,” hissed Wren as she scrabbled up the steep embankment, grasping the odd branch with her left hand to give her more purchase. She looked back to see the beasts all still in the full throes of pursuit but struggling with the gradient of the incline. Finally, she reached the top and hurled the javelin over the wall, grabbed her sister’s feet and pushed them upwards as hard and fast as she could.

  “Aaaggghhh!” her sister screamed as she launched over the wall like an acrobat leaving a cannon. Wren cast one final look back to see the outstretched hands of the creatures just a matter of feet away from her. She jumped up, grabbing the top of the wall and swinging her foot up. Her boot made firm contact with the wall’s ridge for the briefest of seconds before she jumped down the other side.

  She remained crouched, resting her back against the wall as the creatures began to batter themselves against it, hopelessly. Wren got her breathing back under control as she watched her sister pick herself up from the ground.

  “Thanks. I guess,” Robyn said, her breathing ragged.

  Wren looked out over the park. It was still fairly early. “Come on. We’ll rest when we get home,” she said, picking up the javelin.

  “Can we just have one minute?”

  “The longer we’re out here, the greater the risk,” Wren replied.

  “Fine. I’ll take the risk. Just one minute,” Robyn said, crouching down and taking several deep breaths to try and regulate her breathing. The thuds and growls continued, and it was not long before the two of them resumed their journey.

  They remained silent, still in shock at the events that had unfolded. The two sisters carried on through the park, looking around them, making sure there were no more unwanted admirers, keeping a tight hold of their javelins. They finally reached the fence bordering McIntyre’s field, and they clambered over. They remained silent as they walked through the long grass and it was not until they reached their family home that the true weight of what had happened hit them. Not only had they not made it out of the city, they had nearly been killed and they had lost two rucksacks full of supplies, clothes, their “prized possessions,” and some weapons. They were in one piece for the time being, but the prognosis was not good. Their first full day as orphans in this new world had started badly. As they crawled through the hole in the bottom of the fence and into their back garden, the cold dew washed over their hands. As they realised they no longer had a mother and father to make everything better, both girls began to sob.

  chapter 6

  They had washed the dirt and the horrors of the morning off themselves in a sink of cold soapy water. All the curtains at the front of the house had been closed. They did not want to see what was going on out in the street, nor did they want whoever or whatever was on the street to see what was going on in their home.

  They had changed into fresh clothes and were both sat on the bed in Wren’s room. “So, what now?” asked Robyn.

  “I think we need to learn to fight before we head out there again,” Wren said.

  “What are you talking about? Head out there again, are you mad?! I mean, what’s next? We’ve got no food. We don’t know how long the water will carry on running. We’ve got no electricity. We’ll be lucky if we last more than a couple of days in our own home, never mind out there in the world.”

  “So, what do you think we should do? Just sit here and hope?”

  “I don’t know, but there’s no way I’m going back out there. I was right all along. We should have just stayed here, but nooo, Miss Heptathlete Medal Winning I Always Knows Better Bitch, had to have her own way.”

  “Look, we need to work together. There’s stuff we need to do. For a start we—”

  “Just shut up, Wren. Shut your big flapping gob. I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to go to my room. I’m going to put my head on my pillow and I’m going to sleep.”

  “You’re not the only one who’s hurting. We both lost our parents yesterday. You think I’ve forgotten? You think I don’t care?”

  “If you care, why are you just carrying on, making plans?”

  “That’s not fair. I’m just trying to keep us safe. It’s what mum and dad would have wanted.”

  Robyn stood up and marched out, she went into her room and closed the door. Wren sat there on the bed for a while, then she lay down with her legs dangling off the edge. She stared at the ceiling, wracking her brains, desperate to come up with a solution to the problem. At this moment, the prospect of escaping the city looked further away than ever, but she knew that’s what they needed to do if they were going to live. After a few moments of contemplation, she stood up and headed downstairs. She
walked into the kitchen and began to rifle through all the cupboards. She knew there was a little food that they had not been able to fit in the rucksacks, but there was not a huge amount. She pulled it all out and lined it up on the counter. There were two tins of baked beans, a tin of sweetcorn, a tin of corned beef, a packet of dried spaghetti. There was a tube of tomato paste, a large jar of pickled onions left over from Christmas, and two packets of dried custard. “Shit,” she said looking at the sorry array of foodstuffs in front of her.

  She headed out of the kitchen, into the hall, and quietly unlocked the back door, stepping out into the garden. She looked towards the large hole in the back fence, then looked to her right at the hole in the neighbour’s fence. If they were stopping here for a while, those would need to be blocked. Wren opened the rear door to the garage. She left it open, as the only torch she had was in a rucksack under a bush at a trading estate some distance away. The car was parked in the driveway; her dad had been loading it up when their world had come crashing in on them. She stepped into the darkness. The faintest crack of light appeared underneath the up and over door, which was securely locked. She hunted around the shelving units and picked up a small toolbox which she transported outside. She opened it up to see screwdrivers, spanners, pliers, spirit levels, and a wide array of nails and screws. She removed a couple of the screwdrivers and put them in her pocket before walking back into the garage and searching the remainder of it thoroughly for what she was looking for, but to no avail. She headed back into the house and through to the kitchen. She shot glances in every direction, looking for inspiration, until she went to the wall cupboards and began to examine the doors. She pulled a screwdriver out and was about to start removing one of the doors when she looked across the breakfast bar to the huge Monet print on the wall in the dining room.

  Wren removed it from the wall and examined the back. It had a hardboard backing. “Perfect,” she said, beginning to dismantle the frame. She removed the wood and leant the remainder of the frame against the wall. She headed into the living room and did the same to another print in there, before heading back out to the garden.

  Wren went back to the toolbox, and as much as she’d like to hammer nails into the fences for speed, screwing the boards into place would be a lot safer. She had seen her dad use some kind of metal spike to bore holes in wood for screws. She picked it up by its red plastic handle and pressed hard in the four corners of the first piece of wood. Before turning four screws in just by a couple of threads, not too deep, like she had seen her dad do. She took the first piece of board over to the back fence and put it in place. It was way too big for the gap, but that did not matter; at least it covered it. She began to turn the screw, forcing it through the solid hardboard and into the wooden post. She repeated the process with the next screw, then the other two went into much softer fence panels. It was not very secure. But it blocked the view, which was her primary concern.

  Wren opened the shed and took out a spade which she dug into the soil and wedged against the piece of hardboard. She stood back, admiring her handy work for a moment before starting on the next repair.

  She looked at her hands; small blisters had appeared on the palms, which she traced proudly. The repairs did not make the fences invulnerable, but that had not been the goal. It was merely to make anyone in the garden invisible to those in the garden to the right or the field to the back. Wren intended to spend time out here training, and if one of those things happened by, she wanted to minimise the chance of her being seen.

  She put the tools back in the box, headed into the house, and straight into the kitchen. That work had made her thirsty. She pulled a mug from the tree and filled it. She drank greedily, and water ran over her chin and down her front. Wren refilled the mug and did the same again. Then she paused with her handle still on the tap. She filled her mug again and placed it carefully onto the counter, then did the same with all the other mugs. She opened the kitchen cupboards and began to fill bowls, jugs, flasks, glasses, Tupperware containers, until all the surfaces in the kitchen were covered.

  Wren pulled a bucket out from under the sink and turned the tap on then headed back out to the garage and grabbed the bucket that her dad used for washing the car. She filled that too. Then she went upstairs, placed the plug in the bath, and turned the tap on. At least if the water did go off, they would have a supply which would last them a while.

  Wren headed back across the landing, passing her sister’s closed door on the way. She went into her own room and opened her bedside cabinet drawer, pulling out a small project book and a pencil. She sat down on the bed and started writing a list. Water, tick. Fence repairs in back garden, tick. Food, question mark. She took the book and headed downstairs to look at the food that was still laid out on the counter.

  “Okay, by no stretch of the imagination can you put a tick against this one,” she said, placing the book down by the side of the food. She looked at her watch. It was eleven-thirty. She had been up for six and a half hours. If nothing else, she needed to finish this day with some hope, but looking at the meagre selection of foodstuffs in front of her made her realise that the only way that was going to happen was if she went back out there.

  Wren tapped her pen against her mouth. Where am I going to get more food with a minimal amount of risk? Then she remembered back to the horrific scene from the previous day, when her neighbours next door but one had turned. She headed straight to the cupboard underneath the kitchen sink and pulled out a couple of reusable shopping bags, the kind that had shoulder straps. Wren folded and twisted them as tight as she could, binding them with a couple of thick rubber bands from the bureau drawer, and wedging them into her jacket pocket.

  She headed out into the hall and looked up the stairs, passing on the idea of shouting up to tell Robyn what she was doing. She stepped into the back garden; for a second she considered taking along the javelin, but then thought for the distance and the enclosed spaces she was going to be confined to, a smaller weapon would be better. She went back to her dad’s toolbox and picked out a claw hammer. She really wished she hadn’t slid the crowbar into her rucksack; that would have been perfect.

  Wren pulled a white plastic lawn chair across to the fence and climbed onto it, peeking over into the next garden. It was all clear. She had no idea if her next-door neighbours were safe and hiding or…she still could not bring herself to think about the alternative. She took two deep breaths and vaulted the six-foot barrier, landing softly on her neighbour’s lawn. She remained there, frozen for a moment to see if a family of ghouls were going to run towards her. When none did, she jogged the few feet across to the other side and leapt over the hedge that acted as the divide between her next-door neighbours and Catriona and Brian’s garden. She paused again, looking in all directions to make sure the coast was clear before carrying on.

  Wren walked up to the large living room window and cupped her hands over her eyes to look in without the reflection of the sun dazzling her. She knew nobody lived with Brian and Catriona, and she felt sure they would not have returned to the house after...after it happened. Zombies were a lot of things, but didn’t seem like the indoorsy types. She walked up to the back door and tried the handle. “Bingo,” she whispered as she pushed the door open and stepped inside.

  The interior was cool, and she breathed in deeply. There was no smell of decay. As she listened, there was no gurgling or growling, so she walked farther into the house. She looked up the staircase; it was clear. She looked down the hall. The living room door was open. She had already seen from outside that was clear. She put her hand on the door handle to the dining room/kitchen and clenched her fist tightly around the shaft of the hammer. She pushed the door open quickly and took a step back. The front door was closed. A few seconds passed by and nothing came towards her, so she stepped into the dining room and immediately looked right to the open plan kitchen. It was all clear.

  Part of her wanted to start going through the kitchen cupboards straight
away, but that nagging little paranoid part of her told her she needed to check upstairs first. Even though the likelihood of anything being up there was astronomically small, she knew she had to be sure. Wren stepped back out into the hall and stood for a moment at the bottom of the steps, looking up. Should she walk up slowly and stealthily? Or should she charge up, flying into the face of anything that came out, head on?

  “Screw it!” She ran up the stairs, two at a time, vaulting onto the landing and ending the fluid sequence in a frozen crouch. Wren paused. Five, six, seven…but nothing came. She stood up and began to go room to room, swinging the doors open, popping her head around the corner and straight on to the next, all the time clutching the shaft of the hammer like her life depended on it, which of course, it did. Satisfied there was nobody else in the house, she went back through the rooms, closing all the curtains. She did the same downstairs. If any of those creatures were out in the street, she did not want to attract their attention.

  Wren headed back to the kitchen, placed the two bags on the kitchen surface, and got to work rifling through the cupboards.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Tears streaked Robyn’s cheeks as she lay in bed. The buds remained in her ears despite the last of the battery dying on her phone. She had been listening to The Show Must Go On by Queen. It was her dad’s favourite band and that was his favourite track. Most of what he listened to was lame, but Robyn liked quite a few Queen songs and she had downloaded her favourites. Now they would fade into distant memory. As the battery died, she wondered if she’d ever hear another Queen song.

  She stared at the ceiling and wondered, How long have I been lying here? She remembered drifting off to sleep at one stage, the trauma of the morning being too much for her. Robyn stayed there for a few more minutes before sitting up and placing the phone on her bedside cabinet. Now it was nothing more than an ornament. She opened the bedroom door and walked into Wren’s room. Seeing her sister was not there, she went downstairs into the kitchen. “What the hell?” she asked as she saw all the bowls, mugs, bottles and jugs filled with water. All the food was collected together in one neat pile as well, and her confusion grew. “Wren?” she called.